What Are Apparitional Experiences?
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Apparitions, very often they are seen in form of white figure, dough of white light or a hazy mist

Tales of ghosts, wraiths, and other apparitions have been recorded in virtually all cultures. It is difficult to define the term "apparition" without introducing some theoretical assumption about the nature of the phenomena encompassed by that term. In essence an apparition is encountered in a perceptual-like experience and relates to a person or animal that is not physically present, with physical means of communication being ruled out. Note that apparitions are not defined in terms of a "spirit form"; such an approach would incorporate a particular theoretical interpretation of an apparitional experience and thus is best avoided in formulating a definition.

The conceptualization of an apparition either as objective or as hallucinatory has been a dominant issue in the past century of parapsychologists' research into these phenomena. In recent years there has been a growing appreciation that we need to study not the apparition per se but rather the apparitional experience; that is, it might be best to adopt a phenomenological approach in this field of study.

A variety of research techniques have been used in the study of apparitional experiences. Needless to say, data on the experience come predominantly from the study of spontaneous cases. Field studies also may be performed for the purpose of naturalistic observation. In these studies some sensing devices may be placed in locations where an apparition is reported to appear and by this means the researcher can seek objective evidence about the ontological reality of the apparitional experience.

In recent years attempts have been made to induce apparitional experiences in the parapsychological laboratory. The procedure involves an experimental participant sitting in a quiet dark room and gazing deeply into a mirror. In this setting, known as a psychomanteum, the mirror is positioned such that participants see a reflection of the wall above and behind them. Each participant is asked to choose one deceased person who he or she would want to see again. Before the experimental session the participant's relationship with the deceased is discussed in depth, as is any memento of the deceased brought to the laboratory. The participant is then instructed to relax and to gaze into the mirror. According Moody (1994), 70% of participants in the psychomanteum have a visual experience of the deceased. The experimental subjects in Radin and Rebman's (1996) study reported much weaker impressions such as a simple sense of the presence of the deceased, rather than a vivid apparitional experience (Hastings et al 2002). The demand characteristics of this experimental procedure clearly are very high and further research is required in order to demonstrate the utility of the psychomanteum for the study of apparitional experiences.

Classical shapes are those in clock, old granny and little young girl who are believed to have passed away

Phenomenological Characteristics of Apparitional Experiences

Data on the phenomenology of apparitional experience necessarily come from collections of spontaneous cases and anecdotes. Many cases presented to societies for psychical research have been investigated carefully by society members for their evidential reliability, although the usual problems with spontaneous case material apply.

Two additional sources of bias spring from the popularity of ghost stories in fiction. First, some supposedly real-life cases initially may have been devised as a good story but then presented as authentic in the hope of enhancing their commercial potential. Second, fictional ghost stories (and folklore too) promote a particular stereotype of an apparitional experience and it is feasible that witnesses' accounts of their experience unwittingly are distorted to conform to these popular expectations. For example, SPI Ah Toh brought up an interesting argument: why must almost every haunting is made up by a stereotype of a woman, dress in white, long hairs, sometimes red eyed? And the haunting often took place in toilet (female toilet some more). If the reason is because toilets are 'dirty' why not we have haunted dust bin? Psychologically human think toilets are 'dirty' in a sense of collecting many 'ying' (negative) energy is due to human perception. Realistically, a dust bin that had not been washed for years contains thousands times more germs than a toilet that is cleaned on a regular basis.

Therefore parapsychologists must be a little wary of accepting consistencies in spontaneous case accounts as indications of the nature of apparitions: in part these consistencies may reveal only the fictional conception of apparitions. Ignoring fictional anthologies (especially those labeled "true life ghost stories") there are a few case collections testifying to the phenomenology of apparitional experiences. One of the earliest large collections was the the Society of Paranormal Research's "Census of hallucinations" (Sidgwick et al. 1894); this was concerned with apparitions of people occurring about the time of their death. Tyrrell's (1942/1963) book Apparitions was a classic in the field. More recently, Haraldsson (1994) conducted an extensive study of universtigated experiences of apparitions of the dead among Icelanders. The major phenomenological findings of these investigations now will be summarized.

In Palmer's (1979) survey of Charlottesville, Virginia, residents and students 17% had had an impression of an apparition, and of these 3/4 acknowledged more than one such experience. 20% of a sample of Australian university students reported apparitional experiences (Irwin, 1985b, p.6). In Canada, Persinger (1974, p.69) found 32% of survey respondents to acknowledge an apparition of a person or an animal. The duration of the apparitional experience is variable. In Green and McCreery's (1975, p.143) survey about half of the respondents considered their experience to have lasted less than one minute, although 20 percent estimated its duration to exceed five minutes.

