A recent scientific study "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" gives us two cases of what we may call veridical out-of-body experiences. We read this:
"Participant 5 described an out-of-body experience where she visited the hospital to see her aunt in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The following day, upon visiting the hospital in reality, she was deeply surprised to find that the hallway, the door, and the ICU where her aunt was located were exactly as she had seen during the OBE. Participant 10 reported that during her OBE, she visited a village in Scotland. As she flew in, she observed a bridge and a specific landscape, and upon 'landing' in the village, she noticed the village's name. Later, she confirmed on a map that both the river and the village existed."
Many similar cases of veridical out-of-body experiences can be read in my post here, where we read many cases of people who seemed to learn about some details of physical reality during an out-of-body experience, with the details later being confirmed through regular observation. The authors of the "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" paper erroneously state this:
"Given the complexity and subjective nature of OBEs, analyzing and explaining them within the scientific paradigm is an extremely complex task. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first publications on this phenomenon appeared in parapsychology journals (Alvarado, 1982; De Foe et al., 2013; Irwin, 2000)."
To the contrary, out-of-body experiences were thoroughly documented in many publications much earlier than 1982. Reports of out-of-body experiences date back to 1845. Let us look at some of the earliest writings on this topic.
One of the earliest out-of-body experience ever recorded in a first person account was the account given on pages 44-47 of the 1864 book Incidents in My Life by Daniel Dunglas Home.
Here are some excerpts from a much longer account by Home:
"One evening I had been pondering deeply on that change which the world calls death, and on the eternity that lies beyond, until wearied I found relief in prayer, and then ill sleep. My last waking consciousness had been that of perfect trust in God, and a sense of gratitude to Him for the enjoyment I received from contemplating the beauties of the material creation. It might have been that my mind was led to this by the fact of my having watched a beautiful star as it shone and twinkled in the profound stillness of the night. Be this as it may, it appeared to me that, as I closed my eyes to earthly things, an inner perception was quickened within me, till at last reason was as active as when I was awake. I, with vivid distinctness, remember asking myself the question, whether I was asleep or no? when, to my amazement, I heard a voice which seemed so natural, that my heart bounded with joy as I recognised it as the voice of one, who while on earth was far too pure for such a world as ours, and who, in passing to that brighter home had promised to watch over and protect me. And, although I well knew she would do so, it was the first time I had heard her voice, with that nearness and natural tone. She said, ' Fear not, Daniel, I am near you ; the vision you are about to have is that of death, yet you will not die. Your spirit must again return to the body in a few hours. Trust in God and his good angels : all will be well.'...I was at this instant brought to a consciousness of light, by seeing the whole of my nervous system, as it were, composed of thousands of electrical scintillations, which here and there, as in the created nerve, took the form of currents, darting their rayons over the whole body in a manner most marvellous ; still this was but a cold electrical light and besides, it was external. Gradually, however, I saw that the extremities were less luminous, and the finer membranes' surrounding the brain became as it were glowing, and I felt that thought and action were no longer connected with the earthly tenement, but that they were in a spirit-body in every respect similar to the body which I knew to have been mine, and which I now saw lying motionless before me on the bed. The only link which held the two forms together seemed to be a silvery-like light, which proceeded from the brain ; and, as if it were a response to my earlier waking thoughts, the same voice, only that it was now more musical than before, said, 'Death is but a second birth, corresponding in every respect to the natural birth, and should the uniting link now be severed, you could never again enter the body.' "
The long account might be dismissed as some fantasy, but it actually holds high credibility, coming from a witness of unblemished integrity, who very many reported as levitating during seances, with the witness passing with flying colors an investigation by the world-class scientist William Crookes, as described here.
