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APPARITIONS,
supernormal appearances suggesting the real presence of someone distant or dead,
or reminding of the latter's continuity of existence. The perception is visual,
mostly spontaneous, but sometimes it may be experimentally induced. The state of
the percipient may be normal (waking or dream state) or abnormal, the agent may
be living or dead. The first systematic inquiry into the reality of phantasmal
appearances was instituted by the Society for Psychical Research in 1882. The
result was embodied in the Phantasms of the Living by Myers, Podmore and
Gurney. It was published in 1886 after 5,705 persons, chosen at random, had been
canvassed for eventual phantasmal visions within the previous 12 years. It
concluded: "Between death and apparitions a connection exists not due to chance
alone. This we hold a proved fact." As the scientific world did not consider the
evidence of 702 accepted cases sufficient for such a momentous conclusion, an
international statistical inquiry, called the Census of Hallucination, was
decided upon in 1889. Thirty-two thousand answers were received, 17,000 in
English. The report published in 1894 fills almost the whole of Volume X of the
Proceedings. Chance coincidence was more powerfully ruled out than before and
the previous conclusion has been confirmed. The enquiry of the American S.P.R.
and the census of Flammarion have led to the same result.
The belief in apparitions is as old as humanity. But the scientific age has
reduced the phantoms to human shapes. No more do we encounter accounts like
Plutarch's of Brutus: "A little before he left Asia he was sitting alone in his
tent, by a dim light, and at a late hour. The whole army lay in sleep and
silence, while the general, wrapped in meditation, thought he perceived
something enter his tent; turning towards the door he saw a horrible and
monstrous spectre standing silently by his side. "What art thou" said he boldly.
"Art thou God or man, and what is thy business with me?" The spectre answered,
"I am thy evil genius, Brutus! Thou wilt see me at Philippi." To which he calmly
replied, "I'll meet thee there." When the apparition was gone he called his
servants, who told him they had neither heard any voice, nor seen any vision."
About the true nature of apparitions we do not know much. As Andrew Lang stated:
"Only one thing is certain about apparitions, namely this that they do appear.
They really are perceived." How are they seen? When Lord Adare submitted this
question to the control of D. D. Home, he received the following answer "At
times we make passes over the individual to cause him to see us, sometimes we
make the actual resemblance of our former clothing, and of what we were, so that
we appear exactly as we were known to you on earth; sometimes we project an
image that you see, sometimes you see us as we are, with a cloud-like aura of
light around us."
The perception is not restricted to the small hours of the night or to times of
seclusion. It may occur at the most unexpected moments and publicly. A ghost in
evening dress was seen one morning in a London street in 1878. The Daily
Telegraph reported: "A woman fled in affright, the figure had a most
cadaverous look, but the next person the apparition encountered recognized it as
that of a friend, a foreigner." This next person was Dr. Armand Leslie. His
friend was found dead in evening clothes in a foreign city at the time his
phantasm was seen. However, occurrences like this are very rare. In the majority
of cases there is some mediumistic intervention or some sufficiently potent
driving motive to achieve the manifestation to non-sensitive people provided
they happen to be in a receptive state. An instance of the first is Cromwell
Varley's oft-quoted testimony before the London Dialectical Society in 1869: "In
the Winter of 1864-5 I was busy with the Atlantic cable. I left a gentleman at
Birmingham to test the iron wire. He had seen something of Spiritualism but he
did not believe in it. He had had a brother whom I had never seen in life. One
night in my room there were a great number of loud raps. When at length I sat up
in bed I saw a man in the air-a spirit-in military dress. I could see the
pattern of the paper on the wall through him. Mrs. Varley did not see it. She
was in a peculiar state and became entranced. The spirit spoke to me through
her. He told me his name and said that he had seen his brother in Birmingham but
that what he had to communicate was not understood. He asked me to write a
message to his brother, which I did, and received an answer from Birmingham
"Yes, I know my brother has seen you, for he came to me and was able to make
known as much." The spirit informed me that when at school in France he was
stabbed. This fact was only known to his eldest surviving brother and his
mother. When I narrated this to the survivor he turned very pale and confirmed
it."
Why do they appear?
