Observations placeholder
We both saw a luminous and vibrant vapour appeared above our poor father's head, in the shape of a globe
Identifier
028026
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Comment by Professor Ernest Bozzano
The latter fact of the reappearance, two days later, of the same luminous globe, does not lack suggestive value from a point of view that is not only that of the phenomena of "bilocation", given the fact that visions of luminous globes at the deathbed or some time after death, occur quite often in narrations of this kind.
And it is a well-known fact that there is an ancient tradition on this subject, according to which this form is the one assumed by the "human mind" in several circumstances of its extracorporeal activity. And it is curious and interesting to note that the same manifestations in the form of a globe at the deathbed also occur among wild peoples.
For example, Beatrice Grimshaw, a famous explorer from New Guinea, published an article in Wide World Magazine entitled: "Witchcraft and Spiritism among the Papuans". In this article, she reports, among other things, her conversation with a Papuan wizard who assured her that he had witnessed the "disembodiment" of the spirit many times at the time of death. In answer to one of her questions about the shape of the ghost in such situations, the wizard answered:
"It is in every way similar to a sports ball, Madam (football), to one of those balls with which our young people are playing with each other. And it is in every way similar also to a lantern that would give a blue light."
The editor of Light, from whom I borrowed the episode, added some observations to it:
"Spiritists are also very familiar with this form of the phenomenon. It is therefore natural, but even more suggestive, that observation reveals to us that the liberation of the "astral body" from the "somatic body" shows an identical pattern both when it occurs in wild Papuans and when it occurs at the death bed of a Londoner. It is precisely these convergent, concordant, cumulative observations from all over the world that wonderfully contribute to validating the phenomenon by placing it on a scientifically impregnable basis."
A description of the experience
The Journal of the S.P.R. (Vol. VI, p. 68).
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 names of the participants are not indicated, they are known to the editors of the "English Society of Psychic Research". Miss W. tells this story:
"My father died of bronchitis on the night of November 12, 1862, at 12:30 a.m., and at 9:30 a.m. that same evening, the doctors had declared him out of danger. That is why, between 11 and 12 o'clock, my mother, exhausted from the long vigils, by my insistence, went to sleep to regain her strength.
Shortly after midnight, my father, after a brief sleep, woke up, restless, and I offered him a cordial drink that he drank with greed. But a moment later he whispered in a weak voice:
"I feel like I'm dying."
I replied, "Oh, no, Father... You're very weak, that's all!"
But he replied, "Call Kate! Call Kate!"
I asked a friend who was watching with me to call my mother, my sister and my two brothers, who arrived in a hurry. In the chimney a fire was burning that was about to go out, and the room was lit by only one candle. These last details are important because they help to show that what I saw, along with my brother, was not due to the brightness of the room, much less to our imagination.
After a few minutes, the patient expired and I gently placed his head on the pillow. My younger brother and I suddenly made the same exclamation: "Look! Look!"
We both saw a luminous and vibrant vapour appeared above our poor father's head, in the shape of a globe. It seemed as if his breathing had condensed into the air as a luminous vapour, and something had stopped there, flapping its wings like a little bird above the cage that held it for so long, and then launching freely with its wings pulled through the infinite space.
Two nights later, I was in bed, awake, heartbroken and with a soul full of regret, when I suddenly saw the same luminosity above me in the form of a globe, in every way similar to the one already described, but bigger and brighter... I sat down, looking around me in the darkness, busy discovering some rational cause of the phenomenon, but in vain..."
(Miss W.'s brother and sister confirmed all of her statements).