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 CHAPTER XI HAUNTED HOUSES

N the last chapter we have dealt with messages from the dead of a personal character. The dream or vision has represented some one known when alive to the dreamer, and on familiar terms with him. The cause of the percipience—the reason why the vision was seen by that particular person, and not by the man in the street—must in the cases hitherto considered be sought in the bonds of personal affection or relationship. And the same principle applies to the messages from the living dealt with in the earlier chapters of this book. The apparition of the dying man is seen as a rule by some one amongst his closest friends. But even in the case of apparitions of the dying we find some records, relatively few, but still too numerous to be summarily dismissed, in which the the tie between the dying man and the percipient was not one of affection or blood, but apparently of locality. Several cases have been published in Phantasms of the Living, in which the figure of the dying man or woman was seen in the house 245