Here the non-mathematical reader will exclaim: 'Total failure,
except in case 7!' And, about that case, he will have his private
doubts. But, arguing mathematically, M. Richet proves that the
table was right, beyond the limits of mere chance, by fourteen to
two. He concludes, on the whole of his experiments, that, probably,
intellectual force in one brain may be echoed in another brain. But
MM. Binet and Fere, who report this, decide that 'the calculation of
chances is, for the most part, incapable of affording a peremptory
proof; it produces uncertainty, disquietude, and doubt'. {196} 'Yet
something is gained by substituting doubt for systematic denial.
Richet has obtained this important result, that henceforth the
possibility of mental suggestion cannot be met with contemptuous
rejection.'
Mental suggestion on this limited scale, is a phenomenon much less
startling to belief than the reality, and causal nature, of
coincidental hallucinations, of wraiths. But it is plain that, as
far as general opinion goes, the doctrine of chances, applied to
such statistics of hallucinations as have been collected, can at
most, only 'produce uncertainty, disquietude, and doubt'. Yet if
even these are produced, a step has been made beyond the blank
negation of Hibbert.
The general reader, even if credulously inclined, is more staggered
by a few examples of non-coincidental hallucinations, than confirmed
by a pile of coincidental examples. Now it seems to be a defect in
the method of the friends of wraiths, that they do not publish, with
full and impressive details, as many examples of non-coincidental as
of coincidental hallucinations. It is the _story_ that takes the
public: if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental
story in all its features, as is done in the matter of wraiths with
a kind of message or meaning.
Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang
phrase, were 'sells'. Those which we have at first hand are marked
'(A),' those at second-hand '(B)'. But the world will accept the
story of a ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed.
1. (A) A young lady, in the dubious state between awake and
asleep, unable, in fact, to feel certain whether she was awake or
asleep, beheld her late grandmother. The old lady wept as she sat
by the bedside.
'Why do you weep, grandmamma, are you not happy where you are?'
asked the girl.
'Yes, I am happy, but I am weeping for your mother.'
'Is she going to die?'
'No, but she is going to lose you.'
'Am _I_ going to die, grandmamma?'
'Yes, my dear.'
'Soon?'
'Yes, my dear, very soon.'
The young lady, with great courage, concealed her dream from her
mother, but confided it to a brother. She did her best to be good
while she was on earth, where she is still, after an interval of
many years.
Except for the conclusion, and the absence of a mystic bright light
in the bedroom, this case exactly answers to that of Miss Lee, in
1662. Dr. Hibbert would have liked this example.
2. (B) A lady, staying with a friend, observed that one morning
she was much depressed. The friend confided to her that, in the
past night, she had seen her brother, dripping wet. He told her
that he had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat, which was
attached by a rope to a ship. At this time, he was on his way home
from Australia. The dream, or vision, was recorded in writing.
When next the first lady met her friend, she was entertaining her
brother at luncheon. He had never even been in a boat dragged
behind a ship, and was perfectly safe.
3. (B) A lady, residing at a distance from Oxford wrote to tell
her son, who was at Merton College, that he had just entered her
room and vanished. Was he well? Yes, he was perfectly well, and
bowling for the College Eleven.
4. (B) A lady in bed saw her absent husband. He announced his
death by cholera, and gave her his blessing, she, of course, was
very anxious and miserable, but the vision was a lying vision. The
husband was perfectly well.
In all these four cases, anxiety was caused by the vision, and in
three at least, action was taken, the vision was recorded orally, or
in writing. In the following set, the visions were waking
hallucinations of sane persons never in any other instance
hallucinated.
5. (A) A person of distinction, walking in a certain Cambridge
quadrangle, met a very well-known clergyman. The former held out
his hand, but there was before him only open space. No feeling of
excitement or anxiety followed.
6. (A) The writer, standing before dinner, at a table in a large
and brilliantly lit hall, saw the door of the drawing-room open, and
a little girl, related to himself, come out, and run across the hall
into another room. He spoke to her, but she did not answer. He
instantly entered the drawing-room, where the child was sitting in a
white evening-dress. When she ran across the hall, the moment
before, she was dressed in dark blue serge. No explanation of the
puzzle could be discovered, but it is fair to add that no anxiety
was excited.
