I now come to that part of the subject which has perhaps caused more excitement in the public mind than any other feature of the Revival. All my readers must have heard of the mysterious lights in Merionethshire associated with the name of Mrs. Jones of lslawrffond, near Dyffryn. This good lady is, I am told, a very simple, quiet person, whose life until recently has been passed in obscurity. Some time ago she read Sheldon’s book, In His Steps, and was much moved by it. She determined to work for the spiritual good of her neighbours, and she begin her ministry early in December, 1904. The story is that she is attended by lights of various kinds wherever she goes, and, as I shall show presently, there is more in this personal attention than might be supposed. I am spared the necessity of giving minute details, since Mr. Beriah G. Evans, a Carnarvon journalist, has taken care to inform the world as to the lights, and his account of what he and others have seen may be read in The Occult Review for March, April, and ,June, 1905. The numbers are in the S. P. R. Library. It is important to notice that the coast in the neighbourhood of Dyffryn has been favoured or disfavoured with lights of many shapes and sizes in former times. Pennant in his Tour in Wales gives a full account of the appearances of mischievous blue flames that alarmed people and did material damage near Harlech in 1694. Lights of a blue colour appeared also in the neighbourhood of Pwllheii in 1875, and the publication of Mr Picton-Jones’ account of what he then saw elicited from a correspondent the relation of a similar occurrence in 1869 or 1870. Again in 1877 lights of various colours were seen moving over the estuary of the Dysynni. Through the kindness of the editor of the Oswestry Advertizer I have received the extracts from his Bye-gones” columns, which give the notes on lights for the three years 1869, 1876, and 1877. These are quoted in my Appendix (16). I am not satisfied with the investigations that have taken place, and I think now, as I did at the first, that the Society might well employ a geological expert to go over the district and discover, if possible, what conditions are present favourable to the natural production of incandescent vapours. Mr. Bernard B. Redwood (Son of the well-known scientific expert, Sir Boverton Redwood) was sent down by the Daily Mail in February, 1905, but his report, (Footnote:This report was not published in the Daily Mail, but Mr Redwood kindly sent a copy of it to us - Editor) which I give in the Appendix (17), is not to me conclusive. He planned his investigation on the supposition of electrical disturbance, and I am not surprised that he was disappointed at the result. He says, with more approximation to what I think is the cause of some of the lights, that it is just possible that there may have been some lights caused by spontaneous ignition of phosphuretted hydrogen generated in the marsh at Egryn and distorted by mist. He adds that “Methane or marsh gas is never self-ignited, and may be left out of the question.’’ With his personal opinion of Mrs. Jones I am not disposed to agree but granting its truth, we have still to reckon with the witnesses I shall quote as to the reality of both subjective and objective lights. The evidence received I proceed to give, first, however, stating my conviction that Merionethshire has been the scene of late of a large amount of exaggeration and misconception, and perhaps trickery. But having made all allowance for persons who mistook meteors, brightly-shining planets, farm lanterns, railway signals, and bodies of ignited gases for tokens of heavenly approval of Mrs. Jones and the Revival, there remain sufficient instances of abnormal phenomena to encourage further inquiry. Evidence of misapprehensions I have received.

A vicar in the neighbourhood has sent me the following: A very reliable man informed me that one morning last week February, [1905] on looking out through his bedroom window about 6 a.m. he saw some remarkable lights rising over the marsh indicating a wave, bluish colour, and ascending up into the heavens and vanishing away, but he did not in any way connect the light with the Revival in any shape or form.”

