The Astral Camera.

When I was staying at Orchard Lea, in Windsor Forest, I did most of my writing in a spacious window on the first floor looking out over the garden. It opened French fashion, and thereby occasioned a curious optical illusion, which may perhaps help to shed some light upon the phenomena now under consideration. For when the sun was high in the sky and the French window was set at a certain angle, the whole of the flowers, figures, etc., on my right hand appeared reflected upon the lawn on the left hand as vividly as if they actually existed in duplicate. So real was the illusion that for some hours I was under the impression that a broad yellow gravel path actually stretched across the lawn on my left. It was only when a little dog ran along the spectral path and suddenly vanished into thin air that I discovered the illusion. Nothing could be more complete, more life-like. The real persons who walked up the gravel to the house walked across the spectral gravel, apparently in duplicate. Both could be seen at one and the same time. I instantly thought that they could be photographed, so as to show the duplication produced by the illusion. Unfortunately, although the spectral path was distinctly visible through the glass to the eye, no impression whatever was left on the sensitive plate. My friend writes:

“I have tried the phantom path, and I am sorry to say it is too phantom to make any impression on the plate. All that you get is the blaze of light from the glass window, some very faint trees, and no path at all. Possibly, with a June sun, it might have been different; but I doubt it, as one is told never to put the camera facing a window. It is having to take through the glass window which is fatal.”

This set me thinking. It was a simple optical illusion, no doubt, similar to that which enabled Pepper to produce his ghosts at the Polytechnic. But what was the agency which enabled me to see the figures and flowers, and trees and gravel, all transferred, as by the cunning act of some magician, from the right to the left? Simply a swinging pane of perfectly transparent glass. To those who have neither studied the laws of optics nor seen the phenomenon in question, it must seem impossible that a pellucid window-pane could transfer so faithfully that which happened at one end of the garden to the other as to cause it to be mistaken for reality. Yet there was the phenomenon before my eyes. The dog ran double the real dog to the right, the spectral dog to the left and no one could tell at first sight “t’other from which.” Now, may it not be that this supplies a suggestion as to the cause of the phenomenon of clairvoyance? Is it not possible that there may exist in Nature some as yet undiscovered analogue to the swinging windowpane which may enable us to see before our eyes here and now events which are transpiring at the other end of the world? In the mysterious, subconscious world in which the clairvoyant lives, may there not be some subtle, sympathetic lens, fashioned out of strong affection or some other relation, which may enable some of us to see that which is quite invisible to the ordinary eye?

A Surrey Laundry Seen in Cornwall.

Such thoughts came to my mind when I asked the Housekeeper whether she had ever seen any of the phantasmal apparitions of her mistress, my hostess, Mrs. M. The housekeeper, a comfortable, buxom Cornish woman, smiled incredulously. No, she had seen nothing, heard nothing, believed nothing. “As to phantasmal bodies, she would prefer to see them first.” “Had she ever seen a ghost?” “No, never.” “Had ever had any hallucinations?” “No.” But one thing had happened, “rather curious” now that she came to think of it. Last year, when living on the coast far down in the west country, she had suddenly seen as in a dream the house in Hindhead where we were now standing. She had never been in Surrey in her life. She had no idea that she would ever go there, nor did she know that it was in Surrey. What she saw was the laundry. She was standing inside it, and remarked to her husband how strange and large it looked. She looked out at the windows and saw the house and the surroundings with strange distinctness. Then the vision faded away, leaving no other impress on the mind than that she had seen an exceptionally large laundry close to a small country-house in a place where she had never been in before.

Six months passed; she and her husband had decided to leave the west country and take a housekeeper and gardener’s post elsewhere. They replied to an advertisement, were appointed by my hostess; they transferred themselves to Hindhead, where they arrived in the dead of winter. When they reached their new quarters she saw, to her infinite astonishment, the precise place she had seen six months before. The laundry was unmistakable. There is not such another laundry in the county of Surrey. There it was, sure enough, and there was the house, and there were all the surroundings exactly as she had seen them down on the south-west coast. She did not believe in ghosts or phantasmal bodies or such like things, but one thing she knew beyond all possibility of doubt. She had seen her new home and laundry on the top of Hindhead, when living in the west country six months before she ever set foot in Surrey, or even knew of the existence of Mrs. M. “The moment I saw it I recognised it and told my husband that it was the identical place I had seen when in our old home.”

