The Best Psychic Stories Part 27

We present herewith a group of such testimonies either given out to the world by prominent persons as their own experiences or as the experiences of persons whom they knew and believed, or else as told by friends of the prominent persons whose experiences they were.

It is not owing to any selective process that the material is mostly of the sort which favors supernormal hypotheses. We take what we can get.

Whenever an experience is accompanied by a normal explanation, such will be included only a little more willingly than an experience which does not readily suggest a normal explanation. But, let it be noted, the groups which we propose will be composed of human _experiences_, and not opinions, except as the opinions accompany the experiences. And it cannot be expected that, after certain types of experiences as related by certain men have been given, we shall then proceed to name other men who haven't had any such experiences. True, against Paul du Chaillu's a.s.sertion that he had seen gorillas was once urged the fact that n.o.body else had ever seen gorillas. Nevertheless the sole a.s.sertion of the one man who had seen them proved to outweigh in value the lack of experience on the part of all other travelers up to that time.

A PREMONITION OF SIR H. M. STANLEY

This incident is related by the famous explorer, Sir Henry M. Stanley, in his autobiography edited by Dorothy Stanley (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909), on pages 207-208.

Stanley, then a private in the Confederate Army, was captured in the battle of s.h.i.+loh and sent to Camp Douglas near Chicago. It was while here that the incident in question occurred.

"On the next day (April 16), after the morning duties had been performed, the rations divided, the cooks had departed contented, and the quarters swept, I proceeded to my nest and reclined alongside of my friend Wilkes in a posture that gave me a command of one half of the building. I made some remarks to him upon the card-playing groups opposite, when suddenly, I felt a gentle stroke on the back of my neck, and in an instant I was unconscious. The next moment I had a vivid view of the village of Tremeirchion and the gra.s.sy slopes of the hills of Hirradog, and I seemed to be hovering over the rook woods of Brynbella.

I glided to the bed-chamber of my Aunt Mary. My aunt was in bed, and seemed sick unto death. I took a position by the side of the bed, and saw myself, with head bent down, listening to her parting words which sounded regretful, as though conscience smote her for not having been as kind as she might have been, or had wished to be. I heard the boy say, 'I believe you, Aunt. It is neither your fault, nor mine. You were good and kind to me, and I knew you wished to be kinder; but things were so ordered that you had to be what you were. I also dearly wished to love you, but I was afraid to speak of it lest you would check me, or say something that would offend me. I feel our parting was in this spirit.

There is no need of regrets. You have done your duty to me, and you had children of your own who required all your care. What has happened to me since, it was decreed should happen. Farewell.'

"I put forth my hand and felt the clasp of the long thin hands of the sore-sick woman. I heard a murmur of farewell, and immediately I awoke.

"It appeared to me that I had but closed my eyes. I was still in the same reclining att.i.tude, the groups opposite me were still engaged in their card games, Wilkes was in the same position. Nothing had changed.

"I asked, 'What has happened?'

"'What could happen?' said he. 'What makes you ask? It is but a moment ago you were speaking to me.'

"'Oh, I thought I had been asleep a long time.'

"On the next day the 17th of April, 1862, my Aunt Mary died at Fynnon Beuno, in Wales!

"I believe that the soul of every human being has its attendant spirit--a nimble, delicate essence, whose method of action is by a subtle suggestion which it contrives to insinuate into the mind, whether asleep or awake. We are too gross to be capable of understanding the signification of the dream, the vision, or the sudden presage, or of divining the source of the premonition or its import. We admit that we are liable to receive a fleeting picture of an act, or a figure at any moment, but, except being struck by certain strange coincidences which happen to most of us, we seldom make an effort to unravel the mystery.

The swift, darting messenger stamps an image on the mind, and displays a vision to the sleeper; and if, as sometimes follows, among tricks and twists of the errant mind, by reflex acts of memory, it happens to be a true representation of what is to happen, we are left to grope hopelessly as to the manner and meaning of it, for there is nothing tangible to lay hold of.

"There are many things relating to my existence which are inexplicable to me, and probably it is best so; this death-bed scene, projected on my mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of s.p.a.ce, is one of these mysteries."

