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AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME BY J. W. DUNNE [SECOND EDITION]

From Sussex, I went to Sorrento, in Italy. Lying in bed there one morning, I awoke and fell to wondering what the time might be. I lacked energy to look at my watch, which lay outside the mosquito curtains, on a small table within reach, but out of sight when my head was on the pillow. It occurred to me to experiment with the object of ascertaining whether I could again see that watch in the apparently " clairvoyant” fashion of the earlier experience. Closing my eyes, and concentrating my thoughts upon wondering what the time might be, I fell into one of those semi-dozes in which one is still aware of one's situation. A moment later I found myself looking at the watch.

The vision I saw was binocular, upright, poised in space about a foot from my nose, illumined by ordinary daylight, and encircled by a thick, whitish mist which filled the remainder of the field of sight. The hour hand stood at exactly eight o'clock ; the minute hand was wavering between the twelve and the one : the second hand was a formless blur. To look more intently would, I felt, wake me completely, so I made up my mind to treat the minute hand as one treats the needle of a prismatic compass, and to divide the arc of its swing. This gave the time as two and a half minutes past eight. That decided, I opened my eyes, reached out under the mosquito curtains, grabbed the watch, pulled it in, and held it up before me. I was wide awake, and — the hands stood at two and a half minutes past eight.

This time there seemed to be no way out. I was driven to the conclusion that I possessed some funny faculty of seeing — seeing through obstacles, across space, and round corners.