Chapter V: Warnings (2)

As I do not wish to startle my readers, nor draw too suddenly on their faith, I have commenced with this class of phenomena, which it must be admitted are sufficiently strange, and, if true, must also be admitted to be well worthy of attention. No doubt these cases, and still more those to which I shall next proceed, give a painful shock to the received notions of polished and educated society in general—especially in this country, where the analytical or scientifical psychology of the eighteenth century has almost superseded the study of synthetic or philosophical psychology. It has become a custom to look at all the phenomena regarding man in a purely physiological point of view; for although it is admitted that he has a mind, and although there is such a science as metaphysics, the existence of what we call _mind_ is never considered but as connected with the body. We know that body can exist without mind; for, not to speak of certain living conditions, the body subsists without mind when the spirit has fled; albeit, without the living principle it can subsist but for a short period, except under particular circumstances; but we seem to have forgotten that mind, though dependent upon body as long as the connection between them continues, can yet subsist without it. There have indeed been philosophers, purely materialistic, who have denied this, but they are not many; and not only the whole Christian world, but all who believe in a future state, must perforce admit it; for even those who hold that most unsatisfactory doctrine that there will be neither memory nor consciousness till a second incorporation takes place, will not deny that the mind, however in a state of abeyance and unable to manifest itself, must still subsist as an inherent property of man’s immortal part. Even if, as some philosophers believe, the spirit, when freed from the body by death, returns to the Deity and is reabsorbed in the being of God, not to become again a separate entity until reincorporated, still what we call mind can not be disunited from it. And when once we have begun to conceive of mind, and consequently of perception, as separated from and independent of bodily organs, it will not be very difficult to apprehend that those bodily organs must circumscribe and limit the view of the spiritual in-dweller, which must otherwise be necessarily perceptive of spirit like itself, though perhaps unperceptive of material objects and obstructions.

“It is perfectly evident to me,” said Socrates, in his last moments, “that, to see clearly, we must detach ourselves from the body, and perceive by the soul alone. Not while we live, but when we die, will that wisdom which we desire and love be first revealed to us; it must be then, or never, that we shall attain to true understanding and knowledge, since by means of the body we never can. But if, during life, we would make the nearest approaches possible to its possession, it must be by divorcing ourselves as much as in us lies from the flesh and its nature.” In their spiritual views and apprehension of the nature of man, how these old heathens shame us!

The Scriptures teach us that God chose to reveal himself to his people chiefly in dreams, and we are entitled to conclude that the reason of this was, that the spirit was then more free to the reception of spiritual influences and impressions; and the class of dreams to which I next proceed seem to be best explained by this hypothesis. It is also to be remarked that the awe or fear which pervades a mortal at the mere conception of being brought into relation with a spirit, has no place in sleep, whether natural or magnetic. There is no fear then, no surprise; we seem to meet on an equality—is it not that we meet spirit to spirit? Is it not that our spirit being then released from the trammels—the dark chamber of the flesh—it does enjoy a temporary equality? Is not that true, that some German psychologist has said—“_The magnetic man is a spirit!_”

There are numerous instances to be met with of persons receiving information in their sleep, which either is, or seems to be, communicated by their departed friends. The approach of danger, the period of the sleeper’s death, or of that of some persons beloved, has been frequently made known in this form of dream.

Dr. Binns quotes, from Cardanus, the case of Johannes Maria Maurosenus, a Venetian senator, who, while governor of Dalmatia, saw in a dream one of his brothers, to whom he was much attached: the brother embraced him and bade him farewell, because he was going into the other world. Maurosenus having followed him a long way weeping, awoke in tears, and expressed much anxiety respecting this brother. Shortly afterward he received tidings from Venice that this Domatus, of whom he had dreamed, had died on the night and at the hour of the dream, of a pestilential fever, which had carried him off in three days.

On the night of the 21st of June, in the year 1813, a lady, residing in the north of England, dreamed that her brother, who was then with his regiment in Spain, appeared to her, saying, “Mary, I die this day at Vittoria!”

Vittoria was a town which, previous to the famous battle, was not generally known even by name in this country, and this dreamer, among others, had never heard of it; but, on rising, she eagerly resorted to a gazetteer for the purpose of ascertaining if such a place existed. On finding that it was so, she immediately ordered her horses, and drove to the house of a sister, some eight or nine miles off, and her first words on entering the room were, “Have you heard anything of John?”—“No,” replied the second sister, “but I know he is dead! He appeared to me last night, in a dream, and told me that he was killed at Vittoria. I have been looking into the gazetteer and the atlas, and I find there is such a place, and I am sure that he is dead!” And so it proved: the young man died that day at Vittoria, and, I believe, on the field of battle. If so, it is worthy of observation that the communication was not made till the sisters slept.

A similar case to this is that of Miss D——, of G——, who one night dreamed that she was walking about the washing-greens, when a figure approached, which she recognised as that of a beloved brother who was at that time with the British army in America. It gradually faded away into a kind of anatomy, holding up its hands, through which the light could be perceived, and asking for clothes to dress a body for the grave. The dream recurred more than once in the same night, and, apprehending some misfortune, Miss D—— noted down the date of the occurrence. In due course of post, the news arrived that this brother had been killed at the battle of Bunker’s hill. Miss D——, who died only within the last few years, though unwilling to speak of the circumstance, never refused to testify to it as a fact.