Correspondents from whom I have managed to obtain evidence relate various experiences. Mrs. Jones of Islawrffordd wrote on January 16th, 1905: I have seen the light every night from the beginning of the Revival about six weeks ago. Sometimes it appears like a motor-car lamp flashing and going out, and injures nothing at all; other times like two lamps and tongues of fire all round them, going out in one place and lighting again in another place far off sometimes; other times a quick flash and going out immediately, and when the fire goes out a vapour of smoke comes in its place; also a rainbow of vapour and a very bright star.” She said that the lights were always seen out of doors, and at about six o’clock in the evening. I asked if they had been seen by any one who had not been converted, and the answer was “Yes.”
A man at Dolgan says (January 25th, 1905): “We have not seen it now for a fortnight. We saw it for eight nights some time back at about 11 o’clock. We were afterwards a week without seeing it, and then we saw it once more …. It was very like the light of a lamp, but not so bright, and appeared to me to move gradually. Once I saw it move swiftly. It was in a place where there was no light to be. It appeared very low down, along the ground, I should think,” In reply to queries he says that the colour was a weak white light, always very much the same; it appeared at first accidentally, it was not expected. There is a ditch running through a ravine near the spot.

Another correspondent says that only once did he see the light, on January 2nd, 1905. ‘‘It was hovering above a certain farmhouse, and it appeared to me as three lamps about three yards apart, in the shape of a Prince of Wales’s feathers, very brilliant and dazzling, moving and jumping like a sea-wave under the influence of the sun on a very hot day.

The light continued so for ten minutes. All my family saw it the same time, it was 10.40 p.m. at the time.” My questions were treated by him as evidence of utter unbelief, and repeated requests for further information met with refusals.

A young woman of some education wrote (February 4th, 1905): “I saw the light you refer to one night in the beginning of January [between 10 and 10.30 p.m.] At first I saw two very bright lights, about half a mile away” [it was between Dyffryn and Llanbedr] one a big white light, the other smaller and red in colour. The latter flashed backwards and forwards, and finally seemed to become merged in the other. Then all was darkness again. It did not appear in the same place again, but a few minutes after we saw another light which seemed to be a few yards above the ground. It now looked like one big flame, and all around it scorned like one big glare of light. It flamed up and went out alternately for about ten minutes, very much in the same way as some lighthouses.”

It is probable that the two persons whose accounts I have just given saw the same light from different points of view.

On December 22nd, 1904, at 5.18 p.m., another deponent saw, in company with two other persons, a large light “about half way from the earth to the sky, on the south side of Capel Egryn, and in the middle of it something like [a] bottle or black person, also some little lights scattering around the large light in many colours. Last of all the whole thing came to a large piece of fog, out of sight.”

Another writer, whose account is given in the Appendix (18), describes the light as a pillar of fire, quite perpendicular, about two feet wide and three yards in height.

A correspondent whose opinion, from his position in relation to some of the persons quoted, I am disposed to trust, says that the prevailing view in the neighbourhood is that the lights seen along the coast from Towyn to Portmadoc by scores of people at divers times between 6 p.m. and midnight, and in divers forms, are phosphorescent lights, not associated with any person or building. The light has been seen by many, Chapel members and non-members alike, and at the same time, whether Mrs. Jones be at home or away. About Mrs. Jones’s own experiences he declines to express an opinion.

Lengthy communications from a husband and wife at Harlech on the same coast, given in the Appendix (19), contain similar evidence, and some account of earnest endeavours to see the lights in Mrs Jones’s presence.

I need not refer to other communications received from the neighbourhood of Welshpool, save to point out that this locality is several miles away from the other, and yet the descriptions of lights are to some extent similar.

On Wednesday, June 21st, 1905, I interviewed a medical man in the Rhondda fach, who saw on May 27th, at night, a globe of light about the size of a cheese plate, or nearly the apparent diameter of the moon, over the chapel where Mrs. Jones was that evening preaching. He made sure by comparing this light with the gas lamps within sight, that it was not an ordinary lamp. I have had a photograph taken from the very spot where the doctor stood when he and his wife saw the light, and have marked on it the place where the light appeared (see Plate 1.) As may be seen from this photograph, the background of the chapel, as viewed front the house front, is the other side of the narrow valley, the black mark being just over the flat roof of a house on the further side of the street below. Now it is quite possible that some one willing to deceive his neighbours might have perched himself on the mountain side with a powerful lamp; but why, in that case, he should select a position from which the light could only appear to be right over the chapel to a very few persons, those in or in front of the uppermost terrace of houses, and why he should expose the light only for a few minutes, are points that require explanation. The doctor is in sympathy with Mrs. Jones, and when he informed her that he had seen this light she declared that she had also seen it, but from within the chapel. This case is given in full in the Appendix (20).

