W.H. Salter - Ghosts and Apparitions (The Paranormal)

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This volume is based on material in the possession of the Society for Psychical Research and is published with the consent of the Council, who, whilst they do not necessarily endorse any opinion expressed in the book, welcome this opportunity of bringing the evidence before the public.

G HOST stories are of a perennial interest, which does not fade when they happen to be true. The instances given in this book are taken from the Proceedings or Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Before printing any narrative the Society is at pains to ascertain that the narrators are telling what they believe to be true, and to eliminate, so far as possible, all the forms of error which may invalidate evidence even when given by the most conscientious witnesses.

The first three chapters treat of veridical experiences, the gist of which is that a person has (e.g.) a dream which seems to correspond with an actual event, at that time unknown to him. There is an obvious danger that, if the story is left to depend solely on the dreamers memory, the dream may become confused in his mind, and in course of time may be remembered as much more like the event than it really was: the event may also be distorted in his memory so as to conform more closely to the dream. To meet this danger the Society insists that, wherever practicable, the accounts both of experience and of event shall by some means or other be independently confirmed. Practically all the cases cited in these chapters have this confirmation. All of them are first hand.

My general practice has been to give the accounts of the principal witnesses in their own words: considerations of space have made it necessary to omit some passages, but not, I think, any that are material to a judgment on the case. The confirmatory narratives are often summarized. To what extent abridgment was necessary may be judged from the fact that into the first four chapters of this book I have attempted to compress discussion of a subject which occupies the two large volumes of Phantasms of the Living (more than 1,200 pages) and two long papers, each of about 400 pages, in Vols. X and XXXIII of the S.P.R. Proceedings, not to mention other literature. This book will have served its purpose if it stimulates any reader to follow the earlier authors in their brilliant examination of the enormous mass of evidence which they collected.

The critical methods of the S.P.R. may result in the rejection of some thrilling stories. They have the compensating advantage that whatever is not rejected is likely to have permanent value. The cases collected and printed during the Societys early years have the same evidential value now that they had then. But it is perhaps easier for the reader to get on terms with recent cases, and accordingly in this book, as between instances illustrating the same point equally well, preference has been given to that which is more recent.

No attempt has been made to assemble the most thrilling cases, but rather to give examples which would throw light on the different aspects of the subject. Some of the instances chosen may strike the reader as rather humdrum, and not far removed from the experiences of everyday life. But that is as it should be in a comprehensive survey of any department of psychical research, and not least in a survey of the spontaneous phenomena described in this book. One of the difficulties of psychical research is that much of the evidence relates to mediumistic phenomena, and that good mediums seem to form a small and specialized section of mankind; the human basis is too narrow to carry much in the way of superstructure. With the spontaneous phenomena the position is quite different. They are the experiences of hundreds of normal men and women, usually quite unsophisticated in psychical matters, and they are infinitely varied in detail. More has perhaps been learnt from them than from any other branch of psychical research.

A writer on ghosts has first to settle what limits he is to assign to his subject, ghost not being a term of art in psychical research. When he comes to discuss the kind of occurrences popularly attributed to ghosts he will find his subject ramifying at one end into experimental telepathy, and at the other into the physical phenomena of the sance room. Where is he to draw the line? An appearance of a dying man at the moment of death, or repeated appearances of a dead man in a particular place would, I think, generally count as ghosts, and records of such appearances occupy a large part of this book. But hauntings are commonly taken to include not only recurrent apparitions, but the disturbances which sometimes accompany them, and to these I have devoted a chapter.

It would, however, be impossible to discuss apparitions of the dying and the dead without mention of apparitions of the living, and of dreams in which living or dead persons are seen on some significant occasion. But to keep the book within manageable bounds, I have .

Where names are given in full they are the real names of the persons concerned, unless it is otherwise expressly stated. The Society always insists on having the real names, but frequently agrees to pseudonyms or initials being used in its printed reports. The S.P.R. Journal is printed for private circulation among the members, and in some instances, when the real name is given in the Journal, I have thought it desirable to substitute pseudonyms or initials.

Few words not familiar to the general reader have been used in this book. Where any have had to be used, the meaning is explained in the text. In addition, the glossary compiled for this series is printed at the end of the book.

Finally, my best thanks are due to the Council of the S.P.R. for permission to quote extensively from the Journal, and to my wife for permission to quote a case investigated and published by her; and also to several of my colleagues (my wife again included) for their valuable advice and criticism.

A DISCUSSION of ghosts and apparitions must range over a wide field. In the course of it mention must be made of experiences some of which are very rare, of events whose occurrence is far from being generally accepted as fact. It may therefore be convenient to take as a starting point so common a class of experience as dreams.

Most people from time to time dream of their family and friends, and such dreams, whatever interest their content may present to the psychologist or psychoanalyst, do not usually suggest the operation of any faculty not accepted by general scientific opinion: they are not, in the language of psychical research, supernormal.

Even where the content of the dream corresponds more or less closely to facts not within the normal knowledge of the dreamer, there is not necessarily any occasion to suppose supernormal activity. Very many cases, for example, have been recorded in which a dreamer has dreamt of a friend, and has subsequently learnt that the friend was ill or dying at the time of the dream. Dreams being as common as they are, the laws of probability make it certain that in numerous instances a sick or dying person should be dreamt of by one of his friends at or about the time of his illness or death: the resources of chance-coincidence are formidable, and it is only when the correspondence between dream and event is close that it becomes worth while considering whether chance is a sufficient explanation.

If the event be an incident of a kind frequently occurring, or be spread over a long period of time (a long illness, for example), or not wholly unexpected by the percipient (such as death after a serious illness known to him); or if the dream be lacking in striking detail; or if there is a considerable time-lag between event and dream, the scope of chance-coincidence is widened. On the other hand close correspondence either as to time or as to significant detail strengthens the case for supposing the intervention of some factor other than chance.