Apparitional experiences tend to be restricted to one or two sensory modalities. Green and McCreery (1975) report that of their cases 61% were in one modality only, with a further 25% limited to two senses. Most apparitional experiences are visual, summing up to 84%. About 1/3 of cases nevertheless have an auditory component, with 14% being a wholly auditory experience. The reported modality of the apparitional imagery may be in a sensory system that is impaired in the given experient; for example, one "totally deaf" man described hearing the rustle of an apparitional figure's dress (Green & McCreery, 1975, p.169).

A small number of cases are asensory, comprising the intuitive impression of a "presence" nearby. These instances of a sense of a presence represented only 8% of Green and McCreery's (1975, p118) cases. For instance, one student from an Australian university reported the experience of strolling along a deserted beach and feeling there was someone walking beside her; although she did not see nor hear anything to indicate there was something there, the sense of a presence was very strong and she felt very real about it.

In some cases apparitions are said to have witnessed by several people at the same time; Green and McCreery (1975, p.41) report up to 8 people simultaneously experiencing an apparition. About a 1/4 of experients present their case as having been collective (Haraldsson, 1994; Palmer, 1979, p.228). Not all members of a group necessarily will perceive the apparitional figure. In cases with more than 1 person present approximately 1/3 of the apparitions seem to have been collectively experienced (Sidgwick et al., 1894; Tyrrell, 1942/1963).

Most apparitional figures are experienced to be within 10 feet (3 meters) of the subject (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.123). In the majority of cases, however, the figure is not recognized by the experient (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.178). About 70% of recognized apparitions are of people whom the experient knew to be dead (Haraldsson, 1985). This may vary with the age of the individual or more precisely, with the number of deceased persons the individual knew. Thus in Palmer's (1979, p.228) survey about 60% of apparitions witnessed by the older sample of townspeople were of the dead, but for the student sample only 30% were of this type.

The distinction between apparitions of the living and apparitions of the dead can be refined into a more detailed taxonomy. Tyrrell (1942/1963, p.35ff) proposed 4 classes of apparitional experiences:

• Experimental apparitional experiences
• Crisis apparitional experiences
• Postmortem apparitional experiences
• Ghost haunting experiences

These are the infamous so-called ghost photos circulated on internet

Class 1: Experimental Apparitional Experiences

In these cases living people deliberately have endeavored, allegedly with success, to make an apparition of themselves appear before a chosen percipient. One famous case attributed to S. H. Beard (Gurney et al. 1886, Vol.1, pp.93-94). In December 1882, Beard decided to project an apparition of himself to his fiancee Miss Verity. At 9:30pm, he determined to appear in the Verity family's house. He achieved the impression that he was actually in his fiancee's home but he fell asleep and had no further recollection of the experiment. Before going to bed he renewed his determination to appear in Verity's bedroom at midnight, while he was asleep. On the following day Beard visited the Verity family. His fiancee's married sister was visiting her family and without promoting she declared that during the previous night she had seen Beard on two occasions. At approximately 9:30pm, she had observed Beard in a passage walking from one room to another and at midnight she had seen him enter the bedroom, walk to her bedside, and take her long hair into his hand. She told her sister of the experience before Beard's corporeal visit. Both women corroborated this account.

These experimental cases are rare. They seem to occur when the agent is asleep or in a trance-like state. They are similar in some respects to OBEs and at least one researcher (Hart, 1956) regarded experimental apparitions and OBEs as the same phenomenon. On the other hand it is not usual for the "projector" to have the conscious impression of being outside the body in an experimental apparition case; conversely, when an individual has an OBE it is very uncommon for that person's apparition (for parasomatic form) to be witnessed at the location to which the person consciously has projected.


Class 2: Crisis apparitional experiences

In crisis cases a recognized apparition is experienced at a time when the person represented by the apparition is undergoing some sort of crisis. By convention an apparitional experience qualifies as a crisis case only if the apparitional figure is experienced no more than 12 hours before or after the crisis. Often the crisis is death; an apparitional experience shortly before or after the referent person's death commonly is known as a wraith. For one famous example from Tyrrell (1942/1963, p.39). The experient's brother was a pilot and unbeknown to the woman concerned, had been shot down in France. That same day the experient had a strong feeling that she must turn around; on doing so she was amazed to see her "brother." Assuming that he had been re-posted she turned back to put her baby in a safe place, then went to greet her brother only to find that he was not there. Thinking he was playing a joke she called him and searched the house for him. It was only when no trace of her brother could be found that she felt very frightened, suspecting that he was dead. The loss of her brother in combat on the day of the experience was confirmed two weeks later.

