Paranormal phenomenon

“ While your feelings were excited by the unusual episode, the strange surroundings and the dark, she related to you a wild legend of witchcraft and monsters. Later, when you suffered your [Pg 308] first attack of marsh-gas poisoning, your consequent hallucination took form from the story you had just heard. Later conversations with your mysterious lady fixed the idea into an obsession. Recurrent dreams are a common phenomenon even in healthy persons. ”

“ Percipient—The receiver of the telepathic or other message. The one who experiences the phenomenon.
Phantasm—A phantom; an apparition; a “ghost.” The word is more inclusive than any of the words suggested; and is used by preference, by most psychic students.
Telepathy—Mind-reading; thought-transference.
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TRUE GHOST STORIES
CHAPTER I WHAT IS A GHOST?
Ghosts have been believed in by every nation, at every time and at every stage of the world’s evolution. No matter where we may go, we find them stalking through the pages of history ”

“ Therefore, if a ghost rise before me, I have not the right to say, "So, then, the supernatural is possible," but rather, "So, then, the apparition of a ghost is, contrary to received opinion, within the laws of nature—i.e., not supernatural."
Now, in all that I had hitherto witnessed, and indeed in all the wonders which the amateurs of mystery in our age record as facts, a material living agency is always required. On the continent you will find still magicians who assert that they can raise spirits. ”

“ The little mysteries are all embraced in the big Mystery, which would not be mysterious if we had the power to understand it. I was always that kind of a sceptic which believes in there being a reason for everything. When I was a girl I saw ghosts—unmistakably visible ghosts—and even in their presence, certain that they could not be flesh and blood creatures, and paralysed with horror to know it, I was able to keep this attitude of mind. ”

“ AND KINDRED PHENOMENA
"Do I believe in ghosts?" asks Mr Andrew Lang. "One can only answer: 'How do you define a ghost?' I do believe, with all students of human nature, in hallucinations of one, or of several, or even of all the senses. But as to whether such hallucinations among the sane are ever caused by physical influence from the minds of others, alive or dead, not communicated through the ordinary channels of sense, my mind is in a balance of doubt. It is a question of evidence." ”

“ Thus, in those cases where the apparition moved a material object, opened a door, etc., such a theory would have to be abandoned, for the simple reason that a mental concept, an hallucination, cannot open doors and move objects! There must be an outstanding, material entity to effect this. There must be a real ghost. And in those cases where the apparition has been seen by several persons at once, or even photographed, it seems more reasonable to suppose that a material, space-occupying body was present rather than to assume that the various witnesses or the camera were hallucinated. ”

“ Yet—do I go into the darkness outside otherwise than alert?
It is this evolution of our sense of ghost terror—ages of it—that fascinates us.
Can we, with a few generations of modernism behind us, throw it off with all our science? And, if we did, should we not then succeed only in abolishing the old-fashioned ghost story and creating a new, scientific ghost story? ”

“ Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition. Ghosts—things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the Fourth Dimension ventured forth a little way toward our world. And seeing them, we called them ghosts. ”

“ Even granting all this to be true, many believing in ghosts do not for an instant contend that such ghosts represent the actual person the figure symbolises. It is a mere projection; a shell; a form created by the discarnate spirit, a resemblance, a phantasm. The central consciousness which animated and still animates that person is not in the ghostly form, but elsewhere. ”

“ With ghosts we arrive in the spirit-realm, in the realm of essences.
What haunts the universe, and has its occult, "incomprehensible" being there, is precisely the mysterious spook that we call highest essence. ”

“ Nevertheless, I do believe that the great mass of “ghost stories,” of which the world is full, has not been built entirely upon the inventions of the ignorant and superstitious. In plain words, while I, of course, throw aside a million of idle fictions, or exaggerated facts, I do believe in ghosts—or, rather, spectres—only I do not believe them to be supernatural. ”

“ But, in spite of psychical-research societies, science has not yet adopted ghosts; so we can only say that certain ideas of supernatural agency, associated with real circumstances, produce a peculiar kind of horror. ”

“ In short, it seems to me that life is reduced to a mere phantasmagoria, if spectral illusions are so prevalent, so complicated in their nature, and so delusive as they must be if all the instances of ghost-seeing that come before us are to be referred to that theory. ”

“ Belief in ghosts, angels and demons is practically universal; and just here comes in the whole range of psychical phenomena, facts and fantasies, illusions, 17 hallucinations and delusions, rational volition, reason dethroned, and the Will in Subjection, already referred to.
As individual experiences, subjective or objective, all are real. The fear incited by illusions and hallucination, or by “seeing a ghost,” regardless of the fact of its actual existence, is as real to the individual as that of meeting a serpent in the grass, or a tiger in the jungle. ”

“ Fifthly, we have those cases in which the apparition has produced a physical effect in the material world—snuffed a light, opened a door, pulled back the bed-curtains, etc. A hallucinatory figure could not do this. It has been suggested that all this is only a part of the hallucination, but when the thing is found to have been moved in reality, we must explain this somehow ”

“ Ghostly psychology is a fascinating study. The development of spectral personality is one of the evident facts gained from a historical survey of supernatural fiction. The modern ghost has more individuality, more distinctiveness, in the main, than his forbears. The ghosts of medievalism, of ancient superstition, and the drama were for the most part pallid, colorless beings in character as in materialization. ”

“ The boundaries of the real and the unreal were undefined and the belief in the supernatural, while it allowed the imagination free reins, revealed little difference between its creations and the ideas men held of the actual world. In this overlapping of the real and the imaginary, the ghost story arose and has never lost its interest for men, though the cold judgment of science deprived the real thing of its terrors. ”

