Part 7

Another and perhaps more convincing case, more strictly investigated and established, a case which clearly does not admit of explanation by the theory of coincidence, worthy of all respect though this theory be, is that related by M. Théodore Flournoy, professor of science at the university of Geneva, in his remarkable work, _Esprits et médiums_. Professor Flournoy is known to be one of the most learned and critical exponents of the new science of metapsychics. He even carries his fondness for natural explanations and his repugnance to admit the intervention of superhuman powers to a point whither it is often difficult to follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as possible. It will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his masterly book.

In August 1883, a certain Mme. Buscarlet, whom he knew personally, returned to Geneva after spending three years with the Moratief family at Kazan as governess to two girls. She continued to correspond with the family and also with a Mme. Nitchinof, who kept a school at Kazan to which Mlles. Moratief, Mme. Buscarlet’s former pupils, went after her departure.

On the night of the 9th of December (O.S.) of the same year, Mme. Buscarlet had a dream which she described the following morning in a letter to Mme. Moratief, dated 10 December. She wrote, to quote her own words:

“You and I were on a country-road when a carriage passed in front of us and a voice from inside called to us. When we came up to the carriage, we saw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying across it, clothed in white, wearing a bonnet trimmed with yellow ribbons. She said to you:

“‘I called you to tell you that Mme. Nitchinof will leave the school on the 17th.’

“The carriage then drove on.”

A week later and three days before the letter reached Kazan, the event foreseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion. Mme. Nitchinof died on the 16th of an infectious disease; and on the 17th her body was carried out of the school for fear of infection.

It is well to add that both Mme. Buscarlet’s letter and the replies which came from Russia were communicated to Professor Flournoy and bear the post-mark dates.

Such premonitory dreams are frequent; but it does not often happen that circumstances and especially the existence of a document dated previous to their fulfilment give them such incontestable authenticity.

We may remark in passing the odd character of this premonition. The date is fixed precisely; but only a veiled and mysterious allusion (the woman lying across the carriage and cloaked in white) is made to the essential part of the prediction, the illness and death. Was there a coincidence, a vision of the future pure and simple, or a vision of the future suggested by telepathic influence? The theory of coincidence can be defended, if need be, here as every elsewhere, but would be very extraordinary in this case. As for telepathic influence, we should have to suppose that, on the 9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles, from Kazan to Geneva, to a person with whom she had never been intimate. It is very complex but possible, for telepathy often has these disconcerting ways. If this were so, the case would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion; and the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved, would be less clearly established.

5

Let us pass to other examples. I quote from an excellent article on the importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and Sadgrove, which appeared in the _Annales des sciences psychiques_ for 1 February 1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W. Verrall told in full detail in Vol. XX. of the _Proceedings_. Mrs. Verrall is a celebrated “automatist”; and her “cross-correspondences” occupy a whole volume of the _Proceedings_. Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her scientific precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most active and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.

On the 11th of May 1901, at 11.10 P.M., Mrs. Verrall wrote as follows:

“Do not hurry ____ date this ____ hoc est quod volui—tandem. δικαιοσύνη καὶ χαρὰ συμφωνεῖ συνετοῖσιν. A. W. V. καὶ ἄλλῳ τινὶ ἴσως. calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper. Nomen inscribere iam possum—sic, en tibi!”[11]

After the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird walking.

That same night, as there were said to be “uncanny happenings” in some rooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to sit through the night in the empty chambers. Precautions were taken to prevent intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor of the two smaller rooms, “to trace anybody or anything that might come or go.” Mrs. Verrall knew nothing of the matter. The phenomena began at 12.43 A.M. and ended at 2.9 A.M. The watchers noticed marks on the powdered chalk. On examination it was seen that the marks were “clearly defined bird’s footprints in the middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room.” The marks were identical and exactly 2¾ inches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a bird about the size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at 2.30 A.M.; the unexplained phenomena had begun at 12.43 that same morning. The words about “chalk sticking to the feet” are a singularly appropriate comment on the events; but the remarkable point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what we have said one hour and thirty-three minutes before the events took place.

The persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr. J. G. Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and declared that they had not any expectation of what they discovered. I need hardly add that Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything about the happenings in the haunted house and that the watchers were completely ignorant of Mrs. Verrall’s existence.

Here then is a very curious prediction of an event, insignificant in itself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who foretells it, to people whom she does not know either. The spiritualists, who score in this case, not without some reason, will have it that a spirit, in order to prove its existence and its intelligence, organized this little scene in which the future, the present and the past are all mixed up together. Are they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall’s subconsciousness roaming like this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem has seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.

6

We will now take another premonitory dream, strictly controlled by the committee of the S. P. R.[12] Early in September 1893, Annette, wife of Walter Jones, tobacconist, of Old Gravel Lane, East London, had her little boy ill. One night she dreamt that she saw a cart drive up and stop near where she was. It contained three coffins, “two white and one blue. One white coffin was bigger than the other; and the blue was the biggest of the three.” The driver took out the bigger white coffin and left it at the mother’s feet, driving off with the others. Mrs. Jones told her dream to her husband and to a neighbour, laying particular stress on the curious circumstance that one of the coffins was blue.

On the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was confined of a boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their own little boy died on the following Monday, the 2nd of October, being then sixteen months old. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the morning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones that another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would be brought into church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to her husband:

“If the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two other coffins were white.”

The third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be observed that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream premonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the next that of the little Jones boy, who was sixteen months old, and the largest, the blue one, that of a boy six years of age.

Let us take, more or less at random, another case from the inexhaustible _Proceedings_.[13] The report is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and attested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and another gentleman to whom the duchess related the incident before the fulfilment of the prophetic vision:

“A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L⸺,” says Mr. Cooper, “in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the drawing-room, where the duchess was, and the duke said to me:

“‘Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?’

“The duchess said, ‘What earl?’ and, on my answering, ‘Lord L⸺,’ she replied:

“‘That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to bed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were Lord L⸺, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown.’

“I then said:

“‘I am attending Lord L⸺ at present; there is very little the matter with him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon.’

“Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but, at the end of six or seven days after this, I was called to see him suddenly. He had inflammation of both lungs.

“I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But, when I saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the earl and, strange to say, his beard was red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it; and this brought the story to my mind.

“The vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the death of Lord L⸺. It is a most remarkable thing.”

7

But it is impossible to find space for the many instances related. As I have said, there are hundreds of them, making their tracks in every direction across the plains of the future. Those which I have quoted give a sufficient idea of the predominating tone and the general aspect of this sort of story. It is nevertheless right to add that many of them are not at all tragic and that premonition opens its mysterious and capricious vistas of the future in connection with the most diverse and insignificant events. It cares but little for the human value of the occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery on the same plane as the most dramatic death. The roads by which it reaches us are also unexpected and varied. Often, as in the examples quoted, it comes to us in a dream. Sometimes, it is an auditory or visual hallucination which seizes upon us while awake; sometimes, an indefinable but clear and irresistible presentiment, a shapeless but powerful obsession, an absurd but imperative certainty which rises from the depths of our inner darkness, where perhaps lies hidden the final answer to every riddle.

One might illustrate each of these manifestations with numerous examples. I will mention only a few, selected not among the most striking or the most attractive, but among those which have been most strictly tested and investigated.[14] A young peasant from the neighbourhood of Ghent, two months before the drawing for the conscription, announces to all and sundry that he will draw number 90 from the urn. On entering the presence of the district-commissioner in charge, he asks if number 90 is still in. The answer is yes.

“Well, then, I shall have it!”

And to the general amazement, he does draw number 90.

