PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS
Leaving for a moment the larger argument as to the lines of this
revelation and the broad proofs of its validity, there are some smaller
points which have forced themselves upon my attention during the
consideration of the subject. This home of our dead seems to be very
near to us--so near that we continually, as they tell us, visit them in
our sleep. Much of that quiet resignation which we have all observed in
people who have lost those whom they loved--people who would in our
previous opinion have been driven mad by such loss--is due to the fact
that they have seen their dead, and that although the switch-off is
complete and they can recall nothing whatever of the spirit experience
in sleep, the soothing result of it is still carried on by the
subconscious self. The switch-off is, as I say, complete, but
sometimes for some reason it is hung up for a fraction of a second, and
it is at such moments that the dreamer comes back from his dream
"trailing clouds of glory." From this also come all those prophetic
dreams many of which are well attested. I have had a recent personal
experience of one which has not yet perhaps entirely justified itself
but is even now remarkable. Upon April 4th of last year, 1917, I awoke
with a feeling that some communication had been made to me of which I
had only carried back one word which was ringing in my head. That word
was "Piave." To the best of my belief I had never heard the word
before. As it sounded like the name of a place I went into my study
the moment I had dressed and I looked up the index of my Atlas. There
was "Piave" sure enough, and I noted that it was a river in Italy some
forty miles behind the front line, which at that time was victoriously
advancing. I could imagine few more unlikely things than that the war
should roll back to the Piave, and I could not think how any military
event of consequence could arise there, but none the less I was so
impressed that I drew up a statement that some such event would occur
there, and I had it signed by my secretary and witnessed by my wife
with the date, April 4th, attached. It is a matter of history how six
months later the whole Italian line fell back, how it abandoned
successive positions upon rivers, and how it stuck upon this stream
which was said by military critics to be strategically almost
untenable. If nothing more should occur (I write upon February 20th,
1918), the reference to the name has been fully justified, presuming
that some friend in the beyond was forecasting the coming events of the
war. I have still a hope, however, that more was meant, and that some
crowning victory of the Allies at this spot may justify still further
the strange way in which the name was conveyed to my mind.
People may well cry out against this theory of sleep on the grounds
that all the grotesque, monstrous and objectionable dreams which plague
us cannot possibly come from a high source. On this point I have a
very definite theory, which may perhaps be worthy of discussion. I
consider that there are two forms of dreams, and only two, the
experiences of the released spirit, and the confused action of the
lower faculties which remain in the body when the spirit is absent. The
former is rare and beautiful, for the memory of it fails us. The
latter are common and varied, but usually fantastic or ignoble. By
noting what is absent in the lower dreams one can tell what the missing
qualities are, and so judge what part of us goes to make up the spirit.
Thus in these dreams humour is wanting, since we see things which
strike us afterwards as ludicrous, and are not amused. The sense of
proportion and of judgment and of aspiration is all gone. In short,
the higher is palpably gone, and the lower, the sense of fear, of
sensual impression, of self-preservation, is functioning all the more
vividly because it is relieved from the higher control.
The limitations of the powers of spirits is a subject which is brought
home to one in these studies. People say, "If they exist why don't they
do this or that!" The answer usually is that they can't. They appear
to have very fixed limitations like our own. This seemed to be very
clearly brought out in the cross-correspondence experiments where
several writing mediums were operating at a distance quite
independently of each other, and the object was to get agreement which
was beyond the reach of coincidence. The spirits seem to know exactly
what they impress upon the minds of the living, but they do not know
how far they carry their instruction out. Their touch with us is
intermittent. Thus, in the cross-correspondence experiments we
continually have them asking, "Did you get that?" or "Was it all
right?" Sometimes they have partial cognisance of what is done, as
where Myers says: "I saw the circle, but was not sure about the
triangle." It is everywhere apparent that their spirits, even the
spirits of those who, like Myers and Hodgson, were in specially close
touch with psychic subjects, and knew all that could be done, were in
difficulties when they desired to get cognisance of a material thing,
such as a written document. Only, I should imagine, by partly
materialising themselves could they do so, and they may not have had
the power of self-materialization. This consideration throws some
light upon the famous case, so often used by our opponents, where Myers
failed to give some word or phrase which had been left behind in a
sealed box. Apparently he could not see this document from his present
position, and if his memory failed him he would be very likely to go
wrong about it.
