Phantasms of the Living

Record summary

Phantasms of the Living, published in London in 1886 by Edmund Gurney, Frederic W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, assembled hundreds of reports of apparitions, crisis visions, and alleged telepathic experiences. It is a key nineteenth-century comparison source for prophecy-like foreknowledge and perceived communication across distance. The authors generally explored psychological and telepathic explanations rather than asserting ghosts in every case. Verification requires consulting the original volumes, case questionnaires, and later methodological critiques, especially concerning memory, coincidence, selection bias, and the reliability of informants.