---
title: "Hallucination Theories of the Resurrection: quarantine"
description: "Quotations and figures considered for the hallucination-theories article and set aside: the wording as it circulates, the source it was claimed to come from, what was tried, what was found, and what document would change the verdict."
theme: common/themes/berean2/theme.php
---
# Quarantine: quotations and figures set aside
Rejecting a quotation from publication and erasing it from the record are two different decisions. This page is the record.
## What this page is
This page is for the next researcher. Each entry gives the wording as it circulates, the source it is attributed to, what was tried, what was found, and what would change the verdict. Status words: **UNVERIFIABLE** (no route to a source found yet), **REFUTED** (the named source was read and the text is not in it), **MISUSED** (real text, quoted in a way that overstates it).
## 1. Bilu and the "seven women" (UNVERIFIABLE: not in Bilu 2013; no other source located)
**As it circulates:** "Bilu has collected ~80 reports of the Lubavitcher Rebbe appearing to his followers since his death. "In these, he appears to the human eye in what is, at least ostensibly, a fully and normatively conscious mental state… in one case no fewer than seven women saw the Rebbe…""
**Claimed source:** Yoram Bilu, apparently his 2013 article "'We Want to See Our King': Apparitions in Messianic Habad," *Ethos* 41(1): 98-126. The wording reached this project through a post on X by Matthew Hartke, copied into Eric's notes (`christianity/resurrection hallucinations.txt`).
**What was tried:** the full text layer of Bilu 2013 held in the library was searched for "seven," "fully and normatively," "normatively," and "women" (the resurrection-event-or-process lead in September 2026, and the group-experiences helper in this session).
**What was found:** Bilu 2013 gives 76 testimonies, not about 80, and says only that "A few simultaneous apparitions, usually involving a dyad, were reported too" (p. 101). Neither the seven-women sentence nor the "fully and normatively conscious" wording is in the article.
**Second routes tried (October 2026 review):** archive.org holds no copy of Bilu's later book, *With Us More Than Ever: Making the Absent Rebbe Present in Messianic Chabad* (Stanford, 2020; Hebrew edition 2016); OpenAlex lists it with no open copy; a Google Books API search for the exact phrases "no fewer than seven women" and "normatively conscious" returned no result. The parent's exact-phrase web searches also found no usable hit. None of this shows that the sentence does not exist. The circulating attribution names no work, so "apparently" Bilu 2013 was this project's guess, and the 2013 article simply does not contain it.
**What would change the verdict:** the Bilu publication containing the sentence, with a page number; the 2020 book is the likeliest place. Until then the claim of a seven-person sighting must not be cited.
## 2. "As many as 80%" of the bereaved see, hear or feel the dead (MISUSED when quoted as a seeing rate)
**As it circulates:** "As many as 80% of those who have lost loved ones report seeing, hearing, or feeling the touch of the dead person even among Euro-American populations, in which speaking to the dead is not normative." Larøi and colleagues, *Schizophrenia Bulletin* 2014, quoted in Eric's notes.
**What was found:** the sentence is real. Its reference (note 16 in the article's XML) is Grimby 1993, a study of 50 elderly Swedish widowed people. The nearest printed figure from that study, relayed by Streit-Horn and colleagues in 2022, is 82 percent at one month, falling to 52 percent at twelve months, and it counts any kind of experience, mostly a felt presence. In Grimby's own abstract about one third saw, heard and talked to the dead spouse.
**Verdict:** usable only as "up to about 80 percent report some kind of experience in the first month, in one small study." Not a rate of seeing. The main article uses the primary figures instead.
## 3. Goulder's "forty-five per cent ... have seen or heard" (MISUSED)
**As it circulates:** "a Welsh GP reports that as many as forty-five per cent of his patients recently widowed have seen or heard their dead partners." Goulder 1996, p. 51.
**What was found:** Rees 1971 reports that 46.7 percent of 293 widowed people had any experience, most of them a felt presence; 14.0 percent had seen and 13.3 percent had heard the dead spouse (Table IV). At most 27.3 percent saw or heard. The sample covered people widowed for up to decades, not only the recently widowed. The main article quotes Goulder and gives the correction.
## 4. Olson 1985: "Nineteen (54%) of the widows had never discussed the experiences" (UNVERIFIABLE denominator)
**What was found:** the abstract's other figures are 28 of 46 and fractions of 28. The disclosure figure fits neither 46 nor 28; only 35 gives 54 percent. The full paper was not obtained: the publisher's PDF refuses download, no open copy is listed, and archived captures hold only the abstract. The main article reports the inconsistency and does not use the 54 percent.
**What would change the verdict:** the full text of Olson et al., *Journal of the American Geriatrics Society* 33 (1985): 543-547.
## 5. Licona: "only 14 percent of these (or seven percent of all bereaved senior adults surveyed) are visual" (MISUSED denominator)
**As it circulates:** Licona 2010, p. 484: "senior adults who are grieving the loss of a loved one are among those most likely to experience a hallucination: roughly 50 percent. Yet only 14 percent of these (or seven percent of all bereaved senior adults surveyed) are visual in nature." The 14 percent recurs on p. 485 in his "100 percent of the Twelve" argument.
**What was found:** the figures resemble Rees 1971, where 46.7 percent of 293 widowed people had any experience and 14.0 percent of all 293 saw the dead spouse, which is 29.9 percent of those with experiences (Table IV; 41 of 137). Licona's reading makes the seeing rate half of Rees's. His notes cite "Aleman and Larøi (2008)", pp. 61-69, a book that was not available in the library or on archive.org, so whether the slip is his or his source's is not known.
**Verdict:** the article quotes Licona's wording and gives Rees's denominators beside it. Do not repeat "seven percent of all bereaved" as a rate.
**What would change the verdict:** Aleman and Larøi 2008, pp. 61-69, showing a study in which 14 percent of those with experiences, and 7 percent of all those asked, saw the dead person.