An Apparition Paris, Dec. 5, 1911. Dear M. Leymarie:

In answer to your request of last week for your Christmas number, a fortunate coincidence has allowed me to satisfy your wishes and I hasten to send you this account. Always engaged in unending researches, I was looking without success for some new fact to bring to your notice when, this morning, a visit brought it to me. My lamented nephew, Capt. Camille Martin, of the Colonial Infantry, died at Paris on the 22nd of last March, exhausted by fever and fatigue at the age of 46 years. He passed away in an apartment on the avenue des Gobelins, in which he had lived for over a year. His widow and step-daughter came to announce his demise, both still trembling, though the event had occurred seven months previously, from a psychic phenomenon worthy of attention. A long absence from Paris had prevented them from speaking of it to me up to this time.

About six weeks after the death of her husband, Mme. C. Martin, was in her bed, in the same apartment (but not in the death chamber), when, not as yet quite asleep, she perceived the shade of her husband, floating in air not far from her. Her daughter, asleep in another bed, awakened suddenly and perceived the shade of her step-father coming directly towards her, looking at her with the sunken and sickly eyes which characterized him in the last hours of his life. She was so greatly frightened, that she uttered a dreadful cry, and even now, in relating these facts to me, she trembled from head to foot, and her features took on a strange pallor. I begged them both to write separately a summary of what they had seen and felt.

These are the two accounts:

Statement by Mme. Camille Martin. It was in the first week of May. I had gone to bed, quite late, about 11.30 or midnight, very much absorbed by the petty business details that I had been obliged to discuss during the day. The night was warm and the room but vaguely illumined by the lights of Paris. I was lying in bed unable to sleep, my eyes wide open, when I perceived a shadow, that of Camille, with a grayish hue on his face, his eyes sunken, with deep, dark circles, and his person enveloped in a sort of grayish drapery. Half of his body was distinguishable: his legs seemed to disappear into a grayish tint, as if enveloped in a fog. The shade had just come in through an open window and seemed to float at about sixty centimeters above the floor, advancing, or rather gliding, in the direction of my daughter's bed. From my bed, I could follow it the better because a mirror that faced me repeated each movement of the shade. Much distressed, but without the least fear, I wondered what my poor Charles was seeking, when at this exact moment, as he was nearing my daughter's bed, she screamed in terror and called me, crying out. I answered, "Yes, I see him too, do not be afraid." But again she cried out more piercingly than before, and the shade disappeared in the mirror. After this vision, my daughter went to sleep again, quite calmly, more calmly than she ever had before, since this death. The next evening, the fear of seeing this apparition again made her so nervous that she did not wish to sleep in her own bed, and asked to share mine, trembling all the while. As for myself, I have never experienced the slightest fear. On the contrary, I felt a beneficent calm and passed the rest of the night without the smallest disturbance.

Often since, I have tried again to see Camille, by thinking strongly of him, but have never obtained the slightest phenomenon.

I must call to your notice, also, that at the time of this apparition, we frequently heard singular and inexplicable noises in the grooves of the floor, the doors would clap violently, even though they had been carefully closed and locked and tested at various times. Our apartment was, as you know, on the fifth floor.

M. Martin.

Statement by Mlle. Bertha Dupont. This dates from about the first days of May between the fifth and the tenth. We had retired at midnight. I have the impression that I had been asleep about an hour when I felt myself awakened as by a fluid. Opening my eyes, I saw a shadow a short distance away from me. It seemed to be vaguely draped in a shroud, the arms crossed on the chest, the lower part of the body not being visible: it was like a fog about to lift. The shadow seemed to float and advance towards my bed. I have a very distinct impression that I was awake and saw it approaching me. I recognized the features of my step-father's face, and was seized with an overwhelming fear. He came directly towards me. After having seen and recognized him for perhaps two seconds, I called out in order to awaken Mother, who was sleeping in the same room, almost perpendicularly to my bed, and to tell her of my fear. She answered me quietly, to my great surprise, for I had thought her asleep: "But I see it also, do not be afraid." In my terror I cried out another time to her and at this moment the shade vanished. I went to sleep quite calmed and the remainder of the night slept better than I had at any time since the death which had bereaved us.

Bertha Dupont.

"Here are two observations of the same phenomena. The explanation generally admitted by physiologists is that this was a matter of hallucination. But I should really like to know the exact explanatory value of that word. It is considered as a synonym for the word illusion. That is to say, we have here a purely subjective phenomenon, and there is nothing that exists outside the brains of the two narrators. Their vision was a simple product of their imagination, and nerves. Is a collective hallucination as simple as that? We may suppose, it is true, that Mrs. Martin, under the vivid impression of the recent death of her husband, constantly kept alive by business discussions, believed she saw a shadow that had no real existence, herself creating it entirely, and that the waves emanating from her brain had affected that of her daughter. It is possible, but such an explanation, it must be acknowledged, is hypothetical and rather complicated. Let us further notice, that while the young girl watched this mysterious shade coming straight toward her, her mother had seen it in three-quarter view in the mirror. Divers theories have been brought out concerning apparitions of this nature. I do not assert that we can strictly affirm the reality of the presence of my dear nephew. It is not, as certainly, disproved. But the one hypothesis is not less acceptable than the others. Why destroy the fact of mere skepticism? It seems to me wiser and more logical to register the observation and add it to those of a similar nature. These documents will serve one day for definite discussion: let us not neglect any effort toward solution of the great problem. It may be something entirely different from a real apparition, but it is a fact of observation to analyze without any preconceived idea. We are still so ignorant of the mysteries of the soul.

"Camille Flammarion."1