The driving motive is usually an urgent message of extreme danger, worry,
illness or death on the part of the agent. But it is also often a warning of
impending danger or death of someone closely connected to the percipient. The
mode of delivery in the first group may disclose a confused, perturbed
mentality. A phantom form may rush into a room and alarm the inhabitants by its
sudden appearance or by the noises it makes. The purpose, nevertheless, is
mostly clear and the apparition may come back more than once as if to make sure
that the information of the fact of decease was duly understood. Sometimes more
is conveyed, especially in cases of accidental or violent death. Successive
pictures may arise as if in a vision of the state of the body or of subsequent
steps taken in regard to it.
The announcement of death may be quite explicit as in the case of Proceedings
S.P.R. Vol. X. p. 380-82 . "On June 5th, 1887, a Sunday evening, between eleven
and twelve at night, being awake, my name was called three times. I answered
twice, thinking it was my uncle, "Come in, Uncle George, I am awake," but the
third time I recognized the voice as that of my mother, who had been dead
sixteen years. I said "Mamma!" She then came round a screen near my bedside with
two children in her arms, and placed them in my arms and put the bedclothes over
them, and said "Lucy, promise me to take care of them, for their mother is just
dead." I said "Yes, Mamma."
She repeated: "Promise me to take care of them." I replied "Yes, I promise you,"
and I added: "Oh, Mamma, stay and speak to me, I am so wretched." She replied:
"Not yet, my child." Then she seemed to go round the screen again, and I
remained, feeling the children to be still in my arms, and fell asleep. When I
awoke, there was nothing. Tuesday morning, June 7th, I received the news of my
sister-in-law's death. She had given birth to a child three weeks before which I
did not know till after her death."
In a similar case a mother brought the news of the death of her grandson by
drowning, the drowned man also appearing to the percipient. In an instance
quoted by Flammarion in The Unknown, the percipient, whose brother was
killed in the attack at Sedan awoke suddenly during the night and saw "opposite
to the window and beside my bed my brother on his knees surrounded by a sort of
luminous mist. I tried to speak to him but I could not. I jumped out of bed. I
looked out of the window and I saw there was no moonlight. The night was dark
and it was raining heavily, great drops pattering on the window panes. My poor
Oliver was still there. Then I drew near. I walked right through the apparition.
I reached my chamber door, and as I turned the knob to open I looked back once
more. The apparition slowly turned its head towards me, and gave me another look
full of anguish and love. Then for the first time I observed a wound on his
right temple, and from it trickled a little stream of blood. The face was pale
as wax, but it was transparent." A letter later received proved that the dead
man had a wound corresponding to that shown by the apparition.
The warning of death is sometimes veiled. The type is well illustrated by the
instance recorded by the A.S.P.R. of a commercial traveller who, in a distant
city, had suddenly seen the phantasmal appearance of his sister, full of life
and natural, with a bright red scratch on the right side of her face. Perturbed
by the vision he immediately broke his journey. At home his mother nearly
fainted when the scar was mentioned. Nobody knew of it. She had accidentally
scratched her daughter's face after her death and carefully obliterated all the
traces with powder. A few weeks later the mother died. But for the vision her
son would not have seen her in life again. It is known that Josephine appeared
to Napoleon at St. Helena and warned him of his approaching death-Mozart saw an
apparition who ordered him to compose a Requiem and frequently came to inquire
after its progress. The Requiem was completed just in 'time to be played at his
own funeral.
The message is usually brief as if the power to convey it were limited. The
apparition seems to be drawn to the spot by the personality of the percipient.
The place may have been totally unknown to him when in life. It may be a boat on
the open sea. When a picture, for instance, a scene in a death chamber, is
presented, the alternative explanation of clairvoyance should be considered. In
a curious group of cases images are seen instead of the lifelike figure. Miss
Anna Blackwell testified to such an experience before the Dialectical Committee.
The face of a beloved relative, like a life-size daguerrotype, appeared on a
window pane of the house opposite to her window. It faded away several times,
and appeared again. There seemed to be upon the pane a sort of dark iridescence
out of which the face evolved, each appearance lasting about eight seconds, and
each being darker and fainter than the preceding one. She also quoted the case
of Mrs. M. G. who in the tortoise-shell handle of a new parasol saw the face of
Charles Dickens soon after his death. The face was small but with every feature
perfectly distinct; and as she gazed upon it in utter amazement, the eyes moved
and the mouth smiled.
These images usually appear on polished surfaces. They may be seen by several
people and they disappear after a while. In Vol. 11. of Phantasms of the
Living there is recorded an apparition of this kind of Capt. Towns which was
witnessed by eight people. His face was seen on the polished surface of a
wardrobe six weeks after his death.
