both undressed, I was sitting on my bed and
Herr N. was standing by the door of the next room on the point also of
going to bed. This was about half-past ten. We were speaking partly
about indifferent subjects and partly about the events of the French
campaign. Suddenly the door of the kitchen opened without a sound, and
a lady entered, very pale, taller than Herr N., about five feet four
inches in height, strong and broad of figure, dressed in white, but with
a large black kerchief which reached to below the waist.

"'She entered with bare head, greeted me with the hand three times in
complimentary fashion, turned round to the left toward Herr N., and
waved her hand to him three times; after which the figure quietly, and
again without any creaking of the door, went out. We followed at once in
order to discover whether there were any deception, but found nothing.
The strangest thing was this, that our night-watch of two men whom I had
shortly found on the watch were now asleep, though at my first call they
were on the alert; and that the door of the room, which always opens
with a good deal of noise, did not make the slightest sound when opened
by the figure.'"[K]

It is also significant that, as was made evident by the census of
hallucinations, by far the larger number of apparitions reported are
those of persons still alive and well. In these cases, nobody being
dead, it is absurd[L] to raise the cry of spirits, and the only tenable
hypothesis is that, through one of the several causes which seem to
quicken telepathic action, a spontaneous telepathic hallucination has
been produced. Now, the experiments conducted by the society and by
independent investigators have shown that telepathic messages often lie
dormant for hours beneath the threshold of the receiver's consciousness,
being consciously apprehended only when certain favoring conditions
arise; as, for example, when the receiver has fallen asleep, or into a
state of reverie, or when, tired out after a long day's work, he has
utterly relaxed mentally. This is technically known as "deferred
percipience," and, considered in conjunction with the discoveries
mentioned, it is amply sufficient to dislodge from the realm of the
supernatural the ghost seen by Lord Brougham, and every ghost that is
not a mere imposter.

In the Brougham case the exciting cause of the hallucination seems to
have been the death pact. As he lay dying in India, the mind of the
whilom school