737. Having thus discussed a number of cases where the apparition shows varying degrees of knowledge or memory, I pass on to the somewhat commoner type, where the apparition lacks the power or the impulse to communicate any message much more definite than that all-important one - of his own continued life and love. These cases, nevertheless, might be subdivided on many lines. Each apparition, even though it be momentary, is a phenomenon complex in more ways than our minds can follow. We must look for some broad line of demarcation, which may apply to a great many different incidents, while continuing to some extent the series which we have already been descending - from knowledge and purpose on the deceased person's part down to vagueness and apparent automatism.

Such a division - gradual, indeed, but for that very reason the more instructive - exists between personal and local apparitions; between manifestations plainly intended to impress the minds of certain definite survivors and manifestations in accustomed haunts, some of which, indeed, may be destined to impress survivors, but which degenerate and disintegrate into sights and sounds too meaningless to prove either purpose or intelligence.

738. Let us look, then, for these characteristics, not expecting, of course, that our series will be logically simple; for it must often happen that the personal and local impulses will be indistinguishable, as when the desired percipient is inhabiting the familiar home. But we may begin with some cases where the apparition has shown itself in some scene altogether strange to the deceased person.

We have had, of course, a good many cases of this type already. Such was the case of the apparition with the red scratch (717); such was the apparition in the Countess Kapnist's carriage (727), and the apparition to Mrs. B. at Fiesole (728 B). Such cases, indeed, occur most frequently - and this fact is itself significant - among the higher and more developed forms of manifestation. Among the briefer, less-developed apparitions with which we have now to deal, these invasions by the phantasm of quite unknown territory are relatively few. I will begin by referring to a curious case, where the impression given is that of a spiritual presence which seeks and finds the percipient, but is itself too confused for coherent communication (Mrs. Lightfoot's case, 429 B). It will be seen that this narrative is thoroughly in accordance with previous indications of a state of posthumous bewilderment supervening before the spirit has adjusted its perceptions to the new environment.

739. In cases like Mrs. Lightfoot's, where the percipient's surroundings are unknown to the deceased person, and especially in cases where the intimation of a death reaches the percipient when at sea (as in 739 A), there is plainly nothing except the percipient's own personality to guide the spirit in his search. We have several narratives of this type. In one of these - Archdeacon Farler's, already referred to in 710 - the apparition appears twice, the second appearance at least being subsequent to the death. It is plain that if in such a case the second apparition conveys no fresh intelligence, we cannot prove that it is more than a subjective recrudescence of the first. Yet analogy is in favour of its veridical character, since we have cases (like Miss Hall's, cited in 713 A) where successive manifestations do bring fresh knowledge, and seem to show a continued effort to communicate. In this connection I may refer to an experience of a witness who has had many experiences, Mr. Keulemans (see 662 A, &c), where his little son appeared to him both about the time of death and again after death (739 C). In that case the child, it would appear, sought his father first in familiar, then in unfamiliar surroundings.

Then, again, there are auditory cases where the phantasmal peech has occurred in places not known to the deceased person. One such case is that of Mr. Wambey (see 735 A). In 739 B I give a case in which an apparition was seen several weeks after death, the death being unknown to the percipient.

740. One specially impressive characteristic of apparitions (as has been already remarked) is their occasional collectivity - the fact that more percipients than one sometimes see or hear the phantasmal figure or voice simultaneously. When one is considering the gradual decline in definiteness and apparent purpose from one group of apparitions to another, it is natural to ask whether this characteristic - in my view so important - is found to accompany especially the higher, more intelligent manifestations.

I cannot find that this is so. On the contrary, it is, I think, in cases of mere haunting that we oftenest find that the figure is seen by several persons at once, or else (a cognate phenomenon) by several persons successively. I know not how to explain this apparent tendency. Could we admit the underlying assumptions, it would suit the view that the "haunting" spirits are "earthbound," and thus somehow nearer to matter than spirits more exalted. Yet instances of collectivity are scattered through all classes of apparitions; and the irregular appearance of a characteristic which seems to us so fundamental affords another lesson how great may be the variety of inward mechanism in cases which to us might seem constructed on much the same type.1