In seeing apparitions of the dead or the dying, the percipients often feel a
chilliness. The phenomenon may be related to the cold air of the is also
suggestive that in those cases sleep together and one suddenly wakes to see an
apparition the other is in abnormally deep sleep.
Shackleton's experience, recorded in his book South, borders on abnormal
perception: "I know that during that long and racking march of 36 hours over the
unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we
were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but
afterwards Worsley said to me: "Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that
there was another person with us." Crean confessed to the same idea. Being
interviewed by the Daily Telegraph (February 1, 1922) on this point, he
said: "None of us cares to speak about that. There are some things which can
never be spoken of. Almost to hint about them comes perilously near sacrilege.
This experience was eminently one of those things."
Apparitions may be accompanied by bright light. A case in the Proceedings
of the American S.P.R. (Vol. I. p. 405) proves objectivity. A physician and his
wife, sleeping in separate but adjoining rooms, were awakened by a bright light.
The physician saw a figure, his wife got up and went into her husband's room to
see what the light was. By that time the figure had disappeared. In the Rev.
Tweedale's house the disappearance of a phantom on Nov. 14th, 1908, was
accompanied by a big flash of light and a cloud of smoke which filled the
kitchen and the passage. The smoke had no ordinary smell. On another occasion
the figure touched and spoke to his wife, then dissolved into a pillar of black
vapor.
There are some cases in which the apparition is behind the percipient yet
clearly seen. Again, the phantom may appear quite solid yet objects may be seen
beyond it. Occasionally it is a reflection only. Mrs. Scarle (Phantasms of
the Living, Vol. 8. p. 35) fainted. Her husband saw her head and face white
and bloodless about the same time in a looking glass upon a window opposite him.
Meeting Cases
Apparitions seen at death-beds are in a class of their own. In these so-called
"meeting cases" it appears as if deceased friends, relatives would hasten to the
borderland to extend a welcome to the dying.
"The dying person," writes Miss Frances Power Cobbe, in Peak in Darien, "is
lying quietly, when suddenly, in the very act of expiring, he looks
upsometimes starts up in bed-and gazes on what appears to be vacancy, with an
expression of astonishment, sometimes developing instantly into joy, and
sometimes cut short in the first emotion of solemn wonder and awe. If the dying
man were to see some utterly-unexpected but instantly recognized vision, causing
him great surprise, or rapturous joy, his face could not better reveal the fact.
The very instant this phenomenon occurs, Death is actually taking place, and the
eyes glaze even while they gaze at the unknown sight."
There are numbers of cases on record to prove that such supernormal perception
and death are not always simultaneous. "Among all the facts adduced to prove
survival these seem to me to be the most disquieting," writes Professor Richet
who tries to explain all the spiritistic facts by his theory of cryptesthesia.
Hallucination is effectively barred out by those cases in which others in the
room also perceive the phantom forms but there is sufficient evidence for a
genuine phenomenon if the person was not known to be dead to the dying at the
moment of perception, or if independent evidence comes forth to prove that the
perception was veridical. A striking illustration of the latter instance is the
case of Elisa Mannors whose near relatives and friends, concerned in the
communications received through Mrs. Piper, were known to Dr. Hodgson. His
account (Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XIII. p. 378) says:
"The notice of his (F., an uncle of Elisa Mannors) death was in a Boston morning
paper, and I happened to see it on my way to the sitting. The first writing of
the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it. She wrote clearly
and strongly, explaining that F. was there with her, but unable to speak
directly, that she wished to give me an account of how she had helped F. to
reach her. She said that she had been present at his deathbed, and had spoken to
him, and she repeated what she had said, an unusual form of expression, and
indicated that he had heard and recognized her. This was confirmed in detail in
the only way possible at the time, by a very intimate friend of Mme. Elisa and
myself, and also of the nearest surviving relative of F. I showed my friend the
account of the sitting, and to this friend, a day or two later, the relative,
who was present at the deathbed, stated spontaneously that F. when dying said
that he saw Madame Elisa who was speaking to him, and he repeated what she was
saying. The expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my friend, was
that which I had received from Madame Elisa through Mrs. Piper's trance when the
death-bed incident was, of course, entirely unknown to me."
