But, it is obvious, memory is apt to become mythopoeic, so far as to exaggerate closeness of coincidence, and to add romantic details.  We do not need Herr Parish to tell us that; we meet the circumstance in all narratives from memory, whatever the topic, even in Herr Parish’s own writings.

We must admit that the public, in ghostly, as in all narratives on all topics, is given to ‘fanciful addenda.’  Therefore, as Herr Parish justly remarks, we should ‘maintain a very sceptical attitude to all accounts’ of veridical hallucinations.  ‘Not that we should dismiss them as old wives’ fables—­an all too common method—­or even doubt the narrator’s good faith.’  We should treat them like tales of big fish that get away; sometimes there is good corroborative evidence that they really were big fish, sometimes not.  We shall return to these false memories.

Was there a coincidence at all in the Society’s cases printed in the Census?  Herr Parish thinks three of the selected twenty-six cases very dubious.  In one case is a possible margin of four days, another (wrongly numbered by the way) does not occur at all among the twenty-six.  In the third, Herr Parish is wrong in his statement.[4] This is a lovely example of the sceptical slipshod, and, accompanied by the miscitation of the second case, shows that inexactitude is not all on the side of the seers.  However the case is not very good, the two percipients fancying that the date of the event was less remote than it really was.  Unluckily Herr Parish only criticises these three cases, how accurately we have remarked.  He had no room for more.

Herr Parish next censures the probable selection of good cases by collectors, on which the editors of the Census have already made observations, as they have also made large allowances for this cause of error.  He then offers the astonishing statement that, ’in the view of the English authors, a view which is, of course, assumed in all calculations of the kind, an hallucination persists equally long in the memory and is equally readily recalled in reply to a question, whether the experience made but a slight impression on the percipient, or affected him deeply, as would be the case, for instance, if the hallucination had been found to coincide with the death of a near relative or friend.’[5] This assertion of Herr Parish’s is so erroneous that the Report expressly says ’as years recede into the distance,’ the proportion of the hallucinations that are remembered in them to those which are forgotten, or at least ignored, ’is very large.’  Again, ’Hallucinations of the most impressive class will not only be better remembered than others, but will, we may reasonably suppose, be more often mentioned by the percipients to their friends.’[6]