More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

In the five posts below I have described or quoted about 115 cases of someone experiencing something like a suprising apparition of someone, only to soon later learn that the corresponding person had died, usually at about the same time the apparition was seen. The five posts are below:

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

In this post I will discuss additional cases of this type, which are sometimes called veridical apparitions.  The links I will give will usually take you to the exact page of an account that I discuss or quote. 

On page 201 of his autobiography, Lord Brougham tell us of seeing an apparition of his close friend:

"After I left the High School, I went with G , my

most mtimate friend, to attend the classes in the university. There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks discussed and speculated upon many grave subjects — among others, on the immortality of the soul, and on a future state. This question, and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, but of the dead appearing to the living, were subjects of much specu- lation ; and we actually committed the folly of draw-ing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect, that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the 'life after death.' After we

had finished our classes at the college, G went to

India, having got an appointment there in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; moreover, his family having little connection with Edinburgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, or of him through them, so that all the old schoolboy intimacy had died out, and I had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath ; and while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, after the late freezing I had undergone, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get up out of the bath. On the chair sat G , looking calmly at me. How I got out of the bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was, that had taken the likeness of G , had disappeared. This vision produced such a shock that I had no in- clination to talk about it, or to speak about it even to Stuart; but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten ; and so strongly was I affected by it, that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, 19th December, and all the particulars, as they are now fresh before me."

Later we read this interjection into Lord Brougham's autobiography:

["Brougham, Oct. 16, 1862. — have just been copying out from my journal the account of this strange dream: Certissima mortis imago! And now to finish the story, begun above sixty years since. Soon after my return to Edinburgh, there arrived a letter from India, announcing G ’s death  and stating that he had died on the 19 th of December!! Singular coincidence !"]

Brougham's friend G. had died very far away on the same day Brougham had suddenly seen an apparition of G. 

A similar account is told on page 54 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion.  A Baron de Maricourt tells how a priest jokingly said to his young neice, "If you die before I do, let me know." The priest later saw an apparition of his young niece, one that bid goodbye. It was later found that the niece had died on exactly the same day and hour. 

On page 122 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have an account by a
Henry Bourgeois who learned of a death from an apparition:

"I had a friend named Charles, a youth of sixteen. It was in 1908. One evening, when I was reentering my home, I heard myself called several times, most distinctly, and I recognized his voice perfectly. The voice was disturbed and beseeching, but very tender...Disturbed in spite of myself, I did not go to sleep until very late. Then, almost at once, I was awakened by some one touching my forehead, and a voice calling me; I saw Charles distinctly at the head of my bed; he said to me: 'Good-by! Good-by! All is well with me! Comfort my family! I'll come back to your seances!' And he disappeared slowly. Then there was nothing more! As soon as morning came I ran to our friends' home. I found them greatly disturbed: Charles had not come back that night. Instinctively — I do not know why — I thought of a little piece of ground in the country which they owned. I confided my fears to the family, and took them there. In the garden, under the arbor, we found his body, stretched out on the ground; in his right hand he held a flask in which there was still left a little cyanide solution." 

On page 146 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have an account of a man who stated that he saw his uncle at about 9:30 AM. He states, "The vision was of rather short duration." He later learned that his uncle had committed suicide at 5:00 AM that day.  And speaking of uncle ghosts, on the next page we read that "a woman, in excellent health and under absolutely normal conditions for observation, saw her uncle appear, for several minutes, seven hours after his death, which she did not know of." We read the following:

"The same phantom rose before her. 'But Uncle, why have you come here? Are you dead?' The apparition vanished immediately after Madame de Lagenest had uttered these words."

On page 153-154 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have this account by a C. H. of a man in Montbeliard who learned of someone's death many miles away in Haute-Loire, by seeing the man's apparition:

"On a certain evening of the year 1888, my son-in-law, who was living in Haute-Loire, appeared to me. It was about eleven o'clock, and I was thoroughly awake. On the following day I learned that he had died on the morning of the previous day, at eleven o'clock. It is noteworthy that I had no reason to believe him ill, and that he died suddenly."

On pages 169-170 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have this first-hand account by Jules Lermina:

"I explained to him that my cousin had arrived, and even added that he was doubtless hiding, to tease me. But my father answered: 'It's impossible for Wenand to be here! He died yesterday. I didn't want to tell you.' In short, I saw a person who had been dead for twenty-four hours, and spoke to him."

On page 182 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have this first-hand account by a Princess de Montarcy:

"My grandmother had always said to me, 'If you're not 
with me when I die, I 'll let you know I 'm dead.'... That same evening I went to bed at seven o'clock. At nine o'clock my little dog jumped up on my bed, howling as if he were being killed. I looked and saw (the lamp was lighted) at the foot of my bed, my grandmother, just as I had seen her last, but pale. She threw me a kiss, and disappeared. The following morning, at seven o'clock, I was brought a telegram announcing that she had died between eight and nine in the evening."

On page 202 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have this first-hand account by G. Bloche:

"My aunt was busy piling up wood in the kitchen. Suddenly I beard her utter a terrible cry. Terrified, she came into the room, and said, weeping: 'My sister Hannah is dead! She appeared to me behind the sticks of wood, dressed all in white!' As a matter of fact, this sister, who lived in Grussenheim, a village about twenty kilometers from ours, had died some days previously." 

Apparitions don't always appear as moving phantoms. Sometimes an apparition will appear as if it were designed to tell someone of a death. An example of this occurs on  page 202-203 of Death and Its Mystery: After Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, where we have this first-hand account by Lord Beresford:

"It was in the spring of 1864; I was on board the frigate Raccoon on its way from Gibraltar to Marseilles. I had to go down into my cabin to get my pipe. Inside the cabin I saw a coffin in which my father was lying; I saw this as distinctly as if it had been real! I was deeply impressed, and at once told my companions what had happened; they were seated near there, between the cannon, talking. I also told the ship's chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Onslow. In a few days we reached Marseilles, and there I learned of my father's death; he had been buried on the same day and at the same time at which he had appeared to me (half -past twelve). I must add that at the moment of the apparition there was splendid weather, and that I was feeling no uneasiness as to my father, having recently received reassuring news as to his improved health."

On Page 21-22 of Volume 15 of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, we read the following account:

"A case reported by M. Belbeder of the 6th Colonial regiment 
is similar...He had been in bed for about half an hour, and had 
just read his paper, and put out his candle, when, at the corner 
of the mantelpiece which was opposite the bed, he saw a white and transparent mist gradually detach itself, advance toward the bed and bend over him. Belbeder states that he clearly heard it say : 'Always be a friend to my son.' The misty form then retired slowly as it came. ' I clearly recognized,' adds the soldier, 'the mother of one of my best friends, whom I had left in the best of health. When I returned home, I was very surprised to learn that she had died just on the day when I saw the apparition, an hour or two before it approached my bed.' "

Finally let us consider a case discussed in a paper entitled "A Daylight Interview with a Man Recently Dead" by Charles Whitby M.D, found on pages 321-323 of Volume 7 of the Annals of Psychical Research (1908).  One day an ailing John H. met his employer Mr. P. by chance on a tram car. Mr P. stated that about a week later at about 10:30 AM he met John H. while crossing a bridge.  The figure Mr. P. met referred to the previous meeting between the two, and said he was worried about what would happen to his children if he died.  John H. got word from Mr. P. that he would interest himself in the welfare of John H's children. About an hour later Mr. P. mentioned meeting John H. on the bridge at about 10:30. He was told this was impossible, because John H. had died that very morning, at 9:15.  It was later learned that the dying John H. "in his last moments had expressed a very strong desire to see Mr. P."