Aka : Doppelgangers, wraith

Origin : Beliefs in astral projection and out-of-the body travels are present in every culture and for ages.

Description : The figure or the voice of a living person who is experiencing a crisis--such as an accident or a death--is seen or heard.

Time :anytime

Records : 10 000+

Location :anywhere

Theory : Typically, the ghosts appear only once to a special loved one who may be many miles away at the time of the accident.  This phenomenon can also manifest in the person hearing a voice of a friend or loved one with some message or warning while the person who is heard speaking is no where near and totally unaware that this has occurred. Most of these crisis apparitions occur at a moment of great crisis or death when a person is in some form of danger or pain.  The person in crisis is not aware that they are doing this. It is explained and often agreed that these apparitions are the externalization of an unconsciously received telepathic impressions.  Other testimonies reveal projections of future events where the subject will attend a scene that will only happen in the future just as a dream.

In case of a confrontation with one’s own double, it is traditionally considered as an omen of bad luck or even death . Science links it with ESP (Extra Sensory Perception).

December 1943:  Mrs. Violet Almond was awakened by an apparition of her husband that floated above her for a few minutes.  She learned later that her husband, who was on a battlefield in North Africa, was being shelled heavily and was praying to God to save him so he could see his wife again at the exact time she was seeing his apparition in their bedroom.

1951 - Helen Crone saw an apparition of a close friend who was alive miles away.  The agitated apparition instructed her to go check on her baby.  When she did this she found her child had managed to open a drawer full of sharp knives and was about to play with them.

Veracity factor: 9/10, the apparition can be self-induced through telepathy

Working as honorary secretary of the SPR and active on the literary committee, Edmund Gurney soon discovered that the largest single class of occurrences reported were what came to be labelled crisis apparitions. These occur

Within one year of its organization, the SPR had collected over 400 reports of such cases and in 1886, Gurney published a 1,300 page document entitled Phantasms of the Living in which 702 different apparition cases were analyzed. All of the evidence was obtained first-hand from the percipients and was generally backed by corroboratory testimony. Witnesses were also interviewed by SPR members who appraised the value of all testimony.

Gurney described several categories of apparition cases. These are cases of spontaneous telepathy, which occur when the sender is undergoing some shock or strong emotion. For example a lady lying in bed may feel a pain in her mouth at the exact moment when her husband is accidently struck in the jaw. Then come cases where the percipient's experience is not an exact reproduction of the agent's experience, but is only founded upon it, the receiver building a detailed picture from his or her own mind. There are many cases of this type where a person about to arrive at a location is actually seen there by someone not expecting him before his arrival. It is very unlikely that the agent will have in his mind the image of himself as others see him. Finally Gurney refers to the cases in which the agent may be dead or dying while the phantom appears in quite normal behavior and clothing.

Gurney felt that these cases could be explained as hallucinations induced in the mind of the percipient by means of a telepathic message from the agent. What was harder to explain were collective apparitions in which several people independently perceive the identical phantom. There were also reciprocal cases whereby a person imagining himself to be at a distant scene is actually seen at that location by others.

Phantasms of the Living was soon criticized by the eminent American philosopher C. S. Pierce and several others on the grounds that the cases reported did not meet sufficient conditions to be acceptable as evidence. Most of these critical individuals simply did not read the entire book. Their criticisms focused on the weakest cases and overlooked certain cases that were very well documented in all regards. However, Gurney felt that if only a few single cases were strongly evidential, the conclusions for crisis telepathy were inescapable.

Sounds very interesting & informative.


But i want to know more about it, as many times, i have heard my name being called out, but there is no one i know who is there or sometimes, i am alone but have still heard a voice or two calling out my name. U think it has any connection with this ??

Crisis Apparitions: Apparitions of the dying or recently dead (usually less than twelve hours, but as much as 24-48 hours) are the most frequently reported of apparitions. This category commonly involves one-time visits to someone with whom the apparition has close emotional ties. Though the encounter usually seems to be a type of farewell, sometimes important and useful information is relayed to the "viewer." Though dying is the most common crisis, other life-threatening situations can also trigger apparitional visits. In these cases, the crisis apparition typically visits a close associate in an appeal for help.