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Flammarion, C., Carroll, L,
Death and its mystery: before death, proofs of the existence of the soul

… I shall cite … especially the following, which I owe to a  member of the scientific press, Mr. Warrington Dawson, at present in the American Embassy at Paris, who in 1901 was directing an American agency for the great newspapers of Paris. Here is a letter from him, dated, December 3, 1901 (18 rue Feydeau, Paris):

 Dear Master:

It is my duty to acquaint you with a very curious case of telepathy which has just happened to me and which may help to advance your very important and clear-sighted investigations. On Tuesday, the eighth of last October, I was occupied in my office, at 18 rue Feydeau, in writing an article on your young colleague, Mademoiselle Klumpke I (an astronomer at the Observatoire), when I stopped for lack of notes on an interview that she had been kind enough to give me.

Remembering that these notes were in a drawer of my work table in my apartment, 36 rue de Varennes, I returned to get them. I climbed up to my floor - the fourth above the entresol - leaving my hat on a table in the entrance hall, as I always did. Then I noticed that the apartment was deserted, although my house- keeper was supposed to remain there during my absence. I made a gesture of annoyance, saying, 'This must stop l" then, remembering that my mother was to return to Paris before long and that she could arrange these matters better than I, I shrugged my shoulders while I crossed the narrow little hall to enter my workroom. Here I sat down at my table which was laden with papers and on which stood a lamp. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon of the eighth, and I am certain of the date, for the same evening I sent to America, the article of Mademoiselle Klumpke, of which I am sending you a copy, bearing the date of October eighth.

You can read in this article, that she owes her initiation into astronomy to you, and that you were, through your books, her first master. 'What was my astonishment to receive through the mail from America, the following week, a letter from my mother, telling me all the incidents which I have just told you, as they had been seen by one of our friends, Mrs. George Coffin of New York.

My mother's letter bore the date of October eleventh, in New York, and the envelop was postmarked with that date; the letter was therefore mailed three days after the event and, as it takes at least eight days for a letter to go from Paris to New York, there was no possible way to learn of these happenings in less than three days except by cable, and certainly no one would dream of sending such unimportant details, especially at the rate of one franc, twenty-flve centimes a word. My mother wrote on October eleventh, Friday, and said that she had seen Mrs Coffin the preceding Tuesday which was therefore the ninth. It is a curious fact that while trying to see me at two o'clock in the afternoon, New York time, Mrs. Coffin had seen not what I was doing at that moment but what I had done the afternoon before at two o'clock, Paris time.

You will see from the letter that Mrs. Coffin began by describing the apartment. As it had never been photographed, and Mrs. Coffin had seen my mother for the first time since her return from Europe only a few minutes before describing this interior, she could not have known of the arrangement of our apartment.

This could be explained by suggestion, as my mother knew of it, but my mother, who is used to Paris ways, would never think of calling a floor placed four flights above the entresol anything but the fourth floor, while to a New Yorker, who is not used to the entresol, and who calls the ground floor the first floor, it would be the sixth floor, as Mrs. Coffin says. It seems, therefore, from this fact alone, that Mrs Coffin has really seen the apartment. Moreover, for almost a year, that is the only time that I have happened to return home at that hour of the day. Mrs Coffin's astonishment at seeing the porcelain stove, an object unknown in America, shows her usual exactness in this vision at a distance.

During the long years that my family has known Mrs. Coffin we have often amused ourselves by asking her to “see” what was happening to people who interested us or to answer questions which we wrote on bits of paper, closed and sealed, and which she held without looking at them. Her replies have always been clear and, when we were able to verify them, exact.

Very sincerely, etc.,

Francis Warrington Dawson (Letter 1003.)

This letter was accompanied by that of Mr. Dawson's mother, dated New York, October 11th, describing exactly, as dictated by Mrs. Coffin, the apartment in Paris, "on the sixth floor, " Mr. Dawson's visit to this apartment, his annoyance over the servant's absence, his hat placed on a table, the search for his paper, the condition of his bureau, his sitting down to write, in a word, all the details of what he had done in Paris.