736 A. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. viii. p. 218. The following account was written out by me on December 22nd, 1888, from notes taken during an interview with Mrs. Davies the same day; and was afterwards revised and signed by Mrs. Davies.

About twenty years ago I was living with my mother and brother at Islington. Near us lived a family whose name is not important to the narrative. One of their daughters married a Mr. J. W., who went to India. Mrs. J. W. continued living at her father's house. Her father, however, changed his residence, and as Mr. J. W.'s address in India was not known at the time, Mrs. J. W. could not inform him of the change of address. The house where she was living with her father when her husband left home passed to a family whom I will call Brown, with whom I was acquainted, as I also was with Mrs. J. W. and her family.

One evening I paid a visit to Mrs. Brown, and she gave me an Indian letter which had arrived for Mrs. J. W. at the house now occupied by the Browns. Mrs. Brown asked me to transmit this letter to Mrs. J. W. through my brother, who frequently saw a brother of Mrs. J. W.'s. There had thus been some little delay, and perhaps slackness in getting the letter sent on to Mrs. J. W. I promised to give it to my brother, and took it home. It was a dirty-looking letter, addressed in an uneducated handwriting, and of ordinary bulk. I placed it on the chimney-piece in our sitting-room, and sat down alone. I expected my brother home in an hour or two. The letter, of course, in no way interested me. In a minute or two I heard a ticking on the chimney-piece, and it struck me that an old-fashioned watch which my mother always had standing in her bedroom must have been brought downstairs. I went to the chimney-piece, but there was no watch or clock there or elsewhere in the room. The ticking, which was loud and sharp, seemed to proceed from the letter itself. Greatly surprised, I removed the letter and put it on a sideboard, and then in one or two other places; but the ticking continued, proceeding undoubtedly from where the letter was each time.

After an hour or so of this I could bear the thing no longer, and went out and sat in the hall to await my brother. When he came in I simply took him into the sitting-room and asked him if he heard anything. He said at once, "I hear a watch or clock ticking." There was no watch or clock, as I have said, in the room. He went to where the letter was and exclaimed, "Why, the letter is ticking." We then listened to it together, moved it about, and satisfied ourselves that the ticking proceeded from the letter, which, however, plainly contained nothing but a sheet of paper. The impression which the ticking made was that of an urgent call for attention. My brother took the letter to Mrs. J. W. either that night (it was very late) or next morning. On opening it, she found that her husband had suddenly died of sunstroke, and the letter was written by some servant or companion to inform her of his death. The ticking no doubt made my brother and myself hand on the letter more promptly than we might otherwise have done.

I have never experienced any other hallucination of the senses. I once heard a strong push at the street-door at the minute (for I looked at my watch) that my father died at a distance; but, though I went to the door at once and saw no one, I cannot, of course, be sure that some passer-by might not have pushed the door and got out of sight; for the house was in a street with many passers. I have also heard ticks before a death; but these may very likely have been caused by the death-watch insect; which certainly was not the case with the ticks which came from the letter. The incident of the letter made a deep impression on me. (Signed) Anna Davies.

Mr. Davies, brother to Mrs. Davies (who married a gentleman of the same name), gives his independent recollection as follows:-

64 Church Road, Southgate Road, N., February 13th, 1889.

I am afraid my recollection of the details after so long a time has elapsed is rather limited and somewhat hazy, so that if my sister has expanded into details, and her version should slightly differ from mine, please consider that I bow to her superior memory, and accept her account as correct. The main features of the incident are, however, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows:- One night, it must be nearly, if not quite, thirty years ago, I returned home between ten and eleven o'clock, and my sister told me that she had brought home from the house of a friend of hers a letter from India, addressed to a Mrs. Walker, who had formerly lived at the house the letter was directed to, and being acquainted with Mrs. Walker (whose brother was an intimate friend of mine), I was asked to be the bearer of the letter to her. I found it on the mantelshelf, and my sister and myself heard very distinctly a clear ticking noise, as loud as, and similar to, that of a small clock, which we spent some time in trying to account for, and which we could so clearly trace to the vicinity of the letter that it seemed to proceed from the letter itself, but we could find nothing which would in any way account for what we heard.

I delivered the letter to my friend the following day to hand to his sister, Mrs. Walker, and afterwards heard that it contained the news of the decease of her husband in India. I am not quite sure but almost so, that on hearing the mysterious noise we remarked on the probable contents of the letter, but we were certainly struck with the coincidence of the noise being heard whilst the letter was on the shelf (and apparently proceeding from it) and discontinuing on its removal.

I have no means of fixing the date, or even the year, as Mrs. Walker and her brother have both been dead for some years. L. A. Davies.