If we were to attack the opinion of the Committee on Hallucinations, that ’Between deaths and apparitions of the dying a connection exists which is not due to chance alone,’ the assault should be made not only on the method, but on the details.  The events were never of very recent, and often were of remote occurrence.  The remoteness was less than it seems, however, as the questions were often answered several years before the publication of the Report (1894).  There was scarcely any documentary evidence, any note or letter written between the hallucination and the arrival of news of the death.  Such letters, the evidence alleged, had in some cases existed, but had been lost, burnt, eaten by white ants, or written on a sheet of blotting paper or the whitewashed wall of a barrack room.  If I may judge by my own lifelong success in mislaying, losing, and casually destroying papers, from cheques to notes made for literary purposes, from interesting letters of friends to the manuscripts of novelists, or if I may judge by Sir Walter Scott’s triumphs of the same kind, I should not think much of the disappearance of documentary evidence to death-wraiths.  Nobody supposed, when these notes were written, that Science would ask for their production; and even if people had guessed at this, it is human to lose or destroy old papers.

The remoteness of the occurrences is more remarkable, for, if these things happen, why were so few recent cases discovered?  Again, the seers were sometimes under anxiety, though such cases were excluded from the final computation:  they frequently knew that the person seen was in bad health:  they were often very familiar with his personal aspect.  Now what are called ‘subjective hallucinations,’ non-coincidental hallucinations, usually represent persons very familiar to us, persons much in our minds.  I know seven cases in which such hallucinations occurred. 1, 2, of husband to wife; 3, son to mother; 4, brother to sister; 5, sister to sister; 6, cousin (living in the same house) to cousin; 7, friend (living a mile away) to two friends.  In no case was there a death-coincidence.  Only in case 4 was there any kind of coincidence, the brother having intended to do (unknown to the sister) what he was seen doing—­driving in a dog-cart with a lady.  But he had not driven.  We cannot, of course, prove that these seven cases were not telepathic, but there is no proof that they were.  Now most of the coincidental cases, on which the Committee relied as their choicest examples, represented persons familiarly known to the seers.  This looks as if they were casual; but, of course, if telepathy does exist, it is most likely (as Hegel says) to exist between kinsfolk and friends.[16]

The dates might be fresher!

In case 1, percipient knew that his aunt in England (he being in
Australia) was not very well.  No anxiety.

2.  Casual acquaintance.  No anxiety.  Case of accident or suicide.