A remarkable case has been recorded, from contemporary knowledge, by Mr. William Boyd, of Peterhead, N.B. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. pp. 49 et seq.). The events occurred as far back as 1850, but a full account of them was contributed by Mr. Boyd to the Aberdeen Herald for May 8th and 18th of that year, from which it appears that the statements made by the percipient were written down and communicated to Mr. Boyd and others before their correspondence with the facts was known. The incident attracted much notice at the time, from its connection with the whaling fleet, the chief topic of local interest. The following is an extract from the original notes made by Mr. Reid, the hypnotiser, published in the Aberdeen Herald, May 18th, 1850:—
"On the evening of April 22nd I put John Park, tailor, aged twenty-two, into a state of clairvoyance, in presence of twelve respectable inhabitants of this town. (Here follows a description of certain statements regarding the fate of Franklin's expedition and the ships Erebus and Terror, which in the light of information subsequently received proved to have been inaccurate.) He (the clairvoyant) then visited Old Greenland, as was desired, and having gone on board the Hamilton Ross, a whale-ship belonging to this port, saw David Cardno, second mate, getting his hand bandaged up by the doctor in the cabin, having got it injured while sealing. He was then told by the captain that they had upwards of 100 tons of oil. I again, on the evening of the 23rd, put him into a clairvoyant state. (Here follow some further particulars regarding Sir John Franklin's expedition, which also are proved to have been inaccurate.) I again directed him to Old Greenland, and he again visited the Hamilton Ross, and found Captain Gray, of the Eclipse, conversing with the captain about the seal fishing being up.
"(Signed) WILLIAM REID."
It appears from the Herald of May 8th that the Hamilton Ross did come to port first out of eleven ships, that she brought 159 tons of oil, that Cardno had injured his hand, and arrived with his arm in a sling, and that on the 23rd April the captain of the Hamilton Ross was conversing with the captain of the Eclipse. Mr. Boyd points out, however, that Cardno had some years before lost the tip of one finger, so that the clairvoyant's statement of the accident may have been simply a reminiscence. It is worth noting that here, as generally in visions of the kind, the false was mingled with the true, and that the percipient appears quite unable to distinguish between pictures which are obviously the work of his own imagination, and those which are apparently due to inspiration from without.
The next case is also remote in date, but we have received the evidence of several persons still living who were conversant with the facts at the time of their occurrence, and the account given below is taken from contemporary notes. "Jane" was the wife of a pit-man in County Durham, who for many years, from 1845 onwards, was hypnotised for the sake of her health by Mrs. T. Myers, of Twinstead Rectory, Mrs. Fraser, her sister, and other members of the same family. In the hypnotic sleep she appears to have been sensible to telepathic influences of the same kind as those described at the beginning of Chapter III. But she also gave remarkable demonstrations of "travelling clairvoyance," and frequently described correctly the interior of houses she had never seen. Occasionally she went beyond this, and stated facts not within the knowledge of those present, and opposed to their preconceptions. A good instance is the following, taken from notes made in the summer of 1853:—
No. 103.—From DR. F.[143]
"Before commencing the sitting, I fixed to take her to a house, without communicating my intentions to any of the parties present. In the morning of the day I stated to a patient of my own, Mr. Eglinton, at present residing in the village of Tynemouth, that I intended to visit him. He stated that he would be present between 8 and 10 P.M. in a particular room, so that there might be no difficulty in finding him. He was just recovering from a very severe illness, and was so weak that he could scarcely walk. He was exceedingly thin from the effects of his complaint.
"After the usual state had been obtained, I said, 'We are standing beside a railway station, now we pass along a road, and in front of us see a house with a laburnum tree in front of it.' She directly replied, 'Is it the red house with a brass knocker?' I said, 'No, it has an iron knocker.' I have since looked, however, and find that the door has an old-fashioned brass handle in the shape of a knocker. She then asked, 'Shall we go up the steps? Shall we go along this passage, and up these stairs? Is this a window on the stair-head?' I said, 'You are quite right, and now I want you to look into the room upon the left-hand side.' She replied, 'Oh, yes, in the bedroom. There is no one in this room; there is a bed in it, but there is no person in it.' I was not aware that a bedroom was in the place I mentioned, but upon inquiry next day I found she was correct. I told her she must look into the next room, and she would see a sofa. She answered, 'But there is here a little gallery. Now I am in the room, and see a lady with black hair lying upon the sofa.' I attempted to puzzle her about the colour of her hair, and feeling sure it was Mr. Eglinton who was lying there, I sharply cross-questioned her, but still she persisted in her story. The questioning, however, seemed to distract her mind, and she commenced talking about a lady at Whickham, until I at last recalled her to the room at Tynemouth, by asking whether there was not a gentleman in the room. 'No,' she said; 'we can see no gentleman there.'
