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Flammarion, C., Carroll, L, - Death and its mystery: before death

247 DEATH AND ITS MYSTERY

At the time we were very intimate with a German lady, named Hélène Schmidt.  Schmidt was a medium, and as Mama was very much interested in spiritualist seances, she asked her one day to hold one of these seances.  I was not present, for at the time I was a little girl, about twelve years old, and I was at school, but Mama and our old servant have often described the incident to me.

Hélène Schmidt had only to place her hands upon the table for it to begin at once to rock violently. You know, Master, the manner of communicating with spirits, if there are spirits. When the table, a large and heavy dining-table, which it would have been impossible to lift by muscular force alone, began to rap regular blows, indicating that a spirit was present, Mama asked its name, it named itself by the alphabet, saying it was called Anton.

The medium was absolutely unacquainted with this name and she had no knowledge either, who was in question when it was mentioned. Anton, I will add, was Anton Fiedler, an Austrian, the first husband of one of my aunts, a sister of Mama's, who had married as a second husband Adolphe Riesbeek. [Hélène Schmidt was even ignorant of the existence of all these people.]

As this Anton Fredler had been my aunt's nearest relative, Mama thought of asking something about her future. To this first question, "Will Riesbeek always keep his fortune?" the spirit, answered brusquely, 'No.’

“In how many years will he lose it?"

The table struck two blows- “two years."

Mama then asked, “Will he live long after having lost his fortune?" and the reply was a clear and precise, “Five years."

Then Hélène wished to know how he would die, but the spirit answered only that my uncle would die suddenly. To the questions as to whether he would die of sickness, accident, suicide, shipwreck, or as the victim of a crime it answered, “No.”

 It was impossible to know how he would die : at that time no one thought of war, otherwise a question concerning it would also have been asked. All that we were able to obtain from Anton Fredler was the reply to this inquiry: “How old will Biesbeck's son be when he dies?" And the table answered very distinctly: “'Seventeen years."

Then everything ceased.

Dear Master, I do not permit myself to comment; I tell you simply what happened. Mama did not at once tell this to my aunt, for fear that she would repeat it to her husband. For that matter, she did not believe in such things. Unfortunately, everything that had been foretold happened with the most frightful precision: In the spring of 1912 -that is to say exactly two years after the prophecy-my uncle Riesbeck lost his fortune on the stock exchange in a daring speculation.

Some time after, Mama told my aunt, who was and still is at Geneva, of the prophecy which had been made to her and told her the second part of it.

My aunt replied, as anyone else would have replied in her place -that it was all nonsense and that we must not have faith in it.

Nevertheless, the second part of the prophecy has also been realized.

Mama and I often spoke of this seance and I said to her: “the spirit spoke the truth, my uncle ought to die at the beginning of the year 1917.”

Well, Master, Adolphe Riesbeek died at the front on February 12th 1917 -a sudden death, a bullet in the head,-when my cousin Mario was nearly eighteen. And this death of which the spirit could not tell us precisely, which was not sickness, nor accident, nor crime, nor any of the known deaths, this death was death in battle, of which no one was thinking then.