Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1895-11-06
STORIES OF SPIRITS.
eTRANGE CASES OF MANIFESTATIONS
BY SPOOkS.
Investigated by the Society For Psychical
Research, They Are Presented With
Strong Backing Examples Furnished
by Widely Separated Countries.

by Widely Separated Countries.
Reverting to the lore of the Psychical
Research society, here is o case in which
apparitions of the dead and the living
We're eommingled A lady doctor says that
in 1869 she was living in the family of
retired naval officer, Mr.. r., and his wife,
two miles from a seaport town Mrs h,
who was the sister of the British consul al
Cadiz, married her husband, a widower,
in that city. When, after the marriage,
they came to England, her husband was
unable to find the nurse with whom his
youngest child had been left After vain
search they came to London. One night
Mrs. X. saw the sitting room door open.
A beautiful lady came in. followed by
common looking woman, carrying child
about Il year old, dressed in yellow pc
hsse. The lady came up to the bed and
said, pointing to the baby: This is John
ny. You will remember Johnny" She
smiled, and Mrs. r. was just going to an
swer when the vision was gone. Her huS'
band said she had exactly described his
first wife, and that the child's name was
Johnny. Some days after, returning from
Westminster abbey, they lost themselves
IN narrow congerieS of streets. suddenly
Mrs. II. saw the common looking woman
of her vision carrying the baby with a vel
low pelisse. She told her husband, who
spoke to the woman After discreet in.
quiry it turned out that she was tho nurse
that was wanted, and that the baby was
the missing child.
The antithesis of unconscious spiritual
manifestation by the living is the conscious
severance from the body and foretaste Of
deaths mystery. DIR. Wiltse of Skiddy,
Kan, whose case was first published in
the st. Louis Medical Journal in 1889, ap.
parently died of fever. He was declared
to be dead by the physician who attended
him. To make assurance doubly sure,
needles were thrust deeply into the flesh
This was done many times. The doctor
who pronounced the patient dead subse
quertly said, II observed his symptoms
closely, and if there are any symptoms
marking Il patient in artculo morris that
were hot present in his case am ignorant
of them" MEANWHILE the spirit of the
man alleged to be dead had, according TO
his own story, discovered itself from the
body. The disembodied spirit even con.
templated the dwelling of clay it had just
quilted. The liberated Dr. Wiltse was
conscious of two weeping ladies in the
room this wife and his sister) and of two
gentlemen at the door With one of these
gentlemen he came into contact and, very
much to his surprise, perceived that the
other party was unconscious of the cClli
sion. Il now attempted to gain the atten.
ton of the people with the object of com.
forting them as well as of assuring them
of their own immortality. / bowed to
them playfully and saluted with my right
hand | passed about among them also,
but found that they gave me no heed.
Then the situation struck me as humor.
ous and ! laughed outright" Going out
of the house, he noted the redncss of the
soil and the washes that the rain had
made. Presently he found himself in the
air. borne along by pair of hands till he
came to where We're three prodigious
rocks, which, his conductor told him, was
the road to the eternal world, whence he
could no moro return in the flesh. He at
tempted to pass, but his path was barred
by black cloud, and he knew he was tc
be stopped. The cloud the, touched his
face. When he regained consciousness, he
found himself at home in his bed very i'll.
Now there is abundant evidence to prove
that DIR. Wiltse's wife and sister did not
fall a-weeping until he was pronounced
dead; there is evidence that the soil and
the rain washes were as he described i'm
mcGiately he found utterance, though they
must have been very different the last
time he saw them with his bodily eyes;
there is evidence that he told all these
things us soon as he could speak and as
often as he was permitted.
The Rev. l.. j. Bertrand, Huguenot
minister of Neuilly, Paris, writing in
1919, gives o strange experience that befcll
him in the Alps 80 years previously. This
sleep of death had come upon him as he
crouched in the snow upon ledge of
precipice. His mind continued active,
though his body was benumbed. The ap-
proach of death was not painful till the
last, when there was a dreadfully acute
pain of momentary duration. "Then," he
says, "my life went out" His spirit scared
above his body, to which, however it was
still attached by kind of elastic string
With the spiritual eye he saw the remain
der of his party and their guide in a posi-.
ton where he could not possibly have seen
them from the place where his body lay.
He saw that the guide had disobeyed in.
structions as to the route to be trayerSed.
He saw the offender take sly pull at the
percipients own Madeira and eat the alb
straoted leg of fowl. Still more wonder
full he saw his wife, who was always nerv.
Gus about him when he was alpine climb
ing, going to Lucerne till the following
day. well, wife, he soliloquized, II am
a dead man. Goodby." Suddenly he felt
shock, realized that his party had re-
turned and that the guide was rubbing
him with snow to reanimate him. His
first attempt at speech was to reproach the
guide. "If you had simply cut the string"
he peeyishly exclaimed. BY and by he
taxed the guide with his small misdeeds,
and the delinquent ran off in dismay.
When he reached the inn, the guide be-
came delirious, being convinced that the
esteemed pastor was the ID. 1t afterward
appeared that Nine. Bertrand had set off
for Lucerne exactly under the circum-
stances her husband had noted with the
spiritual eye.-Illustrated Modern Art
and Literature.