The Society for Psychical Research Census of Hallucinations

Record summary

The SPR’s Census of Hallucinations gathered questionnaires about visual or auditory experiences interpreted as apparitions, with results published in the 1890s and related to the earlier Phantasms of the Living project. It is a major nineteenth-century comparative lead because it shifted attention from celebrated ghosts to population frequency, timing and crisis experiences. The survey also exposes methodological problems: self-selection, retrospective memory, broad definitions of hallucination and uncertain verification of deaths. It is evidence about reported experiences and survey practice, not proof of survival after death.