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APPARITIONS

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Originally appearing in Volume V02, Page 210 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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APPARITIONS . An apparition, strictly speaking, is merely an See also:

appearance (See also:Lat. apparere, to appear), the result of See also:perception exercised on any stimulus of any of the senses. But in See also:ordinary usage the word apparition denotes a perception (generally through the sense of sight) which cannot, as a See also:rule, be shown to be. occasioned by an See also:object in See also:external nature. We say "as a rule " because many so-called apparitions are merely illusions, i.e. misconstructions of the perceptive processes, as when a See also:person in a had See also:light See also:sees a number of small See also:children leading a See also:horse, and, finds, on nearer approach, that he sees two men carrying See also:bee-hives suspended from a See also:pole. 'Again, See also:Sir See also:Walter See also:Scott's See also:vision of See also:Byron, then lately dead, proved to be a misconstruction of certain plaids and cloaks See also:hanging in the See also:hall at See also:Abbotsford, or so Sir Walter declared. Had he not discovered the See also:physical basis of this illusion (which, while it lasted, was an apparition, technically speaking), he and others might have thought that it was an apparition in the popular sense of the word, a See also:ghost. In popular phraseology a ghost is understood to be a phantasm produced in some way by the spirit of a dead person, the impression being usually visual, though the ghost, or apparition, may also affect the sense of See also:hearing (by words, knocks, whistles, groans and so forth), or the sense of See also:touch, or of See also:weight, as in the See also:case of the " See also:incubus." In ordinary speech an apparition of a person not known to the percipient to be dead is called a See also:wraith, in the Highland phrase, a spirit of the living. The terms ghost and wraith involve the See also:hypothesis that the false perceptions are caused by See also:spirits, a survival of the archaic animistic hypothesis (see See also:ANIMISM), an hypothesis as difficult to prove as to disprove. Apparitions, of course, are not confined to anthropomorphic phantasms; we hear of phantom coaches (sometimes seen, but more frequently heard), of phantom See also:dogs, See also:cats, horses, See also:cattle, See also:deer, and even of phantom houses. Whatever may be the causes of these and other false perceptions,—most curious when the impression is shared by several witnesses,—they may best be considered under the See also:head of See also:hallucination (q.v.). Hallucinations may be pathological, i,e. the result of morbid conditions of See also:brain or See also:nerve, of disease, of See also:fever, of See also:insanity, of alcoholism, of the abuse of drugs. Again, they may be the result of See also:dissociation, or may occur in the borderland of See also:sleep or waking, and in this case they partake of the hallucinatory nature of dreams (q.v.).

Again, hallucinations may, once or twice in a lifetime, come into the experience of the sane, the healthy, and, as far as any tests can be applied, of the wide-awake. In such instances the apparition (whether it take the See also:

form of a visual phantasm, of a recognized See also:voice, ofa touch, or what not) may be coincidental or non-coincidental. The phantasm is called coincidental if it represents a known and distant person who is later found to have been dying or in some other crisis at the moment of the percipient's experience. When the false perception coincides with nothing of the sort, it is styled non-coincidental. Coincidental apparitions have been explained by the theory of See also:telepathy (q.v.), one mind or brain impressing another in some unknown: way so as to beget an hallucinatory apparition or phantasm. On the See also:evidence, so far as it has been collected and analysed, it seems that the mind which, on the hypothesis, begets the hallucinations, usually does so without conscious effort (see SUBLIMINAL SELF). There are, however, a few cases in which the experiment of begetting, in another, an hallucination from a distance, is said to have been experimentally and consciously made, with success. If the telepathic theory of coincidental hallucinations be accepted, we have still to See also:account for the much more See also:common non-coincidental apparitions of the living who do not happen to be in any particular crisis. In these instances it cannot be demonstrated that telepathy has not been at See also:work, as when a person is seen at a See also:place which he thought of visiting, but did not visit. F. W. See also:Myers even upheld a theory of psychorhagy, holding that the spirits of some persons have a way of manifesting themselves at a distance by a psychic invasion.

This involves, as he remarked, paleolithic See also:

psychology, and the old See also:savage See also:doctrine of animism, rather than telepathy (see Myers, Human See also:Personality). Of belief in coincidental hallucinations or wraiths amonb savages, records are scanty; the belief, however, is found among Maoris and Fuegians (see See also:Lang, Making of Religions). The perception of apparitions of distant but actual scenes and occurrences is usually called See also:clairvoyance (q.v.). The belief is also See also:familiar under the name of second sight( see SECOND SIGHT), a See also:term of Scots usage, though the belief in it, and the facts if accepted, are of See also:world-wide See also:diffusion. The apparitions may either represent actual persons and places, or may be symbolical, taking the form of phantasmic See also:lights, coffins, skeletons, shrouds and so forth. Again, the appearances may either represent things, persons and occurrences of the past (see RETROCOGNITION), or of the See also:present (clairvoyance), or of the future (see See also:PREMONITION). When the apparitions produce themselves in given rooms, houses or localities, and are exhibited to various persons at various times, the locality is popularly said to be haunted by spirits, that is, of the dead, on the animistic hypothesis (see See also:HAUNTINGS). Like the other alleged facts, these are of world-wide diffusion, or the belief in them is world-wide, and See also:peculiar to no See also:race, See also:age, or See also:period of culture. A haunted place is a centre of permanent possibilities of hallucinations, or is believed to be so. A distinct See also:species of hauntings are those in which unexplained sounds and movements of See also:objects, apparently untouched, occur. The See also:German term See also:Poltergeist (q.v.) has been given to the supposed cause of these occurrences where the cause is not ascertained to be sportive imposture. In the performances of See also:modern spiritualists the Poltergeist appears, as it were, to be domesticated, and to come at the See also:call of the See also:medium.

An intermittent See also:

kind of ominous haunting attached, not to places, but to families, is that of the See also:banshee (See also:Celtic) or See also:family See also:death See also:omen, such as the See also:white See also:bird of the Oxenhams, the Airlie drummer, the spectral rider of See also:Clan Gilzean, the rappings of the Woodde family. These apparitions, with fairies and djinns (the Arab form of See also:fairy), haunt the borderland between folk-See also:lore and psychical See also:research. So far we have been concerned with spontaneous apparitions, or with the belief in them. Among induced apparitions may be reckoned the materialized forms of spiritual seances, which have a material basis of veils, false moustaches, wigs and the corpus vile of the medium. It is also possible that See also:mere expectancy and See also:suggestion induce hallucinatory perceptions among the members of the circle. That apparitions of a sort can be induced by hypnotic and posthypnotic suggestion is certain enough (see See also:HYPNOTISM). Savages produce apparitions in similar ways by suggestion, accompanied by dances, fumigations, darkness, See also:fasting, drugs, and whatever can affect the imaginations of the onlookers (see MAGIC). Both in savage and civilized See also:life, some persons can provoke themselves into beholding apparitions usually fantastic, but occasionally coincidental, by sedulously staring into any clear deep See also:water, a fragment of See also:rock crystal, a piece of polished See also:basalt or See also:obsidian, a See also:mirror, a See also:ring, a See also:sword blade, or a See also:glass of See also:sherry (see CRYSTAL GAZING). Indeed any object, a See also:wall, the See also:palm of the See also:hand,the See also:shoulder-blade-See also:bone of a See also:sheep, may be, and has been used to this end (see See also:DIVINATION). Almost all known apparitions may accommodate themselves to one or other of the categories given, whether they be pathological, coincidental or spontaneous, induced, permanently localized, or sporadic. See generally, See also:SPIRITUALISM and PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. (A.

End of Article: APPARITIONS

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