The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, by Andrew Lang

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Title: The Book of Dreams and Ghosts

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: June 14, 2004 [eBook #12621]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS***

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE BOOK OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS

PREFACE TO THE NEW IMPRESSION

Since the first edition of this book appeared (1897) a considerable
number of new and startling ghost stories, British, Foreign and
Colonial, not yet published, have reached me. Second Sight abounds.
Crystal Gazing has also advanced in popularity. For a singular series
of such visions, in which distant persons and places, unknown to the
gazer, were correctly described by her, I may refer to my book, The
Making of Religion (1898). A memorial stone has been erected on the
scene of the story called "The Foul Fords" (p. 269), so that tale is
likely to endure in tradition.

July, 1899.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The chief purpose of this book is, if fortune helps, to entertain
people interested in the kind of narratives here collected. For the
sake of orderly arrangement, the stories are classed in different
grades, as they advance from the normal and familiar to the undeniably
startling. At the same time an account of the current theories of
Apparitions is offered, in language as free from technicalities as
possible. According to modern opinion every "ghost" is a
"hallucination," a false perception, the perception of something which
is not present.

It has not been thought necessary to discuss the psychological and
physiological processes involved in perception, real or false. Every
"hallucination" is a perception, "as good and true a sensation as if
there were a real object there. The object happens _not_ to be there,
that is all." {0a} We are not here concerned with the visions of
insanity, delirium, drugs, drink, remorse, or anxiety, but with
"sporadic cases of hallucination, visiting people only once in a
lifetime, which seems to be by far the most frequent type". "These,"
says Mr.