ings.

We must admit that the public, in ghostly, as in all narratives on all
topics, is given to 'fanciful addenda.' Therefore, as Herr Parish justly
remarks, we should 'maintain a very sceptical attitude to all accounts' of
veridical hallucinations. 'Not that we should dismiss them as old wives'
fables--an all too common method--or even doubt the narrator's good
faith.' We should treat them like tales of big fish that get away;
sometimes there is good corroborative evidence that they really were
big fish, sometimes not. We shall return to these false memories.

Was there a coincidence at all in the Society's cases printed in the
Census? Herr Parish thinks three of the selected twenty-six cases very
dubious. In one case is a _possible_ margin of four days, another
(wrongly numbered by the way) does not occur at all among the twenty-six.
In the third, Herr Parish is wrong in his statement.[4] This is a lovely
example of the sceptical slipshod, and, accompanied by the miscitation of
the second case, shows that inexactitude is not all on the side of the
seers. However the case is not very good, the two percipients fancying
that the date of the event was less remote than it really was. Unluckily
Herr Parish only criticises these three cases, how accurately we have
remarked. He had no room for more.

Herr Parish next censures the probable selection of good cases by
collectors, on which the editors of the Census have already made
observations, as they have also made large allowances for this cause of
error. He then offers the astonishing statement that, 'in the view of the
English authors, a view which is, of course, assumed in all calculations
of the kind, an hallucination persists equally long in the memory and is
equally readily recalled in reply to a question, whether the experience
made but a slight impression on the percipient, or affected him deeply,
as would be the case, for instance, if the hallucination had been found to
coincide with the death of a near relative or friend.'[5] This assertion
of Herr Parish's is so erroneous that the Report expressly says 'as years
recede into the distance,' the proportion of the hallucinations that are
remembered in them to those which are forgotten, or at least ignored, 'is
very large.' Again, 'Hallucinations of the most impressive class will not
only be better remembered than others, but will, we may reasonably
suppose, be more often mentioned by the percipients to their friend