When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

In five previous posts I discussed cases in which multiple witnesses reported seeing the same apparition. The five posts are below:

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases
More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

Let us look at some more cases in which multiple witnesses reported seeing the same apparition.  In the seances of Eusapia Palladino, which were witnessed by a host of distinguished observers,  there would very often appear an apparition reported by multiple witnesses. The most common occurrence were "spirit hands" reported being seen by very many observers. Palladino would ususally be under what was called "control" during such appearances, meaning that her arms and legs were held by observers determined to prevent such limbs from performing any trickery.  Such "control" was almost irrelevant when apparitions were seen, because no one has a credible theory of how someone at that time (around 1900) surrounded by close observers could have produced hard-to-explain "spirit hands" or other apparitions, even if their limbs were free. 

On page 185 of  Volume 7 of the Annals of Psychical Science (1908), we read a statement by a V. Chartier who held Eusapia's right hand while an M.P. Drubay held her left hand: 

"I am able to affirm, in the most formal and absolute manner, that at the moment when the phenomena of apparition of materialised hands occurred, I held Eusapia 's right hand in my left, and that I did not cease the control for a single instant . .While continuing to watch the apparition, I instinctively grasped more firmly the right hand of Eusapia, which I held in my left hand, resting on the medium's right knee. . . .My neighbour on the right, M. Ebel, also asserted that he saw the materialised hand."

Beside such "spirit hands," sometimes full-body apparitions were seen by multiple observers during sessions with Eusapia Palladino. On page 175 of Volume 7 of the Annals of Psychical Science (1908), we read the following about an apparition seen by multiple witnesses: "A woman of great beauty appeared, who had died two years before...The apparition was perceived by two others present. and returned several times." This could not have been Eusapia herself, who was not beautiful at the time, and apparently could not have been anyone else living, given precautions against fraud taken during such observation sessions. 

On page 440 of volume 5 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,  we have an account of a daughter who saw an apparition of her mother seven days after her mother died.  The apparition was also seen by a nurse, and by the daughter's father. A few pages later in the same volume, we have accounts of an apparition apparently seen by four people at different times. The first person recognized the apparition (a figure in a white dressing gown) as a particular Mrs. X. The other three persons (in the home of Mrs. X) saw the apparition as a woman in white attire or a figure enveloped in white (pages 442-445). 

A 20th century case of an apparition seen by multiple witnesses is reported on page 254 of the book The Gift by Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicke. We read the following (as quoted on page 2 of this paper):

"A woman and her fifteen-year-old daughter had recently moved to California from their previous home in Washington D.C., where they had left the woman’s father very ill. One day not long after moving, they entered the dining room, and to the woman’s great surprise, there stood her father. 'Why Dad, when did you get here?' she exclaimed. At that point, her daughter turned around to look, and she, too, saw the figure of her grandfather, his hand upraised in a gesture of greeting or perhaps blessing, but he slowly faded away, and they both suddenly realized that he was not really in California in their house. Shortly afterward, they received the news that he had died."

Let us now look at some cases when an apparition is seen by many people. One such case is the sighting reported on pages 213-224 of Volume 7 of the Annals of Psychical Science (1908). On page 213 we read this summary of the case:

"Hardly ever before has an apparition been watched by so many witnesses. Among them were several thoughtful and scientificallv-educated men, who carried out the investigation with the greatest exactness and circumspection; and they unanimously came to the conclusion that fraud and deceit must be excluded, the fact of the apparition having been proved undeniably." 

The story begins like this:

"Elisabetha Eslinger, a widow of thirty-nine years of age, from Baurenlautern, was imprisoned in Weinsherg, because of a small offence which was never quite cleared up. Soon afterwards, on Sept. I2th, Diener Mayer reported that the prisoner Eslinger complained of being tormented by a ghost every night."

