734. The next class of cases in this series well illustrates this unexpectedness. It has only been as the result of a gradual accumulation of concordant cases that I have come to believe there is some reality in the bizarre supposition that the departed spirit is sometimes specially aware of the time at which news of his death is about to reach some given friend. Proof of such knowledge on his part is rendered harder by the alternative possibility that the friend may by clairvoyance become aware of a letter in his own proximity. As was shown in Phantasms of the Living, there is some evidence for such clairvoyance even in cases where the letter seen is quite unimportant (see also 421 H and J and 656 B). May there be here also some conjuncture of the spheres of knowledge of the departed and the incarnate spirits, so that a glimpse obtained by the one in some way reinforces a glimpse obtained by the other?

I quote a typically difficult instance of this coincidence of an apparition with the arrival of the news of a death.

From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 409. The case was sent to us by the Bishop of Carlisle, the percipient being the Rev. G. M. Tandy, vicar of West Ward, near Wigton, Cumberland, formerly of Loweswater, who writes:- 1

When at Loweswater, I one day called upon a friend, who said, "You do not see many newspapers; take one of those lying there." I accordingly took up a newspaper bound with a wrapper, put it into my pocket, and walked home. In the evening I was writing, and wanting to refer to a book, went into another room where my books were. I placed the candle on a ledge of the bookcase, took down a book and found the passage I wanted, when, happening to look towards the window, which was opposite to the bookcase, I saw the face of an old friend whom I had known well at Cambridge, but had not seen for ten years or more, Canon Robinson (of the Charity and School Commission). I was so sure I saw him that I went out to look for him, but could find no trace of him. I went back into the house, and thought I would take a look at my newspaper. I tore off the wrapper, unfolded the paper, and the first piece of news that I saw was the death of Canon Robinson!2

Mr. Tandy further writes:-

In reply to your note, October 6th, I may state, with regard to the narrative I detailed to the Bishop of Carlisle, that I saw the face looking through the window, by the light of a single Ozokerit candle, placed on a ledge of the bookcase, which stood opposite the window; that I was standing, with the candle by my side, reading from a book to which I had occasion to refer, and raising my eyes as I read, I saw the face clearly and distincdy, ghastly pale, but with the features so marked and so distinct that I recognised it at once as the face of my most dear and intimate friend, the late Canon Robinson, who was with me at school and college, and whom I had not seen for many years past (ten or eleven at the very least). Almost immediately after, fully persuaded that my old friend had come to pay me a surprise visit, I rushed to the door, but seeing nothing I called aloud, searched the premises most carefully, and made inquiry as to whether any stranger had been seen near my house, but no one had been heard of or seen.

When last I saw Canon Robinson he was apparently in perfect health, much more likely to outlive me than I him, and before I opened the newspaper announcing his death (which I did about an hour or so after seeing the face) I had not heard or read of his illness or death, and there was nothing in the passage of the book I was reading to lead me to think of him.

The time at which I saw the face was between ten and eleven p.m., the night dark, and I was reading in a room where no shutter was closed or blind drawn.

I may answer in reply to your question - "whether I have ever had any other vision or hallucination of any kind?" - that, though I never saw any apparition, 1 have heard mysterious noises which neither my friends nor I were able satisfactorily to account for.

735. This incident, taken alone and without any apparent connection with other forms of action of the departed, seems almost too quaint to be included in a more or less coherent series like the present. But a hint towards its comprehension is given by certain other cases where the percipient states that a cloud of unreasonable depression fell upon him about the time of his friend's death at a distance, and continued until the actual news arrived; when, instead of becoming intensified, it lifted suddenly. In one or two such cases there was an actual presence or apparition, which seemed to hang about until the news arrived, and then disappeared. Or, on the other hand, there is sometimes a happy vision of the departed preluding the news, as though to prepare the percipient's mind for the shock (735 A). The suggested inference is that in such cases the spirit's attention is more or less continuously directed to the survivor until the news reaches him. This does not, of course, explain how the spirit learns as to the arrival of the news; yet it makes that piece of knowledge seem a less isolated thing.

1 The narrative is undated, but the first part of it was printed in the Journal S.P.R. for January 1885.

2 As we do not know what newspaper this was, it is not possible to ascertain the precise interval which had elapsed since the death.