Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The next account illustrates an emotional impression, with a certain amount of


From Phantasms of the Living by Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Frank Podmore, Chapter V "Specimens of the Various Types of Spontaneous Telepathy."

The next account illustrates an emotional impression, with a certain amount of physical discomfort. The experience appears to have been of a very unusual sort, and the coincidence of time to have been exact; the case is therefore a strong example of a weak class. The narrator is Miss Martyn, of Long Melford Rectory, Suffolk.

"September 4th, 1884.

"On March 16th, 1884, I was sitting alone in the drawingroom, reading an interesting book, and feeling perfectly well, when suddenly I experienced an undefined feeling of dread and horror; I looked at the clock and saw it was just 7 p.m. I was utterly unable to read, so I got up and walked about the room trying to throw off the feeling, but I could not: I became quite cold, and had a firm presentiment that I was dying. The feeling lasted about half-an-hour, and then passed off, leaving me a good deal shaken all the evening; I went to bed feeling very weak, as if I had been seriously ill.

"The next morning I received a telegram telling me of the death of a near and very dear cousin, Mrs. K., in Shropshire, with whom I had been most intimately associated all my life, but for the last two years had seen very little of her. I did not associate this feeling of death with her or with anyone else, but I had a most distinct impression that something terrible was happening. This feeling came over me, I afterwards found, just at the time when my cousin died (7 p.m.). The connection with her death may have been simply an accident. I have never experienced anything of the sort before. I was not aware that Mrs. K. was ill, and her death was peculiarly sad and sudden."