The Book of Dreams and Ghosts by Andrew Lang (the lemonade war series TXT) 📕

As there are, undeniably, many examples of hallucinatory appearances of persons in perfect health and ordinary circumstances, the question has been asked whether there are more cases of an apparition coinciding with death than, according to the doctrine of chances, there ought to be.  Out of about 18,000 answers to questions on this subject, has been deduced the conclusion that the deaths do coincide with the apparitions to an extent beyond mere accident.  Even if we had an empty hallucination for every case coinciding with death, we could not set the coincidences down to mere chance.  As well might we say that if “at the end of an hour’s rifle practice at long-distance range, the record shows that for every shot that has hit the bull’s eye, another has missed the target, therefore the shots that hit the target did so by accident.” {92}  But as empty hallucinations are more likely to be forgotten than those which coincide with a death; as exaggeration creeps in, as the collectors of evidence are naturally inclined to select and question people whom they know to have a good story to tell, the evidence connecting apparitions, voices, and so on with deaths is not likely to be received with favour.

One thing must be remembered as affecting the theory that the coincidence between the wraith and the death is purely an accident.  Everybody dreams and out of the innumerable dreams of mankind, a few must hit the mark by a fluke.  But hallucinations are not nearly so common as dreams.  Perhaps, roughly speaking, one person in ten has had what he believes to be a waking hallucination.  Therefore, so to speak, compared with dreams, but a small number of shots of this kind are fired.  Therefore, bull’s eyes (the coincidence between an appearance and a death) are infinitely less likely to be due to chance in the case of waking hallucinations than in the case of dreams, which all mankind are firing off every night of their lives.  Stories of these coincidences between appearances and deaths are as common as they are dull.  Most people come across them in the circle of their friends.  They are all very much alike, and make tedious reading.  We give a few which have some picturesque features.

“In the latter part of the autumn of 1878, between half-past three and four in the morning, I was leisurely walking home from the house of a sick friend.  A middle-aged woman, apparently a nurse, was slowly following, going in the same direction.  We crossed Tavistock Square together, and emerged simultaneously into Tavistock Place.  The streets and squares were deserted, the morning bright and calm, my health excellent, nor did I suffer from anxiety or fatigue.  A man suddenly appeared, striding up Tavistock Place, coming towards me, and going in a direction opposite to mine.  When first seen he was standing exactly in front of my own door (5 Tavistock Place).  Young and ghastly pale, he was dressed in evening clothes, evidently made by a foreign tailor.  Tall and slim, he walked with long measured strides noiselessly.  A tall white hat, covered thickly with black crape, and an eyeglass, completed the costume of this strange form.  The moonbeams falling on the corpse-like features revealed a face well known to me, that of a friend and relative.  The sole and only person in the street beyond myself and this being was the woman already alluded to.  She stopped abruptly, as if spell-bound, then rushing towards the man, she gazed intently and with horror unmistakable on his face, which was now upturned to the heavens and smiling ghastly.  She indulged in her strange contemplation but during very few seconds, then with extraordinary and unexpected speed for her weight and age she ran away with a terrific shriek and yell.  This woman never have I seen or heard of since, and but for her presence I could have explained the incident: called it, say, subjection of the mental powers to the domination of physical reflex action, and the man’s presence could have been termed a false impression on the retina.

“A week after this event, news of this very friend’s death reached me.  It occurred on the morning in question.  From the family I learned that according to the rites of the Greek Church and the custom of the country he resided in, he was buried in his evening clothes made abroad by a foreign tailor, and strange to say, he wore goloshes over his boots, according also to the custom of the country he died in. . . .  When in England, he lived in Tavistock Place, and occupied my rooms during my absence.” {95a}

“In the month of November (1785 or 1786), Sir John Sherbrooke and Colonel Wynyard were sitting before dinner in their barrack room at Sydney Cove, in America.  It was duskish, and a candle was placed on a table at a little distance.  A figure dressed in plain clothes and a good round hat, passed gently between the above people and the fire.  While passing, Sir J. Sherbrooke exclaimed, ‘God bless my soul, who’s that?’

