866. I now cite a few cases where the point of central interest is the announcement of a death unknown to the sitters.

The first is a case which we received from Dr. Liebeault, of Nancy, and which was first published in Phantasms of the Living (vol. i. p. 293), where it was regarded as an example of a spontaneous telepathic impulse proceeding directly from a dying person. I now regard it as more probably due to the action of the spirit after bodily death. The translation of Dr. Liebeault's narrative is as follows:-

Nancy, September 4th, 1885.

I hasten to write to you as to that case of thought-transference of which I spoke to you when you were present at my hypnotic seances at Nancy. The incident occurred in a French family from New Orleans, who had come to stay for some time at Nancy for business reasons. I had become acquainted with this family from the fact that M. G., its head, had brought to me his niece, Mlle B., to be treated by hypnotism. She suffered from slight anaemia and from a nervous cough, contracted at Coblentz, in a High School where she was a teacher. I easily induced somnambulism, and she was cured in two sittings. The production of this hypnotic state suggested to the G. family (Mrs. G. was a spirit medium) and to M1Ie B. herself that she might easily become a medium. She set herself to the evocation of spirits (in which she firmly believed) by the aid of her pen, and at the end of two months she had become a remarkable writing medium. I have myself seen her rapidly writing page after page of what she called "messages," - all in well-chosen language and with no erasures, - while at the same time she maintained conversation with the people near her.

An odd thing was that she had no knowledge whatever of what she was writing. "It must be a spirit," she would say, "which guides my hand; it is certainly not I".

One day, - it was, I think, February 7th, 1868, about 8 a.m., when just about to seat herself at table for breakfast, she felt a kind of need, an impulse which prompted her to write; - it was what she called a trance, - and she rushed off at once to her large note-book, where she wrote in pencil, with feverish haste, certain undecipherable words. She wrote the same words again and again on the pages which followed, and at last, as her agitation diminished, it was possible to read that a person called Marguerite was thus announcing her death. The family at once assumed that a young lady of that name, a friend of Mlle B.'s and her companion and colleague in the Coblentz High School, must have just expired. They all came immediately to me, Mlle B. among them, and we decided to verify the announcement of death that very day. Mlle B. wrote to a young English lady who was also a teacher in that same school. She gave some other reason for writing; - taking care not to reveal the true motive of the letter. By return of post we received an answer in English, of which they copied for me the essential part. I found this answer in a portfolio hardly a fortnight ago, and have mislaid it again.

It expressed the surprise of the English lady at the receipt of Mlle B.'s unexpected and apparently motiveless letter. But at the same time the English correspondent made haste to announce to Mlle B. that their common friend, Marguerite, had died on February 7th, at about 8 a.m. Moreover, the letter contained a little square piece of printed paper; - the announcement of death sent round to friends.

I need not say that I examined the envelope, and that the letter appeared to me to have veritably come from Coblentz. Yet I have since felt a certain regret. In the interests of science I ought to have asked the G. family to allow me to go with them to the telegraph office to inquire whether they had received a telegram early on February 7th. Science should feel no shame; truth does not dread exposure. My proof of the fact is ultimately a moral one: the honour of the G. family, - which has always appeared to me to be absolutely above suspicion. A. A. Liebeault.

Upon these last sentences Gurney remarks that, apart from the improbability that the whole family would join in a conspiracy to deceive their friend, the nature of the answer received from Coblentz shows that the writer of it cannot have been aware that any telegraphic announcement had been sent. And it is in itself unlikely that the authorities of the school would have felt it necessary instantly to communicate the news to Mdlle. B.

867. I shall next give in 867 A a case of curious complexity received from M. Aksakoff; - an automatic message written by a Mdlle. Stramm, informing her of the death of a M. Duvanel. The principal incidents may here be disentangled as follows:-

Duvanel dies by his own hand on January 15th, 1887, in a Swiss village, where he lives alone, having no relations except a brother living at a distance, whom Mdlle. Stramm had never seen (as the principal witness, M. Kaigorodoff, informs us in a letter of May 1890).

Mdlle. Stramm's father does not hear of Duvanel's death till two days later, and sends her the news in a letter dated January 18th, 1887.

Five hours after Duvanel's death an automatic message announcing it is written at the house of M. Kaigorodoff, at Wilna in Russia, by Mdlle. Stramm, who had certainly at that time received no news of the event.

From what mind are we to suppose that this information came?

(1) We may first attempt to account for Mdlle. Stramm's message on the theory of latency. We may suppose that the telepathic message came from the dying man, but did not rise into consciousness until an opportunity was afforded by Mdlle. Stramm's sitting down to write automatically.

But to this interpretation there is an objection of a very curious kind. The message written by Mdlle. Stramm was not precisely accurate. Instead of ascribing Duvanel's death to suicide, it ascribed it to a stoppage of blood, "un engorgement de sang".

And when M. Stramm, three days after the death, wrote to his daughter in Russia to tell her of it, he also used the same expression, "un engorgement de sang," thus disguising the actual truth in order to spare the feelings of his daughter, who had formerly refused to marry Duvanel, and who (as her father feared) might receive a painful shock if she learnt the tragic nature of his end. There was, therefore, a singular coincidence between the automatic and the normally-written message as to the death; - a coincidence which looks as though the same mind had been at work in each instance. But that mind cannot have been M. Stramm's ordinary mind, as he was not supraliminally aware of Duvanel's death at the time when the first message was written. It may, however, be supposed that his subliminal self had received the information of the death telepathically, had transmitted it in a deliberately modified form to his daughter, while it remained latent in himself, and had afterwards influenced his supraliminal self to modify the information in the same way when writing to her.

(2) But we must also consider the explanation of the coincidence given by the intelligence which controlled the automatic writing. That intelligence asserted itself to be a brother of Mdlle. Stramm's, who died some years before. And this "Louis" further asserted that he had himself influenced M. Stramm to make use of the same euphemistic phrase, with the object of avoiding a shock to Mdlle. Stramm; for which purpose it was needful that the two messages should agree in ascribing the death to the same form of sudden illness.

Now if this be true, and the message did indeed come from the deceased "Louis," we have an indication of continued existence, and continued knowledge of earthly affairs, on the part of a person long dead.

But if we consider that the case, as presented to us, contains no proof of "Louis'" identity, so that "Louis" may be merelyone of those arbitrary names which the automatist's subliminal intelligence seems so prone to assume; then we must suppose that Duvanel was actually operative on two occasions after death, first inspiring in Mdlle. Stramm the automatic message, and then modifying in M. Stramm the message which the father might otherwise have sent.