Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/312

292 writes to say that Miss Nina B. went round on the same afternoon to tell him of the discovery of the note; as he was out he did not actually hear the news until later. Mrs. B. knows the event was on a Sunday but cannot remember the exact date; but Dr. Knorr is able to fix it as having been either on the 13th or 20th May.

We have several records in which the fact of a death, unknown to any of those present, has been announced at a spiritualistic'séance. In the following case, which was carefully recorded at the time by Professor Aksakof, of St. Petersburg, the announcement was conveyed through automatic writing.

No. 64. From

On Jan. 19th, 1887, the engineer Kaigorodoff, of Wilna, called on Professor Aksakof and informed him that his Swiss governess, Mdlle. Emma Stramm, who was in the habit of writing automatically, had received at a'séance held in his presence at Wilna, on Jan. 15th at 9, a message written in French stating that August Duvanel was dead, the cause of death being stated as a clot of blood (engorgement de sang). M. Aksakof saw the original communication and made a note of the occurrence.

In four days Mdlle. Stramm received a letter from her father giving the news in the same words; his letter was shown to Professor Aksakof a few days after its receipt. August Duvanel had been a suitor of Mdlle. Stramm, and she had in fact come to Russia in 1881 to escape from him and her parents' importunity. She had not seen or heard of him since her departure. In 1882 Duvanel had left Neufchâtel, where the