In 1891 Samuel Clemens (using his famous pen name of Mark Twain) published an article in Harper's Magazine entitled "Mental Telegraphy: A Manuscript With a History." In the article (which you can read here) Clemens suggested that he would often seem to get a "crossing of letters" effect in which he would write someone, only to get a letter from the same person, too soon to be a reply to his letter. Clemens then discusses what he calls "the oddest thing that ever happened to me." He describes having a detailed idea for a book:
"Two or three years ago I was lying in bed, idly musing, one morning—it was the 2d of March when suddenly a red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp, and exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness as to sweep the vicinity clean of rub- bishy reflections, and fill the air with their dust and flying fragments. This idea, stated in simple phrase, was that the time was ripe and the market ready for a certain book; a book which ought to be written at once; a book which must command attention and be of peculiar interest—to wit, a book about the Nevada silver mines. The 'Great Bonanza' was a new wonder then, and everybody was talking about it. It seemed to me that the person best qualified to write this book was Mr. William H. Wright, a journalist of Virginia, Nevada, by whose side I had scribbled many months when I was a reporter there ten or twelve years before. He might be alive still; he might be dead; I could not tell; but I would write him, anyway. I began by merely and modestly suggesting that he make such a book; but my interest grew as I went on, and I ventured to map out what I thought ought to be the plan of the work, he being an old friend, and not given to taking good intentions for ill. I even dealt with details, and suggested the order and sequence which they should follow. I was about to put the manuscript in an envelope, when the thought occurred to me that if this book should be written at my suggestion, and then no publisher happened to want it, I should feel uncomfortable; so I concluded to keep my letter back until I should have secured a publisher."
A short time later, Clemens performed a feat that must have seemed like magic to the relative who witnessed it. He describes the feat as follows:
"On the 9th of March the postman brought three or four letters, and among them a thick one whose superscription was in a hand which seemed dimly familiar to me. I could not 'place' it at first, but presently I succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was present: 'Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this letter contains—date, signature, and all—without breaking the seal. It is from a Mr. Wright, of Virginia, Nevada, and is dated the 2d of March—seven days ago. Mr. Wright proposes to make a book about the silver mines and the Great Bonanza, and asks what I, as a friend, think of the idea, He says his subjects are to be so and so, their order and sequence so and so, and he will close with a history of the chief feature of the book, the Great Bonanza.' I opened the letter, and showed that I had stated the date and the contents correctly. Mr. Wright’s letter simply contained what my own letter, written on the same date, contained, and mine still lay in its pigeon-hole, where it had been lying during the seven days since it was written."
Clemens states that this was not clairvoyance, because he did not actually see inside the envelope the way many clairvoyants have seemed to do. Clemens might have been guessing, based on his previous experience with "crossed letters" in which he would get a letter from someone he had just written, before the person had even received his letter. But there seems to have been far more than guesswork involved. Even if you completely discard the statements that Clemens made to his visiting relative, you have the fact that Mr. Wright and Clemens seems to have had on the same day the same unlikely plan for writing a book -- a specific plan about writing a book dealing with silver mining in Nevada, with both of them thinking to write each other, although they both were distant, and both had not spoken in about eleven years.
Clemens writes the following:
"Chance might have duplicated one or two of the details, but she would have broken down on the rest. I could not doubt— there was no tenable reason for doubting — that Mr. Wright's mind and mine had been in close and crystal-clear communication with each other across three thousand miles ot mountain and desert on the morning of the 2nd of March. I did not consider that both minds originated that succession of ideas, but that one mind originated them, and simply telegraphed them to the other. I was curious to know which brain was the telegrapher and which the receiver, so I wrote and asked for particulars. Mr. Wright's reply showed that his mind had done the originating and telegraphing and mine the receiving."
Later Clemens tells us the idea for writing the book about silver mining in Nevada was one that was foreign to him, and rather seems to have poured into his mind on the same day and the same time as Mr. Wright wrote his letter to Clemens. Clemens states this:
"A word more as to Mr. Wright. He had had his book in his mind some time; consequently he, and not I, had originated the idea of it. The subject was entirely foreign to my thoughts; I was wholly absorbed in other things. Yet this friend, whom I had not seen and had hardly thought of for eleven years, was able to shoot his thoughts at me across three thousand miles of country, and fill my head with them, to the exclusion of every other interest, in a single moment. He had begun his letter after finishing his work on the morning paper—a little after three o'clock, he said. When it was three in the morning in Nevada it was about six in Hartford, where I lay awake thinking about nothing in particular; and just about that time his ideas came pouring into my head from across the continent, and I got up and put them on paper, under the impression that they were my own original thoughts....I am forced to believe that one human mind (still inhabiting the flesh) can communicate with another, over any sort of a distance, and without any artificial preparation of ‘'sympathetic conditions' to act asa transmitting agent."
