Just, too, as souls are possessed of visible forms, so they are generally supposed to have voices
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century compilation
- Source
- The Ghost World
- Reference
- The Ghost World · selected passage 12
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Just, too, as souls are possessed of visible forms, so they are generally supposed to have voices
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 onlyJust, too, as souls are possessed of visible forms, so they are generally supposed to have voices. According to Dr. Tylor,[51] 'men who perceive evidently that souls do talk when they present themselves in dream or vision, naturally take for granted at once the objective reality of the ghostly voice, and of the ghostly form from which it proceeds;' and this principle, he adds, 'is involved in the series of narratives of spiritual communications with living men, from savagery onward to civilisation.' European folk-lore represents ghostly voices as resembling their material form during life, although less audible. With savage races the spirit voice is described 'as a low murmur, chirp, or whistle.' Thus, when the ghosts of the New Zealanders address the living, they speak in whistling tones.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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