Two points about this case should be appreciated. First, the wraith was mistaken for a real person; and second, at the time of the experience the experient was not thinking of her brother.

The ghost image has been stereotyped somehow, associated to vampires and rotten zombies, sometimes

Class 3: Postmortem apparitional experiences

These cases involve an apparition of a person who has been dead for at least 12 hours. About 2/3 of recognized apparitions are of the dead (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.188; Haraldsson, 1985, 1994; Persinger, 1974, p.150). One of the most frequently cited instances of this type is the "Chaffin will" case (Case, 1927).

In 1905 James Chaffin, a farmer in North Carolina, made a will leaving his estate to his third son Marshall, with his wife and other three sons unprovided for. In 1919 he made a new will under which the property was to be divided equally between the four sons, with the provision that they look after their mother. The second will was not witnessed but was valid under North Carolina law, being in Chaffin's own hand-writing. The new will was placed in an old family Bible and a note identifying the will's location was sewn inside his overcoat pocket. In 1921 Chaffin died as a result of a fall. As the family did not know of the existence of the new will the third son Marshall obtained probate of the original will.

In June 1925 the second son James experienced an apparition of his father during a vivid dream. The figure was described as wearing the father's overcoat. The apparitional figure pulled back the coat and announced, "You will find my will in my overcoat pocket." It then disappeared. James made enquiries about the whereabouts of his father's overcoat and learned that it had been given to his elder brother John. In July James visited his brother and looked inside the overcoat pocket where he found not the will itself but the message revealing the will's location. James returned to his mother's house and after some searching an old Bible was found and the second will located. In December this will was admitted to probate; ten witnesses were prepared to swear that it was in the testator's handwriting.

The Chaffin will case illustrates a common feature of postmortem cases, namely that the apparition seemingly tries to convey specific information that is unknown to the experient. Note also in this case the apparition had both a visual and an auditory component. As with other types of apparition the figure is lifelike and appears suddenly and unexpectedly. A disconcerting feature of the Chaffin will case is that it occurred during a dream. As Gauld (1977, p.605) comments, on this basis one wonders if almost any extrasensory dream could be regarded also as a veridical apparitional experience. Be that as it may, the case otherwise is representative of postmortem apparitional experiences.

Just as a side note, in contrast to some Chinese belief, the return of the wraith within certain period of time (usually 7 days) after death was anticipated; but in crisis apparitional experiences and postmortem apparitional experiences, the experients may not had any knowledge beforehand. Could this be due to ignorance or different culture? By saying this, the western people may have no idea about the wraith-returning concept that is pertaining possibly to some Chinese religions. But the phenomenon is objective and will still manifest regardless of the experients know (believe) it or not. If the soul-returning were to be classified as Postmortem apparitional experiences, it could be so except that postmortem apparition usually come as a surprise and usually with some unfinished business. The basic concept is different that the Chinese soul-return is to have a last look at their family before he embarks on his journey in the other world. The experience is more material and life-like according to many accounts, and that would involve multiple experients seeing, hearing and even feeling its presence.

These are hang-man type of ghosts? But still, they take a crude form of human figurine

Class 4: Ghost haunting experiences

So-called ghosts are recurrent or haunting apparitions, that is, the same figure is witnessed in the same locality on a number of occasions, often by a number of different experients. The ghosts in these experiences reportedly show less awareness of experients and their surroundings than do other apparitional figures. Additionally, ghosts seem more somnambulistic in their movements. Some ghosts reportedly perform the same actions in the same location on each occasion they are experienced. Recurrent apparitional experiences that are less stereotyped in this regard tend to have a deceased friend or relative as the referent person (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.65). Recurrent apparitions of animals, particularly cats, also are not uncommon (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.63).

Persinger (1974, pp.151-154) notes that some apparitional experiences relate to past or to future events, and he proposes categories for retrocogntive and precognitive apparitions. Other writers (e.g. Bayless, 1973; Sherwood, 2000) point out that there are occasional reports of other sorts of apparitional experiences, including apparitions of animals and luminous manifestations such as disks of light or figures in a circle of light.

