SPIRIT VISITOR

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3328, 28 July 1931, Page 6

SPIRIT VISITOR

SIR A. CONAN DOYLE’S EXPERI-

ENCE.

The late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, after recovery from a long illness due to heart trouble, related the following experience in a message to the Morning Post:

In the early morning on a certain date I was lying awake when I became aware of heavy steps approaching along the passage which leads to my room. They were quite as well marked as those of the butler when he brings me my early morning cup of tea. They paused outside my door, and I then heard clearly a short cough as of someone clearing theii throat.

I turned up the light and noticed that it was 3.30 a.m. I then rose and went to the door. I flung it open, fully expecting to find some person on the other side. The light from my lamp shone down the passage and there was no one there. Having made sure that this was the case, I returned to bed in a somewhat shaken state, as I was a sick man and in no condition for such nocturnal adventures. In a quarter of an ho!ur or so my heart palpitation passed away and I fell into a deep sleep. Two days later my wife received a letter from Mrs Osborne Leonard, the well-known medium, saying that she had never dreamt of me before in her life, but that between 3.30 and 4 o’clock on Monday morning she had had an extraordinary vivid impression of having visited me and actually seeing me and administering some healing treatment to me. “It was all so real,” she said, “that it cannot be classed as a dream.” In this letter Mrs Leonard offered to come to Crowborough, and to give me a special seance, which she did three days later, nobly fulfilling her promise, which involved a drive of thirty miles, partly through deep snow. The seance was a very wonderful experience, but it makes a story by itself. When it was over I discussed with Mrs Leonard the happening of Monday morning, and I mentioned to her the short cough which I had heard outside my door. She said: “ That is really final. I seldom have anything the matter with my throat, but that night every time I woke I found myself coughing in the very way you describe. It was so unusual that it impressed itself upon my memory. These are the facts, and they seem to me beyond all range of coincidence, and to present a very clear case of bilocation, Mrs Leonard, was sleeping at Kenley, but undoubtedly her double or etheric body had visited me at Crowborough.