(as veracious dreams do) information not otherwise known, or, at
least, not known to the knower to be known. The communication of the
knowledge may be done by audible words, with or without an actual
apparition, or with an apparition, by words or gestures. Again, if a
hallucination of Jones's presence tallies with a great crisis in
Jones's life, or with his death, the hallucination is so far veracious
in that, at least, it does not seem meaningless. Or if Jones's
appearance has some unwonted feature not known to the seer, but
afterwards proved to be correct in fact, that is veracious. Next, if
several persons successively in the same place, or simultaneously,
have a similar hallucination not to be accounted for physically, that
is, if not a veracious, a curious hallucination. Once more, if a
hallucinatory figure is afterwards recognised in a living person
previously unknown, or a portrait previously unseen, that (if the
recognition be genuine) is a veracious hallucination. The vulgar call
it a wraith of the living, or a ghost of the dead.

Here follow two cases. The first, The Family Coach, {69a} gave no
verified intelligence, and would be styled a "subjective
hallucination". The second contributed knowledge of facts not
previously known to the witness, and so the vulgar would call it a
ghost. Both appearances were very rich and full of complicated
detail. Indeed, any ghost that wears clothes is a puzzle. Nobody but
savages thinks that clothes have ghosts, but Tom Sawyer conjectures
that ghosts' clothes "are made of ghost stuff".

As a rule, not very much is seen of a ghost; he is "something of a
shadowy being". Yet we very seldom hear of a ghost stark naked; that
of Sergeant Davies, murdered in 1749, is one of three or four examples
in civilised life. {69b} Hence arises the old question, "How are we
to account for the clothes of ghosts?" One obvious reply is that there
is no ghost at all, only a hallucination. We do not see people naked,
as a rule, in our dreams; and hallucinations, being waking dreams,
conform to the same rule. If a ghost opens a door or lifts a curtain
in our sight, that, too, is only part of the illusion. The door did
not open; the curtain was not lifted. Nay, if the wrist or hand of
the seer is burned or withered, as in a crowd of stories, the ghost's
hand did not produce the effect. It was produced in the same way as
when a hypnotised patient is told that "his hand is burned,"