[Mr. Gurney subsequently obtained contemporary documentary evidence which he published in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1887 (vol. i., p. 173) in reply to criticisms by Professor Peirce. He there says: - ]

"I have quite recently learnt that the error [as to exact coincidence] was greater than at first sight appeared. The vision took place on the morning of September 6, that is the day before the death. The date is fixed by the entry in the diary of the narrator's friend, Miss K.2; under the head of September 5 is written, 'On this night Isabella saw Jim vividly appear to her as if dead.' The vision was actually in the early morning - that is, at the close of the night September 5-6. The case, therefore, if telepathic, is one in which the telepathic impulse coincided not with death, but with a time of exceptional danger and probably excitement on the side of the agent. Another document which has lately been recovered further strengthens the evidence. This is a letter, sent at the time by the narrator to her sister, which, though it contains no date, leaves no doubt as to the record of the hallucination having been written and sent away before the news of the death arrived. This is really a better and rarer form of documentary evidence than an entry in a diary, which sometimes allows of the hypothesis that it was written later than the day under which it figures.

The following is the account in the letter: -

1 As to this promise, see pp. 414-15.

2 Before this diary was recovered, Miss K. wrote to me, "I distinctly remember that on my going into her room in the morning she told me immediately what she has related to you".

"Hotel Interlaken,

"Wednesday.

"A few days ago, about seven in the morning, I had lain down again after drawing up my blind to let in the beautiful view of the rose-flushed morning, when I saw an appearance of Mountain Jim, looking just as he did when I last saw him. There was an impression on my mind as though he said: ' I have come as I promised. Farewell.' It was curious, and if I had not heard that he was getting well and going about, I should have thought he was dead".

This record, which closely corresponds with the printed account, written more than eleven years afterwards, makes it almost certain that the narrator's memory was at fault as to one unimportant detail, when she said in that account that she was lying on her bed and writing to her sister at the moment when the apparition occurred; for had she been so employed she could hardly have failed to mention the experience in that letter, instead of waiting some days.

In the next two cases there is a distinct hallucination of sound, suggestive of some one entering or approaching the room (compare the "borderland" cases 182 and 190); and in the second of the two, a short interval elapses before the visual percept is developed. [The first case, 198, is omitted.] The second case is from Mr. B., confidential clerk to a firm with a principal of which we are well acquainted. He withholds his name from publication, having a strong dislike to the subject. The account is in the words of Mr. D. H. Wilson, of Rosemont, Hyeres, but has been read over and corrected by Mr. B. The fact that the percipient had just got up and opened his door may be taken as a proof that he was awake when the visual experience took place.

" October 24th, 1883.

(199) "Mr. B. is a gentleman whom I have known for more than 15 years. He is practical, shrewd, and very trustworthy. I am indebted to him for the following narration: One morning, a few months ago, at 5 o'clock, he was awakened by a noise outside his room, but near his room door. Opening the door he saw no person. He returned to bed, and had scarcely composed himself when he was very disconcerted by seeing the form of a lady friend of his glide or flit across the room. He thereupon woke Mrs. B. and informed her of the fact. This was Saturday, and at the end of the next week Mr. B. called at the house of his friend, the subject of his vision, and was informed that the lady had thrown herself out of the window the previous Saturday at about 5 o'clock in the morning, and was instantaneously killed".

We learn from Mr. B. that the hallucination of the senses here described is the only one that he has ever experienced.

The account, confirmed by Mr. B. in 1883, was written in or before 1876. Mrs. B. writes, on December 31, 1886: "I perfectly recollect the occasion of Mrs. - 's death, and that my husband for a whole week was considerably concerned about her. My husband mentioned the vision the same morning, at the time it occurred, and we did not hear of the death till seven or eight days afterwards." The death could not be traced in the register at Somerset House; but on inquiring of the coroner of the district where it occurred, we find that it took place exactly as described, on April 9, 1873, which, however, was a Wednesday, not a Saturday. The mistake as to the day of the week seems neither to increase nor to decrease the probability that Mr. and Mrs. B. were able, after the short interval which elapsed before they heard the news, correctly to identify the day of the vision with that of the death.

In this example we observe a failure to co-ordinate the elements into a completely natural-seeming incident. A feature in Mr. Keulemans' case (No. 184) has been reserved for mention here as illustrating the same point. He says: -

"The sound [of the child's voice] did not proceed from the locality where the vision [of the child] was seen, nor did it seem to be in any way produced by the organs of speech belonging to the apparition; for the mouth did not move. I heard the voice at a short distance, and on my right side, simultaneously with the vision, which appeared at a greater distance, on my left, or rather in front of me".