So far Mr. Galton would go, but mark what follows! Everybody allows
the existence of dreams, but comparatively few believe in dream
stories of _veracious_ dreams. So every scientific man believes in
hallucinations, {68} but few believe in _veracious_ hallucinations. A
veracious hallucination is, for our purpose, one which communicates
(as veracious dreams do) information not otherwise known, or, at
least, not known to the knower to be known. The communication of the
knowledge may be done by audible words, with or without an actual
apparition, or with an apparition, by words or gestures. Again, if a
hallucination of Jones's presence tallies with a great crisis in
Jones's life, or with his death, the hallucination is so far veracious
in that, at least, it does not seem meaningless. Or if Jones's
appearance has some unwonted feature not known to the seer, but
afterwards proved to be correct in fact, that is veracious. Next, if
several persons successively in the same place, or simultaneously,
have a similar hallucination not to be accounted for physically, that
is, if not a veracious, a curious hallucination. Once more, if a
hallucinatory figure is afterwards recognised in a living person
previously unknown, or a portrait previously unseen, that (if the
recognition be genuine) is a veracious hallucination. The vulgar call
it a wraith of the living, or a ghost of the dead.
Here follow two cases. The first, The Family Coach, {69a} gave no
verified intelligence, and would be styled a "subjective
hallucination". The second contributed knowledge of facts not
previously known to the witness, and so the vulgar would call it a
ghost. Both appearances were very rich and full of complicated
detail. Indeed, any ghost that wears clothes is a puzzle. Nobody but
savages thinks that clothes have ghosts, but Tom Sawyer conjectures
that ghosts' clothes "are made of ghost stuff".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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