The following apparition, seen independently by three people, has been reported by a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in a well-known scientific journal, valued highly by all astronomers: English Mechanic and World of Science, of July 20, 1906.

It is of importance to notice that the apparition appeared after a death. We shall give but a brief resume:

On the tenth of January, 1879, Rev. Charles Tweedale, awakening in the middle of the night, saw his grandmother appear, observed her for several seconds, and then saw her gradually fade from sight into the moonlight.

One thing in particular struck him - that his grandmother was wearing an old-fashioned fluted bonnet. His own father was awakened too, at the same moment, and saw the same apparition (his mother) standing near his bed. Finally the sister of the latter who lived 30 kilometers from there, had the same vision of her mother, that same evening at 2 a.m. Mr. Tweedale, the father, noted the precise instant. As for Mr. Chas. Tweedale (the son) he was sure, according to the light thrown on the walls, that the moon had crossed the meridian. He consulted on this subject the Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, who fixed the hour of the passage at 14 hrs. 19 minutes which corresponds to 2:19 o'clock in the morning. The grandmother had died at 15 minutes after midnight. Thus three persons, independent of each other, had the same vision two hours after the decease. Moreover, Mr. Tweedale declares that he had not seen his grandmother for several years when she died. He wrote to his uncle and sent him a sketch of the bonnet, asking if there were an analogy between it and the mortuary head-covering of the deceased. The uncle replied, "The resemblance is striking."

The Rev. Chas. Tweedale, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London ends with the following reflections:

"The fact which I have just reported presents all the guarantees of authenticity, and one could not, I think, regard it as fraudulent. I counsel all the incredulous to peruse the remarkable facts contained in Human Personality, by F. Myers, and also those of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Sixteen volumes may be consulted to great advantage. To those of our readers who would care to delve a little deeper into these perplexing problems with a true scholar, I would name Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, as also several eminent members of the Council of the Society."

We often have great difficulty in impressing superficial minds with the notion that the apparitions of deceased persons are really studied to-day, and by real scholars. The question is nevertheless much simplified by the data recently acquired by telepathic messages, provoking a vision which is a faithful picture of the situation in which the deceased found himself in his last minutes. Often the manifestation is limited to simple apparition, which is shown calm and smiling, at the very hour when the sick person is expiring: it is sometimes a true materialization - that is, this invisible body, described by all clairvoyants, finds in the surrounding air unknown resources of strength, so that by means of condensation it may attain visibility. We read in Telepathic Hallucinations, page 182, of a similar case of condensation and gradual formation, thus described by a friend of the deceased:

"In proportion as it advanced, this fog, to call it thus, concentrated in a single place, grew thicker, and presented the contours of a human figure of which the head and shoulders became more and more distinctly visible, while the rest of the body seemed enveloped in a veil of gauze, like a mantle. The full light of the window fell upon the object, which was so lacking in consistency and so thin that the light, reflected on the highly varnished panels of the door, was visible through the lower part of the garment. The apparition had no color, it seemed to be a statue sculptured out from the fog."

The witness of this apparition then recognized the features of a very dear friend: the face had an expression of peace, repose, and holiness. Then in an instant everything disappeared as a vapor does when it comes into contact with cold air. The next day's mail brought news that this friend had died at the very moment when he had been seen. It was a sudden death, that nothing could have predicted. This example belongs to a category of similar facts by which we may affirm that the apparition of the deceased is not always a matter of simple telepathy, but may sometimes be manifested by the ordinary process of materialization. Let us cite the following:

Mr. Binet relates (The Unknown, p. 84) that a little friend of his appeared to him under the same conditions. It seemed to him that he saw a ray of moonlight walking, then this luminous shadow, floating as a dress, took the form of a body. It advanced towards the bed. "A thin face smiled at me," he said. "I cried out 'Leontine!' Then the luminous shadow, still gliding, disappeared at the foot of the bed."

M. Binet was at this time at Donchery; the subject was a young girl killed in the bombardment of Mezieres; and the apparition was made visible during the very night and at the hour when the child was killed. Independent of the interest which these apparitions present, independent of the certainty of their reality and even of the proofs of identity which they carry with them, we must agree that those seen by several persons may also produce themselves under conditions that tend to confirm the materiality of images.

They satisfy the conditions of real things, when the image has been well localized by everyone in the same place, when it is reflected in a mirror and fulfills the laws of perspective, presenting its full face to one, and its profile to another, etc.

An account, by C. Flammarion, will be read with interest. It concerns an occurrence of which he knew all the elements, as it took place in his own family. We reproduce it in full and with the commentaries of the author: