Observations placeholder

Journal of the American S.P.R. (1915, p. 392)

Also quoted in Professor Ernest Bozzano Les phénomènes de bilocation Traduit de l’italien par Gabriel Gobron and translated further into English by Serge Patlavskiy]

 The narrator Mrs Margaret Sargent is a certified nurse. She writes:

"A few years ago, in Augusta, Georgia, I was caring for a very young sick woman for an obstinate fever that had also exhausted her loving mother with the long vigils spent at her daughter's bedside, so that the doctor had insisted that the mother withdraw to regain her strength in her sleep.

I stayed with the doctor near the young patient. At about 11 o'clock in the evening we noticed some disturbing symptoms in the patient. However, we did not want to trouble the mother, because the doctor feared that she would become ill if she did not take the necessary rest. We knew that the patient longed for her mother's presence, but as she had fallen into a state of unconsciousness, we did not think it was necessary to satisfy her desire. The symptoms of the pre-agonist crisis soon appeared and we even thought that the patient had actually died.

The doctor and I, familiar with death scenes for a long time, felt this time as if we were invaded by a feeling of mysterious solemnity, which for some time nailed us to our places. I sat at the foot of the bed, silently watching the poor woman whose breathing had stopped manifesting itself in chest movements. Suddenly, from the head of the bed I saw a white form, dressed, advancing, whose face I could not see because it turned its head to the other side. It remained for a moment beside the girl's inert body, then quickly passed right through the doctor and slipped close to me - always turning her face in the other direction - into the room where the patient's mother was sleeping. I felt shocked and overwhelmed by a mysterious feeling that prevented me from moving and speaking. I had not mistaken it for a living person, so I could not understand how it came out of a place where there was no door.

As it passed by the doctor, he flinched and exclaimed, "Who hit me on the shoulder?"

I replied: "But it was probably this lady who walked by you".

He, very intrigued, replied: "What a lady? I don't see anyone. And yet I was hit on the shoulder. What does that mean?"

We looked at each other, in awe. But we were both reminded of reality by the weak voice of the patient, who to our amazement was still alive and had regained her senses. She lived for another 24 hours, then died in full consciousness with her mother's arm affectionately holding her head, while the mother's ear bent over her dying daughter sought to gather the ultimate farewell, as her final words expressed spiritual joy and bliss.

It is our impregnable conviction that in this supreme hour when death was imminent, the spirit of the young girl who idolized her mother, abandoned its own body for a moment to go and say her last goodbyes and then return to its own body.

If we were refused this, then we would have to admit that on that night there appeared to us a "spirit" that made itself visible to my eyes and signalled its presence to the doctor by hitting him on the shoulder. I would add that the doctor in question is one of the most experienced and esteemed members of Augusta's medical staff. When asked by me, he said he was ready to testify about our experience, about the scrupulous accuracy with which I report it here."

(The doctor in question wrote: "I am the doctor referred to in the above report, and I certify, without hesitation, that I found the report of the event we both attended absolutely accurate".

Signed: Dr. E. Goodrich).