Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death

by F. W. H. Myers

From this last group, then, there is scarcely a noticeable transition to the group where departed spirits manifest their knowledge that some friend who survived them has now passed on into their world. That such recognition and welcome does in fact take place, later evidence, drawn especially from trance-utterances, will give good ground to believe. Only rarely, however, will such welcome—taking place as it does in the spiritual world—be reflected by apparitions in this. When so reflected, it may take different forms, from an actual utterance of sympathy, as from a known departed friend, down to a mere silent presence, perhaps inexplicable except to those who happen to have known some long predeceased friend of the decedent's.

I quote in Appendix VII. C one of the most complete cases of this type, which was brought to us by the Census of Hallucinations.

There are other cases more or less analogous to this. In one[143] the apparition of a dying mother brings the news of her own death and that her baby is living. In another[144] a mother sees a vision of her son being drowned and also an apparition of her own dead mother, who tells her of the drowning. In this case, the question may be raised as to whether the second figure seen may not have been, so to say, substitutive—a symbol in which the percipient's own mind clothed a telepathic impression of the actual decedent's passage from earth. Such a view might perhaps be supported by some anomalous cases where news of the death is brought by the apparition of a person still living, who, nevertheless, is not by any normal means aware of the death. (See the case of Mrs. T., already given in Appendix IV. E.)

But such an explanation is not always possible. In the case of Mrs. Bacchus,[145] for instance, both the deceased person and the phantasmal figure were previously unknown to the percipient. This case—the last which Edmund Gurney published—comes from an excellent witness. The psychical incident which it seems to imply, while very remote from popular notions, would be quite in accordance with the rest of our present series. A lady dies; her husband in the spirit-world is moved by her arrival; and the direction thus given to his thought projects a picture of him, clothed as in the days when he lived with her, into visibility in the house where her body is lying. We have thus a dream-like recurrence to earthly memories, prompted by a revival of those memories which had taken place in the spiritual world. The case is midway between a case of welcome and a case of haunting.

I now come to a considerable group of cases where the departed spirit shows a definite knowledge of some fact connected with his own earth-life, his death, or subsequent events connected with that death. The knowledge of subsequent events, as of the spread of the news of his death, or as to the place of his burial, is, of course, a greater achievement (so to term it) than a mere recollection of facts known to him in life, and ought strictly, on the plan of this series, to be first illustrated. But it will be seen that all these stages of knowledge cohere together; and their connection can better be shown if I begin at the lower stage,—of mere earth-memory. Now here again, as so often already, we shall have to wait for automatic script and the like to illustrate the full extent of the deceased person's possible memory. Readers of the utterances, for instance, of "George Pelham" (see Chapter IX.) will know how full and accurate may be these recollections from beyond the grave. Mere apparitions, such as those with which we are now dealing, can rarely give more than one brief message, probably felt by the deceased to be of urgent importance.

A well-attested case where the information communicated in a vision proved to be definite, accurate, and important to the survivors is given in Appendix VII. D. In the same Appendix another case in this group is also quoted. It illustrates the fact that the cases of deepest interest are often the hardest for the inquirer to get hold of.

In this connection I may refer again to Mrs. Storie's dream of the death of her brother in a railway accident, given in Chapter IV. While I think that Gurney was right—in the state of the evidence at the time Phantasms of the Living was written—in doing his best to bring this incident under the head of telepathic clairvoyance, I yet feel that the knowledge since gained makes it impossible for me to adhere to that view. I cannot regard the visionary scene as wholly reflected from the mind of the dying man. I cannot think, in the first place, that the vision of Mr. Johnstone—interpolated with seeming irrelevance among the details of the disaster—did only by accident coincide with the fact that that gentleman really was in the train, and with the further fact that it was he who communicated the fact of Mr. Hunter's death to Mr. and Mrs. Stone. I must suppose that the communicating intelligence was aware of Mr. Johnstone's presence, and at least guessed that upon him (as a clergyman) that task would naturally fall. Nor can I pass over as purely symbolic so important a part of the vision as the second figure, and the scrap of conversation, which seemed to be half heard. I therefore consider that the case falls among those where a friend recently departed appears in company of some other friend, dead some time before.

We have thus seen the spirit occupied shortly after death with various duties or engagements, small or great, which it has incurred during life on earth. Such ties seem to prompt or aid its action upon its old surroundings. And here an important reflection occurs. Can we prepare such a tie for the departing spirit? Can we create for it some welcome and helpful train of association which may facilitate the self-manifestation which many souls appear to desire? I believe that we can to some extent do this. At an early stage of our collection, Edmund Gurney was struck by the unexpectedly large proportion of cases where the percipient informed us that there had been a compact between himself and the deceased person that whichever passed away first should try to appear to the other. "Considering," he adds, "what an extremely small number of persons make such a compact, compared with those who do not, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that its existence has a certain efficacy."

Let us now review the compact-cases given in Phantasms of the Living and consider how far they seem to indicate ante-mortem or post-mortem communication. The twelve cases there recorded are such as fell, or may have fallen, within twelve hours of the death. In three of these cases, the agent whose phantasm appeared was certainly still alive. In most of the other cases the exact time relation is obscure; in a few of them there is strong probability that the agent was already dead. The inference will be that the existence of a promise or compact may act effectively both on the subliminal self before death and also probably on the spirit after death.

This conclusion is confirmed by several other cases, one of which is given in Appendix VII. E. This case suggests an important practical reflection. When a compact to appear, if possible, after death is made, it should be understood that the appearance need not be to the special partner in the compact, but to any one whom the agent can succeed in impressing. It is likely enough that many such attempts, which have faded on account of the surviving friend's lack of appropriate sensitivity, might have succeeded if the agent had tried to influence some one already known to be capable of receiving these impressions.[146] There is a case given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 440, in which a lady, having made a compact with her husband and also with a friend, her phantom is seen after her death by her husband and daughter and the latter's nurse, collectively; but not by the friend, who was living elsewhere.