“‘These are illusions on your part; you have been dreaming.’
“‘That is possible; but there were two, three, all the servants, who also saw you. You did not arrive until nearly midnight; you were dressed as you are now, and riding a white horse, which you fastened to the gnarled oak. We could all recognise you by the moonlight, and you were going towards the side door when I stopped you from entering.
“‘Hearing our voices, the dogs began to bark, which caused all the servants to get up. You were recognised by my master and the young lady, who fell on her knees before her father, beseeching him not to fire on you. Without showing any fear, you returned step by step to your horse and went down the mountain again. My master was much annoyed with you, called his confidential servant Marino, ordered him to follow you and not to be afraid, but to fire on you two or three times, as he would be responsible. Marino set out, and, although he walked quickly and tried all he could to catch you up, he could not do so. A curious phenomenon aroused his attention, which was that he always saw you going at the same pace, and he had not the courage to fire his rifle.
“‘You arrived at the entrance to the town about five o’clock in the morning; the moon was setting and the day commencing to break. Before you arrived at the first crossing of the streets you began to run, and turned quickly along the first street in the town; and though Marino ran after you, he lost sight of you at the next crossing.’
“My persecutor, frightened by what he had seen, returned immediately to the farm to inform his master of what had taken place, and which seemed very extraordinary and supernormal.
“For a long time this adventure, of which I was the unconscious hero, made a great stir in the town.”
Colonel de Rochas, a distinguished French savant, has made this question of the externalisation or projection of the double and of the motricity and sensibility of the subject his special and patient study, and has embodied the results of many of his experiments in separate works. Some have also been published in the pages of the Annals of Psychical Science, so that the reader who is particularly interested in the question will have no difficulty in finding material for further consideration and study.
The Société Magnétique de France has also conducted extensive experiments in this field of research, particulars of which are published from time to time in the Journal du Magnétisme. The following theoretical explanation given at the conclusion of the report of a series of these experiments is reprinted from the Annals for July-September 1910:—
“We know that the phantom is the psychical body projected from the physical body. It is that which enjoys or suffers, thinks, wishes, judges, and perceives all sensations. It is constantly animated by extremely rapid vibratory movements which are certainly the same as when it is within the body. This principle being admitted, we understand that, when it animates the body, its vibratory movements are not projected outside, and that it exercises no appreciable action on other organisms in its neighbourhood. But when it is outside the body its movements are easily externalised. Then the phantom and another person, vibrating in unison, represent two stringed instruments which sound at the same time when one only is touched. If I can obtain this transmission at great distances, we can explain this strange and unexpected phenomenon by the theory of wireless telegraphy or telephony.”
The results of the many experiments conducted by and under the auspices of French scientists in particular tend to indicate that in the near future an explanation of the phenomena of vampirism will be forthcoming.