Hovering

I have occasionally felt as though I knew that the body was lying in the bed, but that the spirit was hovering about it, and contemplating it. When this is the case I am apt to feel some difficulty in waking, and even feel a little unwell through the following morning. With these experiences should be compared the less marked cases where the impression is simply of going out of oneself — a well-known feature of various abnormal conditions ; see for instance Mr. Varley's description above referred to (p. 288, note) ; case 215, below ; and Cardan, Be Varietate Berum (Basle, 1557), p. 314. But in another class of cases the percipient retains his normal point of observation, and simply sees a phantasm representing himself at a place which is really vacant. An instance of this is case 333 (Vol. ii., p. 217) ; and I have another chloroformcase in which the patient, a medical man, seemed to see his own double contemplating him. 556 THE DEVELOPMENT OF [chap. contemporary evidence for such exercise, I think that we should avoid even provisionally resorting to a theory which introduces problems as formidable as any that it can be employed to explain. And in the present cases, as in the former ones, since nothing is perceived that is definitely outside the agent's range of knowledge, the extension of the percipient's faculties— his clairvoyance, if we like to call it so — may still be perfectly well regarded as a telepathic extension, an abnormally increased power of receiving impressions from another mind, or rather a power of receiving impressions from the more withdrawn strata of another mind, under conditions of crisis or excitement. To come now to the evidence — as to which one preliminary remark is needed. Some of the cases to be quoted are, I think, clearly of the type described ; others are also instances of it, if quite correctly recorded. But we must remember that a narrative which is completely correct as to the central facts which go to prove the telepathic origin of the phantasm, may yet be inexact in the particulars which now become important. A striking coincidence is rather apt to suggest to the imagination a detailed correspondence ; and the percipient, in looking back to his experience after hearing of certain features which belonged to the aspect of his dying friend, may come to imagine that they were represented in the phantasm. Every example, therefore, must be weighed with this possibility in view. A genuine instance of the type, I believe, was the one already quoted (No. 194) where the grey hair w