7. (A) A young lady had a cold, and was wearing a brown shawl.
After lunch she went to her room. A few minutes later, her sister
came out, saw her in the hall, and went upstairs after her, telling
her an anecdote. At the top of the stairs, the brown-shawled sister
vanished. The elder sister was in her room, in a white shawl. She
was visible, when absent on another occasion, to another spectator.
In two other cases (A) ladies, in their usual health, saw their
husbands in their rooms, when, in fact, they were in the drawing-
room or study. Here then are eight cases of non-coincidental
hallucination, some of people awake, some of people probably on the
verge of sleep, which are wholly without 'coincidence,' wholly
unveridical. None of the 'percipients' was addicted to seeing
'visions about.' {199}
On the other side, though the writer knows several people who have
'seen ghosts' in haunted houses, and other odd phenomena, he knows
nobody, at first hand, who has seen a 'veridical hallucination,' or
rather, knows only one, a very young one indeed. Thus, between
these personally collected statistics of spectral 'sells' on one
part, and the world-wide diffusion of belief in 'coincidental'
hallucination on the other, the human mind is left in a balance
which mathematics, and the Calculus of Probabilities (especially if
one does not understand it) fail to affect.
Meanwhile, we still do not know what causes these solitary
hallucinations of the sane. They can hardly come from diseased
organs of sense, for these would not confine themselves to a single
mistaken message of great vivacity. And why should either the
'sensory centre' or the 'central terminus' just once in a lifetime
develop this uncanny activity, and represent to us a person to whom
we may be wholly indifferent? The explanation is less difficult
when the person represented is a husband or child, but even then,
why does the activity occur once, and only once, and _not_ in a
moment of anxiety?
The coincidental hallucinations are laid to the door of 'telepathy,'
to 'a telepathic impact from the mind of an absent agent,' who is
dying, or in some other state of rare or exciting experience,
perhaps being married, as in Col. Meadows Taylor's case. This is a
theory as old as Lavaterus, and was proclaimed by Mayo in the middle
of the century; while, substituting 'angels' for human agents,
Frazer of Tiree used it, in 1700, to explain second sight. Nay, it
is the Norse theory of a 'sending' by a sorcerer, as we read in the
Icelandic sagas. But, admitting that telepathy may be a cause of
hallucinations, we often find the effect where the cause is not
alleged to exist. Nobody, perhaps, will explain our nine empty
hallucinations by 'telepathy,' yet, from the supposed effects of
telepathy they were indistinguishable. Are all such cases of casual
hallucination in the sane to be explained by telepathy, by an impact
of force from a distant brain on the central terminus of our own
brains? At all events, a casual hallucination of the presence of an
absent friend need obviously cause us very little anxiety. We need
not adopt the hypothesis of the Maoris.
The telepathic theory has the advantage of cutting down the
marvellous to the minimum. It also accounts for that old puzzle,
the clothes worn by the ghosts. These are reproduced by the
'agent's' theory of himself, perhaps with some unconscious
assistance from 'the percipient'. For lack of this light on the
matter, M. d'Assier, a positivist, who believed in spectres had to
suggest that the ghosts wear the ghosts of garments! Thus
positivism, in this disciple, returned to the artless metaphysics of
savages. Telepathy saves the believer from such a humiliating
relapse, and, perhaps, telepathy also may be made to explain
'collective' hallucinations, when several people see the same
apparition. If a distant mind can thus demoralise the central
terminus of one brain, it may do as much for two or more brains, or
they may demoralise each other.
All this is very promising, but telepathy breaks down when the
apparition causes some change in the relations of material objects.