William Howitt’s Vision.

The Housekeeper’s story is very simple, and almost too commonplace. But its significance lies in those very characteristics. Here was no consuming passion, no bond of sympathy, nothing whatever material or sentimental to act as the refracting medium by which the Hindhead laundry could have been made visible in South Devon. Yet similar phenomena are of constant occurrence. A very remarkable case in point is that of William Howitt who, when on a voyage out to Australia, saw his brother’s house at Melbourne so plainly that he described it on board ship, and recognised it the moment he landed. Here is his own version of this remarkable instance of clairvoyance:

“Some weeks ago, while yet at sea, I had a dream of being at my brother’s at Melbourne, and found his house on a hill at the further end of the town, and next to the open forest. His garden sloped a little down the hill to some brick buildings below; and there were greenhouses on the right hand by the wall, as you look down the hill from the house. As I looked out of the window in my dream, I saw a wood of dusky-foliaged trees having a somewhat segregated appearance in their heads that is, their heads did not make that dense mass like our trees. ‘There,’ I said to some one in my dream, ‘I see your native forest of eucalyptus!’

“This dream I told to my sons and to two of my fellow-passengers at the time, and on landing, as we walked over the meadows, long before we reached the town, I saw this very wood. ‘There,’ I said, ’is the very wood of my dream. We shall see my brother’s house there! And so we did. It stands exactly as I saw it, only looking newer; but there, over the wall of the garden, is the wood, precisely as I saw it and now see it as I sit at the dining-room window writing. When I looked on this scene I seem to look into my dream.” (Owen’s “Footfalls,” .)

The usual explanation of these things is that the vision is the revival of some forgotten impressions on the brain. But in neither of the foregoing cases will that explanation suffice, for in neither case had the person who saw ever been in the place of which they had a vision. One desperate resource, the convenient theory of pre-existence, is useless here. The fact seems to be that there is a kind of invisible camera obscura in Nature, which at odd times gives us glimpses of things happening or existing far beyond the range of our ordinary vision. The other day when in Edinburgh I climbed up to the Camera Obscura that stands near the castle, and admired the simple device by which, in a darkened room upon a white, paper-covered table, the whole panorama of Edinburgh life was displayed before me. There were the “recruities” drilling on the Castle Esplanade; there were the passers-by hurrying along High Street; there were the birds on the housetops, and the landscape of chimneys and steeples, all revealed as if in the crystal of a wizard’s cave. The coloured shadows chased each other across the paper, leaving no trace behind. Five hundred years ago the owner of that camera would have been burned as a wizard; now he makes a comfortable living out of the threepennypieces of inquisitive visitors. Is it possible to account for the phenomena of clairvoyance other than by the supposition that there exists somewhere in Nature a gigantic camera obscura which reflects everything, and to which clairvoyants habitually, and other mortals occasionally, have access?

Seen and Heard at 150 Miles Range.

The preceding incidents simply record a prevision of places subsequently visited. The following are instances in which not only places, but occurrences, were seen as in a camera by persons at a distance varying from 150 to several thousand miles. Space seems to have no existence for the clairvoyant. They are quoted from the published “Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society”:

On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R , C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely and dangerously wounded; and supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at the time was fully 150 miles distant, at Ferozepore.

“On the night of September 9th, 1848,” writes his wife, “I was lying on my bed between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and heard his voice saying, ‘Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife.’ All the next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind. In due time I heard of General R having been severely wounded in the assault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L , the officer who helped to carry General R off the field, that the request as to the ring was actually made to him, just as I heard it at Ferozepore at that very time.” (Vol. I. .)

A Royal Deathbed in France seen in Scotland.

