We gradually discovered that the accounts of apparitions at the moment of death--testifying to a supersensory…
- Date of account
- Published 1903
- Source
- Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
- Reference
- Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death · selected passage 18
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
We gradually discovered that the accounts of apparitions at the moment of death--testifying to a supersensory communication between the dying man and the friend who sees him--led on without perceptible break to apparitions occurring after the death of the person seen, but while that death was yet unknown to the percipi…
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWe gradually discovered that the accounts of apparitions at the moment of death--testifying to a supersensory communication between the dying man and the friend who sees him--led on without perceptible break to apparitions occurring after the death of the person seen, but while that death was yet unknown to the percipient, and thus apparently due, not to mere brooding memory, but to a continued action of that departed spirit. The task next incumbent on us therefore seemed plainly to be the collection and analysis of evidence of this and other types, pointing directly to the survival of man's spirit. But after pursuing this task for some years I felt that in reality the step from the action of embodied to the action of disembodied spirits would still seem too sudden if taken in this direct way. So far, indeed, as the evidence from apparitions went, the series seemed continuous from phantasms of the living to phantasms of the dead. But the whole mass of evidence _primâ facie_ pointing to man's survival was of a much more complex kind. It consisted largely, for example, in written or spoken utterances, coming through the hand or voice of living men, but claiming to proceed from a disembodied source.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThe passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.
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