Real Ghost Stories

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"Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream of being at my brother's
at Melbourne, and found his house on a hill at the further end of the
town, and next to the open forest. His garden sloped a little down the
hill to some brick buildings below; and there were greenhouses on the
right hand by the wall, as you look down the hill from the house. As I
looked out of the window in my dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged
trees having a somewhat segregated appearance in their heads--that is,
their heads did not make that dense mass like our trees. 'There,' I said
to some one in my dream, 'I see your native forest of eucalyptus!'

"This dream I told to my sons and to two of my fellow-passengers at the
time, and on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long before we
reached the town, I saw this very wood. 'There,' I said, 'is the very
wood of my dream. We shall see my brother's house there! And so we did.
It stands exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; but there, over the
wall of the garden, is the wood, precisely as I saw it and now see it as
I sit at the dining-room window writing. When I looked on this scene I
seem to look into my dream." (Owen's "Footfalls," p. 118.)

The usual explanation of these things is that the vision is the revival
of some forgotten impressions on the brain. But in neither of the
foregoing cases will that explanation suffice, for in neither case had
the person who saw ever been in the place of which they had a vision.
One desperate resource, the convenient theory of pre-existence, is
useless here. The fact seems to be that there is a kind of invisible
camera obscura in Nature, which at odd times gives us glimpses of things
happening or existing far beyond the range of our ordinary vision. The
other day when in Edinburgh I climbed up to the Camera Obscura that
stands near the castle, and admired the simple device by which, in a
darkened room upon a white, paper-covered table, the whole panorama of
Edinburgh life was displayed before me. There were the "recruities"
drilling on the Castle Esplanade; there were the passers-by hurrying
along High Street; there were the birds on the housetops, and the
landscape of chimneys and steeples, all revealed as if in the crystal of
a wizard's cave. The coloured shadows chased each other across the
paper, leaving no trace behind. Five hundred years ago the owner of that
camera would have been burned as a wizard; now he makes a comfortable
living out of the threepennypieces of inquisitive visitors. Is it
possible to account for the phenomena of clairvoyance other than by the
supposition that there exists somewhere in Nature a gigantic camera
obscura which reflects everything, and to which clairvoyants habitually,
and other mortals occasionally, have access?

_Seen and Heard at 150 Miles Range._

The preceding incidents simply record a prevision of places subsequently
visited. The following are instances in which not only places, but
occurrences, were seen as in a camera by persons at a distance varying
from 150 to several thousand miles. Space seems to have no existence for
the clairvoyant. They are quoted from the published "Proceedings of the
Psychical Research Society":

On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R----,
C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely and dangerously
wounded; and supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers
with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at
the time was fully 150 miles distant, at Ferozepore.

"On the night of September 9th, 1848," writes his wife, "I was lying on
my bed between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband
being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and heard his voice
saying, 'Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife.' All the
next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind. In due
time I heard of General R---- having been severely wounded in the
assault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was
not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L----, the
officer who helped to carry General R---- off the field, that the
request as to the ring was actually made to him, just as I heard it at
Ferozepore at that very time." (Vol. I. p. 30.)

_A Royal Deathbed in France seen in Scotland._

The above case is remarkable because the voice was transmitted as well
as the spectacle. In the next story the ear heard nothing, but the scene
itself was very remarkable. A correspondent of the Psychical Research
Society writes that whilst staying with her mother's cousin, Mrs.
Elizabeth Broughton, wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edinburgh, and
daughter of the late Colonel Blanckley, in the year 1844, she told her
the following strange story:--

