§ 4. [Passing to definitely sensory cases, Mr. Gurney first quotes one (149) which, as he says, is interesting as a perfect example of an "illusion hypnagogique," suggested apparently by the ideas in a neighbouring mind. It is omitted here as it is rather long and in some respects evidentially incomplete. The author continues: - ]

This particular type is in any case unusual. Looking at the "borderland" impressions of the higher senses as a class, we at once observe the same important change as struck us in the course of our survey of dreams (pp. 232-3). The experience of the percipient is henceforth no longer (or only very rarely) a direct reproduction or embodiment of the idea or sensation of the agent; it is something in which his own creative faculties are at work. He is the author of his impression in the same sense as before he was the author of his dream. I merely note this in passing, reserving further discussion of this point till the subject of waking hallucinations can be treated as a whole.

I will first take examples where a single sense only is concerned, and will begin with the sense of hearing. There is a group of cases where what has been heard has suddenly awakened the percipient - not, however, as the climax of a dream, but with the vivid and instantaneous impressions of a sound externally caused. It may, no doubt, be suggested that in such cases the sound is the climax of a dream of which no memory survived. But if so, the immediate oblivion of the dream serves to set off the specially startling nature of the experience in the moment of waking; and such instantaneous startings from apparently dreamless sleep, with a definite sound in the ears which has no objective reality, are at any rate sufficiently rare to justify us in regarding them, for purposes of evidence, as borderland and not as dream experiences. The cases, however, differ considerably in their evidential force. In some which have most powerfully impressed the imagination of the percipients, the sound has been inarticulate and of the nature of a scream, not identified with the person afterwards assumed to have been the agent. Now this of course diminishes the improbability that its synchronism with an exceptional state of that person was accidental.

And again, it is difficult in such circumstances to prove conclusively that the sound may not have been due to some normal cause which was not discovered; for odd sounds at night are not uncommon, and, till accounted for, may have a peculiarly exciting effect. As regards the first of these objections, it must be remembered, on the other hand, that screams are a very unusual form of purely subjective impression - my large collection of waking hallucinations of the sane does not include a single instance; while they do not seem an unlikely form to be taken by an hallucination which is the sensory embodiment of a sudden undefined idea of death or calamity.1

[Two instances follow, 150 and 151, but as they are remote they are omitted here. In case 151 the percipient's brother was lost in the "Royal Charter" in 1859. On the night of the wreck the percipient suddenly started out of her sleep and found herself seizing hold of her husband's arm, horrified at the most awful wail of agony, which appeared to fill the house. - Ed.] Here, the vivid character of the impression, and the fact that it was unique in the percipient's experience, will probably be accepted without dispute. And if so, the coincidence - though easy enough to to regard as accidental if it stood alone or nearly alone - seems fairly admissible as an item in a cumulative proof of telepathy.

To come now to cases where distinct words are heard - [omitting 152] in the following example - received in 1883 from the Rev. Andrew Jukes - the voice, though recognised, was not that of the agent, but of a person some time deceased. In neither instance is there any reason to regard this feature as other than a purely subjective element supplied by the percipient's own brain - a piece of dream-like investiture in which the telepathic impression clad itself. (See above, pp. 232-3, and below, Chapter XII (The Development Of Telepathic Hallucinations), §5.) Mr. Jukes's case, however, differs from the preceding in the important evidential point that the words heard bore a distinct relation to the agent.

1 Sec the discussion and examples of "rudimentary hallucinations," Chap, xiv., § 4, and Chap, xv., § 6.

"Upper Eglinton Road, Woolwich.

(153) " On Monday, July 31st, 1854, I was at Worksop, staying in the house of Mr. Heming, the then agent there to the Duke of Newcastle. Just as I awoke that morning - some would say I was dreaming - I heard the voice of an old schoolfellow (C. C), who had been dead at least a year or two, saying, ' Your brother Mark and Harriet are both gone.' These words were echoing in my ears as I woke. I seemed to hear them. My brother then was in America; and both were well when I had last heard of them; but the words respecting him and his wife were so vividly impressed upon my mind that before I left my bedroom I wrote them down, then and there, on a scrap of an old newspaper, having no other paper in the bedroom. That same day I returned to Hull, mentioned the circumstance to my wife, and entered the incident, which had made a deep impression on me, in my diary, which I still have. I am as certain as I can well be of anything that the entry is a transcript of what I wrote on the bit of newspaper.

"On the 18th of August (it was before the Atlantic telegraph), I received a line from my brother's wife Harriet, dated August 1st, saying that Mark had just breathed his last, of cholera; after preaching on Sunday, he had been taken ill with cholera on Monday, and had died on Tuesday morning; that she herself was ill, and that in the event of her death she wished their children should be brought to England. She died the second day after her husband, August 3rd. I immediately started for America, and brought the children home.

"The voice I seemed to hear, and which at first I thought must have been a kind of dream, had such an effect on me that, though the bell rang for breakfast, I did not go down for some time. And all that day, and for days after, I could not shake it off. I had the strongest impression, and indeed conviction, that my brother was gone.

"I ought perhaps to add that we had no knowledge of the cholera being in the neighbourhood of my brother's parish. My impression was that both he and his wife must, if the voice were true, have been taken away by some railway or steamboat accident. But you should notice that at the moment when I seemed to hear this voice my brother was not dead. He died early next morning, August 1st, and his wife nearly two days later, namely, August 3rd. I do not profess to explain it - I simply state the facts of the phenomena. But the impression made on me was profound, and the coincidence itself is remarkable.

"Andrew Jukes".

Mr. Jukes has kindly allowed me to inspect the record in his diary. I had hoped to be able to incorporate this verbatim in the account; but he has private reasons - quite unconnected with the present case - for desiring that this should not be done.

In conversation, I learnt from him that the words he heard formed, in fact, the continuation of a dream, but that the dream had not been about his brother and sister-in-law; and he has dictated to me the words, "My impression is that the remark passed while I was awake." He has never on any other occasion in his life made a written note of a dream. Asked if he could recall having experienced an auditory hallucination on any other occasion, he replied that he had "never experienced anything of the kind," except that on one occasion he had a subjective impression of hearing music.

Considering the uniqueness of the impression in this case, it is not evidentially important to decide at what exact stage of the waking process the auditory experience took place. That experience may fairly be assigned to the "borderland" on the ground partly of Mr. Jukes's conviction that he was more awake than asleep, and partly of the fact that the supposed agent or agents had not figured in the preceding dream. The time of its occurrence, however, was not that of either of the two critical moments of death in America. If it coincided with any special moment, it must probably have been with the first shock of alarm in the mind of Mrs. Jukes, at the idea of cholera in her household. But this is conjecture only; we do not know how early on the Monday it was that the first symptoms of illness were apparent; and the evidential force of the case is so far diminished.

The following example, where the voice was not recognised, presents the interesting point of immediate repetition. The narrator is Miss Thompson, now residing at 7, Place Vaugirard, Paris.

"106, Boston Street, Hulme, Manchester.

"January 12th, 1884.