A second account of a light appearing in the same valley, about half a mile lower down, and on the opposite side of the valley, at a much later hour, is also given in the Appendix (21). This light was somewhat similar to one seen in North Wales, of which the account is given in (18),—a column of fire about two feet wide and several feet high, of the tint of a fiery vapour.

From the same locality two other accounts (22) have been sent to me of lights seen about the same time by two women.

Now here are four narratives from the Rhondda fach, but of the six persons who witnessed the lights four are known to be North Walians, like Mrs. Jones herself, and I think this fact tends to support my theory that persons of the same race or tribe have similar modes of mental action. The cases of collective hallucinations quoted, so far as they are genuine, have a strong family likeness, and as the seers are all in sympathy with Mrs. Jones, probably her mind is the originating cause of the appearances. In my correspondence with these light-seers I have made a point of asking whether they had any of them ever seen a corpse light (canwyll gorph). Not one of them had done so, some of the witnesses had not even heard of such a thing. The persons who see the corpse light are, I believe, not from a North Wales, but from Cardiganshire, and possibly are Iberian in race. Professor Barrett has traced the dowsing faculty to Somersetshire, and if the various forms of lights seen in Wales could be properly classified we should no doubt find that as the race-origin so the light-form.

I also suggest a connection between the naturally-caused lights which have appeared frequently along the coast of Tremadoc Bay, from Pwllheli round to Barmouth, and the forms of the subjective appearances which have been described. The traditional, collective memory of the objective lights may act as a guide to the imagination, providing it with materials for picture formation when it is stimulated by a sufficiently exciting cause. Mental imagery can only employ stored-up impressions; however incongruous the various elements, they all may be drawn upon when occasion serves, and the lights of Dryffryn are sufficiently common and familiar to become the mnemonic material of religiously excited minds. Mrs. Jones’ obiter dictum, “lamp flashing and going out and injuring nothing at all,” reads like a reflection of the sub-conscious memory upon the lights of 1694, which did injure material objects. Of those lights and their effects Mrs. Jones had most probably read or heard.

The motor car association would not suggest injury, because whatever mischief motor cars may do, their brilliant lamps are not the causes of the mischief.

There was a rumour of trickery in the Rhondda fach: some said that young men had got on to the flat roof of a house,—the only flat roof of a dwelling house that commands a view of the chapel, Libanus—and caused a light to be projected from it on to the chapel roof or over it. I went to the house and the proprietor told me that he had gone on to the flat roof to watch for the lights. He had a small lantern for guidance, as the roof is dangerous, having no parapet, but it would not be possible with so small a lamp to throw a beam of light or create a disc such as the doctor and his wife saw. The spot where the doctor stood, the flat roof, and the chapel form a triangle with the chapel at the apex. Three other instances of lights seen are given in the Appendix (23), (24), (25).

By way of assisting towards a solution of this matter of the lights, I have added (26) to the letters from Wales a communication from a friend who saw at a séance held by eight persons, in a totally dark room, some years ago, five little lights slowly gyrating near the ceiling of the room. The hypothesis of fraud in this case he dismisses with contempt. If we can gather accounts of any considerable number of similar instances in experiments or séances where the mediums may be trusted, we may arrive at the causes of Mrs. Jones’s light manifestations.

I have taken care to ask in which cases the lights seem illuminated surrounding objects, and whether persons not distinctly religious saw them. The answers prove that illumination of walls, buildings, and hedges took place in some instances, and if so we may dismiss these at once as purely physical, not psychical. I believe a genuine psychical light has no power of itself to illuminate distinctly any external objects. A room may appear to be flooded with light, but I do not find that the furniture is made more apparent. (Footnote: This question is discussed in the “Report on the Census of Hallucination,” Proceedings, Vol. X., pp. 81-82 - Editor.)

