A possible explanation of a different kind has been already illustrated by the story quoted on page 153, where…
- Date of account
- Published 1894
- Source
- Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
- Reference
- Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy · selected passage 199
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
A possible explanation of a different kind has been already illustrated by the story quoted on page 153, where it was shown that a solitary hallucination had grown in the course of five-and-twenty years into a collective vision
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 onlyA possible explanation of a different kind has been already illustrated by the story quoted on page 153, where it was shown that a solitary hallucination had grown in the course of five-and-twenty years into a collective vision. The narrator in this case was a child at the time of the alleged experience. Children and uneducated persons generally, who are not prone to analyse their own sensations, seem liable after a certain interval to mistake the image called up by another's recital for an actual experience of their own; and this is especially likely to occur when the auditor was present at the time of the experience or familiar with the scene of the occurrence. Indeed, most persons who visualise with moderate facility are probably liable to this form of mistake on a small scale. I had about five years since an example of this in my own case. A friend had described to me minutely some simple apparatus of his own invention. About a year later he brought the apparatus to London and offered to show it to me. I replied that I had already seen it; but on being confronted with it I found the proportions and general appearance of the actual object quite unlike my mental image of it.
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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