745. It is, indeed, mainly by dwelling on these intermediate cases, between a message-bringing apparition and a purposeless haunt, that we have most hope of understanding the typical haunt which, while it has been in a sense the most popular of all our phenomena, is yet to the careful inquirer one of the least satisfactory. One main evidential difficulty generally lies in identifying the haunting figure, in finding anything to connect the history of the house with the vague and often various sights and sounds which perplex or terrify its flesh and blood inhabitants. We must, at any rate, rid ourselves of the notion that some great crime or catastrophe is always to be sought as the groundwork of a haunt of this kind. To that negative conclusion the cases now to be described, and the cases which have just been described, do concordantly point us. Mrs. de Freville was concerned in no tragedy; she was merely an elderly lady with a fancy for sepulchres. And as to the cases to which I now proceed - although in Sir Arthur Becher's case, for example (see 745 A), there was at least a rumour of some crime,1 and in Mrs. M.'s case (745 B) of past troubles, in which the percipients, of course, were in no way concerned - yet in Mr. Husbands' and Mrs. Clerke's cases (745 C and D), and Mrs. Lewin's case (Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 462), there was nothing, so far as we know, which could trouble the departed spirit with importunate memories of his earthly home.

Again, Mr. Husbands' case, Mrs. Lewin's, Mrs. Clerke's, have much in common. In each case the apparition is seen by a stranger, several months after the death, with no apparent reason for its appearance at that special time. This last point is of interest in considering the question whether the hallucinatory picture could have been projected from any still incarnate mind. In another case - the vision of the Bishop of St. Brieuc (given in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. v. p. 460), there was such a special reason;- the Bishop's body, unknown to the percipient, was at that moment being buried at the distance of a few miles. Mr. Podmore suggests (op. cit., vol. vi. p. 301) that it was from the minds of the living mourners that the Bishop's phantasm was generated. That hypothesis may have its portion of truth; the surrounding emotion may have been one of the factors which made the apparition possible. But the assumption that it was the only admissible factor - that the departed Bishop's own possible agency must be set aside altogether - lands us, I think, in difficulties greater than those which we should thus escape. The reader who tries to apply it to the apparitions quoted in my earlier groups will find himself in a labyrinth of complexity.

Still more will this be the case in dealing with the far fuller and more explicit motor communications, by automatic writing or speech, which we shall have to discuss in the two next chapters. Unless the actual evidence be disallowed in a wholesale manner, we shall be forced, I think, to admit the continued action of the departed as a main element in these apparitions.

1 I was conducted over Hinxton churchyard by Mr. Forster, and can attest the substantial accuracy of Mr. Bard's description of the relative position of the church, the tomb, and the exits. The words "must have passed me," however, give a slightly erroneous impression;" must have come very near me," would be the more correct description. - F. W. H. M.

I do not say as the only element. I myself hold, as already implied, that the thought and emotion of living persons does largely intervene, as aiding or conditioning the independent action of the departed. I even believe that it is possible that, say, an intense fixation of my own mind on a departed spirit may aid that spirit to manifest at a special moment - and not even to me, but to a percipient more sensitive than myself. In the boundless ocean of mind innumerable currents and tides shift with the shifting emotion of each several soul.

1 See also the case of Mrs. Pennee in Proceedings S. P. R., vol. vi. p. 60.

746. But now we are confronted by another possible element in these vaguer classes of apparitions, harder to evaluate even than the possible action of incarnate minds. I mean the possible results of past mental action, which, for ought we know, may persist in some perceptible manner, without fresh reinforcement, just as the results of past bodily action persist. This question leads to the still wider question of retrocognition, and of the relation of psychical phenomena to time generally - a problem whose discussion cannot be attempted in this chapter. Yet we must remember that such possibilities exist; they may explain certain phenomena into which little of fresh intelligence seems to enter, as, for instance, the alleged persistence, perhaps for years, of meaningless sounds in a particular room or house.