A complete review of the whole subject of the Revival at this point is not desirable, even if it were possible. We need far more inquiry, more examination of more witnesses, time for comparison, also, of the various phenomena with themselves and with other events in former days. But I hope enough has been said to encourage some of our members to study these spiritual movements without prejudice of any kind, and with the certainty that no time is lost which man can devote to the separation of truth from deception, the deliverance of reason from passion, and the clearance of faith from superstition.

A few weeks after the above paper was written I heard of the appearance of “lights” at Ynysybwl, a small colliery town a few miles north of Pontypridd, Glam., and on August 2nd, 1905, I visited the town to interview some of the percipients. Mrs. Jones of Egryn preached at Ynysybwl on July 4th, 5th and 6th, but there is no trustworthy evidence of lights being seen before July 23rd. On that evening several persons went to Ynysyboeth to hear Mrs. Jones once more and by all accounts they were very much affected by the service. On their return to Ynysybwl they held an open-air meeting, at about 10.30 p.m., in the open space known as Robert Town Square. The religious fervour was intense and the service lasted until 1 a.m. One correspondent (see 27a) reports that his attention was called, during the service, to a “ball of light about the size of the moon,” with a slight mist over it. Then stars began to shoot out around it, the light rose higher and grew brighter but smaller.
Another at the same gathering describes the light as a “block of fire” rising from the mountain side and moving along for about 200 or 300 yards. It went upwards, a star “shot out to meet it, and they clapped together and formed into a ball of fire.” The form changed into something like the helm of a ship. The appearance lasted about a quarter of an hour. This deponent went home to fetch his wife to see the light, but from his house he saw nothing, although the house faces the same mountain side. Returning to the square he again saw it (see 27b), A third witness says that the light was a ball of fire, “glittering and sparkling,” and it seemed to be “bubbling over” (27c). A Mrs. J. and her daughters saw the light at 12.30 a.m. as a ball of fire, white, silvery, vibrating, stationary. Mrs. J. also saw two streamers of grey mist emanating from the ball and in the space between them a number of stars (27d). The daughter saw nothing of the stars, but remarks, as no one else does, that the form became oval instead of round (27c). In conversation they told me also that the ball decreased in size. Another witness, whose account has not been written, described his vision to me as a ball of fire with 4 or 5 pillars of light on the left of the ball, the intervening space containing no stars. He was standing near the last-named witnesses. It will be sufficient here to point out that whilst all the witnesses saw a ball of fire, each saw something in connection therewith not mentioned by the others. All agree in thinking that the duration of the light was from 10 to 15 minutes, but whether vision ‘‘minutes” are of the same duration as those of solar time remains to be proved. There is no evidence that any one consulted a watch, or clock to mark the time that really elapsed.

On July 26th, at a meeting of the Salvation Army, in the same square, Mr. D. D. tells me that he saw over a wood on the mountainside a black cloud from, which emerged first a white light, then a yellow, and finally a brilliantly red triangle. The vision lasted about 2 minutes (? vision time). Standing on the spot whence D. D. saw the succession of lights, I noticed that on the hoarding which fences the sidewalk there were four very prominent posters well within the circle of vision as one looked towards the wood over which the light appeared. The posters, read from left to right, as a book is read, gave exactly the sequence of colours as described. The accompanying view (plate 11.) is marked so as to show the order. But for the lateness of the hour, 10.30 p.m., we might attribute the appearances to a transfer of visual impressions from the hoarding to the sky. In that case, however, the colours seen would have been the complementaries of those actually witnessed. The conclusion is that the colour sequence was mnemonic, the imagination using colour and form materials absorbed during daylight. The triangular form of the third light was a reminiscence either of the upper part of the red poster or of the “Bass” advertisement on the further right. The photograph was taken close to the spot where D. D. stood. The suggestion of unconscious utilisation of stored impressions will not be thought unreasonable by those who have examined many vision “cases.’ (Footnote: Cf. cases of “memory images” given in Mr. Myer’s paper on “The Subliminal Consciousness” in Proceedings, Vol. VIII., pp. 450-454; also in Vol., XI., pp. 359-61) I have ascertained that the posters in question were all in situ on or before July 23rd.