On page 67 of the February 9, 1877 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account that should interest those who study near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. We have an account by William Q. Judge claiming that he was able to willfully produce out-of-body experiences or telepathic interactions with others. He states this:
"In my sleep at night, through intense desire and will, I have gone long distances. Once, while down in New Jersey, sixty miles from here, I have come up to this city, and been visible to friends in Mdme. Blavatsky’s house. To her house in spirit I have frequently gone.....Now here I have to take the evidence of others. They say that while my body snored, my double, or simulacrum...or whatever you may name it—that is, a visible counterfeit presentment of me—could be seen walking down the passage to the kitchen.... And now as to another kind of experiment. The projection of my mind upon others seemed a good thing to try. Accordingly, I seized every chance that presented itself, and success often rewarded me. Many times have one or two persons whom I had not previously mesmerised been perfectly aware that even from a distance I was directing my mind upon them, and I have often compelled my child to do certain little things by only looking at her, and mentally commanding the things to be done....A man owed me some money, and failed to pay as agreed. One day, resolved to compel him, I stood up, and for fifteen minutes directing myself to wherever he might then be, I commanded him violently, as it were, to come down and pay a certain part of it. The next day he came in and paid that sum; and, on questioning him, it appeared that at the time I tried the experiment, he suddenly thought of me, went out to collect a bill in order to pay me, and succeeded."
In an 1892 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume VIII, page 196), we have an account by L. J. Bertrand of an out-of-body experience he had 30 years earlier. He states this:
" 'Well,' thought I, 'at last I am what they call a dead man, and here I am, a ball of air in the air, a captive balloon still attached to earth by a kind of elastic string and going up and always up. How strange ! I see better than ever, and I am dead—only a small space in the space without a body ! . . . Where is my last body ? Looking down, I was astounded to recognise my own envelope. ' Strange ! ' said I to myself. 'There is the corpse in which I lived and which I called me, as if the coat were the body, as if the body were the soul ! What a horrid thing is that body ! —deadly pale, with a yellowish-blue colour, holding a cigar in its mouth and a match in its two burned fingers ! Well, I hope that you shall never smoke again, dirty rag ! Ah ! if only I had a hand and scissors to cut the thread which ties me still to it."
The report of something like an elastic string or elastic band connecting the body and a kind of astral body or spirit body floating above the physical body is one that would reappear many times in future accounts of out-of-body experiences.
One of the earliest reports of an out-of-body experience is an 1899 report made by a Dr. Wiltse. According to the page here, the account "was printed in the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal, November, 1889, and in the Mid-Continental Review, February, 1890." The account is quoted at length in my post here, which quotes from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research edition here (Volume 8, page 180, from the year 1892). We have in the account quite a few of the classic aspects of out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences.
On page 288 of the July, 1894 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which can be read here, a witness reported being an observer above his own body, with an "elastic force" preventing him from floating too far away from his body. He reported he could not rise higher than "two yards" above his body. On page 34 of the January 17, 1903 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here, George Wyld MD describes having an out-of-body experience in which his "soul-form" was "six or seven feet" above his body.
On pages 254 to 255 of the 1895 book Brown Studies by George H. Hepworth, we have a description of an out-of-body experience, one that includes an account of being able to pass through matter. We read this:
"While sitting with my right hand resting on the arm of the chair I seemed to step out of my body, and stand beside it, looking upon it with mingled curiosity and astonishment. I felt as light as air, and said to myself, 'This must be what St. Paul calls the spiritual body.' It is true that I looked on what sat in the chair with a kind of tenderness, but the sense of freedom which I soon became conscious of was almost ecstatic, and it seemed as though I would not go back into those narrow quarters again for worlds. The body was so clumsy, so heavy, so uncomely, so uncouth and ungraceful, while this other body, on the contrary, was a delight, a dream, a poem....I moved away from my body toward the door, thinking to open it and go out into the starlight ; but to my surprise I found that the door was no obstruction whatever. I simply passed through it as the sun's rays pass through a pane of glass."
Around the time of about 1900 there appeared some newspaper accounts describing out-of-body experiences. You can read about them in my post here. In a 1901 newspaper article you can read this reference to out-of-body experiences:
"The. theory which Count de Rochas puts forth after ten years' investigation is that a subject under hypnotic influence can exteriorize the astral body, make it depart a certain distance from the material body, and when the air is grasped, as one would grasp an arm where the astral body is, it will be felt in the material or physical. It has been verified by eminent seers that the breath of this projection or astral-body carries sensibility with it."