The above case is remarkable because the voice was transmitted as well as the spectacle. In the next story the ear heard nothing, but the scene itself was very remarkable. A correspondent of the Psychical Research Society writes that whilst staying with her mother’s cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth Broughton, wife of Mr. Edward Broughton, Edinburgh, and daughter of the late Colonel Blanckley, in the year 1844, she told her the following strange story:

“She awoke one night and aroused her husband, telling him that something dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again and not to trouble him. She assured him that she was not asleep when she saw what she insisted on then telling him what she saw, in fact, was; First, a carriage accident which she did not actually see, but what she saw was the result a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure gently raised and carried into the nearest house, then a figure lying on a bed, which she then recognised as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends collecting round the bed among them several members of the French royal family the queen, then the king, all silently, tearfully watching the evidently dying duke. One man (she could see his back, but did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the duke, feeling his pulse, his watch in the other hand. And then all passed away; she saw no more. As soon as it was daylight she wrote down in her journal all that she had seen. From that journal she read this to me. It was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days passed before the Times announced ‘The Death of the Duke of Orleans.’ Visiting Paris a short time afterwards, she saw and recognised the place of the accident and received the explanation of her impression. The doctor who attended the dying duke was an old friend of hers, and as he watched by the bed his mind had been constantly occupied with her and her family.” (Vol. II. .)

The doctor’s sympathy may have been the key to the secret camera of Nature, but it in no wise “explains” how a lady in Edinburgh could see what went on inside a house in Paris so clearly as to know what had happened two days before the intelligence reached the Times.

An African Event Seen in England.

Here is another story where the event occurred in Africa and was seen in England. A correspondent from Wadhurst, West Dulwich, S.E., says:

“My late husband dreamt a certain curious dream about his brother, Mr. Ralph Holden, who was at that time travelling in the interior of Africa. One morning, in June or July, 1861, my husband woke me with the announcement, ‘Ralph is dead.’ I said, ‘You must be dreaming.’ ’No, I am not dreaming now; but I dreamt twice over that I saw Ralph lying on the ground supported by a man.’ They learnt afterwards that Ralph must have died about the time when his brother dreamt about him and that he had died in the arms of his faithful native servant, lying under a large tree, where he was afterwards buried. The Holden family have sketches of the tree and the surroundings, and, on seeing it, my husband said, ’Yes, that is exactly the place where I saw Ralph in my dream, dying or dead.’” (Vol. I. .)

A Vision Which Saved Many Lives.

Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his “Nature and the Supernatural,” tells a story, on the authority of Captain Yonnt, which differs from the foregoing in having a definite purpose, which, fortunately, was attained. Captain Yonnt, a patriarch in the Napa valley of California, told Dr. Bushnell that six or seven years before their conversation he had seen a vision which saved several lives. Here is his story:

“About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter’s night, he had a dream, in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge, perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their particular distress. He awoke profoundly impressed by the distinctness and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he told his story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his recognising without hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra, by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot in the Pass answered exactly his description. By this the unsophistical patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men, with mules and blankets and all necessary provisions. The neighbours were laughing meantime at his credulity. ‘No matter,’ he said, ’I am able to do this, and I will; for I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream.’ The men were sent into the mountains one hundred and fifty miles distant, directly to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive.” ("Nature and the Supernatural,” .)

The Vision of a Fire.

