Hair whitened under the impression of a dream.

— One reads in the Petit Journal of May 14th, 1866:

Mr. Émile Gaboriau, commenting on the fact attributed to that husband who is said to have murdered his wife while dreaming, recounts in the Pays the dramatic episode which is about to be read:

“But here is one that is stronger, and I must say that I believe the fact, whose authenticity was affirmed to me under oath, by the hero in person.

“The hero, my schoolmate from college, is an engineer of about thirty years, a man of spirit and of talent, of methodical character and cold temperament.

“As he was traveling through Brittany two years ago, he had to spend the night in an isolated inn, a few hundred meters from a mine, which he intended to visit the next day.

“He was tired. He went to bed early and had no trouble falling asleep.

“Soon he dreamed. He had just been placed at the head of the exploitation of that neighboring mine.

“He was overseeing the workers, when the proprietor arrived.

“That man, brutal and ill-bred, reproached him for staying outside with his arms crossed, when he ought to be inside, occupied in drawing up the plan.

“ — Very well! I am going down, replied the young engineer.

“Indeed he went down, traversed the galleries and drew up a plan.

“The task finished, he got into a basket which was to bring him out. An enormous cable served to hoist that basket.

“The mine was extraordinarily deep and the engineer calculated that the ascent would last a good quarter of an hour; so he settled himself as comfortably as possible.

“He had already been rising for two or three minutes when, raising his eyes by chance, he thought he saw that the cable from which his life was suspended was cut a few feet above his head, too high for him to be able to reach the break.

“At the very first his terror was such that he nearly fainted. Then he tried to recompose himself, to reassure himself. Might he not have been mistaken, have seen wrongly? It was necessary to appeal energetically to all his courage in order to dare to look again.

“No; he had not been mistaken. The cable had been broken by some splinter of rock and, slowly, but visibly, was coming apart. At that point it was no thicker than an inch.

“The unfortunate man felt himself lost. A mortal cold froze him to the marrow. He wanted to cry out; impossible. Besides, for what? now he was halfway up the path.

“At the bottom, at a vertiginous depth, he perceived, less brilliant than glowworms shining in the grass, the lamps of the workers.

“At the top, the opening of the shaft appeared to him so narrow that it seemed not to have the diameter of the neck of a bottle. “And he kept rising, and one by one, the threads of hemp snapped. “And no means of avoiding the horrible fall, because – he saw it and felt it perfectly – the cable would break before the basket reached the top.

“Such was his mortal anguish, that he had the idea of abridging the torment by hurling himself down.

“He was hesitating, when the basket arrived at ground level. He was saved. It was while letting out a tremendous cry that he leaped onto the ground.

“This cry awakened him. The horrible adventure had been nothing but a dream. But he was in a lamentable state, bathed in sweat, breathing with difficulty, incapable of the slightest movement.

“At last, he was able to ring the bell and they came to his aid. But the people of the inn almost refused to recognize him. His black hair had turned gray.

“At the foot of the bed lay, drawn by him, the plan of that mine which he did not know. The plan was of marvelous exactitude.”

— We have no other guarantee of the authenticity of this fact than the account above. Without prejudging anything in this regard, we will say that all that it relates is within the possible. The plan of the mine, traced by the engineer during sleep, is no more surprising than the works that certain somnambulists execute. n To make it [the plan of the mine] exact, it was necessary that he should have seen it. Since he did not see it with the eyes of the body, he saw it with the eyes of the soul. During sleep, his Spirit explored the mine: the plan is the material proof. As for the danger, it is evident that there was nothing real about it; it was nothing but a nightmare. What is most singular is that, under the impression of an imaginary danger, his hair should have turned white. This phenomenon is explained by the fluidic bonds that transmit to the body the impressions of the soul, when the latter is removed from it. The soul did not realize this separation; its perispiritual body had upon it the effect of its material body, as happens many times after death with certain Spirits who still believe themselves alive and imagine themselves given over to their habitual occupations. Although alive, the Spirit of the engineer found itself in an analogous situation; everything was as real in his thought as if he were in his body of flesh and bone. Hence the sentiment of terror he experienced, seeing himself about to be hurled into the abyss. Where did this fantastic image come from? He himself created, by thought, a fluidic picture, a scene of which he was the actor, exactly like Mrs. Cantianille and Sister Elmérich, of whom we spoke in our preceding issue. The difference comes from the nature of the habitual preoccupations. Naturally the engineer thought of mines, whereas Mrs. Cantianille, in her convent, thought of hell. She certainly believed herself in a state of mortal sin, through some infraction of the rule, committed at the instigation of the demons; she exaggerated its consequences and already saw herself in their power. These words: “I only managed to merit your confidence very well” prove that her conscience was not tranquil. Besides, the description she makes of hell has something seductive for certain persons, for those who consent to blaspheme God, to praise the devil and who have the courage to face the fear of the flames, are rewarded with entirely worldly pleasures. In this picture it was possible to notice a reflection of the Masonic ordeals, which had no doubt been shown to her as the vestibule of hell. As for Sister Elmérich, her preoccupations are gentler; she takes pleasure in beatitude and in the veneration of holy things. That is why her visions are the reproduction of these. In the engineer’s vision, there are, then, two distinct parts: one, real and positive, attested by the exactitude of the plan of the mine; the other, purely fantastic: that of the danger he ran. This is perhaps the effect of the remembrance of a real accident of this nature, of which he had been the victim in his preceding existence. It could have been provoked as a warning to take the necessary precautions. Being charged with the direction of the mine, after such an alert, he will not neglect the measures of prudence.

— Here is an example of the impression one can retain of the sensations experienced in another existence. We do not know whether we have already cited it elsewhere; not having time to verify, we recall it at the risk of making a repetition, because it comes in support of what we have just said.

A lady of our personal acquaintance had been educated in a boarding school in Rouen. When the pupils went out to go to church or to take a walk, this lady was seized, at a certain point in the street, by an extraordinary commotion and apprehension; it seemed to her that she was going to be hurled into an abyss. This repeated itself each time she passed by that place and during all the time she was in that boarding school. She had left Rouen more than twenty years ago, but, having returned there a few years ago, she had the curiosity to go and see again the house she had inhabited; on passing by the same street she experienced the same sensation. Later, having become a Spiritist, the fact came back to her memory, she asked for its explanation and it was answered to her that, formerly, in that place, there were ramparts with deep moats, full of water; that she was part of a group of ladies who contributed to the defense of the city against the English and that all had been hurled into the moats and perished there. The fact is related in the history of Rouen. Thus, after centuries, the terrible impression of that catastrophe had still not been effaced from her Spirit. If she no longer had the same carnal body, she still had the same fluidic or perispiritual body, which had received the first impression and reacted upon her present body. Thus, a dream could retrace the image to her and produce an emotion similar to that of the engineer. How many things the great principle of the perpetuity of the Spirit and of the bond that unites the Spirit to matter explains to us! Perhaps never have the newspapers, denying Spiritism, related so many facts in support of the truths that it proclaims.

[1] [Apart from the sketch of the plan of the mine which, as Kardec said, may have been made in a state of somnambulism, the principal phenomenon that occurred, which is that of the whitening of his hair during a dream that will have lasted a few minutes, seems to be included among the apocryphal phenomena studied in the preceding article, since the hair whitens at the root. The thing seems difficult, but not impossible, because there exists the possibility of the modification of the properties of matter.]