Many mistakes may, I think, be explained in this fashion. It has been
asserted from the other side, and the assertion seems to me reasonable,
that when they speak of their own conditions they are speaking of what
they know and can readily and surely discuss; but that when we insist
(as we must sometimes insist) upon earthly tests, it drags them back to
another plane of things, and puts them in a position which is far more
difficult, and liable to error.
Another point which is capable of being used against us is this: The
spirits have the greatest difficulty in getting names through to us,
and it is this which makes many of their communications so vague and
unsatisfactory. They will talk all round a thing, and yet never get
the name which would clinch the matter. There is an example of the
point in a recent communication in Light, which describes how a young
officer, recently dead, endeavoured to get a message through the direct
voice method of Mrs. Susannah Harris to his father. He could not get
his name through. He was able, however, to make it clear that his
father was a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Inquiry
found the father, and it was then learned that the father had already
received an independent message in Dublin to say that an inquiry was
coming through from London. I do not know if the earth name is a
merely ephemeral thing, quite disconnected from the personality, and
perhaps the very first thing to be thrown aside. That is, of course,
possible. Or it may be that some law regulates our intercourse from
the other side by which it shall not be too direct, and shall leave
something to our own intelligence.
This idea, that there is some law which makes an indirect speech more
easy than a direct one, is greatly borne out by the
cross-correspondences, where circumlocution continually takes the place
of assertion. Thus, in the St. Paul correspondence, which is treated
in the July pamphlet of the S.P.R., the idea of St. Paul was to be
conveyed from one automatic writer to two others, both of whom were at
a distance, one of them in India. Dr. Hodgson was the spirit who
professed to preside over this experiment. You would think that the
simple words "St. Paul" occurring in the other scripts would be
all-sufficient. But no; he proceeds to make all sorts of indirect
allusions, to talk all round St. Paul in each of the scripts, and to
make five quotations from St. Paul's writings. This is beyond
coincidence, and quite convincing, but none the less it illustrates the
curious way in which they go round instead of going straight. If one
could imagine some wise angel on the other side saying, "Now, don't
make it too easy for these people. Make them use their own brains a
little. They will become mere automatons if we do everything for
them"--if we could imagine that, it would just cover the case.
Whatever the explanation, it is a noteworthy fact.
There is another point about spirit communications which is worth
noting. This is their uncertainty wherever any time element comes in.
Their estimate of time is almost invariably wrong. Earth time is
probably a different idea to spirit time, and hence the confusion. We
had the advantage, as I have stated, of the presence of a lady in our
household who developed writing mediumship. She was in close touch
with three brothers, all of whom had been killed in the war. This
lady, conveying messages from her brothers, was hardly ever entirely
wrong upon facts, and hardly ever right about time. There was one
notable exception, however, which in itself is suggestive. Although
her prophecies as to public events were weeks or even months out, she
in one case foretold the arrival of a telegram from Africa to the day.
Now the telegram had already been sent, but was delayed, so that the
inference seems to be that she could foretell a course of events which
had actually been set in motion, and calculate how long they would take
to reach their end. On the other hand, I am bound to admit that she
confidently prophesied the escape of her fourth brother, who was a
prisoner in Germany, and that this was duly fulfilled. On the whole I
preserve an open mind upon the powers and limitations of prophecy.
But apart from all these limitations we have, unhappily, to deal with
absolute coldblooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous
intelligences. Everyone who has investigated the matter has, I suppose,
met with examples of wilful deception, which occasionally are mixed up
with good and true communications. It was of such messages, no doubt,
that the Apostle wrote when he said: "Beloved, believe, not every
spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God." These words can
only mean that the early Christians not only practised Spiritualism as
we understand it, but also that they were faced by the same
difficulties. There is nothing more puzzling than the fact that one
may get a long connected description with every detail given, and that
it may prove to be entirely a concoction. However, we must bear in
mind that if one case comes absolutely correct, it atones for many
failures, just as if you had one telegram correct you would know that
there was a line and a communicator, however much they broke down
afterwards. But it must be admitted that it is very discomposing and
makes one sceptical of messages until they are tested. Of a kin with
these false influences are all the Miltons who cannot scan, and
Shelleys who cannot rhyme, and Shakespeares who cannot think, and all
the other absurd impersonations which make our cause ridiculous. They
are, I think, deliberate frauds, either from this side or from the
other, but to say that they invalidate the whole subject is as
senseless as to invalidate our own world because we encounter some
unpleasant people.
