They Said They Saw a Wife's Apparition

"Banish sternly from your own mind and reject, when asserted by others, the notion that a fact cannot be accepted unless at the same time its existence can be explained. No fallacy has been more fatal to the progress of knowledge than this. The question, ' How can it be ?' must be treated not merely as a folly but as an impertinence. The one question for the honest truth-seeker is — 'Is it ?' "

Edward Cox, The Mechanism of Man

In the interesting book Evidence for a Future Life by Gabrielle Delan, we read an account of a man who claimed to have seen three times the apparition of his deceased wife:

"Under the title True Apparitions of My Wife after Her Death Dr. Waetzel published in 1804 a book which caused a great sensation...During his wife’s illness Waetzel had asked her to appear to him after her death. She promised, but afterwards at her request her husband released her from the promise. However, a few weeks after her death a wind seemed to pass through his room, although the doors were shut; the light was almost put out, a little window in the alcove opened, and in the dim light Waetzel saw the form of his wife, who said to him in a soft voice, ' Charles, I am immortal; one day we shall meet again.'  The apparition appeared a second time and repeated the same words."

In the same book we read on page 176 of a more dramatic case. In seances of the famed medium Kate Fox, a Mr. Livermore repeatedly saw full-body apparitions of his late wife Estella.  We read the following:

"The materialisation of the same figure continued for five years, from 1861 to 1866, during which time Mr. Livermore had 388 seances with the medium Katie Fox, which he made notes of in his journal.... .The materialisation of the figure of Estella was gradual; her husband did not recognise her until the forty-third seance, by means of an intense light, the origin of which was a mystery and which accompanied the phenomenon, and was directed by another figure who assisted in the manifestation. The second apparition called itself Franklin. After this the apparition of Estella became more and more complete, and could at last be seen by the light of a lantern carried by Mr. Livermore. The figure could not speak, except a few words, but the intellectual phenomena which accompanied the manifestation were of a less transitory nature, which gave them additional value. We refer to the numerous communications in writing made by Estella. They were all, to the number of one hundred, received on cards, which Mr. Livermore brought and marked himself. Whilst the apparition wrote Mr. Livermore, holding the hands of Katie Fox, could see perfectly the hand and all the figure of the writer. The handwriting of these communications is a perfect reproduction of that of Mrs. Livermore."

On page 399 of a September 1861 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, we have an account by Mr. Livermore of seeing an apparition of his wife:

"Vigorous rustling was heard, and the light, now very vivid, rose to a height of about three feet above the table (at the side). It was so bright as to illuminate surrounding objects, and as it approached, there seemed a heavy dark substance before it. Reaching a point, about two feet from ray eyes, the dark shadow was lowered, revealing beauty, such as God only, in his infinite goodness and power, could permit those in the flesh to behold. A glimpse of heaven it was, and of an angel, as bright as ever stood before his throne:— the spirit of my wife, a white rose in her hair over the left temple, and her loving eyes smiling inexpressible blessings. She appeared in this manner six or seven times. The perfection of  the appearance was such that every feature, lineament and expression was as complete as a full blaze of light upon a face could make it. A roll or veil surrounded her head, leaving a clear space of about a foot or eighteen inches between it and the hair, and this veil glittered like silver gauze. The whole scene was transcendently beautiful, beyond the power of description. About fifteen minutes afterwards, the light appeared in a corner, illuminating the centre of the room, and a female figure in full proportions stood before us, back towards us, with a veil depending from the head to the feet, of silver gauze, which glittered and shone almost like diamonds when the light struck upon it. I asked if she would raise her arm above her head, and my request was immediately complied with. . No pen can describe the exquisite beauty of what was revealed this night to us. If heaven is half as bright or beautiful, death should have no terrors. This appearance was very much more vivid than any previous manifestation, and each one seems more nearly perfect.”

There follows in the same source a very long account by Livermore in which he claims many apparitions of his wife on many occasions, along with many samples of her handwriting written on cards. 

On page 82 of John Arthur Hill's very interesting book Man Is a Spirit, we have an account of a man who saw an apparition of his wife's spirit, at the time his wife died: 

"It was different light from ordinary daylight. It was much like seeing a person in an exceedingly bright, powerful white light made by some burning gas. The figure was erect or standing, apparently about eight feet or a little less away...The face of the spirit was more beautiful and glorious than anything I have ever seen on earth....There was one great difference in the face of the spirit, or rather, two differences between the face of the spirit and her face when alive. The spirit looked younger by twenty years. Instead of the poor, frail, emaciated face, there was the face of one in health, in the prime of life, and I distinctly saw a rosy colour in the cheeks...The being or spirit seemed to vanish as a cloud of smoke from my cigar vanishes or grows thin and invisible in the air." 

In the September 1861 edition of The Spiritualist magazine, page 385, we hear of a Dr. John F. Gray, who supposedly had "the largest practice of any physician in New York."  Dr. Gray supplies this account from a friend who claims to have seen an apparition of his wife:

"A globular light rose up from the floor behind me, and as it became brighter a face, surmounted by a crown, was distinctly seen by the medium and myself. Next, the head appeared, as if covered with a white veil: this was withdrawn after the figure had risen some feet higher, and I recognised unmistakeably the full head and face of my wife, surrounded by a semi-circle of light about 18 inches in diameter. The recognition was complete, derived alike from the features and her natural expression. The globe of light was then raised, and a female hand held before it was distinctly visible. Each of these manifestations was repeated several times, as if to leave no doubt in our minds. Now the figure, coming lower down and turning its head, displayed falling over the globe of light, long flowing hairy which even in its shade of colour, appeared like the natural tresses of my wife, and like hers was unusually luxuriant."