On the basis of his case collection Tyrrell (1942/1963) determined a number of consistencies in the phenomenological characteristics of apparitional figures. Apparitions appear real and solid. Their appearance changes as the experient moves around it. They occlude objects they move in front of and are occluded by objects they move behind. They may cast a shadow and the experiment may perceive their reflection in a mirror. In those respects therefore, apparitional figures are not the transparent misty forms popularized in fiction. Most apparitions evidence awareness of their surroundings (although this is less characteristic of ghosts). For example, if the observer moves around the room the apparitional figure's head reportedly may turn to follow these movements. Also these figures usually are experienced to leave a room by the door rather than to wander aimlessly through a wall (like the fictional stereotype). Noises made by apparitions tend to be appropriate, like the rustle of cloths or the shuffle of feet rather than clanking chains and soulful moans. Some apparitional images are claimed to have spoken, although this is not common; any spoken communication usually is limited to a few words. If the individual is close to the apparition a sensation of coldness may be felt. Most attempts to touch an apparitional figure are unsuccessful but people who did so generally report their hand to have gone through the apparition. The figure may seem to pick up an object or to open a door when physically these have not moved at all. Apparitions usually leave no physical traces such as foot-prints, nor can they be photographed or tape-recorded, according to Tyrrell.

Green and McCreery's 91975) analysis of apparitional cases yielded several further characteristics. The apparitional figure's background may remain the same or it may be modified as part of the experience. There usually is no discontinuity of experience at the onset and at the termination of apparitional experiences as there sometimes is for example, in the OBE. It is more common for the apparition to enter as a complete figure rather than building up or solidifying before the witness's eys. At the end of the apparitional experience the figure usually vanishes instantly, but in other cases it may fade gradually either as a whole or part by part, or it may be reported to ahve left as if by its own accord (e.g., by walking out of the room).

Finally, Haraldsson (1994) notes that a substantial proportion 30% of recognized apparitional figures were reported to have died by violent means. In Haraldsson's view this factor accounts for his observation that a majority 67% of apparitional figures are male.

These are famous accidental ghosts that were captured by chance. Most of them have been proved fake

Correlates of the Apparitional Experience

Although the apparitional figure almost inevitably is said to have appeared unexpectedly there are some consistencies in the experience's circumstances of occurrence. It typically arises in familiar everyday surroundings, most often in the experient's home or in its immediate vicinity (Persinger, 1974, p.157). Only 12% of Green and McCreery's (1975, p.123) cases occurred in a place that the subject had never visited before. In a considerable majority of cases the experient was indoors (Green and McCreery, 1975, p.123) and in daylight or reasonably good artifical light (Haraldson, 1994).

Psychological conditions of occurrence also have been surveyed. Over 90 percent of respondents in Green and McCreery's (1975, p.123) study claimed to have been in normal health at the time of the apparitional experience; generally the phenomenon would seem, therefore, not to be a hallucination associated with illness. Most apparitions nevertheless occur when the experient is in a physically inactive state. Concurrent activities reported by Green and McCreery (1975, p.124) were lying down 38%, sitting 23%, standing still 19%, walking 18% and others 2%. Because we spend about 1/3 of our lives lying down (sleep) these data should not be taken to imply that one should adopt a supine position to facilitate an apparitional experience, but the trend toward minimal or "automatic" physical activity is notable. This feature was observed also by Persinger (1974, p.158) and in a small-scale Australian survey by Campbell (1987). As observed, this suggests that apparitional experiences occur either in circumstances conducive to absorbed mentation or for people with an enduring need for absorption.

Most demographic variables fail to differentiate apparitional experients from non-experients. Palmer (1979) found no correlations with gender, race, age and religiosity. Two correlates, however, did show statistical significance. Apparitional experiences were reported more frequently by people with a low educational level and also by widows. The "sense of a presence" or asensory apparitional experience is relatively common among recently widowed persons (Simon-Buller, Christopherson and Jones, 1988).

Traditional tests of personality have rarely been administered to match groups of apparitional experients and non-experients. In a sample of recently bereaved adults, however, Datson and Marwit (1997) found that those who reported an apparitional experience of the deceased were more neurotic and extraverted than were non-experients. The remaining available psychometric data lie in the domain of cognitive functions. In relations to the above suggestion that experients may have a relatively marked need for absorbed mentation, such has been found to be the case by Irwin (1985b, p.6) although experients and nonexperients evidently do not differ in their capacity for psychological absorption (Campbell, 1987). The related factor of fantasy-proneness is a strong discriminator: as a group, apparitional experients are highly inclined to fantasize (Cameron & Roll, 1983; Campbell, 1987; Myers and Austrin, 1985; Osis, 1986b; Willson and Barber, 1983)..

