Telepathic hallucinations : the new view of ghosts . nedourselves exclusively to mathematical figures and numbers,so that there could not be the slightest expectation of thenature of the thing to be guessed. The result was as follows :After a short interval of darkness the percipient, Herr Visser,saw the figure of a large crab on the opposite wall: he saidthat the animal was moving its feet. After some time thepicture disappeared, and there came in its place the picture ofan ant: It is brown, he said, and has long hairs, just like anant. (It is to be noted that, generally speaking, one wouldpi
Telepathic hallucinations : the new view of ghosts . nedourselves exclusively to mathematical figures and numbers,so that there could not be the slightest expectation of thenature of the thing to be guessed. The result was as follows :After a short interval of darkness the percipient, Herr Visser,saw the figure of a large crab on the opposite wall: he saidthat the animal was moving its feet. After some time thepicture disappeared, and there came in its place the picture ofan ant: It is brown, he said, and has long hairs, just like anant. (It is to be noted that, generally speaking, one wouldpicture to oneself an ant as without hairs.) Once more thepicture changed, and Herr Visser now fancied he was lookingat the ant through a microscope, for it seemed enormous. Atthis moment time was up and the experiment ended. Theresult was interesting, if only because when a mathematicalfigure or cypher might have been expected, the picture of ananimal appeared. When I asked Herr Visser to draw what he * Proceedings, , vol. viii, pp. 554, 53 Thf N::\v Vifw of Ghosts had seen, I got the accompany-ing figure, which in fact doesntbear much resemblance to anant. W^c see how Httle valuemust be attached to the namewhich the percipient gives tothe picture presented to hismental vision. We were alreadydisposed to count this experi-ment a success, on the groundthat during the three monthsover vrhich the experiments hadhitherto extended, neither thename nor the picture of ananimal had been set, or hadoccurred to the percipient, sothat it seemed very improbablethat the coincidence could bedue to chance. But we wereconfirmed in our view, when welearnt from Hcrr Geels, the agent, that embarrassed at the sightof the word ape, and not knowing how to translate it, sincehe had been accustomed to deal only with mathematical figures,which he could easily represent to himself, he resolved topicture to himself the big ape at the Zoological Gardens, as hehad seen it standing upright again
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