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Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion

Account sent to authors of Phantasms of the Living from Colonel Jones of London 1883 who enclosed a letter from his father written to him a short time after this experience

In 1845 I was with my regiment in Maulmain Burma.  In those days there was no direct mail; sailing vessels brought us our letters, and months often went by without our receiving any.

The evening of March 24th 1845, I was dining with some other people at the home of a friend.  Seated on the veranda after dinner, with the other guests, I was talking of local matters, when suddenly I saw before me, distinctly, a coffin, and stretched out in this coffin with every appearance of being dead, one of my sisters, especially beloved, who was then at home.

It goes without saying that I stopped speaking and every one looked at me questioningly.  They asked me what was the matter.  Laughingly I told what I had seen and my story was taken as a jest.

In the course of the evening, in the company of an officer much older than I (the late Major General George Briggs, retired of the Madras artillery and at that time Captain Briggs), I went back to where I lived.  He returned to the subject and asked me if I had received any news that my sister was ill.  I replied in the negative, adding that my latest letters from home were those I had received about three months previously.

He asked me to make a note of the vision because he had heard of similar experiences.  I did this making a note of it on a calendar opposite the date.

In the seventh of the following May I received a letter telling me that my sister had died on the very day of the vision.