A similar story of "crossed letters" (also strongly suggesting telepathy) is told by another author:
"The London Spectator for Christmas, 1881, contains an interesting story by A. J. Duffield, of thought transference. The gist of this story is that a Mr. Strong went to Lake Superior and became foreman of the Franklin copper mine. He fell sick and would have died but for the care of a lady whose husband was a director of the mining company. She had him carried to her own house, and nursed him with kindest care until he recovered. Seven years after this event, when he had drifted away from the mines, he was sitting by himself one evening when he suddenly saw this kind lady in a room with nothing in it, no fire, no food. She was calm and quiet, with the same face she had when she nursed him in the fever. He thereby was made deeply conscious that she was in distress, and sent her a most liberal amount of money by mail. The day after he received a letter from the lady, saying that her husband was sick, and that they were in great suffering, and asking for aid."
Later in the essay, Clemens tells a story about another wonder of correctly guessing the contents of a sealed letter:
"But here are two or three incidents which come strictly under the head of mind-telegraphing. One Monday morning, about a year ago, the mail came in, and I picked up one of the letters and said to a friend: ‘ Without opening this letter I will tell you what it says. It is from Mrs. ----,and she says she was in New York last Saturday, and was purposing to run up here in the afternoon train and surprise us, but at the last moment changed her mind and returned westward to her home.' I was right; my details were exactly correct. Yet we had had no suspicion that Mrs. ---- was coming to New York, or that she had even a remote intention of visiting us."
Later Clemens tells an account in which it seemed that someone else next to him had read his mind:
"One day last summer, when our family had been away from home several months, I said to a member of the household:
‘ Now, with all this long holiday, and nothing in the way to interrupt—'
‘I can finish the sentence for you,' said the member of the household.
‘ Do it, then,' said I.
‘“George ought to be able, by practising, to learn to let those matches alone.”
It was correctly done. That was what I was going to say. Yet until that moment George and the matches had not been in my mind for three months, and it is plain that the part of the sentence which I uttered offers not the least cue or suggestion of what I was purposing to follow it with."
Later Clemens describes an equally dramatic experience that also seemed like someone pulling out a thought hidden in his mind. He tells us this:
"One day last summer I was lying under a tree, thinking about nothing in particular, when an absurd idea flashed into my head, and I said to a member of the household, ' Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and dumb and blind and toothless, and just as I was gasping out what was left of me on my death-bed—'
‘ Wait, I will finish the sentence,' said the member of the household.
‘Go on,' said I.
‘Somebody should rush in with a document, and say, ‘All the other heirs are dead, and you are the Earl of Durham!'
That is truly what I was going to say. Yet until that moment the subject had not entered my mind or been referred to in my hearing for months before. A few years ago this thing would have astounded me, but the like could not much sur prise me now, though it happened every week; for I think I know now that mind can communicate accurately with mind without che aid of the slow and clumsy vehicle of speech."
I have had experiences as suggestive of telepathy as the experiences described above. I will quote from my long post "Spookiest Observations: A Deluxe Narrative":
"I was at the Queens Zoo in New York City with my two daughters (teenagers at this time). We were looking at a feline animal called a puma, which we could see distantly, far behind a plastic barrier. Suddenly (oddly enough) I had a recollection of a time about 10 years earlier when I and my daughters saw a gorilla just behind a plastic barrier, at the zoo at Busch Gardens in Florida. About three seconds later (before I said anything), my younger daughter said, 'Do you remember that gorilla we saw close-up in Busch Gardens?' I was flabbergasted. It was as if there was telepathy going on. The incident seems all the more amazing when you consider that teenagers live very much in the present or the near future, and virtually never talk about unimportant things that happened 10 years ago. There was nothing in our field of view that might have caused both of us to have that recollection at the same time. On that zoo visit we hadn't seen a gorilla, nor had we seen any animal near a plastic barrier."
Similarly, once when my daughter was leaving, I had the thought of saying to her, "See you later, alligator" (an expression I have almost never used in my lifetime). But I decided not to say such a thing, thinking she might be offended by being called an alligator. So I merely said, "See you later." My daughter then said, "See you later, alligator" -- an expression I had never heard her use before. A mysterious mental conjunction very much more impressive (lasting many minutes and involving me and my sister) is discussed in my "Spookiest Observations" post you can read here.
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