An account

I was born in 1819. The death of my aunt took place in 1829. Though to my most intimate friends — as Sir Philip Crampton, the late Earl and Countesses (2) of Dunraven,i I have often mentioned the event, (and to Judge Halliburton,) I think I never wrote it fully except for Lord Dunraven and his mother, in 1850, who were very desirous to publish it, but I declined. I think that a great reason I have always had for not talking of it was the awe with which it inspired my mother, and her strict commands that ' I should not mention it to anybody.' Then, too, I went to school and lost sight of Lavinia Cumberland, and I shrank from the comments of strangers. 1 The present Lord Dunraven tells us that he does not remember to have heard his father mention the circumstance. XVIII ] COLLECTIVE CASES. 255 In conversation Miss W. added that she had never experienced any other hallucination ; also that the Cumberland girls had visited her home, and seen her aunt — which accounts for Lavinia's recognition of the figure. [We learn, through a relative of Miss Lavinia Cumberland (now Mrs. Monarch, of 16, Regent's Park Road, N.W.), that she herself does not recall the incident ; but that she remembers several times hearing her sister, Mrs. Part, speak of a ghost case in which they had both been somehow concerned.] a. This case, depending on the narrator's memoryat 31 of what occurred when she was under 10, is not, of course, a strong one evidentially. But the very fact that the experience recorded is of so striking a kind makes it more probable that it was remembered than that it was unconsciously invented. The very odd detail of Lavinia's being the first to see the figure seems peculiarly unlikely to have been wrongly imagined afterwards ; for it is a feature that would have had no natural part in any sentimental idea of the child's about her aunt's visiting her, and could only tend to detract in her mind from the emotional significance of the visit. We have, moreover, the tolerably complete assurance that the incident deeply impressed our informant's mother at the time ; for this attitude of a third person, and the injunction of silence to which it led, are even more unlikely f^^ than the original experience to have been the product of the child's fancy. It must, however, be observed that the second hallucination may have been due to Lavinia's verbal suggestion ; and that the minute details of the appearance (which could hardly have been so suggested) may have been subsequently imagined. It is possible, therefore, that th