428. In Mrs. Storie's case the whole experience, as we have seen, presented itself as a dream; yet as a dream of quite unusual type, like a series of pictures presented to the sleeper who was still conscious that she was lying in bed. In other cases the "pyschical invasion" of the spirit either of a living or of a deceased person seems to set up a variety of sleep-waking states - both in agent and percipient. In one bizarre narrative (that of Mr. Pike) which I give in 428 A, a man dreaming that he has returned home is heard in his home calling for hot water - and has himself a singular sense of "bilocation " between the railway carriage and his bedroom. The case of Mrs. Manning (428 B) is closely similar, except that Mrs. Manning is not, like Mr. Pike, looking forward in her dream to the immediate future, but is reviving with singular spontaneous force the life of the childish past. In each case the dream has set the dreamer at a different point of time and place in his career, - with such vividness that others also seem to perceive him at that imaginary point.

Somewhat similar is a narrative of Mr. Newnham's (428 C), but in that instance he himself seems not only to be transported to his fiancés close neighbourhood, but actually to touch her (as she also feels herself touched by him) at a special moment (of going upstairs to bed) which he could not have hit upon precisely by mere calculation. This case tells strongly for "pyschical invasion " - a conception which we shall have to discuss more fully in a later chapter. In another Appendix (428 D) I give a singular story of a kind of encounter in dreamland, apparently more or less remembered by both persons.

An invasion of this type coming upon a sleeping person is apt to induce some change in the sleeper's state, which, even if he regards it as a complete awakening, is generally shown not to be so in fact by the dreamlike character of his own recorded feelings and utterances. Gurney called these "Borderland Cases," and the whole collection in Phantasms of the Living will repay perusal. I introduce one such case here in my text as being at once very perplexing, and, I think, very strongly attested. I knew Mr. and Mrs. T., who certainly were seriously anxious for complete accuracy, and who had (as the narrative shows) made a brief memorandum and consulted various persons on the incident at the time. (I may add that November 18th, 1863, was a Wednesday, so that Mr. T. returned three days after the vision.) I quote the case from Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 425, with Edmund Gurney's comments. The account was written by Mrs. T. in 1883.

On November 18th, 1863,1 was living near Adelaide, and not long recovered from a severe illness at the birth of an infant, who was then five months old. My husband had also suffered from neuralgia, and had gone to stay with friends at the seaside for the benefit of bathing. One night during his absence the child woke me about midnight; having hushed him off to sleep, I said, "Now, sir, I hope you will let me rest!" I lay down, and instantly became conscious of two figures standing at the door of my room. One, M. N. [these are not the real initials], whom I recognised at once, was that of a former lover, whose misconduct and neglect had compelled me to renounce him. Of this I am sure, that if ever I saw him in my life, it was then. I was not in the least frightened; but said to myself, as it were, "You never used to wear that kind of waistcoat." The door close to which he stood was in a deep recess close to the fireplace, for there was no grate; we burnt logs only. In that recess stood a man in a tweed suit.

I saw the whole figure distinctly, but not the face, and for this reason: on the edge of the mantelshelf always stood a morocco leather medicine chest, which concealed the face from me. (On this being stated to our friends, the Singletons, they asked to go into the room and judge for themselves. They expressed themselves satisfied that would be the case to any one on the bed where I was.) I had an impression that this other was a cousin of M. N.'s, who had been the means of leading him astray while in the North of England. I never saw him in my life; he died in India.

M. N. was in deep mourning; he had a look of unutterable sorrow upon his face, and was deadly pale. He never opened his lips, but I read his heart as if it were an open book, and it said, "My father is dead, and I have come into his property." I answered, "How much you have grown like your father!" Then in a moment, without appearing to walk, he stood at the foot of the child's cot, and I saw distinctly the blueness of his eyes as he gazed on my boy, and then raised them to Heaven as if in prayer.

All vanished. I looked round and remarked a trivial circumstance, viz., that the brass handles of my chest of drawers had been rubbed very bright. Not till then was I conscious of having seen a spirit, but a feeling of awe (not fear) came over me, and I prayed to be kept from harm, although there was no reason to dread it. I slept tranquilly, and in the morning I went across to the parsonage and told the clergyman's wife what I had seen. She, of course, thought it was merely a dream. But no - if it were a dream should I not have seen him as I had known him, a young man of twenty-two, without beard or whiskers? But there was all the difference that sixteen years would make in a man's aspect.

On Saturday my husband returned, and my brother having ridden out to see us on Sunday afternoon, I told them both my vision as we sat together on the verandah. They treated it so lightly that I determined to write it down in my diary and see if the news were verified. And from that diary I am now quoting. Also I mentioned it to at least twelve or fourteen other people, and bid them await the result.

And surely enough, at the end of several weeks, my sister-in-law wrote that M. N.'s father died at C------Common on November 18th, 1863, which exactly tallied with the date of the vision. He left £45,000 to be divided between his son and daughter, but the son has never been found.

Many people in Adelaide heard the story before the confirmation came, and I wrote and told M. N.'s mother. She was much distressed about it, fearing he was unhappy. She is now dead. My husband was profoundly struck when he saw my diary corresponding exactly to the news in the letter I had that moment received in his presence.

Gurney adds the following note and comments: -

Mr. T. has confirmed to us the accuracy of this narrative, and Mrs. T. has shown to one of us a memorandum of the appearance of two figures, under date November 18th, in her diary of the year 1863, and a newspaper obituary confirms this as the date of the death. We learn from a gentleman who is a near relative of M. N.'s, that M. N., though long lost sight of, was afterwards heard of, and outlived his father.

If we regard this vision as telepathic, the agent can apparently only have been the dying man; and the case would then seem to be an extreme instance of the very rare type where the agent's personality does not appear, but some idea or picture in his mind is reproduced in the percipient's mind with a force that leads to an actual percept. For, as the narrator herself suggests, had she bodied forth the idea of M. N. from her own unaided resources, she would almost certainly have pictured him with the aspect that had been familiar to her. But though we have to draw on the father's mind for the unfamiliar features, we must not forget the possibilities of agency below the threshold of consciousness. And it is at least worth suggesting that the percipient's mind brought its own affinities to bear - exercised, so to speak, a selective influence; and that thus it was rather owing to her special interest in the son than to the conscious occupation of his father's mind with him, that the telepathic impulse manifested itself to her in this particular form.

As for the appearance of the second figure, it may possibly have been also telepathically produced; but I prefer to lay stress on it simply as one of the numerous indications that these waking percepts are really dream-creations, not objective presences.

I should not now take it for granted that the agent here "can apparently only have been the dying man." I think it possible, in the light of our now somewhat fuller knowledge, that M. N.'s spirit was aware of his father's death, - even though possibly M. N.'s supraliminal self may not have heard of it; - so that the invading presence in this case may have been the discarded lover himself, - dreaming on his own account at a distance from Mrs. T. The second figure I regard as having been an object in M. N.'s dream; - symbolical of his own alienation from Mrs. T. All this sounds fanciful; but I may remark here (as often elsewhere), that I think that we gain little by attempting to enforce our own ideas of simplicity upon narratives of this bizarre type.