If there be a physical effect which endures after the phantasm has
vanished, then there was an actual agent, a real being, a 'ghost' on
the scene. For instance, the lady in Scott's ballad, 'The Eve of
St. John,' might see and might hear the ghost of her lover by a
telepathic hallucination of two senses. But if
The sable score, of fingers four,
Remained on the board impressed
by the spectre, then there was no telepathic hallucination, but an
actual being of an awful kind was in Smailholm Tower. Again, the
cases in which dogs and horses, as Paracelsus avers, display terror
when men and women behold a phantasm, are not easily accounted for
by telepathy, especially when the beast is alarmed _before_ the man
or woman suspects the presence of anything unusual. There is, of
course, the notion that the horse shies, or the dog turns craven, in
sympathy with its master's exhibition of fear. Owners of dogs and
horses may counterfeit horror and see whether their favourites do
sympathise. Cats don't. In one of three cases known to us where a
cat showed consciousness of a spectral presence, the apparition
_took the form of a cat_. The evidence is only that of Richard
Bovet, in his Pandemonium; or, the Devil's Cloyster (1684). In Mr.
J. G. Wood's Man and Beast, a lady tells a story of being alone, in
firelight, playing with a favourite cat, Lady Catherine. Suddenly
puss bristled all over, her back rose in an arch, and the lady,
looking up, saw a hideously malignant female watching her. Lady
Catherine now rushed wildly round the room, leaped at the upper
panels of the door, and seemed to have gone mad. This new terror
recalled the lady to herself. She shrieked, and the phantasm
vanished. She saw it on a later day. In a third case, a cat merely
kept a watchful eye on the ghost, and adopted a dignified attitude
of calm expectancy. If beasts can be telepathically affected, then
beasts have more of a 'psychical' element in their composition than
they usually receive credit for; whereas if a ghost is actually in
view, there is no reason why beasts should not see it.
The best and most valid proof that an abnormal being is actually
present was that devised by the ghost of Sir Richard of Coldinghame
in the ballad, and by the Beresford ghost, who threw a heavy curtain
over the bed-pole. Unluckily, Sir Richard is a poetical figment,
and the Beresford ghost is a myth, like William Tell: he may be
traced back through various mediaeval authorities almost to the date
of the Norman Conquest. We have examined the story in a little book
of folklore, Etudes Traditionistes. Always there is a compact to
appear, always the ghost burns or injures the hand or wrist of the
spectator. A version occurs in William of Malmesbury.
What we need, to prove a ghost, and disprove an _exclusively_
telepathic theory, is a ghost who is not only seen, heard, or even
touched, but a ghost who produces some change in physical objects.
Most provokingly, there are agencies at every successful seance, and
in every affair of the Poltergeist, who do lift tables, chairs,
beds, bookcases, candles, and so forth, while others play
accordions. But then nobody or not everybody _sees_ these agencies
at work, while the spontaneous phantasms which are _seen_ do not so
much as lift a loo-table, generally speaking. In the spiritualistic
cases, we have the effect, with no visible cause; in ghost stories,
we have the visible presence, but he very seldom indeed causes any
physical change in any object. No ghost who does not do this has
any strict legal claim to be regarded as other than a telepathic
hallucination at best, though, as we shall see, some presumptions
exist in favour of some ghosts being real entities.
These rare facts have not escaped a ghost-hunter so intelligent as
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick. This lady is almost too sportsmanlike, for a
psychical researcher, in her habit of giving an apparition the
benefit of every imaginable doubt which may absolve him from the
charge of being a real genuine ghost. 'It is true,' she says, 'that
ghosts are alleged sometimes to produce a physical effect on the
external world;' but to admit this is 'to come into prima facie
collision with the physical sciences' (an awful risk to run), so
Mrs. Sidgwick, in a rather cavalier manner leaves ghosts who produce
physical effects to be dealt with among the phenomena alleged to
occur at seances. Now this is hardly fair to the spontaneous
apparition, who is doing his very best to demonstrate his existence
in the only convincing way. The phenomena of seances are looked on
with deserved distrust, and, generally, may be regarded as an
outworn mode of swindling. Yet it is to this society that Mrs.
Sidgwick relegates the most meritorious and conscientious class of
apparitions.
