750. These hypotheses - none of which, as Mrs. Sidgwick expressly states (op. cit., p. 145), seemed to herself satisfactory - did nevertheless, I think, comprise all the deductions which could reasonably be made from the evidence as it at that time stood. A few modifications, which the experience of subsequent years has led me to introduce, can hardly be said to afford further explanation, although they state the difficulties in what now seems to me a more hopeful way.

In the first place then - as already explained in Chapter VI (Sensory Automatism) - I in some sense fuse into one Mrs. Sidgwick's two first hypotheses by my own hypothesis of actual presence, actual spatial changes induced in the mete-therial, but not in the material world. I hold that when the phantasm is discerned by more than one person at once (and on some other, but not all other occasions) it is actually effecting a change in that portion of space where it is perceived, although not, as a rule, in the matter which occupies that place. It is, therefore, not optically nor acoustically perceived; perhaps no rays of light are reflected nor waves of air set in motion; but an unknown form of supernormal perception, not necessarily acting through the sensory end-organs, comes into play. In the next place, I am inclined to lay stress on the parallel between these narratives of haunting and those phantasms of the living which I have already classed as psychorrhagic. In each case, as it seems to me, there is an involuntary detachment of some element of the spirit, probably with no knowledge thereof at the main centre of consciousness.

Those "haunts by the living," as they may be called (see Chapter VI (Sensory Automatism), 649) where, for instance, a man is seen phantasmally standing before his own fireplace - seem to me to be repeated, perhaps more readily, after the spirit is freed from the flesh.

1 In an earlier part of this paper, I mentioned cases of haunted houses where the apparitions are various, and might therefore all of them be merely subjective hallucinations, sometimes, perhaps, caused by expectancy. It is, of course, also possible to explain these cases by the hypothesis we are now discussing. Another class of cases is, perhaps, worth mentioning in this connection. We have in the collection two cases of what was believed by the narrators to be a quite peculiar feeling of discomfort, in houses where concealed and long since decomposed bodies were subsequently found. Such feelings are seldom clearly defined enough to have much evidential value, for others, at any rate, than the percipient; even though mentioned beforehand, and definitely connected with the place where the skeleton was. But if there be really any connection between the skeleton and the feeling, it may possibly be a subtle physical influence such as I am suggesting. - E. M. S.

751. Again, I think that the curious question as to the influence of certain houses in generating apparitions may be included under the broader heading of Retrocognition. That is to say, we are not here dealing with a special condition of certain houses, but with a branch of the wide problem as to the relation of supernormal phenomena to time. Manifestations which occur in haunted houses depend, let us say, on something which has taken place a long time ago. In what way do they depend on that past event? Are they a sequel, or only a residue? Is there fresh operation going on, or only fresh perception of something already accomplished? Or can we in such a case draw any real distinction between a continued action and a continued perception of a past action? The closest parallel, as it seems to me, although not at first sight an obvious one, lies between these phenomena of haunting, these persistent sights and sounds, and certain phenomena of crystal-vision and of automatic script, which also seem to depend somehow upon long-past events, - to be their sequel or their residue. One specimen case I give in an Appendix (751 A), where the connection of the haunting apparition with a certain person long deceased may be maintained with more than usual plausibility.

From that level the traceable connections get weaker and weaker (see 751 B), until we come to phantasmal scenes where there is no longer any even apparent claim to the contemporary agency of human spirits. Such a vision, for instance, as that of a line of spectral deer crossing a ford, may indeed, if seen in the same place by several independent observers, be held to be something more than a mere subjective fancy; but what in reality such a picture signifies is a question which brings us at once to theories of the permanence or simultaneity of all phenomena in a timeless Universal Soul.

Such conceptions, however difficult, are among the highest to which our mind can reach. Could we approach them more nearly, they might deeply influence our view, even of our own remote individual destiny. So, perhaps, shall it some day be; at present we may be well satisfied if we can push our knowledge of that destiny one step further than of old, even just behind that veil which has so long hung impenetrably before the eyes of men.