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قراءة كتاب Adventurings in the Psychical
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Adventurings in the Psychical
every particular with the description given by the doctor.”
Quite a similar experience occurred to Mr. Harry E. Reeves when he was choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church in San Francisco. On a Friday, about three in the afternoon, Mr. Reeves was in an up-stairs room at his home. He had been working on some music. Wishing to rest for a few minutes, he threw himself on a lounge, but almost immediately an unaccountable impulse led him to get up again and open the door of his room.
Standing at the head of the stairs he saw Edwin Russell, a member of his choir and a well-known San Francisco real estate broker. Mr. Russell had promised to call on him the following day to look over the music for Sunday, and Mr. Reeves’s first thought was that he had come a day earlier than intended. He advanced to greet him, when, to his amazement and horror, the figure on the stairs turned as though to descend, and then faded into nothingness.
“My God!” gasped Reeves, and fell forward.
A door below was hastily opened, and two women and a man ran to his aid. The women were his sister and niece, the man was a Mr. Sprague. They found Mr. Reeves seated on the stairs, his face white and covered with perspiration, his body trembling.
“Uncle Harry!” cried the niece. “What in the world is the matter?”
Mr. Reeves was in such a panic that he could hardly speak, but he managed to reply:
“I have seen a ghost!”
“Whose ghost?” inquired Mr. Sprague, with a skeptical smile.
“The ghost of Edwin Russell.”
Instantly the smile left Mr. Sprague’s face.
“That’s strange,” said he, “that’s very strange. For, as these ladies will tell you, I came to consult with you regarding the music for Mr. Russell’s funeral. He had a stroke of apoplexy this morning, and died a few hours ago.”[4]
Sometimes ghosts of this type present themselves in such a way as to leave no doubt as to the fact and manner of the death of the person seen. As striking a case in point as has come to my knowledge is afforded by the singular experience of an old friend of mine, Edward Jackson, son of the late General Jackson, of Bideford, England.
Born in India, Jackson was from his boyhood of a roving and adventurous disposition. He went in for all forms of athletics, more particularly boxing, cricket, and polo, and before he left India was one of the best known and most popular men in the younger sporting set.
He was still in his early twenties when he came to the United States, drifting West to go on a ranch in Wyoming. Tiring of this, though not of his fondness for adventure, he found work in a Lake Superior mine, where his quickly demonstrated ability to take care of himself in a rough-and-tumble encounter won him the position of superintendent over a gang of men whom it had hitherto been most difficult to superintend.
As superintendent he was privileged to live by himself in a small, two-room cabin, somewhat neater and more comfortable than the ordinary sleeping-shacks. It was in this cabin that he saw the ghost.
“I had returned from the mine one evening, thoroughly tired out,” he said, in telling me the story, “and sat down to rest for a few minutes before an open fire. While I was sitting there, half dozing, I felt a cold current of air, and looked up, thinking that somebody had thrown the door open.
“The door was not open, but standing between me and it was the figure of a young man whom I instantly recognized as a boyhood chum in India. He was dressed in polo costume—we had often played the game together—but for a moment I forgot all about the incongruity between his dress and the rough, outlandish place in which I then saw him. I jumped up, exclaiming:
“‘By Jove, Jack, I’m glad to see you. When did you get here? And how—’
“I stopped. He had been standing with his profile toward me. Now he turned, facing me, and I saw that he was ghastly white, with a deep cut over one eye. Without a word he walked past me, gazing at me solemnly, and disappeared in the inner room.
“I don’t think I am a coward, but I confess that for a moment I felt faint. Recovering, and believing that somebody must be playing me a trick, I made a dash after him.
“There was no one there—and no way in which anybody could have got out unknown to me.
“That night I wrote to my father, telling him what had happened. In his reply he informed me that my friend had been killed the same day that I saw him in my cabin on the shore of Lake Superior. He had been playing polo in far-away India, had been thrown from his horse, and had struck on his head, sustaining a wound similar to that I had seen in my vision.”
Of a somewhat different order, and at once recalling to mind the adventure of Miss Morison and Miss Lamont at the Petit Trianon, is an instance reported by an Englishwoman whose name must be withheld, for reasons that will become obvious. With her husband she had recently moved into a fine old mansion surrounded by a splendid park, with a broad stretch of lawn between the trees and the house. The place had for many years been the home of a family of ancient lineage.
One night, shortly after eleven o’clock, when Mrs. M., as I shall call her, had gone to her bedroom, she thought she heard a moaning sound, and some one sobbing as though in great distress. Mr. M. was away from home, the servants slept in another part of the house, and she was quite alone except for a friend who had come to keep her company during her husband’s absence, and to whom she had said good night a few minutes before. But being a courageous woman, she resolved to make an investigation and soon located the sound as coming from outdoors. Tiptoeing over to a window on the staircase landing, she raised the blind and cautiously peered out.
Below, on the lawn, in the pale glow of the moon, she saw an amazing scene. A middle-aged man, stern of face and wearing a general’s uniform, was standing menacingly over a young girl, who, with hands clasped in anguish, was on her knees before him. At the sight of his hard, unrelenting expression, Mrs. M.’s one thought was not of fear for herself but pity for the unfortunate girl.
“So much did I feel for her,” she said, in narrating the affair, “that without a moment’s hesitation I ran down the staircase to the door opening upon the lawn to beg her to come in and tell me her sorrow.”
When she reached the door, the figures of the soldier and the girl were still plainly visible on the lawn, and in precisely the same attitude. But at the sound of her voice they disappeared.
“They did not vanish instantly,” Mrs. M. explained, “but more like a dissolving view—that is, gradually. And I did not leave the door until they had gone.”
Months afterwards, when calling with her husband at a neighboring house, she noticed on the wall the portrait of a distinguished-looking man in a military uniform. At once she recognized it.
“That,” she told her husband, in an undertone, “is a picture of the officer I saw on the lawn.”
Aloud she asked: “Whose portrait is that?”
“Why,” replied her host, “it is a portrait of my uncle, General Sir X. Y. He was born and died in the house you now occupy. But why do you ask?”
When she had told the story, her host commented:
“What you say is most singular. For it is an unhappy fact