"She awoke one night and aroused her husband, telling him that something
dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again and
not to trouble him. She assured him that she was not asleep when she saw
what she insisted on then telling him--what she saw, in fact, was;
First, a carriage accident--which she did not actually see, but what she
saw was the result--a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure
gently raised and carried into the nearest house, then a figure lying on
a bed, which she then recognised as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually
friends collecting round the bed--among them several members of the
French royal family--the queen, then the king, all silently, tearfully
watching the evidently dying duke. One man (she could see his back, but
did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the duke,
feeling his pulse, his watch in the other hand. And then all passed
away; she saw no more. As soon as it was daylight she wrote down in her
journal all that she had seen. From that journal she read this to me. It
was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days passed
before the _Times_ announced 'The Death of the Duke of Orleans.'
Visiting Paris a short time afterwards, she saw and recognised the place
of the accident and received the explanation of her impression. The
doctor who attended the dying duke was an old friend of hers, and as he
watched by the bed his mind had been constantly occupied with her and
her family." (Vol. II. p. 160.)

* * *

The doctor's sympathy may have been the key to the secret camera of
Nature, but it in no wise "explains" how a lady in Edinburgh could see
what went on inside a house in Paris so clearly as to know what had
happened two days before the intelligence reached the _Times_.

_An African Event Seen in England._

Here is another story where the event occurred in Africa and was seen in
England. A correspondent from Wadhurst, West Dulwich, S.E., says:--

"My late husband dreamt a certain curious dream about his brother, Mr.
Ralph Holden, who was at that time travelling in the interior of Africa.
One morning, in June or July, 1861, my husband woke me with the
announcement, 'Ralph is dead.' I said, 'You must be dreaming.' 'No, I am
not dreaming now; but I dreamt twice over that I saw Ralph lying on the
ground supported by a man.' They learnt afterwards that Ralph must have
died about the time when his brother dreamt about him and that he had
died in the arms of his faithful native servant, lying under a large
tree, where he was afterwards buried. The Holden family have sketches of
the tree and the surroundings, and, on seeing it, my husband said, 'Yes,
that is exactly the place where I saw Ralph in my dream, dying or
dead.'" (Vol. I. p. 141.)

_A Vision Which Saved Many Lives._

Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his "Nature and the Supernatural," tells a
story, on the authority of Captain Yonnt, which differs from the
foregoing in having a definite purpose, which, fortunately, was
attained. Captain Yonnt, a patriarch in the Napa valley of California,
told Dr. Bushnell that six or seven years before their conversation he
had seen a vision which saved several lives. Here is his story:--

"About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter's night, he had a
dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants
arrested by the snows of the mountains and perishing rapidly by cold and
hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge,
perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what
appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he
distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their
particular distress. He awoke profoundly impressed by the distinctness
and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed
exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it
from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he
told his story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his
recognising without hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade
came over the Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a
spot in the Pass answered exactly his description. By this the
unsophistical patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company
of men, with mules and blankets and all necessary provisions. The
neighbours were laughing meantime at his credulity. 'No matter,' he
said, 'I am able to do this, and I will; for I verily believe that the
fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains one
hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And
there they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and
brought in the remnant alive." ("Nature and the Supernatural," p. 14.)