One thing I can truly say, and that is, that in spite of false
messages, I have never in all these years known a blasphemous, an
unkind, or an obscene message. Such incidents must be of very
exceptional nature. I think also that, so far as allegations
concerning insanity, obsession, and so forth go, they are entirely
imaginary. Asylum statistics do not bear out such assertions, and
mediums live to as good an average age as anyone else. I think,
however, that the cult of the seance may be very much overdone. When
once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena the
physical seance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his
or her life in running from seance to seance is in danger of becoming a
mere sensation hunter. Here, as in other cults, the form is in danger
of eclipsing the real thing, and in pursuit of physical proofs one may
forget that the real object of all these things is, as I have tried to
point out, to give us assurance in the future and spiritual strength in
the present, to attain a due perception of the passing nature of matter
and the all-importance of that which is immaterial.
The conclusion, then, of my long search after truth, is that in spite
of occasional fraud, which Spiritualists deplore, and in spite of wild
imaginings, which they discourage, there remains a great solid core in
this movement which is infinitely nearer to positive proof than any
other religious development with which I am acquainted. As I have
shown, it would appear to be a rediscovery rather than an absolutely
new thing, but the result in this material age is the same. The days
are surely passing when the mature and considered opinions of such men
as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Chas. Richet, Lodge, Barrett,
Lombroso, Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantyne, W. T.
Stead, Judge Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon
Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed with
the empty "All rot" or "Nauseating drivel" formulae. As Mr. Arthur
Hill has well said, we have reached a point where further proof is
superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny.
The very people who clamour for proofs have as a rule never taken the
trouble to examine the copious proofs which already exist. Each seems
to think that the whole subject should begin de novo because he has
asked for information. The method of our opponents is to fasten upon
the latest man who has stated the case--at the present instant it
happens to be Sir Oliver Lodge--and then to deal with him as if he had
come forward with some new opinions which rested entirely upon his own
assertion, with no reference to the corroboration of so many
independent workers before him. This is not an honest method of
criticism, for in every case the agreement of witnesses is the very
root of conviction. But as a matter of fact, there are many single
witnesses upon whom this case could rest. If, for example, our only
knowledge of unknown forces depended upon the researches of Dr.
Crawford of Belfast, who places his amateur medium in a weighing chair
with her feet from the ground, and has been able to register a
difference of weight of many pounds, corresponding with the physical
phenomena produced, a result which he has tested and recorded in a true
scientific spirit of caution, I do not see how it could be shaken. The
phenomena are and have long been firmly established for every open
mind. One feels that the stage of investigation is passed, and that of
religious construction is overdue.
For are we to satisfy ourselves by observing phenomena with no
attention to what the phenomena mean, as a group of savages might stare
at a wireless installation with no appreciation of the messages coming
through it, or are we resolutely to set ourselves to define these
subtle and elusive utterances from beyond, and to construct from them a
religious scheme, which will be founded upon human reason on this side
and upon spirit inspiration upon the other? These phenomena have
passed through the stage of being a parlour game; they are now emerging
from that of a debatable scientific novelty; and they are, or should
be, taking shape as the foundations of a definite system of religious
thought, in some ways confirmatory of ancient systems, in some ways
entirely new. The evidence upon which this system rests is so enormous
that it would take a very considerable library to contain it, and the
witnesses are not shadowy people living in the dim past and
inaccessible to our cross-examination, but are our own contemporaries,
men of character and intellect whom all must respect. The situation
may, as it seems to me, be summed up in a simple alternative. The one
supposition is that there has been an outbreak of lunacy extending over
two generations of mankind, and two great continents--a lunacy which
assails men or women who are otherwise eminently sane. The alternative
supposition is that in recent years there has come to us from divine
sources a new revelation which constitutes by far the greatest
religious event since the death of Christ (for the Reformation was a
re-arrangement of the old, not a revelation of the new), a revelation
which alters the whole aspect of death and the fate of man. Between
these two suppositions there is no solid position. Theories of fraud or
of delusion will not meet the evidence. It is absolute lunacy or it is
a revolution in religious thought, a revolution which gives us as
by-products an utter fearlessness of death, and an immense consolation
when those who are dear to us pass behind the veil.
