Telepathy From the Dead
(3). The third theory which has been advanced, is an extension of the second. Thought-transference is still the agency invoked to explain the facts—but from the minds of dead, and not living persons. That is, assuming telepathy to be true, and possible between living minds; and assuming that individual consciousness survives the change called death; we can readily imagine that those who have “passed over” might affect and influence the living by thought-transference also, just as they did in life. On this theory, therefore, the ghost would still represent a hallucination; a mental or imaginary figure, and it would still be induced by telepathy from a distant mind; but that mind would be that of a so-called dead person. After death, we might suppose, this person would be thinking or dreaming over the past events; the scenes of his joys and sorrows; and these dreams would tend to influence the minds of those still living, and cause them to see the figures seen. The figures, on this theory, would be hallucinatory, but they would have a real, objective basis and starting-point for all that; and, as such, would represent the continued existence and activity on the part of the dead.
Against this ingenious theory may be urged all those arguments which have been cited in favor of the materiality of apparitions.