1. Apparitions and hauntings
APPARITIONS, some precognitions or retrocognitions,
and also the so-called "projections" or "out-of-the-body" experiences, all
putatively come under the technical psychological category of hallucinations,
that is, of "abnormal misinterpretations of ideational experiences as
perceptions ... in hallucination the error of perception goes so far as to
suppose facts present to a sense which is actually receiving no relevant
stimulation."(1)
(1) H. C. Warren: Dictionary of Psychology. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, 1934.
More explicitly, a hallucination is essentially a mental image - visual,
auditory, tactual, or/and other - that has the vividness of a sensation and
that, as usual in the case of sensations, is automatically taken to be
perception of a physical object or event, although none such as perceived is
actually stimulating the relevant sense organ(s). Ordinary dreams are the most
common hallucinations: in them, physical objects seem to be perceived and, until
one awakens, are not realized to have been physically non-existent.
Hallucinations thus are not inherently pathological but only sometimes so (as,
for example, in delirium tremens.)
To say that an experience is, or is only, a hallucination is, of course, not at
all to account for its content or for its occurrence, but is merely to say, as
made clear above, that the experience is not due to stimulation of the relevant
sense organ(s) at the time by a physical object of the kind seemingly perceived.
Nor does an experience's being a hallucination in the least dispose of the
question whether the experience is veridical in the sense of being a true sign
of some fact it appears to signify, e.g., of some crisis being faced by the
person whose apparition is perceived; or of some future or past occurrence, as
in precognition or retrocognition; or, as in "out-of-the-body" experiences, of
actual observation of one's own body and of other things - extrasensorily but
accurately - from a point distant in space from the body.
This is important to remember when a particular hallucination is more
specifically characterized, perhaps, as oneiric, or as hypnagogic, or
hypnopompic; or (as in the case of "out-of-the-body" experiences) as
heautoscopic, etc.; for these adjectives are names only of sub-classes of
hallucinations, not at all of causes or of processes that would account for the
particular content of the hallucination, or dispose of the possibility of its
being veridical in the sense stated above.
With these words of caution in mind we may now consider first some concrete
instances of the putatively hallucinatory experiences commonly termed
apparitions of the dead. I say "putatively" because the possibility must not be
ruled out a priori that apparitions are material even if only tenuously so as
compared with the "materializations" we shall consider later.
In Chapter II we had occasion to cite an exceptionally well attested case of the
kind of paranormal occurrence generally regarded by those who witness it as most
evidential of survival of the human personality, namely, "ghosts," or
"apparitions of the dead."
The case was that of the numerous apparitions at the beginning of the 19th
century of the form of the deceased Mrs. Butler in a Maine village, to which the
Rev. Abraham Cummings (A. M. Brown University 1776) had proceeded in order to
expose what he had assumed must be a hoax. He, however, was then himself met in
a field by what he terms "the Spectre." His statement of this meeting reads:
"Sometime in July 1806, in the evening I was informed by two persons that they
had just seen the Spectre in the field. About ten minutes after, I went out, not
to see a miracle, for I believed that they had been mistaken. Looking toward an
eminence, twelve rods distance from the house, I saw there, as I supposed, one
of the white rocks. This confirmed my opinion of their spectre, and I paid no
more attention to it. Three minutes after, I accidentally looked in the same
direction, and the white rock was in the air; its form a complete Globe, white
with a tincture of red, like the damask rose, and its diameter about two feet.
Fully satisfied that this was nothing ordinary, I went toward it for more
accurate examination. While my eye was constantly upon it, I went on four or
five steps, when it came to me from the distance of eleven rods, as quick as
lightning, and instantly assumed a personal form with a female dress, but did
not appear taller than a girl seven years old. While I looked upon her, I said
in my mind, 'you are not tall enough for the woman who has so frequently
appeared among us!' Immediately she grew up as large and as tall as I considered
that woman to be. Now she appeared glorious. On her head was the representation
of the sun diffusing the luminous, rectilinear rays every way to the ground.
Through the rays I saw the personal form and the woman's dress."(2)
(2) Pp. 35-6 of the pamphlet, Immortality proved by the Testimony of Sense,
Bath, Me. 1826.
In the pamphlet the Rev. Mr. Cummings reproduces some thirty affidavits which he
had obtained at the time from persons who had seen or/and heard the Spectre; for
the apparition spoke, and delivered discourses sometimes over an hour long. Some
of the witnesses believed the apparition was from Satan, others from God. It
presented itself sometimes "to one alone .... sometimes she appeared to two or
three; then to five or six; then to ten or twelve; again to twenty; and once to
more than forty witnesses. She appeared in several apartments of Mr. Blaisdel's
house, and several times in the open field ... There, white as the light, she
moved like a cloud above the ground in personal form and magnitude, and in the
presence of more than forty people. She tarried with them till after daylight,
and vanished" (p. 29). On one occasion, one of the men present, Capt. Butler,
"put his hand upon it and it passed down through the apparition as through a
body of light, in the view of six or seven witnesses" (p. 30). Several of the
witnesses report, as does the Rev. Mr. Cummings, that the apparition begins as a
formless small luminous cloud, which then grows and in a moment takes the form
of the deceased Mrs. Butler. (This incidentally, was what occurred when; over
fifty years ago in New York, the present writer witnessed in red light but not
under test conditions a purported gradual materialization of a man's body.)
