Глава 1 Кончина людей

Mysterious omens of the death of people a) My father says Mr. Teplov was a strong old man, he died on October 4, 1877, being 63 years old. Throughout his entire life he was almost never ill. My elder brother, who held a diplomatic post in Constantinople, quite by chance then came to St. Petersburg on business, although not long before he had already been here on vacation, and none of his family expected to see him again so soon. The father died of cerebral apoplexy; he fell ill on October 3, at approximately six o'clock in the morning, and on October 4, having suffered all day and all night, he died at exactly the same time. Tired from a sleepless night, the brother fell asleep in the next room. A few minutes before six o'clock, obeying as if some kind of suggestion, he jumped up from the sofa and rushed into the dying man's room; thanks to this circumstance, he was able to be present at his father’s last breath. Several minutes passed; My brother and I went into the living room to talk about the upcoming funeral. The brother asked to know what time it was on the kitchen clock, since for some reason the mantel clock in the living room stopped and showed only six, that is, it stopped at the moment of his father’s death. The maid replied that the clock in the kitchen was at six o'clock. This was all the more surprising because these watches were with weights, which, at this time, had barely reached half the supply of their wound chains and, therefore, could go on without stopping. Then my brother told me to look at the clock in the second living room. I immediately went there; the ancient bronze clock located there also showed six, and its pendulum did not move. It should be noted that in the first living room the clock was with a monthly winding, and in the second - with a weekly winding. Such a coincidence interested us, and we immediately looked at all the clocks in our apartment, including pocket ones; they all showed six o'clock too. The assumption that all the clocks were not wound did not stand up to criticism, since it was enough to touch their pendulums or winding rods, and they immediately began to move. We marveled at this strange, inexplicable connection between the clock and the life of a person and could not help but tell about it to the psalmist of St. Isaac's Cathedral - an old man of about seventy - who came to read the psalter over the deceased. – Does this surprise you? – he asked. - Meanwhile, for me your case is very common and has happened before my eyes quite often. Why this happens - I don’t know, but I myself have repeatedly witnessed that the clock in the house, with the death of the owner, sometimes stops for no apparent reason!... Twenty years have passed since then, but this case still remains unsolved for us. The authenticity of the above is certified by our signatures, with the attachment of the family stamp (Rebus, 1897, No. 51). b) Letter from Miss Bell from Holston (in England). “In June 1880, I arrived at one estate as a governess. On the very first day of my stay there, as I was going to bed, I heard a strange noise near me, similar to the ticking of a clock, which, however, was not in the room. I soon became convinced that this noise followed me everywhere, stopping only when I was not alone; I even got used to this strange phenomenon and stopped paying attention to it. On July 12, something even stranger happened to me: leaving the dining room, I saw a dark figure in the doorway with outstretched arms. In fear, I closed my eyes for a second, but when I opened them, the vision had already disappeared. Two and a half months later (September 23), I received a letter from my relatives with the news that on the day the ghost appeared to me, my brother drowned. Since I learned this sad news, the ticking of the invisible clock has completely stopped.” From the certificate attached to this letter of an outsider who was on the ship at the time of the misfortune with William Bell, it is clear that the day and hour when it happened coincided with Miss Bell's vision. The latter added the following to what was told to her: “Shortly before I received the news of my brother’s death (I don’t remember the date), something else happened that I did not mention in my first letter, not thinking that this circumstance had anything to do with the grief that befell me. As soon as I went to bed, a strong crash was heard near me, as if something from the dishes had fallen and broken into pieces. I didn’t dare to get up right away and see what was broken; the next morning, to my surprise, I was convinced that everything was intact and in its place. For three nights in a row I heard this terrible crashing sound and could never figure out its cause. I had never had any visions until the day I saw the figure I wrote to you about. I didn’t have time to look at her then and only noticed that she was wearing an outer dress similar to the one in which I saw my brother when saying goodbye.” Almost everyone has probably heard or read about the “death clock,” that is, about a mysterious noise, similar to the ticking of a clock, sometimes heard in living quarters, most often in the silence of the night, and as if foreshadowing someone’s death. Despite the wide spread of this “superstition,” educated people do not find it necessary to study it more closely, and they still seriously continue to consider one bug from the “Xylophagae” breed as its only culprit. This beetle nests in trees, mainly oaks, and even more often in old furniture; he has a habit of attracting his female with original music: hiding his front legs and tentacles, he rhythmically strikes the tree with his head and the edge of his neck shield, producing a noise very similar to the ticking of a large clock. It is very possible that in many cases this restless bug actually gave rise to superstitious fears, but do we have the right to conclude that the widespread belief about the death clock arose solely thanks to this insect? I once happened to offer this natural scientific explanation to a peasant who, in his words, heard the clock of death, and he answered me with the same objection that I expected: that even outside the house, when there was no furniture or buildings nearby, he continued to hear the same noise. “It’s not like this bug was sitting in my old hat!” – he noted, not without irony. Mysticism and especially spiritualism have long recognized that the elementary form in which the transcendental world manifests itself to us is various kinds of knocks. This view existed before among a wide variety of peoples - among