Voices

I was, at the time, not at all anxious about my brother ; and the ' voice ' at the time impressed me as very strange, as I really had not thought of him for some time. My brother died in Kiel, Holstein. The date was the 13th of March, 1876. This was the date of my brother's death ; and I remember that that was what caused me to mention the matter again to those whom I had told on board the steamer that I thought I had heard my brother's voice. I must repeat, however, that what I am stating now is from memory only, and the ' note ' I had made of the occurrence at the time no longer exists. It is also the only time that, as far as I remember, anything of the kind has happened to me. [This is in answer to the question whether he had experienced a hallucination of the senses on any other occasion.] Mrs. Fagan, of 26, Manchester Square, W., writes to us as follows : — August 28th, 1885. On board ship, coming from India, one morning I passed Mr. Witt, who was reading on deck. He stopped me and said that a strange thing had happened to him, and on my asking what it was, said that he had heard his brother's voice calling him, ' Gustave,' more than once (three times, I think, but am not sure). He added that he had heard, before leaving Bombay, that his brother was very seriously ill,i and thinking that perhaps he was then dying, or just dead, he made a note of the date. I asked him to let me know afterwards if the brother really died about that time, and he said he would do so. On meeting him in London afterwards, I inquired if his conjecture had proved correct, and he said it had. I do not know whether the time when Mr. Witt heard the voice coincided exactly with the brother's death, as the difference in the local time made it difficult to decide that point without calculation ; and I did not hear that any calculation was made. But the two events occurred at about the same time. Mr. Witt offers no explanation or opinion on the matter, only saying that it was very strange. We have procured, through the Biirgermeister of Kiel, an official certificate of the death of Mr. John T. Witt, which shows that it occurred on March 13, 1876, at 9.30 p.m. Supposing therefore that Mr. G. A. Witt's experience was immediately mentioned by him, and that Mrs. Fagan is right in her recollection that this was in the morning, it must have preceded the death by a good many hours. If either of these suppositions is incorrect, the coincidence may have been closer.