whom
he had not seen for twenty or twenty-five years. He observed her closely
until his brother entered the house, and coming into the room passed
completely through the phantasm, which shortly afterwards faded away.
Another person in the room could not see it. Some years afterwards he
learned that she had died the same year, six months afterwards, from a
painful cancer of the face. It was curious that the phantasm never
showed him the front of its face, which was always hidden by the door.
(Vol. II. p. 517.)

Sometimes, however, the Thought Body is both conscious and visible,
although in most cases when visible it is not conscious, and retains no
memory of what has passed. When it remembers it is usually not visible.
In Mr. Dale Owen's remarkable volume, "Footfalls on the Boundary of
Another World," there is a narrative, entitled "The Visionary
Excursion," in which a lady, whom he calls Mrs. A., whose husband was a
brigadier-general in India, describes an aerial flight so explicitly
that I venture to reprint her story here, as illustrating the
possibility of being visible and at the same time remembering where you
had been:--

In June of the year 1857, a lady, whom I shall designate as Mrs. A., was
residing with her husband, a colonel in the British army, and their
infant child, on Woolwich Common, near London.

One night in the early part of that month, suddenly awaking to
consciousness, she felt herself as if standing by the bedside and
looking down upon her own body, which lay there by the side of her
sleeping husband. Her first impression was that she had died suddenly,
and the idea was confirmed by the pale and lifeless look of the body,
the face void of expression, and the whole appearance showing no sign of
vitality. She gazed at it with curiosity for some time, comparing its
dead look with that of the fresh countenances of her husband and of her
slumbering infant in the cradle hard by. For a moment she experienced a
feeling of relief that she had escaped the pangs of death; but the next
she reflected what a grief her death would be to the survivors, and then
came the wish that she had broken the news to them gradually.

While engaged in these thoughts she felt herself carried to the wall of
her room, with a feeling that it must arrest her further progress. But
no, she seemed to pass through it into the open air. Outside the house
was a tree; and this also she seemed to traverse as if it interposed no
obst