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

First, there is the court of the Gentiles, where Ego No. 1 chaffers about trifles with the outer world. While he is so doing Ego No. 2 watches him from the court of the Levites, but does not go forth on small occasions. When we 'open out' to a friend the Levite comes forth, and is in turn watched by the priest from the inner court. Let our emotions be stirred in sincere converse and out strides the priest, and takes precedence of the other two, they falling obediently and submissively behind him. But the priest is still watched by the high priest from the tabernacle itself, and only on great and solemn occasions does he make himself manifest by action. When he does, the other three yield to his authority, and then we say the man 'speaks with his whole soul' and 'from the bottom of his heart.' But even now the Shekinah is upon the mercy-seat within the Holy of holies, and the high priest knows it."

The latest word[4] of the French psychologists is thus stated by M. Foüillée:—

"Contemporary psychology deprives us of the illusion of a definitely limited, impenetrable, and absolutely autonomous I. The conception of individual consciousness must be of an idea rather than of a substance. Though separate in the universe, we are not separate from the universe. Continuity and reciprocity of action exist everywhere. This is the great law and the great mystery. There is no such thing as an isolated and veritably monad being, any more than there is such a thing as an indivisible point, except in the abstractions of geometry."

Whatever may be the true theory, it is evident that there is enough mystery about personality to make us very diffident about dogmatising, especially as to what is possible and what is not.

Whether we have one mind or two, let us, at least, keep it (or them) open.

4 (Return)
1891.

PART II. THE THOUGHT BODY, OR THE DOUBLE.

"And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda. And when she knew Peter's voice, she ran in and told how Peter stood before the gate. And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel (or double)."—Acts xil. 13-15.

Chapter I.

Aerial Journeyings.

I began to write this in the autumn of 1891 in a small country-house among the Surrey hills, whither I had retreated in order to find undisturbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and array my facts. It was a pleasant place enough, perched on the brow of a heath-covered slope that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which stands Professor Tyndall's house with its famous screen. Hardly a mile away northward lies the Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone erected in abhorrence of the detestable murder perpetrated on its rim by ruffians whose corpses slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet overhead; far to the south spreads the glorious amphitheatre of hills which constitute the Highlands of the South.

The Portsmouth road, along which for hundreds of years rolled to and fro the tide of martial life between London and the great Sea Gate of the Realm, lies near by, silent and almost disused. Mr. Balfour's land, on the brow of Hindhead, is enclosed but not yet built upon, although a whole archipelago of cottages and villas is springing up amid the heather as the ground slopes towards Selborne—White's Selborne—that can dimly be descried to the westward beyond Liphook Common. Memories there are, enough and to spare, of the famous days of old, and of the not less famous men of our own time; but the ghosts have fled. "There used to be a ghost in the mill," said my driver, "and another in a comparatively new house over in Lord Tennyson's direction, but we hear nothing about them now." "Not even at the Murder Stone of the Devil's Punch Bowl?" "Not even at the Murder Stone. I have driven past it at all hours, and never saw anything—but the stone, of course."

Yet a more suitable spot for a ghost could hardly be conceived than the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl, where the sailor was murdered, and where afterwards his murderers were hanged. I visited it late at night, when the young moon was beginning to struggle through the cloudy sky, and looked down into the ravine which Cobbett declared was the most horrid place God ever made; but no sign of ghostly visitant could be caught among the bracken, no sound of the dead voices was audible in the air. It is the way with ghosts—they seldom appear where they might be looked for. It is the unexpected in the world of shadows, as in the workaday world, which always happens.

Of this I had soon a very curious illustration. For, although there were no ghosts in the Devil's Punch Bowl by the Murder Stone, I found that there had been a ghost in the trim new little villa in which I was quartered! It didn't appear to me—at least, it has not done so as yet. But it appeared to some friends of mine whose statement is explicit enough. Here was a find indeed. I spent most of my boyhood within a mile of the famous haunted house or mill at Willington, but I had never slept before in a place which ghosts used as a trysting place. I asked my hostess about it. She replied, "Yes, it is quite true; but, although you may not believe it, I am the ghost." "You? How?" "Yes," she replied, quite seriously; "it is quite true what your friends have told you. They did see what you would correctly describe as an apparition. That is to say, they saw a more or less shadowy figure, which they at once identified, and which then gradually faded away. It was an apparition in the true sense of the word. It entered the room without using the door or window, it was visibly manifested before them, and then it vanished. All that is quite true. But it is also true that the ghost, as you call it, was my ghost." "Your ghost, but——" "I am not dead, you are going to say. Precisely. But surely you must be well aware of the fact that the ghosts of the living are much better authenticated than ghosts of the dead."

