Voices

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 until after I had a letter saying she was ill, and almost directly afterwards a telegram saying she was dead. To explain clearly, when I had the letter saying she was ill, I mentioned it to my sister who brought the letter ; then when I had the telegram to say she was dead, I found that the time corresponded exactly with the time I heard her voice. This is the only experience of the kind that I ever had. [This is in answer to the question whether she had ever had any other hallucination of the senses.] 114 FURTHER AUDITORY CASES [chap. I didn't for one moment doubt whose voice it was, as I immediately answered by name. § 3. I may make the transition from the recognised to the unrecognised auditory phantasms by an account of several experiences, occurring to the same percipient, in one of which the voice was recognised, but not in the others. The witness is Mrs. Wight, of 12, Sinclair Koad, West Kensington. (279) On five occasions in my life I have heard my Christian name uttered in a peremptory manner, as if by some one who was in need of my aid ; and after each occasion I have learnt that a relation had died at a time closely corresponding to the call. I have never on any other occasion had any sort of hallucination of the senses whatever. The first two occasions of my hearing the call corresponded with the deaths of two aunts, who had brought me up in my childhood, when my parents were in India. In these cases I cannot say whether the call was on the very day of the death or not ; it was certainly within a very few days. The next and most striking occasion was at the time of the death of my mother, which took place in India, on November 8th, 1864. I was living at the time with a cousin, Mrs. Harnett, and her husband, at St. John's Wood. I was sitting one morning in a room with Mr. Harnett, when we both distinctly heard a voice utter my name as it seemed from outside the room. I at once went to look, but it proved that no inmate of the house had called me. Indeed, there was no one except my cousin who would have used my Christian name ; and all our search and efibrts to solve the mystery were unavailing. As Mr. Harnett had heard of the similar occurrence on the death of my aunts, he made a note in writing of the date. In about three weeks, we received the news of my mother's death in India, after a week's illn