Questioned as to the manner in which he acquired this strange certainty, he declares that, two months ago, just after he had gone to bed, he saw a huge, indescribable form appear in a corner of his room with the number 90 standing out plainly in the middle, in figures the size of a man’s hand. He sat up in bed and shut and opened his eyes to persuade himself that he was not dreaming. The apparition remained in the same place, distinctly and undeniably.

Professor Georges Hulin, of the university of Ghent, and M. Jules van Dooren, the district-commissioner, who report the incident, mention three other similar and equally striking cases witnessed by M. van Dooren during his term of office. I am the less inclined to doubt their declaration inasmuch as I am personally acquainted with them and know that their statements, as regards the objective reality of the facts, are so to speak equivalent to a legal deposition. M. Bozzano mentions some previsions which are quite as remarkable in connection with the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo.

I repeat, I am aware that, in the case of these occurrences and those which resemble them, it is possible once again to invoke the theory of coincidence. It will be contended that there are probably a thousand predictions of this kind which are never talked about, because they were not fulfilled, whereas, if one of them is accomplished, which is bound by the law of probabilities to happen some day or other, the astonishment is general and free rein is given to the imagination. This is true; nevertheless, it is well to enquire whether these predictions are as frequent as is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern the conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity of interrogating more than one constant witness of these little dramas of fate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are much rarer than one would believe. Next, we must not forget that there can be no question here of scientific proofs. We are in the midst of a slippery and nebulous region, where we would not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing ourselves to be guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which we are not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.

8

We will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who wish to know the details to the originals, lest we should never have done; or rather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which would still be too long, so plentiful are the materials, we will content ourselves with enumerating a few instances, all taken from Bozzano’s _Des Phénomènes prémonitoires_. We read there of a funeral procession seen on a high-road several days before it actually passed that way; or, again, of a young mechanic who, in the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at half-past five in the afternoon and saw his sister’s little girl run over by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He told his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same month, in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the child was run over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named. We find the ghost, the phantom animal or the mysterious noise which, in certain families, is the traditional herald of a death or of an imminent catastrophe. We find the celebrated vision which the painter Segantini had thirteen days before his decease, every detail of which remained in his mind and was represented in his last picture, _Death_. We find the Messina disaster clearly foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the ruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three months before the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess Toutschkoff that her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so little known at the time that those interested in the dream looked in vain for its name on the maps.

Until now we have spoken only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future. It would seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our lives, bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike of the present, which is no longer able to contain them. They ooze through, they seek a crevice by which to reach us. But side by side with these passive, independent and intractable premonitions, which are but so many vagrant and furtive emanations of the unknown, are others which do yield to entreaty, allow themselves to be directed into channels, are more or less obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions which we put to them. They come from the same inaccessible reservoir, are no less mysterious, but yet appear a little more human than the others; and, without drugging ourselves with puerile or dangerous illusions, we may be permitted to hope that, if we follow them and study them attentively, they will one day open to us the hidden paths joining that which is no more to that which is not yet.

It is true that here, where we must needs mix with the somewhat lawless world of professional mystery-mongers, we have to increase our caution and walk with measured steps on very suspicious ground. But even in this region of pitfalls we glean a certain number of facts that cannot reasonably be contested. It will be enough to recall, for instance, the symbolic premonitions of the famous “seeress of Prevorst,” Frau Hauffe, whose prophetic spirit was awakened by soap-bubbles, crystals and mirrors;[15] the clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event, foretold the death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a written prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of the murdered girl;[16] the gipsy who, also in writing, foretold all the events in Miss Isabel Arundel’s life, including the name of her husband, Burton the famous explorer;[17] the sealed letter addressed to M. Morin, vice-president of the Société du mesmerisme, describing the most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a month later;[18] the famous “Marmontel prediction,” obtained by Mrs. Verrall’s cross-correspondences, which gives a vision, two months and a half before their accomplishment, of the most insignificant actions of a traveller in an hotel bedroom;[19] and many others.

