Apparition of a living son to his mother.

— The following fact is reported by a London medical journal and reproduced by the Journal de Rouen, of December 22, 1868:

“Last week Mr. Samuel W…, one of the principal employees of the Bank, failed to attend an evening party to which he had been invited with his wife, because he was feeling very unwell. He arrived home with a violent fever. They sent for the doctor, but the latter had been called to a nearby town and would not return until late at night.

“Mrs. Samuel resolved to await the doctor at her husband’s bedside. Although stricken by a burning fever, the patient slept peacefully. Somewhat reassured and seeing that her husband was not suffering, Mrs. Samuel did not fight against sleep, and in turn dozed off.

“Toward three o’clock, she heard the bell of the front door ring. She left the armchair hastily, took a candlestick, and went down to the parlor.

“There she expected to see the doctor come in. The parlor door opened, but, instead of the doctor, she saw her son Edward come in, a boy of twelve, who was studying at a college near Windsor. He was very pale and had his head wrapped in a wide white band.

— “You were waiting for the doctor for papa, weren’t you? he asked, embracing his mother. But papa is better; it is really nothing; tomorrow he will get up. It is I who need a good doctor. See to calling one immediately, because the college one does not understand much about the matter…

“Seized with fear, Mrs. Samuel had the strength to ring the little bell. The chambermaid arrived. She found her mistress in the middle of the parlor, motionless, with the candlestick in her hand. The sound of her voice awoke Mrs. Samuel. She had been the plaything of a vision, of a dream, call it what we will. She remembered everything and repeated to the chambermaid what she had thought she heard. Then she exclaimed, weeping: “Some misfortune must have befallen my son!”

“The long-awaited doctor arrived. He examined Mr. Samuel. The fever had almost disappeared; he assured them that it was nothing but a nervous fever, which was running its course and would end in a few hours.

“After these reassuring words, the mother related to the doctor what had happened to her an hour before. The professional – out of incredulity or perhaps out of a desire to go and rest – advised Mrs. Samuel not to attach any importance to these phantoms. Nevertheless, he had to yield to the entreaties, to the anguish of the mother, and to accompany her to Windsor. At the break of day they arrived at the college. Mrs. Samuel asked for news of her son; they answered that he had been in the infirmary since the previous day. The poor mother’s heart contracted; the doctor became pensive. “In short, they visited the boy. He had suffered a great wound on his forehead, playing in the garden. They had given him first aid and, although the dressing was poorly done, the wound was in no way dangerous.

“Here is the fact in all its details; we obtained it from persons worthy of belief. Second sight or dream, it must always be regarded as an ordinary fact.”

— As one sees, the idea of second sight is gaining ground. It is believed in outside of Spiritism, like the plurality of existences, the perispirit, etc., so true is it that Spiritism arrives by a thousand paths and establishes itself under all forms, by the very efforts of those who do not want it.

The possibility of the above fact is evident and it would be superfluous to discuss it. Is it a dream or an effect of second sight? Mrs. Samuel was sleeping and, on awakening, remembers what she saw; it was, then, a dream; but a dream that brings the image of an actuality so precise, and which is verified almost immediately, is not a product of the imagination: it is a very real vision. There is, at the same time, second sight, or spiritual vision, because it is quite certain that it was not with the eyes of the body that the mother saw her son. On one side and the other there was a detachment of the soul; was it the soul of the mother that went to the son, or that of the son that came to the mother? The circumstances make this latter case more probable, because in the other hypothesis the mother would have seen the son in the infirmary. Someone who knows Spiritism only very superficially, but perfectly admits the possibility of certain manifestations, was asking how it is that the son, who was in his bed, had been able to present himself to the mother in his clothes. “I conceive, he said, the apparition by the fact of the detachment of the soul; but I would not understand how purely material objects, such as clothes, have the property of transporting far away a quintessentialized part of their substance, which would suppose a will.”

We answered him that the clothes, as well as the material body of the young man, remained in their place. After a brief explanation of the phenomenon of fluidic creations [See: Furniture from Beyond the Tomb], we added: The Spirit of the young man presented himself in his mother’s house with his fluidic or perispiritual body. Without having had the premeditated design of clothing himself in his clothes, without having made this reasoning: “My cloth clothes are over there; I cannot put them on; it is necessary, then, that I manufacture fluidic clothes which will have their appearance,” it was enough for him to think of his habitual clothing, of that which he would have worn in ordinary circumstances, for this thought to give his perispirit the appearance of that same clothing. For the same reason he could have presented himself in his sleeping clothes, if such had been his thought. For him that appearance had become a kind of reality; he had only an imperfect consciousness of his fluidic state and, just as certain Spirits still believe themselves in this world, he believed he was coming to his mother’s house in flesh and bone, since he kisses her as usual. The exterior forms that clothe the Spirits who become visible are, then, true fluidic creations, often unconscious. The clothing, the particular marks, the wounds, the defects of the body, the objects one uses, are the reflection of one’s own thought in the perispiritual envelope.

— But, then, says our noble interlocutor, this is a whole order of new ideas; there is in this a whole world, and that world is in our midst; many things are explained; the relations between the living and the dead are understood. — Without the least doubt; and it is to the knowledge of that world, which interests us for so many reasons, that Spiritism leads. That world reveals itself by an immensity of facts, which are disdained because their cause is not understood.