Williams: Apparitions of the Living Study Post 1

Case Study Review: Experimenting with Ghosts of the Living?

Bryan Williams
[This is a post on the topic of apparitions that I originally wrote for Halloween on Mike Wilsons Psi Society group on Yahoo in 2010. It was intended to introduce lay readers and paranormal enthusiasts to quasi-experimental cases in the psychical research literature involving apparitions of living people, and discuss how they might be relevant to ESP and the issue of survival after death.]

Traditionally, ghosts have been thought to represent the surviving spirit of a person that remains after the death of that persons body. Many paranormal enthusiasts seem to take this idea largely for granted, without really acknowledging that its one which should be put to the empirical test just like any other dealing with the issue of survival. It can be argued that in order to empirically explore the issue of life after death, we must first try to learn something about life before death. As parapsychologist William Roll (1974) had once stated: If there is survival after death, then that which survives must exist beforehand in the living. In other words, it should be possible to approach the survival question by a study of consciousness in the living (p. 411). It seems that, as early as the 19th century, there were some quasi-experimental attempts to do just that, as indicated by some of the accounts given to psychical researchers by certain correspondents from the general public. In many respects, these attempts represent a form of early survival research conducted with living people. The attempts consisted of people trying to make themselves intentionally appear as a spectral figure before an unsuspecting relative or friend in a distant location. In other words, they involved peoples willful attempts to produce a ghost of themselves that could be seen by others. Some of the earliest accounts of these attempts appeared in Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886), the classic two-volume anthology that presents just over 700 cases of ESP and apparitional experiences that were collected by the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England during the late 19th century. As an example, the following account was given to the SPR by a man known by his initials S. H. B.:
On a certain Sunday evening in November, 1881, having been reading of the great power which the human will is capable of exercising, I determined with the whole force of my being that I would be present in spirit in the front bedroom on the second floor of a house situated at 22, Hogarth Road, Kensington, in which room slept two ladies of my acquaintance, viz., Miss L. S. V. and Miss E. C. V., aged respectively 25 and 11 years. I was living at this time at 23, Kildare Gardens, a distance of about 3 miles from Hogarth Road, and I had not mentioned in any way my intention of trying this experiment to either of the above ladies, for the simple reason that it was only on retiring to rest upon this Sunday night that I made up my mind to do so. The time at which I determined I would be there was 1 oclock in the morning, and I also had a strong intention of making my presence perceptible. On the following Thursday I went to see the ladies in question, and, in the course of conversation (without any allusion to the subject on my part), the elder one told me, that, on the previous Sunday night, she had been much terrified by perceiving me standing by her bedside, and that she screamed when the apparition advanced towards her, and awoke her little sister, who saw me also. I asked her if she was awake at this time, and she replied most decidedly in the affirmative, and upon my inquiring the time of the occurrence, she replied, about 1 oclock in the morning. This lady, at my request, wrote down a statement of the event and signed it. This was the first occasion upon which I tried an experiment of this kind, and its complete success startled me very much (Gurney et al., 1886, Vol. 1, pp. 104 105).

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The statement that Miss L. S. V. had written down and signed went as follows (p. 105):
January 18, 1883. On a certain Sunday evening, about twelve months since, at our house in Hogarth Road, Kensington, I distinctly saw Mr. B. in my room, about 1 oclock. I was perfectly awake and was much terrified. I awoke my sister by screaming, and she saw the apparition herself. Three days after, when I saw Mr. B., I told him what had happened; but it was some time before I could recover from the shock I had received, and the remembrance is too vivid to be ever erased from my memory. L. S. Verity.

Later on, Miss L. S. V. stated that shed never previously experienced any sort of hallucination, and her little sister E. C. V. acknowledged that she too had witnessed the apparition of S. H. B. Another sister of both ladies, Miss. A. S. V., gave a statement, as well (p. 105):
I remember quite clearly the evening my eldest sister awoke me by calling to me from an adjoining room; and upon my going to her bedside, where she slept with my youngest sister, they both told me they had seen S. H. B. standing in the room. The time was about 1 oclock. S. H. B. was in evening dress, they told me.1 A. S. Verity.
1

Mr. B. does not remember how he was dressed on the night of the occurrence.

