The Visions
We read in the Courier de Lyon:
In the evening of 27th to 28th of August 1857, a singular case of intuitive vision took place in Croix-
Rouse, under the following conditions:
“Some three months ago the couple B..., dignified weavers, touched by kind commiseration, took
to their home, as a maid, a mentally challenged young lady, who lived near Bourgoing.”
“Last Sunday the couple was woken up by the lancinating screams of the maid who was asleep in a
loft adjacent to their bedroom. Mrs. B... went upstairs, put the lights on and found the maid
bursting into tears, her spirit in an indescribable state of excitement, twisting her arms in terrible
convulsions, calling for her mother who she had just seen dying, she said, before her eyes.”
“After giving the little maid the best consolation she could, Mrs. B... returned to her bedroom. The
incident had been almost forgotten when yesterday, Tuesday, in the afternoon, the mail man brought
Mrs. B... a letter from the little maid’s tutor, informing her that in the early hours from Sunday to
Monday, between 2 and 3 am, her mother had died as a consequence of a fall from the top of a flight
of stairs.”
“The poor mentally challenged lady left yesterday, in the morning, for Bourgoing, followed by Mr.
B..., her master, in order to receive the inheritance of her mother, whose deplorable end she had
sadly seen in her dreams.”
Facts of such a nature are not rare and we will have frequent opportunities to review some of these
with incontestable authenticity. These occurrences are sometimes produced during the sleep, as in a
dream. This is understandable as dreams are nothing more than an incomplete and natural
somnambulistic state. We will designate the visions that take place during that state as
“somnambulistic visions” to distinguish them from those which take place while awake called double or second vision. Finally we will call “ecstatic visions” those who take place in ecstasy.
These generally recognized by thematic facts and things of the incorporeal world. The following
fact belongs to the second category.
A ship-owner of our acquaintance, residing in Paris, told us the following story a few days ago:
“In the last month of April, feeling unwell, I went for a stroll to the Tuileries, with a friend of mine.
It was a magnificent day; the gardens were vibrant with people. Suddenly the crowd disappears
before my eyes; I no longer feel my body and it is as if I was transported and I distinctly see a ship
entering the port of Havre. I recognize it as the “Clémence” which we were waiting for in the
Antilles. It approached the wharf and I could clearly identify the mast, sails, sailors, the minimum
details, as if I were there. Then I told my partner: “Behold, the Clémence has arrived. We will have
news still today. It was a happy trip.”
On returning home a telegram message was then given to me. Before I read it I declared: “It is the
news of the arrival of the Clémence, which arrived at the port of Havre at 3 o’clock. The message
did really confirm the arrival, exactly at the time we were at the Tuileries.”
When the visions have beings of the incorporeal world, as subjects, one could take them as the
result of imagination, classifying them as hallucinations, since nothing that occurred could
demonstrate their ligitamacy. But in both cases described above there is a material and positive link
to reality. We challenge all physiologists and philosophers to explain them based on the ordinary
systems. Only the Spiritist Doctrine can do that through the emancipation of the soul which,
momentarily escaping from the material harnesses, is transported beyond the sphere of corporeal
activities.
In the first case it is likely that the mother’s soul had come to visit the daughter and warned her
about her death but in the second case it is certain that the ship did not come to meet the owner in
the Tuileries. One must agree that it was his soul that went to meet the ship at the Havre.