I should like to add a few practical words to those who know the truth
of what I say. We have here an enormous new development, the greatest
in the history of mankind. How are we to use it? We are bound in
honour, I think, to state our own belief, especially to those who are
in trouble. Having stated it, we should not force it, but leave the
rest to higher wisdom than our own. We wish to subvert no religion.
We wish only to bring back the material-minded--to take them out of
their cramped valley and put them on the ridge, whence they can breathe
purer air and see other valleys and other ridges beyond. Religions are
mostly petrified and decayed, overgrown with forms and choked with
mysteries. We can prove that there is no need for this. All that is
essential is both very simple and very sure.
The clear call for our help comes from those who have had a loss and
who yearn to re-establish connection. This also can be overdone. If
your boy were in Australia, you would not expect him to continually
stop his work and write long letters at all seasons. Having got in
touch, be moderate in your demands. Do not be satisfied with any
evidence short of the best, but having got that, you can, it seems to
me, wait for that short period when we shall all be re-united. I am in
touch at present with thirteen mothers who are in correspondence with
their dead sons. In each case, the husband, where he is alive, is
agreed as to the evidence. In only one case so far as I know was the
parent acquainted with psychic matters before the war.
Several of these cases have peculiarities of their own. In two of them
the figures of the dead lads have appeared beside the mothers in a
photograph. In one case the first message to the mother came through a
stranger to whom the correct address of the mother was given. The
communication afterwards became direct. In another case the method of
sending messages was to give references to particular pages and lines
of books in distant libraries, the whole conveying a message. The
procedure was to weed out all fear of telepathy. Verily there is no
possible way by which a truth can be proved by which this truth has not
been proved.
How are you to act? There is the difficulty. There are true men and
there are frauds. You have to work warily. So far as professional
mediums go, you will not find it difficult to get recommendations. Even
with the best you may draw entirely blank. The conditions are very
elusive. And yet some get the result at once. We cannot lay down
laws, because the law works from the other side as well as this.
Nearly every woman is an undeveloped medium. Let her try her own
powers of automatic writing. There again, what is done must be done
with every precaution against self-deception, and in a reverent and
prayerful mood. But if you are earnest, you will win through somehow,
for someone else is probably trying on the other side.
Some people discountenance communication upon the ground that it is
hindering the advance of the departed. There is not a tittle of
evidence for this. The assertions of the spirits are entirely to the
contrary and they declare that they are helped and strengthened by the
touch with those whom they love. I know few more moving passages in
their simple boyish eloquence than those in which Raymond describes the
feelings of the dead boys who want to get messages back to their people
and find that ignorance and prejudice are a perpetual bar. "It is hard
to think your sons are dead, but such a lot of people do think so. It
is revolting to hear the boys tell you how no one speaks of them ever.
It hurts me through and through."
Above all read the literature of this subject. It has been far too
much neglected, not only by the material world but by believers. Soak
yourself with this grand truth. Make yourself familiar with the
overpowering evidence. Get away from the phenomenal side and learn the
lofty teaching from such beautiful books as After Death or from
Stainton Moses' Spirit Teachings. There is a whole library of such
literature, of unequal value but of a high average. Broaden and
spiritualize your thoughts. Show the results in your lives.
Unselfishness, that is the keynote to progress. Realise not as a
belief or a faith, but as a fact which is as tangible as the streets of
London, that we are moving on soon to another life, that all will be
very happy there, and that the only possible way in which that
happiness can be marred or deferred is by folly and selfishness in
these few fleeting years.
It must be repeated that while the new revelation may seem destructive
to those who hold Christian dogmas with extreme rigidity, it has quite
the opposite effect upon the mind which, like so many modern minds, had
come to look upon the whole Christian scheme as a huge delusion. It is
shown clearly that the old revelation has so many resemblances, defaced
by time and mangled by man's mishandling and materialism, but still
denoting the same general scheme, that undoubtedly both have come from
the same source. The accepted ideas of life after death, of higher and
lower spirits, of comparative happiness depending upon our own conduct,
of chastening by pain, of guardian spirits, of high teachers, of an
infinite central power, of circles above circles approaching nearer to
His presence--all of these conceptions appear once more and are
confirmed by many witnesses. It is only the claims of infallibility
and of monopoly, the bigotry and pedantry of theologians, and the
man-made rituals which take the life out of the God-given thoughts--it
is only this which has defaced the truth.
