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Death and its Mystery – After Death – Camille Flammarian

From Rev. C. Jupp, head of the Alberlour Orphan- Asylum in Craigellachie. The account first appeared in  June 1883 in the Orphan Asylum’s Annual Report and was subsequently printed in Hallucinations telepathiques

 In 1875 a man died, leaving a wife and six children. The three eldest were taken into the orphan-asylum. Three years afterward the widow died also, and friends raised the money to send the other children there. The youngest was four years old.

Rather late one evening, six months after these children had been admitted to the asylum, some visitors arrived suddenly. The superintendent consented to sleep on a bed placed in the children's dormitory: it contained ten beds, nine of which were occupied. At breakfast one morning the superintendent told the following story:

 "So far as I can remember, I fell asleep about eleven o'clock, and slept soundly for a time. Suddenly I awakened, without any apparent reason; I felt an urge to turn toward the children. Lifting my eyes, I saw a soft light in the room. The gas in the hallway had been turned low, and as the door to the dormitory was open, I thought that the light was coming from there, but such was not at all the case. I turned, and saw something surprising.

"Above the second bed, against the wall, and on the same side of the room on which I was, there was floating a small cloud of light, forming a halo as bright as the moon on an ordinary moonlight night.

“I sat up in bed, to examine the strange apparition. I took up my watch, and noted that the hands stood at five minutes to one. All was still, and all the children were sleeping soundly. In the bed above which the light seemed to float was sleeping the youngest of the children previously mentioned.

“I asked myself, 'Am I dreaming?' No, I was wide awake. I thought I would get up and touch the substance, or whatever it was (for, taking it as a whole, it was five feet high), but something held me back. I heard nothing, but I felt and understood, perfectly, these words: 'Stay in bed ; no harm will come to you’ .  It was not long before I went to sleep, and I got up at half past five, as was my habit.

"About six o'clock I began to dress the children, commencing with the bed farthest from mine. I reached the bed over which I had seen the light floating. I lifted the little boy up, put him on my knee, and drew his clothes on. The chid had just been talking with the others; suddenly he grew silent. Then, looking me full in the face, with an extraordinary expression, he said: ‘Oh, Mr. Jupp, my mother came to me last night. Did you see her?’ For a moment, I could not answer him. I thought that it was better not to speak at all of that, and said: 'Come! Let's hurry, or we'll be late for breakfast.

" Never again did the child speak of this vision, we were assured, and neither did any one speak of it to him. The superintendent of the orphanage acknowledges, simply, that there is a mystery in it, to him. He has recorded the occurrence, and there the thing stands. He is virtually certain of having given, without a single mistake, an account of what he still remembers very exactly.