and the hypothesis of subconscious perception becomes less plausible the more numerous the instances which it is invoked to cover. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a case in which the skeleton of a man murdered forty years previously was discovered through a persistent dream.
So far we have passed in review examples of messages purporting to emanate from the dead, in which the proof of such origin consists in the information, whether as to the death itself, or as to some other fact presumably known only to the deceased, which was conveyed by the message. We have now to consider an important class of cases in which the apparition is seen by two or more persons simultaneously—"collective" apparitions, as they are conveniently termed.[1]
The fact that the phantasm is seen by more than one person at the same moment inevitably suggests that the apparition is in some sense objective; i. e., that it has a cause external to the minds of all the percipients. But even when two or three witnesses are prepared to attest the reality of the vision, it would be difficult now to maintain the older view that the thing seen is objective in the sense of being material, or even quasi-material, astral, metetherial, or whatever other name may be found for the hypothetical substance. Whatever the cause of the apparition, it will probably be recognised that it is
- ↑ For the sake of convenience the case of collective visual hallucinations only is considered in the text. For examples of collective auditory hallucinations, see the Census Report (Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. I... pp.315-17).
