Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science — John Shaqi
Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic ScienceTuttle, Hudson
Religion
Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science
Tuttle, Hudson
Parapsychology
SUBJECTIVE SPECTRAL ILLUSIONS.--Dr. Abercrombie is authority for the
following illustration of subjective spectral illusions: “A gentleman of
high mental endowments, and now upwards of eighty years of age, of spare
habits and enjoying uninterrupted health, has been for eleven years
subject to the daily visits of spectral figures. They in general present
human countenances; the head and body are distinctly defined, the lower
parts are for the most part, lost in a kind of cloud. The figures are
various, but he recognizes the same countenances repeated from time to
time, especially of late years, that of an elderly woman, with a
peculiarly arch and playful expression, and a dazzling brilliancy of
eye, who seems just ready to speak with him.... This female is dressed
in an old-fashioned Scottish plaid of Tartan, drawn up and brought
forward over the head, and then crossed below the chin, as the plaid
was worn by aged women in his younger day. He can seldom recognize among
the spectres any figure or countenance which he remembers to have seen;
but his own face has been presented to him, gradually undergoing the
change from youth to manhood, and from manhood to old age.”
It is not necessary to call in the aid of an invisible being to explain
such appearances. The house had been occupied by Scotch who dressed as
described, and the influence they left impressed itself on the
gentleman’s sensitive brain.
“All houses where men have lived and died are haunted houses,” not by
actual ghosts, but by the subtile force which persons impart to
everything with which they come in contact. That he was subject to some
influence outside of himself is shown by the appearances always being of
some one that he had never seen, and hence they could not have been
revived pictures from his own brain. After he had been in the house for
a long time he began to see his own face; that is, after he had imparted
his own influence to his surroundings, he received them back as from a
mirror.
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