Place withheld · 1885-12-01 · from the PHANTASMS archive
Voices
December 21st, 1885. I had mesmerised Mrs. E. for several months, for severe neuralgia, with the view of affording her natural sleep. One night she had been in the mesmeric trance, and had been awoke by me, and I had returned to barracks — situated about half-a-mile from her house — leaving her in her room. I went to bed, and to sleep, and was awakened with a start by hearing my name called very distinctly. I sat up in bed, and looked for the caller, but saw no one. It was too dark to look at my watch, so that I cannot say what the time may have been. It occurred to me at the time that Mrs. E. might want me for something. I did not recognise the voice, and indeed had no chance of doing so, as it did not call again. In the morning I went to see Mrs. E., in order to find out whether she had had any unusual experience. She asked me if anything had happened to me the night before. I said ' Yes,' and asked her why she put the question. She said, ' Has your father a habit of moving one leg over the other, now and then, in a restless way 1 ' This was the case. She then said, about 1 a.m. she had been roused from sleep, and saw a phosphorescent appearance on the chair near her bed, which resolved itself into a human figure, recognised by her as my father from a photograph in my possession. It did not speak, but seemed to ask her mentally ' Where is Preston ? ' To which she responded, also mentally, ' He was here, but is gone home ' ; whereon the figure disappeared. I was somewhat alarmed at the occurrence, and wrote to ask if my father was well. He was so ; and did not remember having any dream of me on that night. Mrs. E. particularly remarked his habit of crossing first one leg and then the other, of which I had not previously told her.
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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