Research source

XIV. I GO ON WITH THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE, AND NARRATE A GHOSTLY HAPPENING IN LIVERPOOL 183

Date of account: Published 1916
Source: Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter
Reference: Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter · selected passage 102
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Snobbishness is responsible for much

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 only

Snobbishness is responsible for much. The big man is credulous, and because he is credulous the little man is credulous too. Hence, consistency in the spirit world, in clairvoyance, in automatic writing, is, for the moment, almost universally accepted, and direct communication with the spirit world erroneously looked upon as an every-day occurrence. It will be otherwise when the man in the street wakes up and discovers the occult for himself. Experience will, I think, teach him, as it has taught me, that although ghosts may on very rare occasions come to order—and when they do, their coming is, I believe, quite as surprising to the medium as it is to the audience—by far the greater number of superphysical phenomena appear spontaneously; and it is through such spontaneous appearances only that we can hope to make any progress in our communication with the other world.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This is a historical account assembled under the reporting and publishing conventions of its period. It may preserve testimony, hearsay, retelling and editorial interpretation together.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

A modern comparison can identify recurring descriptions and possible explanations, but the account is not treated as independently verified evidence merely because it appeared in print.

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