Observations placeholder
Blackmon Sanders, Reverend Constantine - The death of Lieutenant McClure
Identifier
016221
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
I think the girl sent what amounted to an unconscious broadcast – a cry of distress at the sudden and unexpected death of this man.
We don’t know from the observation what relationship there was between McClure and this ‘lady’ only that he was married to someone else, but it seems somewhat unusual for a man to be alone with a girl nursing her baby unless the relationship was quite close. Thus the distress on her part was likely to have been enormous.
The cry acted like a broadcast and what we do know is that Sanders picked it up because his composer recognised that the broadcast had relevance to him.
A description of the experience
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death – F W H Myers
One day our attention was attracted by manifestations of sympathy, sadness and distress from Mr Sanders accompanied by such expressions as ‘Poor Fellow! What a pity!’
Then he said ‘He is gone! gone! gone!’ closing in a solemn whisper.
I asked the cause of these manifestations. We were quite shocked on hearing his reply that ‘Lieutenant McClure has just died suddenly from an internal haemorrhage near Clarkesville, Tennessee’.
We append the following facts. Lieutenant Robert McClure, a new bridegroom, had a few days before this gone on a visit to his father near Clarkesville Tennessee. On the next morning after Mr Sanders’ above comments, a telegram was received from Clarkesville bringing to his young bride the unexpected and melancholy news of her husband’s sudden death. It confirmed in every circumstance what Mr Sanders had stated the night before.
A recent letter, from a lady who was present, states that Lieutenant McClure died on Wednesday night, between eight and nine o’clock, the 2nd of November 1866. He was sitting in her room, reading aloud a book; had a paroxysm of coughing, and remarked to her that it was blood he spit out. She put her babe down, which she was nursing, and assisted him in sitting down, for he had arisen to his feet. She thinks he did not breathe after being seated