Vanishing suddenly

With regard to my having had any other hallucination, I have had others, but lapse of time and inattention have quite dimmed the remem brance of them. They were of a different kind to this last case. They were, I should say, simply ' nightmare ' or ' daymare.' That is, they were such, that I quite believe I was asleep while experiencing them. In the last case I had not a peculiar sense of breaking out of sleep at once, and with a snap, as it were. I render my idea but imperfectly in the preceding sentence — perhaps I would more truly describe myself as breaking free, not from what was sleep, but from a tyrannous mistake as to my circumstances at the time. This sense was absent in the last case. I believe I might be awake, I even think I was awake, with the image of a dream still strongly on my mind. But in the earlier cases I concluded long ago that I was asleep and vividly dreaming till the image disappeared. Briefly, I cannot be sure in the latter case that I was asleep, although all experience would go to say I was. In the earlier cases many years ago I concluded that waking had caused what looked real to disappear. But do not think for one moment that I consider the last case any less a delusion than the former. I only try to describe my experience and belief at the moment of hallucination. It is difficult to define the difference in these cases. In conversation with our colleague, Mr. R. Hodgson, Mr. Runciman mentioned that he found afterwards from the servant that at the time of his hallucination Mr. Baggit was apparently suffering intense agony. The figure was not part of his dream at all ; he saw it when he woke. It appeared to be lying almost on its right side, between Mr. Runciman and his wife, with the left side-face exposed and eye open, but the body was motionless, though it seemed to Mr. Runciman to be alive. In addition to the low gaslight, the dusky light of the morning was coming through the window, the blind of which was up. The light was sufficient for Mr. Runciman to see the time by his watch. He tells us that he made a written note of the experience, but does not remember whether this was done before he heard of the death. He has searched for the note, but cannot find it, and thinks that it must have been lost at the time of a removal. § 7. I will now give some examples where two senses were concerned. The following, from Mr. D. H. Wilson, of Rosemont, Hyeres, includes an impression of weight as well as of sight. The case belongs to the group where the agent is comatose (pp. 230, 406). 1876. (176) My mother told me one morning, when I went to see her, that in the previous night she had had a startling experience. She was awakened by feeling a heavy weight on her feet, and on sitting up saw the form of her ix.] BORDERLAND CASES. 435 husband (my father was then thousands of miles away) seated on the bed, in his nightshirt, and having the appearance of a corpse. After a few moments the form vanished. I recommended my mother to record this experience in her diary, and she did so. In due course she was informed by her husband that on that particular night he was in a state of coma, having been delirious for some days, and his life was quite despaired of by the doctors.