I cannot end this little book better than by using words more eloquent
than any which I could write, a splendid sample of English style as
well as of English thought. They are from the pen of that considerable
thinker and poet, Mr. Gerald Massey, and were written many years ago.
"Spiritualism has been for me, in common with many others, such a
lifting of the mental horizon and letting-in of the heavens--such a
formation of faith into facts, that I can only compare life without it
to sailing on board ship with hatches battened down and being kept a
prisoner, living by the light of a candle, and then suddenly, on some
splendid starry night, allowed to go on deck for the first time to see
the stupendous mechanism of the heavens all aglow with the glory of
God."
SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS
I. THE NEXT PHASE OF LIFE
I have spoken in the text of the striking manner in which accounts of
life in the next phase, though derived from the most varied and
independent sources, are still in essential agreement--an agreement
which occasionally descends to small details. A variety is introduced
by that fuller vision which can see and describe more than one plane,
but the accounts of that happy land to which the ordinary mortal may
hope to aspire, are very consistent. Since I wrote the statement I
have read three fresh independent descriptions which again confirm the
point. One is the account given by "A King's Counsel," in his recent
book, I Heard a Voice (Kegan Paul), which I recommended to inquirers,
though it has a strong Roman Catholic bias running through it which
shows that our main lines of thought are persistent. A second is the
little book The Light on the Future, giving the very interesting
details of the beyond, gathered by an earnest and reverent circle in
Dublin. The other came in a private letter from Mr. Hubert Wales, and
is, I think, most instructive. Mr. Wales is a cautious and rather
sceptical inquirer who had put away his results with incredulity (he
had received them through his own automatic writing). On reading my
account of the conditions described in the beyond, he hunted up his own
old script which had commended itself so little to him when he first
produced it. He says: "After reading your article, I was struck,
almost startled, by the circumstance that the statements which had
purported to be made to me regarding conditions after death
coincided--I think almost to the smallest detail--with those you set
out as the result of your collation of material obtained from a great
number of sources. I cannot think there was anything in my antecedent
reading to account for this coincidence. I had certainly read nothing
you had published on the subject. I had purposely avoided Raymond and
books like it, in order not to vitiate my own results, and the
Proceedings of the S.P.R. which I had read at that time, do not touch,
as you know, upon after-death conditions. At any rate I obtained, at
various times, statements (as my contemporary notes show) to the effect
that, in this persisting state of existence, they have bodies which,
though imperceptible by our senses, are as solid to them as ours to us,
that these bodies are based on the general characteristics of our
present bodies but beautified; that they have no age, no pain, no rich
and poor; that they wear clothes and take nourishment; that they do not
sleep (though they spoke of passing occasionally into a semiconscious
state which they called 'lying asleep'--a condition, it just occurs to
me, which seems to correspond roughly with the 'Hypnoidal' state);
that, after a period which is usually shorter than the average
life-time here, they pass to some further state of existence; that
people of similar thoughts, tastes and feelings, gravitate together;
that married couples do not necessarily reunite, but that the love of
man and woman continues and is freed of elements which with us often
militate against its perfect realization; that immediately after death
people pass into a semi-conscious rest-state lasting various periods,
that they are unable to experience bodily pain, but are susceptible at
times to some mental anxiety; that a painful death is 'absolutely
unknown,' that religious beliefs make no difference whatever in the
after-state, and that their life altogether is intensely happy, and no
one having ever realised it could wish to return here. I got no
reference to 'work' by that word, but much to the various interests
that were said to occupy them. That is probably only another way of
saying the same thing. 'Work' with us has come usually to mean 'work
to live,' and that, I was emphatically informed, was not the case with
them--that all the requirements of life were somehow mysteriously
'provided.' Neither did I get any reference to a definite 'temporary
penal state,' but I gathered that people begin there at the point of
intellectual and moral development where they leave off here; and since
their state of happiness was based mainly upon sympathy, those who came
over in a low moral condition, failed at first for various lengths of
time to have the capacity to appreciate and enjoy it."
