nature. These were entirely confined to the night or to dark rooms. Occasionlly S. W. saw black figures in the neighbouring streets or in her room; once out in the dark courtyard she saw a terrible copper-red face which suddenly stared at her and frightened her. I could not learn anything satisfactory about the first occurrence of the vision. She states that once at night, in her fifth or sixth year, she saw her “guide,” her grandfather (whom she had never known). I could not get any objective confirmation from her relatives of this early vision. Nothing of the kind is said to have happened until her first séance. With the exception of the hypnagogic brightness and the flashes, there were no rudimentary hallucinations, but from the beginning they were of a systematic nature, involving all the sense-organs equally. So far as concerns the intellectual reaction to these phenomena it is remarkable with what curious sincerity she regarded her dreams. Her entire somnambulic development, the innumerable puzzling events, seemed to her entirely natural. She looked at her entire past in this light. Every striking event of earlier years stood to her in necessary and clear relationship to her present condition. She was happy in the consciousness of having found her real life task. Naturally she was unswervingly convinced of the reality of her visions. I often tried to present her with some sceptical explanation, but she invariably turned this aside; in her usual condition she did not clearly grasp a reasoned explanation, and in the semi-somnambulic state she regarded it as senseless in view of the facts staring her in the face. She once said: “I do not know if what the spirits say and teach me is true, neither do I know if they are those by whose names they call themselves, but that my spirits exist there is no question. I see them before me, I can touch them, I speak to them about everything I wish as loudly and naturally as I’m now talking. They must be real.” She absolutely would not listen to the idea that the manifestations were a kind of illness. Doubts about her health or about the reality of her dream would distress her deeply; she felt so hurt by my remarks that when I was present she became reserved, and for a long time
