Two more apparition cases

In the next two cases the apparition, which was seen some hours after death, conforms more nearly to the orthodox conception of a "ghost" a discarnate spirit. The first case was originally narrated verbally to the late F. W. H. Myers by Lady Gore Booth, who afterwards wrote to him the letter of which an extract is given below, and at a later date sent the two subjoined accounts from her daughter, who was aged fifteen at the time of the incident, and her son, then a schoolboy of ten.


Lissadell House

No. 3.
From Miss Mabel Gore Booth.
Lissadell, Sligo,
February, 1891.

"On the 10th of April, 1889, at about half-past nine o'clock a.m., my youngest brother and I were going down a short flight of stairs leading to the kitchen, to fetch food for my chickens, as usual. We were about half way down, my brother a few steps in advance of me, when he suddenly said: 'Why, there's John Blaney, I didn't know he was in the house!'. John Blaney was a boy who lived not far from us, and he had been employed in the house as hall-boy not long before. I said that I was sure it was not he (for I knew he had left some months previously on account of ill-health), and looked down into the passage, but saw no one. The passage was a long one, with a rather sharp turn in it, so we ran quickly down the last few steps, and looked round the corner, but nobody was there, and the only door he could have gone through was shut. As we went upstairs my brother said, 'How pale and ill John looked, and why did he stare so?' I asked what he was doing. My brother answered that he had his sleeves turned up, and was wearing a large green apron, such as the footmen always wear at their work. An hour or two afterwards I asked my maid how long John Blaney had been back in the house? She seemed much surprised, and said, 'Didn't you hear, miss, that he died this morning?' On inquiry we found he had died about two hours before my brother saw him. My mother did not wish that my brother should be told this, but he heard of it somehow, and at once declared that he must have seen his ghost."
MABEL OLIVE GORE BOOTH.

The actual percipient's independent account is as follows:

March, 1891.
" We were going downstairs to get food for Mabel's fowl, when I saw John Blaney walking round the corner. I said to Mabel, 'That's John Blaney!' but she could not see him. When we came up afterwards we found he was dead. He seemed to me to look rather ill. He looked yellow; his eyes looked hollow, and he had a green apron on."
MORDAUNT GORE BOOTH.

We have received the following confirmation of the date of death:
"I certify from the parish register of deaths that John Blaney(Dunfore) was interred on the 12th day of April, 1889, having died on the 10th day of April, 1889." P. J. SHEMAGHS, C.C. The Presbytery, Ballingal, Sligo. 10th February, 1891.

Lady Gore Booth writes:
May 31st, 1890.
"When my little boy came upstairs and told us he had seen John Blaney, we thought nothing of it till some hours after, when we heard that he was dead. Then for fear of frightening the children, I avoided any allusion to what he had told us, and asked everyone else to do the same. Probably by now he has forgotten all about it, but it certainly was very remarkable, especially as only one child saw him, and they were standing together. The place where he seems to have appeared was in the passage outside the pantry door, where John Blaney's work always took him. My boy is a very matter of fact sort of boy, and I never heard of his having any other hallucination."
G. GORE BOOTH.

It will be noted that this account depends for its evidential value, not on the memory of a child of twelve of events happening two years previously, but on the memory of the older persons who heard his account of what he had seen before they knew of the death to which the vision related.

The next case is of a more dramatic character.The account was procured for the Society for Psychical Research by Professor Alexander, of Riode Janeiro. In the first half of November, 1904, there had been some popular disturbances in Rio de Janeiro, which culminated on the 14th of the month in a revolt of the [Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha] Military School. The School marched out on the evening of that day, under the command of General Travassos, and had a slight skirmish with the police, in the course of which Ensign Joao Sylvestre Cavalcante, a young man in his twenty-seventh year, was shot through the head. A comrade struck a match and looked at the body after it had fallen. "The poor lad lay in a muddy gutter, his horse dead on the pavement beside him." This was at a few minutes after 11 p.m. We now quote from the account drawn up by Professor Alexander from statements made to him by the Rieken family and signed by them.





Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha

No. 4.

" Now before his death Cavalcante had become engaged to a certain Fraulein Maria Luiza Rieken, the daughter of Herr Rieken, a thriving military tailor established in this city, and of Frau Louise Rieken. The family lives at No. 20a Rua Barata Ribeiro, Copacabana, and, as the fiance of the daughter, Cavalcante, who lived close by, was of course a constant visitor at the house, and was accustomed to take his early coffee there before proceeding to the School. On the morning of the 14th he had returned at 9 o'clock to breakfast, which he shared with
'Mimi,' as the young lady was familiarly called. He was in good spirits, and although there was some peculiarity in his manner of taking leave, it is not likely that he had any presentiment of his approaching fate. Shortly before, indeed, he had made the hypothesis of his own death a subject for jest. He left Copacabana never to return there alive.

"No reports whatever respecting the adhesion of the School to the insurrectionary movement reached the family that day. About 11 p.m. by their house clock (which was, however, too slow) a sound of firing was heard from over the hill. But when, in spite of the advanced hour, Cavalcante did not return, Frau Rieken felt very anxious, and for some time after she had retired to bed this state of uneasiness kept her awake. The room occupied by her and her husband is in the upper part of the house, but as it is a small one and filled with large-sized furniture, the door is left wide open for the sake of ventilation. She had already heard the clock strike two it was therefore between two and three o'clock in the morning when she suddenly saw Cavalcante standing at the entrance looking in upon her. He leant against the side of the door, his right hand raised and holding to the jamb and his left arm behind his back. He did not wear the regulation uniform in which he had been killed, but presented himself in the khaki undress he usually wore at home on his head a felt hat with the brim turned down and a rose-coloured neckerchief round his neck. He seemed to be covered with mud and his face was overcast with sadness. 'Guarda Mimi,' he said. ('Take care of Mimi.') Frau Rieken's first surprise was succeeded by a sense of the impropriety of his being in that part of the house at such an hour, and she was about to awake her husband. But on looking again the doorway was a blank - Cavalcante had vanished - it was but a vision.

"Next morning, before any news had reached them, she told Herr Rieken and her daughter of her strange nocturnal experience. Neither of them was willing to believe that the vision had any significance. On walking down to the electric-car station at 8 o'clock, Herr Rieken was informed of the occurrence of the revolt and of Cavalcante's death by some young men who were there reading the papers. At first he gave absolutely no credit to the report, and was convinced of its truth only after it had been confirmed by two naval officers of his acquaintance. He proceeded at once to the Military School, whither the body had been transported. In preparing it for burial he cut away the uniform, which, although not the same as that seen in the vision, was indeed stained with the mud of the street."
"Copacabana,
January 28th, 1905.

"We, the undersigned, herewith declare that everything happened exactly as it has been described by Mr. Alexander.
FRIEDRICH RIEKEN.
LOUISE RIEKEN.
MARIA LUIZA RIEKEN."

The significance of this incident is no doubt to a certain extent diminished by the fact that Frau Rieken was anxious and thinking about the deceased. It will be noticed that the apparition was seen more than three hours after death, if, as is to be presumed, death followed immediately on the shot which passed through the head.

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