As Ernesto Bozzano points out, a curious feature of these visions is that the
dying only claim to see deceased persons, whereas, if his thoughts alone would
be concerned in it, he might be expected to see living persons as frequently as
deceased ones. Again, even people who have been skeptical of survival all their
life sometimes have given evidence of such visions. The effect on those who
witness such rending of the veil is very dramatic. Dr. Wilson of New York who
was present at the death of the well-known American tenor, Mr. James Moore,
wrote:
"Then something which I shall never forget to my dying day happened, something
which is utterly indescribable. While he appeared perfectly rational and as sane
as any man I have ever seen, the only way that I can express it is that he was
transported into another world, and although I cannot satisfactorily explain the
matter to myself, I am fully convinced that he, had entered the Golden City-for
he said in a stronger voice than he had used since I had attended him: 'There is
Mother. Why, Mother, have you come here to see me? No, no, I'm coming to see
you. Just wait, Mother, I am almost over. I can jump it. Wait, Mother.' On his
face there was a look of inexpressible happiness, and the way in which he said
the words impressed me as I have never been before, and I am as firmly convinced
that he saw and talked with his mother as I am that I am sitting here."
In his Psychic Facts and Theories, Dr. Minot J. Savage quotes the
following well authenticated instance in which the death in question was not
known to the dying:
"In a neighboring city were two little girls, Jennie and Edith, one about eight
years of age, and the other but a little older. They were schoolmates and
intimate friends. In June, 1889, both were taken ill with diphtheria. At noon on
Wednesday Jennie died. Then the parents of Edith, and her physician as well,
took particular pains to keep from her the fact that her little playmate was
gone. They feared the effect of the knowledge on her own condition. To prove
that they succeeded and that she did not know, it may be mentioned that on
Saturday, June 8th, at noon, just before she became unconscious of all that was
passing about her, she selected two of her photographs to be sent to Jennie, and
also told her attendants to bid her goodbye. She died at half-past six o'clock
on the evening of Saturday, June 8th. She had roused and .bidden her friends
goodbye, and was talking of dying and seemed to have no fear. She appeared to
see one and another of the friends she knew were dead. So far it was like the
common cases. But now suddenly, and with every appearance of surprise, she
turned to her father and exclaimed Why, papa, I am going to take Jennie with me!
Then she added "Why, papa, why, papa, you did not tell me that Jennie was here."
And immediately she reached out her arms as if in welcome, and said: "Oh,
Jennie, I am so glad you are here ... . . . .
Stainton Moses is quoted by Prof. Richet as the source of the following case:
Miss H., the daughter of an English clergyman, was tending a dying child. His
little brother aged three to four years, was in a little bed in the same room.
As the former was dying, the child woke up, and, pointing to the ceiling with
every expression of joy, said: "Mother, look at the beautiful ladies round my
brother. How lovely they are, they want to take him." The elder child died at
that moment.
There is a group of cases in which only some sort of a presence is felt or a
cloud of depression experienced which becomes instantly relieved when the actual
news of death arrives. Phenomena of sound are often recorded in place of a
visual apparition. Sometimes they attempt to prove identity, imitating the
professional work of the departed, for instance the work in a carpenter's shop.
They differ from Poltergeist phenomena as the latter do not coincide with death.
If no definite message is conveyed, the apparition may be explained by a
continued interest in earthly occupations. The spirit apparently cannot adjust
himself immediately to his new surroundings, he may be seen for a while in his
favourite haunts or at his usual work, being somehow enabled, when recently
freed from the body, to enjoy a fuller perception of earthly scenes than it is
afterwards possible to retain.
Knowledge and memory are the two main characteristics of after-death
apparitions. Local apparitions which are attached to no persons usually
degenerate into mere spectral automatons, as witnessed in haunted houses.
Somewhat similar, yet belonging to a different class, is a case of apparitions
en masse reported by Mrs. Sidgwick in Proceedings S.P.R. Vol. III. p. 76:
"Two ladies, Mrs. F. and her sister, saw in the street during a thick fog
numerous human forms passing by. Some were tall persons who seemed to enter the
body of one of the two sisters. The servant who was with the two ladies cried
out in terror. In this crowd of phantoms there were men, women and dogs. The
women wore high bonnets and large shawls of old fashion. Their faces were livid
and cadaverous. The whole phantasmal troop accompanied Mrs. F. and her sister
about three hundred yards. Sometimes they seemed to be lit up by a kind of
yellow light. When Mrs. F., her sister and the servant reached their home, only
one single individual of the crowd, taller than the others and hideous in
appearance, remained. He then disappeared also." Prolonged apparitions are very
rare, and possibly serve some deeper purpose as in the case of the sailor
Spring, who saw beside him on his ship during a storm, his father on the bridge
for two hours. The message of the apparition is, as a rule, simple and appears
to be chosen intelligently in the form which may best suit the percipient's
power of understanding. An apparition with empty eye sockets perceived by a
sailor's wife, the sound of a terrific storm, the image of a coffin conveys the
intended message nearly as efficiently as the spoken words. The percipient
appears to be curiously receptive in such moments and seldom exhibits
astonishment at the most unlikely things.
