“‘What is the matter?’
“‘Only some one outside,’ I said.
“‘Then, why do you not go out and see? You always do when you hear any unusual noise.’
“‘There is something queer and dreadful about this noise,’ I replied. ‘I dare not face it.’”
Nothing more was heard, and early next morning he made a careful search in the grounds around the house, but not a footprint was to be seen in the snow, which had ceased falling long before the occurrence of the wailing cry. A little later in the day, however, word arrived that at ten o’clock the previous night one of his tenants, who lived half a mile distant and with whom he had spent the afternoon, had committed suicide by drinking prussic acid.
He had gone up to his bedroom, his groom testified at the inquest, had mixed the poison in a tumbler of water, drank it off, and, with a terrible scream, fell dead on the floor.
Fortunately, telepathic hallucinations do not usually come with such intensity or in such an alarming form. Often they are mere vague impressions that something unpleasant or disastrous is occurring to a relative or friend, and, as in the case of self-originating hallucinations like that reported by Lady Eardley, they occasionally impel to action that averts disaster. It was thus, to give a single instance, in an experience reported[12] by William Blakeway, a Staffordshire Englishman:
“I was in my usual place at chapel one Sunday afternoon, when all at once I thought I must go home. Seemingly against my will, I took my hat. When reaching the chapel gates I felt an impulse that I must hasten home as quick as possible, and I ran with all my might without stopping to take breath. Meeting a friend who asked why I hurried so, I passed him almost without notice.
“When I reached home I found the house full of smoke, and my little boy, three years old, all on fire, alone in the house. I at once tore the burning clothes from off him, and was just in time to save his life. It has always been a mystery to me, as no person whispered a word to me, and no one knew anything about the fire till after I made the alarm at home, which was more than a quarter of a mile from the chapel.”
Here the wholly subconscious nature of the phenomenon, on the percipient’s part at all events, is plainly evident. It is even more evident in all cases where, as frequently occurs, the telepathic message is received in a dream like that which was recorded in the opening paragraphs of this chapter. As is to be expected, too, in telepathic dreams we often find an element of symbolism. The news of illness, of accident, of death, or whatever it may be, is not conveyed directly, but indirectly, amid a mass of more or less relevant details of dream imagery.