In addition to being an attempt to willfully produce an apparition, this case is interesting in that it involved an apparition that was collectively perceived by two people at once. The members of the SPR added the following comments regarding the case:
Miss E. C. Verity was asleep when her sister caught sight of the figure, and was awoke by her sisters exclaiming, There is S. The name had therefore met her ear before she herself saw the figure; and the hallucination on her part might thus be attributed to suggestion. But it is against this view that she has never had any other hallucination, and cannot therefore be considered as predisposed to such experiences. The sisters are both equally certain that the figure was in evening dress, and that it stood in one particular spot in the room. The gas was burning low, and the phantasmal figure was seen with far more clearness than a real figure would have been (p. 106).

Thus, while suggestion could have potentially influenced the younger sisters perception of the apparition, it is interesting that the two sisters both perceived something at the same time. The attempt by S. H. B. had actually inspired another that was made in 1886 by Reverend Clarence Godfrey, an acquaintance of SPR investigator Frank Podmore. In a letter to Podmore, Godfrey gives an account of his attempt:
I was so impressed by the account on p. 105 [of Phantasms of the Living; the attempt by S. H. B. described above], that I was determined to put the matter to an experiment. Retiring at 10.45 (on the 15th November 1886), I determined to appear, if possible, to a friend, and accordingly I set myself to work with all the volitional and determinative energy which I possess, to stand at the foot of her bed. I need not say that I never dropped the slightest hint beforehand as to my intention, such as could mar the experiment, nor had I mentioned the subject to her. As the agent I may describe my own experiences. Undoubtedly the imaginative faculty was brought extensively into play, as well as the volitional, for I endevoured to translate myself, spiritually, into her room, and to attract her attention, as it were, while standing there. My effort was sustained for perhaps eight minutes, after which I felt tired and was soon asleep (Myers, 1903, Vol. 1, p. 688).

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At around 3:40 A.M. that same night, Rev. Godfrey suddenly awoke from a dream in which he saw his friend, who (in the dream) indicated to him that shed seen him and that shed been sitting beside him. The next day, November 16, Rev. Godfrey received an account from his friend of what shed experienced, which she wrote down as follows:
Yesterday viz., the morning of November 16th, 1886 about half past three oclock, I woke up with a start and an idea that some one had come into the room. I heard a curious sound, but fancied it might be the birds in the ivy outside. Next I experienced a strange, restless longing to leave the room and go downstairs. This feeling became so overpowering that at last I rose and lit a candle, and went down, thinking if I could get some soda-water it might have a quieting effect. On returning to my room I saw Mr. Godfrey standing under the large window on the staircase. He was dressed in his usual style, and with an expression on his face that I have noticed when he has been looking very earnestly at anything. He stood there, and I held up the candle and gazed at him for three or four seconds in utter amazement, and then, as I passed up the staircase, he disappeared. The impression left on my mind was so vivid that I fully intended waking a friend who occupied the same room as myself, but remembering that I should only be laughed at as romantic and imaginative, refrained from doing so. I was not frightened at the appearance of Mr. Godfrey, but felt much excited, and could not sleep afterwards (p. 689).

Podmore then added the following comments:

On the 21st of the same month (says Mr. Podmore) I heard a full account of the incident given above from Mr. Godfrey, and on the day following from Mrs. --- [Godfreys friend]. Mrs. --- told me that the figure appeared quite distinct and life-like at first, though she could not remember to have noticed more than the upper part of the body. As she looked it grew more and more shadowy, and finally faded away. Mrs. ---, it should be added, told me that she had previously seen two phantasmal figures, representing a parent whom she had recently lost. Mr. Godfrey at our request made two other trials, without, of course, letting Mrs. --- know his intention. The first of these attempts was without result, owing perhaps to the date chosen, as he was aware at the time, being unsuitable. But a trial made on the 7th December 1886 succeeded completely. Mrs. ---, writing on December 8th, states that she was awakened by hearing a voice cry, Wake, and by feeling a hand rest on the left side of her head. She then saw stooping over her a figure which she recognised as Mr. Godfreys. In this last case the dress of the figure does not seem to have been seen distinctly. But in the apparition of the 16th November, it will be observed that the dress was that ordinarily worn in the day-time by Mr. Godfrey, and that in which the percipient would be accustomed to see him, not the dress which he was actually wearing at the time. If the apparition is in truth nothing more than an expression of the percipients thoughts, this is what we should expect to find, and as a matter of fact in the majority of well-evidenced narratives of telepathic hallucination this is what we actually do find. The dress and surroundings of the phantasm represent, not the dress and surroundings of the agent at the moment, but those with which the percipient is familiar (Myers, 1903, Vol. 1, pp. 689 690).

