The Society for Psychical Research’s American case collection

Record summary

British psychical researchers collected apparition reports from North American correspondents as part of the late nineteenth-century study of veridical hallucinations and experiences of the dying or recently dead. Publications such as Phantasms of the Living and the Society for Psychical Research proceedings include named witnesses, correspondence, dates, and attempts to compare reports with independently recorded deaths. The material is useful for studying evidential thresholds and memory transmission. Cases were voluntary and retrospective, and selection bias, coincidence, and ordinary hallucination remain major interpretive concerns.