Among the numerous accounts of visions which seem to have been caused by an instinctive and perfectly unconscious perception of human remains, the story of the Rev. Mr. Lindner, in Königsberg, is perhaps the best authenticated, and from the character of the man to whom the revelation was made, the most trustworthy. It is fully reported by Professor Ehrmann of Strasburg, in Kies. Archiv. x. iii., p. 143. The minister, a modest, pious man, awoke in the middle of the night, and saw, by the bright moonlight which was shining into the room, another minister in gown and bands, standing before his open bible, apparently searching for some quotation. He had a small child in his arms, and a larger child stood by his side. After some time spent in speechless astonishment, Mr. Lindner exclaimed: "All good spirits praise God!" whereupon the stranger turned round, went up to him and offered three times to shake hands with him. Mr. Lindner, however, refused to do so, gazing at the same time intently at his features, and after a while he found himself looking at the air, for all had disappeared. It was a long time afterwards, when sauntering through the cloisters of his church, he was suddenly arrested by a portrait which bore all the features of the minister he had seen on that night. It was one of his predecessors in office, who had died nearly fifty years ago in rather bad odor, reports having been current at the time, as very old men still living testified, that he had had several illegitimate children, of whose fate nothing was known. But there was a still further sequel to the minister's strange adventure. In the course of the next year his study was enlarged, and for that purpose the huge German stove had to be removed; to the horror of the workmen and of Mr. Lindner, who was promptly called to the spot, the remains of several children were found carefully concealed beneath the solid structure. As there is no reason to suspect self-delusion in the reverend man, and the vision cannot well be ascribed to any outward cause, it must be presumed that his sensitive nature was painfully affected by the skeletons in his immediate neighborhood, and that this unconscious feeling, acting through his imagination, gave form and shape to the impressions made upon his nerves.
In another case the principal person was a candidate of divinity, Billing, well known as being of a highly sensitive disposition and given to hallucinations; the extreme suffering which the presence of human remains caused to his whole system had been previously already observed. The great German fabulist, Pfeffel, a blind man, once took Billing's arm and went with him into the garden to take an airing. The poet noticed that when they came to a certain place, the young man hesitated and his arm trembled as if it had received an electric shock. When he was asked what was the matter, he replied, "Oh, nothing!" But upon passing over the spot a second time, the same tremor made itself felt. Pressed by Pfeffel, the young man at last acknowledged that he experienced at that spot the sensation which the presence of a corpse always produced in him, and offered to go there with the poet at night in order to prove to him the correctness of his feelings. When the two friends went to the garden after dark, Billing perceived at once a faint glimmer of light above the spot. He stopped at a distance of about ten yards, and after a while declared that he saw a female figure hovering above the place, about five feet high, with the right arm across her bosom and the left hand hanging down by her side. When the poet advanced and stood on the fatal spot, the young man affirmed that the image was on his right or his left, before or behind him, and when Pfeffel struck around him with his cane, it produced the effect as if he were cutting through a flame which instantly reunited. The same phenomena were witnessed a second time by a number of Pfeffel's relations. Several days afterwards, while the young man was absent, the poet caused the place in the garden to be dug up, and at a depth of several feet, beneath a layer of lime, a human skeleton was discovered. It was removed, the hole filled up, and all smoothed over again. After Billing's return the poet took him once more into the garden, and this time the young man walked over the fatal spot without experiencing the slightest sensation (Kieser, Archiv., etc., p. 326).
It was this remarkable experience which led Baron Reichenbach to verify it by leading one of his sensitive patients, a Miss Reichel, at night to the great cemetery of Vienna. As soon as she reached the place she perceived everywhere a sea of flames, brightest over the new graves, weaker over others, and quite faint here and there. In a few cases these lights reached a height of nearly four feet, but generally they had more the appearance of luminous mists, so that her hand, held over the place where she saw one, seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of fire. She was in no way troubled by the phenomena, which she had often previously observed, and Baron Reichenbach thought he saw in them a confirmation of his theory about the Od-light. There can be, however, little doubt that the luminous appearance, perceptible though it be only to unusually sensitive persons, is the result of chemical decomposition, which has a peculiar influence over these persons.
Hence, no doubt, the numerous accounts of will-o'-the-wisps and ghostly lights seen in graveyards; the frightened beholder is nearly always laughed at or heartily abused, and more than one poor child has fallen a victim to the absurd theory of "curing it of foolish fears." There can be no doubt that light does appear flickering above churchyards, and that there is something more than mere idle superstition in the "corpse-candles" of the Welsh and in the "elf-candles" of the Scotch, which are seen, with foreboding weight, in the house of sickness, betokening near dissolution. At the same time, it is well known that living persons also have, under certain circumstances, given out light, and especially from their head. The cases of Moses, whose face shone with unbearable brightness, and of the martyr Stephen, are familiar to all, and the halo with which artists surround the heads of saints bears eloquent evidence of the universal and deeply-rooted belief. But science also has fully established the fact that light appears as a real and unmistakable luminous efflux from the human body, alike in health and in mortal sickness. By far the most common case of such emission of light is the emission of sparks from the hair when combed. Before and during the electrical "dust-storms" in India, this phenomenon is of frequent occurrence in the hair of both sexes. In dry weather, and when the hair also is dry, and especially immediately before thunderstorms, the same sparks are seen in all countries. Dr. Phipson mentions the case of a relative of his, "whose hair (exactly one yard and a quarter long), when combed somewhat rapidly with a black gutta-percha comb, emits sheets of light upward of a foot in length," the light being "composed of hundreds of small electric sparks, the snapping noise of which is distinctly heard."