We might note that in both the S. H. B. case and the Godfrey case, the two ghosts were seen by the witnesses dressed in clothes that they were regularly accustomed to seeing S. H. B. and Mr. Godfrey wear. Similarly, in accounts of encounters with ghosts of the dead, parapsychologist Richard Broughton (2006) notes that: Often the clothing that the ghost appeared in was what the deceased customarily wore, not necessarily those in which the person died (p. 150). This may offer an important clue about the nature of the experience. It suggests that the agent (i.e., the person willfully trying to produce the ghost, who in these cases, are S. H. B. and Mr. Godfrey) is not the only one who plays a part in producing the ghost; rather, it seems that the witnesses play a

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part, as well. Here, witnesses may contribute to the details of the ghost (such as what the ghost is wearing) through their own personal memories of the person whose ghost they see. As Broughton (2006) suggests, the ghosts that are seen may be essentially a product of the mind of the percipient [i.e., the witness] an hallucination composed of images taken or constructed from the experiencers memory (p. 150). This hallucination would not be a pathological experience resulting from mental illness; rather, it would be a projected visual hallucination generated in part through ESP. Offering preliminary support to this possibility are the anecdotal and experimental findings suggesting that memory (especially long-term memory) has a role in ESP (Broughton, 2006; Irwin, 1979; Palmer, 2006; Roll, 1966; Stanford, 2006). If this idea has any merit, then the ghosts witnessed in these cases could perhaps be thought of as representing projected visual hallucinations generated by the witnesses through ESP with the agents (where the agents intention to appear before the witness helps facilitate a link between them through ESP), with the witnesses filling in the details of the ghost (such as what it is wearing) through their own memories about the agents. Psychical researcher G. N. M. Tyrrell (1953/1961) offered a similar theory in his classic book Apparitions that ghosts of this type may be a product of both agent and witness. Dr. Louisa Rhine (1957) also noticed how the witnesses own everyday perceptions of the agents seemed to be reflected what they saw. As she wrote, one reason for thinking that the percipient [i.e., the witness] initiated the experience was that he saw the agents figure from the same viewpoint from which he (the percipient) customarily saw him (p. 43). The possibility that the agents and the witnesses both play a role in these kinds of ghost experiences is further suggested by an attempt made in 1822 by Herr H. M. Wesermann (a government assessor and the chief inspector of roads in Dsseldorf, Germany) to make an image appear in the dreams of someone he knew, known as Lieutenant -----n. However, the intriguing thing about this attempt was that Wesermann was not trying to make an image of himself appear, but that of a deceased woman instead. Tyrrell (1953/1961) gives us one version of Wesermanns attempt, presented in Wesermanns own words:
A lady who had been dead for five years was to appear to Lieutenant -----n in a dream at 10.30 p.m. and incite him to good deeds. At half-past ten, contrary to expectation, Herr -----n had not gone to bed but was discussing the French campaign with his friend Lieutenant S----- in the anteroom. Suddenly the door of the room opened, the lady entered dressed in white, with a black kerchief and uncovered head, greeted S----- with her hand three times in a friendly manner; then turned to -----n, nodded to him and returned again through the doorway (p. 132).

This account indicates that, instead of appearing in Lieutenant -----ns dream as originally intended, the image of the woman had appeared to him as a ghost, which was also seen by another person, Lieutenant S-----, who later gave his own account of the experience:
After supper I was sitting on my bed and Herr -----n was standing by the door of the next room on the point also of going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We were speaking partly about indifferent subjects and partly about the events of the French campaign. Suddenly the door out of the kitchen opened without a sound, and a lady entered, very pale, taller than Herr -----n, about five foot four inches in height, strong and broad in figure, dressed in white, but with a large black kerchief which reached to below the waist. She entered with bare head, greeted me with the hand three times in complimentary fashion, turned round to the left towards Herr -----n, and waved her hand to him three times; after which the figure quietly, and again without any creaking of the door, went out. We followed at once in order to discover whether there were any deception, but found

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nothing the door of the room, which always opens with a good deal of noise, did not make the slightest sound when opened by the figure (p. 132).

