Cock Lane and Common-Sense

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...publish, with full and impressive details, as many examples of non-coincidental as of coincidental hallucinations. It is the story that takes the public: if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental story in all its features, as is done in the matter of wraiths with a kind of message or meaning. 1 Animal Magnetism, pp. 61-64, 1887. Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang phrase, were 'sells'. Those which we have at first hand are marked '(A),' those at second hand '(B)'. But the world will accept the story of a ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed. 1. (A) A young lady, in the dubious state between awake and asleep, unable, in fact, to feel certain whether she was awake or asleep, beheld her late grandmother. The old lady wept as she sat by the bedside. 'Why do you weep, grandmamma, are you not happy where you are?' asked the girl. 'Yes, I am happy, but I am weeping for your mother.' 'Is she going to die?' 'No, but she is going to lose you.' 'Am / going to die, grandmamma?' 'Yes, my dear.' 'Soon?' 'Yes, my dear, very soon.' The young lady, with great courage, concealed her dream from her mother, but confided it to a brother. She did her best to be good while she was on earth, where she is still, after an interval of many years. Except for the conclusion, and the absence of a mystic bright light in the bedroom, this case exactly answers to that of Miss Lee, in 1662. Dr. Hibbert would have liked this example. 2. (B) A lady, staying with a friend, observed that one morning she was much depressed. The friend confided to her that, in the past night, she had seen her brother, dripping wet. He told her that he had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat, which was attached by a rope to a ship. At this time, he...