[73] See the case recorded by Miss X. (Proc. S.P.R., vol. v. pp. 507, 508). In this instance Miss X. saw in the crystal a notice of a friend's death in the form of an extract from the obituary column of the Times, in which journal she had almost certainly seen the news, without perceiving it, the day before. There is a dream recorded in Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 687, 688, which may probably be explained as the emergence in dream of intelligence unconsciously received a few hours before.
[74] I have before me as I write one case of the kind which will serve as a sample. A told us the story, and induced B to write to us about it. B informed us that he heard it from his brother C, a F.R.S., who had received it from D, to whom it was told by E; who had it from the lips of F, "who was a visitor at the house where the occurrence took place." We wrote to D, who referred us to two sources of information, G and H. G wrote in reply to our letter that he heard the story from a stranger at a dinner-party "about three years ago," and promised further inquiries. H referred us to J and K. Our letter to K was answered by his cousin L, who wrote that she had heard it from M, "who got it from some one who was present," and further inquiries were again promised. It is needless to add that in cases of this kind the story, like a will-o'-the-wisp, ever recedes as we advance, until it ends with the nameless stranger at some dinner long since gone "away in the Ewigkeit."
[75] There is, as Mr. Gurney has pointed out, a converse error to be guarded against—viz., the gradual effacement of the lines of an impression, so that an actual waking hallucination has in some instances come to be regarded, after a long interval, as only a dream.
[76] A good illustration of this kind of embellishment, in a case recorded at second-hand, will be found in the footnote on a case in Chapter XII.
[77] So in a case given in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, vol. ii. pp. 5-10, we have an extract from the log-book of the Jacques-Gabriel, which records that the captain, mate, and another man when at sea heard, on the 17th July 1852, the sound of a woman's voice crying. In a marginal note on the log-book the captain adds that on reaching port they learnt of the death of the mate's wife, "on the same day and at the same hour." But the official register shows that the death took place on the 16th June 1852.
[78] That such a pseudo-memory on the part of a person not professing to be the actual percipient is possible after a long interval appears to be shown by the account just cited of the "ghost" seen by the nurse in a foreign hotel. But we have no evidence that a memory hallucination of this kind could be, as demanded by the theory, of instantaneous or very rapid growth; or that any verbal suggestion could intercalate a false picture into a series of still recent and unimpaired memories.
[79] Second-hand narratives have, however, a value of their own, as shown later; for by taking note of the features which occur commonly in such cases, but are absent from the best attested first-hand narratives, we obtain a valuable standard of comparison by which to check aberrations of memory.
[80] An apparent exception to this statement will be found in Nos. 45 and 46, Chapter VII., and elsewhere, where the account is furnished not by the actual percipient, but by a person to whom the percipient related his experience before he knew of its correspondence with fact. The evidence in such cases, it should be pointed out, is as good as first-hand; indeed, where, as in Nos. 45 and 46, the actual percipient was illiterate and the narrator educated, it may be regarded as better than first-hand.
[81] This part of the work has been undertaken in this country by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. E. Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, myself, and others; in America, chiefly by Professor Royce and Dr. Hodgson.
[82] In the Times of the 6th January 1893 there appeared a letter from a well-known writer, narrating how in 1851 he had received a description of the sea-serpent from a lady who had watched its movements for some half-hour in a small bay on the coast of Sutherlandshire. So far the story is on a par with any of our own second-hand ghost stories. But the writer goes on to say that the serpent had rubbed off some of its scales on the rocks; that a few of these scales, of the size and shape of scallop-shells, were for some years in his own possession, but that when he searched amongst his curios, in order to show these scales to Professor Owen, they were not to be found. The humble investigators of the S.P.R. have occasionally found themselves in the same position as the illustrious anatomist.