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The Mystery of the Human Double – Ralph Shirley

A lady signing herself "Hermione P. Okeden" was the first to launch the discussion, and I am reproducing her letter in an abbreviated form as illustrative of her modus operandi. She wrote me:

"I wonder if you will allow me to ask if you or any of your readers have the power to travel as I do. Whenever I desire to know how and where a friend is whom I have not heard of for some time I go and find them. It is not done in the astral body (sic) but when awake, and I can do it sitting quietly in my chair in the day or before going to sleep when in bed at night, perfect quiet being the only condition necessary.

I close my eyes and have a feeling of going over backwards which, though unpleasant, is too short for actual discomfort and I find myself going down a long, dim tunnel which is warm and as it were moss-lined. At the far end is a tiny speck of light which grows as I approach into a large square and I am 'there'.

In nearly every case I can describe the room my friends are in, the clothes they are wearing, the people they are talking to, and on several occasions when I have been anxious about a friend who lives in London I have found myself in a strange room among strange people in the country, and there was my friend.

Only once have I been seen and spoken to.

I have been tested over and over again when I have arranged (beforehand) to go. One friend put on a new evening gown, another even took the trouble to move her bedroom furniture round, which I at once noticed and questioned her about it when next we met, to her great amazement.

I have done this at intervals for years. It seems a pity, if it is a known form of astral communication, that it is not more widely practised."