W.T.  Stead relates the case of a lady well known to him, who spontaneously developed the power of awakening astral perception in others.  She seemed to “materialize” in their presence.  Her power in this direction became a source of considerable anxiety and worry to her friends to whom she would pay unexpected and involuntary visits, frightening them out of their wits by the appearance of her “ghost.”  They naturally thought that she had died suddenly and had appeared to them in ghostly form.  The lady, her self, was totally unconscious of the appearance, though she admitted that at or about the times of the appearances she had been thinking of her friends whom she visited astrally.

The German writer, Jung Stilling, mentions the case of a man of good character who had developed power of this kind, but also was conscious of his visits.  He exerted the power consciously by an effort of will, it seems.  At one time he was consulted by the wife of a sea captain whose husband was on a long voyage to Europe and Asia (sailing from America).  His ship was long overdue, and his wife was quite worried about him.  She consulted the gentleman in question, and he promised to do what he could for her.  Leaving the room he threw himself on a couch and was seen by the lady (who peered through the half-opened door) to be in a state of semi-trance.  Finally he returned and told her that he had visited her husband in a coffee-house in London, and gave her husband’s reasons for not writing, adding that her husband would soon return to America.  When her husband returned several months later, the wife asked him about the matter.  He informed her that the clairvoyant’s report was correct in every particular.  Upon being introduced to the clairvoyant, the captain manifested great surprise, saying that he had met the man in question on a certain day in a coffee-house in London, and that the man had told him that his wife was worried about him, and that he had told the man that he had been prevented from writing for several reasons, and that he was on the eve of beginning his return voyage to America.  He added that when he looked for the man a few moments afterwards, the stranger had apparently lost himself in the crowd, disappeared and was seen no more by him.

The Society for Psychical Research gives prominence to the celebrated case of the member of the London Stock Exchange, whose identity it conceals under the initials “S.H.B.,” who possessed this power of voluntary awakening of astral sight in others by means of his “appearance” to them.  The man relates his experience to the Society as follows:  “One Sunday night in November, 1881, I was in Kildare Gardens, when I willed very strongly that I would visit in the spirit two lady friends, the Misses X., who were living three miles off, in Hogarth Road.  I willed that I should do this at one o’clock in the morning, and having willed it, I went to sleep.  Next Thursday, when I first met my friends, the elder lady told me that she woke up and saw my apparition advancing to her bedside.  She screamed and woke her sisters, who also saw me.” (The report includes the signed statement of the ladies, giving the time of the appearance, and the details thereof.)