HPB-SB-3-234: Difference between revisions

  | title = Apparitions Due to Physiological Causes

  | source title = London Spiritualist

  | source details = No. 195, May 19, 1876, p. 235

  | publication date = 1876-05-19

{{Style S-Small capitals|Apparitions Due to Physiological Causes}}.—A clergyman now deceased, and whose name it is not necessary to mention, but who will be identified by a large number of people when it is said that he had been an officer in the army prior to his ordination, and that he held in succession incumbencies in Bath and in Coventry, was accustomed to relate a curious experience of his own. He was walking in an unfrequented road near Bath, when he saw in front of him a party of big boys, who were ill-treating a little boy; and, although of portly figure and past middle age, he hurried forward to the rescue. Between him and the boys a narrow lane entered the road on his right hand, and just before he reached this lane a little old woman, in a black bonnet and red cloak, and carrying a crutch-handled stick, seemed to emerge from it, with her back towards him, and to hasten on in front of him, as if bent upon the same errand with himself. He overtook her, and when close to her he fancied that she was unreal, or shadowy, and he walked through her, so to speak, without experiencing any contact or resistance. He turned round, saw her stand facing him, and walked through her again, on which she vanished. Being a sensible man, he left the boys to their own devices, strolled slowly home, and sent for the doctor. A very eminent hospital surgeon in London was occasionally haunted by an apparition for nearly fifteen years; and in his case the connection between the spectre and the state of the circulation of the brain was proved by the circumstance that the figure always became visible when a position was assumed which interfered with the free flow of blood through the great vessels of the neck.—''The Times, ''April 19th.