The precise meaning of the pa.s.sage wherein Sir Henry speculates on the nature and meaning of such facts, is not entirely clear. Does he by the word _spirit_ mean what is usually meant by that term, or does he mean some part of the mind functioning upon the rest as its object, like Freud's _psychic censor_ though with a different purpose? And the affirmative employment of the terms "presage" and "premonition" do not seem to be consistent with the expression "it happens to be a true representation of what is to happen." It seems plain that the distinguished explorer did believe that the death-bed scene was "projected on" his "mind's screen, across four thousand five hundred miles of s.p.a.ce." However, what Stanley thought about the facts is of much less importance than the facts themselves, as reported by one whose life was one long drill in observing, appraising and recording facts.

COINCIDENT EXPERIENCES OF GENERAL FReMONT AND RELATIVES

These are related on pages 69-72 of _Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Fremont, Daughter of the Pathfinder General John C. Fremont and Jessie Benton Fremont His Wife_.

After describing a terrible experience of her father and his men in 1853, while crossing the Wahsatch Mountains, and their rescue from starvation by reaching Parowan, Utah, Miss Benton goes on:

"That night my father sat by his campfire until late in the night, dreaming of home and thinking of the great happiness of my mother. Could she but know that he was safe! Finally he returned to his quarters in the town only a few hundred yards away from the camp. The warm bright room, the white bed with all suggestion of shelter and relief from danger made the picture of home rise up like a real thing before him, and at half-past eleven at night he made an entry in his journal, putting there the thought that had possession of him and that my mother in far away Was.h.i.+ngton might know that all danger was past and that he was safe and comfortable.

"All this is a prelude to a most uncommon experience which befell my mother in our Was.h.i.+ngton home on the night in question. We could not possibly hear from father at the earliest until midsummer. Though my mother went into society but little that year, there was no reason for gloomy forebodings. The younger members of the family kept her in close touch with the social side of life, while her father, whose confidant she always was, kept her informed as to the political events of the moment. Her life was busy and filled with her full share of its responsibilities. In midwinter, however, my mother became possessed with the conviction that my father was starving, and no amount of reasoning could calm her fears. The idea haunted her for two weeks or more, and finally began to leave its physical effects upon her. She could neither eat nor sleep; open-air exercise, plenty of company, the management of a household, all combined, could not wean her from the belief that father and his men were starving in the desert.

"The weight of fear was lifted from her as suddenly as it came. Her young sister Susie and a party of relatives returned from a wedding at General Jessup's on the night of February 6, 1854, and came to mother to spend the night, in order not to awaken the older members of my grandmother's family. The girls doffed their party dresses, replaced them with comfortable woolen gowns, and, gathered before the open fire in mother's room, were gaily relating the experiences of the evening.

The fire needed replenis.h.i.+ng and mother went to an adjoining dressing-room to get more wood. The old-fas.h.i.+oned fire-place required long logs which were too large for her to handle, and as she half knelt, balancing the long sticks of wood on her left arm, she felt a hand rest lightly on her left shoulder, and she heard my father's laughing voice whisper her name, 'Jessie.'

"There was no sound beyond the quick-whispered name, no presence, only the touch, but my mother knew as people know in dreams that my father was there, gay and happy, and intending to startle Susie, who when my mother was married was only a child of eight, and was always a pet playmate of my father's. Her shrill, prolonged scream was his delight, and he never lost an opportunity to startle her.

"Mother came back to the girl's room, but before she could speak, Susie gave a great cry, fell in a heap upon the rug, and screamed again and again, until mother crushed her balldress over her head to keep the sound from the neighbors. Her cousin asked mother what she had seen, and she explained that she had seen nothing, but had heard my father tell her to keep still until he could scare Susie.

"Peace came to my mother instantly, and on retiring she fell into a refres.h.i.+ng sleep from which she did not waken until ten the next morning; all fear for the safety of father had vanished from her mind; with sleep came strength, and she soon was her happy self again.

"When my father returned home, we learned that it was at the time the party was starving that my mother had the premonition of evil having befallen them, and the entry in his journal showed that exactly the moment he had written it in Parowan, my mother had felt his presence, and in the wireless message from heart to heart knew that my father was safe and free from harm. The hour exactly tallied with the entry in his book, allowing for the difference in longitude."

