Category: Dead Acquaintances
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Jean Vitalis
Date: Undetermined (Pub. 1921)Location: Undetermined (France?) [Translated from French] Dr. W.C., of Seranyn, in his work: Contribution to the Study of certain unacknowledged cerebral faculties, reports the following fact, which he personally observed during his long medical career: Jean Vitalis was a robust, stout, sanguine man, married, childless, enjoying perfect health. He must have been…
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Mrs. Brown & Mr. Auchterlonie
Date: Circa. 1918Location: Undetermined, UK. “Some interesting cases of visions seen by dying persons are given in a little book by Mrs. Joy Snell, who was a nurse in a large hospital, and the cases she narrates are her own personal experiences, and not narratives related at second-hand. Mrs. Snell seems to be a careful…
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Mrs. L. E. Bates’s Daughter
Date: March 16, 1907. Location: Undetermined [Perhaps New York State], USA. Note: This case is only included due to the reported incidents of the Mrs. Bates’s daughter at the time of death rather than the general focus of the letters on Mrs. Bates herself and her claimed “premonitory” dream. The following case is interesting as…
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The Sunday School Teacher
Date: Prior to March, 1907. Location: Greeley, Colorado. The following case is a very important one, because the percipient did not know his teacher was dead. Unfortunately the mother took an unreasonable position in regard to narrating the facts. The state of mind of religious people on such a matter is incomprehensible, except on the…
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Clifford Jenks
Date: October 19th, 1906. Location: Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The following case is more complex than the others. It is less evidential. The pastor who first reported the facts asserts that the young man was not under the influence of opiates or anaesthetics [sp.]. One would infer from this statement, tho he does not directly assert, that…
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Death of a Nine Year Old Boy
Date: May 14, 1906. Location: Undetermined, US. [Below: Comments by Dr. James H. Hyslop (1907, A.S.P.R. Psychologist & not the doctor attending the boy.)] The mother confirms this narrative and inquiry brings out the following facts. The boy had never known his grandmother who had died twenty years ago. His sister had died four years…
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James Moore
Date: Circa 1903.Location: Detroit, Michigan It was about four o’clock, and the dawn for which he had been watching was creeping in through the shutters, when, as I bent over the bed, I noticed that his face was quite calm and his eyes clear. The poor fellow looked up into my face, and taking my…
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M. Constant Savy
Date: Cirac Early/Mid 19th Century.Location: Undetermined A modern writer, M. Constant Savy, relates an extraordinary dream which he had when he was apparently at the point of death. “I felt very ill,” writes Constant Savy, “I had no strength, it seemed to me that my life was making efforts to resist death, but in vain,…
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Rev. Dwight L. Moody
Date: December 26, 1899. Location: Northfield, Massachusetts, USA Professor Bozzano, in the Annals of Psychical Science, gives twenty-two cases in all, three of which are found in this discussion… [James H. Hyslop] The first instance is taken from the life of the Rev. Dwight L. Moody, the celebrated evangelical preacher of the United States, written…
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Mrs. Alexander Taylor
Date: August 9, 1899.Location: Near Wheeling, West Virginia. News from Wheeling, W. Va., tells of a Mrs. Alexander Taylor, a widow, thirty-five years old, residing at Toronto, near Wheeling, who has been slowly dying of consumption. On the 9th inst. she became unconscious. A doctor pronounced her dead and funeral preparations were begun. About midnight…
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Infinite
Date: Undetermined, Prior to 1896. Location: Undetermined, Probably East Coast USA. When I read the words of that minister [Gail Hamilton] and others, I recalled my strange journeyings into infinite space, with the vividness of yesterday, though it is now twenty-three years since. I was well, I was in the world and in the body,—suddenly…
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The Funerary Card
Date: June 24, 1894Location: Caracas, Venezuela “I am indebted to Mr. C. J. Hans Hamilton for the following case, which he translated from the Review “Psychica” of 1921. It was contributed by M. Warcollier, of the Institut Metapsychique, Paris, who says: My uncle, M. Paul Durocq, left Paris in 1893 for a trip to America,…
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Up, Up!
