The strange case, which will be discussed, happened with the chamberlain of the Swedish king, Baron Sulz. The incident seemed so inexplicable to the Baron that he tried to record everything in his diary as detailed as possible.
“I met at the entrance to the park,” wrote the baron, “my father in his usual suit, with a stick in his hands. I greeted, and we talked for a long time, heading to the house; already entering his room, I saw my father, fast asleep in bed; at that moment the ghost disappeared; a few minutes later my father woke up and looked at me questioningly."
In 1810, when Lord Byron, while in Greece, was lying with a fit of severe fever, people who knew the poet well saw him on the streets of London several times. State Secretary Peel wrote to Byron that in those days he met him twice on Saint-Germain Street, and once saw the Lord, walking with Byron's brother. In response to this letter, Byron wrote with his inherent combination of seriousness and irony: “I have no doubt that we can - although we do not know how this happens - split in two; moreover, the question arising in this case about which of the twins is currently valid and which is not, I submit to your decision."
Once, during Mark Twain's trip to Canada, on the day he was due to perform in Montreal, a reception was given in his honor. There, among those present, he noticed Mrs. R., an old acquaintance of his, whom he had lost sight of twenty years ago. He saw her very close, talking with other guests, but he was surprised and somewhat puzzled by the fact that she did not even say hello and did not come up to him.
In the evening, when Mark Twain was preparing to perform, he was told that some lady wanted to see him. He recognized the visitor as Mrs. R., who looked and dressed exactly the same as at the party where he had seen her during the day.
“I recognized you at once,” Twain remarked gallantly, “as soon as you showed up at the party today.
Mrs R. was extremely surprised:
- I was not at the reception. I just arrived from Quebec no later than an hour ago.
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“She was not at the reception, not even in the city,” Twain concluded his note of the event. “And yet I saw her there, I saw her perfectly clearly and unmistakably. I swear to it. I did not think about her at all at that moment, as I had not thought about her for many years. But she undoubtedly thought of me at the time. Perhaps her thoughts, flying the distance that separated us, brought with them such a clear and pleasant image of herself. It seems to me that this is so."
Once in his student years, the famous Irish poet and playwright, Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) learned the news that he urgently needed to convey to a friend who lived in another city. And at that very time, when he was about to write to him and was thinking intensely about it, his friend, who lived in another city, suddenly saw Yeats among a large crowd of people in the lobby of the hotel where he then lived. Not doubting his reality, the friend asked Yeats to come to him later, when the audience had dispersed. After that, according to the story of his friend, Yeats disappeared, but appeared again at midnight and told him the news that Yeats himself wanted to convey to him. At the same time, Yeats himself, who was in another city, did not have the slightest idea of what was happening.
Another case recorded in historical sources tells the story of Alphonse de Ligori (1696-1787), the abbot of one of the Catholic monasteries. Somehow in 1774, during many days of severe fasting, while in his cell, he fell into oblivion. When he left it, he announced that he was present at the deathbed of Pope Clement XIV. To those who heard him, it seemed absolutely impossible - the Pope's residence was at least four days away. However, the story of Alfonse de Ligori was unexpectedly confirmed by other persons present at the death of the Pope. They saw the abbot during the Pope's last minutes, and then during the funeral service, and some even talked to him, not realizing that they were communicating not with the abbot himself, but with his double.
Among the testimonies of living ghosts-twins, a special place is occupied by an episode associated with Prince P. A. Vyazemsky (1792-1878), a poet and essayist. This episode was preserved in the recording of the St. Petersburg bishop Porfiry (Uspensky), made by him from the words of the poet himself.
“Once, - said Vyazemsky, - at night I was returning to my apartment on Nevsky Prospekt, near Anichkov Bridge, and saw a bright light in the windows of my office. Not knowing why he was here, I entered the house and asked my servant: "Who is in my office?" The servant said, "There is no one there," and gave me the key to this room. I unlocked the office, entered there and saw that in the back of this room a man was sitting with his back to me and was writing something. I went up to him and, reading what was written over his shoulder, screamed loudly, grabbed his chest and fell unconscious; when he woke up, he no longer saw the one who was writing, but he took what he had written, hid it and until now I melt, and before death I will order to put this secret of mine with me in the coffin and in the grave. I think I saw myself writing."