If this principle be admitted, it is adequate to explain all the puzzling phenomena of real ghosts and of true dreams. For example, the ghostly and intersomnial communications, with which we have as yet dealt, have been announcements of the deaths of absent parties. Suppose our new principle brought into play; the soul of the dying person is to be supposed to have come into direct communication with the mind of his friend, with the effect of suggesting his present condition. If the seer be dreaming, the suggestion shapes a corresponding dream; if he be awake, it originates a sensorial illusion. To speak figuratively, _merely figuratively_, in reference to the circulation of this partial mental obituary, I will suppose that the death of a human being throws a sort of gleam through the spiritual world, which may now and then touch with light some fittingly disposed object; or even two simultaneously, if chance have placed them in the right relation;—as the twin-spires of a cathedral may be momentarily illuminated by some far-off flash, which does not break the gloom upon the roofs below. The same principle is applicable to the explanation of the vampyr visit. The soul of the buried man is to be supposed to be brought into communication with his friend’s mind. Thence follows, as a sensorial illusion, the apparition of the buried man. Perhaps the visit may have been an instinctive effort to draw the attention of his friend to his living grave. I beg to suggest that it would not be an act of superstition _now_, but of ordinary humane precaution, if one dreamed pertinaciously of a recently buried acquaintance, or saw his ghost, to take immediate steps to have the state of the body ascertained. It is not my intention, in the present letter, to push the application of this principle further. With slight modifications it might be brought to explain several other wonderful stories, which we usually neglect just from not seeing how to explain them. One class of these instances is what was termed second-sight. The belief in it formerly prevailed in Scotland, and in the whole of the north of Europe. But the faculty, if it ever existed, seems to be disappearing now. However, it is difficult, one has heard so many examples of the correctness of its warnings and anticipations, not to believe that it once really manifested itself.