Soon other people reported seeing the apparition:

"In the night of I7th-I8th Sept., Oberamtsrichter Heyd was with Referendar Burger in Eslinger's prison cell, and they convinced themselves of the reality of the ghostly occurrences. The following night similar manifestations took place at the house of Oheramtsrichter Eckhardt, who had previously asked Eslinger to send the phantom to him. Again, in the course of December, six female and five newly-arrived male prisoners became witnesses of the apparition....Dr. Kerner's son passed the night of Dec. 26th-27th in a cell of the prison, and he, too, perceived the strange phenomena." 

This Dr. Kerner pleaded for an investigation into the phenomenon. As a result, even more witnesses were involved:

"In consequence of this decision, the strange manifestations came under the observation of the following people: Professor Kapff, Kupferstecher Dullenhofer, Maler Wagner, Pfarrer Stookmayer, Rechtsanwalt Frass, Dr. Med. Sicherer, Baron Hugel von Eschenau, Pfarrer Meguin, Dr. Med. Kerner, Dr. Med. Seyffer, Oberamtsrichter Hevd-all of whom found themselves obliged to admit the truth of the occurrences. Besides this most valuable evidence, there is also that of Diener Mayer, of the soldier Krust and of three male prisoners, all of whom during the night of Jan. 13th-14th, 1836 (at a time, therefore, when Eslinger was no longer in the prison), witnessed these ghost-phenomena and bore testimony to them." 

The apparition was apparently not only seen in a prison cell, but also in the houses of multiple people. We read the following:

"On several nights, between Dec. I9th, 1835, and Jan. 28th, 1836, the phantom appeared, invited and uninvited, in far-off houses, even in Heilbronn, which is three-quarters of a German mile distant, and made itself perceptible in the same way as in the prison."

We are given the exact names and dates relating to those who received these "phantom visitations."  We read the following:

"The following are the names of the receivers of these ghost visits : Oberamtsgerichts-Beisitzer Theurer (30-I2-I835). 
Lehrer Neuffer (30-I2-I835), to whom the phantom came by chance; that is to say, on the occasion of another visit it paid in the same house. 

Referendar Burger (30-12-1835 and I3-I-1836), to whom the phantom showed himself twice by request. 

Burger Kumel and his son. Landschaftsmaler Dorr, at Heilbronn (29-I2-I835)·

 Professor Kapff, at Heilbronn, to whom the phantom came four times uninvited. 

Baron Hugel von Eschenau. Dr. Kerner, at whose house it often appeared in order to convince Kerner's wife and sister-in-law (Dec. 19, 21, 26, 1835; Jan. 20, 21, 24, 27, 1836)." 

Here is how the apparition appeared to Elisabetha Eslinger: "The phantom, which had first shown itself as a misty column, appeared now to her in the form of a man, wrapped in long drapery held together with a belt, and on his head he wore a four-cornered cap" (page 217). On page 218 we read this description of the apparition by witness Christine Wurmer: "I saw during the prayer that a luminous figure moved towards her, in appearance like a man, which was soon followed by two other luminous forms, small, like little clouds." On page 220 we read this description of the apparition by witness Elisabrtha  Neidhardt: "a luminous form of a man in white garments." On page 221 a Professor Kapff reports that he "saw a luminous appearance of indistinct shape, three to four feet wide, and about the height of the door." These are only some of many witness reports involving such an apparition that appear on these pages and surrounding pages. Multiple witnesses report gusts of cold air in connection with the apparition. 

On  page 149 of the long fascinating 1866 book The Night Side of Nature by Catherine Crowe we have this account: "Two young ladies staying at the Queen's Ferry arose one morning early to bathe; as they descended the stairs, they each exclaimed, 'There's my uncle !' They had seen him standing by the clock. He died at that time." 

On page 150 of the same book, we are told that in New Orleans a man heard another man report seeing the man's brother.  Looking around, the man stated that he had also seen his brother, who was believed to be in England.  We are told "the young man died at that time in England." 

On page 152 of the same book, we have this account:

"Three young ladies, two of them her daughters, assembled in their bedroom to talk over the evening's amusement. Suddenly, one of them cried, 'O God ! my mother.' They all saw her pass across the room towards a chest of drawers, where she vanished. They immediately told their friends what' they had seen; and afterwards learned that the lady died that night."