Here, supposing this to be a real apparition, we see an instance of that desire for decent obsequies so constantly attributed by the ancients to the souls of the dead.

When the German poet Collin died at Vienna, a person named Hartmann, who was his friend, found himself very much distressed by the loss of a hundred and twenty florins, which he had paid for the poet, under a promise of reimbursement. As this sum formed a large portion of his whole possessions, the circumstance was occasioning him considerable anxiety, when he dreamed one night that his deceased friend appeared to him, and bade him immediately set two florins on No. 11, on the first calling of the little lottery, or loto, then about to be drawn. He was bade to confine his venture to two florins, neither less nor more; and to communicate this information to nobody. Hartmann availed himself of the hint, and obtained a prize of a hundred and thirty florins.

Since we look upon lotteries, in this country, as an immoral species of gambling, it may be raised as an objection to this dream, that such intelligence was an unworthy mission for a spirit, supposing the communication to have been actually made by Collin. But, in the first place, we have only to do with facts, and not with their propriety or impropriety, according to our notions; and, by-and-by, I shall endeavor to show that such discrepancies possibly arise from the very erroneous notions commonly entertained of the state of those who have disappeared from the terrestrial life.

Simonides the poet, arriving at the seashore with the intention of embarking on board a vessel on the ensuing day, found an unburied body, which he immediately desired should be decently interred. On the same night, this deceased person appeared to him, and bade him by no means go to sea, as he had proposed. Simonides obeyed the injunction, and beheld the vessel founder, as he stood on the shore. He raised a monument on the spot to the memory of his preserver, which is said still to exist, on which are engraven some lines, to the effect that it was dedicated by Simonides, the poet of Cheos, in gratitude to the dead who had preserved him from death.

A much-esteemed secretary died a few years since, in the house of Mr. R—— von N——. About eight weeks afterward, Mr. R—— himself being ill, his daughter dreamed that the house-bell rang, and that, on looking out, she perceived the secretary at the door. Having admitted him, and inquired what he was come for, he answered, “To fetch somebody.” Upon which, alarmed for her father, she exclaimed, “I hope not my father!” He shook his head solemnly, in a manner that implied it was not the old man he had come for, and turned away toward a guest-chamber, at that time vacant, and there disappeared at the door. The father recovered, and the lady left home for a few days, on a visit. On her return, she found her brother had arrived in the interval to pay a visit to his parents, and was lying sick in that room, where he died.

I will here mention a curious circumstance regarding Mr. H——, the gentleman alluded to in a former page, who, being at the seaside, saw, in a dream, the danger that awaited his son when he went to bathe. This gentleman has frequently, on waking, felt a consciousness that he had been conversing with certain persons of his acquaintance—and, indeed, with some of whom he knew little—and has afterward, not without a feeling of awe, learned that these persons had died during the hours of his sleep.

Do not such circumstances entitle us to entertain the idea that I have suggested above, namely, that in sleep the spirit is free to see, and to know, and to communicate with spirit, although the memory of this knowledge is rarely carried into the waking state?

The story of the two Arcadians, who travelled together to Megara, though reprinted in other works, I can not omit here. One of these established himself, on the night of their arrival, at the house of a friend, while the other sought shelter in a public lodging-house for strangers. During the night, the latter appeared to the former, in a dream, and besought him to come to his assistance, as his villanous host was about to take his life, and only the most speedy aid could save him. The dreamer started from his sleep, and his first movement was to obey the summons, but, reflecting that it was only a dream, he presently lay down, and composed himself again to rest. But now his friend appeared before him a second time, disfigured by blood and wounds, conjuring him, since he had not listened to his first entreaties, that he would, at least, avenge his death. His host, he said, had murdered him, and was, at that moment, depositing his body in a dung-cart, for the purpose of conveying it out of the town. The dreamer was thoroughly alarmed, arose, and hastened to the gates of the city, where he found, waiting to pass out, exactly such a vehicle as his friend had described. A search being instituted, the body was found underneath the manure; and the host was consequently seized, and delivered over to the chastisement of the law.

“Who shall venture to assert,” says Dr. Ennemoser, “that this communing with the dead in sleep is merely a subjective phenomenon, and that the presence of these apparitions is a pure illusion?”

A circumstance fully as remarkable as any recorded, occurred at Odessa, in the year 1842. An old blind man, named Michel, had for many years been accustomed to get his living by seating himself every morning on a beam in one of the timber-yards, with a wooden bowl at his feet, into which the passengers cast their alms. This long-continued practice had made him well known to the inhabitants, and, as he was believed to have been formerly a soldier, his blindness was attributed to the numerous wounds he had received in battle. For his own part, he spoke little, and never contradicted this opinion.

