Apparitions

by G.N.M. Tyrrell

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Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

George Nugent Merle Tyrrell, most well known as G. N. M. Tyrrell was a British mathematician, physicist, radio engineer and parapsychologist.

Tyrrell was the president of the Society for Psychical Research 1945-1946.

Tyrrell created the term out-of-body experience in his book Apparitions.

Reviews

[Lamont S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential Reading on the Subject

Highly recommended for those wishing to delve into the fascinating matter of apparitions. The book is by this time quite dated but remains relevant.

[Charles Hengst · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Psychical research has certainly not drawn a blank. It has, on the contrary, discovered something so big that people sheer away from it in a reaction of fear. They feel that they cannot cope with it, and are unwilling to make the drastic overhaul of their cherished convictions which the subject demands.”

[Heikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1889, the British Society for Psychical research entered into a landmark research project: the Census of Hallucinations.

17,000 people were asked the "Census Question", which read: "Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or an inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; which impression, so far as you could discover, was not due to any external physical cause?"

This complex sentence of course translates to "Have you ever seen, heard, or been touched by an apparition?" Out of the 17,000 respondents, 1,684 said Yes. To these, almost 10% of the interviewees, a more complete interview was given. This corpus of evidence is then painstakingly examined by Mr Tyrrell, who does a splendid job in providing a statistical analysis of the results.

According to him, the apparitions that were described in the corpus can be divided into four categories: Experimental cases, in which a living person deliberately tries to make himself visible to an observer who is distant; Crisis-apparitions in which a person is represented by an apparition in a time of acute crisis; Apparitions which appear so long after a person's death that no crisis can be supposed; and Ghosts, which haunt certain places or buildings. This classification is not sharply divided.

With fascinating examples, Tyrrell looks into each class and supplies evidence that the events are real and not hallucinatory. Still, apparitions are not physical phenomena; even if they appear to open a door and enter a room, they do so by opening a 'copy' of the door, sometimes with associated squeaks and sounds of floorboards creaking. He also has many examples to cover the feeling of cold often associated with ghosts as well as auditory cues and other subjective features.

To explain what an apparition is, he goes into much detail with normal sensory observation, ie. when we see a brick, we see an object and decide upon previous experience and the characteristics of that object that it is a brick. There's a distinction between sensing and perceiving here, and with apparitions, we may be perceiving upon hallucinatory sense-data. Tyrrell is hesitant in declaring what apparitions really are, and he's not saying they are departed souls or anything really, but he doesn't dispute the veracity or validity of the people who have seen or sensed apparitions. He sees apparitions as manifestations of an 'idea-pattern' pertaining to the person whose apparition it is that someone sees, and that the idea-pattern can sometimes become evident after death. Tyrrell states that we will never get to the bottom of this issue, unless we invest heavily into learning more about human personality.

This is not a book for ghost-hunters or those eager to be spooked; rather, this is a book for those who are interested in the big picture and want to consider ghosts and apparitions from a rationa, albeit skeptical and realistic standpoint. For me as a writer of speculative fiction, it is a treasure trove for learning of many kinds of encounters that have actually occurred between people and apparitions. Some of the cases, especially the crisis-apparitions, are extremely interesting in the sense that such events appear in other books as well. When Captain Raymond Hinchliffe was attempting the crossing of the Atlantic from east to west, he was beyond radio contact and no one knew what was happening to him. However, his distraught figure appeared on a steamer on the Atlantic, on which two of his old pilot buddies were traveling, and said that he was lost and could not survive. This classic crisis-apparition has many siblings in Tyrrell's book.

All in all, I'd say that for quick thrills, this is not your book, but if you are into the issue of ghosts and apparitions beyond just the surface, don't miss this.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitious--and boring (the usual result when somebody tries to make the flaky sound respectable). The only interesting part was the cases themselves--what there was of them. His theory was unbearable--almost as excruciating as Dunne's An Experiment With Time. I'm afraid it's a bit early in the ball game to be elaborating such conclusions--the best you can do is go on gathering facts. As he himself says: "These people want to build a railway, whereas our first duty is to make a rough map of the terrain."

[Jose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haven’t really dived into it yet, but the summaries by reviewers seems promising