Death-compacts offer another fruitful field of study. There are cases on record
when the apparition concerned was perceived not after death but before, at the
moment of a dangerous accident. In Phantasms of the Living there are 12
such cases recorded, the apparition having appeared within twelve hours of the
death. In three cases the agent was still alive. It appears as if such a compact
would act effectively both on the subconscious before death and on the spirit
after death. How long the efforts as a result of such a compact may continue we
cannot tell. It is usually fulfilled shortly after death, but in some cases
after years. The living party to the compact may not be sufficiently sensitive
to be successfully impressed and others may see a phantom of the departed much
sooner than he.
The genesis of apparitions
Are apparitions objective, produced in space, or are they subjectively seen as
the result of a telepathic impact from the agent? This is the crux of the
problem. The answer is a qualified one as the subjective nature of the
apparition is often unquestionable. Helen Smith wrote to Prof. Flournoy in 1926
of an Italian spiritualist from whom she received a letter. She decided to ask
him for details of his life. Suddenly, she heard a knock at the door, three
sharp and distinct raps, the door opened and she saw a man, holding in each hand
a small wickerwork basket, containing grain of different kinds. He made a sign,
inviting her attention to the baskets. Two minutes afterwards he disappeared.
The door was found shut. After sending off the intended letter, a photograph
came, the exact reproduction of the man seen, with the information that the
writer was a dealer in corn still living in Genoa.
The objectivity of any apparition could best be decided by the means of the
camera. Circumstances, however, are very seldom such that would make possible
the acquisition of such evidence. There is, however, a well authenticated case,
furnished by the Rev. Charles L. Tweedale, Vicar of Weston. He photographed in
the breakfast room of the vicarage an old man who was clairvoyantly seen by Mrs.
Tweedale. The photographs obtained by spirit photographers belong to a different
class as there is no perceptible apparition during the process.
Nevertheless the photograph of the Combermere ghost demands consideration here.
Lady C. had taken for a summer Lord Combermere's country house, Combermere
Abbey, in Cheshire. The library in the house was a fine paneled room and the new
tenant was anxious to secure a photograph of it. Accordingly, placing her
half-plate camera on its stand in a favorable position-fronting the unoccupied
carved oak arm chair on which Lord Combermere always used to sit-she opened a
new box of photographic plates in the dark room, put a plate in the dark slide,
and after focussing the, camera, inserted and exposed the plate. On developing
the plate by herself, she was amazed to find the figure of a leg-less old man
seated in the carved oak arm chair. The curious coincidence that Lord Combermere
was buried a few miles from his country house at the very time the photograph
was taken led to the surmise whether the ghostly figure resembled the late
nobleman. Opinions of the family differed but on the whole it was considered to
be like him, especially in the peculiar attitude which was habitual to him when
seated in his chair. But Sir William Barrett who investigated the case and
reported on it in the Journal S.P.R., December, 1895, was not satisfied. Working
on the theory that a man servant may have come in and seated himself in the
chair he took a test photograph and got a picture which was almost a duplicate
of the Combermere photograph. With this the matter was ended but-as he tells in
On the Threshold of the Unseen-some time later he received a letter from
Lord Combermere's daughter-in-law in which she said:
"The face was always too indistinct to be quite convincing to me, though some of
his children had no doubt at all of the identity. I may add, none of the men
servants in the house in the least resembled the figure and were all young men;
whilst the outside men were all attending the funeral, which was taking place at
the Church four miles off, at the very time the photograph was being done."
This testimony induced Sir William Barrett to change his opinion.
The question whether an objective apparition is simply an effigy or the actual
presence of whom it represents is satisfactorily settled in J. N. Maskelyne's
account of a drowning experience of his (M.A.P., April 22nd, 1899) He said: "One
thing, however, did appear to my mental vision as plainly as though it were
actually before my eyes. That was the form of my mother, engaged upon her
household duties. Upon returning home, I was utterly astonished to find that she
had been as conscious of my danger as I had been, and at the moment when I was
so near death." It seems that when his past life flashed by in the moment of
drowning the last thoughts of Maskelyne dwelt on his mother with the effect that
he found his mental self gazing at her. Many other apparitions may be simply
thought forms, reflections of intense mental anguish experienced in some time
past in certain places which are now called haunted or, as Myers suggested, they
may be visible dreams of the dead.