One night, Michel, by some accident, fell in with a little girl of ten years old, named Powleska, who was friendless, and on the verge of perishing with cold and hunger. The old man took her home, and adopted her; and, from that time, instead of sitting in the timber-yards, he went about the streets in her company, asking alms at the doors of the houses. The child called him _father_, and they were extremely happy together. But when they had pursued this mode of life for about five years, a misfortune befell them. A theft having been committed in a house which they had visited in the morning, Powleska was suspected and arrested, and the blind man was left once more alone. But, instead of resuming his former habits, he now disappeared altogether; and this circumstance causing the suspicion to extend to him, the girl was brought before the magistrate to be interrogated with regard to his probable place of concealment.

“Do you know where Michel is?” said the magistrate.

“He is dead!” replied she, shedding a torrent of tears.

As the girl had been shut up for three days, without any means of obtaining information from without, this answer, together with her unfeigned distress, naturally excited considerable surprise.

“Who told you he was dead?” they inquired.

“Nobody!”

“Then how can you know it?”

“I saw him killed!”

“But you have not been out of the prison?”

“But I saw it, nevertheless!”

“But how was that possible? Explain what you mean!”

“I can not. All I can say is, that I saw him killed.”

“When was he killed, and how?”

“It was the night I was arrested.”

“That can not be: he was alive when you were seized!”

“Yes, he was; he was killed an hour after that. They stabbed him with a knife.”

“Where were you then?”

“I can’t tell; but I saw it.”

The confidence with which the girl asserted what seemed to her hearers impossible and absurd, disposed them to imagine that she was either really insane, or pretending to be so. So, leaving Michel aside, they proceeded to interrogate her about the robbery, asking her if she was guilty.

“Oh, no!” she answered.

“Then how came the property to be found about you?”

“I don’t know: I saw nothing but the murder.”

“But there are no grounds for supposing Michel is dead: his body has not been found.”

“It is in the aqueduct.”

“And do you know who slew him?”

“Yes—it is a woman. Michel was walking very slowly, after I was taken from him. A woman came behind him with a large kitchen-knife; but he heard her, and turned round: and then the woman flung a piece of gray stuff over his head, and struck him repeatedly with the knife; the gray stuff was much stained with the blood. Michel fell at the eighth blow, and the woman dragged the body to the aqueduct and let it fall in without ever lifting the stuff which stuck to his face.”

As it was easy to verify these latter assertions, they despatched people to the spot; and there the body was found, with the piece of stuff over his head, exactly as she described. But when they asked her how she knew all this, she could only answer, “I don’t know.”

“But you know who killed him?”

“Not exactly: it is the same woman that put out his eyes; but, perhaps, he will tell me her name to-night; and if he does, I will tell it to you.”

“Whom do you mean by _he_?”

“Why, Michel, to be sure!”

During the whole of the following night, without allowing her to suspect their intention, they watched her; and it was observed that she never lay down, but sat upon the bed in a sort of lethargic slumber. Her body was quite motionless, except at intervals, when this repose was interrupted by violent nervous shocks, which pervaded her whole frame. On the ensuing day, the moment she was brought before the judge, she declared that she was now able to tell them the name of the assassin.

“But stay,” said the magistrate: “did Michel never tell you, when he was alive, how he lost his sight?”

“No—but the morning before I was arrested, he promised me to do so; and that was the cause of his death.”

“How could that be?”

“Last night, Michel came to me, and he pointed to the man hidden behind the scaffolding on which he and I had been sitting. He showed me the man listening to us, when he said, ‘I’ll tell you all about that to-night;’ and then the man——”

“Do you know the name of this man?”

“It is _Luck_. He went afterward to a broad street that leads down to the harbor, and he entered the third house on the right——”

“What is the name of the street?”

“I don’t know: but the house is one story lower than the adjoining ones. Luck told Catherine what he had heard, and she proposed to him to assassinate Michel; but he refused, saying, ‘It was bad enough to have burnt out his eyes fifteen years before, while he was asleep at your door, and to have kidnapped him into the country.’ Then I went in to ask charity, and Catherine put a piece of plate into my pocket, that I might be arrested; then she hid herself behind the aqueduct to wait for Michel, and she killed him.”

“But, since you say all this, why did you keep the plate—why didn’t you give information?”

“But I didn’t see it then. Michel showed it me last night.”

“But what should induce Catherine to do this?”

“Michel was her husband, and she had forsaken him to come to Odessa and marry again. One night, fifteen years ago, she saw Michel, who had come to seek her. She slipped hastily into her house, and Michel, who thought she had not seen him, lay down at her door to watch; but he fell asleep, and then Luck burnt out his eyes, and carried him to a distance.”

“And is it Michel who has told you this?”

“Yes: he came, very pale, and covered with blood; and he took me by the hand and showed me all this with his fingers.”

Upon this, Luck and Catherine were arrested; and it was ascertained that she had actually been married to Michel in the year 1819, at Kherson. They at first denied the accusation, but Powleska insisted, and they subsequently confessed the crime. When they communicated the circumstances of the confession to Powleska, she said, “I was told it last night.”

This affair naturally excited great interest, and people all round the neighborhood hastened into the city to learn the sentence.