A common argument against the objective or independent quality of apparitions is that they are the product of the mind of the person seeing them, an illusion, in fact. This is plausible. We know that people see hallucinations under a range of conditions, such as sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, drug intoxication, extreme stress, and mental derangement. So what should be different about ghosts? It is important to note that Martindale [see Ruickie excerpts 3 and 4] was not under the influence of any of these factors, but how else could we test this?
People have tried to record ghosts using photography, film (video) and audio, with occasionally surprising results; however, almost all of these can be explained as artifacts or manipulations of the media, even if they may not be. We had best leave that Pandora’s Box alone.
We have seen that apparitions can reveal information to the witness that they did not already have and often did not know they needed. This seems like cast-iron proof that apparitions cannot be in the mind of the witness; however, we could still argue that this was the percipient’s psi (the general term for telepathy, precognition, etc.) working unconsciously to manifest what the conscious mind required. It seems a bit strained, but even so, we could argue that.
What if a ghost were seen by more than one person? Would that test the percipient psi theory? There are two classes of possibility here: the same ghost seen by different witnesses at different times; and the same ghost seen by different witnesses at the same time. There are plentiful examples for both situations.
The Martindale case has already supplied an example of the former, but, of course, there are many more. A young medical student, Rosina Clara Despard (1863–1930), conducted a detailed investigation of the haunting of her family home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. A ghost was seen or heard over a number of years from 1882 to 1889 by at least eighteen people (independently, sometimes consecutively, and on four occasions at the same time), and by the family dogs (judging from their reactions). Frederic Myers was also involved, interviewing witnesses, and encouraging Rosina to investigate further. Andrew Mackenzie, another figure connected with the SPR [Society for Psychical Research], collected reports of continued paranormal phenomena up until the 1970s.
In the Census of Hallucinations there were 283 cases where the percipient was not alone (and the other person was awake). The other person also saw the apparition in 95 cases (33.6%). There were also another auditory cases experienced by more than one person at the same time. Hart et al., used stricter criteria to identify 46 cases “in which more than one person was in a position to be a percipient” and of these found that 26 (56%) were “collective.” Stevenson looked at other research to conclude that approximately 30% of visual hallucinations were seen by more than one witness.
Gurney still tried to explain collective apparitions as the psi effect of a principle percipient telepathically causing everyone else to see the same thing, what he called “psychical affection,” and Stevenson “telepathic infection.” Stevenson pointed out that this leaves the perplexing question of why the group should suddenly become telepathic on the occasion of the ghost’s appearance, and on no other; Tyrell also argued that the witnesses all saw the same apparition, but differently because it was from their individual viewpoints, thus not like an image received from one mind.
Although immaterial, we can rule out that apparitions seen by mentally normal people not under the influence of drugs are illusions because they can be seen by several people at different times and at the same time: they demonstrate a realness that would be widely accepted if it did not contradict our dominant ideas about the nature of reality.
Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site, https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.
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