Mrs. G. Kelly sends an experience of a "wraith" which seems in some
mysterious way to have been conjured up in her mind by the description
she had heard, and then externalized. She writes: "About four years ago
a musical friend of ours was staying in the house. He and my husband
were playing and singing Dvorak's 'Spectre's Bride,' a work which he had
studied with the composer himself. This music appealed very much to
both, and they were excited and enthusiastic over it. Our friend was
giving many personal reminiscences of Dvorak, and his method of
explaining the way he wanted his work done. I was sitting by, an
interested listener, for some time. On getting up at last, and going
into the drawing-room, I was startled and somewhat frightened to find a
man standing there in a shadowy part of the room. I saw him distinctly,
and could describe his appearance accurately. I called out, and the two
men ran in, but as the apparition only lasted for a second, they were
too late. I described the man whom I had seen, whereupon our friend
exclaimed, 'Why, that was Dvorak himself!' At that time I had never seen
a picture of Dvorak, but when our friend returned to London he sent me
one which I recognized as the likeness of the man whom I had seen in our
drawing-room."
A curious vision, a case of second sight, in which a quite unimportant
event, previously unknown, was revealed, is sent by the percipient, who
is a lady well known to both the compilers, and a life-long friend of
one of them. She says: "Last summer I sent a cow to the fair of
Limerick, a distance of about thirteen miles, and the men who took her
there the day before the fair left her in a paddock for the night close
to Limerick city. I awoke up very early next morning, and was fully
awake when I saw (not with my ordinary eyesight, but apparently _inside_
my head) a light, an intensely brilliant light, and in it I saw the back
gate being opened by a red-haired woman and the cow I had supposed in
the fair walking through the gate. I then knew that the cow must be
home, and going to the yard later on I was met by the wife of the man
who was in charge in a great state of excitement. 'Oh law! Miss,' she
exclaimed, 'you'll be mad! Didn't Julia [a red-haired woman] find the
cow outside the lodge gate as she was going out at 4 o'clock to the
milking!' That's my tale--perfectly true, and I would give a good deal
to be able to control that light, and see more if I could."
Another curious vision was seen by a lady who is also a friend of both
the compilers. One night she was kneeling at her bedside saying her
prayers (hers was the only bed in the room), when suddenly she felt a
distinct touch on her shoulder. She turned round in the direction of the
touch and saw at the end of the room a bed, with a pale,
indistinguishable figure laid therein, and what appeared to be a
clergyman standing over it. About a week later she fell into a long and
dangerous illness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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