{199} The Psychical Society has published the writer’s encounter with Professor Conington, at Oxford, in 1869, when the professor was lying within one or two days of his death at Boston, a circumstance wholly unknown to the percipient.  But no jury would accept this as anything but a case of mistaken identity, natural in a short-sighted man’s vague experiences.  Mr. Conington was not a man easily to be mistaken for another, nor were many men likely to be mistaken for Mr. Conington.  Yet this is what must have occurred.  There was no conceivable reason why the professor should ‘telepathically’ communicate with the percipient, who had never exchanged a word with him, except in an examination.

{205} Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, viii. 111.

{206} Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 442.

{207a} Modern Spirit Manifestations.  By Adin Ballou.  Liverpool, 1853.

{207b} Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, xiv. 469.

{209} Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxii.

{214} In the author’s case the hypnagogic phantasms seem to be created out of the floating spots of light which remain when the eyes are shut.  Some crystal-gazers find that similar points de repere in the glass, are the starting-points of pictures in the crystal.  Others cannot trace any such connection.

{215} Compare Blackwood, August, 1831, in Noctes Ambrosianae.

{216a} Paus., ii. 24, I.

{216b} Bouche Leclercq, i. 339.

{223} The accomplished scryer can see as well in a crystal ringstone, or in a glass of water, as in a big crystal ball.  The latter may really be dangerous, if left on a cloth in the sun it may set the cloth on fire.

{224} Animal Magnetism, second edition, p. 135.

{228} Thus an educated gentleman, a Highlander, tells the author that he once saw a light of this kind ‘not a meteor,’ passing in air along a road where a funeral went soon afterwards.  His companions could see nothing, but one of them said:  ’It will be a death-candle’.  It seems to have been hallucinatory, otherwise all would have shared the experience.

{231a} Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 481, Edinburgh, 1834.

{231b} Op. cit., p. 473.

{232a} Op. cit., p. 470

{232b} It is, perhaps, needless to add that the unhappy patients were executed.

{232c} Miscellanies, 1857, p. 184.

{233a} Wodrow, i. 44.

{233b} Aulus Gellius, xv. 18.  Dio Cassius, lib. lxvii.  Crespet, De la Hayne de Diable, cited by Dalyell.

{234} Miscellanies, 177.

{235} A copy presented by Scott to Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck is in the author’s possession; it bears Scott’s autograph.

{237} Information from Mr. Mackay, Craigmonie.

{238} 2 Kings, v. 26.

{244} i. 259.  Longmans, London, 1811.