Apparitions II

Of course there was not going to be an apparition on Lokon (see Apparitions) because "The Sharing of Flesh" is sf, not fantasy. However, Poul Anderson accurately describes a bereaved state of mind that can project apparitions. On Nike, commoners think that a warlord dead three hundred years still walks the ruins of his "cave" (castle). Stories told on Nike could include apparitions.

Ydwyr, a Merseian in A Circus of Hells, has studied paranormal phenomena among primitive races so I checked whether he had investigated any of their attempts to communicate with their dead but I had been thinking of an alien in a Larry Niven story:

"'When I thought to talk to their ghosts, there was nothing, though I used their own techniques.'"

-Larry Niven, "Cautionary Tales" IN Niven, Convergent Series (New York, 1979), pp. 177-181 AT p. 180. 

Maybe ghosts only speak with living members of their own species?

We have mentioned more than once that Dominic Flandry asks his murdered fiancee for a sign.

Contact with the dead is possible in the goetic universe which, like the Technic History timeline, has access to the Old Phoenix.