Apparitional experience

In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception.Reportedly haunted locations: In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. In academic discussion, the term 'apparitional experience' is to be preferred to the term 'ghost' in respect of the following points: Attempts to apply modern scientific or investigative standards to the study of apparitional experiences began with the work of Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers and Frank Podmore, who were leading figures in the early years of the Society for Psychical Research (founded in 1882). Their motive, as with most of the early work of the Society, was to provide evidence for human survival after death. For this reason they had a particular interest in what are known as ‘crisis cases’. These are cases in which a person reports having a hallucinatory experience, visual or otherwise, which apparently represents someone at a distance, this experience subsequently being considered to have coincided with that person's death, or a significant life event of some kind. If the temporal coincidence of the crisis and the distant apparitional experience cannot be explained by any conventional means, then in parapsychology the presumption is made that some as yet unknown form of communication, such as telepathy (a term coined by Myers) has taken place. While it may be said that the work of Gurney and his colleagues failed to provide convincing evidence for either telepathy or survival of death, the large collection of firsthand written accounts which resulted from their methods may nevertheless be regarded as providing a valuable body of data concerning the phenomenology of hallucinations in the sane. A notable later discussion of apparitional experiences was that of G. N. M. Tyrrell, also a leading member of the Society for Psychical Research of his day. Tyrrell accepted the hallucinatory character of the experience, pointing out that it is virtually unknown for firsthand accounts to claim that apparitional figures leave any of the normal physical effects, such as footprints in snow, that one would expect of a real person. However, Tyrrell develops the idea that the apparition may be a way for the unconscious part of the mind to bring to consciousness information that has been paranormally acquired – in crisis cases, for example. He introduces an evocative metaphor of a mental ‘stage-carpenter’, behind the scenes in the unconscious part of the mind, and constructing the quasi-perceptual experience that eventually appears on the stage of consciousness, so that it embodies paranormal information in a symbolic way, a person drowning at a distance appearing soaked in water, for example. The study and discussion of apparitions developed in a different direction in the 1970s, with the work of Celia Green and Charles McCreery. They were not primarily interested in the question of whether apparitions could shed any light on the existence or otherwise of telepathy, or in the survival question; instead they 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 anomalous perceptual experience or hallucination.