_The Vision of a Fire._

The wife of a Dean of the Episcopal Church in one of the Southern States
of America was visiting at my house while I was busy collecting
materials for this work. Asking her the usual question as to whether she
had ever experienced anything of the phenomena usually called
supernatural, apparently because it is not the habitual experience of
every twenty-four hours, she ridiculed the idea. Ghosts? not she. She
was a severely practical, matter-of-fact person, who used her natural
senses, and had nothing to do with spirits. But was she quite sure; had
nothing ever occurred to her which she could not explain? Then she
hesitated and said, "Well, yes; but there is nothing supernatural about
it. I was staying away down in Virginia, some hundred miles from home,
when one morning, about eleven o'clock, I felt an over-powering
sleepiness. I never sleep in the daytime, and that drowsiness was, I
think, almost my only experience of that kind. I was so sleepy I went to
my room and lay down. In my sleep I saw quite distinctly my home at
Richmond in flames. The fire had broken out in one wing of the house,
which I saw with dismay was where I kept all my best dresses. The people
were all about trying to check the flames, but it was of no use. My
husband was there, walking about before the burning house, carrying a
portrait in his hand. Everything was quite clear and distinct, exactly
as if I had actually been present and seen everything. After a time I
woke up, and, going downstairs, told my friends the strange dream I had
had. They laughed at me, and made such game of my vision that I did my
best to think no more about it. I was travelling about, a day or two
passed, and when Sunday came I found myself in a church where some
relatives were worshipping. When I entered the pew they looked rather
strange, and as soon as the service was over I asked them what was the
matter. 'Don't be alarmed,' they said, 'there is nothing serious.' They
then handed me a postcard from my husband, which simply said, 'House
burned out; covered by insurance.' The date was the day on which my
dream occurred. I hastened home, and then I learned that everything had
happened exactly as I had seen it. The fire had broken out in the wing
which I had seen blazing. My clothes were all burnt, and the oddest
thing about it was that my husband, having rescued a favourite picture
from the burning building, had carried it about among the crowd for some
time before he could find a place in which to put it safely."
Swedenborg, it will be remembered, also had a clairvoyant vision of a
fire at a great distance.

_The Loss of the "Strathmore."_

A classic instance of the exercise of this faculty is the story of the
wreck of the _Strathmore_. In brief the story is as follows:--The
father of a son who had sailed in the _Strathmore_, an emigrant
ship outward bound from the Clyde, saw one night the ship foundering
amid the waves, and saw that his son, with some others, had escaped
safely to a desert island near which the wreck had taken place. He was
so much impressed by this vision that he wrote to the owner of the
_Strathmore_, telling him what he had seen. His information was
scouted; but after awhile the _Strathmore_ was overdue and the
owner got uneasy. Day followed day, and still no tidings of the missing
ship. Then, like Pharaoh's butler, the owner remembered his sins one day
and hunted up the letter describing the vision. It supplied at least a
theory to account for the vessel's disappearance. All outward bound
ships were requested to look out for any survivors on the island
indicated in the vision. These orders being obeyed, the survivors of the
_Strathmore_ were found exactly where the father had seen them. In
itself this is sufficient to confound all accepted hypotheses. Taken in
connection with other instances of a similar nature, what can be said of
it excepting that it almost necessitates the supposition of the
existence of the invisible camera obscura which the Theosophists
describe as the astral light?

_The Analogy of the Camera Obscura._

Clairvoyance can often be explained by telepathy, especially when there
is strong sympathy between the person who sees and the person who is
seen. Mr. Edward R. Lipsitt, of Tralee, sends me the following
narrative, which illustrates this fact:--

"I beg to narrate a curious case of telepathy I experienced when quite a
boy. Some ten years ago I happened to sleep one night in the same room
with a young friend of about my own age. There existed a very strong
sympathy between us. I got up early and went out for a short walk,
leaving my friend fast asleep in his bed. I went in the direction of a
well-known lake in that district. After gazing for some moments at the
silent waters, I espied a large black dog making towards me. I turned my
back and fled, the dog following me for some distance. My boots then
being in a bad condition, one of the soles came off in the flight;
however, I came away unmolested by the dog. But how amazed was I when
upon entering the room my friend, who was just rubbing his eyes and
yawning, related to me my adventure word by word, describing even the
colour of the dog and the very boot (the right one) the sole of which
gave way!"

_Motiveless Visions._

There is often no motive whatever to be discovered in the apparition. A
remarkable instance of this is recorded by Mr. Myers in an article in
the _Arena_, where the analogy to a camera obscura is very close. The
camera reflects everything that happens. Nothing is either great or
small to its impartial lens. But if you do not happen to be in the right
place, or if the room is not properly darkened, or if the white paper is
taken off the table, you see nothing. We have not yet mastered the
conditions of the astral camera. Here, however, is Mr. Myers' story,
which he owes to the kindness of Dr. Elliott Coues, who happened to call
on Mrs. C---- the very day on which that lady received the following
letter from her friend Mrs. B----.

