In the next case [344 omitted here for brevity though recent. - Ed.] the coincidence seems again to have been close to within a very few minutes; but the form [a church bell] which the hallucination (if it was one [and this Gurney after investigation on the spot rinds "it all but impossible to doubt." - Ed.]) took had no special connection with anything that we can conceive to have been present to the agent's mind. Bells are, however, a not uncommon form of purely subjective impression.1 And if the principle of telepathic hallucinations be granted, one would naturally expect that the rudimentary specimens of that class - specimens which do not suggest any conscious idea of the agent, but are projected, as it were, blindly under the telepathic impulse - should follow the ordinary lines of hallucinations in general.

I now come to cases where the sense of sight was involved. And I may begin with a few specimens where the experiences of the several percipients were either not exactly simultaneous or not exactly similar, and where, therefore, the theory that they were severally derived from the agent receives some slight support. (Compare in this respect the auditory case, No. 36).

In the following example the experience of the second percipient included an auditory as well as a visual impression, and was, moreover, separated by an interval of 3 hours from that of the first. The narrator is Mrs. Cox, who wrote from Summer Hill, Queenstown, Ireland.

" December 26th, 1883.

(345) "On the night of the 21st August, 1869, between the hours of 8 and 9 o'clock, I was sitting in my bedroom in my mother's house at Devonport, my nephew, a boy aged seven years, being in bed in the next room, when I was startled by his suddenly running into my room, and exclaiming in a frightened tone,' Oh, auntie, I have just seen my father walking around my bed.' I replied, ' Nonsense, you must have been dreaming.' He said, 'No, I have not,' and refused to return to the room. Finding that I was unable to persuade him to go back, I put him in my own bed. Between 10 and 11 I myself retired to rest. I think about an hour afterwards, on looking towards the fireplace, I distinctly saw, to my astonishment, the form of my brother seated in a chair, and what particularly struck me was the deathly pallor of his face. (My nephew was at this time fast asleep.) I was so frightened, knowing that at this time my brother was in Hong Kong, China, that I put my head under the bed-clothes. Soon after this I plainly heard his voice calling me by name; my name was repeated three times. The next time I looked, he was gone. The following morning I told my mother and sister what had occurred, and said I should make a note of it, which I did.

The next mail from China brought us the sad intelligence of my brother's death, which took place on the 21st August, 1869, in the Harbour of Hong Kong, suddenly, [of heat-apoplexy]. "Minnie Cox".

We have received from the Admiralty an official confirmation of the date of the death.

1See p. 325.

In answer to further inquiries, Mr. Cox (at present Secretary to the Naval Commander-in-Chief at Devonport) wrote:-

"February 21st, 1884.

"As my wife is too unwell to reply to your letter she has asked me to state with reference to your question on the subject of the appearance of her brother to her, that: -

" As she has no note now in her possession, and as her mother is dead, she cannot be positive as to the hour at which her brother died. The circumstance happened about 15 years ago - both the persons she mentioned it to are dead. All that she can now state positively is that she now believes it must have been after midnight when she saw the appearance, but at the same time she is quite certain that her little nephew came into her room before midnight. She is sure that afterwards, when the news came from China, the time corresponded, but has nothing to prove it. I fear that she has not sufficient evidence, or in fact any evidence now; but it is an old story she has often told me, and I have not the slightest doubt that she did see the appearance. "JAMES Cox".

In conversation Mrs. Cox told me that she was quite certain of having put down the date, and compared it with the date in the letter. She has never had the slighest hallucination on any other occasion. The child was not in the least given to frights, and had no dread of the dark.

[If the time either of Mrs. Cox's or of her nephew's impression coincided with that of the death, the first date in the account is of course given wrongly, as 9 p.m. in England would correspond with about 5 a.m. of the next day at Hong Kong. If the first date is right, then the percipients' experiences must have followed the death by some hours. It might be suggested that Mrs. Cox's experience was due to suggestion from her nephew. But it is scarcely probable that a person who has no tendency to hallucinations should evolve one from what she took to be the dream of a frightened child].

[Cases 346 and 347 are omitted].