It remains to be shown whether these results imply the apparitional experience to be a pure fantasy or on the other hand, to be an experience that tends to arise when the individual is absorbed in fantasy-like memtation.

Residential ghosts that live around us?

One Case

One recent case study nevertheless raises some interesting possibilities in regard to psychological processes underlying the apparitional experience. The study was conducted by an American psychiatrist living in London, Morton Schatzman (1980). A young married woman called Ruth consulted Schatzman when she was seriously troubled by apparitions of her father (the latter was alive and in another country at the time). The apparition had her father's looks, voice and smell. When "he" sat on her bed Ruth allegedly felt and saw the bed sag. The apparition also occluded her view of objects behind it, cast shadows, and was reflected in a mirror. The figure seemed to appear at times not of Ruth's choosing. The case had marked sexual connotations: the apparition would terrify Ruth with recollections of the time her father had tried to rape her as a child, and subsequently it appeared in her husband's place in bed.

Now, many collectors of case reports would not accept Ruth's story as an instance of an apparition. Some features of the case are uncharacteristic of apparitions: for example, when the apparition appeared in Ruth's bed it was by way of a perceived change in her husband's appearance to that of her father. some of Ruth's behavior and the sexual tone of the experiences might be construed as symptomatic of psychotic disturbance; indeed Ruth was referred to Schatzman by her physician as a possible schizophrenic, although Schatzman himself dealt with her depression and anxiety as a response to the apparitional experiences rather than as signs of psychosis. Additionally some developments during therapy (to be described shortly) strongly suggest that the experiences were hallucinatory. With past researchers' preoccupation with the objectivity of apparitions Ruth's experiences would be dismissed by many parapsychologists as psychotic hallucinations and not admitted for consideration in relation to apparitions. As far as assessment of the objectivity issue is concerned perhaps this position is a reasonable one. But for the parapsychologist wishing to pursue research on the nature of the apparitional experience Schatzman's treatment of Ruth's case could prove most instructive.

Most psychiatrists in Schatzman's position would work to put an end to Ruth's experiences, but this was not the immediate objective of Schatzman. Rather than encouraging Ruth to dispel the apparition whenever it appeared, he suggested to Ruth that she could and should make the apparition appear at her own wish. Initially she was too frightened to attempt this but with further psychotherapy to relieve the anxiety evoked by the experiences, Ruth achieved some voluntary control over both the occurrences of the experiences and the behavior of the apparitional figure. Later she was able to produce apparitions of other people including her husband, her children, a friend, Schatzman, and even herself (the apparition of herself was not her mirror image). By letting her father's apparition "speak" through her, Ruth was able to express his feelings and point of view, thereby lessening her own hatred for her father and her (unjustified) feelings of guilt over her own role in the childhood assault.

One of Schatzman's tests raises some interesting questions about the processes of apparitional experiences. When a person stares at a screen displaying a changing checkerboard pattern the occipital cortex (the visual area of the cerebral cortex) will produce an EEG record (called the evoked response) that changes with the checkerboard stimulus. When Ruth was presented with this stimulus her visual evoked response was normal. Schatzman then asked Ruth to make an apparition appear in front of the screen. The evoked response disappeared, as if something had actually blocked the stimuli, yet the response of the retina and the pupillary reaction to the flashing checkerboard pattern were normal. Evidently low level visual processes are not involved in Ruth's sort of hallucination, but higher level visual processes (say, from the lateral geniculate nucleus) apparently are much the same as in the perception of a real object.

It would be well worth attempting to replicate this result with "normal" subjects in recurrent apparitional cases. Such a study might throw some light on the curious mix of apparently objective and subjective elements of the apparitional experience. In this context it may be noted that later tests of Ruth (Harris and Gregory, 1981) did not reveal evidence of unusual powers of eidetic imagery. If the apparitional experience is hallucinatory the realism of the apparitional figure therefore might be due not so much to the quality of the imaginal processes responsible for its production but rather to the locus of the imaginal input within the visual information processing system.

Schatzman's idea of controlling apparitional experiences opens up many possibilities for research. For example, it might permit exploration of the underlying personality dynamics of the apparitional experience. Through the experient(s) the investigator may administer various psychological tests to the apparitional personality and compare the results of such tests with the manifest needs of the experients and if possible with the psychological profile of the referent person.

