Sleep event

I am more inclined to think that I heard of it within a day or two after it happened, and that if I added the date 1880, it must have been the date of my copying it into my notebook from some loose memoranda. Here we have a singular feature — an appearance which suggested not the agent but a person closely resembling her. The case thus stands in a sort of midway position between the more normal cases and the class of unrecognised phantasms, of which several specimens have already been given (pp. 218, 384, 409, 427). The same peculiarity occurs in the next case. The narrator, Miss R, was willing to have her name and address published ; but her family disliked the idea, and we have acted in accordance with their wishes. May 8th, 1879. (171) In the year 1861 my parents were living in Soho Square, and I and my brother Alfred, aged 24, were living with them. On the 15th October my brother went to spend the evening at the house of an old schoolfellow, where it was not unusual for him to remain for the night, in order to avoid coming home at a late hour. It was customary for him, if he happened to come home after my parents had gone to bed, to go quietly to my mother's bedside and to give her a kiss if she were awake, and if not, to leave his hat upon the dressing-table as a sign that he had been there. She went to bed on October 15th without expecting his return that night, but after her first sleep she awoke up suddenly and saw him, as she thought, standing at the foot of the bed ; she said softly, ' I am not asleep, my dear,' but he went away instead of going to kiss her ; and this surprised her. On the morning of the 16th October, at breakfast time, she said to me : ' Where is Alfred 1 ' I replied, ' He did not come home last night, mamma.' She answered, ' Oh, yes, he did ; and he came into my room when he was partly undressed, but he did not speak to me as usual.' In the course of an hour my brother came in, and my mother asked him if he had been into her room during the night. He assured her he had not been home. She said, ' It is very strange, for I am quite convinced that someone was standing at the foot of my bed when I awoke in the night.' At about mid-day a letter arrived to inform us that our cousin, Frank, only a few years older than my brother Alfred, had died at 1 o'clock that morning in London. My mother instantly exclaimed, ' It was Frank whom I saw ! I can recall him to mind distinctly as I saw him, and though at the time I thought I was looking at Alfred, yet I thought there was something strange in his appearance, and I could not understand why he came in to see me without his coat on.' We find the date of death, October 16th, 1861, confirmed by the obituary in the Times. On March 20th, 1884, the narrator informed Mr. Podmore as follows: — 430 BORDERLAND CASES. [chap. Before writing this account, I wrote a letter to my cousin's family to confirm my recollection of the time at which he died, and received an answer to the effect that he died at 1 a.m. There was no very great I likeness between my brother and my cousin ; merely a general family resemblance. Both were fair : but Frank was taller than Alfred, and had a fine beard, whilst Alfred had but a slight one. « ]\I. J]. R. Miss R.'s brother says :— « March 20th, 1884, I remember this circumstance, but attach no importance to it, and '• detect nothing of the marvellous in the narrative.