On page 222 of the same book, we have this account:

"A remarkable circumstance occurred, about forty 

years ago, in the family of Dr. Paulus at Stuttgard. 

The wife of the head of the family having died, they, 

with some of their connexions, were sitting at table 

a few days afterwards, in the room adjoining that in 

which the corpse lay, when suddenly the door of the 

latter apartment opened, and the figure of the mother, 

clad in white robes, entered, and saluting them as she 

passed, walked slowly and noiselessly through the room, 

and then disappeared again through the door by which 

she had entered. The whole company saw the appa- 

rition ; but the father, who was at that time quite in 

health, died eight days afterwards."

On page 346 of the same book, we have this account of four people seeing an apparition at a house that had the reputation of being a haunted house:

"The following more recent case of an apparition, 

seen in the window of the same house from the outside, 

by four credible witnesses who had the opportunity of 

scrutinizing it for more than ten minutes, is given on 

most unquestionable authority. One of these witnesses 

is a young lady, a near connexion of the family, who, 

for obvious reasons, did not sleep in the house ; another, 

a respectable man, who has been many years employed 

in, and is foreman of, the manufactory; his daughter, 

aged about seventeen ; and his wife, who first saw the 

object, and called out the others to view it. The ap- 

pearance presented was that of a bareheaded man, in a 

flowing robe like a surplice, who glided backwards and 

forwards about three feet from the floor, or level with 

the bottom of the second story window, seeming to 

enter the wall on each side, and thus present a side 

view in passing. It then stood still in the window, 

and a part of the figure came through both the blind, 

which was close down, and the window, as its luminous 

body intercepted the view of the framework of the 

window. It was semi-transparent, and as bright as a 

star, diffusing a radiance all around. As it grew more 

dim, it assumed a blue tinge, and gradually faded away 

from the head downwards. The foreman passed twice 

close to the house under the window, and also went to 

inform the family, but found the house locked up. 

There was no moonlight, nor a ray of light visible any- 

where about, and no person near."

On page 358 of the same book, we have this account of an apparition seen by two observers:

"Dr. Kerner mentions a very similar fact, wherein an advocate and his wife were awakened by a noise and a light, and saw a beautiful child enveloped by the sort of glory that is seen surround- 

ing the heads of saints. It disappeared, and they never 

had a repetition of the phenomenon, which they after- 

wards heard was helieved to recur eveiy seven years in 

that house and to be connected with the cruel murder 

of a child by his mother."

On pages 14-15 of the very interesting book Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences by Walter Franklin Prince, we have an account by James Ludovic Lindsay, a scientist, Parliament member and President of an astronomical society:

"That evening I missed the last train at the Crystal Palace, and had to stay at Norwood, and I got a shakedown on a sofa in Home’s room. ...Then I saw at the foot of my sofa a female figure, standing en profile to me. I asked Home if he saw anything, and he answered, 'a woman, looking at me.'...I saw the features perfectly, and impressed them upon my memory. She seemed to be dressed in a long wrap, going down from the shoulders, and not gathered in at the waist. Home then said, 'It is my wife ; she often comes to me.' And then she seemed to fade away.  . . The next morning, before I went to London, I was looking at some photographs, and I recognized the face I had seen in the room up-stairs overnight. I asked Mrs. Jencken who it was, and she said it was Home’s wife."

Artwork by William Blake

No, We Were Not Built by Software

 Ever since DNA was discovered, some biologists have been making a claim as phony as a three dollar bill. This claim (which I call the Great DNA Myth) is the false assertion that DNA is some kind of blueprint or recipe for making an organism.  It has been incorrectly asserted countless times that an incredibly complicated structure such as a human body arises because some specification of the human body is read from DNA.  No such specification exists in DNA. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up the polypeptide chains that are the starting points of protein molecules. DNA does not have any high-level specification of the human body, does not have a specification of any organ in the human body, and does not even have any specification of any of the 200 types of cells used by the human body.  Besides not having any specification of such things (in the sense of anything like a blueprint), DNA also does not have anything like a set of instructions for assembling cells or organs or bodies.  In DNA there is no program or recipe for building organisms or any of their visible parts. 

