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Death and its Mystery: After Death – Camille Flammarion

Annales des Sciences Psychiques 1900 page 65

On Tuesday May 25, 1897, at eight o'clock in the morning, Mrs. de Lagenest was in her apartment in Fontenay-le-Comte, making her bed in the absence of her maid, when, on the other side of the bed (which was in the middle of the room), she saw her uncle, Monsieur Bonnamy. He was living in Loche, and she believed him in good health.

She saw him smile happily, but this apparition distressed her, and she walked to the other side of the bed, hoping to escape it. To her great surprise, she saw her uncle in the spot which she had just left.

Then she spoke to him, asking the reason for his presence. She received no reply from the apparition; ceasing to smile, it gazed at her in a kindly way.

Madame de Lagenest attributed this obsession to an hallucination. To escape its gaze, which disturbed her, she went down to the rooms on the ground floor, and went into her husband's office. The same phantom rose before her. “But Uncle, why have you come here? Are you dead?" The apparition vanished immediately after Madame de Lagenest had uttered these words.

She went to take a walk in the garden, to regain her self-control. Half an hour afterward, hearing someone ring the door-bell, she said to the servant near her, without having seen the person who had just arrived : "Go and get the telegram that's come; my uncle is dead."

This was true; Monsieur Bonnamy had died in Loche on May 25th, at a quarter-past one in the morning. According to Madame de Lagenest, the vision lasted for ten minutes. It caused her excessive fatigue, which did not disappear until very late in the evening.