“ Unreal Ghosts—Law of Sensorial Illusions—Cases of Nicolai, Schwedenborg, Joan of Arc—Fetches—Churchyard ghosts.
The projected analysis has been crowned with success. The fumes of superstition have been driven off, and the ghosts have been reduced to rational elements. All trace of supernatural agency has vanished; and in its place are found three principles—one physical, two psychical—by the help of which every conceivable ghost may in future be alternately decomposed and recompounded by the merest tyro. ”

“ So, then, we arrive at a sort of explanation of many of these cases of apparitions, occurring at the moment of death; for we have shown them to be “telepathic hallucinations.” This is also the correct explanation, doubtless, for many [36] cases in which apparitions of the living have been seen—in which a phantasm of a living person has appeared to another, during sleep, or in hypnotic trance, etc.
But how about those ghosts which appear some time after death? They, at least, cannot be explained by any such theory. What has been said by way of explanation of these cases? ”

“ The picture is mental, in such a case; it is an imaginative creation; it is a hallucination,—although it was caused or created by another, distant mind. It was, it is true, a hallucination; but as it was induced by telepathy, we have for such apparitions the name of “telepathic hallucinations.” It is this theory of “telepathic hallucinations” which is invoked to explain many of these cases of death-coincidences, or apparitions of the dying. ”

“ This perfectly accountable appearance, in its aimlessness, its unconsciousness, its irresponsiveness, is undeniably just like the common notion of a ghost. Now, if ordinary ghosts are not of flesh and blood, like the sleep-walking house-maid, yet are as irresponsive, as unconscious, and as vaguely wandering as she, then (if the dead are somewhat) a ghost may be a hallucination produced in the living by the unconscious action of the mind of the dreaming dead. ”

“ It is also pointed out that "in ghost stories of a supposed supernatural character which by disease are rendered so unduly intense as to induce spectral illusions, may be traced to such fantastical objects of prior belief as are incorporated in the various systems of superstition which for ages have possessed the minds of the vulgar." "Spectral illusions arise from a highly excited state of the nervous irritability acting generally upon the system, or from inflammation of the brain." ”

“ Every one has heard of the Wesley ghost, Sir George Villiers’s spectre, Lord Lyttelton’s ghost, the Beresford ghost, Mr. Williams’s dream of Mr. Perceval’s murder, and so forth. But the original sources have not, as a rule, been examined in the ordinary spirit of calm historical criticism, by aid of a comparison of the earliest versions in print or manuscript. (3) Even ghost stories, as a rule, have some basis of fact, whether fact of hallucination, or illusion, or imposture. They are, at lowest, “human documents”. ”

“ I have never been a very superstitious man, and have never believed in ghosts or spirits, in table-turnings or spirit-rappings, in visions or apparitions; in fact, in anything that can strike the material senses, and yet pretend to be immaterial, and has nothing to strike with. This is the whole problem of ghosts in a nutshell. If ghosts are immaterial, they cannot strike our eyes, or tickle our ears. ”

“ It is a strange, weird, mysterious place, filled with uncanny sights and sounds, haunted by the ghosts of former dusky inhabitants, whom it swallowed without warning and extinguished in a twinkling of an eye in the most diabolical manner, and whose tortured spirits even now cry out for relief and freedom from cruel bondage on every dark and stormy night. ”

“ But the dream-horror which I speak of is far more frightful. The dreamer finds housed within himself—occupying, as it were, some separate chamber in his brain—holding, perhaps, from that station a secret and detestable commerce with his own heart—some horrid alien nature. ”

“ In the light of these discoveries, then, the belief has been gaining ground that ghosts—real ghosts—are at most nothing but mental images [47] impressed upon one mind by another through the subtle power of telepathy, and apprehended in the form of hallucinations of the various senses, just as any ordinary telepathic message may be apprehended.
A person is stricken with a mortal illness, is fatally injured, or is passing through some other great crisis likely to terminate in death. ”

“ And what can be more plausible reasoning than to argue that, as solid men eat solid food, ghosts eat ghostly food? “Soul” thus appears as a sort of ghost-substance, or ghost-body. For, in dreams, the departed are seen as if in the flesh; and moreover analogy requires that the ghost consciousness and ghost-force shall have a body of some sort, and, of course, one that will maintain in ghost-land the same relations to other things that the mortal body did in this world. In ghost-land, or shadow-land, or dream-land, the substance of all things is this soul-stuff. ”

“ I have been busily engaged penning descriptions of the ghosts I and others have seen, when I have been startled by the fact that my paper, originally white, has suddenly become the colour of the sky, and on looking hastily up to discover a reason, have been in no small measure shocked to see my candle burning a bright blue. An occult manifestation of sorts has invariably followed. I am often warned of the near advent of the occult in this same manner when I am investigating in a haunted house—the flame of the candle burns blue before the appearance of the ghost. ”

“ However, at present we are only on the threshold of these marvels, and we who are not engaged in the task of occult discovery can still be interested and entertained by "ghost stories" as ghost stories, and can discuss various points and form our own ideas about them. And there is one feature common to a great many of these supernatural tales and incidents which I think must strike everybody, whether believers or sceptics, and that is their apparent lack of purpose. ”

“ We say ‘old-fashioned’ of set purpose, because while modern tales of ‘levitation’ and flighty furniture, of flying stones, of rappings, of spectral hands, of cold psychical winds, are exactly like the tales of old, a change, an observed change, has come over the ghost of the nineteenth century. Readers of the Proceedings of the Psychical Society will see that the modern ghost is a purposeless creature. ”