Many biology experts (such as more than 15 I quote at the end of this post) have confessed that the myth of DNA as a blueprint or recipe for the human form is untrue. So it's kind of like a situation where biology's left hand is writing one thing, and biology's right hand is writing an entirely different thing that contradicts what the left hand is writing. 

A recent article in The Scientist backs away from some of the old mythology claiming our bodies arise from DNA blueprints or DNA recipes, commendably telling us "genomes are not a blueprint for anatomy."  But while the article has some moments of candor, it sadly veers into some replacement rhetoric that may leave us with an erroneous idea.

The article by Michael Levin (a director of a biology lab) has a title mentioning something that is not actually explained in the article.   That title is "How Groups of Cells Cooperate to Build Organs and Organisms."  The article gives us no real sign that Levin understands any such thing.  In fact, in the text Levin refers to "the deep puzzle of how competent agents such as cells work together to pursue goals such as building, remodeling, or repairing a complex organ to a predetermined spec," without telling how any such specification has been found anywhere, and without clarifying this strange idea of a mere cell pursuing a goal.  Elsewhere he asks, "What if we solved the mystery of how groups of cells cooperate to construct specific multicellular bodies during embryogenesis and regeneration?" These two statements certainly do not sound like the words of someone who has any great understanding of "how groups of cells cooperate to build organs and organisms,"  something no one actually understands. 

But I can at least applaud the candid humility of both of these statements, both of which suggest the real truth, that biologists have no understanding at all of how a speck-sized egg is able to progress to become a large organism such as a 10-pound baby.  The problem is that Levin does not stick to such humility. Elsewhere in his article, he rather seems to veer away from such humility, and begins to speak as if he has some kind of idea about how incredibly complex large organisms arise.  He tries to suggest that organisms such as you and I are built by software. 

Levin states, "The software of life, which exploits the laws of physics and computation, is enabled by chemical, mechanical, and electrical signaling across cellular networks."  He refers to "the logic of the software—implemented by chemical, mechanical, and electrical signaling among cells—that controls large-scale outcomes and enables remodeling to stop when a specific morphology has been achieved." He refers to "anatomical software." "Software" is just a figurative term Levin has carelessly chosen to use for mere signaling going on between cells. But signaling isn't software. When I use my remote control to change the channel on my TV, that's a signal, but it isn't software. If I use a hand signal to summon a cab to the curb, that's a signal, but it isn't software. When a cell sends out some chemical, that may be a signal, but it isn't software.  Software is intelligently designed information characterized by things such as very precise and highly organized complex instructions, iterative loops, variable assignment and if/then logic. Mere signals between cells are not such a thing.  No one has actually discovered any such thing as "anatomical software" in the human body. 

At one point in his article, Levin makes a vaunting claim. He states, "We were able to create novel living machines, artificial bodies with morphologies and behaviors completely different from the default anatomy of the frog species (Xenopus laevis) whose cells we used." Wow, you might think from such a statement that Levin and his colleagues have achieved some kind of titantic success in which they have been able to design novel new organisms. But if you follow the link he provides, you will be very disappointed. The link leads to an article (in The Scientist) with a very misleading title, "Algorithm Designs Robots Using Frog Cells." The article merely describes a most unimpressive little formless clump of cells.  It seems that The Scientist has been infected by the clickbait epidemic that has spread to so many science sites, so that it now sometimes has sensational-sounding article titles that do not match the content of the article. 

We can never explain the origin of large incredibly complicated  biological organisms by some mere idea of cell signaling. First, while networks of cell signals are fantastically complicated, an individual cell signal is a low-information thing like a traffic light signal or a TV remote control signal, not a high-information thing like a radio signal that can transmit precise and very detailed instructions. So cell signals cannot explain how cells organize into incredibly complicated functional structures. For example, there is no cell signal that can tell a cell to take a particular position in three dimensional space or a particular position in the body or a particular position in an organ. Second, signals between cells cannot explain how different types of cells originate, such as 200 types of fantastically complicated human cells that are capable of such incredibly sophisticated signaling effects.  

