Cock Lane and Common-Sense

129

The writer has known a case in which a collector of these statistics, disdained non-coincidental hallucinations as ‘of no use’

130

Proceedings S. P. R., xv. 7.

131

Animal Magnetism, pp. 61-64, 1887.

132

The Psychical Society has published the writer’s encounter with Professor Conington, at Oxford, in 1869, when the professor was lying within one or two days of his death at Boston, a circumstance wholly unknown to the percipient. But no jury would accept this as anything but a case of mistaken identity, natural in a short-sighted man’s vague experiences. Mr. Conington was not a man easily to be mistaken for another, nor were many men likely to be mistaken for Mr. Conington. Yet this is what must have occurred. There was no conceivable reason why the professor should ‘telepathically’ communicate with the percipient, who had never exchanged a word with him, except in an examination.

133

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, viii. 111.

134

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 442.

135

Modern Spirit Manifestations. By Adin Ballou. Liverpool, 1853.

136

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 469.

137

Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxii.

138

In the author’s case the hypnagogic phantasms seem to be created out of the floating spots of light which remain when the eyes are shut. Some crystal-gazers find that similar points de repère in the glass, are the starting-points of pictures in the crystal. Others cannot trace any such connection.

139

Compare Blackwood, August, 1831, in Noctes Ambrosianæ.

140

Paus., ii. 24, I.

141

Bouché Leclercq, i. 339.

142

The accomplished scryer can see as well in a crystal ringstone, or in a glass of water, as in a big crystal ball. The latter may really be dangerous, if left on a cloth in the sun it may set the cloth on fire.

143

Animal Magnetism, second edition, p. 135.

144

Thus an educated gentleman, a Highlander, tells the author that he once saw a light of this kind ‘not a meteor,’ passing in air along a road where a funeral went soon afterwards. His companions could see nothing, but one of them said: ‘It will be a death-candle’. It seems to have been hallucinatory, otherwise all would have shared the experience.

145

Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 481, Edinburgh, 1834.

146

Op. cit., p. 473.

147

Op. cit., p. 470

148

It is, perhaps, needless to add that the unhappy patients were executed.

149

Miscellanies, 1857, p. 184.

150

Wodrow, i. 44.

151

Aulus Gellius, xv. 18. Dio Cassius, lib. lxvii. Crespet, De la Hayne de Diable, cited by Dalyell.

152

Miscellanies, 177.

153

A copy presented by Scott to Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck is in the author’s possession; it bears Scott’s autograph.