"A few years ago I was engaged in a large building in the ——, and during the busy times was often there till late in the evening. On one particular night I was at work along with a junior clerk till about 11 P.M., in the room marked A on the annexed sketch. All the lights in the place had been out for hours except those in the room which we occupied. Before leaving, we turned out the gas. We then looked into the fireplace, but not a spark was to be seen. The night was very dark, but being thoroughly accustomed to the place we carried no light. On reaching the bottom of the staircase (B), I happened to look up; when, to my surprise, the room which we had just left appeared to be lighted. I turned to my companion and pointed out the light, and sent him back to see what was wrong. He went at once and I stood looking through the open door, but I was not a little astonished to see that as soon as he got within a few yards of the room the light went out quite suddenly. My companion, from the position he was in at the moment, could not see the light go out, but on his reaching the door everything was in total darkness. He entered, however, and when he returned, reported that both gas and fire were completely out. The light in the daytime was got by means of a glass roof, there being no windows on the sides of the room, and the night in question was so dark that the moon shining through the roof was out of the question. Although I have often been in the same room till long after dark, both before and since, I have never seen anything unusual at any other time."
Mr. P. endorses this:—
"I confirm the foregoing statement."
In subsequent letters Mr. R. says:—
"The bare facts are as stated, being neither more nor less than what took place. I have never on any other occasion had any hallucination of the senses, and I think you will find the same to be the case with Mr. P."
This incident took place after Mr. J.'s vision, but Mr. J. had mentioned his own experience only to his wife and one other friend, and no hint of it appears to have reached the assistants in the library, so that the two visions would appear to have been independent.
To extend the theory of thought-transference from living minds to cover a case such as that just quoted may seem to some extravagant. But if there is anything beyond chance in the occurrence—and it would be a very remarkable coincidence that three persons should independently be the subject of hallucination in the same house, and that one of the hallucinations should resemble a former occupant of the house, unknown to the percipient—some explanation is required, and an explanation which involves no novel or unproved agency is, ceteris paribus, to be preferred. As regards the apparently local character of the visitation, Mr. Gurney has suggested, with regard to some cases quoted in Phantasms of the Living (vol. ii. pp. 267-269), where the link between agent and percipient appears to have been of a local and not of a personal character, that a similarity of immediate mental content between the percipient and agent may have been the condition of the telepathic action. In the ordinary case of an apparition, e.g., of a dying mother to her son, the condition of the appearance to that particular percipient rather than to the man in the street should on this hypothesis be sought in the community of intellectual and emotional experiences which may be presumed to exist between near relatives who have passed a large part of their lives in the same environment. In the cases now under consideration the substitute for such far-reaching community is to be found in the transitory occupation of both percipient and agent—the one in present sensation, the other in memory—with the same scene. Such partial community of perception, by a kind of extended association of ideas, tends under the hypothesis towards more complete community, and the agent thus imports into the sensorium of the percipient the image of his own or some other's presence in the scene which forms part of the present content of both minds. On this view Mr. J. saw the figure of Mr. Q. in the library, because some friend of Mr. Q.'s was at that moment vividly picturing to himself the late librarian in his old haunts.
Cases, such as the three last quoted, of the solitary appearance of a phantasmal figure, subsequently identified by description, photograph, or—as in Frances Reddell's case—actual encounter with the original, are rare; and experience shows how easy it may be for the somewhat vague image preserved in the memory to take on definite form and colour during the process, occasionally prolonged, of "recognition." The type cannot, therefore, be regarded as well established. As, however, such narratives have in some instances been regarded as affording evidence of the action of disembodied spirits, it seemed well to suggest that, if the facts are accepted, they are susceptible of another interpretation.
Haunted Houses.
But there are numerous cases to which the hypothesis of telepathic infection may be applied with perhaps less hesitation. The form which so-called "ghost stories" most commonly assume is the appearance of an unrecognised phantasmal figure. When the appearance is to one person only, or when, in the intervals of its appearance to others, the matter has been freely discussed amongst the members of the household, and the details of the figure described, we should probably be justified, on the analogy of hypnotic and epidemic religious hallucinations, in regarding the original appearance as purely subjective and the later ones as due to verbal suggestion and expectancy. But there are cases where, from the definite statements of the witnesses and the surrounding circumstances, it appears at all events extremely improbable that any mention was made of the original hallucination. In such cases it seems permissible to conjecture that the later apparitions, or some of them, may have been due to telepathic suggestion from the original percipient, to whom his solitary experience would naturally be a subject of frequent and vivid reflection.