651. I give in 651 A a somewhat similar case, where there is strong attestation that a sailor, watching by a dying comrade, saw figures around his hammock, apparently representing the dying man's family, in mourning garb. The family, although they had no ordinary knowledge of the sailor's illness, had been alarmed by noises, etc, which rightly or wrongly they took as indications of some danger to him. I conceive, then, that the wife paid a psychical visit to her husband; and I take the mourning garb and the accompanying children's figures to be symbolical accompaniments, representing her thought, "My children will be orphans," in just the same way as the figure in the flannel petticoat, etc, represented Mrs. Reddell's thought, " I must get out of bed and see how my daughter looks to-night." I think this more likely than that the Pearce children also should have possessed this rare peculiarity of becoming perceptible at a distant point in space. And secondary figures, as we shall see later on, are not uncommon in such telepathic presentations. One may picture oneself as though holding a child by the hand, or even driving in a carriage and pair, as vividly as though carrying an umbrella or walking across a room; and one may be thus pictured to others.

I will give one more instance of this deflected perception, where a dying (or dead) man, apparently wishing to appear to his sister, fails to attract her attention, but is observed by a black nurse, who has never seen him in the flesh.

From Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 61.

This case came from Mrs. Clerke, of Clifton Lodge, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood, S. E.

October 30th, 1885.

In the month of August 1864, about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I was sitting reading in the verandah of our house in Barbadoes. My black nurse was driving my little girl, about eighteen months or so old, in her perambulator in the garden. I got up after some time to go into the house, not having noticed anything at all - when this black woman said to me, " Missis, who was that gentleman that was talking to you just now ? " "There was no one talking to me," I said. "Oh, yes, dere was, missis - a very pale gentleman, very tall, and he talked to you, and you was very rude, for you never answered him." I repeated there was no one, and got rather cross with the woman, and she begged me to write down the day, for she knew she had seen some one. I did, and in a few days I heard of the death of my brother in Tobago. Now, the curious part is this, that I did not see him, but she - a stranger to him - did; and she said that he seemed very anxious for me to notice him.

May Clerke.

In answer to inquiries, Mrs. Clerke says -

(1) The day of death was the same, for I wrote it down. I think it was the 3rd of August, but I know it was the same.

(2) The description, "very tall and pale," was accurate.

(3) I had no idea that he was ill. He was only a few days ill.

(4) The woman had never seen him. She had been with me for about eighteen months, and I considered her truthful. She had no object in telling me.

In conversation, Gurney learned that Mrs. Clerke had immediately mentioned what the servant said, and the fact that she had written down the date, to her husband, Colonel Clerke, who corroborates as follows: -

I well remember that on the day on which Mr. John Beresford, my wife's brother, died in Tobago - after a short illness of which we were not aware our black nurse declared she saw, at as nearly as possible the time of his death, a gentleman, exactly answering to Mr. Beresford's description, leaning over the back of Mrs. Clerke's easy-chair in the open verandah. The figure was not seen by any one else. Shadwell H. Clerke.

We find it stated in Burke's Peerage that Mr. J. H. de la Poer Beresford, Secretary for the Island of Tobago, died on August 3, 1863 (not 1864). It is on this case that Gurney remarks: -

If this incident is to be interpreted telepathically, it is scarcely possible to suppose that Mrs. Clerke's own presence did not play a part in the phenomenon. The case would then be comparable to some "collective" cases where one of the percipients is a stranger to the agent; the difference being that here the person who should (so to speak) have been the principal percipient was as unconscious of the impression which she received as we have found the percipient to be in some of the experimental cases.

To me it seems that the nurse was merely the bystander, endowed with a special perceptivity, more effective here than the kinship of the intended percipient. Note that in this case we have no means of knowing whether the invader recollected the incident or not. The narrative belongs to a class as to which we shall afterwards have to say much, where the death of the agent has prevented question, and has left it uncertain what his condition at the time or his subsequent recollection may have been.