The prima facie evidence of survival provided by an apparition is greatest when
it supplies information that was unknown to the percipent. Among a number of
well attested reports of just this, two, which are so clear-cut that they have
become classics in this field, may be cited briefly.
One is of the case of a travelling salesman, whose sister had died in 1867, and
who in 1876 was in his hotel room at noon in St. Joseph, Mo. smoking a cigar and
writing up the orders he had obtained: "I suddenly became conscious that some
one was sitting on my left, with one arm resting on the table. Quick as a flash
I turned and distinctly saw the form of my dead sister, and for a brief second
or so looked her squarely in the face; and so sure was I that it was she, that I
sprang forward in delight calling her by name, and, as I did so, the apparition
instantly vanished ... I was near enough to touch her ... and noted her
features, expression, and details of dress, etc. She appeared as alive."
He was so moved by the experience that he cut his trip short and returned to his
home in St. Louis, where he related the occurrence to his parents, mentioning
among other details of the apparition that on the right side of the girl's nose
he had noticed a bright red scratch about three fourths of an inch long. "When I
mentioned this," he states, "my mother rose trembling to her feet and nearly
fainted away, and .... with tears streaming down her face, she exclaimed that I
had indeed seen my sister, as no living mortal but herself was aware of that
scratch, which she had accidentally made while doing some little act of kindness
after my sister's death. She said she well remembered how pained she was to
think she should have, unintentionally, marred the features of her dead
daughter, and that unknown to all, she had carefully obliterated all traces of
the slight scratch with the aid of powder, etc., and that she had never
mentioned it to a human being from that day to this."(3)
(3) A full account of the case appears in Vol. VI: 17-20, S.P.R. Proceedings,
1889-90. It is reproduced in F. W. H. Myers Human Personality and its Survival
of Bodily Death, Vol. 11:27-30.
The other famous case - the Chaffin will case - concerns not a similarly waking
vision, but one occurring as either a vivid dream, or in a state between waking
and dreaming. The essential facts are as follows. On November 16, 1905, James L.
Chaffin, a North Carolina farmer, made a will attested by two witnesses, in
which he left his farm to his son Marshall, the third of his four sons; and
nothing to the other three or to his wife. On January 16, 1919, however, he made
a new will, not witnessed but legally valid because wholly in his own
handwriting. In it, he stated first that it was being made after his reading of
the 27th chapter of Genesis; and then that he wanted his property divided
equally between his four children, and that they must take care of their mother.
He then placed this holograph will at the 27th chapter of Genesis in a Bible
that had belonged to his father, folding over the pages to enclose the will.
He died on September 7, 1921, without, so far as ascertainable, ever having
mentioned to anybody the existence of the second will. The first will was not
contested and was probated on the 24th of the same month by its beneficiary,
Marshall Chaffin.
Some four years later, in June, 1925, the second son, James Pinkney Chaffin
began to have very vivid dreams that his father appeared to him at his bedside,
without speaking. Later that month, however, the father again appeared at the
bedside, wearing a familiar black overcoat, and then spoke, saying "you will
find my will in my overcoat pocket." In the morning, James looked for the
overcoat, but was told by his mother that it had been given to his brother John,
who lived twenty miles away. Some days later, James went to his brother's house,
found the coat, and examined it. The inside lining of the inside pocket had been
stitched together. On cutting the stitches, he found a little roll of paper on
which, in his father's handwriting, were written only the words: "Read the 27th
chapter of Genesis in my Daddie's old Bible." He then returned to his mother's
house, accompanied by his daughter, by a neighbor, and by the neighbor's
daughter. They had some trouble finding the old Bible, but when they finally
did, and the neighbor opened it at the 27th chapter of Genesis, they found the
second will. The testator's wife and James P. Chaffin's wife were also present
at the time. The second will was admitted to probate in December of the same
year.(4)
(4) Proc. of S.P.R., Vol. 36:517-24, 1927.
Hauntings are apparitions that recur and that seem to be connected with a place
rather than intended for a particular witness. A famous, well-attested case is
that of the Morton ghost. It is described by Miss R. C. Morton (pseudonym) in
Vol. VIII, 1892, of the S.P.R. Proceedings, pp. 311/332, who at that time was a
medical student and apparently viewed the occurrences without fear or
nervousness but only with scientific curiosity. The case dates back to 1882.
Miss Morton states that, having one evening gone up to her room, she heard
someone at the door, opened it, and saw in the passage the figure of a tall
lady, dressed in black, whose face was hidden by a handkerchief held in her
right hand. She descended the stairs and Miss Morton followed; but the small
piece of candle she carried went out, and she returned to her room. The figure
was seen again half a dozen times during the next two years by Miss Morton, once
by her sister Mrs. K, once by the housemaid, and once by Miss Morton's brother
and by a boy. After the first apparition, Miss Morton made it a practice to
follow the figure downstairs into the drawing room. She spoke to the apparition
but never got any reply; she cornered it several times in order to touch it, but
it then simply disappeared. Its footsteps were audible and characteristic, and
were heard by Miss Morton's three sisters and by the cook. Miss Morton stretched
some threads across the stairs, but the figure passed right through them without
detaching them. The figure was seen in the orchard by a neighbor as well as in
the house by Miss Morton's sisters E. and M., by the cook, by the charwoman, and
by a parlormaid, and by the gardener. But Miss Morton's father could not see it
even when he was shown where it stood. The apparition was seen during the day as
well as at night. In all about twenty people saw it, some of them many times;
and some of them not having previously heard of the apparition or of the sounds.
