Place withheld · 1841-01-01 · from the PHANTASMS archive
Knocking
I do not know of any of the Spencer family ; the old lady, her son and daughter, I mentioned, having long been dead. The circumstance I named occurred in the year 1841, but as I was a party to it I consider my evidence first-hand. You next ask me whether I have had ' any auditory hallucinations.' I cannot remember any but the one I give you. We find from the Register of Deaths that a Mrs. Spencer, who is probably the person mentioned in this case, died at Ormskirk in 1841. [This case could, of course, have no claim at all to attention, but for its analogy to others, as there is no sufficient proof that the sound was not a real knock. If it was a hallucination, Mr. Hurry's share in the experience cannot be accounted for as the subjective effect of strain and anxiety.] (682) From Mr. W. Hillstead, a teacher of music, who, at the time when he gave us the account, in 1884, was acting as care-taker in a large house at Cambridge. In October, 1848, I was sitting with my mother in 8, Suffolk Place, Pall Mall East. The house was empty except for ourselves. The room was mainly lighted by a large skylight. The house was quite quiet. It was rather dark on an October day. Suddenly we were both startled by a terrifying noise, as if a cartload of gravel had been shot down from a height on to the skylight. I jumped up in startled alarm, thinking that the skylight was, of course, smashed to pieces by the stones which I had actually heard falling on it. There was not the slightest trace of anything unusual. My mother, who had had many warnings of different kinds, was less alarmed. She took for granted that someone was dead, but we could neither of us think who it could be, as we knew of no one who was ill. Some days afterwards, a cousin of mine called, and told us that his 638 SUPPLEMENT. [chap. brother Richard was dead. We asked when he died, and found that it was at dusk on the very afternoon on which we heard the crash. My mother had been very fond of the young man, and so was I. Of late he had gone wrong, and we had seen less of him.
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the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
My father's death occurred when I was in my seventh year. It was the subject of conversation between my mother and myself from time to v.] VISUAL CASES. 511 time till her death in 1866, so t…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
In answer to your first question I must tell you that at the time of my sister's death I was with almost entire strangers, and therefore do not think I mentioned what I had heard to anyone u…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
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This is a witness statement collected in the 1880s by Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore of the Society for Psychical Research, and published in Phantasms of the Living (1886), the first large scientific collection of such testimony. Witnesses signed their statements and were often corroborated by others, whose statements appear as their own accounts. The book is in the public domain; the text is verbatim save for scanning artifacts, and the full volumes are at archive.org.
Anomaly