PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. APPARITIONS AND

HAUNTED HOUSES.

BY RICHARD HODGSON, LL. D.

IN a previous paper in THE ARENA, I invited the reader's attention to some "ghost stories" as an introduction to the field of psychical investigation. At the close of the article, I pointed out that the apparitions seen by the witnesses, in the cases which I cited, resembled persons who were either unquestionably living or unquestionably dead. In the former class, the experience of the percipient seemed to be referable to the coincident exceptional state of the agent, the person whose figure was seen. Thus Dr. G and Miss Crans were both in a distinctly abnormal state when their apparitions were seen, and in each of the three cases which I quoted as belonging to this group, the percipient was apparently the dominant subject of the more or less excited agent's thoughts at the time of the percipient's experience.

But this criterion, coincidence in time between the special state of the agent and the corresponding experience of the percipient, cannot of course be applied to the cases of the other class, where the figures seen are those of the dead, since here we have no independent means of ascertaining the mental state of the "dead person whose figure is seen, even if we suppose that he still possesses some form of individual consciousness. Hence it does not follow of necessity that apparitions of deceased persons, albeit veridical, are the result of any direct action of the deceased persons themselves.

I have already explained the word "veridical" as meaning "truth-telling, or corresponding to some action going on elsewhere." It is to be contrasted with morbid, and obviously excludes experiences which may be classed as merely subjective hallucinations. Were, for example, the apparition of a deceased friend of whose death I was aware, simply to appear and disappear before me now, as I write alone in my room,

we should be bound to class the experience as a subjective hallucination. But should the apparition be the figure of my brother, whom I suppose to be living, and should I afterwards ascertain that he died a month ago in Australia, the apparition would be classed as veridical; though it might be well open to doubt whether my experience was due to some telepathic action on the part of my brother, or on the part, say, of one of my sisters in some crisis of emotion, thinking of me in connection with his death. If an apparition of the dead is seen by two or more persons, or if it conveys information previously unknown to the percipient, such, e. g., as the death of the person whom it resembles, or the presentation of an appearance unknown to the percipient but serving for identification, it may be classed as veridical.

Two broad considerations suggest themselves in dealing with such veridical apparitions of deceased persons. On the one hand we may reason: The veridical apparitions of living persons appear to be correlated with some direct influence from those persons, and, therefore, the veridical apparitions of the dead are correlated with some direct influence from the dead. On the other hand we may reason: Wherever we can clearly trace the origin of veridical apparitions, we find them to be apparently due to the direct action of living human beings, and, therefore, the presumption is that where we cannot trace their origin, they are also due to the action of living human beings. These considerations lead us once more to the conclusion which I expressed in my previous article, that we must seek more light upon the ghosts of the living, before we can hope to explain the ghosts of the dead. And now let us turn to a few borderland" experiences, those which cluster, so to speak, about the time of dissolution of the organism; the apparition is seen either shortly before death, or at the point of death, or shortly after death.

But before proceeding further, I must become slightly more technical in my exposition. The experiences which we have so far considered have been visual. We must now include in our survey other experiences, such as auditory and tactile, ideational and emotional. Let us refer to experiences belonging to any of these groups, by the comprehensive term, phantasm.

The following case is an example of an auditory phantasm. Professor Crosby kindly obtained the account for us from Mr.

Augustine Jones, principal of Friends' School, Providence, R. I.:

I hereby and herewith give, as nearly as I am able to do so, the circumstances of a strange and singular experience that I had in the autumn of 1878; I do not know the month or day.

I had passed a very agreeable evening at my home, No. 43 Nahant Street, Lynn, Mass., in cheerful company; and the company leaving early, I retired at 9 P. M. (It was Sunday night.) I had not been in bed five minutes when I heard my name with great distinctness and swiftness. I was wide awake. I thought a blind swinging against the house had been mistaken by me for the calling of my name. The name is Augustine, but, for short is Gustin, which last it sounded like. I heard only my first name, as above, and while I was endeavoring to satisfy myself, and thinking that possibly some of my departing friends (or neighbors very near on each side of me, by the way, one house being twenty feet east of mine, and the other ten feet west, and the street on the north) were in need of me, and refusing to myself the idea of its being really a person in trouble, though thinking of all things and striving to determine the fact; in five minutes it came again. I sprang to my feet out of bed, convinced utterly that some one needed me. The moon was exceedingly bright; not a particle of wind, not a person in the street. I could see at once out of every side of the house but one by passing into the next room, which I did. But as I crossed the room and was near the middle, it came the third time with a crash, charged with a tremendous force, and I was filled with alarm, almost terror. I threw on all, or rather the least reasonable amount of clothing, and rushed out of the house and examined the whole outside premises to find if possible who needed me. Not a person about, all quiet, all lights extinguished in the houses about, no one far or near on the street, and I returned to my bed still believing that something somewhere had slammed. I was, after the third hearing of it, in a thoroughly frightened state, with exceedingly rapid breathing and perspiration; overwhelmed with mystery which seemed to deepen. I calmed myself with the theory that there was nothing supernatural, although the voice seemed to be in the centre of the room, without any distance whatever, the last time. It was in the room each time, or rather had no appreciable effect of distance or direction; that is, it did not seem to be from the front or rear of the house, nor the distance of the street. It came with greater swiftness each time.

I slept soundly, going to sleep at once, satisfied that whatever it was no one needed me, and determined in the morning to examine the matter. I visited my neighbors the next day, and satisfied myself that it did not proceed from the houses. There was only one servant in my house, and I became certain that she did not share in it. Still I had no theory about it. My servant had a theory at once; she says, "You will hear of a death in your family at once." I gave this no heed; I only pitied her superstitious mind.