The figure was described in the same way by all. The apparitions continued to
occur until 1889. The figure wore widow's cuffs, and corresponded to the
description of a former tenant of the house, Mrs. S., whose life there had been
unhappy.
The weight of apparitions as evidence of survival is decreased by the fact that
there are numerous cases on record of apparitions of the living. Many of them
are cited in Gurney, Myers, and Podmore's Phantasms of the Living(5). Like
apparitions in general, they are most impressive when more than one of the
percipient's senses is affected-for instance, touch and hearing, or touch and
sight. Several such cases are described on pp. 446 ff. of the book just cited.
One is that of a girl, reading at night in her room, who suddenly "felt"
(heard?) some one come into the room but, looking, could see no one. Then, she
writes, "I felt a kiss on my forehead - a lingering, loving pressure. I looked
up without the least sensation of fear, and saw my lover standing behind my
chair, stooping as if to kiss me again. His face was very white and
inexpressibly sad. As I rose from my chair in great surprise, before I could
speak, he had gone, how I do not know; I only know that, one moment I saw him,
saw distinctly every feature of his face, saw the tall figure and broad
shoulders as clearly as I ever saw them in my life, and the next moment there
was no sign of him" (p. 447). A few days later, she heard that her lover had at
the time been riding a vicious horse which, in order to unseat him, reared
perfectly straight and pressed its back against a wall, with him between, making
him lose consciousness - his last thought having been that he was dying and that
he wanted to see his fiancée again before he died. It turned out, however, that
only his hand had been severely injured, so that, for some days, he could not
write to tell her what had occurred.
(5) In two vols. 1886. Abridged edition prepared by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. One
vol. 1918, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. London: E. P. Dutton and Co., New
York.
Such cases of apparitions of the living, veridical in the sense stated earlier,
are most plausibly accounted for as telepathically caused hallucinations since
they cannot really be apparitions of the dead. If, however, they are considered
together with the cases of "out-of-the-body" experience - so-called "projection
of the double" - of which instances are cited in Sec. 2 of the present chapter,
then what suggests itself is that what is seen in cases of apparitions - whether
of the living or of the dead - is the "projected," i.e., externalized, "double"
assumed to be possessed by man but to be normally collocated with the body. It
is conjectured that at death the dislocation of it from the body is complete and
permanent, whereas in apparitions of the living, the dislocation is temporary
and incomplete in that a connection - the reported "silver thread" - remains
between the externalized "double" and the body. If this should actually be the
state of affairs, then apparitions would not really be visual hallucinations,
but rather sights, fleeting but genuine, of something very tenuous though
objectively present at the place where it is perceived.
In the way of this supposition, however, stands a fact to which we shall have
occasion to return; namely that, since apparitions are seldom if ever naked,
then their clothes too would have to be supposed to have an externalizable
"double."
But even when telepathy is admitted to be a fact and is invoked, apparitions
veridical in the sense stated remain very difficult to explain plausibly. How
difficult will be appreciated by readers who may be interested to look up the
seemingly farfetched explanations to which able thinkers have found themselves
forced to have recourse when they have insisted on taking scrupulously into
consideration all the facts on record.(6)
(6) Apparitions, by G. N. M. Tyrrell, with a preface by H. H. Price; Gerald
Duckworth and Co. Ltd., revised edition, 1953; A Theory of apparitions, by W. F.
Barrett, E. Gurney, and F. Podmore, Proc. S.P.R. Vol. 11:109-36; 1884. Six
theories about appartions, by Homell Hart, Proc. S.P.R., 1955-56 pp. 153-239.
For additional references on the subject of apparitions, see G. Zorab's
Bibliography of Parapsychology, Parapsychology Found'n. Inc. New York 1957, pp.
27-8. Concerning Haunting, see H. H. Price's presidential address to the S.P.R.;
Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XLV:307-343, 1938-39.
2. "Out-of-the-body" experiences
Let us turn next to the "out-of-the-body,"
experiences alluded to in the latter part of the preceding section, of which
many cases have been reported. Those who have undergone the experience generally
consider it impressive evidence that the human consciousness is separable in
space from the human body and, it would therefore seem, can exist independently
of the latter. That experience has variously been termed projection of "the
double," "ESP projection," projection of the "astral body," "out-of-the-body"
experience, and "bilocation." In the most striking form of it, the person
concerned, having gone to sleep or being under anaesthesia, wakens to see his
body inert on the bed and is able to observe it from the same variety of angles
as he could the body of another. He is also able to observe the various objects
in the room, and in some cases he perceives and is later able to describe
persons who came into the room and went out before his body awoke. The thus
temporarily excarnate observer may or may not find himself able to travel away
from the vicinity of his sleeping body. In some of the cases when he does so and
visits a distant place, he is reported to have been seen at that place at the
time. These are the cases of "bilocation." A famous one is that of Alfonso de
Liguori who in 1774 was at Arezzo, in prison, fasting. On awakening one morning,
he stated that he had been at the bedside of the then dying Pope, Clement XIV;
where, it turned out, he had been seen by those present.