"After a little she described the door opening, and asked, with a tone of great surprise, 'Is that a gentleman?' I replied, 'Yes; is he thin or fat?' 'Very fat,' she answered; 'but has he a cork leg?' I assured her that he had no cork leg, and tried to puzzle her again about him. She, however, assured me that he was very fat and had a great corporation, and asked me whether I did not think such a fat man must eat and drink a great deal to get such a corporation as that. She also described him as sitting by the table with papers beside him, and a glass of brandy and water. 'Is it not wine?' I asked. 'No,' she said, 'it's brandy.' 'Is it not whisky or rum?' 'No, it is brandy,' was the answer; 'and now,' she continued, 'the lady is going to get her supper, but the fat gentleman does not take any.' I requested her to tell me the colour of his hair, but she only answered that the lady's hair was dark. I then inquired if he had any brains in his head,[144] but she seemed altogether puzzled about him, and said she could not see any. I then asked her if she could see his name upon any of the letters lying about. She replied, 'Yes'; and upon my saying that the name began with E, she spelt each letter of the name 'Eglinton.'
"I was so convinced that I had at last detected her in a complete mistake that I arose, and declined proceeding further in the matter, stating that, although her description of the house and the name of the person were correct, in everything connected with the gentleman she had guessed the opposite from the truth.
"On the following morning Mr. E. asked me the result of the experiment, and after having related it to him, he gave me the following account:—He had found himself unable to sit up to so late an hour, but wishful fairly to test the powers of the clairvoyante, he had ordered his clothes to be stuffed into the form of a figure, and to make the contrast more striking to his natural appearance, had an extra pillow pushed into the clothes so as to form a 'corporation.' The figure had been placed near the table, in a sitting position, and a glass of brandy and water and the newspapers placed beside it. The name, he further added, was spelt correctly, though up to that time I had been in the habit of writing it 'Eglington,' instead of as spelt by the clairvoyante, 'Eglinton.'"
In this case it will be seen that the only person from whom knowledge of the facts given could have been derived was personally unknown to the percipient, the only apparent link of connection being their common acquaintance with Dr. F.
In the last case to be mentioned there are again some indications of thought-transference from the mind of a person at a distance. On April 8th, 1890, Dr. Backman, at Kalmar, received a letter from Dr. Kjellman, at Stockholm, asking that on the following day Dr. Backman should request one of his subjects, Alma Radberg, to "find" Dr. von B. (known to Alma), and describe the apartment (Dr. Kjellman's own) in which he would be sitting, adding that something would be hung on the chandelier for her to describe. The percipient in the trance gave a description of the room, and when asked to look at the chandelier she said there was no chandelier, something more like a lamp, and described something long and narrow, of white metal, hanging from it, with some red stuff round it. When awake she said that what she saw was probably a pair of scissors for cutting paper, or a paper-knife. Dr. Backman sent his notes to Dr. Kjellman, who replied, showing that the description of the room, though in some respects accurate (e.g., she mentioned a long stuffed easy-chair, a glass bookcase, three doors in the lobby, etc.), was in other features incorrect, and should on the whole be regarded as inconclusive. "But," he adds, "her statement that the object was hanging in a lamp, not a chandelier, was right. It is both a lamp and a chandelier, and the lamp was drawn down a long way under the chandelier," and that the object hanging there was "a large pair of paper scissors, fixed by an india-rubber otoscope, and with a tea-rose and some forget-me-nots in one of the handles of the scissors." It will thus be seen that on the one point to which her attention had been specially directed, the hypnotic's description was strikingly accurate; and the articles described were hardly within the range of conjecture.
Dr. Backman has made other experiments with the same subject, in which he obtained further indications of clairvoyance of this kind. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. vii. p. 207, etc.)