But electric light is sometimes given off by the human body itself, not merely from the hair. A memorable instance of this phenomenon is recorded by Dr. Kane in the journal of his last voyage to the Polar regions. He and a companion, Petersen, had gone to sleep in a hut during intense cold, and on awaking in the night, found, to their horror, that their lamp—their only hope—had gone out. Petersen tried in vain to get light from a pocket-pistol, and then Kane resolved to take the pistol himself. "It was so intensely dark," he says, "that I had to grope for it, and in so doing, I touched his hand. At that instant the pistol—in Petersen's hand—became distinctly visible. A pale bluish light, slightly tremulous, but not broken, covered the metallic parts of it. The stock, too, was distinctly visible as if by reflected light, and to the amazement of both of us, also the thumb and two fingers with which Petersen was holding it—the creases, wrinkles and circuit of nails being clearly defined upon the skin. As I took the pistol my hand became illuminated also." This luminous and doubtless electric phenomenon took place in highly exceptional circumstances, and is the only case recorded in recent times. But a far more remarkable phenomenon of a similar kind is mentioned by Bartholin, who gives an account of a lady in Italy, whom he rightly styles mulier splendens, whose body became phosphorescent—or rather shone with electric radiations—when slightly rubbed with a piece of dry linen. In this case the luminosity appears to have been normal, certainly very frequent under ordinary circumstances, and the fact is well attested. Mr. B. H. Patterson mentions in the journal Belgravia (Oct., 1872), that he saw the flannel with which he had rubbed his body, emit blue sparks, while at the same time he heard a "crackling" sound. These facts prove that the human body even in ordinary life, is capable of giving out luminous undulations, while science teaches us that they appear quite frequently in disease. Here again, Dr. Phipson mentions several cases as the result of his reading. One of these is that of a woman in Milan, during whose illness a so-called phosphoric light glimmered about her bed. Another remarkable case is recorded by Dr. Marsh, in a volume on the "Evolution of Light from the Human Subject," and reads thus: "About an hour and a half before my sister's death, we were struck by luminous appearances proceeding from her head in a diagonal direction. She was at the time in a half-recumbent position, and perfectly tranquil. The light was pale as the moon, but quite evident to mamma, myself, and sisters, who were watching over her at the time. One of us at first thought it was lightning, till shortly afterwards we perceived a sort of tremulous glimmer playing around the head of the bed, and then, recollecting that we had read something of a similar nature having been observed previous to dissolution, we had candles brought into the room, fearing that our dear sister would perceive the luminosity, and that it might disturb the tranquillity of her last moments."
The other case relates to an Irish peasant, and is recorded from personal observation by Dr. Donovan, in the Dublin Medical Press, in 1870, as follows: "I was sent to see Harrington in December. He had been under the care of my predecessor, and had been entered as a phthisical patient. He was under my care for about five years, and I had discontinued my visits, when the report became general that mysterious lights were seen every night in his cabin. The subject attracted a great deal of attention. I determined to submit the matter to the ordeal of my own senses, and for this purpose I visited the cabin for fourteen nights. On three nights only I witnessed anything unusual. Once I perceived a luminous fog resembling the aurora borealis; and twice I saw scintillations like the sparkling phosphorescence exhibited by sea-infusoria. From the close scrutiny I made, I can with certainty say, that no imposition was either employed or attempted."
The only explanation ever offered by competent authority of the luminous radiations from persons in disease, ascribes them to an efflux or escape of the nerve-force, which is known to be kindred in its nature to electricity, transmuting itself into luminosity as it leaves the body. The Seeress of Prevorst reported that she saw the nerves as shining threads, and even from the eyes of some persons rays of light seemed to her to flash continually. Other somnambulists also, as well as mesmerized persons, have seen the hair of persons shine with a multitude of sparks, while the breath of their mouth appeared as a faint luminous mist.
The same luminosity is, finally, perceived at times in graveyards, and would, no doubt, have led to careful investigation more frequently, if observers had not so often been suspected of superstitious apprehensions. In the case of Baron Reichenbach's patients, however, no such difficulty was to be feared; they saw invariably light, bluish flames hovering over many graves, and what made the phenomena more striking still, was the fact that these moving lights were only seen on recent graves, as if naturally dependent upon the process of decomposition. If we connect this with our experience of luminosity seen in decaying vegetables, in spoiled meat, and in diseased persons, we shall be prepared to believe that even so-called ghost stories, in which mysterious lights play a prominent part, are by no means necessarily without foundation.
Cases in which deceased persons have made themselves known to survivors, or have produced, by some as yet unexplained agency, an impression upon them through other senses than the sight, are very rare. Occasionally, however, the hearing is thus affected, and sweet music is heard, in token, as it were, of the continued intercourse between the dead and the living. One instance may serve as an illustration.
The Countess A. had all her life been remarkable for the strange delight she took in clocks; not a room in her castle but had its large or small clock, and all these she insisted upon winding up herself at the proper time. Her favorite, however, was a very curious and most costly clock in her sitting-room, which had the form of a Gothic church, and displayed in the steeple a small dial, behind which the works were concealed; at the full hour a hymn was played by a kind of music-box attached to the mechanism. She allowed no one to touch this clock, and used to sit before it, as the hand approached the hour, waiting for the hymn to be heard. At last she was taken ill and confined for seven weeks, during which the clock could not be wound up, and then she died. For special reasons the interment had to take place on the evening of the next day, and, as the castle was far from any town, the preparations took so much time that it was nearly midnight before the body could be moved from the bedroom to the drawing-room, where the usual ceremonies were to be performed. The transfer was accomplished under the superintendence of her husband, who followed the coffin, and in the presence of a large number of friends and dependents, while the minister led the sad cortége. At the moment when the coffin approached the favorite clock, it suddenly began to strike; but instead of twelve, it gave out thirteen strokes, and then followed the melody of a well-known hymn: