Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying.
Manifestations of the Living (in Health).
Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dead.
Clairvoyance.
Premonitory Dreams. Forecast of the Future.
Dreams that give Information of the Dead.
Meetings foreseen by Presentiment.
Presentiments realized.
Doubles of the Living.
Communications of Thought at a Distance (Telepathy).
Instinctive Presentiments of Animals.
Calls heard at Great Distances.
Movements of Objects without Apparent Cause.
Bolted Doors Opening of Themselves.
Haunted Houses.
Spiritualistic Experiments.
Since my first publication of these documents, I have received many new ones. More than one thousand are to-day crowded into my manuscript library. They contain about fifteen hundred observations which seem to me to be sincere and authentic. The doubtful ones have been eliminated. These narratives emanate as a general thing from persons who are filled with astonishment and are extremely desirous of receiving, if possible, an explanation of these strange events (often very affecting). All the narratives which I have been able to verify have been found to be fundamentally accurate—sometimes modified afterwards, as respects their mere form, by a memory more or less confused.
In L'Inconnu, I published a portion of these narratives. But I excluded from that work[75] phenomena not properly included within the limits of its main plan, which was to show the existence of unknown faculties of the soul.
I excluded, I say, "movements of objects without apparent cause," "bolted doors opening of themselves," "haunted houses," "Spiritualistic experiments;" that is to say, the very cases studied in the present work, in which I hoped to be able to publish them. But space fails me. In my desire to offer to my readers a set of records as complete as possible, for the purpose of giving them a firmly based opinion, I have been swamped by the abundance of material, and, can only rescue a few of the most interesting specimens of them for presentation here.
First of all, I select the following communication as having a certain intrinsic value. It was sent me by my regretted friend Victorin Joncières, the well-known composer of music.
I was on a tour of inspection of the music-schools of the Provinces (he says), and happened to be in a city which I cannot name to you for the reasons which I gave. I was coming out of the branch establishment of our Conservatory, after having examined the piano-class there, when I was addressed by a lady who asked me what I thought of her daughter, and whether I judged that she ought to enter upon an artistic career.
After a rather long conversation, in the course of which I promised to go to hear the young artist, I found myself engaged to go the same evening (for I was leaving the next day) to the house of one of their friends, a high official in the state service, to take part in a Spiritualistic séance.
The master of the house received me with extreme cordialty, recalling the promise I had given him to keep secret his name and that of the city in which he lived. He presented his niece, the medium, to whom he attributes the phenomena which take place in his house. It was, in fact, after the young girl's mother had died, and she came to live with him, that the strange occurrences began to take place.
They began with unusual noises in the walls, and in the floors, with the displacement of articles of furniture that moved without being touched, and with the warblings of birds. M. N. at first believed that it was a piece of foolery planned either by one of his own family or by one of his clerks. However, in spite of the most vigilant watching, he could not discover any trickery, and he finally came to the conclusion that the phenomena were produced, by invisible agents, with whom he believed he could communicate. He soon obtained raps, direct writing, the mysterious appearance of flowers, etc.
After this account, he led me into a large room with bare walls, in which several persons had assembled, among whom were his wife and a professor of natural philosophy at the lyceum—altogether, a dozen of experimenters. In the middle of the room there was a big oak table, upon which were placed paper, a pencil, a small harmonica, a bell, and a lighted lamp.