The wife of a Dean of the Episcopal Church in one of the Southern States of America was visiting at my house while I was busy collecting materials for this work. Asking her the usual question as to whether she had ever experienced anything of the phenomena usually called supernatural, apparently because it is not the habitual experience of every twenty-four hours, she ridiculed the idea. Ghosts? not she. She was a severely practical, matter-of-fact person, who used her natural senses, and had nothing to do with spirits. But was she quite sure; had nothing ever occurred to her which she could not explain? Then she hesitated and said, “Well, yes; but there is nothing supernatural about it. I was staying away down in Virginia, some hundred miles from home, when one morning, about eleven o’clock, I felt an over-powering sleepiness. I never sleep in the daytime, and that drowsiness was, I think, almost my only experience of that kind. I was so sleepy I went to my room and lay down. In my sleep I saw quite distinctly my home at Richmond in flames. The fire had broken out in one wing of the house, which I saw with dismay was where I kept all my best dresses. The people were all about trying to check the flames, but it was of no use. My husband was there, walking about before the burning house, carrying a portrait in his hand. Everything was quite clear and distinct, exactly as if I had actually been present and seen everything. After a time I woke up, and, going downstairs, told my friends the strange dream I had had. They laughed at me, and made such game of my vision that I did my best to think no more about it. I was travelling about, a day or two passed, and when Sunday came I found myself in a church where some relatives were worshipping. When I entered the pew they looked rather strange, and as soon as the service was over I asked them what was the matter. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ they said, ‘there is nothing serious.’ They then handed me a postcard from my husband, which simply said, ’House burned out; covered by insurance.’ The date was the day on which my dream occurred. I hastened home, and then I learned that everything had happened exactly as I had seen it. The fire had broken out in the wing which I had seen blazing. My clothes were all burnt, and the oddest thing about it was that my husband, having rescued a favourite picture from the burning building, had carried it about among the crowd for some time before he could find a place in which to put it safely.” Swedenborg, it will be remembered, also had a clairvoyant vision of a fire at a great distance.

The Loss of the “Strathmore."

A classic instance of the exercise of this faculty is the story of the wreck of the Strathmore. In brief the story is as follows: The father of a son who had sailed in the Strathmore, an emigrant ship outward bound from the Clyde, saw one night the ship foundering amid the waves, and saw that his son, with some others, had escaped safely to a desert island near which the wreck had taken place. He was so much impressed by this vision that he wrote to the owner of the Strathmore, telling him what he had seen. His information was scouted; but after awhile the Strathmore was overdue and the owner got uneasy. Day followed day, and still no tidings of the missing ship. Then, like Pharaoh’s butler, the owner remembered his sins one day and hunted up the letter describing the vision. It supplied at least a theory to account for the vessel’s disappearance. All outward bound ships were requested to look out for any survivors on the island indicated in the vision. These orders being obeyed, the survivors of the Strathmore were found exactly where the father had seen them. In itself this is sufficient to confound all accepted hypotheses. Taken in connection with other instances of a similar nature, what can be said of it excepting that it almost necessitates the supposition of the existence of the invisible camera obscura which the Theosophists describe as the astral light?

The Analogy of the Camera Obscura.

Clairvoyance can often be explained by telepathy, especially when there is strong sympathy between the person who sees and the person who is seen. Mr. Edward R. Lipsitt, of Tralee, sends me the following narrative, which illustrates this fact:

“I beg to narrate a curious case of telepathy I experienced when quite a boy. Some ten years ago I happened to sleep one night in the same room with a young friend of about my own age. There existed a very strong sympathy between us. I got up early and went out for a short walk, leaving my friend fast asleep in his bed. I went in the direction of a well-known lake in that district. After gazing for some moments at the silent waters, I espied a large black dog making towards me. I turned my back and fled, the dog following me for some distance. My boots then being in a bad condition, one of the soles came off in the flight; however, I came away unmolested by the dog. But how amazed was I when upon entering the room my friend, who was just rubbing his eyes and yawning, related to me my adventure word by word, describing even the colour of the dog and the very boot (the right one) the sole of which gave way!”

Motiveless Visions.

There is often no motive whatever to be discovered in the apparition. A remarkable instance of this is recorded by Mr. Myers in an article in the Arena, where the analogy to a camera obscura is very close. The camera reflects everything that happens. Nothing is either great or small to its impartial lens. But if you do not happen to be in the right place, or if the room is not properly darkened, or if the white paper is taken off the table, you see nothing. We have not yet mastered the conditions of the astral camera. Here, however, is Mr. Myers’ story, which he owes to the kindness of Dr. Elliott Coues, who happened to call on Mrs. C the very day on which that lady received the following letter from her friend Mrs. B .

