I had gone about 500 yards when the light of a star shell revealed what seemed to be a lady standing in the middle of the road. I had to pull up. Consider my surprise, as the next star shell went up, to find no one there. First, second, top gear, then another star shell and the lady was just in front again. I pulled up to find no lady. Just as I approached Salvation corner, I saw, by the light of a star shell, a sentry standing at the challenge—his bayonet gleamed. I gave the customary shout “92nd Field Ambulance.” He didn’t move again. I pulled up and, to my astonishment, there was no sentry, but, immediately in front, was a shell hole large enough to bury a London bus. It took a long time to get past, but I got my patient to Poperinghe alive. Should I have done so had those apparitions not appeared? A Field of the Dead PERHAPS the most unique of many ghostly experiences—both personal and those of friends—was one which took place on the fateful night between August 3rd and 4th, 1914. My brother (who though strong and unimaginative is somewhat psychic) and I had sat up till about midnight, and I was amazed to hear him suddenly declare, as he shut his book and rose, that “no one could sit and read with that noise going on.” I asked what noise, and, on being bidden to listen (our house is on a quiet hill off an old Roman road going to the coast) noticed the sound of a great crowd, a confused, soft sound. “Why,” I said, “I don’t understand you—it’s no worse than any Bank Holiday. Quieter, indeed. You can well understand their being about to-night; they want to know whether it will be war or not.” He maintained that it was impossible to do anything but get quickly to bed. More and more amazed—this was so unlike him—I went to the front door with him, and there, clear and distinct, the sound of thousands of footsteps, of people shuffling, treading, moving about, but without uttering one single word, came from the road at the foot of our hill—about four houses’ distance. Nothing whatever could be seen. My brother declined absolutely to let me run down to look, or to come with me. Next day we heard that war had been declared at midnight. We live five miles out of London and it is not a place where people would gather for news. Subsequent inquiries made of a friend who lived on the road where the silent crowd had moved and passed about (remaining in the one place so far as I could judge), revealed nothing in the way of explanation. To his knowledge there had been no crowd. It was as if the ghosts of those who were to fall during those coming four years of blood had “projected” themselves, eerily, at the hour of the declaration of the Great War, upon the ancient road where Roman soldiers, long ago, must have marched. Or were they the spirits of the long-dead soldiers of the centuries, welcoming the heroes of 1914—1918? A Mother's Vision