Desirous to ascertain what effect this apparition had pro-
duced on Colonel Wilson's opinion touching a future state,
I put the question directly to him. "I think it a very
curious phenomenon 1 " he replied. " Not to be accounted
for in the present state of our knowledge, and requiring
investigation. But it is not sufficient to alter my convic-
tion. Some energetic projection from Dubois's brain might
perhaps suffice to account for the appearance which I un-
doubtedly witnessed."

The above case is a particularly good one, because
the witness had no prepossession in favour of the facts
he narrated. The hypothesis mentioned in the last
paragraph of the quotation is fallacious, as will be set



A SPIRIT SEEN BY MR, HOWITT'S MOTHER. 49

forth farther on, apparitions long after bodily death
being common.
In Mr. Dale Owen's Footfalls on the Boundary of
Another World, Mr. William Howitt writes : — ^

The circumstance you desire to obtain from me is one
which I have many times heard related by my mother. It
was an event familiar to our family and the neighbourhood,
and is connected with my earliest memories; having oc-
curred about the time of my birth, at my father's house at
Heanor in Derbyshire, where I myself was born.