The therapeutic technique employed by Schatzman also has implications for current clinical practice. People who attend a psychological clinic for guidance in coming to terms with their apparitional experience are likely to be classified and treated as psychotics or to be told that the experience was a mere perceptual illusion. Schatzman alerts us to other possibilities, but most importantly he shows how the client can be helped to work through the experience to reach their own understanding of it.

Recent studies like that by Schatzman serve to remind us that the objectivity of an apparitional figure is not the only issue of interest or even the most important one. If apparitions should prove to be pure hallucinations the origins and underlying processes of the apparitional experience still would deserve the attention of behavioral scientists.

Sometimes apparitions are resembled by smoke and cloud

Theories of Apparitional Experiences

The central issue addressed by the major theories of apparitional experiences is whether apparitional figures are objective or subjective phenomena. As the foregoing review indicates there would seem to be evidence for both views. Apparitions may be deemed objective because sometimes they are perceived by more than one person, and they have been reported to occlude objects, cast shadows, be reflected on a mirror, and change perspective with the experient's movement.

On the other hand apparitions seem to be subjective (hallucinatory) phenomena in that some people present might not perceive them, some apparitions are reported to have moved through solid objects, experients may put their hand through the figure, objects may be perceived to have moved when in fact they did not, and apparitions leave no physical traces in circumstances where such traces should be found. An adequate theory of apparitional experiences should be able to accommodate these ostensibly contradictory characteristics.

The traditional theory of apparitions is the spirit hypothesis, that is, an apparition is an aspect of the individual's existence that survives bodily death. Hart (1956, 1967) and Crookall (1970) each developed a theory of apparitions along these lines. In essence the approach is equivalent to the ecsomatic models of the OBE and the NDE, with the additional assumption that the ecsomatic element has a continued postmortem existence. Some people are comfortable with such a notion as it relates to apparitions of the dead but are dubious about its applicability to apparitions of living persons. Thus if the spirit leaves the physical body, they argue, the person would die.

There are further, more serious difficulties with this model. To account for both objective and subjective characteristics of apparitions, recourse is made to rather vaue concepts such as "semiphysical" and "ultraphysical" states of existence. That is, a spirit can have physical qualities that are the basis of its reportedly objective phenomena, yet still be ethereal and pass through solid objects, for example. This would seem little else than an ad hoc assumption of what is to be explained. A slightly more subtle approach is to argue that the spirit is nonphysical and projects into space, but is perceived only by extrasensory means. This accounts for several features of the experience, although that an extrasensorially perceived nonphysical spirit should be seen to cast shadows is not explained.

A major problem for the spirit hypothesis is the fact that apparitional figures usually are described as being appropriately attired, sometimes with such accessories as a walking stick and a flower in a lapel. Now our religious heritage leaves us at least potentially tolerant of the notion of the body's "soul", but the implication that our cloths and favored accessories also possess a "soul" seems to some people to the stretching the bounds of credibility. Ecsomatic theorists' attempts to explain apparitional attire in terms of an 'etheric double' of the referent person's own clothes (e.g. Crookall, 1966) are conceptually as flimsy as the ghostly garments themselves.

Some relatively direct tests of the spirit hypothesis have been undertaken. Attempts to use various types of sensors and other devices to detect the presence of an apparition (e.g. SPI, 2003) nevertheless have yielded fundamentally ambiguous or otherwise inconclusive data. The spirit hypothesis of apparitional experiences now is promoted by a minority of modern parapsychologists (e.g. Osis, 1986a; Stevenson, 1982).

Let us turn now to some alternative theories. One early theory was that proposed by Edmund Gurney, a founding member of the SPR. Gurney (Gurney et al., 1886) held that apparitions were hallucinatory and were mediated by telepathy. Thus the experient acquires certain information from the referent individual by extrasensory means and then admits this information to consciousness as a hallucination in the form of the individual's apparition. To accommodate collective cases Gurney had to propose the idea of "contagious telepathy." One person would acquire the extrasensory information and telepathically communicate the nature of the hallucinatory figure to other people present, inducing them to witness the same experience. Again it would seem to be asking a lot of ESP to ensure that different people's images of the apparition exhibit a mutually consistent set of perspectives, as is claimed to have occurred in some collective cases. Also Gurney posed his theory only in relation to apparitions of the living and crisis cases.

An extension of Gurney's theory to postmortem apparitions could require the additional assumptions of the survival hypothesis and of the possibility of telepathic communication by deceased personalities, although some form of super-ESP model might be devised as an alternative. The "telepathic hallucination" theory nevertheless readily accommodates apparitional experiences in which the experient acquires information and those in which the apparitional figure appears appropriately clothed.