the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc., and continues to exist in our time. It is much easier to ridicule such a firmly rooted “superstition” than to find any satisfactory explanation for it. According to Jean-Paul, “it is impossible to consider facts that have been known for a long time and universally devoid of foundation; after all, no nation,” he says, “will claim to have a king or wage war if in reality it does not.” The very fact is the knocking, known as the “clock of death,” and is not disputed by almost anyone; This belief has developed, I believe, not because there is a knocking bug in the world, but as a result of an unconscious, perhaps, conclusion made at different times by many people from their individual observations. This conclusion may, of course, be false, and refer to the fact that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”; scientific mysticism has no grounds; she should rather remember the words of Giordano Bruno: “Laverita amata la comnagnia dei pochi e sapienti, odia la moltitudine” 1 For us, living at the end of the 19th century, only with the transition to another world can these mysteries be fully explained; but sooner or later the day will probably come when they will be revealed to earthly science. “He who, outside the realm of pure mathematics, decides to declare something impossible acts rashly,” said the astronomer Arago. We leave it to the reader to decide whether the following cases should be considered mathematically and generally logically impossible: c) In the spring of 1863, the Suel couple buried their little daughter Lily. This is what the mother of the deceased writes: “Not long before our Lily’s death, my husband, I and our little son were sitting in the sick woman’s room and trying to entertain her, when suddenly our attention was attracted by the sounds of music; it sounded as if from the corner of the room and resembled an Aeolian harp. “Can you hear the music, Lily?” – I asked but, to our surprise, she answered; "No". Meanwhile, the sounds grew and finally filled the entire room, not inferior in strength to the full tone of the organ; then they began to move away - as if the players were going down the stairs - and finally fell silent. Our eldest daughter was in the pantry at that time, and the maid was in the kitchen, that is, two floors below us, and, nevertheless, both of them also heard the music? and talked about it with each other. This happened around four o'clock in the afternoon. The next day was Sunday; In the sick room, besides my husband, there were two guests: one of our relatives and Lily’s former nanny. At the same hour as the day before, the same sounds were heard again, and everyone heard them, including me, who was busy in the kitchen preparing a milk dish for the sick woman. The next day there was no music, but on Tuesday, again at the same time, it resumed, and on the same day our child died. Not a single instrument is capable of producing in human hands those tender, plaintive sounds that we heard three times.” Mr. Sewell added the following for his part: “I am convinced that the musical sounds we heard could not have come from the street, from which our house, located in the depths of a large garden, was 50 yards away. No one lived in the neighboring house at that time. The music continued for half a minute each time; It’s interesting that the sick child, who loved music very much, did not hear a single sound.” d) In the work "Euthanasia" the following account is given from a reliable source about the death of the eighty-two-year-old prelate Hochstaeter. “On the eve of his death, which followed on November 7, 1720, everyone in his room heard the singing of a wonderful voice, accompanied by quiet, euphonious music; the sounds seemed to penetrate the windows from the street. They were heard twice: at 9 pm and at 3 am. The expression of bliss on the face of the dying man made it possible to think that he enjoyed this music more than others, which touched everyone who managed to hear it. Hochstäter was a great lover of sacred music and two days before his death he sang praises to God with a weakening voice.” e) We find a similar example in the obituary of the German poet Merike. “On September 8, 1874, the poet turned 70 years old. Having modestly celebrated this day, he went to bed early, but his sister Clara and daughter Maria were not yet in bed. There was complete silence on the streets of that remote part of Stuttgart where this little family lived, but it was suddenly interrupted by a loud chord, and the rooms were filled with the sounds of a harp. This did not last long: the music stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Clara went to the window to look at the musicians who wanted to surprise the poet, but they were neither on the street nor in the house. The old man asked from his room: who played it? Hearing from his sister and daughter that there was no one in sight, he became thoughtful and then remarked: “No more birthdays will come for me.” His words came true." If we wish to approach scientifically, we must accept the simplest of all explanations possible for such facts, without allowing our personal feelings and desires to prevail over the demands of reason. Near-death hallucinations can in many cases be quite satisfactorily explained by purely physiological reasons: disorders of blood circulation, brain activity, etc. Due to the law of psychological reaction, the hallucinations of a person tormented by illness can also be of a pleasant nature. It is known that victims of the Inquisition sometimes fell into ecstasy (Wonneschlaf) during torture, and that those dying of hunger and thirst often dream of luxurious feasts before death. But what if not just the dying person, but others hear mystical music? Then we have to assume that the impressions of the dying person can be telepathically transmitted to other persons. For those cases where music was heard after someone's death, further this explanation turns out to be insufficient, unless we assume that the death occurred later than it was stated. This assumption does not contain anything incredible; hearing, for example, remains active for a very long time, otherwise the terrible fact would not be possible that sometimes the sobs and cries of despair of those around them return for a few moments to life those from whom it had apparently already flown away. However, even with this assumption, cases in which the dying person himself does not hear music still remain incomprehensible. In search of their solution, some brave psychologists delve even deeper into the realm