Haunted house inhabitants

Usage examples of apparitions.

For, if we think for a moment, the alleged events of ghostdom - apparitions of all sorts - are precisely identical with the every-night phenomena of dreaming, except for the avowed element of sleep in dreams.

At the same time an account of the current theories of Apparitions is offered, in language as free from technicalities as possible.

This theory, that apparitions come in an infinitesimal moment of sleep, while a man is conscious of his surroundings and believes himself to be awake was the current explanation of ghosts in the eighteenth century.

Out of about 18,000 answers to questions on this subject, has been deduced the conclusion that the deaths do coincide with the apparitions to an extent beyond mere accident.

Here it may be remarked that apparitions in haunted houses are very seldom recognised as those of dead persons, and, when recognised, the recognition is usually dubious.

I found myself still gazing at the window from which both apparitions had vanished.

While alien abduction stories have much more the flavour of profane, demonic apparitions, insight into the UFO myth can also be gained from visions described as sacred.

But more appropriate for our purpose are the apparitions seen by shepherds and peasants and children.

Europe, such apparitions were greeted warmly by the Roman Catholic clergy, especially because the Marian admonitions were so congenial to the priesthood.

But we have no apparitions cautioning the Church against, say, accepting the delusion of an Earth-centred Universe, or warning it of complicity with Nazi Germany - two matters of considerable moral as well as historical import, on which Pope John Paul II, to his credit, has admitted that the Church has erred.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is true, some of the apparitions have taken on greater import - at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, where the Virgin was incensed that a secular government had replaced a government run by the Church, and at Garabandal, Spain, in 1961-5, where the end of the world was threatened unless conservative political and religious doctrines were adopted forthwith.

In the late medieval cures associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary, most were of sudden, short-lived, whole-body or partial paralyses that are plausibly psychogenic.

People who see ghosts or religious apparitions have the same patterns as the UFO contactees.