Real Ghost Stories by William Thomas Stead (best non fiction books to read txt) 📖

one which cannot be accepted until the immaterial body is photographed under test conditions at the same time that the material body is under safe custody in another place. Of course, it is well to bear in mind that to all those who profess to know anything of occult lore, and also to those who have the gift of clairvoyance, there is nothing new or strange in the doctrine of the immaterial body. Many clairvoyants declare that they constantly see the apparitions of the living mingling with the apparitions of the dead. They are easily distinguishable. The ghost of a living person is said to be opaque, whereas the ghost of one from whom life has departed is diaphanous as gossamer.

All this, of course, only causes the unbeliever to blaspheme. It is to him every whit as monstrous as the old stories of the witches riding on broomsticks. But the question is not to be settled by blasphemy on one side or credulity on the other. There is something behind these phantasmal apparitions; there is a real substratum of truth, if we could but get at it. There seems to be some faculty latent in the human mind, by which it can in some cases impress upon the eye and ear of a person at almost any distance the image and the voice. We may call it telepathy or what we please. It is a marvellous power, the mere hint of which indefinitely expands the horizon of the imagination. The telephone is but a mere child's toy compared with the gift to transmit not only the sound of the voice but the actual visible image of the speaker for hundreds of miles without any conductor known to man.

Chapter IV.

The Hypnotic Key.

Hypnotism is the key which will enable us to unlock most of these mysteries, and so far as hypnotism has spoken it does not tend to encourage the belief that the immaterial body has any substance other than the hallucination of the person who sees it. Various cases are reported by hypnotist practitioners which suggest that there is an almost illimitable capacity of the human mind to see visions and to hear voices. One very remarkable case was that of a girl who was told at midsummer by the hypnotist, when in the hypnotic state, that he would come to see her on New Year's Day. When she awoke from the trance she knew nothing about the conversation. One hundred and seventy-one days passed without any reference to it. But on the 172nd day, being New Year's Day, she positively declared that the doctor had entered her room, greeted her, and then departed. Curiously enough, as showing the purely subjective character of the vision, the doctor appeared to her in the depth of winter, wearing the light summer apparel he had on when he made the appointment in July. In this case there can be no question as to the apparition being purely subjective. The doctor did not make any attempt to visit her in his immaterial body, but she saw him and heard him as if he were there.

The late Mr. Gurney conducted some experiments with a hypnotic subject which seem to confirm the opinion that the phantasmal body is a merely subjective hallucination, although, of course, this would not explain how information had been actually imparted to the phantasmal visitant by the person who saw, or imagined they saw, his wraith. Mr. Gurney's cases are, however, very interesting, if only as indicating the absolute certainty which a hypnotised patient can be made to feel as to the objectivity of sights and sounds:—

"S. hypnotised Zillah, and told her that she would see him standing in the room at three o'clock next afternoon, and that she would hear him call her twice by name. She was told that he would not stop many seconds. On waking she had no notion of the ideas impressed upon her.

"Next day, however, she came upstairs about five minutes past three, looking ghastly and startled. She said, 'I have seen a ghost.' I assumed intense amazement, and she said she was in the kitchen cleaning some silver, and suddenly she heard her name called sharply twice over, 'Zillah!' in Mr. Smith's voice. She said, 'And I dropped the spoon I was rubbing, and turned and saw Mr. S., without his hat, standing at the foot of the kitchen stairs. I saw him as plain as I see you,' she said, and looked very wild and vacant.

"The next experiment took place on Wednesday evening, July 13th, 1887, when S., told her, when hypnotised, that the next afternoon, at three o'clock, she would see me (Mr. Gurney) come into the room to her. She was further told that I would keep my hat on and say, 'Good-morning,' and that I would remark, 'It is very warm,' and would then turn round and walk out.

