Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the
raising, without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or
even of a person, might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory
power; but hitherto the instances have not been sufficiently
numerous or authentic to allow us to draw any conclusions. Also
we shall meet with it again when we come to the chapter treating
of the materializations of which it forms part.


THE UNKNOWN GUEST

CHAPTER I. PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

1

This brings us without any break to the consideration of
veridical apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted
houses. We all know that the phantasms of the living and the dead
have now a whole literature of their own, a literature which owes
its birth to the numerous and conscientious enquiries conducted
in England, France, Belgium and the United States at the instance
of the Society for Psychical Research. In the presence of the
mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in
denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this
time incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be
transmitted instantaneously from one mind to another, however
great the distance that separates the mind experiencing the
emotion from the mind receiving the communication. It is most
often manifested by a visual hallucination, more rarely by an