Gurney, writing in 1888, believed that there are three conditions which might
establish a presumption that an apparition or other immediate manifestation of a
dead person is something more than a subjective hallucination. Either (1) more
persons than one might be independently affected by the phenomenon, or (2) the
phantasm might convey information, afterwards discovered to be true, of
something which the percipient had never known; or (3) the appearance might be
that of a person whom the percipient himself had never seen, and of whose aspect
he was ignorant, and yet his description of it might be sufficiently definite
for identification. Gurney also noted that the high number of phantasmal
appearances shortly after death is also very suggestive as the calculation of
probabilities for telepathic impressions from the living would not result in
such a disproportionate number. The telepathic explanation of apparitions
presents many difficulties. One has to suppose that a dying man can visualize
himself and his condition sufficiently clearly to project a telepathic image as
distinctly as perceived. It is also strange that intense concentration at such
critical moments should result in the transmission of an image of oneself and
not on the reverse, in the perception of the person in the mind of the dying. In
experimental thought transference it is always the idea on which the agent
concentrates that is perceived by the percipients. On the other hand in the
projection-of-the-double experiments the agent always concentrates on the person
to whom he wishes to appear and not on himself. But again in such cases the
agent often sees the percipient and brings back an account which can be
subsequently verified. This speaks for the real presence of the agent and for
the insufficiency of the telepathic impact theory.
Apparently the telepathic impulse is first registered on the unconscious part of
the mind. If so, the impression may be latent for a time. Strong preoccupation
of the conscious mind with the business of life may prevent its emergence. This
would explain why the vision of an apparition does not always coincide in time
with the actual happening. In Phantasms of the Living such deferred
telepathic perceptions are admitted within a period of 12 hours. On the other
hand, the theory does not bar out the other, that there is an actual presence
which does not always find the mind of the percipient sufficiently receptive to
take cognition. Reciprocal perceptions are also on record. The telepathic theory
has to be twisted and modified to cover the wide range of supernormal
perceptions. In case of accidental death, the apparition is sometimes seen at
the moment of death, sometimes after it. Does the mind transform the picture of
deadly danger into a picture of death? If this were true we would come across
many cases in which the vision of death w as premature as the accident did not
prove fatal. Again, in cases of suicides the apparition is often found to
precede the actual commission of the act. It would seem very credible that
brooding over the fatal act and its possible effect on close relations produces
a telepathic image. By all means, the telepathic theory would account for the
clothes worn by the ghosts and would eliminate suggestions as that of d'Assier
of the ghosts of garments. But it meets with difficulties in cases when animals
are stricken with terror and when they register alarm before the man suspects
anything unusual. The greatest stumbling block in the way of the telepathic
theory, as an all-inclusive explanation, is presented by those cases in which
the apparition is collectively perceived. Gurney attempted to explain these
cases by a fresh telepathic transmission which takes place from the percipient's
mind to the mind of his neighbors. This theory is obviously inadequate. There is
nothing to prove its possibility. The hallucinations of the insane or the
visions seen in delirium tremens are never communicated to those around them.
Why should such a communication take place in cases of apparitions, coinciding
with the death of someone distant? What happened when the percipient appeared to
have traveled to a distant scene and he was actually perceived there? As early
as 1885 Myers began to feel the insufficiency of the telepathic theory. Gurney
himself, by the time he died, was convinced of the veridical character of many
an apparition. The trance phenomena of Mrs. Piper led Myers to the belief that
the evidence for communications from the departed is quite as strong as for
telepathic communication between the living. Still, there remained a large
number of phantasmal manifestations that even communication from the departed
could not explain. So Myers worked out a theory of psychical invasion, the
creation of a "Phantasmogenetic center" in the percipient's surroundings by some
dissociated elements of the agent's personality which in some way are potent
enough to affect and modify space. He considered it a subliminal operation,
resembling the continuous dream-life which he supposed to run concurrently with
the waking life, not necessarily a profound incident but rather a special
idiosyncrasy on the part of the agent which tends to make his phantasm easily
visible. From the Greek he coined the word "psychorrhagy" which means "to let
the soul break loose." He believed he had discovered a new physiological fact,
the psychorrhagic diathesis, essentially a psychical manifestation by some
people born with an ability to produce phantasmogenetic effect either on the
mind of another person or on a portion of space, in which case several persons
may simultaneously discern the phantasm.