In the same town on July 30th at midnight a Mrs. O., whom I have seen, called the attention of my friend, Mr. J. R. J., who lives next door to her, to a ball of fire or torch which she saw travelling over the hill side to the north of Ynysybwl, rather more than a mile, as the crow flies, from her house. Three relatives of Mrs. O., with her and Mr. J. R J., watched the light moving about in a zigzag from the top of the hills to the valley below, across fields and hedges, for about 20 minutes. The night was dark; the light went out at intervals and reappeared. It does not appear possible that any person could have borne a powerful lamp over the area pointed out to me, or have moved front point to point so rapidly as the light travelled, the apparent rate being six miles an hour. There is no evidence discoverable of bodies of ignited gases having been seen in the locality previously, and one of the witnesses was not in the least affected by the Revival efforts of Mrs. Jones. There is no solution of this incident at present. It may have been, as the Robert Town Square appearance was, a case of collective hallucination, but there was no immediate mental excitement at work as on the night of the 23rd. Careful examination of the appended letters can hardly fail to strengthen the idea of collective hallucination modified or tempered by individual idiosyncrasies, the originating mind being Mrs. Jones’s, in the case of the Robert Town vision. I have taken care not to report other reputed light visions of which the testimony is not considered, locally, to be worth very much, and it may be well to note that, according to trustworthy information, I understand that the ministers of some of the chapels are exercising praiseworthy caution in accepting the reports of visions. Their attitude is wholesomely sceptical.

Visiting the Garw Valley, on the western side of Mid-Glamorgan, a few days ago, I interviewed a tradesman who also saw a light or lights after Mrs. Jones’s visit to that valley. But his written account has not yet come to hand.

Several correspondents have expressed a desire for some satisfactory explanation of the lights seen in Glamorganshire and elsewhere, but, until many more authentic cases of the kind are collected and compared, their wish must remain unsatisfied. The lights seen in July were, I believe, not any of them due to extraneous physical causes. If they are called subjective, the term must be held only to be equivalent to an operation within the physical limits of the percipients, and the lights must be considered in relation to the sounds and changes of bodily temperature experienced by several persons elsewhere, as related in this paper and Appendix. In the ascending scale of vibrations the order is sound, heat, and light waves. Is it probable that persons affected by such stimuli as the Revival provided heard, felt, or saw according (1) to the intensity of the stimulus in each case, and (2) to the susceptibility of the percipient? If one man’s mental organs were excited to a certain degree, he would hear a voice; if to a higher degree, he would experience a vision; either operation, however, being entirely within the brain of the subject. I advance the theory of physical vibratory operation with considerable hesitation, and only because I am not satisfied with the proposal to attribute the occurrences either to diseased imagination (if by that term is meant a species of self-deception) or to some mental operation apart or distinct from the organism by which the mind works. If a sharp blow upon a certain portion of the head causes a man to “see stars,” may it not be possible for a mental stimulus from without to act in a similar way? When it is known how mind can affect mind at a distance it will be possible, perhaps, to explain the operation within a man’s self which interprets stimuli now as sound, now as heat, or again in vision. My chief concern here is to ask that the three kinds of experiences may be examined in correlation and all of them with due regard to the ascertained laws of vibration and anodes of energy. The theory may he put thus:
A. Agent, exercising influence and suggesting form.
B. Recipient of mental stimulus whose brain translates the message into sound, heat, or light form according to its own capacity of motion.

In this inquiry the physical and the psychical cannot safely be dissevered, however necessary it may be to specialise for the sake of adequate research.