9

I will not review the various and very often grotesque methods of interrogating the future that are most frequently practised to-day: cards, palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by means of coffee-grounds, tea-leaves, magnetic needles and white of egg, graphology, astrology and the rest. These methods, as I have said before, are worth exactly what the medium who employs them is worth. They have no other object than to arouse the medium’s subconsciousness and to bring it into relation with that of the person questioning him. As a matter of fact, all these purely empirical processes are but so many, often puerile forms of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is known as intuition, clairvoyance or, in certain cases, psychometry. I have written at length, in my volume entitled _The Unknown Guest_, of this last faculty and need not linger over it now. All that we have still to do is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the foretelling of the future.

A large number of investigations, notably those conducted by M. Duchatel and Dr. Osty, show that, in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr. Joseph Maxwell observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past, present and future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or psychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, “do not feel,” as M. Duchatel very ably remarks, “what the future is. They do not distinguish it from the other tenses; and consequently they succeed in being prophets, but unconscious prophets.” In a word—and this is a very important indication from the point of view of the probable coexistence of the three tenses—it appears that they see that which is not yet with the same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more, but are incapable of separating the two visions and picking out the future which alone interests us. For a still stronger reason, it is impossible for them to state dates with precision. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, when we take the trouble to sift their evidence and have the patience to await the realization of certain events which are sometimes not due for a long time to come, the future is fairly often perceived by some of these strange soothsayers.

There are psychometers, however, and notably Mme. M⸺, Dr. Osty’s favourite medium, who never confuse the future and the past. Mme. M⸺ places her visions in time according to the position which they occupy in space. Thus she sees the future in front of her, the past behind her and the present beside her. But, notwithstanding these distinctly-graded visions, she also is incapable of naming her dates exactly; in fact, her mistakes in this respect are so general that Dr. Osty looks upon it as a pure chronological coincidence when a prediction is realized at the moment foretold.

We should also observe that, in psychometry, only those events can be perceived which relate directly to the individual communicating with the percipient, for it is not so much the percipient that sees into us as we that read in our own subconsciousness, which is momentarily lighted by his presence. We must not therefore ask him for predictions of a general character, whether, for instance, there will be a war in the spring, an epidemic in the summer or an earthquake in the autumn. The moment the question concerns events, however important, with which we are not intimately connected, he is bound to answer, as do all the genuine mediums, that he sees nothing.

The area of his vision being thus limited, does he really discover the future in it? After three years of numerous, cautious and systematic experiments with some twenty mediums, Dr. Osty categorically declares that he does:

“All the incidents,” he says, “which filled these three years of my life, whether wished for by me or not, or even absolutely contrary to the ordinary routine of my life, had always been foretold to me, not all by each of the clairvoyant subjects, but all by one or other of them. As I have been practising these tests continually, it seems to me that the experience of three years wholly devoted to this object should give some weight to my opinion on the subject of predictions.”

This is incontestable; and the sincerity, scientific conscientiousness and high intellectual value of Dr. Osty’s fine work inspire one with the utmost confidence. Unfortunately, he contents himself with quoting too summarily a few facts and does not, as he ought, give us _in extenso_ the details of his experiments, controls and tests. I am well aware that this would be a thankless and wearisome task, necessitating a large volume which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions would make almost unreadable. Moreover, it could scarcely help taking the form of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and it is not easy to bring one’s self to make this sort of public confession. But it has to be done. In a science which is only in its early stages, it is not enough to show the object attained and to state one’s conviction; it is necessary above all to describe every path that has been taken and, by an incessant and infinite accumulation of investigated and attested facts, to enable every one to draw his own conclusions. This has been the cumbrous and laborious method of the _Proceedings_ for over thirty years; and it is the only right one. Discussion is possible and fruitful only at that price. In all these extra-conscious matters, we have not yet reached the stage of definite deductions, we are still bringing up materials to the scene of operations.