“’Monday evening, January 14th, 1889.

“’My Dear Friend, I know you will be surprised to receive a note from me so soon, but not more so than I was to-day, when you were shown to me clairvoyantly, in a somewhat embarrassed position. I doubt very much if there was any truth in it; nevertheless, I will relate it, and leave you to laugh at the idea of it.

“’I was sitting in my room sewing this afternoon, about two o’clock, when what should I see but your own dear self; but, heavens! in what a position. Now, I don’t want to excite your curiosity too much, or try your patience too long, so will come to the point at once. You were falling up the front steps in the yard. You had on your black skirt and velvet waist, your little straw bonnet, and in your hand were some papers. When you fell, your hat went in one direction, and the papers in another. You got up very quickly, put on your bonnet, picked up the papers, and lost no time getting into the house. You did not appear to be hurt, but looked somewhat mortified. It was all so plain to me that I had ten to one notions to dress myself and come over and see if it were true, but finally concluded that a sober, industrious woman like yourself would not be stumbling around at that rate, and thought I’d best not go on a wild goose chase. Now, what do you think of such a vision as that? Is there any possible truth in it? I feel almost ready to scream with laughter whenever I think of it; you did look too funny, spreading yourself out in the front yard. “Great was the fall thereof."’

“This letter came to us in an envelope addressed: Mrs. E. A. C , 217 Del. Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C., and with the postmarks, Washington, D.C., Ja, 7 a.m., 1889, and Washington, N.E.C.S., Ja, 8 a.m.

“Now the point is that every detail in this telepathic vision was correct. Mrs. C had actually (as she tells me in a letter dated March 7th, 1889) fallen in this way, at this place, in the dress described, at 2.41, on January 14th. The coincidence can hardly have been due to chance. If we suppose that the vision preceded the accident, we shall have an additional marvel, which, however, I do not think we need here face. ‘About 2,’ in a letter of this kind, may quite conceivably have meant 2.41.”

The exceeding triviality of the incident often destroys the possibility of belief in the ordinary superstition that it was a direct Divine revelation. This may be plausible in cases of the Strathmore, where the intelligence was communicated of the loss of an English ship, but no one can seriously hold it when the only information to be communicated was a stumble on the stairs.

Considering the enormous advantages which such an astral camera would place in the hands of the detective police, I was not surprised to be told that the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department in London and Chicago occasionally consult clairvoyants as to the place where stolen goods are to be found, or where the missing criminals may be lurking.

Mr. Burt’s Dream.

When I was in Newcastle I availed myself of the opportunity to call upon Mr. Burt, M.P. On questioning him as to whether he had ever seen a ghost, he replied in the negative, but remarked that he had had one experience which had made a deep impression upon his mind, which partook more of the nature of clairvoyance than the apparition of a phantom. “I suppose it was a dream,” said Mr. Burt. “The dream or vision, or whatever else you call it, made a deep impression upon my mind. You remember Mr. Crawford, the Durham miners’ agent, was ill for a long time before his death. Just before his death he rallied, and we all hoped he was going to get better. I had heard nothing to the contrary, when one morning early I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was standing by the bedside of my old friend. I passed my hand over his brow, and he spoke to me with great tenderness, with much greater tenderness than he had ever spoken before. He said he was going to die, and that he was comforted by the long and close friendship that had existed between us. I was much touched by the feeling with which he spoke, and felt awed as if I were in the presence of death. When I woke up the impression was still strong in my mind, and I could not resist the feeling that Crawford was dying. In a few hours I received a telegram stating that he was dead. This is more remarkable because I fully expected he was going to get better, and at the moment of my dream he seems to have died. I cannot give any explanation of how it came about. It is a mystery to me, and likely to remain so.”

This astral camera, to which “future things unfolded lie,” also retains the imperishable image of all past events. Mr. Browning’s great uncle’s studs brought vividly to the mind of the clairvoyant a smell of blood, and recalled all the particulars of the crime of which they had been silent witnesses. Any article or relic may serve as a key to unlock the chamber of this hidden camera.