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Thoughts through Space – Sir Hubert Wilkins and Harold M Sherman

As with many people, the first experience which impressed upon me the possibility of mind communicating with mind was a dramatic one.

I had switched on the electric light in my room hundreds of times. There was no apparent reason why, this late afternoon in the spring of 1915, I should suddenly be seized with a feeling of apprehension as I took hold of the bulb.

"Don't turn on the light!" a voice, in my inner ear, seemed to say.

I stood for a moment, hesitant, my fingers on the switch. I had been seated at my typewriter desk, typing, and the sun had dropped below the western horizon. The giant shadow of dusk was moving over the landscape.

"All right," I decided, wondering why I was surrendering to the impulse, "I won't turn the light on just yet. I can still see."

And so I resumed my seat and my typing. But it soon became difficult to distinguish the keys. I arose once more and put my hand on the bulb.

"Don't turn on the light!"

The impulse was stronger this time-a positive warning! I instinctively let go the switch. I had never felt this way before-almost as though some invisible presence had spoken to me, not in an audible voice, but in words which rang out in consciousness.

It was absurd for me to let an inexplicable urge like that paralyze me. And yet I could not bring myself to go against the impulse. Instead, I pulled my typewriter desk nearer the window, and turned it about so that the dwindling light would fail upon the typewriter keys. In this manner I was able to type for perhaps five more minutes.

By this time, the light simply had to be turned on. I was not going to put up with any more nonsense from this strange whim of my mind.

My hand was on the switch above the bulb, when I heard heavy footsteps come running up onto our front porch. There was no one at home but me. A fist pounded excitedly on our front door, and then the bell commenced ringing furiously.

I hurried downstairs, and flung open the door. An electric-light linesman burst in.

"Don’t turn on the lights!" he gasped. "There’s a high-voltage line down across your wires outside . . . and there’s no telling what might . . !"

I was told afterward that little or nothing probably would have happened.

But this young linesman was taking no chances. Investigating a "trouble call," and finding what was wrong, he had raced to three residences whose lines were covered by the high-voltage wire. Our house was the last one he reached, and at each place he had shouted: "Don't turn on the lights!"

As I reflected upon my own feelings afterward, I began to wonder. Had I, in some unaccountable way, picked up the frenzied thoughts of this linesman?

Had my mind, the instant it was focused upon the light, tuned in upon his "thought warning"?