I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior
intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those
have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such
wise would find no parallel or response in a listener's internal life, and might be
suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, who should have seen some extraordinary
creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the
same traveller, having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought,
vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate
considerably before he would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity
in which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences
of these subjective things as we do our experiences of objective creation. The
consequence is, that the general stock of experience in this regard appears exceptional,
and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect.
In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up, opposing, or supporting,
any theory whatever. I know the history of the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the
case of the wife of a late Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have
followed the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of Spectral Illusion
occurring within my private circle of friends. It may be necessary to state as to this last,
that the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree, however distant, related to me. A mistaken
assumption on that head might suggest an explanation of a part of my own case,--but only
a part,--which would be wholly without foundation. It cannot be referred to my
inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all similar
experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience since.
It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder was committed in
England, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of murderers as they
rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and I would bury the memory of this
particular brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail. I purposely abstain
from giving any direct clue to the criminal's individuality.
When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell--or I ought rather to say, for I
cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell--
on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. As no reference was at that time made to
him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him can at that
time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered.
Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I
found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not
three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper,
I was aware of a flash--rush--flow--I do not know what to call it,--no word I can find is
satisfactorily descriptive,--in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my
room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous
