Humans often report apparition sightings. Skeptics try to explain such sightings as hallucinations. Let us consider what we would expect under the hallucination hypothesis, and compare that to what is observed in apparition sightings.
Under the hypothesis that apparition sightings are hallucinations, we would expect all of the following things:
(1) It would be just as common, or perhaps even more common, for people to see apparitions of healthy, living people (with years of additional life) as apparitions of dead people.
(2) It would be just as common for people to see apparitions of animals as apparitions of humans.
(3) It would be just as common for people outside of reputed haunted places to see apparitions of historical people or celebrities as apparitions of family members or friends.
(4) It would be just as common for people to see apparitions of lifeless things as apparitions of humans.
(5) Almost never (except by the most improbable of coincidences) would two or more people report seeing the same apparition. If an apparition was a hallucination caused by some rare brain state, we would not expect so rare a brain state to appear identically to two people, so that they both reported seeing at the exact same an illusory thing (such as the same deceased person). That would be as improbable as two people sleeping together waking up, and both of them reporting that they just had the same dream (such as a dream of a dinosaur roaming about).
(6) The people who reported apparitions of the deceased would be mainly mentally ill people.
All of these predictions fail to match reality. Let's look at each one.
Prediction 1: "It would be just as common, or perhaps even more common, for people to see apparitions of healthy, living people (with years of additional life) as apparitions of dead people." Counting the entire lifespan (which often includes sightings of apparitions at the end of life), it is fairly common for people to report seeing an apparition of someone known to be dead. Also, a large class of apparitions consists of cases in which someone reports seeing an apparition of someone who was later found to have died at about the same time, or later found to have been close to death at about the same time. I give very many examples of such apparitions in the series of 16 posts you can read here (you can read all of them by continuing to press Older Posts when you come to the bottom). But it seems to be rare for someone to report an apparition of a living, healthy person who had years of additional lifespan ahead of him. Such cases seem to be many times less common that apparitions of someone who previously died or died at about the same time the apparition was seen.
Prediction 2: "It would be just as common for people to see apparitions of animals as apparitions of humans." For a large fraction of people, pets are almost like family members. But it seems to be very rare for someone to report seeing an apparition of a deceased pet. The topic is discussed in the news article below, published after the Society for Psychical Research had published hundreds of accounts of apparitions of humans:
We read at the top left a statement that apparitions of animals are very scarce.
Prediction 3: "It would be just as common for people outside of reputed haunted places to see apparitions of historical people or celebrities as apparitions of family members or friends." In England there are various old castles or old buildings where there are supposedly apparitions of historical figures sometimes seem. Outside of such cases, it seems to be very rare for anyone to see an apparition of a historical figure.
Under the theory that apparitions are hallucinations, we would expect apparitions of Jesus to be very common in countries where Christianity is predominant. Apparitions of Jesus seem to be very rare for those not being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Chronicling America web site allows you to do text searches of American newspapers from 1756 to 1963. Searching for the phrase "apparition of Jesus" on the Chronicling America web site produces only 11 matches, with only one of the newspaper accounts referring to an apparition of Jesus reported in modern times. For some reason, searching for the phrase "ghost of Jesus" on this site does not work to find matches of that exact phrase, but instead picks up any page (very many) referring to the Christian Trinity using the older phrasing such as "the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."
Abraham Lincoln was the most famous US president between 1820 and 1920, but searching for "apparition of Lincoln" on the Chronicling America web site produces no cases of anyone reporting an apparition of Lincoln. Similarly, searching for "apparition of Napoleon" on that site produces no cases of anyone reporting an apparition of Napoleon, merely a few repetitions of someone loosely using the word "apparition" to merely mean a sighting of Napoleon while they were in the presence of the living Napoleon. Without using such a term, I did find one account of someone claiming to see an apparition of Napoleon.
By comparison, searching for the phrase "apparition of her husband" produces 45 results, many of which are accounts of people claiming to see apparitions of husbands; and searching for "ghost of her husband" produces 126 matches.
"Calling together her friends and neighbors, she told them she had just seen an apparition of her husband, who, for two years had been absent In New York. He appeared to her to be lying
in a hospital with one hand covering his breast, and he told her that he had been gravely wounded. The day after she received a cablegram from America Informing her that her husband was
dying, having been stabbed by an emissary of the Black Hand."
Similarly, searching for "apparition of his wife" produces 11 matches, searching for "ghost of his wife" produces 119 matches, searching for "apparition of his father" produces 20 matches, searching for "ghost of his father" produces 119 matches, searching for "apparition of his mother" produces 6 matches, searching for "ghost of his mother" produces 58 matches, searching for "apparition of her mother" produces 7 matches, searching for "apparition of her father" produces 9 matches, searching for "ghost of her father" produces 47 matches, searching for "apparition of his brother" produces 5 matches, searching for "apparition of his sister" produces 5 matches, searching for "apparition of her sister" produces 11 matches, searching for "apparition of his friend" produces 11 matches, searching for "apparition of her friend" produces 7 matches, searching for "ghost of her friend" produces 4 matches, and searching for "ghost of her friend" produces 47 matches.
Clearly Prediction #3 does not match reality. It is very much more common for people to report seeing apparitions of deceased family members or deceased friends (or family members or friends at about the same time they died) than to see apparitions of historical figures or celebrities.
Prediction #4: "It would be just as common for people to see apparitions of lifeless things as apparitions of humans." It seems to be extremely rare for anyone to see an apparition of a lifeless thing. Automobiles have long played a central role in the life of Americans. But a search for the phrase "apparition of an automobile" on the Chronicling America web site produces only two matches, both of which refer only to horses being scared by automobiles, not humans reporting an apparition of an automobile. No one ever reports seeing an apparition of an automobile in their house or back yard.
Prediction #5: "Almost never (except by the most improbable of coincidences) would two or more people report seeing the same apparition." This prediction fails. There are hundreds of cases of more than one people reporting the sight of the same apparition. Such cases can be examined by using the link
here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. Among the posts you can read using that link are these:
Prediction #6: "The people who reported apparitions of the deceased would be mainly mentally ill people." There is no evidence that this is the case. The great majority who report seeing an apparition of the deceased are normal people who never previously hallucinated. I personally have published many posts describing many hundreds of apparition sightings, and I can almost never recall such a reported sighting coming from someone with signs of psychosis.
The content of apparition sightings (mainly involving either family members or friends who either died earlier or at about the same time as the apparition was seen) argues strongly against the claim that apparition sightings are mainly hallucinations. Apparition sightings are an extremely important clue about the nature of our minds: one of many clues that our minds are not the products of our brains, and that minds can exist outside of bodies. There are many other types of clues telling us the same thing, clues discussed in the posts of this blog.
The ignoring of apparition sightings by today's neuroscientists is an example of people senselessly ignoring a very important clue, rather like a trusting wife ignoring the very important clue of strange panties repeatedly found under her bed, panties she does not recognize as her own. Senselessly, today's scientists profess belief in things humans never have observed (such as dark matter, dark energy and synapse-stored memories), while refusing to believe in things (spirits of the deceased) that very many people have claimed to have directly observed. It's as if their inner rule was a senseless and unscientific rule of "believe as my peers believe, not in proportion to how many observations there were of something."
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