In 1896 a newspaper published the very interesting news article below (which you can read here). You might call this a case of precognitive amnesia. I have never heard before of that combination.
In the article above (in the area I highlighted in red) we read this astonishing claim about Franklin Hart developing an extraordinary power after he tried to kill himself by gassing himself:
" 'While Franklin's physical condition is
so good that he will be able to leave the
hospital in a day or two,' writes Hart,
'his mental state startles me. His mental
vision is supernaturally perspective [i.e. precognitive ], instead of being retrospective, and the physicians here tell me that there is no
parallel case on record in any part of the
civilized globe. They claim that the
phenomenon demonstrated in my son's
mentality is one of the many hidden
forces in human nature. In ordinary conversation
Franklin is as lucid as ever, yet it is difficult for him to recall past events without hard study. For instance, when I referred to his Portland visit and his departure from there, it took him two days to recall the more important events, as they had altogether passed from his memory since the almost tragic affair at the Palmer House."
"The writer adds that the phenomenon in his son's mind consists of his mental anticipation of events as, for instance, the day prior to Mr. Hart's arrival in Chicago Franklin repeated almost verbatim to the doctor attending him the conversation he had with his father eight hours later. The singular and unheard-of metamorphosis of young Hart's mental vision consists of its power to read all manner of events, even of the most trifling import, forty-eight hours in advance, with the same distinct clearness that the healthy, normal mind conjures up the past."
Not many years earlier, another source had used the same "mental vision" phrase we read in the quote above. On page 205 of the 1888 Revue Philsophique which you can read here, we have an article entitled "MENTAL VISION OR DOUBLE SIGHT IN INDUCED AND SPONTANEOUS SLEEPWALKING." The article by a Dr. Dufay is about clairvoyance in someone while that person is in a hypnotic trance. Such a phenomenon was very widely reported during the 19th century. The account is in French, but I used Google Translate to produce the translations below.
On page 209 we have an account of a woman named Marie who seems to have clairvoyant powers. We read of a strange power of this Marie, a type of medical clairvoyance she had under hypnosis. In the passage "put Marie to sleep" the author refers to hypnotizing someone:
"Dr. Girault had several times witnessed me perform very curious experiments on this girl, whom he magnetized [hypnotized] almost every day. When he was called to the countryside, he would put Marie to sleep before leaving and question her about the condition of the patient he was going to visit, so that, he said, he knew positively—let's just say approximately—what medications he should take with him."
On the same page and the next page we read that this Marie seemed to know through hypnotic clairvoyance of the death of a person whose death was unknown to her through normal means. The reference to "the sleepwalker" is a reference to Marie while she was in a hypnotic trance. We read this:
"Then, with the speed of lightning, the comedy turned into drama: the poor sleepwalker was overcome with suffocation, her tears flowed, a cold sweat wet her forehead, and she called Mr. Girault for help.
'What's the matter with you, Marie?... What's your pain, my daughter?'
'Ah! sir... Ah! sir... How awful! He's dead!'
'Who's dead? Is it one of my patients?'
'The son of Father Limoges, the ropemaker... you know... In Crimea... He's just died. Poor people! Poor people!'
'Come, come, my child, pull yourself together; it's no doubt a dream, a bad dream you've had.'
'A dream!... But I'm not asleep [that's the pretension of all sleepwalkers]. I see him... He's just breathed his last... Poor boy! Look at him.'
And her eyes wandered to a point in the apartment she pointed to with her hand. She wanted to flee, but, barely getting up from her chair, she fell back, her legs unable to support her.
It took a long time for calm to return, and when M. Girault woke Marie, she was still in the grip of a great malaise... which she attributed to indigestion, having no memory of what had happened.
What had she suddenly thought of the young soldier about? It was known in the village that the father was worried; he had no news of his son. Was she concerned about him out of sympathy for the family, or out of a more tender feeling that the idea of Mademoiselle de S.'s marriage would have rekindled in her at that moment?
In any case, Father Limoges was informed some time later of his son's death, which had occurred in Dalmate (was that the name of a French ambulance?) near Constantinople, on June 15, 1855, that is, the very day Marie had had the vision.
This recalls the account of Gregory of Tours, according to which Saint Ambrose, having fallen asleep while saying Mass in the church of Milan, dreamed that Saint Martin had just died in Tours, which happened precisely on that day, and at the hour of Mass."
On page 211 we read that the same Marie was subjected to tests in which she was asked to tell the contents of sealed envelopes. The author (Dr. Dufay) says he took an envelope containing a letter from a military man telling of his dysentery illness; and the author says he put the letter back in the envelope, and enclosed that envelope inside another envelope. We read this:
"The ten or twelve people gathered in Mrs. D.'s living room were stunned by what they had just seen. The sleepwalker [Marie] had unmistakably recognized the contents of several packages they had prepared themselves, as I had done. But I left mine in my pocket to avoid the monotony of the experiments, merely slipping my letter into the hand of one of the assistants, signaling to her to pass it to Mr. Girault. He received it without knowing it came from me, and placed it in Marie's hands.
I didn't note whether her eyes were open or closed, but that, as you can imagine, was of no importance in such a case.
'What do you have in your hand?' asked Dr. Girault.
'A letter.'
'To whom was it addressed?'
'To Mr. Dufay.'
'By whom?'
'By a military gentleman I don't know.'
'What is he talking about in his letter, this military gentleman?'
'He's sick; he's talking about his illness.'
'Is it an illness you could name?'
'Oh! Yes, very well;... it's like the old woodcutter's in Mesland, which hasn't yet subsided...'
'Very well, very well, I understand,... dysentery. Listen, Marie, I think you would give Mr. Dufay great pleasure if you went to see his friend the officer, to bring him back some reliable news.'"
Marie seemed to have correctly identified that the double sealed letter was from a military man with dysentery.
On later pages (pages 213 and 214) we read of a man who was accused of murder, and who committed suicide in prison, hanging himself with his own tie. The article author (Dufay) says he took the tie, and wrapped it in several sheets of paper, giving it to Marie. She correctly identified the package as containing something that was used to kill a man, and that the package contained a tie. She also said the person who was killed by the contents was someone who threw his murder weapon at a particular spot in a pond. A search revealed a matching weapon at that spot.
On page 215 in the same article we read of an extraordinary sleepwalker named Janicaud Théophile. We read in the next pages that Janicaud seemed to make clairvoyant mind trips in which he found out little details about distant persons that were only later verified as true. For example, on page 217 we read this:
"The following night, he said that he saw on the road to Glény the body of a man who had drowned while bathing in the Creuse, and that he was being brought back to Guéret in a car. The next morning I went to check the news and learned that a resident of the town had indeed drowned the day before in Glény and that his body had been brought back to Guéret during the night. However, no one in the establishment, or even in the town, had been aware of this accident the day before."
The accounts of Marie's ability to detect the contents of sealed packages and sealed envelopes is similar to many accounts in the literature of parapsychology, documenting such a skill in others such as Alexis Didier. You can read many similar accounts in my posts here and here and here. To read many posts discussing accounts of apparitions that seemed to act like a death notification, see my series of posts here, continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right.
If the topic of this post interested you, check out my free book "Psychics and Paranormal Phenomena," available on www.archive.org using the link here. Using the native www.archive.org file viewer in single-page mode (after clicking the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer), you can conveniently read the whole book by finger swiping. Scholars who are interested in following the links may prefer to download the book as a PDF file, which will allow opening links by right-clicking on a link.
No comments:
Post a Comment