.^22 PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. 



explanations have been suggested for such appearances. The 

 easiest hypothesis is that the appearance is only a hallucination 

 or mental projection of the percipient without any objective 

 basis. But the influence of locality, that is, the fact that the 

 apparition comes to different persons in a particular spot or 

 neighbourhood, requires to be accounted for in some further 

 way. On the hypothesis that such apparitions are hallucinations 

 produced in the percipient by some telepathic impression from 

 the deceased person, the suggestion has been made that the local 

 character of the apparition may be explained by the occupation 

 of the consciousness of the percipient in present sensation with 

 the same set of objects as those which occupy the memory of 

 the agent. Another hypothesis is that the explanation of the 

 appearance is to be found not in a continuing local interest on 

 the part of the deceased person, but in the existence of some 

 kind of local imprint left by an event or events in the life of 

 the deceased and perceptible under certain conditions by, appro- 

 priately sensitive subjects. Such an imprint would be somewhat 

 analogous to that left on a pane of glass by a coin and made 

 perceptible by breathing on the glass, cr by anything laid on 

 a photographic plate and perceptible when the plate is developed, 

 and analogous also to the influence that is found to have been 

 made on things over which a hypnotizer's hand has passed. 

 Even if such appearances are hallucinatory in the sense of being 

 projections from the mind of the percipient, this does not imply 

 that they are void of all objective foundation or reality. For 

 all objects as we actually perceive them are phenomena or pro- 

 jections of our own minds, net transcripts of the real nature 

 of things. 



As regards the general question of survival and the evidence 

 for it adducible from psychical research, we may start from the 

 unquestionable facts, first, that one person may voluntarily ' 

 convey a phantasm or appearance of himself to another person 'i 

 at a distance, and secondly, that at the moment of death an i 

 apparition of the dying person may come to another, to whom ; 

 presumal)ly there has been some intense reference in the dying ;| 

 person's thoughts or to whom at any rate the death is for some i 

 reason or another of peculiar or tragic interest. Of the former | 

 phenomenon there are several well-authenticated cases. Such | 

 appearances, therefore, come under the head of veridical or } 

 truth-telling hallucination, that is, a mental image coinciding |. 

 with some distant real occurrence ; and are instances of tele- ^ 

 pathic communication, whether of the voluntary or the involun- f 

 tary kind. i*. 



For the latter phenomenon, that is, an apparition occurring i 

 about the time of death, there exists a great abundance of evi- | 

 dence. Here, again, there is often no need to go beyond the 

 hypothesis of terrene telepathy, that is, thought-transference 

 from the living, for an explanation of the occurrences. But 