AUTOMATIC WRITING
This form of mediumship gives the very highest results, and yet in its
very nature is liable to self-deception. Are we using our own hand or
is an outside power directing it? It is only by the information
received that we can tell, and even then we have to make broad
allowance for the action of our own subconscious knowledge. It is
worth while perhaps to quote what appears to me to be a thoroughly
critic-proof case, so that the inquirer may see how strong the evidence
is that these messages are not self-evolved. This case is quoted in Mr.
Arthur Hill's recent book Man Is a Spirit (Cassell & Co.) and is
contributed by a gentleman who takes the name of Captain James Burton.
He is, I understand, the same medium (amateur) through whose
communications the position of the buried ruins at Glastonbury have
recently been located. "A week after my father's funeral I was writing
a business letter, when something seemed to intervene between my hand
and the motor centres of my brain, and the hand wrote at an amazing
rate a letter, signed with my father's signature and purporting to come
from him. I was upset, and my right side and arm became cold and numb.
For a year after this letters came frequently, and always at unexpected
times. I never knew what they contained until I examined them with a
magnifying-glass: they were microscopic. And they contained a vast
amount of matter with which it was impossible for me to be acquainted."
. . . "Unknown to me, my mother, who was staying some sixty miles
away, lost her pet dog, which my father had given her. The same night
I had a letter from him condoling with her, and stating that the dog
was now with him. 'All things which love us and are necessary to our
happiness in the world are with us here.' A most sacred secret, known
to no one but my father and mother, concerning a matter which occurred
years before I was born, was afterwards told me in the script, with the
comment: 'Tell your mother this, and she will know that it is I, your
father, who am writing.' My mother had been unable to accept the
possibility up to now, but when I told her this she collapsed and
fainted. From that moment the letters became her greatest comfort, for
they were lovers during the forty years of their married life, and his
death almost broke her heart.
"As for myself, I am as convinced that my father, in his original
personality, still exists, as if he were still in his study with the
door shut. He is no more dead than he would be were he living in
America.
"I have compared the diction and vocabulary of these letters with those
employed in my own writing--I am not unknown as a magazine
contributor--and I find no points of similarity between the two."
There is much further evidence in this case for which I refer the
reader to the book itself.
THE CHERITON DUGOUT
I have mentioned in the text that I had some recent experience of a
case where a "polter-geist" or mischievous spirit had been manifesting.
These entities appear to be of an undeveloped order and nearer to earth
conditions than any others with which we are acquainted. This
comparative materialism upon their part places them low in the scale of
spirit, and undesirable perhaps as communicants, but it gives them a
special value as calling attention to crude obvious phenomena, and so
arresting the human attention and forcing upon our notice that there
are other forms of life within the universe. These borderland forces
have attracted passing attention at several times and places in the
past, such cases as the Wesley persecution at Epworth, the Drummer of
Tedworth, the Bells of Bealing, etc., startling the country for a
time--each of them being an impingement of unknown forces upon human
life. Then almost simultaneously came the Hydesville case in America
and the Cideville disturbances in France, which were so marked that
they could not be overlooked. From them sprang the whole modern
movement which, reasoning upwards from small things to great, from raw
things to developed ones, from phenomena to messages, is destined to
give religion the firmest basis upon which it has ever stood.
Therefore, humble and foolish as these manifestations may seem, they
have been the seed of large developments, and are worthy of our
respectful, though critical, attention.
Many such manifestations have appeared of recent years in various
quarters of the world, each of which is treated by the press in a more
or less comic vein, with a conviction apparently that the use of the
word "spook" discredits the incident and brings discussion to an end.