Let us examine a few instances of the ghost who visibly moves
material objects. We take one (already cited) from Mrs. Sidgwick's
own article. {205} In this case a gentleman named John D. Harry
scolded his daughters for saying that _they_ had seen a ghost, with
which he himself was perfectly familiar. 'The figure,' a fair woman
draped in white, 'on seven or eight occasions appeared in my
bedroom, and twice in the library, and on one occasion _it lifted up
the mosquito-curtains_, and looked closely into my face'. Now,
could a hallucination lift a mosquito-curtain, or even produce the
impression that it did so, while the curtain was really unmoved?
Clearly a hallucination, however artful, and well got up, could do
no such thing. Therefore a being--a ghost with very little maidenly
reserve--haunted the bedroom of Mr. Harry, if he tells a true tale.
Again (p. 115), a lady (on whose veracity I am ready to pledge my
all) had doors opened for her frequently, 'as if a hand had turned
the handle'. And once she not only saw the door open, but a grey
woman came in. Another witness, years afterwards, beheld the same
figure and the same performance. Once more, Miss A. M.'s mother
followed a ghost, who _opened a door_ and entered a room, where she
could not be found when she was wanted (p. 121). Again, {206} a
lady saw a ghost which, 'with one hand, the left, _drew back the
curtain_'. There are many other cases in which apparitions are seen
in houses where mysterious thumps and raps occur, especially in
General Campbell's experience (p. 483). If the apparition gave the
thumps then he (or, in this instance, she) was material, and could
produce effects on matter. Indeed, this ghost was seen to take up
and lay down some books, and to tuck in the bed-clothes.
Hallucinations (which are all in one's eye or sensory centre, or
cerebral central terminus), cannot draw curtains, or open doors, or
pick up books, or tuck in bed-clothes, or cause thumps--not real
thumps, hallucinatory thumps are different. Consequently, if the
stories are true, _some apparitions are ghosts_, real objective
entities, filling space. The senses of a hallucinated person may be
deceived as to touch, and as to feeling the breath of a phantasm (a
likely story), as well as in sight and hearing. But a visible ghost
which produces changes in the visible world cannot be a
hallucination. On the other hand Dr. Binns, in his Anatomy of Sleep
tells us of 'a gentleman who, in a dream, pushed against a door in a
distant house, so that those in the room were scarcely able to
resist the pressure'. {207a} Now if this rather staggering anecdote
be true, the spirit of a living man, being able to affect matter, is
also, so to speak, material, and is an actual entity, an astral
body. Moreover, Mrs. Frederica Hauffe, when in the magnetic sleep,
'could rap at a distance'.
These arguments, then, make in favour of the old-fashioned theory of
ghosts and wraiths, as things objectively existing, which is very
comforting to a conservative philosopher. Unluckily, just as many,
or more, anecdotes look quite the other way. For instance, General
Barter sees, hears, and recognises the dead Lieutenant B., wearing a
beard which he had grown since the general saw him in life. He also
sees the hill-pony ridden by Mr. B., and killed by him--a steed with
which, in its mortal days, the general had no acquaintance. This is
all very well: a dead pony may have a ghost, like Miss A. B.'s dog
which was heard by one Miss B., and seen by the other, some time
after its decease. On mature reflection, as both ladies were well-
known persons of letters, we suppress their names, which would carry
the weight of excellent character and distinguished sense. But
Lieutenant B. was also accompanied by two grooms. Now, it is too
much to ask us to believe that he had killed two grooms, as he
killed the pony. {207b} Consequently, they, at least, were
hallucinations; so what was Lieutenant B.? When Mr. K., on board
the Racoon, saw his dead father lying in his coffin (p. 461), there
was no real coffin there, at all events; and hence, probably, no
real dead father's ghost,--only a 'telepathic hallucination'. Miss
Rose Morton could never _touch_ the female ghost which she often
chased about the house, nor did this ghost break or displace the
threads stretched by Miss Morton across the stairs down which the
apparition walked. Yet its footsteps did make a noise, and the
family often heard the ghost walking downstairs, followed by Miss
Morton. Thus this ghost was both material and immaterial, for
surely, only matter can make a noise when in contact with matter.
