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The appearance of a person before their actual arrival. Frequently the arriving phantom appears in the same clothing the individual is wearing at the same time. The individual is usually not aware of appearing in a distant location until told about it.

Arrival cases were collected and studied by the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in the early twentieth century. They collected their evidence in their exhaustive survey Phantasms of the Living (1918).

Arrivals have been claimed to eat, sleep and seem so real that anyone could believe it was a double (doppelgänger) of the real person. The most likely explanation of arrival cases is that the individual somehow projects a double, which is perceived as real, perhaps as an out-of-body projection (bilocation) or as a psychic projection of intent or desire to be in that different place. Others think that arrival cases are a quirk of time duplicating itself.

In the Highlands of Scotland, the term for arrival cases is ‘spirits of the living’. In Norway, the arrival case phenomenon is called vardøger, which means ‘forerunner’.

One unusual vardøger case occurred in Oslo and concerned Erikson Gorique, an American importer. For years, Gorique had wanted to go to Norway but was forced to keep postponing the trip. In July 1955 he was finally able to go. On his arrival in Oslo, Gorique asked where he might stay. Much to his astonishment, when he arrived at the recommended hotel he was greeted by name by the hotel clerk. The clerk told him it was nice to see him again. When Gorique protested that he had never before travelled to Norway or been at the hotel, the puzzled clerk insisted that he could not mistake Gorique’s unusual name and American appearance. He said Gorique stayed at the hotel several months earlier and had made reservations to return that month.

Gorique was even more surprised when he visited a wholesale dealer, who also greeted him like an old friend, saying it was terrific to have him back to conclude previous business. Gorique told the dealer that he hadn’t been there before, whereupon the dealer nodded knowingly and explained the vardøger phenomenon: ‘It is not uncommon in Norway,’ he said.