Later on page 387 the same source states, " The table was lifted from the floor, the door violently shaken, the window-sash raised and shut several times, and in fact, everything moveable in the room seemed in motion."

Aeneas and the ghost of his wife

This year a man confessed to the police that he had killed his wife, and claimed that he was haunted by the apparition of his wife, who urged him to confess. According to www.encyclopedia.com, a Frenchman named Mallebranche and his new wife heard voices coming from the man's earlier wife, who had died five years earlier. At one reference site, we read the following account:

"The story of Rev. Russell H. Conwell, founder of Philadelphia’s Temple University, is given in the Reader’s Digest book Quest For the Unknown—Life Beyond Death. Shortly after his wife’s death in the early 1900s, Conwell would see his deceased wife standing at the foot of his bed every morning. He said that she seemed completely real and solid and that she even spoke to him. He decided to put the apparition to a few tests. He asked it where his army discharge papers were kept. The figure answered correctly. Then he had his housemaid hide a pen, without telling him where. The next day the apparition of his wife told him, correctly, where it had been placed."

In the very interesting book Life Now and Forever by A. J. Wills, which includes many a fascinating tale, we read the following account by the author regarding an apparition of his deceased wife:

"I keep my bedroom pitch dark and have a habit of awakening from 3 to 4 a.m., which is a usual time for me to get, at rare intervals, some wonderful manifestations. Once, in particular, my wife appeared and kissed me (the touch as gentle as a rose petal) and I saw (by the luminous, silky, gauze-like cloud surrounding her, white as snow and with a beautiful sheen of its own) that columns of mist, about the size of an average person, were arranged in a circle around my bed with two- to three-feet intervals of space between."

The photo here shows a newspaper account of a most unusual case of a person seeing an apparition of his wife. A man named John Bradley claimed to have seen an apparition of his living wife in a field, an apparition that vanished. Going home, he saw his wife at home doing housework. The man took this as a sign that he would die soon, and he did die two months later.  

The case is one of one of quite a few cases in which a "double" of a living person is reported.  Some offer the explanation that humans have a physical body and a spirit body that may appear as a double of the physical body. It is claimed that very rarely the two may separate, allowing someone to see an apparition of someone at a spot where the physical body did not exist.  On page 40-43 of his book Death and Its Mystery:At The Moment of Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have an astonishing case of such a sighting of a "double."  According to Flammarion's account, 13 girls saw an apparition of a school teacher named Emilie Sagee, right next to her physical form, so that there was "one beside the other." "They were exactly alike, and going through the same movements," according to Flammarion, who states, "All the young girls, without exception, had seen the second form, and agreed perfectly in their description of the phenomenon."   Later, according to his account, 42 pupils saw a "double" of Sagee in a school at the same time Sagee was also observed picking flowers in a garden -- as if there were two copies of Emilie Sagee. According to the pupils, the double "gradually vanished."

In a long fascinating 1959 article in McCleans magazine, we have a discussion of quite a few cases of out-of-the-body experiences, some of which are referred to as "autoscopy."  There is also a discussion of some cases of people seeing a double of themselves.  Here is one such account: 

"A retired schoolteacher in England said she first saw her double when she returned from the cemetery after her husband’s funeral. It was waiting for her in her darkened bedroom. Dimly conscious of an intruder, the teacher said, she reached up with her right hand to switch on the electric light. The intruder made the same movement with her left hand. The hands seemed to meet, not with a touch but with a chill, numbing sense of the blood running out. Under the light the double was revealed to her dressed in identical widow's weeds, and it seemed to mimic her every movement. The schoolteacher was suddenly and overwhelmingly drained of feeling and emotion, unbearably sleepy. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. Almost at once she seemed to feel life seeping back into her and when she opened her eyes again the double was gone. But it returned the next day at dusk, and almost every day after that. The doctor who examined her could find no sign of organic disease or any other disorder beyond 'a mildly obsessional and worrying type of personality, with a tendency to depressive moods.' "

Apparently a recurring vision of a double of the self also was experienced by a famous writer, for in the article we read this: 

"De Maupassant, the French novelist, once asked a friend, 'How would you feel if you had to go through what I experience? Almost every time when I return home I see my double. I open the door and see myself sitting in the armchair.' "

The article also has an account of an architect who reported seeing his double five times in the year before he suddenly died in a tram accident.  We are reminded of the previously mentioned case of John Bradley, who saw a double of his wife not long before he died.  It seems that if you ever see a double, your chance of living decades longer may not be very good. 

Postscript: A Lord Lindsay testified to having seen an apparition of Daniel Dunglas Home's wife:

"A few minutes after, I saw an apparition which seemed like a column of vapour or an indistinct shadow, which grew gradually into a definite shape, and I then saw the form of a woman standing en profile to me. She stood between me and Home, I saw the features plainly, and should have recognised them again anywhere. She seemed to be attired in a long flowing gown which hung without belt from the shoulders. The figure seemed quite solid, I could not see through it, I spoke to Home, he said he saw her distinctly, and that it was the apparition of his late wife ; she often came to him. She moved and stood by his side. She then walked to the right of the bed and rather behind it, but not out of my sight, and then slowly faded away like a column of vapour. The next morning I found an album, and on looking over the pictures carelessly, I saw a photograph exactly like the figure I had seen. Mrs, Jencken said it was the likeness of the late Mrs. Home."