Cell signaling includes a host of situations where one cell has a signal receiver that precisely meshes with a single reception area in another cell, rather like a key exactly fitting a lock. How could there be so many such situations, when the structures of cells aren't even specified in DNA?   

Do a Google image search for "cell signaling" or "signal transduction," and you will see many an extremely complicated biochemistry diagram, none of which comes anywhere close to fully explaining the myriad complexities of cell signaling. The immensely complicated chart here shows some of these signal pathways. The science paper "The complexity of complexes in signal transduction" gives us a taste of the vast complexities involved in cell signaling:

"Many activities of cells are controlled by cell-surface receptors, which in response to ligands, trigger intracellular signaling reactions that elicit cellular responses. A hallmark of these signaling reactions is the reversible nucleation of multicomponent complexes, which typically begin to assemble when ligand-receptor binding allows an enzyme, often a kinase, to create docking sites for signaling molecules through chemical modifications, such as tyrosine phosphorylation. One function of such docking sites is the co-localization of enzymes with their substrates, which can enhance both enzyme activity and specificity. The directed assembly of complexes can also influence the sensitivity of cellular responses to ligand-receptor binding kinetics and determine whether a cellular response is up- or downregulated in response to a ligand stimulus. The full functional implications of ligand-stimulated complex formation are difficult to discern intuitively. Complex formation is governed by conditional interactions among multivalent signaling molecules and influenced by quantitative properties of both the components in a system and the system itself. Even a simple list of the complexes that can potentially form in response to a ligand stimulus is problematic because of the number of ways signaling molecules can be modified and combined."

If you dive down to study all the innumerable enormous intricacies of cell structure and cell signaling, you will feel like someone studying the electronic intricacies of a digital computer, and will be left more puzzled rather than less puzzled by how such purposeful fine-tuned intricacy could have arisen. I borrow this term "fine-tuned" from a science paper that refers to the "fine-tuned communication between different cells."  These matters are a hundred miles over the heads of our scientists, two of which made the general observation in one paper that "we still lack an explicit analysis of complexity in a specific system at molecular level."  Referring to a crucial aspect of morphogenesis, a page of a Yale lab confesses, "The process by which stem cells differentiate into various tissues is largely unknown due to the enormous complexity of signals, both chemical and mechanical."  Trying to say that the growth of an organism is merely caused by cell signals is rather like some first-grader saying he understands how TV shows arrive on his TV set, because he knows it's all "just energy moving around." 

Were our scientists to describe accurately their lack of knowledge of how a speck-sized egg progresses to become a full-sized human, and if they were to describe accurately the failure of all neural explanations for human mental phenomena such as consciousness, thinking, imagination, instantaneous memory recall, and 50-year memory preservation, our scientists would have to confess that while they understand how a woman becomes pregnant, they do not actually understand the origin of any single human being.  But such a confession is not made by them, because it would conflict with their unfounded boast that they understand the origin of the human race.  Similarly, once a child has boasted that he understands the game of baseball, he cannot then confess that he does not understand what a homerun or a base hit is.  And once a child has boasted that he knows how movies are made, he cannot then confess that he does not understand how images get on the frames of a film. 

A 1496-Page E-Book of Mine, Available for Free

Readers of my blog www.orbpro.blogspot.com will know that I have long got the astonishing phenomenon of dramatic orb patterns massively repeating when I photographed falling drops of pure, clean water. I collected all of my posts on that blog relating to such patterns,  and placed them in a single PDF file that I uploaded to www.archive.org, where the file now exists as a 1496-page E-book entitled "Vast Precision of the Orb Patterns." I never dreamed that I would ever produce a book of such a length, but I also never dreamed that I would get an inexplicable phenomenon appearing so abundantly that it would require a book of that length to show all of my photos of the phenomenon.   

You can now read the book for free (without any login) at www.archive.org using the URL below:

https://archive.org/details/vast-precision-of-the-orb-patterns

The native format you get using that link is instantly usable and very easy to use, but has the one disadvantage that the very many links in the book will not lead anywhere when you click them.  If you are interested in following the links, you can download the PDF version of the book, in which the links work. In this book the links are not very important (as they do not refer to external sites). So using the link above (without doing a PDF download) is probably your best and simplest option for reading the book. 