In the very interesting 1907 book The Psychic Riddle by Isaac Funk (the same Funk of the famous Funk and Wagnall's dictionary), we read this account on pages 179 to 184 by a person who Funk tells is a " well-known gentleman in New York, a man whose veracity would be questioned by no one who knows him, a physician of standing, also an editor and publisher of reputation." We read this account:
"As the movement continued upward, all at once there came a flashing of lights in my eyes and a ringing in my ears, and it seemed for an instant as tho I had become unconscious. When I came out of this state, I seemed to be walking in the air. No words can describe the exhilaration and freedom that I experienced. No words can describe the clearness of mental vision. At no time in my life had my mind been so clear or so free. Just then I thought of a friend who was more than a thousand miles distant. Then I seemed to be traveling with great rapidity through the atmosphere about me. Everything was light, and yet it was not the light of the day or the sun, but, I might say, a peculiar light of its own, such as I had never known. It could not have been a minute after I thought of my friend before I was conscious of standing in a room where the gas-jets were turned up, and my friend was standing with his back toward me, but suddenly turning and seeing me, said, 'What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Florida,' and he started to come toward me. While I heard the words distinctly, I was unable to answer. An instant later I was gone, and the consciousness of the things that transpired that memorable night will never be forgotten. I seemed to leave the earth, and everything pertaining to it, and enter a condition of life of which it is absolutely impossible to give here any thought I had concerning it, because there was no correspondence to anything I had ever seen or heard or known of in any way. The wonder and the joy of it was unspeakable, and I can readily understand now what Paul meant when he said, 'I knew a man, whether in the body or out of it I know not, who was caught up to the third heaven, and there saw things which it is not possible (lawful) to utter.'...I may add here that the friend referred to having been seen by me that night was also distinctly conscious of my presence and made the exclamation mentioned. We both wrote the next day and relating the experiences of the night, and the letters corroborating the incident crossed in the post....If the whole world was to rise up and say that there was no life after one left the physical organism, it would not make one particle of difference in my mind, as I am absolutely certain that I have been as free from my physical body as l ever will be, and that my life apart from it was far more wonderful than any life I have ever experienced in it."
In the article "Astral Excursions" by Franz Hartmann MD, which appears on page 159 of the March 1908 Occult Review, which can be read here, Hartmann describes an out-of-body experience. He says that during this experience "when I tried to lift one of the instruments on a little table next to the chair, I could not do so, as my fingers passed through it."
On page 480 of the October 7, 1911 edition of the journal Light, we read Mary Hamilton state this:
"The articles on ‘ Bilocation’ have been very interesting to me, and I think with ‘B. C. W' that this phase of mediumship ought to be studied, for it is undoubtedly a form of mediumship, and in my own case I have had so many experiences of this kind that I never think of the physical body as myself. It is difficult to write on this matter, but I have been shown how the body is linked to the spiritual and sustained by it just as simply and naturally as the unborn child is by the mother. I have stood by my body fully conscious and been given this lesson by an Egyptian friend just as naturally as a teacher in the body could give it, and I have been overjoyed at the beauty and order of all things spiritual."
On the previous page of the same edition, we have a letter by Vincent N. Turvey of "Marrington, Branksome Park, Bournemouth." He quotes an account of an experience he had that could be an out-of-body experience. But the wording is too vague for us to tell whether what is going is an out-of-body experience or telepathy or clairvoyance.
An important fact for anyone researching for the earliest literature on this topic is that before the phrase "out-of-body experience" became widely used, it was more common to use the slightly different phrase "out-of-the-body experience." Anyone searching for the earliest literature needs to search for all of these terms:
- Out-of-body experience
- Out-of-the-body experience
- Astral journey (an early term for an out-of-body experience)
- Astral projection (a term meaning a willfully produced out-of-body experience)
- Bilocation (a term meaning to be in two places at once, one sometimes used to describe a soul existing in a spot outside of the body)
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