"December 14th, 1890.
"In the beginning of the summer of 1884 we were sitting at dinner at home as usual, in the middle of the day. In the midst of the conversation I noticed my mother suddenly looking down at something beneath the table. I inquired whether she had dropped anything, and received the answer, 'No, but I wonder how that cat can have got into the room?' Looking underneath the table, I was surprised to see a large white Angora cat beside my mother's chair. We both got up, and I opened the door to let the cat out. She marched round the table, went noiselessly out of the door, and when about half-way down the passage turned round and faced us. For a short time she regularly stared at us with her green eyes, then she dissolved away, like a mist, under our eyes.
"Even apart from the mode of her disappearance, we felt convinced that the cat could not have been a real one, as we neither had one of our own, nor knew of any that would answer to the description in the place, and so this appearance made an unpleasant impression upon us.
"This impression was, however, greatly enhanced by what happened in the following year, 1885, when we were staying in Leipzig with my married sister (the daughter of Mrs. Greiffenberg). We had come home one afternoon from a walk, when, on opening the door of the flat, we were met in the hall by the same white cat. It proceeded down the passage in front of us, and looked at us with the same melancholy gaze. When it got to the door of the cellar (which was locked), it again dissolved into nothing.
"On this occasion also it was first seen by my mother, and we were both impressed by the uncanny and gruesome character of the appearance. In this case, also, the cat could not have been a real one, as there was no such cat in the neighbourhood."
A very striking example of a collective hallucination, apparently of the same type, was given to us by Mrs. Ward. She and her husband, the late E. M. Ward, R.A., in 1851 saw in their bedroom two small pear-shaped lights which, when touched, broke into small luminous fragments. (Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 193.) We have also a case in which our informant, when a girl of fifteen, with another girl, saw in the middle of the room, at a dancing class, a hallucinatory chair. Yet another case is recorded by Miss Foy, a careful observer, who had been troubled for some time with a hallucinatory skeleton, the subjective character of which she fully recognised. On one occasion when in hospital the hallucination recurred, and appears to have been seen also by the patient in the adjoining bed, to whom no hint of any kind had been given. In both these cases, however, the evidence depends upon a single memory. We have another case in which a singular luminous body—apparently a hallucination of a rudimentary kind—was perceived by two witnesses coincidently with the death of a near relative of one of them. The Rev. A. T. S. Goodrick, from whom I originally received the account viva voce, was walking with a friend across a moor in Sutherlandshire
"when there suddenly arose, to all appearance out of the road between our feet as we walked, a ball of fire, about the size of an 18lb. cannon ball. It was of an orange-red colour, and there seemed to be a kind of rotatory motion in it, not unlike a firework of some description.... It seemed to move forward with us, at a distance of not more than 6 inches in front, and at the same time rose pretty swiftly breast high ... and then disappeared and left no trace."
Mr. Goodrick adds that a light rain was falling; but there was no thunderstorm.
From uneducated witnesses such an account no doubt would have but little value. A will-o'-the-wisp in an adjoining marsh, or even a flash of lightning, might in such a case form a sufficient basis for the story. And even assuming that the account here given accurately describes what was seen, it is difficult to feel certain that the appearance was hallucinatory. But if it were of a physical nature, it is certainly not easy to conjecture what it could have been, and the coincidence with the death is an additional argument for regarding the phenomenon as hallucinatory.
In the next case the phantasm seems to belong to a not unusual type of subjective hallucinations, the "after-image" of a familiar figure. There are no grounds for ascribing the apparition to any "agency" on the part of the person whose image was seen. If the incident is correctly described, the prima facie explanation is that a casual hallucination was communicated by telepathic suggestion to a second person in the company of the original percipient. At our request the two accounts which follow were written independently.
No. 81.—From MRS. MILMAN.
"17 SOUTHWELL GARDENS, S.W.,
March 20th, 1888.