caused by the deceased, is not necessarily the deceased, though it may
be an indication that "some kind of force is being exercised after death
which is in some way connected with a person previously known on earth,"
or that the apparitions may be purely local, or due entirely to
subjective hallucination on the part of the person beholding them.
Strangely enough, we rarely find any of those interesting cases,
everywhere so well attested, of people appearing just about the time of
their death to friends or relatives to whom they are particularly
attached, or with whom they have made a compact that they will appear,
should they die first, if it is possible. The classical instance of this
is the well-known story of Lord Brougham who, while taking a warm bath
in Sweden, saw a school friend whom he had not met for many years, but
with whom he had long ago "committed the folly of drawing up an
agreement written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us
died first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had
entertained of the life after death." There are, however, a number of
stories of the passing of souls, which are curiously like some of those
collected by the Society for Psychical Research, in the Fourth Book of
Gregory the Great's Dialogues.

Another noticeable difference is that apparitions in most
well-authenticated modern ghost stories are of a comforting character,
whereas those in the ancient world are nearly all the reverse. This
difference we may attribute to the entire change in the aspect of the
future life which we owe to modern Christianity. As we have seen, there
was little that was comforting in the life after death as conceived by
the old pagan religions, while in medieval times the horrors of hell
were painted in the most lurid colours, and were emphasized more than
the joys of heaven.