W.B. Yeats lectures on ‘Ghosts and Dreams’

Dublin, 31 October 1913 - At a meeting of the Dublin Branch of the Psychical Research Society in the Antiquaries’ Hall on St Stephen’s Green today, W.B. Yeats gave a lecture entitled ‘Ghosts and Dreams’.

Mr Yeats explained how he had spent days researching the topic in the British Library and had proved the existence of ghosts. He also informed his audience that dead people have been reporting to him via a medium. For Yeats the matter is now closed: he believes that the soul survived death.

He warned the audience that he believed four-fifths of mediums were unreliable and cheats, but that this should not deter people from acknowledging the existence of spirits. Such spirits were merely men without the body, and that the spirit world could be better understood and interrogated if everyone embraced dreams, a state in which people experience ‘the dissolution of personality and the moral sense’.

[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]