James, "are on any theory hard to understand in detail. They
are often extraordinarily complete; and the fact that many of them are
reported as _veridical_, that is, as coinciding with real events, such
as accidents, deaths, etc., of the persons seen, is an additional
complication of the phenomenon." {0b} A ghost, if seen, is undeniably
so far a "hallucination" that it gives the impression of the presence
of a real person, in flesh, blood, and usually clothes. No such
person in flesh, blood, and clothes, is actually there. So far, at
least, every ghost is a hallucination, "_that_" in the language of
Captain Cuttle, "you may lay to," without offending science, religion,
or common-sense. And that, in brief, is the modern doctrine of
ghosts.

The old doctrine of "ghosts" regarded them as actual "spirits" of the
living or the dead, freed from the flesh or from the grave. This
view, whatever else may be said for it, represents the simple
philosophy of the savage, which may be correct or erroneous. About
the time of the Reformation, writers, especially Protestant writers,
preferred to look on apparitions as the work of deceitful devils, who
masqueraded in the aspect of the dead or living, or made up phantasms
out of "compressed air". The common-sense of the eighteenth century
dismissed all apparitions as "dreams" or hoaxes, or illusions caused
by real objects misinterpreted, such as rats, cats, white posts,
maniacs at large, sleep-walkers, thieves, and so forth. Modern
science, when it admits the possibility of occasional hallucinations
in the sane and healthy, also admits, of course, the existence of
apparitions. These, for our purposes, are hallucinatory appearances
occurring in the experience of people healthy and sane. The
difficulty begins when we ask whether these appearances ever have any
provoking mental cause outside the minds of the people who experience
them--any cause arising in the minds of others, alive or dead. This
is a question which orthodox psychology does not approach, standing
aside from any evidence which may be produced.

This book does not pretend to be a convincing, but merely an
illustrative collection of evidence. It may, or may not, suggest to
some readers the desirableness of further inquiry; the author
certainly does not hope to do more, if as much.

It may be urged that many of the stories here narrated come from
remote times, and, as the testimony for these cannot be rigidly
st