Cock Lane and Common-Sense

'Why, there's my ghost!' she exclaimed, and her friends, running to the window, allowed that he answered to the description. The 'ghost' went into the house of Miss H.'s friend...

When the spectral Desfontaines went away, on the first occasion, Bezuel told another boy that Desfontaines was drowned. The lad ran to the parents of Desfontaines, who had just...

The narrator here makes the important reflection that Providence could not allow a ghost to appear merely to enrich a foolish peasant. But, granting ghosts (as the narrator does...

Very fortunately for science, we have similar examples of imperfect expression in the living. Thus Dr. Gibotteau, formerly interne at a hospital in Paris, published, in Annales...

The inferences to be drawn from crystal-gazing are not unimportant. First, we note that the practice is very ancient and widely diffused, among civilised and uncivilised people....

A brief precis of 'cases' may show how these elements of noise, on one side, and apparitions, on the other, are commonly blended. In a detached villa, just outside 'the town of...

Let us examine a few instances of the ghost who visibly moves material objects. We take one (already cited) from Mrs. Sidgwick's own article. {205} In this case a gentleman name...

It is usual to explain the raps by a theory that the 'medium' produces them through cracking his, or her, knee-joints. It may thus be argued that Sister Anthoinette discovered t...

Religious excitement and hallucination. St. Anthony. Zulu catechumens. Haunted Covenanters. Strange case of Thomas Smeaton. Law's 'Memorialls'. A deceitful spirit. Examples of i...

This exclusiveness of 'Imperator' certainly donne furieusement a penser. If spirits are spirits they may just as well take it for understood that performances 'done in a corner'...

Iamblichus, in his reply to Porphyry's doubts, first enters into theology pretty deeply, but, in book ii. chap. iii. he comes, as it were, to business. The nature of the spiritu...

Before examining the researches and the results of this learned body, we may glance at some earlier industry of investigators. The common savage beliefs are too well known to ne...

Curiously enough, a different version of Dr. Pitcairn's dream is in existence. Several anecdotes about the doctor are prefixed, in manuscript, to a volume of his Latin poems, wh...

M. Poupart now gives the explanations of common-sense. The early noises might have had physical causes: master, servants, and neighbours all heard them, but that proves nothing....

The tendency of the anthropologist is to explain this fact by Survival and Revival. Given the savage beliefs in magic, spirit rapping, clairvoyance, and so forth, these, like Ma...

This theory is most cogently presented by Mr. Tylor, and is confirmed by examples chosen from his wide range of reading. But, among these normal and natural facts, as of sleep,...

Beginning with what may be admitted as possible, we find that the Dene Hareskins practise a form of healing under hypnotic or mesmeric treatment. {38} The physician (who is to b...

M. de Gasparin now examines another class of objections. First, the phenomena were denied; next, they were said to be as old as history, and familiar to the Greeks. We elsewhere...

Taking levitation, haunting, disturbances and apparitions, and leaving 'telepathy' or second sight out of the list for the present, he who compares psychical research in the sev...

Granting the ambiguous state, granting darkness, and expectancy, anything may seem to happen. But Dr. Carpenter wholly omits such cases as that of Mr. Hamilton Aide, and of M. A...

Dr. Hibbert never even asks for the authority on which this legend reposes, certainly Balcarres does not tell the tale in his own report, or memoirs, for James II. (Bannatyne Cl...

Spirits much more rare and valuable than those spoken of in this book are yours. Whatever 'Mediums' may be able to do, you can 'transfer' High Spirits to your readers; one of wh...

As to the idea of purposely evoking the dead, it is at least as impious, as absurd, as odious to taste and sentiment, as it is insane in the eyes of reason. This protest the wri...

On the Coppermine River the medicine-man, according to Hearne, prophesies of travellers, like the Highland second-sighted man, ere they appear. The Finns and Lapps boast of simi...

{26b} We have here thrown together a crowd of odd experiences. The savages' examples are dealt with in the next essay; the Catholic marvels in the essay on 'Comparative Psychica...