The year 1874 might be considered a "high water mark" for reports of the paranormal. To read about some of the amazing things reported in that year, you can read my post "Spookiest Years, Part 12: The Year 1874" using the link here.
At the link here you can read an account by a newspaper reporter attending a seance in 1874. After reporting the appearance of a mysterious light, the writer reports this:
"The features grew brighter, until it was a beautiful, womanly, fascinating face, all sweetness and exquisite mirth -- the ball of light developing into eyebrows, nose, eyes, a tinge of red on the cheeks and lips, all forming a miracle of loveliness, but never absolutely distinct nor seeming to be actually a tangible something. But as it finally became almost strongly distinct, it was a face artistic to the last degree."
On page 159 of a 19th century book, we have an account in which it is claimed that a young girl "hundreds of times" took on the appearance of her brother who had died years before. A doctor supposedly weighed the girl, and found that during these transfigurations her weight was almost doubled. In other accounts of transfigurations, it may be reported that some person's face becomes inexplicably illuminated. In the Sept 17, 1875 edition of The Spiritualist, page 142, we have an account by A. Joy claiming that a medium named Mrs. Crocker in Chicago underwent transfigurations in which "her face entirely changed its form, size and character," to match those of certain deceased figures, such as a man with a beard. In a book on hypnotism, Professor William Gregory seems to describe a kind of transfiguration that may occur under deep hypnosis. Using the term "mesmeric sleep" for a hypnotic state, he states this: "In the highest stages of the mesmeric sleep, the countenance often acquires the most lovely expressions, surpassing all that the greatest artists have given to the Virgin Mary, or to Angels, and which may fitly be called heavenly, for it involuntarily suggests to our minds the moral and intellectual beauty which alone seems consistent with our views of heaven."
It seems that certain mediums call themselves "transfiguration mediums," and claim to produce a phenomenon in which their faces transform to resemble the faces of departed persons, possibly with the help of ectoplasm. You can find some examples by following the links after using this search query, which searches for the word "transfiguration" in the archives of the Psychic News periodical. On page 287 of the publication here, we have an account of transfiguration, in which someone claims that a friend saw him "enveloped in a cloud of purple" with his face then taking on the appearance of deceased people. On the page here we have an account of transfiguration in the clairvoyant Mollie Fancher. Describing Fancher, the author says, "I have seen her at times when she was strangely transfigured ; her features were illuminated."
It has sometimes been reported that a human faces has undergone a kind of transfiguration at the moment of death. For example, here is a news report on the death of the wife of US president William McKinley:
"One of those who watched at the death bed of Mrs. McKinley speaks of the last moments as follows:
'I will never believe that Mrs. McKinley did not know at the very moment of the soul's transition that she was passing from death unto life. I bent over her at that moment and saw her face transfigured as though animated by great Joy.' "
Such an account is "small potatoes" or "chickenfeed" compared to the far more dramatic deathbed transfiguration account found on page 477 of the October 7, 1911 edition of the periodical Light. That account includes an enormously strange element of faces of the deceased appearing on the face of a dying person. "A well-known business man of New York passed away. His widow is a clear-minded and educated lady, without any morbid or superstitious taint in her nature, or any belief in Spiritualism. While bending over her husband shortly before his death she observed that the expression of his face was changing, and the next moment saw there, instead, the face of her dead brother. The two men were entirely unlike in appearance, one being light and having a blond beard, and the other very dark. Shortly afterwards the lady saw on her husband’s face the expression of another deceased friend, and a little later that of a third. Her morbid and overwrought fancy deceived her, someone says. Could two persons be deceived at the same time and in the same way? I ask this because three years ago this lady and her sister watched beside the dying child of the latter. The little girl’s face suddenly changed. One of the ladies saw that the other observed this, and said : ‘ Emily, who was it ? ’ ‘ Adelaide,’ was the answer. 'Yea, Adelaide. ’ The two ladies told our informant that they saw unmistakably the face of their dead cousin, a woman, shining out through the face of the dying child. She could offer no explanation of these phenomena, and we present them, because they seem unusual and interesting."
