DEAD MEN’S DREAMS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 464, 19 April 1890, Page 3

DEAD MEN’S DREAMS.

Some Well-authenticated Ghosts, (from our.special correspondent.) London, February 14. The appropriately coloured slate green volume which semi-annually chronicles the more or less insane proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, seldom Contains matter which . the average reader 'cair swallow without .(metaphorically speaking) retching. Now arid again, however* one does come across an article which de_ serves passing notice. This is the cas e with 50 pages in the current half-yearly issue by Mr F. W. Myers. They are entitled, “ On Recognised Ap.paribions Occuring More than a Year After Death,”, and they consist of a collection ’of well-aubhenbicabe’d' ghbsb stories, upon which Mr Myers bases a theory that apparitions are' in reality the dreams of the 'dead men, and can be explained scientifically by the analogy of telepathy. i . What is a Ghost? Mr -Myers dismisses as unscientific the popular conception of a ghost as a dead .person permitted to communicate with the living; IJis definition of a ghost .is that’it is a manifestation, of persistedtj personal, energy, or that It is ‘si residue Of .the ‘force, or energy which the man generate'd while he was still alive, which, clings to the locality in which he spenc his existence.He argues plausibly that .the best key to the laws governing the. phenomena of. apparitions is most likely to b.e suggested by studying the laws which goverriffhe manifestationvof Spirits while in tfi'e'flesh.: : >•«.,, “T : wo such.laws I believe bo exist. Ip*, the first placed I believe that telepathy—the transference of thought through other than sensory channels—exists .both as between embodied spirits and as between em: bodied and disembodied spirits. I lipid that apparitions after death result from the continued exercise of the same energy by the spirits of the departed. “ And in the .second place l regard it as analogically probable that ‘ghosts’ must therefore as,a rule represent’not conscious or central currents of intelligence, but mere automatic projections, from consciousness, which have their centres elsewhere.”

A Dead Man Dreaming of his Skeleton. This is somewhat obscure, but ibis better: illustrated by the extraordinary story of the well-authenticated discovery of a skeleton by a revelation in a dream. “A man is murdered in a bedroom of a Scotch farmhouse. His body is carried out and hastily buried in the open field. For forty years the murdered man retains-some consciousness of this tragedy. He broods over the fact of his death in .that room, his interment in that stony hillock. At last the bedroom is occupied by a roan sensitive to the peculiar influence which (on our hypothesis) these broodings of deceased persons diffuse. The dream of. the dead passes into the dream- of the living ; it per-, ’gists in—'’s-mind' with the same intensity as in the murdered man’s own imagination. The purpose once achieved,—the discovery., made,—the obsession ceases. ; ItArid at any rate this conception of a dead mun's dream, , —of a probably uri- ■ conscious gravitation- of some.-fraction of his disembodied entity towards his ol’dasso--ciations,:—a. flowing of some backwate'r of* his being’s current irito channels familiar long ago,—will serve to supply a' fairlycoherent conception of the meaning of those vague hauntings into which, as we have seen, orir narratives of- recognised post-mortem apparitions imperceptibly glide. ” , ! Tai' Analogy of thL -Electric Lamp.

This story of a dead man’s dream is as weird as any professional wizard ever invented. it is somewhat difficult to translate the. conception into language which can b,e understood by those not familiar with th'e technical phraseology of physical researchers. But if we might make a bold effort \vo Should say, that it' amounts to a theory that a man does not dife : altogether and pass totally into'a different state of being. A certain shadowy resemblance of himself lingers-behind, which, when the dead man elsewhere dreams of his old life,assumes a more palpable shape, and ■ occasionally becomes visible to the eyes of, mortals, as the slender filament of the-in-candescent lamp becomes luminous when the electricity is turned on. Some Authentic Ghosts. Of this several extraordinary illustrations, are given by Mr Myers. One story is told by an American commercial traveller, which describes how his sister appeared to him, nine years aftdr her death, at noonday. The peculiarity of this ghost was that the. brother saw upon his sister’s, face a red scratch which he had never seen during her lifetime. He hastened home and told the story to his parents. His mother was at once thrown into a state of profound consternation, and.,.confessed’ -while layingout' ' the ' corpse ' sKe' nad inadvertently scratched its fa'ce-and had hidden the fact from every human being until- the apparition of her daughter’s ghost bearing the scratch on her cheek compelled her to confess what had,happened. Another story tells how an old Lady Carnarvon, who died in 1826, appeared in her house at Pebworth some eleven years later. A very curipus story is told, in Dale Owen’s “Footfalls,” of a Washerwoman’s ghost who persistently haunted another woman for several nights, urging her to go to a priest Who would pay 3s lOd which she owed to some, one not. mentioned. Following up thi3 clue, itiWiis ''fobtfd that'shA'aC tda'f‘did‘ow¥3s lOd to.a grocer. The sum was paid, and thOhaunbings - ceased, The ghost of Voltaire- is said*rto/haveffieeh seen writing as lately as 186^, _. v iir t>he' : Chateau de Pragins, near Nyon, in'. Switzerland. Mr Myers suggests in many of these cases the apparition is due to something like the working out of‘a poscffiypnotic suggestion. ... I'.;': • V;, .-•■ Why Ghosts Haunt Places. ; “ Thus we may conceive a murdered man, for instance, as feeling persistently that he ought not to have been murdered,—that his existence should' still be continuing in.'his earthly home. And if his apparition is seen in that home, we need not say that he - is ‘condemned to walk there,’ but rather that his memory or his dream goes back irresistibly to the scene to.* which In a gfeifee; he "feels that he still belongs. I say.r.'hfs memory or his dream but it is of course, possible that neither word may-suggest'a close parallel to • What actually occurs. There may be a deeper severance in the personality, of the dead. There is; nothing per se improbable in the idea that our personality—so much more.fr,actionable even during oiir'earbhly ljfe : than we were wont to imagine—should fie.susceptibie, when liberated from the body, of . still profounder divisions, j For the present, however, it seems better.,to keep to morefamiliar analogies, and ,tp. use the' word ‘ dream ’ as the widest term available ; though;; of i-Coutse,' without ■’assuming that '"the decedent is imany sertseasleep.’ - • ,-i ; It; is;:evident that, if/Mr Myers is right, - we. shall have to reconstruct; the whole pr pur theory of personality. , ; . ' ;