Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/896

814 to do so. The internal anguish, of her mind was, however, at its utmost height when the funeral hymns began to be sung, and when the lid of the coffin began to be nailed on. The thought that she was to be buried alive was the first one that gave activity to her soul, and caused it to operate upon her corporeal frame."

This account, being anonymous, is not as well authenticated as one could wish, but to me it seems credible because I have not only known several persons who have had analogous experiences, but I have had one or two myself. My experiences belonged however to the third type, in which both movement and sensation are dissociated from thought. The first was in March of 1892. I was staying at a pension in Florence. I had arrived the preceding evening and was in excellent health. I came to consciousness after a dreamless sleep, to find myself paralyzed, I think anæsthetic also, but am not sure of that, and I felt as if I were struggling with an alien and hostile personality for the possession of my own body. With a violent effort I regained control of myself, turned over with the thought, "What a horrible dream!" and tried to go to sleep. The same thing recurred. Again I shook it off. This happened three or four times, and the last time it was only with the greatest difficulty and after the most desperate struggles that I expelled, as it seemed to me, my enemy, got out of bed, and opened the shutters. I was somewhat frightened, but knew enough of such phenomena to interpret it. much as I have here done. Four or five times in the next four months I had similar experiences. The last was in July. I was at a hotel in Liverpool, and awoke to find myself absolutely paralyzed and absolutely anæsthetic, but with no consciousness of the alien personality. I was vividly conscious; a little alarmed, I remembered the previous occurrences of the same state, remembered writing to a friend about it, speculated about its cause, tried frequently in vain to break it. Finally, as I thought, I succeeded. With a great effort I sat upright in bed, still in total darkness, and at that moment the spell was broken. I was lying flat on my back. It was a bright summer morning and the sunlight was streaming in through the windows. Two of my friends—one an artist and the other a professor of law in a well-known university—have told me of the same experience, and both had noted that the execution of the least movement, as of the little finger, would break the spell.

We must conceive of such states as due to an imperfect awakening. The normal co-ordination of waking life is not yet fully restored. Very often in cases of this sort the patient's consciousness seems to be separated from his body, sometimes appears to visit distant parts of the earth and at others to go into