For the sake of concreteness, a few of the many reports of out-of-the-body
experience will now be cited.
Dr. E. Osty, in the May-June issue of the Revue Metapsychique for 1930, quotes a
letter addressed by a gentleman named L. L. Hymans to Charles Richet, dated June
7, 1928, in which the former relates two such experiences: "The first time it
was while in a dentist's chair. Under anaesthesia, I had the sensation of
awaking and of finding myself floating in the upper part of the room, from
where, with great astonishment, I watched the dentist working on my body, and
the anaesthetist at his side. I saw my inanimate body as distinctly as any other
object in the room ... The second time I was in a hotel in London. I awoke in
the morning feeling unwell (I have a weak heart) and shortly thereafter I
fainted. Greatly to my astonishment, I found myself in the upper part of the
room, from where, with fear, I beheld my body inanimate in the bed with its eyes
closed. I tried without success to reenter my body and concluded that I had died
... Certainly I had not lost either memory or self-consciousness. I could see my
inanimate body like a separate object: I was able to look at my face. I was,
however, unable to leave the room: I felt myself as it were chained, immobilized
in the corner where I was. After an hour or two I heard a knock on the locked
door several times, without being able to answer. Soon after, the hotel porter
appeared on the fire escape. I saw him get into the room, look anxiously at my
face, and open the door. The hotel manager and others then entered. A physician
came in. I saw him shake his head after listening to my heart, and then insert a
spoon between my lips. I then lost consciousness and awoke in the bed." In the
same article, Dr. Osty cites the similar experiences of two other persons.
Dr. Ernesto Bozzano cites the case of a friend of his, the engineer Giuseppe
Costa who, while asleep, so disturbed the kerosene lamp on his bedside table
that it filled the room with dense, choking smoke. Signor Costa writes: "I had
the clear and precise sensation of finding myself with only my thinking
personality, in the middle of the room, completely separated from my body, which
continued to lie on the bed ... I was seized with an inexpressible anguish from
which I felt intuitively that I could only free myself by freeing my material
body from that oppressive situation. I wanted therefore to pick up the lamp and
open the window, but it was a material act that I could not accomplish ... Then
I thought of my mother, who was sleeping in the next room ... It seemed to me
that no effort of any kind was needed to cause her to approach my body. I saw
her get hurriedly out of bed, run to her window and open it ... then leave her
room, walk along the corridor, enter my room and approach my body gropingly and
with staring eyes." He then awoke. He writes further: "My mother, questioned by
me soon after the event, confirmed the fact that she had first opened her window
as if she felt herself suffocating, before coming to my aid. Now the fact of my
having seen this act of hers through the wall, while lying inanimate on the bed,
entirely excludes the hypothesis of hallucination and nightmare ... I thus had
the most evident proof that my soul had detached itself from my body during its
material existence. I had, in fact, received proof of the existence of the soul
and also of its immortality, since it was true that it had freed itself ... from
the material envelope of the body, acting and thinking outside it."(7) In order
to explain this case, however, telepathy plus clairvoyance would be enough.
(7) Quoted in Bozzano's Discarnate Influence in Human Life, pp. 112-15, from
Giuseppe Costa's Di la della Vita, p. 18.
In some persons, out-of-the-body experience becomes voluntary. The best known
account of the process involved is that of the late Sylvan Muldoon(8), whose
description of his own experiences brought him numerous communications from
strangers who had themselves had out-of-the-body experiences. Many of these are
quoted by him in a later book,(9) including one which, some years before that
book appeared, was related to the present writer by the person concerned, Miss
Mary Ellen Frallic. Her "projection" experience occurred not during sleep or
under anaesthesia, but while walking on the street. She gradually became
conscious of rising higher and higher, up to the height of the second floor of
the surrounding buildings, and then felt an urge to look back; whereupon she saw
her body walking about one block behind. That body was apparently able to see
"her" for she noticed the look of bewilderment on its face. Her consciousness of
location then shifted a few times from that of the "double" to that of the body,
and back, each being able to perceive the other. She then felt afraid, and
immediately reentered her body.(10)
(8) The Projection of the Astral Body, David McKay Co. Philadelphia, 1929.
(9) The Phenomena of Astral Projection, by Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward
Carrington, Rider and Co., London, 1951.
(10) Cf. op. cit. pp. 189-90.
Besides Muldoon's account of voluntary "projections," one of the most
interesting is by a Frenchman who, under the pseudonym, Yram, wrote in 1926 a
book entitled "The Physician of the Soul," which has since been translated under
the title Practical Astral Projection. In it he describes twelve years of his
own experimentation in conscious out-of-the-body experience. Another writer,
Oliver Fox, in a book entitled Astral Projection, related his own
experiences.(11)
(11) Rider and Co. London (no date) A number of interesting cases are quoted in
some detail on pp. 220-29 of Dr. Raynor C. Johnson's The Imprisoned Splendour,
Harper and Bros. New York, 1953. A bibliography of the subject is furnished on
pp. 221-22 of Muldoon and Carrington's The Phenomena of Astral Projection.
