The number of hallucinations representing living or dying recognised
persons in the answers received, was 352. Of first-hand cases, in which
coincidence of the hallucination with the death of the person apparently
seen was affirmed, there were 80, of which 26 are given.

The non-coincidental hallucinations were multiplied by four, to allow for
forgetfulness of 'misses.' The results being compared, it was decided that
the hallucinations collected coincided with death 440 more often than
ought to be the case by the law of probabilities. Therefore there was
proof, or presumption, in favour of some relation of cause and effect
between A's death and B's hallucination.

If we were to attack the opinion of the Committee on Hallucinations, that
'Between deaths and apparitions of the dying a connection exists which is
not due to chance alone,' the assault should be made not only on the
method, but on the details. The events were never of very recent, and
often were of remote occurrence. The remoteness was less than it seems,
however, as the questions were often answered several years before the
publication of the Report (1894). There was scarcely any documentary
evidence, any note or letter written between the hallucination and the
arrival of news of the death. Such letters, the evidence alleged, had in
some cases existed, but had been lost, burnt, eaten by white ants, or
written on a sheet of blotting paper or the whitewashed wall of a barrack
room. If I may judge by my own lifelong success in mislaying, losing, and
casually destroying papers, from cheques to notes made for literary
purposes, from interesting letters of friends to the manuscripts of
novelists, or if I may judge by Sir Walter Scott's triumphs of the same
kind, I should not think much of the disappearance of documentary evidence
to death-wraiths. Nobody supposed, when these notes were written, that