Gurney's colleague Franke Podmore generally reitereated Gurney's theory of veridical apparitions of the living but went further in dismissing out of hand any notion of ghosts as telepahtic hallucinations. Experiences of ghosts were a product of an apprehensive subject's imaginative misinterpretation of natural sounds, Podmore (1909, p.123) asserted.

F. W. H. Myers, another founder of the SPR, devised a theory in many ways similar to that of Gurney. Myers (Myers, 1903, Ch. 6&7) agreed that apparitions (of the living or of the dead) could be hallucinatory projections of telepathically acquired information, but he proposed further that the referent person sometimes could cause changes in the "metetherial world" which permit the objective perception of his or her image by people in the vicinity of this change. This would account, for example, for the consistency of different experients' perspectivies in certain collective cases. Myers is not very lucid in his specification of this metetherial world but evidently it entails some nonphysical dimension of existence that interwines with physical space.

How one would seek independent evidence of the existence of the metetherial world is unknown. but at least Myers appreciated the problem posed by collective cases and sought to address it in a manner he thought to be justified by the evidence accumulated in the SPR investigations. He also implied that apparitional experiences might not all feature exactly the same underlying process.

Tyrrell (1942/1963), like Gurney and Myers, held apparitions to be engendered telepathically. In Tyrrell's view the referent person and the experients affect a hallucination by a mingling of their subconscious minds, a cooperative production of an apparitional drama. since all participants contribute to the mental staging of the hallucination the apparition has consistent perspectives for the different experients. People who are unable to perceive the apparition are held not to have taken part in the subconscious dramatic production.

The identification of apparitional experiences with hallucinatory ESP experiences was pursued further by Louisa Rhine (1957). Consistent with her views on the agent's role in other extrasensory experiences Rhine construed the apparitional experient (rather than the referent person) to be the instigator of the experience, reaching out extrasensorially to the referent person and expressing the subconsciously acquired information through the medium of a hallucination of that person. Unlike earlier theorists, therefore, Rhine saw no need to propose the referent person to be an active contributor to the experience.

Green and McCreery (1975) also accept the apparitional experience as hallucinatory, in some cases inspired by extrasensory information about the referent person. In the view of these researchers both the apparitional figure and the environment in which it seemingly appears are hallucinatory in the majority of cases, although there may be some experiences in which the figure is hallucinated upon the real environment of the experient.

Cemeteries are hotbed for apparition sightings throughout the centuries

Pure Hallucination?

The skeptical approach to apparitional experiences, of course, is that the apparition is a pure hallucination. That is, the image has no objective status and its occurrence is not grounded in ESP nor in any other parapsychological process; it is totally a product of the imagination and reflects the experient's suggestibility, expectations, needs, social conditioning and unconscious childhood memories. The realism of the experience commonly is ascribed to the properties of hypnagogic (a psychological term means 'subconsciously and subtly agogic = excited') imagery.

The skeptical theory is supported by claims of variations in the apparitional experience across historical periods and across cultures in accordance with the social functions served by belief in apparitions. On the other hand Gauld (1984) argues the evidence for such claims is unsatisfactory because cases of apparitional experience prior to the 17th century are very poorly documented and they cannot be regarded in any way as a random sample of such experiences in their respective historical period. In addition, perhaps social conventions have a greater bearing on how an apparitional case is narrated than on the phenomenology of the associated experience itself (see Herman, 2000). Collective apparitional cases presumably are treated as mass hallucination under the skeptical theory, although there is some doubt that such an account could accommodate the features of these cases if they have been reported accurately.

Little conceptual development has occurred in this area in the last 20 or 30 years. In the late 1970s there were some suggestions that Kirlian photography, so-called photographs of the "aura" (Neher, 1980, p.189), might provide an empirical foundation for spirit/ecsomatic models of apparitional experiences and OBEs, but these were soon discounted. Although the experience of an aura may be a legitimate issue for parapsychological investigation (e.g., see Alvarado and Zingrone, 1994) the relevance of this research to apparitional experiences is equivocal.

Just a sensation in the brain?

