Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathyPodmore, Frank
Philosophy
Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
Podmore, Frank
Apparitions; Telepathy
"A lady, who had been dead five years, was to appear to Lieutenant
----n in a dream at 10.30 P.M. and incite him to good deeds. At
half-past ten, contrary to expectation, Herr ----n had not gone
to bed, but was discussing the French campaign with his friend
Lieutenant S---- in the ante-room. Suddenly the door of the room
opened, the lady entered dressed in white, with a black kerchief
and uncovered head, greeted S---- with her hand three times in a
friendly manner; then turned to ----n, nodded to him, and returned
again through the doorway.
"As this story, related to me by Lieutenant ----n, seemed to be too
remarkable from a psychological point of view for the truth of it
not to be duly established, I wrote to Lieutenant S----, who was
living six[112] miles away, and asked him to give me his account of
it. He sent me the following reply:--
"'... On the 13th of March, 1817, Herr ----n came to pay me a visit
at my lodgings about a league from A----. He stayed the night with
me. After supper, and when we were both undressed, I was sitting on
my bed and Herr ----n was standing by the door of the next room on
the point also of going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We
were speaking partly about indifferent subjects and partly about
the events of the French campaign. Suddenly the door out of the
kitchen opened without a sound, and a lady entered, very pale,
taller than Herr ----n, about five feet four inches in height,
strong and broad of figure, dressed in white, but with a large
black kerchief which reached to below the waist. She entered with
bare head, greeted me with the hand three times in complimentary
fashion, turned round to the left towards Herr ----n, and waved her
hand to him three times; after which the figure quietly, and again
without any creaking of the door, went out. We followed at once
in order to discover whether there were any deception, but found
nothing. The strangest thing was this, that our night-watch of two
men whom I had shortly before found on the watch were now asleep,
though at my first call they were on the alert, and that the door
of the room, which always opens with a good deal of noise, did not
make the slightest sound when opened by the figure.
"'S.
"'D----n, January 11th, 1818.'
"From this story (Wesermann continues) the following conclusions
may be drawn:--
"(1) That waking persons, as well as sleeping, are capable of
perceiving the ideas [_Gedankenbilder_] of distant friends through
the inner sense as dream images. For not only the opening and
shutting of the door, but the figure itself--which, moreover,
exactly resembled that of the dead lady--was incontestably only a
dream in the waking state, since the door would have creaked as
usual had the figure really opened and shut it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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