Research source

The piece of plaster must have weighed fully a stone, and had it struck Williams the result would doubtless…

Date of account: Published 1893
Source: How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism
Reference: How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism · selected passage 20
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

The piece of plaster must have weighed fully a stone, and had it struck Williams the result would doubtless have been fatal

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

The piece of plaster must have weighed fully a stone, and had it struck Williams the result would doubtless have been fatal. A passer-by saw the constable a few minutes after, and his scared looks and agitated manner clearly showed that his story was true.” Concerning telepathy, Mrs. Andrew Crosse, the distinguished widow of the famous electrician, relates in _Temple Bar_ an anecdote about the late Bishop Wilberforce, to the effect, the Bishop was writing a dry business letter one day, when a feeling of acute mental agony overcame him and he felt that some evil had befallen his favourite son, a midshipman in the navy. The impression was correct. On that very day the lad, who was with his ship in the Pacific, had been wounded and nearly bled to death. When this was told Hallam, the historian, he replied that a very similar thing had happened to himself. A few cases are noted further on. Some persons would repudiate _all_ such incidents as accidents or coincidences; while others would fly to the extreme, and declare all such are the result of “spirit control”--that is, some disembodied but friendly spirit projected the dream, conveyed the warning, or telepathically despatched the news.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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