Date: Late 19th Century (“Years Prior” to 1895) Location: Illinois Years ago, when I was a lad, my father, while engaged in operating a circular saw, was struck and knocked senseless by a bolt catching on back of the saw. He was carried into his home, near by, and placed on a bed. It was…
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Jennie and Edith
Date: June 8, 1889. Location: Near Boston, MA, USA. [Most Likely] I quote next a well authenticated instance on the authority of Dr. Minot J. Savage. He records it in his Psychic Facts and Theories. He also told me personally of the facts and gave me the names and addresses of the persons on whose…
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She Knows Who I Am
Date: Circa. 1887Location: California, USA. The following case was given by Dr. Paul Edwards, and was published in the Journal “Light” for April, 1906: “While living in a country town in California (U.S.A.) about the year 1887, I was called upon to visit a very dear lady friend who was very low and weak from…
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Professor A. Pastore
Date: Prior to 1887Location: Genoa, Italy. I have been through a very severe illness. At the crisis, when I had entirely lost consciousness of physical pain, the power of my imagination was increased by an extraordinary degree, and I saw clearly in a most distinct confusion (two words which do not accord, but which, in…
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S.P.R. Unpublished Case #B-G-57-1893
B G 57. Transitional (or L) Visual. Date: When Mrs. B. was about 10. Recorded: 1886 3rd hand, good as 2nd.— Mrs. Beaumont heard her parents relate that their parents lay dying in adjoining rooms. The mother died, and her death was kept secret from the father. An hour after her death he remarked that…
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David Edward
Date: November 2-3, 1885. Location: Aspley, Hertfordshire, UK. On November 2nd and 3rd, 1870, I lost my two eldest boys, David Edward and Harry, in scarlet fever, they being then three and four years old, respectively. Harry died at Abbot’s Langley on November 2nd, fourteen miles from my vicarage at Aspley; David the following day…
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“Aunt” Louisa Browning
Date: October 28, 1883. Location: Bracknell [Berkshire], England. The following letters came into my [Editor, Journal of A.S.P.R.] possession as I shall describe. The letter to Capt. Ericsson, the inventor of the [U.S.S.] Monitor, was sent to the editor of The Open Court and by him to Mr. David P. Abbott, the author of “Behind…
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Seeing George Hanley
“The next case was communicated to the S.P.R. by the Rev. J. A. Macdonald, who has for some years been a useful helper to the Society in the careful collection of evidence. Mr. Macdonald received it at first hand from Miss Ogle, who was the sister of the percipient. She writes as follows: My brother,…
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Oh, Dear Mamma, There is Minnie!
Date: Prior to 1879Location: London In the case here abridged, the singing and voice of the unseen visitant were heard by the mother as well as by her dying child; and a cousin of the deceased child appears to have had a vision of the child and heard a premonitory intimation of her death. “Mrs.…
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Colonel Z’s Wife
Date: February, 1874 Location: United Kingdom The following interesting case is an instance in which the dying person heard the sound of singing and also had a vision of a lady of whose death she was unaware. The case is taken from the “Proceedings S.P.R.” for 1885, and is as follows somewhat abridged: Mrs. Z,…
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Rev. Cyrus Hamlin
Date: Circa, 1874/5 Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. of Turkey in Europe, Turkey in Asia, and Lexington in Massachusetts, entered the Massachusetts General Hospital for surgical treatment. “I had no remarkable spiritual exercises,” he writes, “I had time to review my life, to consider its close, and to look over to the…
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Emily Ainsworth
Date: Circa 1870’s. Location: Near Chicago, Illinois, USA. The following case is entirely second hand and very old. It must pass for what it is worth. The man who reports it is an intelligent person and, with the two instances in his own family briefly mentioned in a later letter, it may have a place…
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Daisy Irene Dryden
Date: October 8th, 1864Location: San José, California The following account of the last days of a little child was published in the “Journal of the American S.P.R.,” edited by Dr. James H. Hyslop (Vol. XII, No. 6), and a considerably abridged report was compiled by Miss H. A. Dallas, a summary of which is given…
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The Passing of Minna
Date: Prior to April 11, 1857. Location: Unknown, probably USA. After a bounteous repast I was led into a little room where lay Minna. She smiled sweetly as my gaze met her own, and I at once felt myself in the presenece of a purely spiritual being. And yet I experienced no restraint; for, if…
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Fanny Smith
Date: Prior to August 23, 1856. Location: Probably near Hopkinton, MA, United States. Nancy Andrews of Hopkinton, (Massachusetts, we suppose) in a brief communication refers to the closing scene in the earthly-life of Fanny Smith, a young lady on whose fair cheek the roses of fifteen summers had bloomed and faded. Our correspondent says, Fanny…
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Report of Dean Plumptre
In April 1854, a mother, lying on her death-bed, spoke in near-unconsciousness, unexpectedly naming her deceased children, including William, whose name had long been unspoken. She also mentioned Priscilla, who had passed away two days prior, unbeknownst to her.
