People who dabble in the occult have been so impressed by such dreams that they have sometimes believed that these flights represented a real excursion of the 'astral body.' This is the belief of Colonel de Rochas.[105] César de Vesme, the editor of the French edition of the _Annals of Psychical Research_, has thought it worth while to investigate the matter; and after summarising the results of a _questionnaire_ concerning dreams of flying, he comes to the conclusion that 'the sensation of aerial flight in dreams is simply a hallucinatory phenomenon of an exclusively physiological [he means 'psychological'] kind,' and not evidence of the existence of the 'astral body.'[106] The fact, nevertheless, that so many people are found who believe such dreams to possess some kind of reality, clearly indicates the powerful impression they make. All my life, it seems to me, certainly from an early age, until recently, I have at intervals had dreams in which I imagined myself rhythmically bounding into the air, and supported on the air, remaining there for a perceptible interval; at other times I have felt myself gliding downstairs, but not supported by the stairs. In my case the experience is nearly always agreeable, involving a certain sense of power, and it usually evokes no marked surprise, occurring as a familiar and accustomed pleasure. On awaking I do not usually remember these dreams immediately, which seems to indicate that they are not due to causes specially operative at the end of sleep, or liable to bring sleep to a conclusion. But they leave behind them a vague yet profound sense of belief in their reality and reasonableness. Dream-flight, it is necessary to note, is not usually the sustained flight of a bird or an insect, and the dreamer rarely or never imagines that he is borne high into the air. Hutchinson states that of all those whom he has asked about the matter 'hardly one has ever known himself to make any high flights in his dreams. One almost always flies low, with a skimming manner, slightly, but only slightly, above the heads of pedestrians.'[107] Beaunis, from his own experience, describes what I should consider a typical kind of dream-flight as a series of light bounds, at one or two yards above the earth, each bound clearing from ten to twenty yards, the dream being accompanied by a delicious sensation of easy movement, as well as a lively satisfaction at being able to solve the problem of aerial locomotion by virtue of superior organisation alone.[108] Lafcadio Hearn, somewhat similarly, describes, in his _Shadowings_, a typical and frequent dream of his own as a series of bounds in long parabolic curves, rising to a height of some twenty-five feet, and always accompanied by the sense that a new power had been revealed which for the future would be a permanent possession.