The book can also be downloaded in many other formats (such as Kindle), using the link above. The three-part pattern shown below is one of very many three-part patterns shown in the book.

Below we see an example of one of very many two-part patterns shown in the book:

When Apparitions "Break the Mold"

On this blog I have collected two main types of accounts of apparitions:

(1) cases in which someone was surprised to see an apparition of someone thought to be alive, only to soon find out the person had died about the time the apparition was seen (examples such as we can read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here);
(2) cases in which an apparition was seen by more than one observer (examples such as we can read here, here, here, here and here).

In the annals of parapsychology, there are some interesting apparition cases that fall outside of such categories. One such case is the remarkable one discussed on page 102 of Volume 1 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.  We read the following:

"At the beginning of our researches we received tidings of a ghost which had been seen within the last few years by an artist at his studio·in Chelsea. Having obtained an introduction, two of our number called upon him, and received from him a very striking and circumstantial account of his experiences. The apparition was seen in broad daylight; it appeared to him, during his three years' tenancy of the·studio, over a hundred times. He was in his ordinary health throughout this period, and neither before nor since had ever seen anything of the kind. The circumstances were such as to preclude all possibility of' deception, and the figure itself was so distinct and lifelike that he·succeeded in producing a portrait of it. A rough sketch of this portrait-which is now in the possession of the Society-represents a young man of about twenty-five, with the right arm torn away from the shoulder, and a strangely mournful, pleading expression in the eyes. Our informant was perfectly clear in his account; and the minute·examination to which we subjected him failed to disclose any inconsistencies. Further, it was impossible to question his good faith. That he was fully convinced he did actually see what he described to us is a matter which, in our judgment, does not admit of doubt."

This account is very untypical in the sense that normally an apparition will appear only once to an observer. But here we have someone claiming to have seen an apparition over a hundred times. 

Another type of untypical account is when someone sees an apparition of someone who is not yet dead. We get such an account on page 212 of  Volume IV of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, where we read the following, told by the distinguished evolution expert G. J. Romanes:

"Towards the end of March, 1878, in the dead of the night, while believing myself to be awake, I thought the door at the head of my bed was opened and a white figure passed along the side of the bed to the foot, where it faced about and showed me it was covered head and all in a shroud. Then with its hands it suddenly parted the shroud over the face, revealing between its two hands the face of my sister, who was ill in another room. I exclaimed her name, whereupon the figure vanished instantly. Next day (and certainly 
on account of the shock given me by the above experience), I called in Sir W. Jenner, who said my sister had not many days to live." 

On page 48 of his book Death and Its Mystery: At the Hour of Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we read of another case of an apparition of someone who was still alive. He quotes this report from an English correspondent:

"For some days a report has spread that a suite of the House of Conmions, giving upon the speaker's courtyard, was haunted. Nothing was said as to whether the specter had ever ventured into the lobbies of the House. Several members of Parliament grew uneasy. The truth was at last discovered. The phantom is not a ghost, but the double of a person still living. And this person is none other than the wife of one of the principal office-holders of Westminster Palace, Mr. Archibald Milman, secretary of the House of Commons (at a salary of 38,000 francs). Mrs. Milman tells in these words the story of her specter: 'The strangest thing about it is that it is true. It has lasted for years. I am afflicted with another self, that people meet in places where I am not. The other day a friend took leave of me in the work-room in which I give myself up to a passion for binding books. Scarcely had he stepped out at the door, when he found me again on the landing of the stairway. Dumfounded, he shrank aside to let me pass. I had not stirred....This very day a young woman living with us saw me in the courtyard, without my having left the house.' "

On page 63 of his book Death and Its Mystery: At the Hour of Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we read of another case of an apparition of someone who was still alive.  Some people tried an experiment in which one person tried to project an apparition of himself so that another person could see it.  This reportedly resulted in just such an apparition being seen at the arranged time, by not just one person but two people.  On page 69 Flammarion cites another such experiment. A male tried an experiment in which he tried to project his image to a female. The female saw an apparition corresponding to the male, and was so shocked that she fainted.  On page 70 Flammarion discusses a similar experiment in which Frederic Myers attempted to project an apparition of himself to Stainton Moses. Moses reported that the experiment succeeded, and that at the time such an attempt was made, Moses saw an apparition of Myers. 