It is remarkable that each is treated as an entirely isolated
phenomenon, and thus the ordinary reader gets no idea of the strength
of the cumulative evidence. In this particular case of the Cheriton
Dugout the facts are as follows:
Mr. Jaques, a Justice of the Peace and a man of education and
intelligence, residing at Embrook House, Cheriton, near Folkestone,
made a dugout just opposite to his residence as a protection against
air raids. The house was, it may be remarked, of great antiquity, part
of it being an old religious foundation of the 14th Century. The
dugout was constructed at the base of a small bluff, and the sinking
was through ordinary soft sandstone. The work was carried out by a
local jobbing builder called Rolfe, assisted by a lad. Soon after the
inception of his task he was annoyed by his candle being continually
blown out by jets of sand, and, by similar jets hitting up against his
own face. These phenomena he imagined to be due to some gaseous or
electrical cause, but they reached such a point that his work was
seriously hampered, and he complained to Mr. Jaques, who received the
story with absolute incredulity. The persecution continued, however,
and increased in intensity, taking the form now of actual blows from
moving material, considerable objects, such as stones and bits of
brick, flying past him and hitting the walls with a violent impact.
Mr. Rolfe, still searching for a physical explanation, went to Mr.
Hesketh, the Municipal Electrician of Folkestone, a man of high
education and intelligence, who went out to the scene of the affair and
saw enough to convince himself that the phenomena were perfectly
genuine and inexplicable by ordinary laws. A Canadian soldier who was
billeted upon Mr. Rolfe, heard an account of the happenings from his
host, and after announcing his conviction that the latter had "bats in
his belfry" proceeded to the dugout, where his experiences were so
instant and so violent that he rushed out of the place in horror. The
housekeeper at the Hall also was a witness of the movement of bricks
when no human hands touched them. Mr. Jaques, whose incredulity had
gradually thawed before all this evidence, went down to the dugout in
the absence of everyone, and was departing from it when five stones
rapped up against the door from the inside. He reopened the door and
saw them lying there upon the floor. Sir William Barrett had meanwhile
come down, but had seen nothing. His stay was a short one. I
afterwards made four visits of about two hours each to the grotto, but
got nothing direct, though I saw the new brickwork all chipped about by
the blows which it had received. The forces appeared to have not the
slightest interest in psychical research, for they never played up to
an investigator, and yet their presence and action have been
demonstrated to at least seven different observers, and, as I have
said, they left their traces behind them, even to the extent of picking
the flint stones out of the new cement which was to form the floor, and
arranging them in tidy little piles. The obvious explanation that the
boy was an adept at mischief had to be set aside in view of the fact
that the phenomena occurred in his absence. One extra man of science
wandered on to the scene for a moment, but as his explanation was that
the movements occurred through the emanation of marsh-gas, it did not
advance matters much. The disturbances are still proceeding, and I
have had a letter this very morning (February 21st, 1918) with fuller
and later details from Mr. Hesketh, the Engineer.
What is the REAL explanation of such a matter? I can only say that I
have advised Mr. Jaques to dig into the bluff under which he is
constructing his cellar. I made some investigation myself upon the top
of it and convinced myself that the surface ground at that spot has at
some time been disturbed to the depth of at least five feet. Something
has, I should judge, been buried at some date, and it is probable that,
as in the case cited in the text, there is a connection between this
and the disturbances. It is very probable that Mr. Rolfe is, unknown
to himself, a physical medium, and that when he was in the confined
space of the cellar he turned it into a cabinet in which his magnetic
powers could accumulate and be available for use. It chanced that
there was on the spot some agency which chose to use them, and hence
the phenomena. When Mr. Jaques went alone to the grotto the power left
behind by Mr. Rolfe, who had been in it all morning, was not yet
exhausted and he was able to get some manifestations. So I read it,
but it is well not to be dogmatic on such matters. If there is
systematic digging I should expect an epilogue to the story.
Whilst these proofs were in the press a second very marked case of a
Polter-geist came within my knowledge. I cannot without breach of
confidence reveal the details and the phenomena are still going on.
Curiously enough, it was because one of the sufferers from the invasion
read some remarks of mine upon the Cheriton dugout that this other case
came to my knowledge, for the lady wrote to me at once for advice and
assistance. The place is remote and I have not yet been able to visit
it, but from the full accounts which I have now received it seems to
present all the familiar features, with the phenomenon of direct
writing superadded. Some specimens of this script have reached me.
Two clergymen have endeavoured to mitigate the phenomena, which are
occasionally very violent, but so far without result. It may be some
consolation to any others who may be suffering from this strange
infliction, to know that in the many cases which have been carefully
recorded there is none in which any physical harm has been inflicted
upon man or beast.
End of Project Gutenberg's The New Revelation, by Arthur Conan Doyle