727 A. The following case (quoted from Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 216, foot-note) was received from the Rev. Arthur Bellamy, of Publow Vicarage, Bristol, in February 1886; but the particulars were first published in 1878.

When a girl at school my wife made an agreement with a fellow pupil, Miss W., that the one of them who died first should, if Divinely permitted, appear after her decease to the survivor. In 1874 my wife, who had not seen or heard anything of her former school-friend for some years, casually heard of her death. The news reminded her of her former agreement, and then, becoming nervous, she told me of it. I knew of my wife's compact, but I had never seen a photograph of her friend, or heard any description of her. [Mr. Bellamy told Gurney, in conversation, that his mind had not been in the least dwelling on the compact].

A night or two afterwards as I was sleeping with my wife, a fire brightiy burning in the room and a candle alight, I suddenly awoke, and saw a lady sitting by the side of the bed where my wife was sleeping soundly. At once I sat up in the bed, and gazed so intently that even now I can recall her form and features. Had I the pencil and the brush of a Millais, I could transfer to canvas an exact likeness of the ghostly visitant. I remember that I was much struck, as I looked intently at her, with the careful arrangement of her coiffure, every single hair being most carefully brushed down. How long I sat and gazed I cannot say, but directly the apparition ceased to be, I got out of bed to see if any of my wife's garments had by any means optically deluded me. I found nothing in the line of vision but a bare wall. Hallucination on my part I rejected as out of the question, and I doubted not that I had really seen an apparition. Returning to bed, I lay till my wife some hours after awoke and then I gave her an account of her friend's appearance.

I described her colour, form, etc, all of which exactly tallied with my wife's recollection of Miss W. Finally I asked, "But was there any special point to strike one in her appearance?" "Yes," my wife promptly replied; "we girls used to tease her at school for devoting so much time to the arrangement of her hair." This was the very thing which I have said so much struck me. Such are the simple facts.

I will only add that till 1874 I had never seen an apparition, and that I have not seen one since. Arthur Bellamy.

We have also seen an account written by Mrs. Bellamy in May 1879, which entirely agrees with the above, except that she "thinks it was a fortnight after the death" that the vision occurred, and that the light was "the dim light of a night-lamp." She says, "The description accorded in all points with my deceased friend." In conversation, Mr. Bellamy described the form as seen in a very clear light; and this may account for his idea that the room itself was lighted by fire and candle. Gurney adds:-

This experience, as I have said, may have been purely subjective; and identification of a person's appearance by mere description is generally to be regarded with great doubt. But in view of the circumstances, and especially of the fact that Mr. Bellamy has never had any other hallucination, two alternative hypotheses seem at least worth suggesting. (1) Believers in telepathic phantasms may suspect Mr. Bellamy's experience to have been conditioned by his wife's state of mind - possibly even by a dream, forgotten on waking, in which her friend figured. (2) Believers in the possibility of postmortem communications, if they believe that this was one of them, might further suppose that Mr. Bellamy's experience depended on a psychical influence exercised in the first instance on Mrs. Bellamy, though acting below the level of her normal consciousness. To me, I confess, this appears a more reasonable supposition than that a direct influence (so to speak) missed its mark, and was exercised on Mr. Bellamy by a stranger who cared nothing about him.