This theory is most important. It is a half-way house between telepathy and the
double of the living or the astral self of the dead. The supposition of the
double easily explains many an apparition of the living: the "arrival cases"
where a man's attention is fixed on his return home, the cases in which there is
a strong link of emotion between agent and percipient and the phantom is
collectively or repeatedly seen; but there is a residue of phantasmal
apparitions in which the theory of the double offers no satisfactory
explanation. The case of Canon Bourne, in the Journal of S.P.R., Vol. VI. p. 129
is a very good instance. It is told by Miss L. Bourne as follows: "On February
5th, 1887, my father, sister, and I went out hunting. About the middle of the
day my sister and I decided to return home with the coachman, while my father
went on. Somebody came and spoke to us, and delayed us for a few moments. As we
were turning to go home, we distinctly saw my father, waving his hat to us and
signing us to follow him. He was on the side of a small hill, and there was a
dip between him and us. My sister, the coachman and myself all recognized my
father, and also the horse. The horse looked so dirty and shaken that the
coachman remarked he thought there had been a nasty accident. As my father waved
his hat I clearly saw the Lincoln and Bennett mark inside, though from the
distance we were apart it ought to have been utterly impossible for me to have
seen it. At the time I mentioned seeing the mark in the hat, though the
strangeness of seeing it did not strike me till afterwards.
"Fearing an accident, we hurried down the hill. From the nature of the ground we
had to lose sight of my father, but it took us very few seconds to reach the
place where we had seen him. When we got there, there was no sign of him
anywhere, nor could we see anyone in sight at all. We rode about for some time
looking for him, but could not see or hear anything of him. We all reached home
within a quarter of an hour of each other. My father then told us he had never
been in the field, nor near the field, in which we thought we saw him, the whole
of that day. He had never waved to us, and had met with no accident. My father
was riding the only white horse that was out that day.
Myers believes that Canon Bourne was subliminally dreaming of himself as having
had a fall, and as beckoning to his daughters, an incoherent dream but of quite
ordinary type. Being born with the psychorrhagic diathesis a certain psychical
element so far detached itself from his organism as to affect a certain portion
of space near the daughters of whom he was thinking, to effect it not materially
nor even optically, but yet in such a manner that to a certain kind of
immaterial and non-optical sensitivity a phantasm of himself and his horse
became discernible.
Myers suggested that hauntings by departed spirits may be similarly explained
and that the modification of space into a phantasmogenetic center applies to a
phantasmal voice as well.
If this alteration of space is more than a theory it may theoretically happen,
so Myers thought, that a bystander may discern the alteration more clearly than
the person for whose benefit it was made or that the bystander alone may
perceive it. Such seems to be the case of Frances Reddell quoted in Phantasms
of the Living, Vol. 1. p. 214: "Helen Alexander (maid to Lady Waldegrave)
was lying here very ill with typhoid fever, and was attended by me. I was
standing at the table by her bedside, pouring out her medicine, at about 4
o'clock in the morning of the 4th October, 1880. I heard the call bell ring
(this had been heard twice before during the night in that same week) and was
attracted by the door of the room opening, and by seeing a person entering the
room whom I instantly felt to be the mother of the sick woman. She had a brass
candlestick in her hand, a red shawl over her shoulder, and a flannel petticoat
on which had a hole in the front. I looked at her as much as to say "I am glad
you have come" but the woman looked at me sternly, as much as to say "Why wasn't
I sent for before?" I gave the medicine to Helen Alexander and then turned round
to speak to the vision, but no one was there. She had gone. She was a short,
dark person, and very stout. At about 6 o'clock that morning Helen Alexander
died. Two days after her parents and a sister came to Antony, and arrived
between 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning; I and another maid let them in,
and it gave me a great turn when I saw the living likeness of the vision I had
seen two nights before. I told the sister about the vision, and she said that
the description of the dress exactly answered to her mother's, and that they had
brass candlesticks at home exactly like the one described. There was not the
slightest resemblance between the mother and daughter."
The account was corroborated. Myers believes the vision was meant for the
daughter by the mother who, in her anxiety paid her a psychical visit and
affected part of the space with an image corresponding to the conception of her
own aspect latent in her mind. A bystander, a susceptible person, happened to
see the image while the girl for whom it was meant died without leaving a sign
of having perceived it.
