Phantasms of the Living

This 1886 publication investigating the connection between ghost-seeing and telepathy is a key source on Victorian psychical research.

Edmund Gurney (Author), Frederic William Henry Myers (Author), Frank Podmore (Author)

9781108027335, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2011

766 pages
21.6 x 14 x 4.3 cm, 0.96 kg

This two-volume work, co-authored by Edmund Gurney (1847–1888), Frederic W. H. Myers (1843–1901) and Frank Podmore (1856–1910), all leading members of the Society for Psychical Research, was first published in 1886. This collection, containing over 700 case studies of sensory phantasms and hypnotic experiments, was one of the first attempts to deal scientifically with the hypothesis of psychic thought-transference and to catalogue and provide a body of evidence in its support. Volume 2 presents data and analyses of auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations, and those of a reciprocal or collective nature. It contains addenda and a conclusion for the two volumes. This pioneering study is an indispensable source for the history of psychical research and nineteenth-century attitudes to the idea of telepathy. It provides detailed insights into the Victorian fascination with the occult and the supernatural.

Additions and corrections
13. The theory of chance-coincidence
14. Further visual cases occurring to single percipient
15. Further auditory cases occurring to a single percipient
16. Tactile cases, and cases affecting more than one of the percipient's senses
17. Reciprocal cases
18. Collective cases
Conclusion
Supplement: Introduction
1. Further examples of thought-transference, principally in hypnotic cases
2. Ideal, emotional, and motor cases
3. Dream
4. Borderland cases
5. Visual cases
6. Auditory and tactile cases
7. Cases affecting more than one of the percipient's senses
8. Reciprocal cases
9. Collective cases
Additional chapter
Table of numbered cases
Analysis of the table
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]