In a number of cases, the projected "double" is reported to remain connected
with the sleeping body by a "silver cord" which is extensible in various
degrees. Persons who have had the out-of-the-body experience have usually
assumed, as did the engineer Giuseppe Costa quoted above, that the spatial
separation in it of the observing and thinking consciousness from the body on
the bed means that the former is capable of existing and of functioning
independently of the latter not only thus temporarily during "projection," but
enduringly at death, which is then simply permanent, definitive projection when
the "silver cord" snaps.
This conclusion, however, does not necessarily follow, for it tacitly assumes
that the conscious "double" is what animates the body-normally in being
collocated with it, but also, when dislocated from it, through connection with
it by the "silver cord!' The fact, however, could equally be that the animation
is in the converse direction, i.e., that death of the body entails death of the
conscious "double" whether the latter be at the time dislocated from or
collocated with the former.
Hence. out-of-the-body experience, however impressive to those who have it, and
however it may tempt them to conclude that they then know that consciousness is
not dependent on the living material body, does not really warrant this
conclusion; but only the more modest one, which, of course, is arresting enough,
that correct visual perception of physical events and objects, including
perception of one's own body from a point distant in space from it, can occur,
exceptionally, at times when the eyes are shut and the body asleep - this fact, of
course, not being at all explained by labelling the occurrences of it "heautoscopic
hallucinations" since, as pointed out earlier, what is paranormal, instead of
merely abnormal, in certain hallucinations is that they are veridical in the
same sense in which perceptions are so, even if not through the same mechanism.
3. Materializations and other paranormal physical phenomena
Among paranormal
phenomena, certain physical ones -especially materializations and the so-called
"direct voice" - are easily accepted by persons who witness them as evidence of
survival. There are numerous reports, some of them circumstantial and made by
careful and experienced observers, of the materialization of portions of human
bodies - of hands, for example, which move and grasp and carry things; or of faces
or even of entire bodies which act, speak, and breathe like ordinary living
human bodies; and after a while dematerialize, suddenly or slowly.
Sir William Crookes, for instance, in an article he published in the Quarterly
journal of Science(12) writes: "A beautifully formed small hand rose up from an
opening in a dining table and gave me a flower; it appeared and then disappeared
three times at intervals, affording me ample opportunity of satisfying myself
that it was as real in appearance as my own. This occurred in the light in my
own room, whilst I was holding the medium's hands and feet. On another occasion
a small hand and arm, like a baby's, appeared playing about a lady who was
sitting next to me. It then passed to me and patted my arm and pulled my coat
several times. At another time a finger and thumb were seen to pick the petals
from a flower in Mr. Home's button-hole and lay them in front of several persons
who were sitting near him ... I have more than once seen, first an object move,
then a luminous cloud appear to form about it, and lastly, the cloud condense
into shape and become a perfectly-formed hand ... At the wrist, or arm, it
becomes hazy, and fades off into a luminous cloud. To the touch the hand
sometimes appears icy cold and dead, at other times warm and life-like, grasping
my own with the firm pressure of an old friend. I have retained one of these
hands in my own, firmly resolved not to let it escape. There was no struggle or
effort made to get loose, but it gradually seemed to resolve itself into vapour
and faded in that manner from my grasp."
(12) Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual during the years
1870-73. Reprinted with other articles by Crookes under the title Researches in
the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Two Worlds Pub'g. Co. 1926. The quotation is from
pp. 102-3.
Among the materializations of entire bodies that have been reported, those of
"Katie King," repeatedly observed by Sir William Crookes under his own
conditions as well as by others, and measured, auscultated, tested and
photographed by him Florence Cook being the medium-are probably the most famous
and most carefully described.(13)
(13) Loc. cit. pp. 115-28.
The apparent materialization, in whole or in part, of human bodies and of their
clothing and accoutrements, is supposed to depend on and to consist at least in
part of a mysterious substance that emanates from the medium's body, and to
which the name of "ectoplasm" has therefore been given. It seems able to exert
or to conduct force. It is said to have various consistencies -sometimes
vaporous, sometimes filmy like a veil, sometimes gelatinous, sometimes pasty
like thick dough.
The latter was its consistency on the one occasion when in the house of a friend
of mine I personally had an opportunity to see in good red light, to touch, and
take ten flash light photographs of a substance emanating from the mouth of an
entranced non-professional medium; which substance, whether or not it was
"ectoplasm," did not behave, feel, or look as any other substance known to me
could, I think, have done under the conditions that existed. It was coldish,
about like steel. This made it seem moist, but it was dry and slightly rough
like dough the surface of which had dried. Its consistency and weight were also
dough-like. It was a string, of about pencil thickness, varying in length from
some six to twelve feet. On other photographs, not taken by me, of the same
medium, it has veil-like and rope-like forms.