The female ghost witnessed by the two men seemed to conform to Wesermanns stated intentions to produce an apparition of her likeness and manner (p. 132), suggesting that he played a role as agent. However, its important to notice that the apparition had also deviated from Wesermanns intentions in at least three respects:
1.) As noted, the woman was originally supposed to appear in Lieutenant -----ns dream, but instead, she appeared to him as an apparition. 2.) Since Wesermann assumed that Lieutenant -----n was going to be asleep at the time he made his attempt, one might expect that the apparition of the lady should have appeared in Lieutenant -----ns empty bedroom. But it didnt; instead, it appeared in the ante-room where he was talking with Lieutenant S-----. 3.) At the time he made his attempt, Wesermann apparently did not know that Lieutenant S----was going to be present with Lieutenant -----n in the ante-room. Yet it is clear from the accounts that the lady ghost had acknowledged the presence of both men.

These deviations seem to suggest a possible a contribution to the experience by the witnesses themselves, Lieutenants -----n and S-----. William Roll (1974) further commented on this case:
The Wesermann ghost also supports Tyrrells theory that an apparition is usually the product not only of its creator but also of the perceiver. The lady ghost would have performed in an empty room had something not brought her to the anteroom that something presumably being the unconscious minds of the officers reacting to Wesermanns attempts. In [psychical researcher Hornell] Harts terminology, the three men had together produced a persona. This all sounds rather strange, but in fact, it is typical of ESP. Even in card tests, the result is rarely an exactly copy of the target but an interaction between the target, the mind of the subject, and often of the experimenters mind too (p. 403).

If some ghosts really are the product of ESP between the agents and the witnesses who see them, then this potentially confounds the issue of survival after death a little with regards to ghosts and apparitions. As Tyrrell (1953/1961) pointed out: If an apparition represents a dead person this is not sufficient proof that the dead person is the agent. A living agent can produce it (p. 133, his emphasis). However, he goes on to note that: On the other hand, the consensus of evidence goes to show that this kind of apparition must be produced by some agent; and in the majority of cases it is hard to find a plausible candidate other than the person the apparition represents (p. 133, his emphasis). Thus, the possibility that the ghost could be produced by the spirit of a dead person is not completely ruled out in this case, but at the same time, it must be recognized that the possibility is not clearly supported here, either. This illustrates how difficult it can be to make the case for survival after death, and this is why we must be cautious when seriously considering the idea that ghosts represent spirits of the dead. However, it should be made clear again that this does not fully shut the door on the argument for survival, since the survival hypothesis is not completely ruled out. Perhaps only with additional cases and research will we be able to better weigh the issue for survival with regards to ghosts and apparitions.

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References (in order of text citation):

Roll, W. G. (1974). Survival research: Problems and possibilities. In E. D. Mitchell & J. White (Eds.) Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science (pp. 397 424). New York: G. P. Putnams Sons. Gurney, E., Myers, F. W. H., & Podmore, F. (1886). Phantasms of the Living (2 vols.). London: Trbner & Company. Myers, F. W. H. (1903). Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (2 vols.). London: Longmans, Green & Company. Broughton, R. (2006). Why do ghosts wear clothes? Examining the role of memory and emotion in anomalous experiences. 60 Simpsio da Fundao Bial: Aqum e Alm do Crebro (6th Symposium of the Bial Foundation: Behind and Beyond the Brain) (pp. 149 167). Porto, Portugal: Fundao Bial. Irwin, H. J. (1979). Psi and the Mind: An Information Processing Approach. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Palmer, J. (2006). Memory and ESP: A review of the experimental literature. 60 Simpsio da Fundao Bial: Aqum e Alm do Crebro (6th Symposium of the Bial Foundation: Behind and Beyond the Brain) (pp. 121 147). Porto, Portugal: Fundao Bial. Roll, W. G. (1966). ESP and memory. International Journal of Neuropsychiatry, 2, 505 521. Stanford, R. (2006). Making sense of the extrasensory: Modeling receptive psi using memory-related concepts. 60 Simpsio da Fundao Bial: Aqum e Alm do Crebro (6th Symposium of the Bial Foundation: Behind and Beyond the Brain) (pp. 169 197). Porto, Portugal: Fundao Bial. Tyrrell, G. N. M. (1953/1961). Science and Psychical Phenomena/Apparitions. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books. Rhine, L. E. (1957). Hallucinatory psi experiences: II. The initiative of the percipient in hallucinations of the living, the dying, and the dead. Journal of Parapsychology, 21, 13 46.