"Next day this is what Zillah reported. She said, 'I was in the kitchen washing up, and had just looked at the clock, and was startled to see how late it was (five minutes to three) when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs—rather a quick, light step—and I thought it was Mr. Sleep' (the dentist whose rooms are in the house), 'but as I turned round, with a dish mop in one hand and a plate in the other, I saw some one with a hat on who had to stoop as he came down the last step, and there was Mr. Gurney. He was dressed just as I saw him last night, black coat and grey trousers, his hat on, and a roll of paper like manuscript in his hand, and he said, "Oh! good-afternoon;" and then he glanced all round the kitchen and he glanced at me with an awful look, as if he was going to murder me, and said, "Warm afternoon, isn't it?" and then "Good-afternoon," or "Good-day," I am not sure which, and then turned and went up the stairs again; and after standing thunderstruck a minute, I ran to the foot of the stairs and saw just like a boot disappearing on the top step.' She said, 'I think I must be going crazy. Why should I always see something at three o'clock each day after the seance?'" (Vol. V. pp. 11-13.)

Whatever hypothesis we select to explain these mysteries, they do not become less marvellous. Even if we grant that it is mere telepathy, or mind affecting mind at a distance without the use of the recognised organs of sense or of any of the ordinary conducting mediums, what an enormous extension it gives to the ordinary conception of the limits of the human mind! To be able instantaneously to paint upon the retina of a friend's eye the life-like image of ourselves, to make our voice sound in his ears at a distance of many miles, and to communicate to his mind information which he had never before heard of, all this is, it may be admitted, as tremendous a draft upon the credulity of mankind as the favourite Theosophical formula of the astral body. Yet who is there who, in face of the facts and experiences recorded above, will venture to deny that one or other of these hypotheses alone can account for the phenomena under consideration?

It is obvious that when once the possibility of the Double is admitted, many mysteries could be cleared up, although it is also true that a great many inconveniences would immediately follow; the establishment of the reality of the double would invalidate every plea of alibi. If a man can really be in two places at one time, there is an end to the plea which is most frequently resorted to by the accused to prove their innocence. There are other inconveniences, which are alluded to in the following letter from a lady correspondent, who believes that she has the faculty in frequent, although uncertain and unconscious, use:—

"'I saw you yesterday, and you cut me.' Such was the remark I frequently heard from my friends: in the broad daylight they saw me in street or tram, etc. Once a personal friend followed me into church on Christmas Day in a city at least 100 miles from where I really was. Another time I sat two pews in front of a friend at a cathedral service. When I denied having been there, she said, 'It's no good talking: I saw you, and you didn't want to wait for me.' 'But,' I said, 'you have my word that I was not there.' 'Yes,' she said, 'but I have my sight, and I saw you.' Of course, I naturally thought it was some one like me, and said, perhaps rather sarcastically, 'Would it be very strange if any one else bore some resemblance to me?' 'No,' said my friend, 'it would not; but someone else doesn't wear your clothes.' On one occasion I remember three people saw me where I certainly was not physically present the same day; all knew me personally. I often bought books of a man who kept a second-hand bookstall. One day he told me that he had a somewhat rare edition of a book I wanted, but that it was at the shop. I said, 'I'll come across to-morrow for it if I make up my mind to give the price.' The next day I was prevented from going, and went the day after, to hear it was sold. 'Why didn't you keep it?' I asked. 'I thought you did not want it when you came yesterday and did not buy it.' 'But I didn't come yesterday.' 'Why, excuse me, you did, and took the book up and laid it down again while I was serving Mr. M., and you went away before I could ask you about it; Mr. M. remarked that it was strange you did not answer him when he spoke.' When I asked the gentleman referred to, he confirmed the story. Mrs. B. also saw me lower down the same street that morning.

"Still it never struck me that it was anything strange; I was only rather curious to see the woman who was so like me. I saw her in an unexpected manner. Going into my room one night, I happened to glance down at my bed, and saw a form there. I thought it strange, yet was not startled. I bent over it, and recognised my own features distinctly. I was in perfect health at the time, and no disaster followed."

Queen Elizabeth's Double.

In a volume published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt," I find the following references to the Double:—

"If this phantom be seen in the morning it betokens good fortune and long life to its prototype; if in the evening a near death awaits him. This superstition was known and felt in England even in the reign of Elizabeth. We quote a passage from Miss Strickland's account of her last illness:—

"'As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady Guildford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off. Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the Royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen still in the same lethargic slumber in which she left her.'"

PART III. CLAIRVOYANCE—THE VISION OF THE OUT OF SIGHT.

"Moreover, the spirit lifted me up and brought me unto the East gate, and, behold, at the door of