Professor Charles Richet, who had many occasions to observe what appeared to be
materializations, discusses at one point in his Thirty Years of Psychical
Research(14) the possibilities of fraud in purported materializations and the
precautions necessary to preclude it; and he concludes that, in the case of the
best of the available reports of the phenomenon - a number of which he mentions
- neither fraud nor illusion is a possible explanation: "When I recall the
precautions that all of us have taken, not once, but twenty, a hundred, or even
a thousand times, it is inconceivable that we should have been deceived on all
these occasions."
(14) Collins and Sons, London, 1923, p. 460. English translation by Stanley De
Brath, p. 467.
Concerning occurrences he personally observed under especially favorable
conditions, he writes: "Sometimes these ectoplasms can be seen in process of
organization; I have seen an almost rectilinear prolongation emerge from
Eusapia's body, its termination acting like a living hand ... I have ... been
able to see the first lineaments of materializations as they were formed. A kind
of liquid or pasty jelly emerges from the mouth or the breast of Marthe which
organizes itself by degrees, acquiring the shape of a face or a limb. Under very
good conditions of visibility, I have seen this paste spread on my knee, and
slowly take form so as to show the rudiment of the radius, the cubitus, or
metacarpal bone whose increasing pressure I could feel on my knee."(15)
(15) Thirty Years of Psychical Research, Collins and Sons, London, 1923, p. 469.
The prima facie most impressive evidence there could be of the survival of a
deceased friend or relative would be to see and touch his materialized,
recognizable bodily form, which then speaks in his or her characteristic manner.
This is what appeared to occur in my presence on an occasion three or four years
ago when, during some two hours and in very good red light throughout, some
eighteen fully material forms - some male, some female, some tall and some
short, and sometimes two together - came out of and returned to the curtained
cabinet I had inspected beforehand, in which a medium sat, and to which I had
found no avenue of surreptitious access.
These material forms were apparently recognized as those of a deceased father,
mother, or other relative by one or another of the fourteen or fifteen persons
present; and some touching scenes occurred, in which the form of the deceased
spoke with and caressed the living.
One of those forms called my name and, when I went up to her and asked who she
was, she answered "Mother." She did not, however, speak, act, or in the least
resemble my mother. This was no disappointment to me since I had gone there for
purposes not of consolation but of observation. I would have felt fully rewarded
if the conditions of observation had been such that I could have been quite sure
that the material form I saw, that spoke to me and patted me on the head, was
genuinely a materialization, no matter of whom or of what. Indeed,
materialization of half a human body would, for my purpose, have been even more
significant than materialization of an entire one.
I should add, however, that the friend who had taken me to that circle, who is a
careful and critical observer, and who had been there a number of times before,
told me that on the occasions when a material form that purported to be a
materialization of his mother had come out of the cabinet and spoken to him, the
form was sometimes recognizably like her, and sometimes not.
Apparitions and genuine materializations (if any) are alike in being visible,
and usually in reproducing the appearance of a human body or of parts of one;
and, in cases where at least the face is reproduced, sometimes in being
recognizably like that of one particular person known to someone present. On the
other hand. materializations are tangible whereas apparitions are not so.
The question then arises whether apparitions are incomplete materializations (a
mist or haze is visible but not tangible, and yet is material,) or whether
materializations are "complete" hallucinations, i.e., hallucinations not only of
sight and of sound of voice or of footsteps, but also of the sense of touch and
the others. As regards the second alternative, I can say only that if the form I
saw which said it was my mother and which patted me on the head, was a
hallucination - a hallucination "complete" in the sense just stated - then no
difference remains between a complete hallucination on the one hand and, on the
other, ordinary veridical perception of a physical object; for every further
test of the physicality of the form seen and touched could then be alleged to be
itself hallucinatory and the allegation of complete hallucination then
automatically becomes completely vacuous.
On the other hand, cases are on record of apparitions of the living but, so far
as I know, no good cases have been reported of materializations of the living in
the sense that a living person was not merely seen and perhaps heard, but also
tangibly present at a place distant from that of his body. In such cases of "bilocation"
as that of Alphonse of Liguori, who, while in prison at Arezzo, was seen among
the persons in attendance at the bedside of the then dying Pope Clement XIV in
Rome, the testimony does not, I believe, include any statement that he was
touched, while there, as well as seen.
But no matter whether we say that apparitions are incomplete materializations,
or that materializations are complete hallucinations, a fact remains concerning
both, that has bearing on the question whether they constitute evidence of
survival after death. It is that both apparitions and materializations wear
clothing of some sort; so that, as someone has put the point, "if ghosts have
clothes, then clothes have ghosts." That is, if one says that the apparition or
materialization is the deceased's surviving "spirit," temporarily become
perceptible, then does not consistency require one to say that the familiar
dress or coat or other accoutrement it wears had a spirit too, that has also
survived? On the other hand, if one assumes that the clothing the apparition or
materialization wears is materialization only of a memory image of the
deceased's clothing, then would not consistency dictate the conclusion that the
now temporarily perceptible parts of the deceased's body are materializations
likewise only of a memory image of his appearance and behavior?
