Apparition unknown to the experients

I've used a bit of poetic license here :-).

Our next case is of a different type. The "ghost" here was apparently unknown to the persons to whom it presented itself.

No. 6. From the Misses Du Cane.
July 31st, 1891.

"On the night of November 1st, 1889, between 9-30 and 10 p.m., my three sisters and myself left our library, where we had spent the evening, and proceeded upstairs to our bedrooms. On reaching my room, which is on the second floor, I and a sister went to the mantelpiece in search of the matchbox, in order to light the gas. I must here explain that my bedroom opens into my mother's, and the door between the two rooms was open.

"There was no light beyond that which glimmered through the Venetian blinds in each room. As I stood by the mantelpiece I was awe-struck by the sudden appearance of a figure gliding noiselessly towards me from the outer room. The appearance was that of a young man, of middle height, dressed in dark clothes, and wearing a peaked cap. His face was very pale, and his eyes downcast as though deep in thought. His mouth was shaded by a dark moustache. The face was slightly luminous, which enabled us to distinguish the features distinctly, although we were without a light of any kind at the time.

"The apparition glided onwards towards my sisters, who were standing inside the room, quite close to the outer door, and who had first caught sight of it, reflected in the mirror. When within a few inches from them it vanished as suddenly as it appeared. As the figure passed we distinctly felt a cold air which seemed to accompany it. We have never seen it again, and cannot account in any way for the phenomenon.

"One of my sisters did not see the apparition, as she was looking the other way at the moment, but felt a cold air ; the other two, however, were eye-witnesses with myself to the fact.
Signed by
LOUISA F. Du CANE.
F. A. Du CANE.
C. A. Du CANE."

Answers to questions (asked by Dr. Kingston) respecting apparition.
August 4th, 1891.

"There was no light of any kind in passage outside the rooms.
"We had not been talking or thinking of ghosts during the evening, or reading anything exciting; neither were we the least nervous.
"None of us had ever before been startled by anything unexpected in the dark or twilight.
"It was not light enough to see each other's faces, as the only illumination there was came through the Venetian blinds, which were drawn down.
"It was myself, Louisa Du Cane, who first saw the apparition. We three sisters who saw it exclaimed at the same moment, and found we had seen the same thing.
"My sister Mary did not see the figure, as she was looking the other way at the time, but felt distinctly, as did the rest of us, a sensation of cold when the figure passed us.
"We did not recognise the figure as anybody we had ever
seen.
"We did not afterwards hear of any event that we could connect with the appearance."
LOUISA F. Du CANE.

Mrs. Henry Sidgwick called on the Misses Du Cane in December, 1891, and learnt some further particulars. She writes:

"I saw the room in daylight, but was told that at night it was to some extent lighted ('like moonlight') by the street lamp opposite. Miss L. Du Cane saw the face better than the natural light would have enabled her to do. Her sisters, I gathered, saw the figure clearly but not the face. The dress, so far as seen, might have been that of, say, a purser on board a merchant steamer. The figure did not suggest to them any
person they had ever seen, and its dress and appearance had no associations for them. Its arms were held away from the body, so that they saw the light between - about as a man's arms would be if his hands were in his pockets. They did not see the hands. I think it is doubtful how much of detail each lady observed independently at the time, especially as they were a good deal startled and agitated, or how much the
several impressions may have got defined and harmonised in recollection afterwards. The figure seems to have moved quietly towards them from the window."

Mrs. Sidgwick was satisfied that the figure seen could not have been a man of flesh and blood.

Taken from the Book: Telepathic Hallucinations: The New View of Ghosts by Frank Podmore M.A.