The same thing happened at Temple Mead Station, Bristol, when I was again seeing Mrs. W. off to her home. This time I rubbed my eyes, and still her phantom was at the window, waving vigorously until the train had travelled some distance!
In an article specially written for "Cassell's Magazine" last year, I described how, on certain nights in the year (New Year's Eve for example), I have seen the phantasms of people destined to play some more or less important rôle in my subsequent life. I have referred to this peculiar form of phenomenon, too, in my book, "The Haunted Houses of London," and I am now afforded the opportunity of quoting a third instance. One New Year's Eve a few years ago I was at a small country station in the Midlands, waiting for the Birmingham train. As the weather was very cold and wet, there were few travellers, and the platform, gloomy and streaming with water, presented a singularly forlorn and forbidding appearance. Having been confined indoors all day, I was glad to snatch any opportunity for stretching my limbs, and was pacing up and down in the rain, when I narrowly avoided collision with a very elegantly--though unseasonably--dressed lady. Apart from being pretty, she had a decidedly intellectual face, and I was so struck with her, that I admit I wheeled round with the intention of passing her again, when to my astonishment there was no one to be seen, and on my enquiring both of the station-master and solitary porter who the lady was, it was positively asserted that no such person had entered the station. Some months later, when taking tea at a club in Knightsbridge, I was introduced to Lady ----, whom I immediately recognised as the lady I had seen on New Year's Eve. I mentioned the incident to her, and she laughingly told me she had never been to such a place. Lady ---- is now a great friend of mine.
Also the phantasms of people, who have at any time deeply impressed me, appear to me frequently. Some years ago I was always seeing the phantasm of H., a boy to whom I had the strangest aversion when I was at C. College. I recollect the first time I witnessed the phenomenon was in the High Street, Falmouth. I was walking with an old school friend, now Major F., of the ---- Regiment. Seeing H. suddenly cross the road very slowly in front of us, I exclaimed, "Why, how extraordinary! If that isn't H.! You remember H. at school, don't you? He hasn't altered in the slightest."