Based on these accounts and others he cites, Flammarion stated this on page 66: "It can no longer be doubted that human beings possess fluid phantasms which may, under certain conditions, become visible and tangible."

On page 126 of the book Contact with the Other World by James H. Hyslop, we have another account suggesting the idea of an apparition of someone appearing before the person died:

"The knock was heard by both mother and daughter. On opening the door with the least loss of time possible, my grandmother was surprised to find not only no one there, but no one even in the long corridor which led to the drawing room. My mother distinctly remembered the look of astonishment in her mother’s face as she returned from the door. Nothing more was said on the subject, but in a short time afterwards a letter was received from London from my 

grandmother’s sister, saying that she (the sister) had been most seriously ill, at death’s door indeed, but was now a little better, and wished my grandmother to come and see her. The latter went up to town and found her sister still very ill, but slowly recovering. After the mutual endearments natural to such an occasion, my grandmother said: ‘Do you know, such a strange thing occurred, exactly at the time, it seems, when you were supposed to be dead or dying.’ ‘I know what you are going to say,’ said the other. ‘ When I was in the trance which was mistaken for death, I thought I went to your house in the Isle of Wight and knocked at your drawing room door. You opened it instantly and looked much affrighted at not seeing me or any one, though I saw you.’ The singular point in the story is the anticipation by the one sister of what the other was going to say."

The account below is from page 33 of the Volume 7 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.  We read of an accidental death, and a woman's vision of that death.  After reading that while working on a tug boat an Edmund Dunn "fell or was thrown overboard by the towline, and drowned," we read this account by a Mrs. Paquet who was Edmund's sister:

"As I turned around my brother Edmund — or his exact image — stood before me and only a few feet away. The apparition stood with back toward me, or, rather, partially so, and was in the act of falling forward — away from me — seemingly impelled by two ropes or a loop of rope drawing against his legs. The vision lasted but a moment, disappearing over a low railing or bulwark, but was very distinct. I dropped the tea, clasped my hands to my face, and exclaimed, 'My God! Ed. is drowned.' At about half- past ten a. m. my husband received a telegram from Chicago, announcing the drowning of my brother." 

It is not very rare for people to see an apparition of someone appearing at about the time the person died.  I have collected more than 200 such accounts, which you can read using the links I gave earlier in this post. But it is rare for someone to see an apparition that is rather like a scene displaying how the person died. 

Another rare type of apparition is the one described below on page 94 of his book Death and Its Mystery: At the Hour of Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion. We read an account by a Antoine Hornung of Geneva:

"One morning, some months ago, when I was in bed, wide awake, my eyes turned toward a mirror near me. In one of its panels I saw, very distinctly, the head and features of a person whom I had known very well some years before, — a most friendly relationship which had been broken off in consequence of calamitous circumstances. This person had left Geneva for her own distant country, and I had never had any news of her. When I saw her in the mirror  looking at me fixedly, I felt, though frightened, a certain happiness; I sat up in bed, talking to her, asking her if it were really she. Her features, rather hard, softened, her eyelids fluttered with pleasure, and a peaceful smile appeared on her lips. I kept on looking at her, but the vision vanished. Some days afterward, I learned that this person had died at that precise date."

The "learning of someone's death through an apparition" is one I have read countless times before, but this is the first time I can recall reading of someone seeing an apparition in a mirror. Another way in which an apparition can "break the mold" is when an apparition of someone appears shortly before the person's death, rather than at the same time or shortly thereafter. One case of such a thing appears on pages 440-441 of Volume 11 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. We read the following:

"A white figure passed along the side of the bed to the foot, where it faced about and showed me it was covered head and all in a shroud. Then with its hands it suddenly parted the shroud over the face, revealing between its two hands the face of my sister, who was ill in another room. I exclaimed her name, whereupon the figure vanished instantly. Next day (and certainly on account of the shock given me by the above experience), I called in Sir W. Jenner, who said my sister had not many days to live. (She died, in fact, very soon afterwards.)" 