If one is fortunate enough to witness an apparition, or even better, a
materialization where the materialized form duplicates the appearance of a
deceased friend or relative, speaks and behaves as the latter did, and mentions
facts of an intimate nature which few if any but the deceased and oneself knew,
then the temptation may well be psychologically irresistible to believe that the
deceased himself is with us again in temporarily materialized form, and
therefore that he does indeed survive the death of the body that was his. The
remarks made above, however, show that this interpretation of the experience, no
matter how hard psychologically it then is to resist, is not the only one of
which the experience admits, and is not necessarily the one most probably true.
On this point, some words of Richet - who as we have seen became certain that
materializations do really occur - are worth quoting. Comparing the evidence for
survival from mediumistic communications with that which materializations are
thought to furnish, he writes: "The case of George Pelham [one of Mrs. Piper's
best communicators], though there was no materialization, is vastly more
evidential for survival than all the materializations yet known ...
materializations, however perfect, cannot prove survival; the evidence that they
sometimes seem to give is much less striking than that given by subjective
metapsychics," i.e., chiefly, by mediumistic communications (p. 490). It is
worth bearing in mind in this connection that in the star case of "Katie King,"
who claimed to have in life been Annie Owen Morgan, daughter of the buccaneer
Sir Henry Owen Morgan, no evidence exists that such a woman did actually live.
But unless she actually did, and died, the question whether "her" spirit
survived death, and materialized as Katie King, becomes vacuous.
As regards the evidence for survival supposedly constituted by physical
paranormal phenomena such as "poltergeist" occurrences, telekinesis, raps,
levitation, "direct" voice' etc., H. F. Saltmarsh writes that "in order that
events of this kind should have any value as evidence of survival they must
possess some characteristic which will connect them with some deceased person.
The bare fact that a material object is moved in a way we cannot account for by
normal means does not afford any clue to the identity of the agent. All we could
say in the most favourable circumstances would be that some unknown agency is
involved and that that agency exhibits intelligence; we could not argue that it
was, or even had been, human, still less that it was connected with some one
particular person. Thus when any special characteristics which might connect
them with a deceased person are absent, we can rule out physical phenomena as
completely unevidential of survival. Where, however, the phenomena show some
special characteristics which connect with some definite deceased person, any
evidential value for survival rests entirely on those characteristics."(16)
(16) "Is Proof of Survival Possible?"
Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XL: 106-7, Jan. 1932.
4. "Possessions"
Another sort of paranormal occurrence, some cases of which
invite interpretation as evidence of survival, is that popularly known as
"possession," i.e., prima facie possession of a person's body by a personality -
whether devilish, divine, or merely human - radically different from his or her
own. The most probably correct interpretation of the great majority of such
cases is that the "possessing" personality is only a dissociated, normally
repressed portion or aspect of the total personality of the individual
concerned.
The case of the Rev. Ansel. Bourne, of Greene, R.I.,(17) the still more famous
cases of the alternating personalities of Miss Beauchamp, reported by Dr. Morton
Prince, and the Doris Fischer case described by Dr. Walter F. Prince,(18) would
be examples of such temporary "possession." The survival interpretation has
little or no plausibility as regards most such cases, but is less easy to
dismiss in a few others, different from these in that the intruding personality
gives more or less clear and abundant evidence of being that of one particular
individual who had died some time before.
(17) Proc., Soc. for Psychical Research, Vol. VII, 1891-2: A Case of Double
Consciousness, by Richard Hodgson, M. D. Pp. 221-57. It is commented upon by
William James in Ch. X of his Principles of Psychology, 1905, pp. 390-3, who
also cites a number of others.
(18) Morton Prince: The Dissociation of a Personality, London, Longmans Green,
1906; W. F. Prince: The Doris Case of Multiple Personality, Proc. A.S.P.R. Vols.
IX and X, 1915, 1916; and in Vol. Xl, discussed by J. H. Hyslop.
About as impressive a case of this as any on record is that of the so-called
Watseka Wonder. An account of it was first published in 1879 in the Religio-Philosophical
Journal, and, in 1887, republished as a pamphlet, The Watseka Wonder, by the Religio-Philosophical Publishing House, Chicago. The sub-title is "A narrative
of startling phenomena occurring in the case of Mary Lurancy Vennum." The author
of the narrative was a medical man, Dr. E. Winchester Stevens (1822-1885), who
had been consulted at the time in the case.
Two girls were concerned. One, Mary Roff, had died on July 5, 1865 at the age of
18. From an early age, she had had frequent "fits" becoming more violent with
the years; she had complained of a "lump of pain in the head" (p. 10), to
relieve which she had repeatedly bled herself; and she is stated to have been
able, while "heavily blindfolded by critical intelligent, investigating
gentlemen" to read readily books even when closed and letters even in envelopes,
and to do other tasks normally requiring the use of the eyes (p. 11).
