Research source

I will conclude this chapter with the following extract from “Lockhart’s Life of Scott:”

Date of account: First published 1848
Source: The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers
Reference: The Night-Side of Nature; Or, Ghosts and Ghost-Seers · selected passage 81
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

There are also numerous cases of sick persons seeing themselves double, where no tendency to delirium or spectral illusion has been observed

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 only

There are also numerous cases of sick persons seeing themselves double, where no tendency to delirium or spectral illusion has been observed. These are, in this country, always placed under the latter category; but I find various instances recorded by the German physiologists, where this appearance has been seen by others, and even by children, at the same that it was _felt_ by the invalid. In one of these cases, I find the sick person saying, “I can not think how I am lying. It seems to me that I am divided and lying in two places at once.” It is remarkable, that a friend of my own, during an illness in the autumn of 1845, expressed precisely the same feeling; we, however, saw nothing of this second _ego_; but it must be remembered, that the seeing of these things, as I have said in a former chapter, probably depends on a peculiar faculty or condition of the seer.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

A modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.

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