On page 123 of the  book Death and Its Mystery: At the Hour of Death by the astronomer Camille Flammarion, we have an account told by a Madame Dobelmann.  Again, we read of an apparition of someone appearing not at the moment of that person's death, but somewhat beforehand (in this case, a single day earlier). We read the following:

"My friend Madame Turban was taking care of a younger sister who was ill... Soon they lost hope of saving her. One Sunday afternoon she expressed to her sister her great regret at never having heard her fiance, the pastor several leagues from there, preach. She fell into catalepsy, and lay for two hours as one dead. When she awakened she told of having seen her fiance, and of having heard him preach in such and such a way. She died the next day. After the burial Madame Turban asked the fiance if on Sunday afternoon he had preached on such and such a subject. Stmck by her question, and very much surprised, he asked, 'How do you know that!' — 'Your fiance told me.' — 'It's very strange,' he answered. 'Just imagine — in the middle of my sermon I thought I saw a white form enter the church, which resembled my fiance; she sat down in an empty seat in the midst of the assembly, and disappeared toward the end of the service.' "  

On page 309 of the book Apparitions and Thought Transference by Frank Podmore, we have an account of an apparition sighting that is very unusual in that the person seeing the apparition did not recognize the person corresponding to the apparition, but only identified the person after seeing a photo of the person.  Here is the account:

"The facts are simply these. I was sleeping in a hotel in 
Madeira in January 1885. It was a bright moonlight night. 
The windows were open and the blinds up. I felt some one was 
in my room. On opening my eyes, I saw a young fellow about 
twenty-five, dressed in flannels, standing at the side of my bed 
and pointing with the first finger of his right hand to the place I was lying in. I lay for some seconds to convince myself of some one being really there. I then sat up and looked at him. I saw his features so plainly that I recognised them in a photograph which was shown me some days after. I asked him what he wanted ; he did not speak, but his eyes and hand seemed to tell me I was in his place. As he did not answer, I struck out at him with my fist as I sat up, but did not reach him, and as I was going to spring out of bed he slowly vanished through the door, which was shut, keeping his eyes upon me all the time. Upon inquiry I found that the young fellow who appeared to me died in that room I was occupying."

On pages 156-157 of the book Contact with the Other World by James H. Hyslop, we have an account of a daughter who (when she did not know her mother was dead) saw an unusual apparition of her mother: one in which her mother appeared dead (not ghost-like as in a typical apparition sighting), and in which a remote scene appeared as if a movie had been projected on a wall:

"The wall opposite me seemed to open, and I saw my mother lying dead on her bed in her little house....Some flowers were at her side and on her breast: she looked calm, but unmistakably dead, and the coffin was there.  It was so real that I could scarcely believe that the wall was really brick and mortar, and not a transparent window — in fact, it was a wall dividing the hotel in which we were living from the Carabinieri." 

On page 159 of the same book, we have this unusual account by an A. B. Weymouth who had made a pact with a Jennie D. that whoever died first would appear to the other:

"On Saturday evening, October 22, 1910, I retired to rest soon after nine o’clock. After refreshing sleep I awoke, with the impression that something unusual was about to happen. Then I distinctly heard a voice saying: ‘Jennie D. is coming.’ A few moments later, something like a bright cloud appeared in my bedroom. In the midst of the cloud I recognized the form of my long lost friend. While hovering in the air she sang two verses sweetly. Then other spirit forms appeared (the faces not recognized) and joined in the refrain. I had never heard the words or the music before; and I regret that I cannot recall the words. They were very beautiful and so was the melody. 

When the music ceased, the bright cloud and the celestial visitors disappeared and my room was dark again."

The account "breaks the mold" both in its musical aspect and also in there appearing multiple apparitions rather than just one.