The evening Rose Hervey saw her cousin coming up the stairs, on the other side of the world: a shared-death experience

Step 1

1887 · Dublin and Tasmania · Rose Hervey’s account

Rose Hervey moves to Tasmania and leaves her cousin Ethel, her best friend, behind in Dublin

Rose Hervey and her cousin Ethel had lived together and were very close friends. Ethel was a nurse at a hospital in Dublin.

In 1887, Rose went to live in Tasmania, an island south of Australia. There she lived in the house of a friend, whom the journal that published the case calls only Lady H. Rose was 31.

A letter took weeks to get from Dublin to Tasmania.

Step 3

That same evening · Rose Hervey’s account

Lady H. laughs, but tells her to write it down in her diary, and Rose writes it down with the time

Rose told Lady H. what she had seen. Lady H. laughed at her, but told her to write it down in her diary. Rose wrote:

“Saturday, April 21st, 1888, 6 p.m. Vision of [Ethel] on landing in grey dress.”

Rose asked Lady H. why her cousin would be dressed in gray. Lady H. told her that was the uniform of the nurses at that hospital. Rose says she hadn’t known that.

That night, Rose wrote Ethel a long letter telling her about the vision.

Step 5

June 1888 · Tasmania · Rose Hervey’s account

Six weeks later, the news of the illness and the news of the death arrive together

The news reached Tasmania in June, six weeks after the death. Rose learned at the same time that Ethel had been ill and that she had died.

The letter Rose had written to Ethel that night reached Dublin after Ethel had already died. It was sent back, and Rose tore it up.

The diary, however, Rose kept.

Step 6

1892 · London · The researcher Frank Podmore’s account

A researcher visits Rose in London and sees the diary page

By 1892, Rose was living in London. That year she wrote her account for the Society for Psychical Research, a society in London that studied cases like this. One of its researchers, Frank Podmore, visited her and saw the diary page. He copied the entry. Below it was a note added later, with the date and time of the death.

The researchers also saw a copy of the letter that told how Ethel died. The letter was written in Dublin on the afternoon of Sunday, April 22, the same day as the death, and Rose had kept the copy.

They also examined a sample of the cloth of the nurses’ uniform at that hospital. It was a check of white, navy blue, and a little red, and from a distance it looked gray. The researchers concluded that the likeness in color had no value as evidence, because up close the cloth was not gray.

Next, they wrote to Lady H. to ask her to confirm it.

Step 7

1893 and 1894 · According to Lady H. and the Society for Psychical Research

Lady H. barely remembers it, and the Society publishes the case in 1894

In 1893, Lady H. replied. Her son remembered that Rose had spoken of the vision at the time. Lady H. said she remembered something, but nothing specific.

Rose told the researchers that at 14 she had had another vision, of an angel carrying a schoolmate in its arms. That vision would have coincided with the girl’s death. But it was already known that the girl was dying, and there is no way to confirm it. Rose had also heard voices several times. The researchers say that two of those times seemed to coincide with something real, although she didn’t think much of them.

The Society published the case in 1894, in its large study of visions, the Census of Hallucinations. The Census presents the case as one of the few in which the note taken at the time was kept.

The question remains: how could Rose see her cousin, ill in Dublin, from Tasmania?