Andrew Lang

“ When the apparitions produce themselves in given rooms, houses or localities, and are exhibited to various persons at various times, the locality is popularly said to be haunted by spirits, that is, of the dead, on the animistic hypothesis (see Hauntings) . Like the other alleged facts, these are of world-wide diffusion, or the belief in them is world-wide, and peculiar to no race, age, or period of culture. A haunted place is a centre of permanent possibilities of hallucinations, or is believed to be so. ”

“ If the telepathic theory of coincidental hallucinations be accepted, we have still to account for the much more common non-coincidental apparitions of the living who do not happen to be in any particular crisis. ”

“ When the false perception coincides with nothing of the sort, it is styled non-coincidental. Coincidental apparitions have been explained by the theory of telepathy (q.v.) , one mind or brain impressing another in some unknown way so as to beget an hallucinatory apparition or phantasm. On the evidence, so far as it has been collected and analysed, it seems that the mind which, on the hypothesis, begets the hallucinations, usually does so without conscious effort (see Subliminal Self) . ”