Clairvoyance and Occult Powers, William Walker Atkinson [best book clubs TXT] 📗

pictures were apropos of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been reading or talking of; they simply came as if I had been able to look through a glass at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had my peep, and then it passed."

An interesting case of space clairvoyance is that related of Swedenborg, on the best authority. The story runs that in the latter part of September, 1759, at four o'clock one Saturday afternoon, Swedenborg arrived home from England, and disembarked at the town of Gothenburg. A friend, Mr. W. Castel, met him and invited him to dinner, at which meal there were fifteen persons gathered around the table in honor of the guest. At six o'clock, Swedenborg went out a few minutes, returning to the table shortly thereafter, looking pale and excited. When questioned by the guests he replied that there was a fire at Stockholm, two hundred miles distant, and that the fire was steadily spreading. He grew very restless, and frequently left the room. He said that the house of one of his friends, whose name he mentioned, was already in ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock, after he had been out again, he returned crying out cheerfully, "Thank heaven! the fire is out, the third door from my house!" The news of the strange happening greatly excited the people of the town, and the city officials made inquiry regarding it. Swedenborg was summoned before the authorities, and requested to relate in detail what he had seen. Answering the questions put to him, he told when and how the fire started; how it had begun; how, when and where it had stopped; the time it had lasted; the number of houses destroyed or damaged, and the number of persons injured. On the following Monday morning a courier arrived from Stockholm, bringing news of the fire, having left the town while it was still burning. On the next day after, Tuesday morning, another courier arrived at the city hall with a full report of the fire, which corresponded precisely with the vision of Swedenborg. The fire had stopped precisely at eight o'clock, the very minute that Swedenborg had so announced it to the company.

A similar case is related by Stead, having been told to him by the wife of a Dean in the Episcopal Church. He relates it as follows: "I was staying in Virginia, some hundred miles away from home, when one morning about eleven o'clock I felt an overpowering sleepiness, which drowsiness was quite unusual, and which caused me to lie down. In my sleep I saw quite distinctly my home in Richmond in flames. The fire had broken out in one wing of the house, which I saw with dismay was where I kept all my best dresses. The people were all trying to check the flames, but it was no use. My husband was there, walking about before the burning house, carrying a portrait in his hand. Everything was quite clear and distinct, exactly as if I had actually been present and seen everything. After a time, I woke up, and going down stairs told my friends the strange dream I had had. They laughed at me, and made such game of my vision that I did my best to think no more about it. I was traveling about, a day or two passed, and when Sunday came I found myself in a church where some relatives were worshipping. When I entered the pew they looked very strange, and as soon as the service was over I asked them what was the matter. 'Don't be alarmed,' they said, 'there is nothing serious.' Then they handed me a post-card from my husband which simply said, 'House burned out; covered by insurance.' The day was the date upon which my dream occurred. I hastened home, and then I learned that everything had happened exactly as I had seen it. The fire had broken out in the wing I had seen blazing. My clothes were all burned, and the oddest thing about it was that my husband, having rescued a favorite picture from the burning building, had carried it about among the crowd for some time before he could find a place in which to put it safely."

Another case, related by Stead, the same authority, runs as follows: "The father of a son who had sailed on the 'Strathmore,' an emigrant ship outbound from the Clyde saw one night the ship foundering amid the waves, and saw that his son, with some others, had escaped safely to a desert island near which the wreck had taken place. He was so much impressed by this vision that he wrote to the owner of the 'Strathmore' telling him what he had seen. His information was scouted; but after a while the 'Strathmore' became overdue, and the owner became uneasy. Day followed day, and still no tidings of the missing ship. Then like Pharaoh's butler, the owner remembered his sins one day, and hunted up the letter describing the vision. It supplied at least a theory to account for the ship's disappearance. All outward-bound ships were requested to look out for any survivors on the island indicated in the vision. These orders were obeyed, and the survivors of the 'Strathmore' were found exactly where the father had seen them."

