744. I will conclude this group with three cases closely similar, all well attested, and all of them capable of explanation either on local or personal grounds. In the first (see 744 A) an apparition is seen by two persons in a house in Edinburgh, a few hours before the death of a lady who had lived there, and whose body was to be brought back to it. In the second (see 744 B) the dead librarian haunts his library, but in the library are members of his old staff. In the third, the dead wife loiters round her husband's tomb, but near it passes a gardener who had been in her employ. This last - the case of Mrs. de Freville and the gardener Bard - I must insert in the text. As often happens when (as I do here) one knows the percipient and his milieu, even the very plot of ground on which he dodged about to watch the phantom, one feels a reality in the incident which the most satisfactory depositions from a distance will not always bring. The case is quoted from Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 212. Gurney there remarks of it:-

The next case again exhibits the slight deferment of the percipient's experience which I have already mentioned. But its chief interest is as illustrating what may be called a local, as distinct from a personal, rapport between the parties concerned. The percipient, at the moment of his impression, was contemplating a spot with which the agent was specially connected, and which may even have had a very distinct place in her dying thoughts; and it is natural to find in this fact a main condition why he, of all people, should have been the one impressed.

The first account of it was sent to us by the Rev. C. T. Forster, Vicar of Hinxton, Saffron Walden, as follows:-

August 6th, 1885.

My late parishioner, Mrs. de Freville, was a somewhat eccentric lady, who was specially morbid on the subject of tombs, etc.

About two days after her death, which took place in London, May 8th, in the afternoon, I heard that she had been seen that very night by Alfred Bard. I sent for him, and he gave me a very clear and circumstantial account of what he had seen.

He is a man of great observation, being a self-taught naturalist, and I am quite satisfied that he desires to speak the truth without any exaggeration.

I must add that I am absolutely certain that the news of Mrs. de Freville's death did not reach Hinxton till the next morning, May 9th. She was found dead at 7.30 p.m. She had been left alone in her room, being poorly, but not considered seriously or dangerously ill. C. T. Forster.

The following is the percipient's own account:-

July 21st, 1885.

I am a gardener in employment at Sawston. I always go through Hinxton churchyard on my return home from work. On Friday, May 8th, 1885, I was walking back as usual. On entering the churchyard, I looked rather carefully at the ground, in order to see a cow and donkey which used to lie just inside the gate. In so doing, I looked straight at the square stone vault in which the late Mr. de Freville was at one time buried. I then saw Mrs. de Freville leaning on the rails, dressed much as I had usually seen her, in a coal-scuttle bonnet, black jacket with deep crape, and black dress. She was looking full at me. Her face was very white, much whiter than usual. I knew her well, having at one time been in her employ. I at once supposed that she had come, as she sometimes did, to the mausoleum in her own park, in order to have it opened and go in. I supposed that Mr. Wiles, the mason from Cambridge, was in the tomb doing something. I walked round the tomb, looking carefully at it, in order to see if the gate was open, keeping my eye on her, and never more than five or six yards from her. Her face turned and followed me.

I passed between the church and the tomb (there are about four yards between the two), and peered forward to see whether the tomb was open, as she hid the part of the tomb which opened. I slightly stumbled on a hassock of grass, and looked at my feet for a moment only. When I looked up she was gone. She could not possibly have got out of the churchyard, as in order to reach any of the exits she must have passed me.1 So I took for granted that she had quickly gone into the tomb. I went up to the door, which I expected to find open, but to my surprise it was shut and had not been opened, as there was no key in the lock. I rather hoped to have a look into the tomb myself, so I went back again and shook the gate to make sure, but there was no sign of any one's having been there. I was then much startled and looked at the clock, which marked 9.20. When I got home I half thought it must have been my fancy, but I told my wife that I had seen Mrs. de Freville.

Next day, when my little boy told me that she was dead, I gave a start, which my companion noticed, I was so much taken aback.

I have never had any other hallucination whatever.

Alfred Bard.

Mrs. Bard's testimony is as follows:-

July 8th, 1885. When Mr. Bard came home, he said, "I have seen Mrs. de Freville tonight, leaning with her elbow on the palisade, looking at me. I turned again to look at her and she was gone. She had cloak and bonnet on." He got home as usual between nine and ten. It was on the 8th of May 1885.

Sarah Bard.

The Times obituary confirms the date of the death.

From information more recently received (see Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 415) we learn that the lady was found dead at 2 p.m. - not 7.30 p.m. as stated above - so that the apparition was seen about seven and a half hours after the death. This, as Gurney remarked, makes it still more difficult to regard the case as a telepathic impression transmitted at the moment of death, and remaining latent in the mind of the percipient. The incident suggests rather that Bard had come upon Mrs. de Freville's spirit, so to say, unawares. One cannot imagine that she specially wished him to see her, and to see her engaged in what seems so needless and undignified a retracing of currents of earthly thought. Rather this seems a rudimentary haunting - an incipient lapse into those aimless, perhaps unconscious, reappearances in familiar spots which may persist (as it would seem) for many years after death.

A somewhat similar case is that of Colonel Crealock (in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 432) where a soldier who had been dead some hours was seen by his superior officer in camp at night rolling up and taking away his bed.