Seen and Unseen

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS

H

aving set myself to write a personal record of psychic experiences, I must

"begin at the beginning," as the children say.

When only nine years old I lost my father-the Rev. John Ellison Bates of

Christ Church, Dover-and my earliest childish experience of anything su-

pernormal was connected with him. He had been an invalid all my short

life, and I was quite accustomed to spending days at a time without see-

ing him. His last illness, which lasted about a fortnight, had therefore no

special significance for me, and my nurse, elder brother, and godmother,

who were the only three people in the house at the time, gave strict orders

that none of the servants should give me a hint of his being dangerously ill.

These instructions were carefully carried out, and yet I dreamed three nights

running-the three nights preceding his decease-that he was dead. I was en-

tirely devoted to my father, who had been father and mother to me in one,

and these dreams no doubt broke the terrible shock of his death to me. How

well I remember, that cold, dreary February morning, being hastily dressed

by candle-light by strange hands, and then my dear old nurse (who had been

3 E. KATHERINE (EMILY KATHERINE) BATES

by his bedside all night) coming in and telling me the sad news with tears

streaming down her cheeks. It seemed no news at the moment; and yet I

had spoken of my dreams to no one, "for fear they should come true," hav-

ing some pathetic, childish notion that silence on my part might avert the

catastrophe. In all his previous and numerous illnesses I had never dreamt

that any special one was fatal.

During the next few years of school life my psychic faculty remained abso-

lutely in abeyance. In a fashionable school, surrounded by chattering com-

panions and the usual paraphernalia of school work, classes, and masters,

etc., I can, however, recall many a time when suddenly everything around

me became unreal and I alone seemed to have any true existence; and even

that was for the time merged in a rather unpleasant dream, from which I

hoped soon to wake up. This sensation was quite distinct from the one-also

well known to me in those days and later-of having "done all this before,"

and knowing just what somebody was about to say.

Probably both these sensations are common to most young people. Itwould

be interesting to note which of the two is the more universal.

I pass on now to the timewhen Iwas about eighteen years old, and a constant

visitor, for weeks and months at a time, in the house of my godfather, the

archdeacon of a northern diocese. His grandson, then a young student at

Oxford, of about my own age, must have been what we should now call

a very good sensitive. It was with him that I sat at my first "table," more

as a matter of amusement than anything else, and certainly young Morton

Freer treated the "spirits" in the most cavalier fashion. They did not seem

to resent this, and he could do pretty much what he liked with them. This

may be a good opportunity for explaining that when I speak in this narrative

of "spirits" I do so to save constant periphrasis, and am quite consciously

"begging the question" very often, as a matter of verbal convenience.

In those days I don't think we troubled ourselves much about