This young lady, in bed, saw a light, then a hallucination which called itself her mother
- Date of account
- Published 1894
- Source
- Cock Lane and Common-Sense
- Reference
- Cock Lane and Common-Sense · selected passage 161
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
This young lady, in bed, saw a light, then a hallucination which called itself her mother
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyThis young lady, in bed, saw a light, then a hallucination which called itself her mother. The figure prophesied the daughter's death at noon next day and at noon next day the daughter died. A physician, when she announced her vision, attended her, bled her, and could find nothing wrong in her health. Dr. Hibbert conjectures that her medical attendant did not know his business. 'The coincidence was _a fortunate one_,' that is all his criticism. Where there is no coincidence, the stories, he says, are forgotten. For that very reason, he should have collected contemporary stories, capable of being investigated, but that did not occur to Dr. Hibbert. His last case is the apparition of Mrs. Donne, with a dead child, to Dr. Donne, in Paris, as recorded by Walton. As Donne was a poet, very fond of his wife, and very anxious about her health, this case is not evidential, and may be dismissed for 'a fortuitous coincidence' (p.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThe passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.
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