"'Monday evening, January 14th, 1889.

"'My Dear Friend,--I know you will be surprised to receive a note
from me so soon, but not more so than I was to-day, when you were
shown to me clairvoyantly, in a somewhat embarrassed position. I
doubt very much if there was any truth in it; nevertheless, I will
relate it, and leave you to laugh at the idea of it.

"'I was sitting in my room sewing this afternoon, about two o'clock,
when what should I see but your own dear self; but, heavens! in what
a position. Now, I don't want to excite your curiosity too much, or
try your patience too long, so will come to the point at once. You
were falling up the front steps in the yard. You had on your black
skirt and velvet waist, your little straw bonnet, and in your hand
were some papers. When you fell, your hat went in one direction, and
the papers in another. You got up very quickly, put on your bonnet,
picked up the papers, and lost no time getting into the house. You
did not appear to be hurt, but looked somewhat mortified. It was all
so plain to me that I had ten to one notions to dress myself and
come over and see if it were true, but finally concluded that a
sober, industrious woman like yourself would not be stumbling around
at that rate, and thought I'd best not go on a wild goose chase.
Now, what do you think of such a vision as that? Is there any
possible truth in it? I feel almost ready to scream with laughter
whenever I think of it; you did look _too_ funny, spreading
yourself out in the front yard. "Great was the fall thereof."'

"This letter came to us in an envelope addressed: Mrs. E. A. C----, 217
Del. Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C., and with the postmarks, Washington,
D.C., Jan. 15, 7 a.m., 1889, and Washington, N.E.C.S., Jan. 15, 8 a.m.

"Now the point is that every detail in this telepathic vision was
correct. Mrs. C---- had actually (as she tells me in a letter dated
March 7th, 1889) fallen in this way, at this place, in the dress
described, at 2.41, on January 14th. The coincidence can hardly have
been due to chance. If we suppose that the vision preceded the accident,
we shall have an additional marvel, which, however, I do not think we
need here face. 'About 2,' in a letter of this kind, may quite
conceivably have meant 2.41."

The exceeding triviality of the incident often destroys the possibility
of belief in the ordinary superstition that it was a direct Divine
revelation. This may be plausible in cases of the _Strathmore_,
where the intelligence was communicated of the loss of an English ship,
but no one can seriously hold it when the only information to be
communicated was a stumble on the stairs.

Considering the enormous advantages which such an astral camera would
place in the hands of the detective police, I was not surprised to be
told that the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department in
London and Chicago occasionally consult clairvoyants as to the place
where stolen goods are to be found, or where the missing criminals may
be lurking.

_Mr. Burt's Dream._

When I was in Newcastle I availed myself of the opportunity to call upon
Mr. Burt, M.P. On questioning him as to whether he had ever seen a
ghost, he replied in the negative, but remarked that he had had one
experience which had made a deep impression upon his mind, which partook
more of the nature of clairvoyance than the apparition of a phantom. "I
suppose it was a dream," said Mr. Burt. "The dream or vision, or
whatever else you call it, made a deep impression upon my mind. You
remember Mr. Crawford, the Durham miners' agent, was ill for a long time
before his death. Just before his death he rallied, and we all hoped he
was going to get better. I had heard nothing to the contrary, when one
morning early I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was standing by
the bedside of my old friend. I passed my hand over his brow, and he
spoke to me with great tenderness, with much greater tenderness than he
had ever spoken before. He said he was going to die, and that he was
comforted by the long and close friendship that had existed between us.
I was much touched by the feeling with which he spoke, and felt awed as
if I were in the presence of death. When I woke up the impression was
still strong in my mind, and I could not resist the feeling that
Crawford was dying. In a few hours I received a telegram stating that he
was dead. This is more remarkable because I fully expected he was going
to get better, and at the moment of my dream he seems to have died. I
cannot give any explanation of how it came about. It is a mystery to me,
and likely to remain so."

