Knocking

My parents informed my cousin and aunt (who is now deceased) of the circumstance, before she received the letter; and my aunt, who is just dead, remembered the circumstance quite well. My grandmother often used to mention it. I have appealed to my cousin to write her recollection of the incident, but I cannot at present persuade her to do so. In conversation Mrs. Weyer stated that there were no water-pipes near the room, and that the sound seemed startlingly near — close to the head of the bed. She is not at all predisposed to alarms or fancies, and has never had any other hallucination — unless we are to reckon as such a startling sound of knocks which others also heard, and for which no external cause could be discovered. The idea which she expressed that the sounds in the present case were premonitory of bad news, since it was not founded on any sufficient knowledge of the evidence for telepathic occurrences as facts in Nature, indicates, no doubt, an uncritical acceptance of marvels. But the only question for us is how far such a habit of mind , may have affected the evidence to the facts ; and my strong impression is , that it has not appreciably affected it. We may regard it as probable, however, that the sobs were not described as like those of a person dying until after the fact of the death was realised. The following is the result of an independent inquiry as to the time of death. 1 As regards the repetition, see p. 105. As to the three sobs, in examining a large mass of evidence respecting abnormal phenomena (and especially second-hand accounts), one finds this number recurring with somewhat noticeable frequency — which at any rate suggests unconscious modification of the facts. Nor need we assume any specially superstitious habit of mind on the part of the witness, to find it natural that, at the points where memory is hazy, slight resulting errors should take lines which are (so to speak) marked out for them by literary or religious associations. 230 COLLECTIVE CASES. [chap. Melville Hospital, Chatham. July 18th, 1885. In reply to your letter asking to be informed of the exact hour of the death of David Mackenzie Annison, I beg to state that there was a David Annison, chief stoker, aged 38, admitted into this hospital 26th June, 1865, from H.M.S. ' Cumberland.' He was suffering from chronic liver disease and jaundice. He died at 11.35 p.m., on the 5th July, 1865, and his friends took his body away to Sheerness. In case of a death in this establishment, the body is seen by the medica