Adventurings in the Psychical

by H. Addington Bruce

A typical case of the kind occurred a few years ago in connection with the mysterious death of a New Hampshire girl, Miss Bertha Huse, of Enfield, who was drowned in Mascoma Lake.

For three days after the disappearance of Miss Huse, one hundred and fifty of her townspeople searched vainly for her. She had last been seen alive on a long bridge crossing the lake, and it was supposed that she had fallen from it or had deliberately committed suicide. The waters were dragged but without result, and failure also attended the efforts of a professional diver from Boston employed by a sympathetic citizen.

Meantime, in the little town of Lebanon, some miles distant, a Mrs. Titus fell into a trance, during which she talked to her husband and described to him a spot in the lake where she said the body of the Huse girl was lying. So strongly was Mr. Titus impressed by her statements that, next day, he took her to Enfield, where the diver, following her instructions, quickly found the body in the place located by her.

Mrs. Titus afterwards gave other, if less sensational, demonstrations of a similar character; and Professor James, who made a close study of her case, publicly stated his belief that her experiences form “a decidedly solid document in favor of the admission of a supernormal faculty of seership—whatever preciser meaning may later come to be attached to such a phrase.”

There are also on record certain well-attested dreams presenting the same difficulty of identifying the agent, or sender, of the clairvoyant vision. A characteristic dream of this sort is reported by Mrs. Alfred Wedgwood, daughter-in-law of the English savant, Hensleigh Wedgwood.

“I spent the Christmas holidays with my father-in-law in Queen Anne Street,” says Mrs. Wedgwood,[16] “and in the beginning of January I had a remarkably vivid dream, which I told to him next morning at breakfast.

“I dreamed I went to a strange house, standing at the corner of a street. When I reached the top of the stairs I noticed a window opposite with a little colored glass, short muslin blinds running on a brass rod. The top of the ceiling had a window veiled by colored muslin. There were two small shrubs on a little table. The drawing-room had a bow window, with the same blinds; the library had a polished floor, with the same blinds.

“As I was going to a child’s party at a cousin’s, whose house I had never seen, I told my father-in-law I thought that that would prove to be the house.

“On January tenth I went with my little boy to the party, and, by mistake, gave the driver a wrong number. When he stopped at number twenty, I had misgivings about the house, and remarked to the cabman that it was not a corner house. The servant could not tell me where Mrs. H. lived, and had not a blue-book. Then I thought of my dream, and, as a last resource, I walked down the street, looking up for the peculiar blinds I had observed in my dream. These I met with at number fifty, a corner house, and, knocking at the door, was relieved to find that it was the house of which I was in search.