A still more curious but, according to Myers, similarly explainable case is the
sailor's (Phantasms of the Living, Vol II. p. 144) who, watching by a
dying comrade, saw figures around his hammock, apparently representing the dying
man's family, in mourning garb. The family, it was found out, was alarmed by
noises which they took as indication of danger to the dying. According to Myers
the wife paid a psychical visit to her husband. The mourning garb and the
figures of the children were symbolical expressions of her thought that her
children will be orphans.
Would the alteration of space theory account for changes in physical objects?
Myers is silent on this point. Andrew Lang considers it crucial. For if an
apparition can thump, open a door or pull a curtain, it must be a ghost, real,
objective entity, filling space. Per contra, "no ghost who does not do
this has any strict legal claim to be regarded as other than a telepathic
hallucination at best." The statement is rather severe in view of his quotation
from Dr. Binn's Anatomy of Sleep of the case of the gentleman who, in a
dream, pushed so strongly against a door in a distant house that they hardly
could hold it against him.
Apparitions may be produced experimentally by the projection of the double or
powerful suggestion. The first attempts in the latter class are recorded from
Germany in H. M. Wesermanns' Der Magnetismus und die Allgemeine Weltsprache,
Creveld, 1822. On four occasions he succeeded in inducing four separate
acquaintances to dream on matters suggested by himself. On the fifth occasion he
produced a collective apparition. The subject and a friend who happened to be in
his company saw, in the waking state, the apparition of a woman in accordance
with the operator's suggestion.
Frank Podmore, the most ardent champion of the telepathic theory of apparitions,
gives a case of a most interesting failure to induce a vision in dream. The
agent desired that a certain lieutenant should see a lady who had been dead five
years, in his dreams. Instead of this, the apparition was seen by the lieutenant
and a companion of his while they were wide awake. The door, while they were
conversing, suddenly opened and the lady entered. She was dressed in white, head
uncovered, and she smilingly bowed to the young lieutenant three times, passed
through the doorway and disappeared.
For other types of apparitions, see
Materialization
and
Transfiguration
Bibliography: John Beaumont: Treatise of Spirits, Apparitions, Witches, etc.,
1705; Andrew Moreton: The Secrets of the Invisible World Disclosed, or a
Universal History of Apparitions, Sacred and Profane, 1729; Anon: An Essay on
the History and Reality of Apparitions, 1727; Don Augustin Calmet: Dissertations
upon the Apparitions of Angels, Demons and Ghosts, 1759; The Phantom World,
1850; Anon.: The Secrets of the Invisible World Laid Open, 1770; John Tregortha:
News from the Invisible World, 1813; S. Hibbert: Sketches of the Philosophy of
Apparitions, 1825; The Unseen World, 1847; Catherine Crowe: The Nightside of
Nature, 1848; Ghosts and Family Legends, 1859; N. Crossland: Apparitions, 1856;
Rev. B. W. Saville: Apparitions, 1874; Rev. Wrey Savile: Apparitions, A
Narrative of Facts, 1874; Frances Power Cobbe: The Peak in Darien, 1881; Rev. J.
S. Pollock: Dead and Gone; Gurney, Meyers and Podmore: Phantasms of the Living,
1886; Frank Podmore: Apparitions and Thought Transference, 1894, The New View of
Ghosts; W. T. Stead: Real Ghost Stories, 1897; Andrew Lang: Book of Dreams and
Ghosts, 1898; Hamlin Garland: The Shadow World, 1908; Camille Flammarion: Death
and its Mystery, I. II.,
and
111., 1922-23; Ernesto Bozzano: Phenomenes Psychique au Moment de la Mort, 1923;
E. 0. Donnell: Ghostly Phenomena; Ghosts Helpful and Harmful, Byways and
Highways of Ghostland; Animal Ghosts; 1913; Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, 1928;
Werewolves; Dudley Wright: Vampires and vampirism, 1914; Frank Hamel: Human
Animals, 1915; H. Carrington: True Ghost Stories, 1915; Violet Tweedale: Ghosts
I Have Seen, 1920; W. F. Barrett: Death Bed Visions, 1926; A. 0. Eaves:
Vampirism; Dr. Edward H. Clarke: Visions; J. W. Wickwar: The Ghost World; Mrs.
joy Snell: The Ministry of Angels; Richard Pike: Life's Borderland and Beyond.
F
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