The other girl, Lurancy Vennum, was born on April 16, 1864 and was therefore a
little over one year old at the time Mary Roff died. At the age of 13 in July
1877, Lurancy, who until then "had never been sick, save a light run of measles"
(p. 3), complained of feeling queer, went into a fit including a cataleptic
state lasting five hours. On subsequent similar occasions, while in trance, she
conversed and described "angels" or "spirits" of persons who had died. She was
believed insane and was examined by two local physicians. On January 31, 1878,
Mr. Roff, who had heard of Lurancy's case and become interested in it, was
allowed by her father to bring Dr. E. W. Stevens to observe her. On that
occasion, she became apparently "possessed" by two alien personalities in
turn-one a sullen, crabbed old hag, and the second a young man who said he had
run away from home, got into trouble, and lost his life (pp. 5,6). Dr. Stevens
then "magnetized" her and "was soon in full and free communication with the sane
and happy mind of Lurancy Vennum herself" (p. 7). She described the "angels"
about her and said that one of them wanted to come to her instead of the evil
spirits mentioned above." On being asked if she knew who it was, she said: "Her
name is Mary Roff" (p. 7). The next day, "Mr. Vennum called at the office of Mr.
Roff and informed him that the girl claimed to be Mary Roff and wanted to go
home ... 'She seems like a child real homesick, wanting to see her pa and ma and
her brothers'" (p. 9).
Some days later, she was allowed to go and live with the Roffs. There, she
"seemed perfectly happy and content, knowing every person and everything that
Mary knew in her original body, twelve to twenty-five years ago, recognizing and
calling by name those who were friends and neighbors of the family from 1852 to
1865, [i.e., during the 12 years preceding Lurancy's birth,] calling attention
to scores, yes, hundreds of incidents that transpired during [Mary's] natural
life" (p. 14). She recognized a head dress Mary used to wear; pointed to a
collar, saying she had tatted it; remembered details of the journey of the
family to Texas in 1857 [i.e., 7 years before Lurancy's birth]. On the other
hand, she did not recognize any of the Vennum family nor their friends and
neighbors, nor knew anything that had until then been known by Lurancy.
Lurancy's new life as Mary Roff lasted 3 months and 10 days. Then Lurancy's own
personality returned to her body, and she went back to the Vennums, who reported
her well in mind and body from then on. She eventually married and had children.
Occasionally then, when Lurancy was visiting the Roffs, the Mary personality
would come back for some little time.
What distinguishes this case from the more common ones of alternating
personalities is, of course, that the personality that displaced Lurancy's was,
by every test that could be applied, not a dissociated part of her own, but the
personality and all the memories that had belonged to a particular 18 year old
girl who had died at a time when Lurancy was but 14 months old; and that no way,
consistent with Dr. Stevens' record of the facts, has been suggested in which
Lurancy, during the 13 years of her life before her sojourn with the Roffs,
could have obtained the extensive and detailed knowledge Mary had possessed,
which Lurancy manifested during the sojourn. For the Vennums were away from
Wateska for the first 7 years of Lurancy's life; and when they returned to
Watseka, their acquaintance with the Roffs consisted only of one brief call of a
few minutes by Mrs. Roff on Mrs. Vennum, and of a formal speaking acquaintance
between the two men, until the time when Mr. Roff brought Dr. Stevens to the
Vennums on account of Lurancy's insane behavior.
In commenting on various cases of seeming "possession" of a person's organism by
a personality altogether different, William James notes that "many persons have
found evidence conclusive to their minds that in some cases the control is
really the departed spirit whom it pretends to be," but that "the phenomena
shade off so gradually into cases where this is obviously absurd, that the
presumption (quite apart from a priori 'scientific' prejudice) is great against
its being true."(19) He then turns to the Watseka case just described,
introducing it by the statement that it is "perhaps as extreme a case of
'possession' of the modem sort as one can find," but he makes no attempt to
explain it.
(19) Principles of Psychology, New York. Henry Holt and Co., 1905. p. 396.
The only way that suggests itself, to avoid the conclusion that the Mary Roff
personality which for fourteen weeks "possessed" Lurancy's organism was "really
the departed spirit whom it pretended to be," is to have recourse to the method
of orthodoxy, whose maxim is: "When you cannot explain all the facts according
to accepted principles, then explain those you can and ignore the rest; or else
deny them, distort them, or invent some that would help."
This procrustean method, of course, has a measure of validity, since errors of
observation or of reporting do occur. Yet some facts turn out to be too stubborn
to be disposed of plausibly by that method; and the present one would appear to
be one of them, especially if the conclusion reached in Part Ill is accepted,
that no impossibility either theoretical or empirical attaches to the
supposition of survival of a human personality after death.
5. Memories, seemingly of earlier lives
Brief mention may be made at this point
of another kind of occurrence, of which only a few cases at all impressive have
been reported, but which, like those of the other kinds considered in the
preceding sections, constitute prima facie evidence of survival. I refer to the
cases where a person has definite apparent memories relating to a life he lived
on earth before his present one, and where the facts and events he believes he
remembers turn out to be capable of verification. If these should indeed be
memories in the same literal sense as that in which each of us has memories of
places he visited years before, of persons he met there, of incidents of his
school days, and so on, then this would constitute proof not strictly that he
will survive the death of his body but that he has survived that of the
different body he remembers having had in an earlier life.
In Part V, we shall consider in some detail the particular form of possible life
after death consisting of rebirth of the individual on earth. A number of the
most circumstantial accounts of putative memories of an earlier life will be
cited and the alternative interpretations to which they appear open will be
examined.
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