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Apparitional experience

"Apparitional" redirects here. For the 2013 film, see Apparitional (film).
In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual
experience. It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living be
ing or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a
perception. The person experiencing the apparition is awake, excluding dream vis
ions from consideration.
In scientific or academic discussion, the term "apparitional experience" is to b
e preferred to the term "ghost" in respect of the following points:
The term ghost implies that some element of the human being survives death and,
at least under certain circumstances, can make itself perceptible to living huma
n beings. There are other competing explanations of apparitional experiences.
Firsthand accounts of apparitional experiences differ in many respects from thei
r fictional counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories and films (see
below).
The content of apparitional experiences includes living beings, both human and a
nimal, and even inanimate objects.
History of the concept[edit]
Attempts to apply modern scientific or investigative standards to the study of a
pparitional experiences began with the work of Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Mye
rs and Frank Podmore,[2] who were leading figures in the early years of the Soci
ety for Psychical Research (founded in 1882). Their motive, as with most of the
early work of the Society,[3] was to provide evidence for human survival after d
eath. For this reason they had a particular interest in what are known as crisis
cases . These are cases in which a person has a quasi-perceptual experience of som
eone at a distance at the time of that person s death or other crisis. If the temp
oral coincidence of the crisis and the distant apparitional experience cannot be
explained by any conventional means, then the presumption is made that some as
yet unknown form of communication, such as telepathy (a term coined by Myers[4])
has taken place.
While the extent to which the work of Gurney and his colleagues succeeded in pro
viding evidence for either telepathy or survival of death is still controversial
, the large collection of firsthand written accounts which resulted from their p
ainstaking methods still constitutes a body of valuable data concerning the phen
omenology of hallucinations in the sane.
A notable later discussion of apparitional experiences was that of G. N. M. Tyrr
ell,[5] also a leading member of the Society for Psychical Research of his day.
Tyrrell accepted the hallucinatory character of the experience, pointing out tha
t it is virtually unknown for firsthand accounts to claim that apparitional figu
res leave any of the normal physical effects, such as footprints in snow, that o
ne would expect of a real person.[6] However, Tyrrell develops the idea that the
apparition may be a way for the unconscious part of the mind to bring to consci
ousness information that has been paranormally acquired
in crisis cases, for exa
mple. He introduces an evocative metaphor of a mental stage-carpenter ,[7] behind t
he scenes in the unconscious part of the mind, and constructing the quasi-percep
tual experience that eventually appears on the stage of consciousness, so that i
t embodies paranormal information in a symbolic way, a person drowning at a dist
ance appearing soaked in water, for example.
The study and discussion of apparitions developed in a different direction in th
e 1970s, with the work of Celia Green and Charles McCreery.[8] They were not pri
marily interested in the question of whether apparitions could shed any light on
the existence or otherwise of telepathy, or in the survival question; instead t
hey were concerned to analyse a large number of cases with a view to providing a

taxonomy of the different types of experience, viewed simply as a type of anoma


lous perceptual experience or hallucination.
One of the points that was highlighted by their work was point (2) listed above,
namely that real-life accounts of apparitional experiences differ markedly from t
he traditional or literary ghost story. These are some of the more notable diffe
rences, at least as indicated by their own collection of 1800 firsthand accounts
:
Subjects of apparitional experiences are by no means always frightened by the ex
perience; indeed they may find them soothing or reassuring at times of crisis or
ongoing stress in their lives.[9]
Spontaneous apparitional experiences tend to happen in humdrum or everyday surro
undings, and under conditions of low central nervous system arousal, most often
in the subject s own home - while doing housework, for example. By contrast, subje
cts who visit reputedly haunted locations in hopes of seeing a ghost are more ofte
n than not disappointed.[10]
Apparitions tend to be reported as appearing solid and not transparent; indeed t
hey may be so realistic in a variety of ways as to deceive the percipient as to
their hallucinatory nature; in some cases the subject only achieves insight afte
r the experience has ended.[11]
It is unusual for an apparitional figure to engage in any verbal interaction wit
h the percipient; this is consistent with the finding that the majority of such
experiences only involve one sense (most commonly the visual).[12]
Psychological implications[edit]
Psychological theories of perception[edit]
Apparitional experiences have relevance to psychological theories of perception,
and in particular to the distinction between top-down and bottom-up approaches
(cf. article on Top-down and bottom-up design). Top-down theories, such as that
of Richard Langton Gregory, who conceives of perception as a process whereby the
brain makes a series of hypotheses about the external world,[13] stress the imp
ortance of central factors such as memory and expectation in determining the phe
nomenological content of perception; while the bottom-up approach, exemplified b
y the work of James J. Gibson, emphasises the role of the external sensory stimu
lus.[14]
Apparitional experiences would seem to lend support to the importance of central
factors, since they represent a form of quasi-perceptual experience in which th
e role of external stimuli is minimal or possibly non-existent, while the experi
ence nevertheless continues to be phenomenologically indistinguishable from norm
al perception, at least in some cases.[15]
The concept of schizotypy[edit]
The interest of apparitional experiences to psychology has acquired an added dim
ension in recent years with the development of the concept of schizotypy or psyc
hosis-proneness.[16] This is conceived of as a dimension of personality,[17] con
tinuously distributed throughout the normal population, and analogous to the dim
ensions of extraversion or neuroticism. As long as mental illness is regarded un
der the disease model, according to which a person either does or does not have sc
hizophrenia or manic depression, just as a person either does or does not have s
yphilis or tuberculosis, then to talk of the occurrence of an apparitional or ha
llucinatory experience in a normal person is either an oxymoron, or to be taken
as an indication of latent or incipient psychosis. If, on the contrary, a dimens
ional view of the matter is taken, it becomes easier to conceive of how normal p
eople, more or less high on the putative schizotypy dimension, might be more or
less prone to anomalous perceptual experiences, without their ever tipping over
into psychosis.[18]
Green and McCreery s identification of a class of what they called reassuring appar
itions [9] is of particular interest in this regard, as it suggests that the exper

