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Telepathy: Genuine and Fraudulent
(London, 1917)
W. W. Baggally: Experienced investigator of supernormal
phenomena and amateur conjuror with much experience. Alan Gauld
notes in The Founders of Psychical Research that Baggally
'had sat with every notable physical medium since Home and had
found them all wanting'. For many years he had come to a
negative conclusion as to the possibility of any genuine
physical phenomena - until his co-investigation of Eusapia
Palladino in 1909, with Everard Feilding and Hereward
Carrington. |
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THERE APPEARS to be evidence that telepathy can also occur between the mind of a
human being and that of an animal. The reader will doubtless recollect Mr H.
Rider Haggard's case which appeared in the public press. This gentleman, on the
night of Saturday, 9th July 1904, dreamed that a favourite dog of his eldest
daughter was lying on its side among brushwood by water, and that it was trying
to transmit in an undefined fashion the knowledge that it was dying. Next day
the dog was missing. The body of the dog was subsequently found floating in the
water near a bridge. An examination of the attendant circumstances pointed to
the dog having met its death on the night of Mr Rider Haggard's dream. As a
result of this gentleman having made public this experience, he received from
numerous correspondents accounts of telepathy between the minds of the writers
of the letters and the minds of animals. These accounts were sent by Mr Rider
Haggard to the Secretary of the S.P.R., who handed them to me for investigation.
A very good case was that communicated by Lady C. The following is the account
of her experience:
"On one hot Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1900 I went, after luncheon, to
pay my customary visit to the stables to give sugar and carrots to the horses,
among the number being a favourite mare named Kitty. She was a shy, nervous,
well-bred animal, and there existed between us a great and unusual sympathy. I
used to ride her every morning before breakfast (whatever the weather might be)
- quiet, solitary rides on the cliffs which overhung the sea at Castle F., and
it always seemed to me that Kitty enjoyed that hour in the freshness of the day
as much as I did. On this particular afternoon I left the stables, and walked
along to the garden, a distance of a quarter of a mile, and established myself
under a tree with an interesting book, fully intending to remain there for a
couple of hours. After about twenty minutes an uncomfortable sensation came
between me and my reading, and at once I felt sure that there was something the
matter with Kitty. I tried to put the feeling from me, and to go on with my
book, but the impression grew stronger, and I felt compelled to hasten back to
the stables. I went straight to Kitty's box and found her 'cast,' and in urgent
need of help. The stablemen were in a distant part of the stables, whence I
fetched them to have the mare up. Their surprise was great to find me in the
stables for the second time that afternoon."
I wrote to Lady C., and received the following reply:
"27th December 1904
"Lady C. would be glad indeed to have the case investigated, as it always seemed
to her to be of the greatest possible interest. At the same time, it may be
difficult at this date to get a statement from the stablemen, one of whom is
somewhere in England, but Lady C. will try to do so. She is absolutely convinced
that no one entered the stable. Had the stablemen done so they would at once
have helped the mare to get up, and anyone else would have given the alarm. It
seems a direct case of telepathy from animal mind to human."
Lady C. afterwards sent me a statement from a former coachman; it is this:
"31st December 1904
"I was coachman at Castle F. at the time. Lady C. came to the stables after
luncheon as usual on a Sunday afternoon with carrots and sugar for the horses.
Kitty was then loose in her box and quite well. I then went to my room over the
stables, the other stablemen being also upstairs, and to my surprise, after half
an hour or three-quarters of an hour later, her ladyship, who had been to the
garden, called me and the other stablemen to come and help Kitty up, as she was
lying 'cast'(1) in her box. No one had gone into the stable in the interval.
(Signed) "E. N."
(1) This word is used by veterinary surgeons to describe the state of a horse
that has fallen down in its box in a stable and cannot rise.
Telepathy may possibly exist between the mind of an animal and that of a human
being and vice versa, but a sufficient number of cases have not been collected
to establish this as a fact.
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