Again, we cannot tell how long the spirit may continue the effort, or, so to say, renew the experiment. In a case recorded in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x. p. 378, the compact is fulfilled after a space of five years. In another case,[147] there had been no formal compact; but there is an attempt to express gratitude on an anniversary of death; and this implies the same kind of mindful effort as the fulfilment of a definite promise.
I have now traced certain post-mortem manifestations which reveal a recollection of events known at death, and also a persistence of purpose in carrying out intentions formed before death. In this next group I shall trace the knowledge of the departed a little further, and shall discuss some cases where they appear cognisant of the aspect of their bodies after death, or of the scenes in which those bodies are temporarily deposited or finally laid. Such knowledge may appear trivial,—unworthy the attention of spirits transported into a higher world. But it is in accordance with the view of a gradual transference of interests and perceptions,—a period of intermediate confusion, such as may follow especially upon a death of a sudden or violent kind, or perhaps upon a death which interrupts very strong affections.
Thus we have already (Appendix VII. B) encountered one striking case of this type,—the scratch on the cheek, perceived by the departed daughter, as we may conjecture, by reason of the close sympathy which united her to the mother who was caring for her remains.
There are also two cases closely resembling each other, though from percipients in widely different parts of the world, where a clairvoyant vision seems to be presented of a tranquil death-chamber. In that of Mr. Hector of Valencia, South Australia (see Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 353), the percipient sees in a dream his father dying in the room he usually occupied, with a candle burning on a chair by his bed; and the father is found dead in the morning, with a candle by his bedside in the position seen in the dream. There is not, however, in this case any sure indication that the dead or dying person was cognisant of his own body's aspect or surroundings. There may have been a clairvoyant excursion on the percipient's part, evoked by some impulse from the agent which did not itself develop into distinctness.[148]
But in certain cases of violent death there seems to have been an intention on the deceased person's part to show the condition in which his body is left. Such was Mrs. Storie's dream, or rather series of visions referred to earlier in this chapter. Such are the cases given in Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 365 [429 A], and Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iii. (1885) p. 95 [§ 730]. Here, too, may be placed two cases—those of Dr. Bruce (in Appendix IV. D) and Miss Hall (Journal S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 173 [731 A])—where there are successive pictures of a death and the subsequent arrangement of the body. The milieux of the percipients, the nature of the deaths, are here again totally disparate; yet we seem to see the same unknown laws producing effects closely similar.
In Dr. Bruce's case one might interpret the visions as coming to the percipient through the mind of his wife, who was present at the scene of the murder. But this explanation would be impossible in Miss Hall's case. Rather it seems as though some telepathic link, set up between the dying brother and the sister, had been maintained after death until all duties had been fulfilled to the departed. The case reminds one of the old Homeric notions of the restless appeal of unburied comrades.
In the case of Mrs. Green (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 420 [429 D]), we come across an interesting problem. Two women are drowned under very peculiar circumstances. A friend has apparently a clairvoyant vision of the scene, yet not at the moment when it occurred, but many hours afterwards, and about the time when another person, deeply interested, heard of the death. It is therefore possible to suppose that the apparently clairvoyant scene was in reality impressed telepathically on the percipient by another living mind. I think, however, that both the nature of the vision and certain analogies, which will appear later in our argument, point to a different view, involving an agency both of the dead and of the living. I conjecture that a current of influence may be started by a deceased person, which, however, only becomes strong enough to be perceptible to its object when reinforced by some vivid current of emotion arising in living minds. I do not say that this is yet provable; yet the hint may be of value when the far-reaching interdependencies of telepathy between the two worlds come to be better understood.
Two singular cases in this group remain, where the departed spirit, long after death, seems preoccupied with the spot where his bones are laid. The first of these cases (Journal S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 230 [733 A]) approaches farce; the second (in which the skeleton of a man who had probably been murdered about forty years before was discovered by means of a dream; see Proceedings S.P.R., vol. vi. p. 35), stands alone among our narratives in the tragedy which follows on the communication. Mr. Podmore in an article in the same volume (p. 303) suggests other theories to account for this case without invoking the agency of the dead; but to me the least impossible explanation is still the notion that the murdered man's dreams harked back after all those years to his remote unconsecrated grave. I may refer further to another case (in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. iv. p. 155, footnote) where feelings of horror and depression were constantly experienced in a room over which a baby's body was afterwards found. This case makes, perhaps, for another explanation—depending not so much on any continued influence of the departed spirit as on some persistent influence inhering in the bones themselves—deposited under circumstances of terror or anguish, and possibly in some way still radiating a malignant memory. Bizarre as this interpretation looks, we shall find some confirmation of such a possibility in our chapter on Possession. Yet another case belonging to the same group (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 418) supplies a variant on this view; suggesting, as Edward Gurney has remarked, the local imprintation of a tragic picture, by whom and upon what we cannot tell.
I think it well to suggest even these wild conjectures; so long as they are understood to be conjectures and nothing more. I hold it probable that those communications, of which telepathy from one spirit to another forms the most easily traceable variety, are in reality infinitely varied and complex, and show themselves from time to time in forms which must for long remain quite beyond our comprehension.
The next class of cases in this series well illustrates this unexpectedness. It has only been as the result of a gradual accumulation of concordant cases that I have come to believe there is some reality in the bizarre supposition that the departed spirit is sometimes specially aware of the tune at which news of his death is about to reach some given friend.[149] Proof of such knowledge on his part is rendered harder by the alternative possibility that the friend may by clairvoyance become aware of a letter in his own proximity. As was shown in Phantasms of the Living, there is some evidence for such clairvoyance even in cases where the letter seen is quite unimportant.