More recent work on the "sense of a presence" may prove a fruitful avenue for future research into apparitional experiences. Persinger and his colleagues (Persinger, 1993) have proposed a neuropsychological model of the experience of a sensed presence. Citing previous suggestions that the sense of ("conscious") self is an aggregate property of language processes taking place primarily in the left hemisphere of the brain, Persinger proposes that a homologue of these left hemispheric processes exists in the right hemisphere and is the primary neurological basis of the sense of a presence. This account could be extended to accomodate the expereince of an apparition or "ghost" (Persinger, 1993, p.916). Persinger's theory is arguably consistent with reports of low frequency radiation in the setting of two appartitional cases (Tandy, 2000; Tandy & Lawrence, 1998). On the other hand the theory also predicts that the sensed presence or apparitional figure would typically be located to the left of the experient's body, and this does not seem to be case (Brugger, 1994). An allied approach in the analysis of potergeist experiences holds that unusual electromagnetic or geomagnetic fields may influence susceptible people's temporal lobe functioning, causing them to have anomalous perceptions such as the experience of an apparition (Persinger and Koren, 2001). There is some case material and correlational evidence in support of this view (e.g. Persinger, Koren and O'Connor, 2001; Terhune, 2003; Wiseman et al, 2003), but at present the research does have methodological limitations.

Other recent theories of apparitional experiences are critically surveyed by McCue (2002). Finally, mention may be made of a trend among some contemporary researchers (Evans, 2001; Houran, 2000) to group apparitional experiences with encounters of such other entities as extraterrestrial aliens, the Virgin Mary, phantom hitchhikers, fairies, Men in Black, materializations in the seance room, angels, and other weird stuff.

As far as the survival hypothesis is concerned it is assessed by Gauld (1977, pp.601-607) to have gleaned little substantive empirical support from apparitional experiences, although this conclusion is disputed by Stevenson (1982). It would seem nonetheless that the spirit theory has not proved a productive approach, yet most proponents of the telepathic theories seem compelled to imply some form of discarnate existence in their attempts to account for postmortem apparitional cases. Additionally, a satisfactory account of collective cases and their characteristics has yet to be formulated. It is to be hoped that the recent phenomenological orientation of research into apparitional experiences will generate a new style of theory that is more fruitful and more comprehensive than past approaches have been.

Are they real or fake? You be the judge.

Summary of the possible explanations

If supernatural powers are not behind amazing tales of ghosts, levitation, spells, and visions, then what is? Skeptics have come up with a barrage of alternative explanations for why people might believe they have seen or experienced something supernatural. The most common explanation for stories of ghost and other visionary sightings is that people only thought they saw something weird. In other words they imagined it. There are several ways this could happen.

Hallucination

This may sound like an extreme explanation, but hallucinations (experiences that seem real but happen entirely in the mind) are not restricted to the insane. As you fall asleep or wake up you pass through a slightly altered state of consciousness, known as a hypnagogic (while falling asleep) or a hypnopompic (while waking up) state. Fleeting hallucinations are common during these periods.

We may spend up to 5% of our sleeping time in a hypnagogic or hypnopomic state, and as much as 64% of people may have experienced hypnopompic imagery at least once.

Wishful Thinking

An alternative psychological theory is that people who experience supernatural phenomena are more likely to have a "fantasy prone personality". This type of person has a rich imaginary life but a weak grip on reality, and is much more likely than others to have elaborate or vivid fantasies.

The Cultural Source Hypothesis

Many supernatural phenomena seem to be heavily influenced by the culture in which they occur. Ghost sightings, for instance, seem to vary with culture. Native Americans often report that the spirits of the departed return in animal form, whereas the typical modern European ghost is an anonymous, shadowy human figure. Visions of the Virgin Mary appear almost exclusively to Roman Catholics. In South East Asia, a very common sighting of a female figure in white (sometimes in green) is said to be Pontianak, a Malay vampire. These patterns have led some researchers to suggest that supernatural experiences derive from the cultural background of the people who have them. So, for instance, both a Protestant and a Catholic might see a bright white light, but only the Catholic would interpret it as a vision of Virgin Mary.

Misidentification

The senses are not as reliable as is often thought, and it is easy to mistake something innocent, such as a dim reflection in a distant window, for something sinister, such as a ghost. Misidentification is particularly common if the viewer is expecting to see something - a phenomenon known to psychologists as expectant attention. For instance, if you visited a house that someone had told you was haunted, you would be much more likely to misinterpret ambiguous sensations, like a harmless draught, as supernatural ones.

Fakers

One of the most obvious explanations for supernatural events is fraud. Skeptics argue that once one incidence of a type of phenomenon has been proved to be fake, we can assume that all the other instances are also fake. So, for instance, once one medium is shown to be a fraud we can assume that they are all frauds. This is an example of faulty logic, however, and ignores the fact that many reports come from honest witnesses who have nothing to gain, and who often risk ridicule by coming forward.

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