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Edward Young
Date: Prior to Dec. 25, 1852 Location: USA? My Dear Friends:— In accordance with my promise to you, the other evening, I now proceed to give you an account of my, while laying on the bed of death. I felt an internal consciousness, from my first being taken sick, that that was my last sickness:…
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Pittsburgh Vision
Date: Before September 13th, 1852. Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some few days ago, we noticed the fact of a young lady, residing in this city, being in a trance, since the previous Saturday. At first we have inclined to treat the rumor as a hoax, but we have since made inquires about the case, and find…
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Henry Clay’s Alledged Experience
Date: June 29, 1852. Location: Washington, D.C., USA. When the dissolution of the body is gradual, it not unfrequently occurs that in proportion as the external senses are obscured, the soul experiences an immortal quickening; so that the forms of departed spirits are rendered visible, and the other life becomes a present occurrence, and tangible…
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I Don’t See Out of my Eyes
Date: 1851 Location: USA A little lad, robust, fun-loving, free, until he was eight years old, began then to fail in body and to mature in mind, until his spiritual nature seemed to have absorbed mental and physical, in development for another world. One evening, as it began to draw toward the first day of the…
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Dr. Passavant’s Account of a Peasant Boy
Date: Undetermined (Probably mid-19th Century [~1850])Location: Undetermined (Probably in Pennsylvania, US) Dr. Passavant relates the case of a peasant boy, who after a short but painful illness, apparently died, his body being perfectly stiff. He, however, revived, complaining bitterly of being called back to life. He said he had been in a delightful place, and…
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Margaret Hangley
Date: September 20, 1849 Location: Bangor, Maine. The following communication refer to a palpable case of spiritual transit to the other world, and the prophetic announcements are among the facts which forever remain to puzzle and rebuke the skepticism of unbelieving men. [Ed.] To Editor of the Telegraph: Dear Sir: During the summer of 1849,…
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Meanwhile in India
Date: Circa. 1830 – 1840. Location: United Kingdom, India The following incident was sent to the “Spectator” by “H. Wedgwood” in 1882. He says: Between forty and fifty years ago a young girl, a near connexion of mine, was dying of consumption. She had lain for some days in a prostrate condition taking no notice…
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A Young Lady and Her Soldier Lover
Date: Circa. 1807-1814 Location: Ross-Shire, Scotland. Dr. Macnish noticing the following case, which he says may be confidently relied on, is one of the most striking examples of identity between the dream and the real circumstances, with which I am acquainted:—Miss M— a young lady, a native of Ross-shire, was deeply in love with an…
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Old Man Westburn
Date: Circa 1757-1758 Location: Undetermined (Most likely near Edinburgh) Sir Bernard Burke, in his book entitled Family Romance, thus describes the dream and death of Westburn, about 1757 or 1758. Westburn, who was an elderly man, and not in very strong health, was in the habit of reposing during an hour after dinner, and his…
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Thomas Say
Date: Circa, 1725. Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Vision During A State of Coma This case has a resemblance to this vision of Dr. Wiltse, in Proceedings, Vol. VIII. p. 180 (quoted in Human Personality, Vol. II. p. 315), and is still more interesting in that, if the statements given are to be implicitly trusted, the patient…
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Monk of Evesham’s Vision
Date: Circa, 1196. Location: Evesham Abbey, Worcestershire England In those days a monk belonging to the convent of Evesham fell ill, and for fifteen months he was terribly afflicted with bodily pain. Food and drink made him so nauseous that sometimes he would take nothing but the smallest drop of cold water for nine days…
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Tortgyth’s Vision
Date: Prior to 731 A.D. Location: England, perhaps near Barking. When Ethelburga, the devout Mother of this God-fearing Community, was herself about to be taken out of this world, one of the sisters whose name was Tortgyth saw a wonderful vision. This nun had lived many years in the convent, humbly and sincerly striving to…
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