Mrs. Collyer's Story.

"On the 3rd of January, 1856, I did not feel well and retired early. Sometime afterwards, I felt ill at ease, and sat up in bed. I looked round the room and to my very great astonishment, saw Joseph standing near the door. He gazed at me with large mournful eyes and his head was swathed with bandages. He wore a soiled nightcap and a white garment like a surplice, also soiled. He was entirely disfigured: I was troubled for the rest of the night because of this apparition, etc."

In reply to a request for enlightenment, Dr. Collyer wrote:

"As I have stated, my mother received the spiritual impression of my brother, on the 3rd of January, 1856. My father, who is a scientist, calculated the difference in longitude between Camden, New Jersey, and New Orleans, and proved that the spiritual impression was produced at the exact moment of my brother's death. I may say that I have never believed in any spiritual communion, as I have never believed that the phenomena produced when the brain is excited are spiritual phenomena. For forty years I have been a materialist and am convinced that all the so-called spiritual manifestations admit of a philosophic explanation, based upon physical laws and conditions. I do not wish to propound a theory, but in my opinion, there existed sympathetic bonds of relationship between my mother and brother, who was her favorite son. When these bonds were broken by his sudden death, my mother was at the time in a condition which would favor the reception of the shock.1

"In the story published by the Spiritual Magazine, I omitted to say, that before the accident, my brother Joseph had retired for the night to his bunk: the boat was moored along the levee, at the time it was struck by another vessel descending the Mississippi. Naturally, my brother was in his night clothes. As soon as he was called and someone told him a steamboat was close upon his own boat, he ran up on deck. These details were told to me by my brother William who was at that very time upon the scene of the accident. I cannot explain how the apparition wore bandages, for they could not have put them upon my brother until sometime after his death. The difference in time between Camden, New Jersey and New Orleans, is almost fifteen degrees, that is, an hour.

"On the third of January, my mother retired early, about eight o'clock: this would have given seven o'clock (the time in New Orleans) as the hour of my brother's death."

It is evident that a death so sudden would render impossible all active cerebration. Moreover, the victim received at the moment of the accident no visual image; therefore, he was unable to transmit one. However, the deceased person might have looked upon his own corpse and have been the motive agent of this transmission.

1 The reception of the shock, as well as the broken bond, could be only metaphors upon the lips of a materialist. What shock could medullary substance produce at a distance of a thousand miles? As for the physical bond, if it be real it is impossible to say whether it is material or not. We can only accept what is proven: it has been proved that force may act at a distance, but not that matter may so act. If the mind acts at a distance, it is because it is a force.

But there is nothing to prove that the image was not transmitted by another witness of the accident. Despite the affirmations of Dr. Collyer, who claimed that his father had established coincidence in calculating the difference in longitude, in reality, nothing was proved, the report is silent concerning the hour of the accident and that of the vision. On the other hand, it is stated that the brother of the victim lived in the neighborhood. It is very probable then, that he had already seen the bandage and night clothes of the victim when the mother received the impression.

Consequently, it was the brother William, who in this case served as a mirror, and it is he who may be presumed to have been the motive agent.

This remark is important because it is too often supposed that visions of this kind, produced at the moment of dying, are due to a state of over-excitement preceding death. It is a gratuitous hypothesis, and it is interesting to note the numerous cases from which it must be excluded.

When we find ourselves incontestably facing a cast of post-mortem apparation, and when the accident has had no witnesses, a still bolder hypothesis is profounded, that of retarded telepathy.

This hypothesis does not correspond to the facts: there must be an intelligence and an active force to explain telepathy. Also, post-mortem apparitions ordinarily accompany warnings which are outside the knowledge of all living persons, as in the following case:

Resume of page 291, Volume V, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

"Mrs. Brooks was traveling in Europe and had written to her son, employed in New York and living in Brooklyn, to join her. The latter replied, fixing the time of his departure. But in the meantime he fell ill, and his mother was obliged to return home, recalled by the illness of her son. However, she found him already able to be up, and the doctor had no doubt of his complete recovery.

"The young man then declared that a Mr. Hall, his professor and friend, who had died about five months before, had appeared to him and warned him that he would die of heart disease on Wednesday, the 5th of December, at three o'clock.

"Young Brooks had never had the least heart trouble, and those of his friends to whom he told the warning held it of no importance. His doctor only laughed and assured him that his heart was in perfect condition.

"On December 4th, he attended a funeral with a lady in whose company he passed the evening. He made her promise that she would come to see him the next day if he should write to her. The doctor, on his side, seeking to distract the patient by physical means, applied to his neck a blistering plaster.