I did not even remember there was a bolt to the door, for I recollect just for a moment thinking I must and would go, and then such a strange feeling of mysterious peril that I wondered how I should secure the door in case there was no lock or bolt. On reaching the room I lit the candle, and felt very queer, as if some supernatural presence was very near me. There was a strong common iron bolt to the door, I discovered on examination. As a proof that there had been no mere revulsion of feeling, I may mention that even now 1 hesitated whether to secure the door or not, so anxious was I to go, and so accustomed in those days (I was only 19 years old) to doing my own will at all hazards. At the very last moment objectified hallucination - which so terrified him that he rushed out of the house.1

In the same connection, it is of interest to observe that below even the lowest stage of sensory hallucination there is a type of delusion which may take a very distinct form, and which looks like potential hallucination - namely, the sense of a presence, felt not merely in the general way which probably every one has experienced, but as the presence of a particular person. It is well exemplified in the following account, from Mr. W. de V. Wade, of The Downs, Dunmow: -

"About 4 years ago I awoke about 2 o'clock in the morning, with a curious feeling that a great friend of mine, who is in India, was in my room. I do not think I had been dreaming about him. I felt an irresistible impulse to call out his name, and, although I was wide awake, it took me some moments to realise that he could not be in the room. It was quite dark, and as soon as I had satisfied myself that it was merely a delusion, I went off to sleep again. Some time in 1882, I was thinking about my brother, who is in America, before I went to sleep. In the middle of the night I suddenly woke up, with the feeling that he was in the room and had spoken to me. I actually listened for a second or two, in the anticipation that he would speak again. Hearing nothing, I controlled a great inclination to call out his name, and then, after arguing to myself that it must be all nonsense, I went to sleep".

Another of my correspondents has had a similar impression with respect to a sister. " On one or two occasions the feeling has been so strong that I have got up and left the room."2 The close connection between a vivid sense of presence and actual hallucination is further shown by examples where the one develops into the other. Thus, Mr. Joseph Kirk, of the Audit Office, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, informs me that a niece of his had one night an overwhelming sense of an unseen visitant, which lasted some time before it culminated in a clear auditory impression, the words, " I must go now - good night." Another informant- a lady of vigorous practical intelligence - experienced lately a similar subjective conviction of a particular friend's presence (probably due to the fact that she was apprehending news of this friend's death), and then saw her form, "standing in a natural attitude and looking straight at my face. The colour of her dress and cap, and the fashion of both, were absolutely familiar to me." In such a process as this, we seem to see the central origin absolutely laid bare.

(it was quite a 'toss up' which it should be) I bolted the door and got into bed. A great calm succeeded the past agitation, and I soon fell asleep.

"The next thing I heard was about 3 in the morning (I suppose) a hammering at the door, as I had expected. I was wide awake, but gave no reply. Then I heard voices, and the door violently shaken and kicked at. I did not speak, for I knew I should have been over persuaded if I had called out. I did not mean to go. At last, after a thundering noise, I heard them cursing and swearing, as well as shouting. But I lay still as a mouse. So at last they gave it up and went away. I lay awake some little time wondering whether, after all, I had not been foolish, and then fell into a sound sleep.

" About 9 o'clock I went down into the breakfast-room, where a military gentleman, a captain or a colonel, was at his breakfast. As I entered the room, he said,' Have you heard what has happened? ' ' No,' said I, ' I am just down.' 'Why,' he said, 'it seems that a party left this hotel this morning for Ruapuke, and their boat has been capsized on the bar, and they are every one of them drowned.' I said, 'Why, I was to have gone with them, and very nearly did.' ' Then,' said he, ' you've had a lucky escape.' I told him I had had a kind of warning not to go, and had bolted my door, etc.; but I did not tell him all the details.

" Two or three of the men's bodies were washed up on the beach that day, and the rest in a few days more. Not one of them was saved, and if I had been with them I must have perished without a doubt".

1For further examples of different degrees of externalisation, sec Chap. xiv., § 1.

2[For an apparently telepathic instances, see No. 692, pp. 175-7].