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Death and its Mystery: After Death – Camille Flammarion

The following letter was sent me from Nantes on March 31, 1921.

MY DEAR MASTER:

I am forty-two. I love science too much, I have too much interest in all those questions which you are investigating so impartially and so scientifically, and finally-and this should be enough-I have too much esteem and consideration for the savant that you are, to fabricate or exaggerate anything whatsoever.

I was nineteen, and. was living in Nantes, where I am at present. I frequented a cafe where I spent almost all my evenings; I was on very intimate terms with the proprietor. A charwoman used to come into this cafe, to do the heavy work. This woman was not married, and was living in a marital relation with a workman from Marseilles, whose given name was Marius. She was a native of Brittany; Keryado was her family name; but we only called her, familiarly, "Mother Marius." She drank a little.

These details have their own importance.

She was, on the whole, a good sort, kind-hearted, and she had done for me certain small services.

Every week I used to leave Nantes on Saturday evening and spend Sunday on a farm in the very midst of the country-side. One Saturday I left as usual-took leave of the proprietor, of my friends and said good-by to this same charwoman, who was in excellent health. So, late on Saturday night, I found myself in the country as usual, but I must explain that this time, through exceptional circumstances, I was to remain there for the whole week.

The farm-house had two rooms: a kitchen and another room. On Thursday, at one o'clock in the afternoon, I was talking, in the other room, with the young girl of the house. There was no one in the kitchen. The doors and windows were closed. We were talking, when both of us heard a noise in the kitchen, as though the fire- tongs had fallen on to the hearthstone. Out of precaution, thinking that the cat might be getting into the jars of milk, I went to see what it was. There was nothing; everything was shut up. Scarcely had I come back into the room when there was the same noise.

I turned. Nothing. Since I had already taken up spiritualism, I said to the young girl, laughing, “It's a spirit, perhaps,"-attaching no importance to my words, however.

I then had the idea of using a little round table, with which we had already experimented, and we waited, both of us sitting at it, our hands upon it. Almost immediately we got a communication through rapping, one that was according to the usual alphabetic code.

“Is this a spirit?"-

“Yes” –

“You lived on earth?"-

“Yes”

''You knew me?”-

“Yes.”-

 "What was your name?"-

“Keryado."

At this odd name (I did not remember the charwoman's family name) I was about to leave the table, thinking that the reply was pointless, when the young girl said to me, “That's the family name of the charwoman in the café” –

“That's true," I answered, and then I began a series of questions.

I was unwilling to believe that she was dead, having left her in perfect health only five days before. I asked her for details and learned that she had been taken ill at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening that she had been carried to her home, and that she had died at 11 o’clock, of a haemorrhage. I have already said that she drank. (The young girl knew her, but since going to the country a month before had had no news of her.) This happened on Thursday.

On Saturday, when I returned to Nantes, as soon as I got out of the train, I went to the cafe, and there, to my stupefaction, they gave me confirmation of this woman's death and of all the details she had given me. Such was the experience I had. I have since told it more than twenty times, when the conversation turned on this general subject. Autosuggestion cannot explain it. I had left this woman in perfect health; I had no reason for thinking of her; the girl who was at the little table had not seen her for a month, and was not in correspondence with her.

Neberry,

Nantes.  Letter 4407