Appendix Vii. a) Where a Spirit Is Recorded As Appearing Repeatedly--in

guardian-angel fashion--and especially as foreseeing and sympathising with the survivor's future marriage.

Among repeated apparitions this case at present stands almost alone; its parallels will be found when we come to deal with the persistent "controls," or alleged communicating spirits, which influence trance-utterance or automatic script. A case bearing some resemblance to it, however, is given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 233, the main difference being that the repeated communications are there made in dream, and in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 450, [714 A], is recorded another case, where the deceased person seems to make repeated efforts to impress on survivors a wish prompted by continued affection.

Less uncommon are the cases where an apparition, occurring singly and not repeated, indicates a continued knowledge of the affairs of earth. That knowledge, indeed, runs mainly, as we shall presently see, in two directions. There is often knowledge of some circumstance connected with the deceased person's own death, as the appearance of his body after dissolution, or the place of its temporary deposit or final burial. And there is often knowledge of the impending or actual death of some friend of the deceased person's. On the view here taken of the gradual passage from the one environment into the other, both these kinds of knowledge seem probable enough. I think it likely that some part of the consciousness after death may for some time be dreamily occupied with the physical scene. And similarly, when some surviving friend is gradually verging towards the same dissolution, the fact may be readily perceptible in the spiritual world. When the friend has actually died, the knowledge which his predecessor may have of his transition is knowledge appertaining to events of the next world as much as of this.

But apart from this information, acquired perhaps on the borderland between two states, apparitions do sometimes imply a perception of more definitely terrene events, such as the moral crises (as marriage, grave quarrels, or impending crimes) of friends left behind on earth. In Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 25 [716 A], is a case of impressive warning, in which the phantom was seen by two persons, one of whom had already had a less evidential experience.

In another case of similar type, the message, while felt by the percipient to be convincing and satisfactory, was held too private to be communicated in detail. It is plain that just in the cases where the message is most ultimately veracious, the greatest difficulty is likely to be felt as to making it known to strangers.

I have already given a case (Appendix VII. A) where a departed spirit seems to show a sympathetic anticipation of a marriage some time before it is contemplated. In another case (Journal S.P.R., vol v. p. 10), the percipient, Mrs. V., describes a vision of a mother's form suspended, as it were, in a church where her son is undergoing the rite of confirmation. That vision, indeed, might have been purely subjective, as Mrs. V. was familiar with the departed mother's aspect; though value is given to it by the fact that Mrs. V. has had other experiences which included evidential coincidences.

From these instances of knowledge shown by the departed of events which seem wholly terrene, I pass to knowledge of events which seem in some sense more nearly concerned with the spirit-world. We have, as already hinted, a considerable group of cases where a spirit seems to be aware of the impending death of a survivor. In some few of those cases the foreknowledge is entirely inexplicable by any such foresight as we mortals can imagine, but in the case given in Appendix VII. B, though the family did not foresee the death, a physician might, for aught we know, have been able to anticipate it. However explained, the case is one of the best-attested, and in itself one of the most remarkable, that we possess.

I place next by themselves a small group of cases which have the interest of uniting the group just recounted, where the spirit anticipates the friend's departure, with the group next to be considered, where the spirit welcomes the friend already departed from earth. This class forms at the same time a natural extension of the clairvoyance of the dying exemplified in some "reciprocal" cases (e.g. in the case of Miss W., where a dying aunt has a vision of her little niece who sees an apparition of her at the same time; see Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 253). Just as the approaching severance of spirit from body there aided the spirit to project its observation among incarnate spirits at a distance upon this earth, so here does that same approaching severance enable the dying person to see spirits who are already in the next world. It is not very uncommon for dying persons to say, or to indicate when beyond speech, that they see spirit friends apparently near them. But, of course, such vision becomes evidential only when the dying person is unaware that the friend whose spirit he sees has actually departed, or is just about to depart, from earth. Such a conjuncture must plainly be rare; it is even rather surprising that these "Peak in Darien" cases, as Miss Cobbe has termed them in a small collection which she made some years ago, should be found at all. We can add to Miss Cobbe's cases two of fair attestation. (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iii. p. 93, and vol. xiv. p. 288 [718 A and B]).

From this last group, then, there is scarcely a noticeable transition to the group where departed spirits manifest their knowledge that some friend who survived them has now passed on into their world. That such recognition and welcome does in fact take place, later evidence, drawn especially from trance-utterances, will give good ground to believe. Only rarely, however, will such welcome--taking place as it does in the spiritual world--be reflected by apparitions in this. When so reflected, it may take different forms, from an actual utterance of sympathy, as from a known departed friend, down to a mere silent presence, perhaps inexplicable except to those who happen to have known some long predeceased friend of the decedent's.

I quote in Appendix VII. C one of the most complete cases of this type, which was brought to us by the Census of Hallucinations.

There are other cases more or less analogous to this. In one the apparition of a dying mother brings the news of her own death and that her baby is living. In another a mother sees a vision of her son being drowned and also an apparition of her own dead mother, who tells her of the drowning. In this case, the question may be raised as to whether the second figure seen may not have been, so to say, substitutive--a symbol in which the percipient's own mind clothed a telepathic impression of the actual decedent's passage from earth. Such a view might perhaps be supported by some anomalous cases where news of the death is brought by the apparition of a person still living, who, nevertheless, is not by any normal means aware of the death. (See the case of Mrs. T., already given in Appendix IV. E.)

But such an explanation is not always possible. In the case of Mrs. Bacchus, for instance, both the deceased person and the phantasmal figure were previously unknown to the percipient. This case--the last which Edmund Gurney published--comes from an excellent witness. The psychical incident which it seems to imply, while very remote from popular notions, would be quite in accordance with the rest of our present series. A lady dies; her husband in the spirit-world is moved by her arrival; and the direction thus given to his thought projects a picture of him, clothed as in the days when he lived with her, into visibility in the house where her body is lying. We have thus a dream-like recurrence to earthly memories, prompted by a revival of those memories which had taken place in the spiritual world. The case is midway between a case of welcome and a case of haunting.

I now come to a considerable group of cases where the departed spirit shows a definite knowledge of some fact connected with his own earth-life, his death, or subsequent events connected with that death. The knowledge of subsequent events, as of the spread of the news of his death, or as to the place of his burial, is, of course, a greater achievement (so to term it) than a mere recollection of facts known to him in life, and ought strictly, on the plan of this series, to be first illustrated. But it will be seen that all these stages of knowledge cohere together; and their connection can better be shown if I begin at the lower stage,--of mere earth-memory. Now here again, as so often already, we shall have to wait for automatic script and the like to illustrate the full extent of the deceased person's possible memory. Readers of the utterances, for instance, of "George Pelham" (see