Note 25 — Chapter VI · SOME RECENTLY OBSERVED PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA
L. I. (Laura I.) Finch translation
The reader may care to see Dr. Maxwell’s detailed report to Professor Richet of the above incident:—
‘On Sunday morning Meurice was out driving. A short distance from Bordeaux his carriage collided with a milk-cart; the shafts of the latter crashed through one of the carriage windows. At the same time an electric tram, unable to pull up in time, struck the carriage in the rear. The coachman was thrown from his seat on to the ground, where he lay unconscious. He was wounded near the left eye, ... his face was covered with blood.
‘At the moment the collision with the tram took place, Meurice quickly opened the carriage door with the natural intention of jumping out; but he felt himself suddenly lifted up and carried on to the footpath, a distance of ten feet. He saw no one.
‘He probably jumped of his own accord, and the sensation he experienced was but the symbolical expression of the solicitude the personifications show for him. The protector was supposed to be H. B.
‘Now, on Saturday afternoon, the eve of the day on which the above accident occurred, I had a seance with my friend. We tried for luminous phenomena, but the experiment was null. Towards the close of the seance, Meurice said he saw the face of a dead man, with a wound on the left temple, the face was covered with blood. I asked who it was, and received by raps without contact: “Suicide, victime d’amour, Gaston”; the raps refused to give the surname. The aspect of the coachman’s face after the accident the next morning somewhat recalls the aspect of the vision; if we accept this, there is a curious mixture of true and false, the false showing forth when our personal activity intervenes in order to question: a fact which I have often observed.
‘The accident occurred between ten and a quarter past ten o’clock. My friend’s youngest sister—a young girl of twenty—is paying him a visit this week. Now, this Sunday morning she went into the kitchen at ten o’clock, looking very distressed, and said to the servants that she felt sure an accident had happened to her brother. The sister’s and servants’ versions concorded absolutely when questioned a few hours later on this coincidence.’