Lehal Library

mistaken. I recognized him by the negative." Mr. Thompson persisted that there must be a mistake because his son had died on Saturday, January 3rd, at about 2.30 p.m., and that at the time which Mr. Dickinson mentioned he was unconscious and remained so till his death. He added that, on the Friday, his son had been delirious, and had cried out so frequently for his photographs, that he himself had called on that day in the hope of obtaining them, as Miss Simon had reported. No one else was authorized to call, nor had they any friend or relative who would know of the portrait being taken, neither was anyone likely to impersonate the man who had sat for it. He repeated that it was physically impossible for his son to have left the house. In this case the Somatic Double was a fully equipped personality, differing in no way mentally or physically from the self it represented. No suspicion of Mr. Thompson s actuality was aroused, his memory was acute and particular, and behind his annoyance must have been a recollection of the purpose for which the photograph was intended, which might mean that some emotional stress was in part responsible for his adventure. It is noticeable that the coma, in which his body was immersed at the time, in no way affected the clearness of his mind, the etheric brain being uninfluenced by the physical brain's mishaps, but only able to assert its immunity when disjoined from it; as was the case of the old lady in a mental home, who, under hypnosis, became her youthful and rational self It is fortunate that medical exactitude as to the hour of Mr. Thompson's death excludes any spiritualistic interpretation of the dying man's excursion. His was a Phantasm of the Living.