Within twenty-four hours I received a despatch from St. Louis, Mo., that my brother-in-law had died suddenly. The remark of the girl came to my mind. I wrote instantly to my sister, the widow of the deceased, giving her all the details of this matter, and giving her the exact difference of time between Boston and St. Louis, and asking her to tell me what was passing there at that exact time. She replied, "That was the last conscious moment, so far as we know, of my husband."

He left his family without much property, and with the natural expectation that I should, as far as possible, take his place in caring for them.

In connection with this it should perhaps be added that Mr. Jones describes another experience which he had about the year 1859, in connection with a college classmate, H. A., with whom he was intimate, and who drowned himself leaping from a bridge into a river at midnight.

That night at what hour I never knew, I had what I called a nightmare. I sprang upright suddenly in bed to help H. A. against his enemies. I waked and found myself sitting bolt upright in bed in great agitation. It has been an interesting coincidence to me all my life.

This last experience belongs to the emotional and motor class, in illustration of which I quote another example from Phantasms of the Living, of perhaps a more common type.

December 11, 1884.

"On the third of May in the same spring, my wife, while taking tea with my daughter, was suddenly seized with an epileptic fit, and fell heavily to the floor, striking her forehead on the fender; she was never conscious again, but died the next day. This accident happened between three and four o'clock in the afternoon. For nearly five years my wife had intermittently suffered from epilepsy, but for some three months before her death seemed to have completely recovered, which apparent fact had caused much joy in our little family circle, as the poor dear had been a great sufferer. I set this down to show that her death or serious illness was not at all expected at the time it happened.

"On the morning of the third of May I left for the city, and as my wife kissed her hand to me at the window, I thought how remarkably well and 'like her old self' she appeared. I went to business in high spirits,' and left her in the same; but somewhere about the time she fell, -neither my daughter nor I have been able to fix the time within an hour,-I suddenly fell into such a fit of gloom that I was powerless to go on with my work, and could only sit with my face between my hands, scarcely able to speak to my colleagues in the same office, who became alarmed, as they had never seen me in any but a cheerful mood. I was at the time editing England, and as friend after friend dropped into my room, and wanted to know what ailed me, I could only explain my sensation in a phrase (which they and I well remember) which I kept repeating, namely, 'I have a horrible sense of some impending calamity.' So far as I am aware, my thoughts never once turned to my home. If they had, I think I should not have accepted, as I did, an invitation to dine with a friend at a restaurant in the Strand, pressed on me for the express purpose of cheering me up.'

"I was telegraphed for to our office in the Strand, but by an accident it was not forwarded to me to Whitefriars Street at my editorial room: so that I never saw my wife until after twelve at night, when my eight or nine hours of fearful depression of spirits (as it instantly struck me) were accounted for. I may add that I am naturally of a buoyant temperament,-in fact I may say far above the average of people in that respect, and I was never, to my knowledge, ever so suddenly or similarly depressed before. My wife, in this case, you will observe, was not dead, but simply unconscious when my fit of low spirits 'set in.

"There are several witnesses who can testify to these facts, for, when it became known at the office that my wife was dead the strong coincidence of my suddenly 'turning so queer' was a topic of conversation

there. I have nothing to add but that we (my wife and I) had been married for twenty-five years, and were extremely fond of each other, and we were both, I should say, of a sympathetic temperament; perhaps more than ordinarily so."

NETHERWORTON HOUSE, STEEPLE ASTON, Oxon.

September 16, 1885. Dear Sir.- My friend Mr.—, of England, has asked me to corroborate the fact that he suffered a singular depression all the day of his wife's fatal seizure. I was in his company most of the day, and can fully corroborate his statement.

Did space permit, experiences might be recounted, ranging from a vague emotional depression, as in the foregoing incident, up to the most complex visual phantasm, as in the following case, sent to me on Dec. 28, 1887, by Mrs. K. E. Alexander, Birmingham, Mich.

Sometime in February 1876, my father, Philip Dyer, who lived in Livingston Co., fifty miles from this place, was taken sick. My mother wrote to me that she would send me word if he became dangerously ill. She wrote again that he was recovering; so my mind was happily at rest. On Friday morning about the time to arise, being fully awake and in good health, I saw a man digging a grave; I heard the sound of the pick in frozen dirt three times. There stood my father at the foot of my bed, supported on either side by persons I did not know; his head drooped to one side, and he felt very weak he said. This passed away instantly, and I arose and went to my husband's bed and told him my father was dead or about to die. He made immediate preparations for me to go home to my father's house. When I reached there, I found my father had died on Thursday night, preceding my visit from him. KEZIA E. ALEXANDER. I hereby certify that the statements herein made by my wife are strictly true. S. ALEXANDER, BIRMINGHAM, MICH.

Mrs. Alexander's vision, I note in passing, appears to have been of a somewhat symbolical character, and not an exact reproduction of what was occurring elsewhere, and I learn that some of her experiences, of which she has sent me careful records, are entirely symbolical. The question of symbolism in veridical phantasms is one of no little interest and importance. When, for example, the phantasm takes the form of a coffin suspended in air, with the name of the deceased in large letters on the plate, must this symbol of death be regarded as the reproduction of a picture in the mind of the dying agent, or has the telepathic message of the death of the agent become externalized as the hallucination of a coffin, owing to certain peculiarities of strongly associated imagery in the mind of the percipient? There seems to be little doubt but that, frequently at least, the latter is the case.