On the whole, if the evidence is worth anything, there are real
objective ghosts, and there are also telepathic hallucinations: so
that the scientific attitude is to believe in both, if in either.
And this was the view of Petrus Thyraeus, S.J., in his Loca Infesta
(1598). The alternative is to believe in neither.
We have thus, according to the advice of Socrates, permitted the
argument to lead us whither it would. And whither has it led us?
The old, savage, natural theory of ghosts and wraiths is that they
are spirits, yet not so immaterial but that they can fill space, be
seen, heard, touched, and affect material objects. Mediaeval and
other theologians preferred to regard them as angelic or diabolic
manifestations, made out of compressed air, or by aid of bodies of
the dead, or begotten by the action of angel or devil on the
substance of the brain. Modern science looks on them as
hallucinations, sometimes morbid, as in madness or delirium, or in a
vicious condition of the organ of sense; sometimes abnormal, but not
necessarily a proof of chronic disease of any description. The
psychical theory then explains a sifted remnant of apparitions; the
coincidental, 'veridical' hallucinations of the sane, by telepathy.
There is a wide chasm, however, to be bridged over between that
hypothesis, and its general acceptance, either by science, or by
reflective yet unscientific inquirers. The existence of thought-
transference, especially among people wide awake, has to be
demonstrated more unimpeachably, and then either the telepathic
explanation must be shown to fit all the cases collected, or many
interesting cases must be thrown overboard, or these must be
referred to some other cause. That cause will be something very
like the old-fashioned ghosts. Perhaps, the most remarkable
collective hallucination in history is that vouched for by Patrick
Walker, the Covenanter; in his Biographia Presbyteriana. {209} In
1686, says Walker, about two miles below Lanark, on the water of
Clyde 'many people gathered together for several afternoons, where
there were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, which covered
the trees and ground, companies of men in arms marching in order,
upon the waterside, companies meeting companies. . . . and then all
falling to the ground and disappearing, and other companies
immediately appearing in the same way'. This occurred in June and
July, in the afternoons. Now the Westland Whigs were then, as
usual, in a very excitable frame of mind, and filled with fears,
inspired both by events, and by the prophecies of Peden and other
saints. Patrick Walker himself was a high-flying Covenanter, he was
present: 'I went there three afternoons together'--and he saw
nothing unusual occur. About two-thirds of the crowd did see the
phenomena he reckons, the others, like himself, saw nothing strange.
'There was a fright and trembling upon them that did see,' and, at
least in one case, the hallucination was contagious. A gentleman
standing next Walker exclaimed: 'A pack of damned witches and
warlocks, that have the second sight, the deil ha't do I see'. 'And
immediately there was a discernable change in his countenance, with
as much fear and trembling as any woman I saw there, who cried out:
"O all ye that do not see, say nothing; for I perswade you it is
matter of fact, and discernable to all that is not stone-blind".'
Those who did see minutely described 'what handles the swords had,
whether small or three-barred, or Highland guards, and the closing
knots of the bonnets, black or blue. . . . I have been at a loss
ever since what to make of this last,' says Patrick Walker, and who
is not at a loss? The contagion of the hallucination, so to speak,
did not affect him, fanatic as he was, and did affect a cursing and
swearing cavalier, whose prejudices, whose 'dominant idea,' were all
on the other side. The Psychical Society has published an account
of a similar collective hallucination of crowds of people,
'appearing and disappearing,' shared by two young ladies and their
maid, on a walk home from church. But this occurred in a fog, and
no one was present who was not hallucinated. Patrick Walker's
account is triumphantly honest, and is, perhaps, as odd a piece of
psychology as any on record, thanks to his escape from the prevalent
illusion, which, no doubt, he would gladly have shared. Wodrow, it
should be said, in his History of the Sufferings of the Kirk,
mentions visions of bonnets, which, he thinks, indicated a future
muster of militia! But he gives the date as 1684.