The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1900-04-28
BELIEVED IN GHOSTS.

Dr. Elliott CoueS, the famous or
nithologist and member of the Ameri-
can Academy of Sciences, was long
recognized as the foremost advocate of
belief in the existence of ghosts. He
had promised several of his friends
that, if able to do so, he would appear
tothem after his own demise, and they
are still waiting, with no little inter
est, to see if he can carry out the
agreement.
II have myself seen the ghosts of
q good many dead persons, said the
doctor one day. II remember one
occasion when I had just gone to bed,
the light being turned out, I was COM
posing myself to slumber when sud-
denly became aware of a presence in
the room. The impression conveyed
to my mind was that it was the pres
ens@of certain person lately deceas-
ed, with whom I had been on very in
innate tsrms. In fact, I felt an over
powerlng sense of the nearness of the
individualin question.
About ,he same moment there
arose slowly from the floor a nebu-
lous mass of what looked like shining
white vapor, which began to take
shape, as did thesmoke from the cas-
ket opened by the fisherman in the
Arabian Nights tales. Gradually
it assumed more distinct outline,
until it presented radiant image of
my friend. The lips appeared to
move, and from them came an intelli-
gible utterance, message in short,
from the departed. I do not care to
say what that message was.
II can assure you that the vision
was no dream, and the nature of the
message was such as to eliminate, to
my own satisfaction at all events, the
theory of hallucination. What, then,
was this shape of shining white va
por? Was it human soul? 1t is a
question pregnant with intense in
terest.
Each of us, believe, has in him
a ghost, which ordinarily is confined
to the precincts of the body. When
Idle, my ghost leaves my body perma-
nently, and, having done so, perhaps
it may continue to be the vehicle and
means of expression of conscious will,
memory and understanding. St.
Paul says, There is a natural body
and spiritual body 1t is of the
spiritual body that am speaking.
"Our senses take cognizance of no
forms of matter except those which
are in a certain degree of condensa-
ton, but the spiritual body may be of
a more rare6ed and tenuous substance.
The nonappearance of ghosts to US
may be a question not of the exis-
tence of specters, but of the acuteness
of Our perceptive faculties.
My own experience is that the
coming of an apparition is always
sysSs a curious sensation which
Cd ~hiIT. When this
IIves, the threshold of
.r. lsnl55r9oS. SoA ynS oAuAA"AAly
invisls ls5fom5 sa a3sS SSsVSSss1ange is usually
very so;o,,s. Eng only a few seconds,
during which the manifestation oc-
ours.
Zone reason that 1 have for believ-
ing the evidence of my own senses in
this matter is that on several occa-
sions the apparition of my own per-
sona1ity has presented itself to other
persons in places where my body was
not at the time. Some years ago
was in Chicago, at an ordinary even
ing party with about 40 friends, when
an individual in Washington, who
did not even know where 1 was, was
visited by my phantasm and received
from it brief message stating where
I was at the time and giving the
names of two or three of the guests
present-persons with whom the OBJ
server was unacquainted. This was
one of the rare cases where a ghost
made itself audible.
"You ask what would happen if
one should approach ghost, such as
1 have described, and try to touch it.
My reply is that there would certain
ly be no danger in doing so, for spec
tiers never do anybody any harm, the
fear of them entertained by most peo-
pie being simply a dread of that
which is unknown and not under
stood. Whatever is unknown is al
ways terrible. But the phantom is
composed of matter too tenuous to
present any obstacle, and l do not
doubt that it would dissolve and dis
appear if you attempted to walk
through it. - Washington Sta,.