Real Ghost Stories | Page 4

latent force, which may yet be
destined to cast into the shade even the marvels of electrical science!
There is a growing interest in all the occult phenomena to which this
work is devoted. It is in evidence on every hand. The topic is in the air,
and will be discussed and is being discussed, whether we take notice of
it or not. That it has its dangers those who have studied it most closely
are most aware, but these dangers will exist in any case, and if those
who ought to guide are silent, these perils will be encountered without
the safeguards which experience would dictate and prudence suggest. It
seems to me that it would be difficult to do better service in this
direction than to strengthen the hands of those who have for many
years past been trying to rationalise the consideration of the Science of
Ghosts.
It is idle to say that this should be left for experts. We live in a
democratic age and we democratise everything. It is too late in the day
to propose to place the whole of this department under the care of any
Brahmin caste; the subject is one which every common man and
woman can understand. It is one which comes home to every human
being, for it adds a new interest to life, and vivifies the sombre but
all-pervading problem of death.

W. T. Stead.
London, 1891.

CONTENTS
PAGE

Part I.--The Ghost That Dwells in Each of
Us.

Chapter I.
The Unconscious Personality 17
" II. Louis V. and His Two Souls 32
" III. Madame B. and Her Three Souls 45
" IV. Some Suggested Theories 52

Part II.--The Thought Body, or the Double.

Chapter I.
Aerial Journeyings 56

" II. The Evidence of the Psychical Research Society 72
" III. Aimless Doubles 86
" IV. The Hypnotic Key 101

Part III.--Clairvoyance.--The Vision of the
Out of Sight.

Chapter I.
The Astral Camera 108
" II. Tragic Happenings Seen in Dreams 127
" III. My Own Experience 141

Part IV.--Premonitions and Second Sight.

Chapter I.
My Own Extraordinary Premonitions 145
" II. Warnings Given in Dreams 160
" III. Premonitory Warnings 179
" IV. Some Historical and Other Cases 192

Part V.--Ghosts of the Living on Business.

Chapter I.
Warnings of Peril and Death 199
" II. A Dying Double Demands its Portraits! 211

Part VI.--Ghosts Keeping Promise.

Chapter I.
My Irish Friend 222
" II. Lord Brougham's Testimony 231
Appendix.--Some Historical Ghosts 240

REAL GHOST STORIES.


PART I.
THE GHOST THAT DWELLS IN EACH OF US.

Chapter I.
The Unconscious Personality.
"Real Ghost Stories!--How can there be real ghost stories when there
are no real ghosts?"
But are there no real ghosts? You may not have seen one, but it does
not follow that therefore they do not exist. How many of us have seen
the microbe that kills? There are at least as many persons who testify
they have seen apparitions as there are men of science who have
examined the microbe. You and I, who have seen neither, must
perforce take the testimony of others. The evidence for the microbe
may be conclusive, the evidence as to apparitions may be worthless;
but in both cases it is a case of testimony, not of personal experience.
The first thing to be done, therefore, is to collect testimony, and by way
of generally widening the mind and shaking down the walls of
prejudice which lead so many to refuse to admit the clearest possible
evidence as to facts which have not occurred within their personal
experience, I preface the report of my "Census of Hallucinations" or
personal experiences of the so-called supernatural by a preliminary
chapter on the perplexing subject of "Personality." This is the question
that lies at the root of all the controversy as to ghosts. Before disputing
about whether or not there are ghosts outside of us, let us face the
preliminary question, whether we have not each of us a veritable ghost
within our own skin?
Thrilling as are some of the stories of the apparitions of the living and
the dead, they are less sensational than the suggestion made by
hypnotists and psychical researchers of England and France, that each
of us has a ghost inside him. They say that we are all haunted by a
Spiritual Presence, of whose existence we are only fitfully and
sometimes never conscious, but which nevertheless inhabits the
innermost recesses of our personality. The theory of these researchers is
that besides the body and the mind, meaning by the mind the Conscious
Personality, there is also within our material frame the soul or

Unconscious Personality, the nature of which is shrouded in
unfathomable mystery. The