This astral camera, to which "future things unfolded lie," also retains
the imperishable image of all past events. Mr. Browning's great uncle's
studs brought vividly to the mind of the clairvoyant a smell of blood,
and recalled all the particulars of the crime of which they had been
silent witnesses. Any article or relic may serve as a key to unlock the
chamber of this hidden camera.

Chapter II.

Tragic Happenings Seen in Dreams.

_An Irish Outrage Seen in a Dream._

One of the best stories of clairvoyance as a means of throwing light on
crime is thus told by a correspondent of the Psychical Research Society:

One morning in December, 1836, he had the following dream, or, he would
prefer to call it, revelation. He found himself suddenly at the gate of
Major N. M.'s avenue, many miles from his home. Close to him was a group
of persons, one of whom was a woman with a basket on her arm, the rest
men, four of whom were tenants of his own, while the others were unknown
to him. Some of the strangers seemed to be murderously assaulting H. W.,
one of his tenants, and he interfered. "I struck violently at the man on
my left, and then with greater violence at the man's face on my right.
Finding, to my surprise, that I had not knocked down either, I struck
again and again with all the violence of a man frenzied at the sight of
my poor friend's murder. To my great amazement I saw my arms, although
visible to my eye, were without substance, and the bodies of the men I
struck at and my own came close together after each blow through the
shadowy arms I struck with. My blows were delivered with more extreme
violence than I ever think I exerted, but I became painfully convinced
of my incompetency. I have no consciousness of what happened after this
feeling of unsubstantiality came upon me." Next morning he experienced
the stiffness and soreness of violent bodily exercise, and was informed
by his wife that in the course of the night he had much alarmed her by
striking out again and again with his arms in a terrific manner, 'as if
fighting for his life.' He, in turn, informed her of his dream, and
begged her to remember the names of those actors in it who were known to
him. On the morning of the following day (Wednesday) he received a
letter from his agent, who resided in the town close to the scene of the
dream, informing him that his tenant had been found on Tuesday morning
at Major N. M.'s gate, speechless and apparently dying from a fracture
of the skull, and that there was no trace of the murderers. That night
he started for the town, and arrived there on Thursday morning. On his
way to a meeting of magistrates he met the senior magistrate of that
part of the country, and requested him to give orders for the arrest of
the three men whom, besides H. W., he had recognised in his dream, and
to have them examined separately. This was at once done. The three men
gave identical accounts of the occurrence, and all named the woman who
was with them. She was then arrested, and gave precisely similar
testimony. They said that between eleven and twelve on the Monday night
they had been walking homewards along the road, when they were overtaken
by three strangers, two of whom savagely assaulted H. W., while the
other prevented his friends from interfering. H. W. did not die, but was
never the same man afterwards; he subsequently emigrated. (Vol. I. p.
142.)

The advantage which would accrue from the universal establishment of
this instantaneous vision would not be unmixed. That it is occasionally
very useful is obvious.

_A Clairvoyant Vision of a Murder._

The most remarkable experiment in clairvoyant detection that I have ever
come across is told by Dr. Backman, of Kalmar, in a recent number of the
"Psychical Research Society's Proceedings." It is as follows:--

"In the month of October, 1888, the neighbourhood of Kalmar was shocked
by a horrible murder committed in the parish of Wissefjerda, which was
about fifty kilometres from Kalmar as the crow flies. What happened was
that a farmer named P. J. Gustafsson had been killed by a shot when
driving, having been forced to stop by stones having been placed on the
road. The murder had been committed in the evening, and a certain tramp
was suspected, because Gustafsson, in his capacity of under bailiff, had
arrested him, and he had then undergone several years' penal servitude.

"This was all that I or the public knew about the case on November 1st
of the same year. The place where the murder was committed and the
persons implicated in it were quite unknown to me and the clairvoyant.

"On the same day, November 1st, having some reason to believe that such
a trial would be at least partially successful, I experimented with a
clairvoyant, Miss Agda Olsen, to try if it was possible to get some
information in this way about such an event.

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