Camille Flammarion, the celebrated French astronomer who believed in an advanced Martian civilization and haunted houses, had a fascination with the unknown. In fact, The Unknown is the title of his 1900 book, in which he devoted a substantial portion of pages to what he called “telepathic communications.”
After issuing public requests for testimony, he received several hundred letters from people describing crisis apparitions: vivid visions, impressions, or encounters reported at the very moment a distant loved one died or suffered grave injury. Flammarion sifted through this paranormal trove with a curious blend of scientific rigor and fanciful imagination, treating these accounts not as ghost stories but as suggestive evidence of a subtle human power to transmit a final signal before drifting beyond the veil—and into the unknown.
Below are just a few examples of stories he received:
Allow me to call your attention to a circumstance which seems to me very curious. In the first place, it decided my future life, and, besides that, its circumstances were not ordinary ones.
In 1867 (I was then twenty-five) on December 17th, I went to bed. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and as I undressed I sat down and began thinking. My thoughts were fixed on a young girl I had met during my last vacation at the sea-bath of Trouville. My family knew hers quite intimately, and Martha and I became very fond of each other.
Our marriage was on the eve of being arranged when our two families quarrelled, and it had to be given up. Martha went to Toulouse, and I returned to Grenoble. But we continued to love each other so sincerely that the young girl refused other offers for her hand.
That evening, December 17, 1867, I was thinking about all this, when the door of my room opened softly, and, almost noiselessly, Martha entered. She was dressed in white, with her hair streaming over her shoulders. Eleven o’clock struck—this I can confidently assert, for I was not sleeping. The vision drew near me, leaned lightly over me, and I tried to seize the young girl’s hand. It was icy cold. I uttered a cry, the phantom disappeared, and I found myself holding a glass of cold water in my hand. This may have given me the sensation of cold.1 But, observe, I was not asleep, and the glass of water had been standing on the table de nuit at my side.
I could not sleep that night. On the evening of the next day I heard of the death of Martha, at Toulouse, the night before, at eleven.
Her last word had been, “Jacques!”
This is my story. I may add that I have never married. I am an old bachelor, but I think constantly of my vision. It haunts my sleep.
— Jacques C., Grenoble
1 A superficial examination might tend to prove that this was an hallucination — that is, that it was the work of the imagination. But telepathic influence is much more probable.
A few years ago, at Monzon (Ardennes), a woman who was very ill sent her little daughter to pass a few days with some relations at Sedan. One night the child woke up crying, calling her mother, and asking to see her, begging that she might be taken home at once.
The next day news came that the mother was dead. She had died in the night, at the very hour when the child had called her and insisted on being taken back to her.
I do not remember the names of these people, nor the precise date of the event, not having paid great attention to the story at the time, but I can assure you that the fact is quite authentic.
— G. GILLET, 78 Rue Bourniget, Vouziers (Ardennes)
My brother, who was military superintendent at Cayenne, had leave of absence, and spent his holiday at Bolléne, in the Department of Orange. He told me the following circumstance. He was very intimate with another superintendent, M. Renucci. This gentleman had a little daughter who was very fond of my brother and his wife.
The little girl fell ill. One night my brother woke up. At the far end of the chamber he saw little Lydia looking at him fixedly. Then she passed away. My brother, much troubled, woke his wife and said to her: “Didi” (Lydia’s pet name) “is dead. I have just seen her perfectly.” They slept no more that night.
The next morning my brother went in all haste to see M. Renucci. The little girl had indeed died during the night, the hour of her death coinciding with that of her appearance to my brother.
— REGINA JULLIAN, Schoolmistress at Mornes (Vaucluse)
In 1857 and 1858 I was living at Paimbœuf with my wife and child, in a house which had been occupied before we took it by Madame Leblanc, who had gone to live at Nantes. One night in the spring of 1858 (I am sorry I cannot give the date more precisely, but any one might consult the civil register) my wife and I were awakened suddenly by a loud noise. It seemed to both of us that a great bar of iron had been violently thrown down on the floor of our chamber, and that our bed was violently shaken. We sprang up in haste and lit the candle, running at once to our child’s cradle, and examining the whole room. Nothing had been disturbed.
The next day (or the day after) news reached us that Madame Leblanc had died the very night when, without any apparent cause, we were so roughly awakened, and about the same hour. We had never had any intimate relations with that lady, and did not know she was ill.
My mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who occupied two rooms beyond ours, had got up and joined us. I think I was told that they were awakened by my wife’s cries, and by the noise we made, and not by anything else.
When we learned that the date of Madame Leblanc’s death corresponded with the event that had caused us so much surprise, my sister-in-law, who was very pious, said, “The souls of people dying, often, at the moment when they are separated from the body, come back to revisit the house where they have lived.”
— L. ORIEUX, Employê of the Government, Nantes