Further details would have been desirable, particularly just what was the immediate occasion of Susie's fright, for she screamed before Mrs.

Fremont related what had befallen herself. The only escape from the conclusion that Susie had some separate peculiar experience is to suppose--which we may not unreasonably do--that the elder lady betrayed her own agitation before she spoke, perhaps by dropping the sticks, hurrying back, and looking strangely at Susie. We would have liked a sight of the General's journal, also, and to have been permitted to copy the entry exactly as it stands.

Nevertheless, though we leave Susie and her screams quite out of account, we have a very pretty case remaining, however we explain it.

Mrs. Fremont's depression might be explained by the very natural fears of a woman whose husband was engaged in a possibly dangerous expedition, though she picked out for her fears exactly the period of the expedition when there was an actual state of privation and danger. But why did the fear so afflicting to her health and spirits so suddenly leave her, while it was still winter in the mountains? And why did the hour and moment of the cessation of these fears coincide with the hour and moment when the explorer was occupied with thoughts of home and writing his wish that his wife might know that he was safe?

Many a reader will be disposed to answer the question "why?" with the facile answer "telepathy," but that word is a key which does not turn in this lock with perfect ease. There are cases where one person thinks a particular thing under extraordinary circ.u.mstances, and precisely that thought, or a hallucination of precisely that nature, occurs to another person at a distance. But in this case General Fremont thinks a wish that his wife knew he was safe, and his wife seems to feel a hand upon her shoulder, seems to hear his voice p.r.o.nounce her name, and somehow gets the impression that he proposes to play a trick on her sister Susie. If exact coincidence between the thought of the supposed "sender"

and that of the supposed "recipient" is a support to the theory of telepathy as applied to one case, then wide discrepancy between the coincident thoughts of two persons in another case should be an argument against the theory of telepathy as applied to that. There should be some limit to the handicap which, by way of courtesy, the spiritistic hypothesis allows to the telepathic.

If there are spirits, and if they have a certain access to human thoughts, and if the limitations of s.p.a.ce are little felt by them, then the spiritistic theory would have an easier time than telepathy with the facts in this case. A friendly intermediary might convey the a.s.surance that the Pathfinder wanted conveyed to his wife, and in doing so employ such devices as an intelligent personal agent could think up, and were within its grasp. The touch, the hallucination of a voice resembling that of the absent husband, the sense of gayety, and even the very characteristic trait of liking to startle Susie, might all be the result of the friendly messenger's attempts to implant in Mrs. Fremont's mind a fixed a.s.surance that somebody was safe and happy, and that this somebody was in very truth her husband.

INCIDENTS RELATED BY DEAN HOLE

The Very Rev. Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, England, was not only an effective preacher and popular lecturer, but likewise the author of fascinating books, composed of reminiscences and shrewd and witty comments upon men and affairs. He made two lecturing tours in America.

His _The Memories of Dean Hole_ contains a remarkable dream of his own, and one of similar character told him by a trusted friend. They may be found on pages 200-201. After rehearsing the account of a dream and its tragic sequel told him many years before, he goes on:

"Are these dreams coincidences only, imaginations, sudden recollections of events which had been long forgotten? They are marvelous, be this as it may. In a crisis of very severe anxiety, I required information which only one man could give me, and he was in his grave. I saw him distinctly in a vision of the night, and his answer to my question told me all I wanted to know; and when, having obtained the clearest proof that what I had heard was true, I communicated the incident and its results to my solicitor, he told me that he himself had experienced a similar manifestation. A claim was repeated after his father's death which had been resisted in his lifetime and retracted by the claimant, but the son was unable to find the letter in which the retraction was made. He dreamed that his father appeared and told him it was in the left hand drawer of a certain desk. Having business in London, he went up to the offices of his father, an eminent lawyer, but could not discover the desk, until one of the clerks suggested that it might be among some old lumber placed in a room upstairs. There he found the desk and the letter.

"Then, as regards coincidence, are there not events in our lives which come to us with a strange mysterious significance, a prophetic intimation, sometimes of sorrow and sometimes of success? For example, I lived a hundred and fifty miles from Rochester. I went there for the first time to preach at the invitation of one who was then unknown to me, but is now a dear friend. After the sermon I was his guest in the Precincts. Dean Scott died in the night, almost at the time when he who was to succeed him arrived at the house which adjoins the Deanery. There was no expectation of his immediate decease, and no conjecture as to a future appointment, and yet when I heard the tolling of the cathedral bell, I had a presentiment that Dr. Scott was dead, and that I should be Dean of Rochester."

Again, Dean Hole in his _Then and Now_, pp. 9-11, together with some opinions of his, sets down a seeming premonition and what he considers answers to prayer.

"There is an immeasurable difference between ghosts and other apparitions--between that which witnesses declare they saw with their own eyes when they were wide awake--as Hamlet saw the ghost of his father, and Macbeth saw Banquo--and that which presents itself to us when we are asleep, or in that condition between waking and sleeping which makes the vision so like reality. I do not believe in the former, and I am fully persuaded in my own mind that the wonderful stories which we hear are to be accounted for either as exaggerations or as the result of natural causes which have been misstated or suppressed; but many of us have had experience of the latter--of those visions of the night which have seemed so real, and which in some instances have brought us information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently proved to be true.

"George Benfield, a driver on the Midland Railway living at Derby, was standing on the footplate oiling his engine, the train being stationary, when he slipped and fell on the s.p.a.ce between the lines. He heard the express coming on, and had only just time to lie full length on the 'six-foot' when it rushed by, and he escaped unhurt. He returned to his home in the middle of the night, and as he was going up the stairs he heard one of his children, a girl about eight years old, crying and sobbing. 'Oh, Father!' she said, 'I thought somebody came and told me that you were going to be killed, and I got out of bed and prayed that G.o.d would not let you die.' Was it only a dream, a coincidence?"

Dean Hole is the first person whom we remember to have held that a man's testimony respecting a given species of experience is more credible if he was asleep at the time that he claims to have had it, than if he was awake. He states that dreams "in some instances have brought us information as to occurrences before unknown to us, but subsequently proved to be true," but the same is a.s.serted in respect to waking apparitional experiences on exactly as satisfactory evidence, in many cases. He accounts for the wonderful stories we hear in respect to waking apparitions, and discredits them on exactly the same grounds that others account for and discredit his dreams. The fact is that, with Dean Hole as with many others, the personal equation is operative. He believes in coincidental dreams because he himself has experienced them and knows that he is not guilty of exaggerations in recounting them, nor can he see how natural causes can explain them; he never has had a waking apparition, and therefore is inclined to conjure up guesses as to the inaccuracy and inveracity of those who have--guesses which he would resent if they were applied to himself.

But the Dean's testimony is one matter, his opinions or prejudices another.

INCIDENTS REPORTED BY SERJEANT BALLANTINE

Serjeant William Ballantine (1812-1887) was one of the foremost lawyers in England, noted for his skill in cross-examination. He was counsel in the Tichborne claimant case, one of the most celebrated in the history of the English courts, and in the equally famed trial of the Gaekwar of Baroda. The incidents which impressed him are to be found in Ballantine's _Some Experiences of a Barrister's Life_, pp. 256-267.

"I do not think it will be out of place whilst upon this subject to relate a story told of Sir Astley Cooper.[22] I am not certain that it has not been already in print, but I know that I have had frequent conversations about it with his nephew.

[Footnote 22: Sir Astley Paston Cooper was perhaps the most famous and influential surgeon of his time in England.]

"There had been a murder, and Sir Astley was upon the scene when a man suspected of it was apprehended. Sir Astley, being greatly interested, accompanied the officers with their prisoner to the gaol, and he and they and the accused were all in a cell, locked in together, when they noticed a little dog which kept biting at the skirt of the prisoner's coat. This led them to examine the garment, and they found upon it traces of blood which ultimately led to conviction of the man. When they looked around the dog had disappeared, although the door had never been opened. How it had got there or how it got away, of course n.o.body could tell. When Bransby Cooper spoke of this he always said that of course his uncle had made a mistake, and was convinced of this himself; Bransby used to add that no doubt if the matter had been investigated it would have been shown that there was a mode of accounting for it from natural causes. But I believe that neither Sir Astley nor his nephew in their hearts discarded entirely the supernatural."