My hostess was the daughter of a well-known London solicitor, who, after spending her early youth in dancing and riding and other diversions of young ladies in society who have the advantage of a house in Park Lane, suddenly became possessed by a strange, almost savage, fascination for the occult lore of the ancient East. Abandoning the frivolities of Mayfair, she went to Girton, where she plunged into the study of Sanscrit. After leaving Girton, she applied herself to the study of the occult side of Theosophy. Then she married a black magician in the platonic fashion common to Occultists, early Christians, and Russian Nihilists, and since then she has prosecuted her studies into the invisible world with ever-increasing interest.

The Thought Body.

"I see you are incredulous," she replied; "but, if you like, I will some time afford you an opportunity of proving that I am simply speaking the truth. Tell me, will you speak to me if I appear to you in my thought body?" "Certainly," I replied, "unless I am struck dumb. Nothing would please me better. But, of course, I have never seen a ghost, and no one can say how any utterly unaccustomed experience may affect him." "Unfortunately," she replied, "that is too often the case. All those to whom I have hitherto appeared have been so scared they could not speak." "But, my dear friend, do you actually mean to say that you have the faculty of——" "Going about in my Thought Body? Most certainly. It is not a very uncommon faculty, but it is one which needs cultivation and development." "But what is a Thought Body?" My hostess smiled: "It is difficult to explain truths on the plane of thought to those who are immersed body and soul in matter. I can only tell you that every person has, in addition to this natural body of flesh, bones, and blood, a Thought Body, the exact counterpart in every respect of this material frame. It is contained within the material body, as air is contained in the lungs and in the blood. It is of finer matter than the gross fabric of our outward body. It is capable of motion with the rapidity of thought. The laws of space and time do not exist for the mind, and the Thought Envelope of which we are speaking moves with the swiftness of the mind."

"Then when your thought body appears?"

"My mind goes with it. I see, I hear, and my consciousness is with my Thought Envelope. But I want to have a proper interview while on my thought journeys. That is why I ask you if you would try to speak to me if I appear."

"But," I objected, "do you really mean that you hope to appear before me, in my office, as immaterial as gas, as visible as light, and yet to speak, to touch?"

"That is just what I mean," she replied, laughing, "that and nothing less. I was in your office the other morning at six o'clock, but no one was there. I have not got this curious power as yet under complete control. But when once we are able to direct it at will, imagine what possibilities it unfolds!"

"But," said I, "if you can be seen and touched, you ought to be photographed!"

"I wish to be photographed, but no one can say as yet whether such thought bodies can be photographed. When next I make the experiment I want you to try. It would be very useful."

Useful indeed! It does not require very vivid imagination to see that if you can come and go to the uttermost parts of the world in your thought shape, such Thought Bodies will be indispensable henceforth on every enterprising newspaper. It would be a great saving on telegraphy. When my ideal paper comes along, I mentally vowed I would have my hostess as first member of my staff. But of course it had got to be proved, and that not only once but a dozen times, before any reliance could be placed on it.

"I often come down here," said my hostess cheerfully, "after breakfast. I just lie down in my bedroom in town, and in a moment I find myself here at Hindhead. Sometimes I am seen, sometimes I am not. But I am here; seen or unseen, I see. It is a curious gift, and one which I am studying hard to develop and to control."

"And what about clothes?" I asked. "Oh," replied my hostess airily, "I go in whatever clothes I like. There are astral counterparts to all our garments. It by no means follows that I appear in the same dress as that which is worn by my material body. I remember, when I appeared to your friend, I wore the astral counterpart of a white silk shawl, which was at the time folded away in the wardrobe."

At this point, however, in order to anticipate the inevitable observation that my hostess was insane, I think I had better introduce the declarations of my two friends, who are quite clear and explicit as to their recollection of what they saw.

My witnesses are mother and daughter. The daughter I have seen and interviewed; the mother I could not see, but took a statement down from her husband, who subsequently submitted it in proof to her for correction. I print the daughter's statement first.

"About eighteen months ago (in May, 1890) I was staying at