“Almost at the same moment Colonel W. said, ‘That’s my brother John Wynyard, and I am sure he is dead’.  Colonel W. was much agitated, and cried and sobbed a great deal.  Sir John said, ‘The fellow has a devilish good hat; I wish I had it’.  (Hats were not to be got there and theirs were worn out.)  They immediately got up (Sir John was on crutches, having broken his leg), took a candle and went into the bedroom, into which the figure had entered.  They searched the bed and every corner of the room to no effect; the windows were fastened up with mortar. . . .

“They received no communication from England for about five months, when a letter from Mr. Rush, the surgeon (Coldstream Guards), announced the death of John Wynyard at the moment, as near as could be ascertained, when the figure appeared.  In addition to this extraordinary circumstance, Sir John told me that two years and a half afterwards he was walking with Lilly Wynyard (a brother of Colonel W.) in London, and seeing somebody on the other side of the way, he recognised, he thought, the person who had appeared to him and Colonel Wynyard in America.  Lilly Wynyard said that the person pointed out was a Mr. Eyre (Hay?), that he and John Wynyard were frequently mistaken for each other, and that money had actually been paid to this Mr. Eyre in mistake.”

A famous tale of an appearance is Lord Brougham’s.  His Lordship was not reckoned precisely a veracious man; on the other hand, this was not the kind of fable he was likely to tell.  He was brought up under the régime of common-sense.  “On all such subjects my father was very sceptical,” he says.  To disbelieve Lord Brougham we must suppose either that he wilfully made a false entry in his diary in 1799, or that in preparing his Autobiography in 1862, he deliberately added a falsehood—and then explained his own marvel away!

“December 19, 1799.

“ . . . At one in the morning, arriving at a decent inn (in Sweden), we decided to stop for the night, and found a couple of comfortable rooms.  Tired with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advantage of a hot bath before I turned in.  And here a most remarkable thing happened to me—so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning.

“After I left the High School, I went with G---, my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. . . .  We actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of ‘the life after death’.  G--- went to India, years passed, and,” says Lord Brougham, “I had nearly forgotten his existence.  I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath.  On the chair sat G---, looking calmly at me.  How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor.  The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G---, had disappeared. . . .  So strongly was I affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars as they are now fresh before me.  No doubt I had fallen asleep” (he has just said that he was awake and on the point of leaving the bath), “and that the appearance presented so distinctly to my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment doubt. . . .”

On 16th October, 1862, Lord Brougham copied this extract for his Autobiography, and says that on his arrival in Edinburgh he received a letter from India, announcing that G--- had died on 19th December.  He remarks “singular coincidence!” and adds that, considering the vast number of dreams, the number of coincidences is perhaps fewer than a fair calculation of chances would warrant us to expect.

This is a concession to common-sense, and argues an ignorance of the fact that sane and (apparently) waking men may have hallucinations.  On the theory that we may have inappreciable moments of sleep when we think ourselves awake, it is not an ordinary but an extraordinary coincidence that Brougham should have had that peculiar moment of the “dream” of G--- on the day or night of G---’s death, while the circumstance that he had made a compact with G--- multiplies the odds against accident in a ratio which mathematicians may calculate.  Brougham was used to dreams, like other people; he was not shocked by them.  This “dream” “produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it”.  Even on Brougham’s showing, then, this dream was a thing unique in his experience, and not one of the swarm of visions of sleep.  Thus his including it among these, while his whole language shows that he himself did not really reckon it among these, is an example of the fallacies of common-sense.  He completes his fallacy by saying, “It is not much more wonderful than that a person whom we had no reason to expect should appear to us at the very moment we had been thinking or speaking of him”.  But Lord Brougham had not been speaking or thinking of G---; “there had been nothing to call him to my recollection,” he says.  To give his logic any value, he should constantly when (as far as he knew) awake, have had dreams that “shocked” him.  Then one coincidence would have had no assignable cause save ordinary accident.

If Lord Brougham fabled in 1799 or in 1862, he did so to make a “sensation”.  And then he tried to undo it by arguing that his experience was a thoroughly commonplace affair.

We now give a very old story, “The Dying Mother”.  If the reader will compare it with Mr. Cleave’s case, “An Astral Body,” in this chapter, he will be struck by the resemblance.  Mr. Cleave and Mrs. Goffe were both in a trance.  Both wished to see persons at a distance.  Both saw, and each was seen, Mrs. Goffe by her children’s nurse; Mr. Cleave by the person whom he wished to see, but not by