5
Let us pass to other examples. I quote from an excellent article on the importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and Sadgrove, which appeared in the Annales des sciences psychiques for 1 February 1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W. Verrall told in full detail in Vol. XX. of the Proceedings. Mrs. Verrall is a celebrated “automatist”; and her “cross-correspondences” occupy a whole volume of the Proceedings. Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her scientific precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most active and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.
On the 11th of May 1901, at 11.10 P.M., Mrs. Verrall wrote as follows:
“Do not hurry ____ date this ____ hoc est quod volui—tandem. δικαιοσύνη καὶ χαρὰ συμφωνεῖ συνετοῖσιν. A. W. V. καὶ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἴσως. calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper. Nomen inscribere iam possum—sic, en tibi!”[11]
After the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking.
That same night, as there were said to be “uncanny happenings” in some rooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to sit through the night in the empty chambers. Precautions were taken to prevent intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller rooms, “to trace anybody or anything that might come or go.” Mrs. Verrall knew nothing of the matter. The phenomena began at 12.43 A.M. and ended at 2.9 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk. On examination it was seen that the marks were “clearly defined bird’s footprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room.” The marks were identical and exactly 2¾ inches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about the size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at 2.30 A.M.; the unexplained phenomena had begun at 12.43 that same morning. The words about “chalk sticking to the feet” are a singularly appropriate comment on the events; but the remarkable point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what we have said one hour and thirty-three minutes before the events took place.
The persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr. J. G. Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and declared that they had not any expectation of what they discovered. I need hardly add that Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the haunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of Mrs. Verrall’s existence.
Here then is a very curious prediction of an event, insignificant in itself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who foretells it, to people whom she does not know either. The spiritualists, who score in this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in order to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little scene in which the future, the present and the past are all mixed up together. Are they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall’s subconsciousness roaming like this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem has seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.