Observations placeholder
Mrs Agnes Paquet –England - Annales des Sciences psychiques 1891
Identifier
012959
Type of Spiritual Experience
Exploring group perception
Hallucination
Background
These were not the perceptions of the brother that she was seeing, the high emotion of the brother may well have been the trigger to the search – like the mobile phone in her head calling, but she saw the event as though she was a bystander. For this reason I think this was the exploration of group perception. It is possible that a bystander was indeed present witnessing the event and as shocked as her brother. It would have been his perceptions – linked to her brother – that she found, helped by the fact they had the high level of emotion needed to find them.
A description of the experience
Death and Its Mystery – Camille Flammarion
Mrs Agnes Paquet –England, from Annales des Sciences psychiques 1891
On October 24th, 1889, Edmund Dunn, brother of Mrs Agnes Paquet, was employed as stoker and machinist on the Wolf, a little steamer which towed boats in the port of Chicago. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon the tug was attached to a vessel, to draw it up the river. While adjusting the buoy Mr Dunn fell overboard and was drowned. The body was not found for three weeks after the accident, when it came to the surface near the spot where mr Dun had disappeared.
The observer describes her experience in these words:
“I rose, the morning of the day of the accident, at the usual time; it must have been 6 o’ clock. I had slept well. I woke up, sad, depressed, without being able to shake off this uneasiness. After breakfast my husband left for his work; the children went to school, leaving me alone in the house. Shortly afterward, I decided to make some tea and to drink it. I went into the pantry and took up the tea caddy, and turning, I saw before me some feet away, my brother Edmund - or–his exact image. The phantom was almost turning its back to me; it leaned forward, as if it was falling, drawn by two ropes, or by the coil of a rope pulling its legs. The vision lasted only an instant, but it was most distinct. I dropped the tea, hid my face in my hands and cried ‘Good heavens! Edmund’s been drowned!’
About half past ten in the morning my husband got a telegram from Chicago, telling him that my brother was drowned. When he got home he told me “Edmund is ill; he’s in a hospital in Chicago; I’ve just got a telegram”.
I answered “Edmund was drowned; I saw him fall into the water.” I then gave him a detailed description of what I had seen. I said that my brother, when I saw him, was bareheaded, that he wore a blue sailor’s shirt and no coat and that he had been pulled over a hand rail, or railing. I noticed that his trousers were turned up and showed the white lining. I also described the appearance of the boat at the spot where my brother had fallen.
I am not nervous and neither before nor afterward did anything like this ever happen to me. My brother was subject neither to spells of weakness nor to dizziness”