iencing of hallucinations may even have an adaptive effect in certain subjects,


making them better able to cope with adverse life events. This would fit with th
e model of schizotypy as essentially a normal dimension of personality, and migh
t help to explain why the proneness to anomalous perceptual experiences has appa
rently not been weeded out by the process of natural selection.
Philosophical implications[edit]
Direct realism[edit]
Apparitional experiences also have implications for the philosophy of perception
. The occurrence of hallucinations, that is, perceptual experiences 'having the
character of sense perception, but without relevant or adequate sensory stimulat
ion [ ]',[19] have long been one of the standard objections to the philosophical t
heory of direct realism. According to this theory we are in some sense in direct
contact with the external world when we seem to be perceiving it, and not merel
y in direct contact with some mediating representation in our mind, such as a se
nse-datum or an image, which may or may not correspond to external reality. The
psychologist J.J. Gibson, referred to above, became an advocate of the philosoph
ical theory of direct realism.[20]
Hallucinatory experiences reported by sane people do not pose any new problem in
principle for the theory of direct realism, other than that posed already by th
e more widely discussed hallucinations reported by people in a state of psychosi
s or under other abnormal conditions such as sensory deprivation. However, they
do pose the problem in a particularly stark way, for the following reasons:
Scepticism about the status of verbal reports:
In the case of hallucinations reported to have occurred in pathological or abnor
mal states there is some scope for uncertainty about the accuracy, or even the m
eaning, of the percipient s verbal report. Horowitz,[21] for example, summarising
his experience of questioning chronic schizophrenic patients about their visual
experiences during painting sessions, wrote:
'It was necessary to persist beyond initial verbal descriptions of their halluci
nations, and insist that the patient describe and draw what he had seen. Initial
descriptions of "vicious snakes" might then be drawn and redescribed as wavy li
nes. "Two armies struggling over my soul" arose from the subjective experience o
f seeing moving sets of dots. "Spiders" might be reduced, when the patient state
d and drew what he actually saw, to a few radiating lines. In drawings of their
hallucinations patients could often distinguish between those forms which duplic
ated what they saw with their eyes from those forms which were what they "made o
ut of it".'[22]
Such difficulties of interpretation are much less obvious in the case of written
reports by ostensibly normal subjects, in good health and not medicated at the
time of the experience.
Extreme realism of the experience:
As mentioned above, at least some of the apparitional experiences reported by no
rmal subjects appear to mimic normal perception to such a degree that the subjec
t is deceived into thinking that what they are experiencing actually is normal p
erception. Similar close mimicking of normal perception is reported by some of t
he subjects of a lucid dream[23] and out-of-body experiences,[24] which therefor
e pose similar problems for the theory of direct realism.
Representationalism[edit]
Apparitional experiences appear prima facie more compatible with the philosophic
al theory of representationalism. According to this theory, the immediate object
s of experience when we are perceiving the world normally are representations of
the world, rather than the world itself. These representations have been variou
sly called sense-data or images. In the case of an apparitional experience one m

ight say that the subject is aware of sense-data or images which happen not to c
orrespond to, or represent, the external world in the normal way.
The philosophical implications of hallucinatory experiences in the sane are disc
ussed by McCreery.[25] He argues that they provide empirical support for the the
ory of representationalism rather than direct realism.
See also[edit]

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