“I then had a singularly clear and vivid dream, all the incidents of which are as clear in my memory as ever. I dreamed that I was stopping with the family of a lady who subsequently became my wife. All the younger ones had gone to bed, and I stopped chatting to the father and mother, standing up by the fireplace. Presently I bade them good-night, took my candle, and went off to bed. On arriving in the hall, I perceived that my fiancee had been detained downstairs, and was only then near the top of the staircase. I rushed upstairs, overtook her on the top step, and passed my two arms around her waist, under her arms, from behind. Although I was carrying my candle in the left hand, when I ran upstairs, this did not, in my dream, interfere with this gesture.
“On this I woke, and the clock in the house struck ten almost immediately afterwards.
“So strong was the impression of the dream that I wrote a detailed account of it the next morning to my fiancee.
“Crossing my letter, not in answer to it, I received a letter from the lady in question: ‘Were you thinking about me very specially last night, just about ten o’clock? For, as I was going upstairs to bed, I distinctly heard your footsteps on the stairs, and felt you put your arms round my waist.’”
[Mrs. Newnham wrote a confirmation of this account, which was also published.]
WHAT HAPPENS AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH
In all these cases, of course, the psychic body of the subject returns and re-animates the physical body; for if it did not do so, death would take place. When death does actually take place, this is what occurs; and psychics and clairvoyants assert that they are able to see and follow this process perfectly; and many of them have described exactly what takes place at the moment of death. The following description, for example, given by Andrew Jackson Davis, is taken from his Death, and the After Life, pp. 15-16, and is as follows:
“Suppose the person is now dying. It is to be a rapid death. The feet first grow cold. The clairvoyant sees over the head what may be called a magnetic halo—an etherial emanation, in appearance golden, and throbbing as though conscious. The body is now cold up to the knees and elbows, and the emanation has ascended higher in the air. The legs are cold to the hips and the arms to the shoulders; and the emanation, though it has not risen higher in the room, is more expanded. The death-coldness steals over the breast and round on either side, and the emanation has attained a higher position nearer the ceiling. The person has ceased to breathe, the pulse is still, and the emanation is elongated and fashioned in the outline of a human form. Beneath, it is connected with the brain. The head of the person is internally throbbing—a slow, deep throb—not painful but like the beat of the sea. Hence the thinking faculties are rational, while nearly every part of the person is dead. Owing to the brain’s momentum, I have seen a dying person, even at the last feeble pulsebeat, rouse impulsively and rise up in bed to converse with a friend, but the next instant he was gone—his brain being the last to yield up the life principle.
“The golden emanation, which extends up midway to the ceiling, is connected to the brain by a very fine life-thread. Now the body of the emanation ascends. Then appears something white and shining, like a human head; next, in a very few moments, a faint outline of the face divine, then the fair neck and beautiful shoulders; then, in rapid succession, come all parts of the new body down to the feet—a bright, shining image, a little smaller than its physical body, but a perfect prototype or reproduction in all except its disfigurements. The fine life-thread continues attached to the old brain. The next thing is the withdrawal of the electric principle. When this thread snaps the spiritual body is free, and prepared to accompany its guardians to the Summer-Land. Yes, there is a spiritual body; it is sown in dishonor and raised in brightness.”
It is doubtless this spiritual body which is the true cause of many apparitions—of many ghost stories. It is this body which is seen by the seer or percipient in many a ghost story; it is this body which moves objects and touches the individual who sees the ghost. This body is detached at death, as we have seen, and afterwards is free to rove at its own free will. Apparitions of the dead might thus be accounted for; while all those cases of apparitions of the dying which are with difficulty explained as due to pure telepathy might also thus find their explanation. The spiritual body, freed at that moment, would manifest its presence to the distant percipient as it did after death. So far so good, but how about apparitions of the living? How explain those cases in which the apparition of a living person has been seen, when the spiritual body is supposedly safely attached to the physical body?