The Society for Psychical Research mentions another interesting case, as follows: "Dr. Golinski, a physician of Kremeutchug, Russia, was taking an after-dinner nap in the afternoon, about half-past three o'clock. He had a vision in which he saw himself called out on a professional visit, which took him to a little room with dark hangings. To the right of the door he saw a chest of drawers, upon which rested a little paraffine lamp of special pattern, different from anything he had ever seen before. On the left of the door, he saw a woman suffering from a severe hemorrhage. He then saw himself giving her professional treatment. Then he awoke, suddenly, and saw that it was just half-past four o'clock. Within ten minutes after he awoke, he was called out on a professional visit, and on entering the bedroom he saw all the details that had appeared to him in his vision. There was the chest of drawers—there was the peculiar lamp—there was the woman on the bed, suffering from the hemorrhage. Upon inquiry, he found that she had grown worse between three and four o'clock, and had anxiously desired that he come to her about that time, finally dispatching a messenger for him at half-past four, the moment at which he awoke."

Another, and a most peculiar, phase of space clairvoyance is that in which certain persons so awaken the astral senses of other persons that these persons perceive the first person—usually in the form of seemingly seeing the person present in the immediate vicinity, just as one would see a ghostly visitor. In some cases there is manifested double-clairvoyance, both persons visioning clairvoyantly; in other cases, only the person "visited" astrally senses the occurrence. The following cases illustrate this form of space clairvoyance.

W.T. Stead relates the case of a lady well known to him, who spontaneously developed the power of awakening astral perception in others. She seemed to "materialize" in their presence. Her power in this direction became a source of considerable anxiety and worry to her friends to whom she would pay unexpected and involuntary visits, frightening them out of their wits by the appearance of her "ghost." They naturally thought that she had died suddenly and had appeared to them in ghostly form. The lady, her self, was totally unconscious of the appearance, though she admitted that at or about the times of the appearances she had been thinking of her friends whom she visited astrally.

The German writer, Jung Stilling, mentions the case of a man of good character who had developed power of this kind, but also was conscious of his visits. He exerted the power consciously by an effort of will, it seems. At one time he was consulted by the wife of a sea captain whose husband was on a long voyage to Europe and Asia (sailing from America). His ship was long overdue, and his wife was quite worried about him. She consulted the gentleman in question, and he promised to do what he could for her. Leaving the room he threw himself on a couch and was seen by the lady (who peered through the half-opened door) to be in a state of semi-trance. Finally he returned and told her that he had visited her husband in a coffee-house in London, and gave her husband's reasons for not writing, adding that her husband would soon return to America. When her husband returned several months later, the wife asked him about the matter. He informed her that the clairvoyant's report was correct in every particular. Upon being introduced to the clairvoyant, the captain manifested great surprise, saying that he had met the man in question on a certain day in a coffee-house in London, and that the man had told him that his wife was worried about him, and that he had told the man that he had been prevented from writing for several reasons, and that he was on the eve of beginning his return voyage to America. He added that when he looked for the man a few moments afterwards, the stranger had apparently lost himself in the crowd, disappeared and was seen no more by him.

The Society for Psychical Research gives prominence to the celebrated case of the member of the London Stock Exchange, whose identity it conceals under the initials "S.H.B.," who possessed this power of voluntary awakening of astral sight in others by means of his "appearance" to them. The man relates his experience to the Society as follows: "One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was in Kildare Gardens, when I willed very strongly that I would visit in the spirit two lady friends, the Misses X., who were living three miles off, in Hogarth Road. I willed that I should do this at one o'clock in the morning, and having willed it, I went to sleep. Next Thursday, when I first met my friends, the elder lady told me that she woke up and saw my apparition advancing to her bedside. She screamed and woke her sisters, who also saw me." (The report includes the signed statement of the ladies, giving the time of the appearance, and the details thereof.)

"Again, on December 1, 1882, I was at Southall. At half-past nine I sat down to endeavor to fix my mind so strongly upon the interior of a house at Kew, where Miss V. and her sister lived, that I seemed to be actually in the house. I was conscious, but was in a kind of mesmeric sleep. When I went to bed that night, I willed to be in the front bedroom of that house at Kew at twelve; and to make my presence felt by the inmates. Next day I went to Kew. Miss V.'s married sister told me, without any prompting from me, that she had seen me in the passage going from one room to another at half-past nine o'clock, and that at twelve, when she was wide awake, she saw me come to the front bedroom, where she slept, and take her hair, which is very long, into my hand. She said I then took her hand, and gazed into the palm intently. She said, 'You need not look at the lines, for I never have any trouble.' She then woke her sister. When Mrs. L. told me this, I took out the entry that I had made the previous night and read it to her. Mrs. L. is quite sure she was not dreaming. She had only seen me once before, two years previously. Again, on March 22, 1884, I wrote