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Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion
Letter 4362, Count Auguste de Malachowski, Stockholm Herserud Wrangelsberg January 3rd 1921I

It was in 1869.  My brother aged ten, my cousin nine, and I, seven, all three recovering from scarlet fever, were in bed in my mother’s room.  The house was 60 kilometers from Odessa, where my father was ill of dropsy.

One morning my brother and my cousin asked my mother at the same instant, why my father, who had come in the night, had not awakened her and why he was no longer there.  My mother, astonished, told them he was in Odessa, ill, and that he had not returned.

‘What!’ my brother and my cousin answered together.  ‘He came back, because we saw him’.

And they told how, though they were not asleep, they had most clearly seen my father come into the room; how he had drawn near my brother who had wished to speak, but had been unable to utter a sound.  Next, he went up to my cousin, who, seeing him, was frightened and hid his face under the covers; then he went toward the little bed in which I slept, not far from my mother; he gazed at us, then went toward the door opening into another room and disappeared.

Such is the two little boys’ exact account.

Four or five days afterwards my father died.

Since that time and during his whole life, my cousin, who died only a year ago, was afraid of the dark; it was like a malady.