Tag: scholarship

  • The “Material Envelope”

    The “Material Envelope”

    Date: January 31, 1920 Location: St. Martin, Guernsey (Channel Islands, U.K.) H.I.M., who (with the concurrence of Miss Dallas) sends us the following striking narrative of the experience of a dying person, has furnished us with her name and address, but does not wish them published:— My sister, who was all her life a seeker…

  • Mrs. L. E. Bates’s Daughter

    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…

  • A “Life Experience”

    A “Life Experience”

    Date: Undetermined,(Prior to April, 1906) Location: Undetermined The “Progressive Thinker” lately reproduced from the “Sunday School Times” a “life experience” written by a valued contributor who, in a letter to the Editor of that journal, said:— “I am dubious about offering this, even as my own enlightening and comforting experience, and yet, because we know…

  • James Moore

    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…

  • M. Constant Savy

    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,…

  • Alfred Smedley’s Wife

    Date: Prior to 1900.Location: Undetermined [Translated from French] A few moments before her death, her eyes fixed on something that seemed to fill them with lively and pleasant surprise. Then she said, “How! Here is my sister Charlotte; here is my mother, my father, my brother John, my sister Marie! Now they are also bringing…

  • Mrs. Alexander Taylor

    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…

  • Mr. J. A. F. “In Articulo Mortis”

    Mr. J. A. F. “In Articulo Mortis”

    Date: May 16th, 1896Location: Undetermined Light, (November 24, 1900), p. 558-560.

  • Jennie and Edith

    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…

  • Professor A. Pastore

    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…

  • “Aunt” Louisa Browning

    “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…

  • Colonel Z’s Wife

    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,…

  • John (Jack) Britton

    John (Jack) Britton

    Date: Circa. 1872.Location: Leeds, UK. The following case appears to point to a hallucinatory origin of the music heard. It is an interesting case and worth quoting in an abbreviated form. It is printed in the “S.P.R. Journal,” Vol. IV, p. 181. Here the subject was a deaf mute, John Britton, who was taken dangerously…

  • Mr. James J. Kane of the U.S. Navy

    Mr. James J. Kane of the U.S. Navy

    Date: Most Likely Summer of 1864Location: Gulf of Mexico The “Daily Mail,” for October 1st, published a remarkable narrative of an experience of passing out of, and return to, the physical body. Mr. James J. Kane, for thirty years chaplain in the United States Navy, says that he had been eight times at the point…

  • Mr. F. W. Thurstan: An Anglo-Indian’s Experience

    Mr. F. W. Thurstan: An Anglo-Indian’s Experience

    Date: Circa. Early 1860s.Location: Near Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka It was, perhaps, only a dream, but [I] felt it was more than that, and while all other dreams of [my] childhood have vanished, this one forever remained as a real vision of another world to influence [my] career in this one. It came about in…

  • Report of Dean Plumptre

    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.

  • To See Her Children

    To See Her Children

    Date: Circa. 1854 Location: Egypt A lady and her husband (who held a position of some distinction in India) were returning home (A.D. 1854) after an absence of four years, to join a family of young children, when the former was seized in Egypt with an illness of a most alarming character, and, though carefully…

  • Dr. Passavant’s Account of a Peasant Boy

    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…

  • Charles Hamlin Phelps

    Date: September 29th, 1849. Location: Ohio, USA. Charles Hamlin Phelps, was born here in my home, and since his mother died has clung to me. Within the last three years he had several attacks of inflammatory rheumatism, and on April 5 the end came. His father was supporting him in bed, but he could not…

  • Admiral Francis Beaufort

    Admiral Francis Beaufort

    Date: Circa. 1825Location: Portsmouth Harbour, England The following letter, addressed by Admiral Beaufort to Dr. W. H. Wollaston, giving an account of the feelings of the former when apparently on the very point of death from drowning, was originally published in the Life of the late Sir John Barrow. It will well repay perusal: The…

  • A Young Lady and Her Soldier Lover

    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…

  • Old Man Westburn

    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…

  • Mrs. Birbeck of Cockermouth

    Mrs. Birbeck of Cockermouth

    Date: 1739 Location: Cockermouth, UK. In 1739 Mrs. Birbeck, the wife of William Birbeck, banker, of Settle, and a member of the Society of Friends, was taken ill and died at Cockermouth, while returning from a journey to Scotland, which she had undertaken alone—her husband and three children, aged seven, five, and four years respectively,…

  • Johann Schwerzeger

    Johann Schwerzeger

    Date: 1733Location: Undetermined. UK? In the year 1733 Johann Schwerzeger fell into a state of trance, after an illness, but revived. He said he had seen his whole life, and every sin he had committed, even those he had quite forgotten—everything had been as present to him as when it had happened. He also lamented…

  • Er of Pamphylia

    Er of Pamphylia

    Date: Prior to 375 BCE.Location: Pamphylia (Modern-day Southern Turkey) Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten…