718. I place next by themselves a small group of cases which have the interest of uniting the group just recounted, where the spirit anticipates the friend's departure, with the group next to be considered, where the spirit welcomes the friend already departed from earth. This class forms at the same time a natural extension of the clairvoyance of the dying exemplified in some "reciprocal" cases (e.g. in the case of Miss W., where a dying aunt has a vision of her little niece who sees an apparition of her at the same time; see Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 253). Just as the approaching severance of spirit from body there aided the spirit to project its observation among incarnate spirits at a distance upon this earth, so here does that same approaching severance enable the dying person to see spirits who are already in the next world. It is not very uncommon for dying persons to say, or to indicate when beyond speech, that they see spirit friends apparently near them. But, of course, such vision becomes evidential only when the dying person is unaware that the friend whose spirit he sees has actually departed, or is just about to depart, from earth.

Such a conjuncture must plainly be rare; it is even rather surprising that these "Peak in Darien" cases, as Miss Cobbe has termed them in a small collection which she made some years ago, should be found at all. We can add to Miss Cobbe's cases two of fair attestation, which I give in 718 A and B.

719. From this last group, then, there is scarcely a noticeable transi-tion to the group where departed spirits manifest their knowledge that some friend who survived them has now passed on into their world. That such recognition and welcome does in fact take place, later evidence, drawn especially from trance-utterances, will give good ground to believe. Only rarely, however, will such welcome - taking place as it does in the spiritual world - be reflected by apparitions in this. When so reflected, it may take different forms, from an actual utterance of sympathy, as from a known departed friend, down to a mere silent presence, perhaps inexplicable except to those who happen to have known some long prede-ceased friend of the decedent's.

1 For some curious parallels to these modern cases from savage beliefs, see Mr. Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i. pp. 105-6.

I quote in full one of the most complete cases of this type, which was brought to us by the Census of Hallucinations {Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x. pp. 380-82).

From Miss L. Dodson:-

September 14th, 1891.

On June 5th, 1887, a Sunday evening,1 between eleven and twelve at night, being awake, my name was called three times. I answered twice, thinking it was my uncle, "Come in, Uncle George, I am awake," but the third time I recognised the voice as that of my mother, who had been dead sixteen years. I said, "Mamma!" She then came round a screen near my bedside with two children in her arms, and placed them in my arms and put the bedclothes over them and said, "Lucy, promise me to take care of them, for their mother is just dead." I said, "Yes, mamma." She repeated, "Promise me to take care of them." I replied, "Yes, I promise you;" and I added, "Oh, mamma, stay and speak to me, I am so wretched." She replied, "Not yet, my child," then she seemed to go round the screen again, and I remained, feeling the children to be still in my arms, and fell asleep. When I awoke there was nothing. Tuesday morning, June 7th, I received the news of my sister-in-law's death. She had given birth to a child three weeks before, which I did not know till after her death.

I was in bed, but not asleep, and the room was lighted by a gaslight in the street outside. I was out of health, and in anxiety about family troubles. My age was forty-two. I was quite alone. I mentioned the circumstance to my uncle the next morning. He thought I was sickening for brain fever. [I have had other experiences, but] only to the extent of having felt a hand laid on my head, and sometimes on my hands, at times of great trouble.

Lucy Dodson.

The collector, Mr. C. H. Cope, writes in answer to our questions:-

Brussels, October 17th, 1891.

I have received replies from Miss Dodson to your inquiries.

(1) "Yes [I was] perfectly awake [at the time]".

(2) "Was she in anxiety about her sister-in-law?" "None whatever; I did not know a second baby had been born; in fact, had not the remotest idea of my sister-in-law's illness".

(3) "Did she think at the time that the words about the children's mother having just died referred to her sister-in-law? Had she two children?" "No, I was at a total loss to imagine whose children they were".

(4) "I was living in Albany Street, Regent's Park, at the time. My sister-in-law, as I heard afterwards, was confined at St. Andre" (near Bruges), and removed to Bruges three days prior to her death. (N.B.-She had two children including the new-born baby.)"

(5) "My late uncle only saw business connections, and having no relations or personal friends in London, save myself, would not have been likely to mention the occurrence to any one".

1 We have ascertained that this date was a Sunday.

Mr. Cope also sent us a copy of the printed announcement of the death, which Miss Dodson had received. It was dated, "Bruges, June 7th, 1887," and gave the date of death as June 5th. He quotes from Miss Dodson's letter to him, enclosing it, as follows:- "[My friend], Mrs. Grange, tells me she saw [my sister-in-law] a couple of hours prior to her death, which took place about nine o'clock on the evening of June 5th, and it was between eleven and twelve o'clock the same night my mother brought me the two little children".

Professor Sidgwick writes:-

November 23rd, 1892.

I have just had an interesting conversation with Miss Dodson and her friend, Mrs. Grange.

Miss Dodson told me that she was not thinking of her brother or his wife at this time, as her mind was absorbed by certain other matters. But the brother was an object of special concern to her, as her mother on her deathbed, in 1871, had specially charged her - and she had promised - to take care of the other children, especially this brother, who was then five years old. He had married in April 1885, and she had not seen him since, though she had heard of the birth of his first child, a little girl, in January 1886; and she had never seen his wife nor heard of the birth of the second child.

She is as sure as she can be that she was awake at the time of the experience. She knew the time by a clock in the room and also a clock outside. She heard this latter strike twelve afterwards, and the apparition must have occurred after eleven, because lights were out in front of the public-house. The children seemed to be with her a long time; indeed, they seemed to be still with her when the clock struck twelve. The room was usually light enough to see things in - e.g. to get a glass of water, etc. - owing to the lamp in the street, but the distinctness with which the vision was seen is not explicable by the real light. The children were of ages corresponding to those of her sister-in-law's children, i.e. they seemed to be a little girl and a baby newly born; the sex was not distinguished. She was not at all alarmed.

She heard from Mrs. Grange by letter, and afterwards orally from her brother, that her sister-in-law died between eight and nine the same night.

She never had any experience of the kind, or any hallucination at all before: but since she has occasionally felt a hand on her head in trouble.

Mrs. Grange told me that she was with the sister-in-law about an hour and a half before her death. She left her about seven o'clock, without any particular alarm about her; though she was suffering from inflammation after childbirth, and Mrs. Grange did not quite like her look; still her state was not considered alarming by those who were attending on her. Then about 8.30 news came to Mrs. Grange in her own house that something had happened at the sister-in-law's. As it was only in the next street, Mrs. Grange put on her bonnet and went round to the house, and found she was dead. She then wrote and told Miss Dodson.

I quote further cases more or less analogous to this in the Appendices to this section. In the first (719 A) the apparition of a dying mother brings the news of her own death and that her baby is living. In the second (719 B) a mother sees a vision of her son being drowned and also an apparition of her own dead mother, who tells her of the drowning.

In this case, the question may be raised as to whether the second figure seen may not have been, so to say, substitutive - a symbol in which the percipient's own mind clothed a telepathic impression of the actual decedent's passage from earth. Such a view might perhaps be supported by some anomalous cases where news of the death is brought by the apparition of a person still living, who, nevertheless, is not by any normal means aware of the death. (See the case of Mrs. T., already given in Chapter IV (Sleep)., 428; and that of Miss Hawkins-Dempster in 719 C).