(262) "An account of a circumstance which occurred to me when quartered at Templemore, Co. Tipperary, on 20 February, 1847.

"This afternoon, about 3 o'clock p.m., I was walking from my quarters towards the mess-room to put some letters into the letter-box, when I distinctly saw Lieut.-Colonel Reed, 70th Regiment, walking from the corner of the range of buildings occupied by the officers towards the mess-room door; and I saw him go into the passage. He was dressed in a brown shooting jacket, with grey summer regulation tweed trousers, and had a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand. Although at the time I saw him he was about 15 or 20 yards from me, and although anxious to speak to him at the moment, I did not do so, but followed him into the passage and turned into the ante-room on the left-hand side, where I expected to find him. On opening the door, to my great surprise, he was not there; the only person in the room was Quartermaster Nolan, 70th Regiment, and I immediately asked him if he had seen the colonel, and he replied he had not; upon which I said, ' I suppose he has gone upstairs,' and I immediately left the room.

Thinking he might have gone upstairs to one of the officers' rooms, I listened at the bottom of the stairs and then went up to the first landing place; but not hearing anything I went downstairs again and tried to open the bedroom door, which is opposite to the ante-room, thinking he might have gone there; but I found the door locked, as it usually is in the middle of the day. I was very much surprised at not finding the colonel, and I walked in to the barrack-yard and joined Lieutenant Caulfield, 66th Regiment, who was walking there; and I told the story to him, and particularly described the dress in which I had seen the colonel. We walked up and down the barrack-yard talking about it for about 10 minutes, when, to my great surprise, never having kept my eye from the door leading to the mess-room (there is only one outlet from it), I saw the colonel walk into the barracks through the gate - which is in the opposite direction - accompanied by Ensign Willing-ton, 70th Regiment, in precisely the same dress in which I had seen him, and with a fishing-rod and a landing-net in his hand.

Lieutenant Caul-field and I immediately walked to them, and we were joined by Lieut. -Colonel Goldie, 66th Regiment, and Captain Hartford, and I asked Colonel Reed if he had not gone into the mess-room about 10 minutes before. He replied that he certainly had not, for that he had been out fishing for more than two hours at some ponds about a mile from the barracks, and that he had not been near the mess-room at all since the morning.

"At the time I saw Colonel Reed going into the mess-room, I was not aware that he had gone out fishing - a very unusual thing to do at this time of the year; neither had I seen him before in the dress I have described during that day. I had seen him in uniform in the morning at parade, but not afterwards at all until 3 o'clock - having been engaged in my room writing letters, and upon other business. My eyesight being very good, and the colonel's figure and general appearance somewhat remarkable, it is morally impossible that I could have mistaken any other person in the world for him. That I did see him I shall continue to believe until the last day of my existence.

"William Matthew Bigge,

"Major, 70th Regiment".

On July 17th, 1885, after Colonel Bigge had described the occurrence but before the account was taken from the envelope and read, he was good enough to dictate the following remarks to me: -

"When Colonel R. got off the car about a couple of hours afterwards, Colonel Goldie and other officers said to me, 'Why that's the very dress you described.' They had not known where he was or how he was engaged. The month, February, was a most unlikely one to be fishing in. Colonel Reed was much alarmed when told what I had seen.

"The quartermaster, sitting at the window, would have been bound to see a real figure; he denied having seen anything.

"I have never had the slightest hallucination of the senses on any other occasion".

[It will be seen that these recent remarks exhibit two slips of memory. It is quite unimportant whether Colonel Reed was seen walking in at the gate or getting off a car. But in making the interval between the vision and the return two hours instead of ten minutes, the late account unduly diminishes the force of the case. If there is any justification at all for the provisional hypothesis that the sense of impending arrival is a condition favourable for the emission of a telepathic influence, it is of importance that, at the time when the phantasmal form was seen, Colonel Reed was not busy with his fishing, but was rapidly approaching his destination; for thus the incident, at any rate, gets the benefit of analogy with other cases. This illustrates what was said above (pp. 107-8), that where memory errs, it is not always in the direction of exaggeration].