Observations placeholder
Bertha Hurley sees the dying Mrs Ewans
Identifier
011309
Type of Spiritual Experience
Dying
Inter composer communication
Hallucination
Background
A description of the experience
Death and its Mystery, At the Moment of Death; Manifestations and Apparitions of the Dying – Camille Flammarion
from Annales des science psychiques 1891: letter from Bertha Hurly February 25th 1890.
In the spring and summer of 1886 I often went to visit a poor woman named Ewans, who lived in our parish of Caynham. She was very ill, suffered from a painful disease, but was given, she told me, great pleasure when I went to see her. I often went to talk with her. Towards the middle of October her condition had grown worse, but she seemed to be in no immediate danger.
I had not seen her for several days, when one evening, when I was in the dining room with the rest of my family, I saw a woman’s form, dressed like Mrs Ewans and wearing a large apron and a muslin cap. This form crossed the room, from one door to the other and vanished.
I cried ‘What’s that?’
‘Why, what’s the matter?’ my mother asked.
I answered ‘That woman who just passed’.
Everyone began to laugh at me and to ask me if I were dreaming; but I was fully persuaded that it was Mrs Ewans.
The following day we learned that she was dead.
When we went to her home to inquire about her death, we learned that she had fallen into delirium and lost consciousness at the very moment of her appearance to me and that she had died towards morning.