These letters, which apparently relate to the second of the three experiences mentioned by M., afford incidentally strong corroboration of the accuracy of the statements made as to the first and most remarkable experience.
Several instances have been already published (Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. pp. 365-370) of what appears to be telepathic affection, in which there was no apparent link to connect the agent and percipient. Thus intimation of the deaths of three dukes—Cambridge, Portland, and Wellington—was conveyed to complete strangers. A similar impression is recorded (Journal S.P.R., Nov. 1892) as affecting a stranger at the death of Lord Tennyson, and a somewhat similar instance is recorded (Journal, May 1892) in connection with the death of General the Hon. Sir Leicester Smyth. The Head-master of a Grammar School in Leicester saw in a vision the irruption of water into the Thames Tunnel (Phantasms, loc. cit.). In all these cases, if we accept the incidents as telepathic, they recall, as Mr. Gurney remarks, "the Greek notion of φήμη, the Rumour which spreads from some unknown source, and far outstrips all known means of transport." The evidence so far adduced, however, is by no means sufficient to establish any such conclusion. But the following narrative, which comes from a lady well known to me, is worth considering in this connection.
No. 50.—From MISS Y.
"PERTH, 19th January 1890.
"One Sunday evening I was writing to my sister, in my own room, and a wild storm was raging round the house (in Perth). Suddenly an eerie feeling came over me, I could not keep my thoughts on my letter, ideas of death and disaster haunted me so persistently. It was a vague but intense feeling; a sudden ghastly realisation of human tragedy, with no 'where,' 'how,' or 'when' about it.
"I remember flying upstairs to seek refuge with my mother, and I remember her soothing voice saying, 'Nonsense, child,' when I insisted that I was sure 'lots of people were dying.'
"We both thought it was a little nervous attack, and thought no more about it. But when we heard the news of the Tay Bridge disaster next day, we both noticed (we received the news separately from the maid when she came to wake us) that the time of the accident coincided with my strange experience of the evening before.
"We spoke of the 'coincidence' together, but did not attach much importance to it.
"I have never had any experience like it, before or since."
Mrs. Y., in a letter of the same date, corroborates her daughter's statement. Mrs. Y.'s account, it should be added, was written without previous consultation with Miss Y., and embodies her independent recollection of the incident.
"On the night of the Tay Bridge disaster A. was sitting alone in her room, when she suddenly came running upstairs to me, saying that she had heard shrieks in the air; that something dreadful must have happened, for the air seemed full of shrieks. She thought a great many people must be dying. Next morning the milk-boy told the servant that the Tay Bridge was down."
In a later letter, Miss Y. adds:—
"My mother says she cannot remember my having any other experience of the kind. It happened before 9 P.M., we think."
From the Times of December 29th, 1879 (Monday), it appears that the accident took place on the previous evening (28th). The Edinburgh train, due at Dundee at 7.15 P.M., crossed the bridge during a violent gale. It was duly signalled from the Fife side as having entered on the bridge for Dundee at 7.14. It was seen running along the rails, and then suddenly there was observed a flash of fire. The opinion was the train then left the rails and went over the bridge.
Motor Impulses.