Conference hydra::dejavu

132.0. "An interesting apparition case" by PBSVAX::COOPER (Topher Cooper) Mon May 12 1986 17:48

The following is the abstract of an article which appeared in the
April (1986, Volume 80 #2 pp 175-194) issue of the _Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research_.  It is by Karlis Osis
and is entitled "Characteristics of Purposeful Action in an
Apparition Case."  I thought people might be interested.  I have
added some notes of my own to flesh out the abstract a bit.  These
notes appear in "[...]" with a "-- T" signature.  My source of
information for these is the article itself.

    Some theories depict apparitions as mindless fragments,
    whereas others point out their intelligent and purposive
    side.  This case involves apparitions of a businessman,
    which occurred 2 days after he was killed in an airplane
    disaster [he was seemingly the only victim so "disaster"
    is probably a poor choice of words here -- T].  A distant
    relative addressed a plea to his postmortem personality
    [by talking to a picture of the deceased in a wedding
    album --T], requesting that he appear to his mother in a
    certain manner ["It would be a nice gesture if you would
    go and find your little boy who was drowned a year ago and
    take him by the hand and appear to your mother so that she
    will know that you are not dead, just separated from your
    body.  And if she saw her little grandson with you, she
    will be more comforted" -- T] that would constitute a sign
    of his continued existence.  This appeal was communicated
    to a witness but was not disclosed to the mother or to
    anyone else.  Subsequently, the deceased man's mother saw
    an apparition of him in the form her relative had requested
    [I.e., holding the hand of the boy; there was no verbal or
    gestural communication but a sense of peacefulness was felt.
    This latter is unusual (though not unheard of) in apparition
    cases not involving near-death experiences.  Usually they are
    emotionally neutral (ignoring obviously situational feelings
    such as surprise) or frightening -- T]; he also appeared
    in and identical form to his 6-year-old niece.  All three
    experients lived about 100 miles away from each other.
    Neither the mother nor the niece knew of the request to
    appear, and neither had information about the other's
    experience at the time of her own. ...

This case, of course, *proves* nothing, since the participants could have
made up the whole thing and "cooked" up a hoax.  However, it is not clear
what their motivations would be, since their identities are, at their
insistence, being kept quite secret (they would be anyway, of course).

I also thought that the first paragraph of the introduction to the article
might be of interest:

    The characteristics of apparition experiences (AEs) are not
    conveniently uniform but are of a bewildering variety.  Some
    AEs are shared in the way sensory experiences are: Everyone
    present and attentive to the area can perceive the event.
    Other AEs are private events, as unobservable to others as
    are our thoughts and ESP impressions.  Apparitions in the
    context of near-death experiences result in experiences of
    peace and fascination, whereas in other contexts, apparitions
    can evoke fear and depression.  Sometimes experients scream
    and run away, even from apparitions of their own mothers!
    Apparitions are rarely perceived as communicative:  They do
    not say or show percipients anything, nor do they seem to
    communicate nonverbally.  More often than not, apparitions
    just stand there or float by.  Some apparitions are veridical,
    that is, they convey information in other ways, such as
    appearing at the time of their deaths to the hitherto
    uninformed percipient.  Nevertheless, "the great majority of
    experiences that might be regarded as apparitional are not
    veridical" (Stevenson, 1982, p 341 [Stevenson, I. (1982) The
    contribution of apparitions to the evidence of survival,
    _Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol.
    76, pp 341-358])...

		Topher

    What is meant by "an apparition connected with a near-death
    experience"?  Is this an apparition of someone appearing at the
    time they nearly die?  Any correlation with the strange visions
    and experiences sometimes reported by the one nearly doing the dying?
    
    Earl Wajenberg

RE: 132.1

    The phrase is ambiguous.  Apparitions of people having NDE (Near-Death
    Experiences) certainly occur, including those people who never recover
    apparent consciousness.

    However, in this case I believe what is being referred to is with the
    person having the NDE as the experient, i.e., they perceive the presence
    of someone who has already "gone on".  They commonly receive from this
    presence (or perhaps from the complete experience, its a bit hard to
    separate components) a sense of peace and serenity.

    This is one of the almost-consistant factors of NDEs which have been
    noted and studied.

    There is a great deal of variation in the identity of the perceived
    deceased.  I don't have any of the statistical breakdowns with me, nor
    is this an area I'm particularly expert at, but as I remember it,
    loved ones and religious figures are both common.  Somewhat less common,
    but not super-rare are other people that were admired e.g., political
    figures.

    There are certainly stories around of someone having a NDE, and during
    it having visited someone, and for the visited person to report an
    apparition of the visitor.  Offhand, though, I don't know if any have
    been well documented (my not knowing of any doesn't mean they don't
    exist, and in any case not being documented doesn't mean it didn't
    happen, only that its hard for an outsider to be sure).  Anyway, I don't
    think that this is what was being referred to in this case.

			Topher