The general reader, even if credulously inclined, is more staggered by a few examples of non-coincidental hallucinations, than confirmed by a pile of coincidental examples.  Now it seems to be a defect in the method of the friends of wraiths, that they do not publish, with full and impressive details, as many examples of non-coincidental as of coincidental hallucinations.  It is the story that takes the public:  if we are to be fair we must give the non-coincidental story in all its features, as is done in the matter of wraiths with a kind of message or meaning.

Let us set a good example, by adducing wraiths which, in slang phrase, were ‘sells’.  Those which we have at first hand are marked ‘(A),’ those at second-hand ‘(B)’.  But the world will accept the story of a ghost that failed on very poor evidence indeed.

1. (A) A young lady, in the dubious state between awake and asleep, unable, in fact, to feel certain whether she was awake or asleep, beheld her late grandmother.  The old lady wept as she sat by the bedside.

‘Why do you weep, grandmamma, are you not happy where you are?’ asked the girl.

‘Yes, I am happy, but I am weeping for your mother.’

‘Is she going to die?’

‘No, but she is going to lose you.’

‘Am I going to die, grandmamma?’

‘Yes, my dear.’

‘Soon?’

‘Yes, my dear, very soon.’

The young lady, with great courage, concealed her dream from her mother, but confided it to a brother.  She did her best to be good while she was on earth, where she is still, after an interval of many years.

Except for the conclusion, and the absence of a mystic bright light in the bedroom, this case exactly answers to that of Miss Lee, in 1662.  Dr. Hibbert would have liked this example.

2. (B) A lady, staying with a friend, observed that one morning she was much depressed.  The friend confided to her that, in the past night, she had seen her brother, dripping wet.  He told her that he had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat, which was attached by a rope to a ship.  At this time, he was on his way home from Australia.  The dream, or vision, was recorded in writing.  When next the first lady met her friend, she was entertaining her brother at luncheon.  He had never even been in a boat dragged behind a ship, and was perfectly safe.

3. (B) A lady, residing at a distance from Oxford wrote to tell her son, who was at Merton College, that he had just entered her room and vanished.  Was he well?  Yes, he was perfectly well, and bowling for the College Eleven.

4. (B) A lady in bed saw her absent husband.  He announced his death by cholera, and gave her his blessing, she, of course, was very anxious and miserable, but the vision was a lying vision.  The husband was perfectly well.

In all these four cases, anxiety was caused by the vision, and in three at least, action was taken, the vision was recorded orally, or in writing.  In the following set, the visions were waking hallucinations of sane persons never in any other instance hallucinated.