step the indications of the medium, the man's friends ended by
discovering the body, dressed as stated, lying in the middle of a
coppice, just as described, close to a huge stump of a tree all
covered with moss, which might easily be mistaken for a rock, and
on the edge of a crescent-shaped piece of water. I may add that
these particular indications applied to no other part of the
wood.

6

I refer the reader to Dr. Osty's conscientious and exhaustive
article for the numerous details which I have been obliged to
omit; but those which I have given are enough to show the
character of this extraordinary case. To begin with, we have one
certainty which appears almost unassailable, namely, that there
can be no question of a crime. No one had the least interest in
procuring the old man's death. The body bore no marks of
violence; besides, the minds of those concerned did not for a
moment entertain the thought of an assault. The poor man, whose
mental derangement was known to all those about him, obsessed by
the desire and thought of death, had gone quietly and obstinately
to seek it in the nearest coppice. There was therefore no
criminal in the case, in other words, there was no possible or
imaginable communication between the medium's subconsciousness,
and that of any living person. Hence we are compelled to admit
that the communication was established with the dead man or with
his subconsciousness, which continued to live for nearly a month
after his death and to wander around the same places; or else we
must agree that all this coming tragedy, all that the old man was
about to see, do and suffer was already irrevocably contained and