of mysticism; even such scientifically and philosophically educated people like Messrs. Perty and Schindler 2 resorted to explain them to the metaphysical concept of the soul, as a special essence that goes beyond the limits of the (phenomenal) self we know. It is assumed that the activity of the soul under ordinary conditions does not seem to exist for our brain consciousness, just as for an awakened somnambulist actions committed in a dream do not exist. This view of the soul does not contain a logical contradiction; We are convinced of this by such well-known properties of our nature as split consciousness in sleep, 3 memory, conscience, as well as the “split personality” known in mysticism. The mysterious phenomenon that interests us is attributed to the soul, understood in this way; in the presence of conditions unknown to us, its activity is telepathically transmitted to the consciousness of the dying person and those close to him (“Rebus”, 1890, No. 43–44). f) I spent this Christmas, as in many previous years, at the estate of old friends, where the same members of the friendly family constantly gathered. But this time our festive meeting was overshadowed by a great loss: our good friend, our cheerful host, the center and soul of our society, suddenly left us in the prime of life. A minor illness over the course of a week... and we, having parted so joyfully several months ago, met again in this house, not for joy, but to share our common grief and talk about the friend who had left us. I had to learn a lot of strange circumstances from the conversations of an orphaned family. So, about a month before the death of our friend, a young German girl, his children’s governess, having met V. during a walk, suddenly felt some strange premonition, or idea, as if he was about to die soon, although at that time he was still completely healthy. This impression was so strong in her that she involuntarily blurted out what she was thinking about. “How strange,” V. answered her, “at that moment I felt exactly the same myself.” During his illness, the same young German woman just as suddenly saw in front of her a scene that was exactly repeated in reality after his death. In her vision, she saw a coffin of a completely unfamiliar shape, not at all similar to those she had seen in her homeland. German coffins differ in some respects from ours. I learned the following facts from a lady I knew, a friend of the said family, who lived quite far from their estate. I convey them in the true words of her two letters to me. “The first news we had about V. was a letter from L., notifying us of his death. It was received on April 9. For many weeks before that, we had no news about them, either direct or indirect. At least two or three weeks before receiving L.’s letter, both of us, my mother and I, felt at the same time, as if something bad had happened to V’s family. This feeling was especially strong for my mother and depressed her so much that, not considering it convenient in this case to write to them with the sole purpose of finding out what was happening with them, I decided to look for some kind of engraving, so that, by sending it to them, I could write it, by the way, but day by day I postponed my intention. All this time, we both felt something uneasy, no matter how hard we tried to assure each other that it was all nonsense, imagination, our restless state did not decrease, on the contrary... A night or two before his death, I woke up twice from the feeling of a cold hand touching my face, and at the same time it was as if I could hear someone’s sigh. I experienced almost the same thing shortly before my brother died, but then I didn’t attach any importance to it. Finally, on Sunday night, the day on which the news of V.’s death reached us, I was awakened by the ringing of bells in our village church, the vicar of which at that time was dangerously ill. The ringing began around midnight, since it was exactly ten minutes past twelve, when, annoyed at the interruption in my sleep, I looked at my watch, after which I fell soundly asleep. This ringing made a painful impression on me, although I explained it by the resumption of the old custom of ringing at the death of a clergyman and thought what a bad impression this might make on our sick neighbor, who lived just opposite the church, which is what I told my maid when she came to me in the morning. Then going to my mother’s room, I found her with a letter from L., informing us of V.’s death. Without in any way attributing any omen to the ringing of the bells, I asked the young girl who was staying with us at that time to go and find out from the churchwarden at what time the vicar died and what made them resume the ancient custom at such an inopportune time? It turned out that the vicar was not dying and there was no ringing.” I report these strange facts as they happened, without any comments, except perhaps the first, which can also be explained by the “transfer of thoughts” from my late friend V. to a young German woman (“Light”, see “Rebus” 1884, No. 34). g) “Pet. Sheet." reports about the following incident that happened in St. Petersburg. The merchant Anton Pavlovich S... va, who lived on Liteiny Prospekt, had a portrait of his father, who lived in Moscow, hanging in his luxurious office in a gilded frame. His father, although an old man, was a very vigorous and completely healthy man, distinguished by a strong body. Upon returning from the dacha, all the paintings, including the portrait of Mr. S... va’s father, had the cords on which they hung were replaced with new and strong ones. The other evening, when Mr. S...ov and his family were drinking tea in the dining room, in the next office there was a knock from an object falling on the floor; everyone rushed into the office, and there it turned out that the portrait of Mr. S... va’s father had fallen to the floor from the wall due to the fact that the cord had burst. This circumstance made an extremely unpleasant impression on Mr. S..., and he involuntarily imagined that at that moment his father had died in Moscow. And indeed, his premonition came true: the next morning a telegram was received informing that the previous evening Mr. S...va’s father had died suddenly (“Pet. List”; see “Rebus” 1885, 42 49). “Truth willingly dwells among the enlightened few and hates the crowd.” G. Schndler – Doctor of Medicine, author of the book “Das magische Geistesleben” See Duprel: “The Monistic Doctrine of the Soul” (“Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Soul”) and his “Philosophy of Mysticism.” You might be interested in: