A PHANTASM OF THE LIVING.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—With regard to your correspondent A. B.'s theory of brain-waves, the following may be of some interest to your readers : About twenty years ago I resided in a village four miles from a watering-place on the Yorkshire coast. One afternoon in early October my daughter and I went by train to the town. Among other shops, we visited that of an antique furniture dealer well known to us, where I purchased a quaint carved oak shelf for china, and requested him to send it to the station for the 5.50 train, by which we were returning home. My daughter and I then parted, and I arrived at the station first. On the platform I met the principal auctioneer of the town, with whom I entered into conversation. As we were talking, the furniture dealer, in his shirt-sleeves and wearing a green-baize apron, as in his shop, came on to the platform wheeling a little truck on which was a large parcel wrapped in brown paper. He passed close to us without taking any notice of us, put the parcel in the van, and wheeled away his barrow. The auctioneer said, "Why, there is Mr. L.," and I replied, "Yes, he has brought an oak shelf that I have just bought from him." In an archway, the entrance to the station, he met my daughter, nearly ran over her, but passed on without any remark or apology. In those parts it is not customary to pass anyone to whom one is known without some sort of salutation. On arrival at our station no parcel was put out of the van, and, on our asking the guard for it, he said the only parcel he bad had at all in his van was a sack of potatoes for a station further up the line. We looked in, and certainly there was nothing else there, and the guard was quite angry when we said we had seen it put in. Next morning the shelf was brought up from the station, having arrived by a train leaving the town at 6.10. My daughter went again to the town the next day, and on her entering the furniture shop, the dealer, without waiting for her to speak, began to apologise for not sending the shelf to the train we wished. He said he had been extremely worried about it, but his boy was out and he could not leave his shop, so was obliged to send it by the train twenty minutes later, the last leaving the town that night. It is worthy of note that the apparition was not only seen by my daughter and myself, who were expecting the shelf, but also by the person to whom I was speaking, who knew nothing whatever about my purchase. It was so real that we never for a moment suspected anything unusual, though we noticed the dealer was extremely pale, and thought it odd he should be without a coat, as the weather was cool and the station some distance from his shop.—I am,
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