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David Scott Rogo - Leaving the Body: A Complete Guide to Astral Projection

An even more elaborate set of similar attempts was recorded by S.H. Beard, a London businessman who began experimenting with astral projection in 1881. He made several visits to his fiancee, a Miss Verity, and at least one of these experiments was overseen by Edmund Gurney, a scholar who was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research in England. (The Society had recently been organized to study and investigate reports of psychic phenomena.)

Beard began his experiments after reading about the nature of the will. He seemed to grasp intuitively the role that focused willing contributes to astral projection. As he wrote later, "Having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercizing, I determined with the whole force of my being that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom of the second floor of a house. . . in which slept two young ladies."

These were Miss Verity (aged 25) and her eleven-year-old sister. They also lived in London.

The tests began one Sunday night in November. Beard seated himself in his room and concentrated his mind on the Verity home. The young woman knew nothing of the experiment. Beard concentrated with all his might and fell asleep with no conscious recollection of having accomplished his purpose. The following day he visited the Verity home and learned, for the first time, that he had been successful.

The elder Miss Verity told him that his apparition had suddenly appeared in her room the previous night. She had screamed in shock, awakening her sister, who also saw the apparition. Miss Verity later wrote that the incident was ". . . too vivid to be ever erased from my memory."

Beard conducted his next impromptu experiment on December 1st  at 9:30 P.M.

Once again he went to his room and tried to project to a house in London where the Veritys were visiting.

"l endeavored so strongly to fix my mind upon the house in which resided Miss Verity and her two sisters," he wrote in his journal, "that I seemed to be actually in the house." Beard remained there for some time. Although he could sense his physical body back in his own home, he felt paralyzed. His consciousness seemed to be across town with his fiancee. Through an effort of will, he broke the paralysis and returned to his body. Later that night, he gave himself the suggestion that he would once again appear to Miss Verity . . .  this time at midnight.

Beard found that he had been successful the next day when he visited the Veritys and learned that his apparition had been seen in the hallway of the upper floor of the house at 9:30. At 12:00 Miss Verity had seen the apparition once again. She was awake in bed when the apparition suddenly appeared, entered her room, walked up to her, stroked her hair, and then disappeared.

Beard made his final attempt on March 22, 1884. Once again he focused all his concentration on the Verity home and then fell asleep. At the same time, his apparition appeared across town.

It is unfortunate that Beard conducted most of his experiments right before falling asleep and usually had no recollection of his projections.

However, the critical December 1st experiment is a notable exception and confirms much of what Lancelin was discovering in France at the same general time. ln this instance, Beard's act of will was so intense that he actually experienced himself at the distant location. This impression was so vivid that he genuinely felt himself as the apparition while remaining simultaneously aware of his paralyzed body back home. The fact that his apparition was seen by two witnesses on one occasion is strong evidence that the London businessman really was projecting some aspect of his self to the home of his fiancee.