Abstract

Recent attempts to facilitate reunions with deceased loved ones using a psychomanteum chamber have found that many participants report reunion experiences ranging from a sense of presence to vivid and realistic visual encounters. Many participants consider these to be actual encounters with the deceased and find them to be very beneficial. Such experiences can also be accompanied by apparent mental or verbal communications, tactile and bodily sensations, sensations of movement and, occasionally, smells.

Although most encounters occur during psychomanteum sessions, some happen later when the participant is in the hypnagogic or hypnopompic states which occur between wakefulness and sleep and vice versa. This paper notes that there are also strong similarities between psychomanteum and normal hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery with regard to the circumstances in which they occur and, particularly, in terms of the content and progression of the visual imagery and also the sense of reality and vividness. Sensations in other modalities are also similar in many cases.

The main difference between psychomanteum and hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery is that in the former case the participant presumably has his/her eyes open whereas in the latter case the participant may or may not have his/her eyes open. Another difference is that, unlike hypnagogic/hypnopompic imagery, psychomanteum experiences do not tend to feature non-verbal auditory imagery. Verbal or mental communications also tend to be coherent whereas with hypnagogic/hypnopompic auditory imagery it is often unintelligible and can be nonsensical. Psychomanteum experiences also seem to be more interactive, more emotional and have more of an impact on the participants.

One possible explanation for psychomanteum apparitional experiences is that they involve hypnagogic-like imagery whose content may be strongly influenced by the needs, motivations and expectations of the participants. Further research is needed to investigate the potential influence of participants' mental set and expectations on the content of psychomanteum experiences.