Phantasms of the Living - Volume I.. Frank Podmore
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writer, who seems to have had the means of ascertaining Cavallier’s opinions when the latter was in England. (A Short View of the Pretended Spirit of Prophecy, London, 1708, pp. 9, 16. See also A Preservative against the False Prophets of the Times, by Mark Vernons, London, 1708, p. 72; and Clavis Prophetica, London, 1707, pp. 8, 9.) As regards Colonel Cavallier himself, we have to note (1) that in the history of the Cevennes disturbances, attributed to him and probably drawn up from recollections of his conversations, not a word on the subject occurs; and that the only direct testimony to the occurrence that we have from him, as far as I can discover, is the phrase, “Cela est vrai,” applied to the fire of Clary, “et d’autres choses de cette nature” (Memoires pour Servir, &c, p. 10);2 (2) that even supposing he was an eye-witness, it nowhere appears that he examined Clary after the ordeal, and ascertained that his clothes and hair were unsinged; and, as Hutchinson remarks, the fire may have been “a fire of straw, that is no sooner kindled but it is out again.” And in fact, in the Histoire des Troubles des Cevennes, by A. Court (Villefranche, 1760), p. 442, the author professes to have found, from information gathered at the spot, that “(1) Clary ne séjourna pas dans le feu; (2) il y entra deux fois; (3) il se brûla au col du bras, et fut obligé de s’arrêter au lieu de Pierredon, pour se fair panser.”
I confine myself to this single case, which bears directly on my discussion of evidence in Chapter IV.; but since no topic has been a greater favourite in the modern literature of the “supernatural” than the phenomena of the Cevennes, it may be useful to add that probably no chapter of history offers equal facilities for studying the natural genesis of modern miracles.
Page 127, line 16. For wonder-mongerer read wonder-monger.
Page 140, last sentence of note. Since this was written, a few other instances have been included where it is possible, but not certain, that the 12 hours’ limit was exceeded. It was exceeded in case 138, and possibly in case 165.
Page 145, last sentence. Since this was printed, some further cases have been received of considerable exaggeration of the closeness of a coincidence, which should be added to the examples mentioned in the note.
(1) An informant sent us a sworn affidavit to the effect that, in January, 1852, when returning from China on board the “Pilot,” and near the Cape, he had a vision of his sister, and learnt on his arrival in England that she had died “about the time” of the vision. We find, from an examination of various newspapers, that the “Pilot” was in the East Indies up to December, 1851, and was at Devonport in March, 1852; so that she may well have been near the Cape in January, 1852. But we find from the Register of Deaths that the sister died on June 29, 1851, at which date, as we learn from the Admiralty, the “Pilot” was at Whampoa. It is not likely that our informant was mistaken as to his own experience having taken place on the return voyage, and shortly before his arrival in England. What happened, we may surmise, is that he was told, when he arrived after a long absence, that his sister had lately died; and that on the strength of his vision, he assumed or gradually came to imagine, that the death had happened only several weeks before, instead of several months.
(2) A gentleman gave us a striking account of a phantasm of a friend, then in the Transvaal war, who appeared in his room early one morning, and announced that he had been shot through the right lung. Such a hallucination being absolutely unique in our informant’s experience, he noted the time—4.10 a.m.—by a clock on the mantelpiece, and waited feverishly during the hours that elapsed before he could see a newspaper at his club. He found no news of the war. In the course of the day he mentioned his vision and his disquietude to an acquaintance at the club. The next morning he saw, in the first paper that he took up, the announcement that his friend had been killed—shot through the right lung, as it afterwards proved—at an hour (as he calculated) closely coincident with that of his vision. We found, however, from the London Gazette, that the battle in which this officer was killed did not begin till 9.30 a.m.; and the death took place at least two hours later, which would be between 9 and 10 a.m. in England. Clearly, therefore, the vision must have preceded the death by some hours, if they occurred on the same day. But an examination of the newspapers makes it seem very likely that the vision fell on the day after the death. The battle took place on Friday, and was announced in the Saturday papers; but the death was not announced in the morning papers till Monday, and the vision which is represented as having occurred on the day next before the announcement of the death may more easily be supposed to have occurred on the second day than on the third day before—i.e., on the Saturday, not the Friday morning. As to the statement that the papers contained no war-news on the morning of the vision, that is a point on which our informant’s memory might easily get wrong, as they did not contain what he searched them for.
(3) An account signed by three witnesses of unimpeachable character, and purporting to be a statement made to them on Sept. 7, 1859, by T. Crowley, of Dinish Island, records a hallucination which he experienced on Saturday, Aug. 13, and afterwards connected with the unexpected death of his daughter, Ellen, which took place at a distance a few hours earlier. This daughter had been an inmate of a Deaf and Dumb Asylum. From the secretary of this institution we learnt that the day of her death was Sunday, July 24, 1859; and we procured a certificate of her burial on the following day. It is probable that those who took down the statement got an idea that the coincidence was a close one, and unconsciously forced the wrong date on an uneducated witness.
(4) Two letters have been handed to us, written by a husband to his wife on Nov. 7 and Dec. 28, 1874. The first letter describes an overpowering impression of calamity at home which the writer experienced, during a voyage, on Friday, Nov. 6, and which he immediately mentioned to a friend, who has given us full written confirmation of the fact. In that week the writer of the letters lost a child, who died, as we find from the Register of Deaths, on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Yet the second letter, written after the news of the death had reached the father, says, “It is very strange, but the very time—day and hour—of our boy’s death, I could not sleep,” and then follows another account of the very experience which was before described (and undoubtedly correctly) as having happened on the night of Nov. 6, three days after the death.
(5) A lady, who did not remember ever to have dreamt of death on any other occasion, told us that one night, in January, 1881, she had a remarkably vivid dream of the death of a relative whom she did not know to be ill or likely to die; and that on coming down in the morning she found the death announced in the Times as having occurred on the previous day. She did not (for family reasons) communicate the name of the person who died. But it is not very common for deaths to appear in the Times on the day after that on which they occurred. A list was accordingly made out of all the persons, corresponding with her description in sex and age, whose deaths were so immediately announced during that month; and the list, being submitted to her, her relative’s name proved not to be in it. The death must therefore have preceded the dream by more than 24 hours.
(6) Another informant gives an account of an interesting experience said to have occurred on the night of Sunday, May 6, 1866, and remarkably coinciding with the death of the narrator’s brother, lost with the “General Grant.” The fate of this ship was not known till January, 1868, when the Melbourne Argus published a “narrative of the survivors.” From this account we find that the wreck occurred on the night of Sunday the 13th, and that the death in question probably occurred on the morning of the 14th; which, allowing for longitude, would closely correspond with the time of the experience in England, supposing that our informant’s date was wrong by a week. This may very likely have been the case, as he explains that all he is clear about is that the day was a Sunday in May which he spent at a particular place. But unfortunately he had said in a former letter that the date May 6 was impressed on his mind by its being his own birthday; and that statement cannot, of course, be ignored; although he makes it tolerably clear that he really only inferred long afterwards that that was the day, because he knew for certain that on his birthday he was at the place where the experience occurred.
Pages 149–51. The following instructive instance of the difference between first-hand and second-hand evidence