"Can the OBEer be seen as an apparition?"
The study of apparitions formed an important part of early physical
research, and many different types of apparition have been recorded, but
the ones which primarily interest us here are those in which a person
having an OBE simultaneously appeared to someone else as an apparition.
There are many cases of this kind in the early literature and they have
been quoted again and again but a relatively small number of them really
form the mainstay of the anecdotal evidence on OBE apparitions. Crookall
[Cro61] and Smith [Smi65] give some recent cases but they too concentrate
on the older ones. Green [Gre68a] discusses the similarities between
apparitions in general and the asomatic body perceived by OBEers, but she
does not give any examples from her own case collection in which another
person saw the exteriorized double. By contrast, about 10% of Palmer's
OBEers claimed to have been seen as an apparition [Pal79b] and Osis claims
that from his survey OBEers 'frequently' said they were noticed by others
and in 16 cases (6% of the total) he was able to obtain some verification
through witnesses, although he does not expand on this remark. Obviously
it would be very helpful if much more evidence of this sort could be
collected, and recent cases thoroughly checked.
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