HAUNTINGS IN THE EAST END
Having come to the conclusion that it was quite impossible to earn a
living in America, I returned to England as a steerage passenger on the
German liner “Elbe.”
It was the last homeward journey she was destined to go, for she was
run into on her next outward voyage by the “Crathie,” several hundred
miles off the East Coast of England, and sunk with an appalling loss of
life. The weather being particularly rough, we were about nine days at
sea; and the fact that our quarters were extremely close, consisting
of little more than a square foot to each person, coupled with food
that I could not eat, made me sincerely thankful when the time came to
go ashore. Apart from these details I had nothing to complain of in
the way I was treated, for the crew—though barely concealing their
hearty contempt for all but the first-class passengers—were to me
civil enough. At the same time the experience—an experience I had not
bargained for—was one I certainly do not desire to go through again.
I shall never forget how glad I was to find myself once more in an
English restaurant, sitting down to a good, square English meal. I
spent two nights in Southampton, travelling thence to London.
On arriving at Waterloo, I found myself almost as embarrassed as I had
been in New York, for my knowledge of London was extremely limited.
I had only been there—excepting when I was up for my Sandhurst
Exam.—for an odd day occasionally, and then I had always stayed at a
private hotel in Cambridge Street, Hyde Park. Now, however, my funds
being no longer equal to the West End, I was forced to look elsewhere
for a lodging. After a wearisome search, I at last found a room in
Tennyson Street, S.E. That room will take a lot of forgetting. It was
very small, very dark, and very beetly. I could hear whole armies of
blackbeetles parading the floor and scaling the walls. Occasionally,
one dropped with a thud seemingly close to me, and I sprang out of bed
in terror, lest it had landed on the counterpane. I honestly believe I
am as much afraid of cockroaches as I am of ghosts.
I only stayed in that house three days, and then moved into the attic
of a coffee tavern in York Road. That was midway in the ‘nineties, and
York Road then was very different from what it is now. In the day-time
it was full of frowsily dressed men and women and the fœtid steam from
the cheaper kinds of restaurants.
I well remember one shop that boasted of hot rabbit dinners for
fourpence; and big pork pies, that had a peculiar fascination for
blue-bottles, were sold there, all the year round, for threepence. I
often wondered how many people those pies killed, and how any man could
be such a villain as to sell them.
But if York Road was mean and squalid in the day-time, it was
infinitely worse at night. I have never in any other street in London
seen such an endless procession of women of the unfortunate class. They
were nearly all German, and their hard, cruel faces should have been
a sufficient warning to anyone to give them a wide berth. I haven’t
the slightest doubt that many of the young men who were foolish enough
to be enticed by them were ruthlessly robbed, and not infrequently
murdered.
One very nasty incident took place just under my window. It was in the
depths of December, and the snow lay thick on the ground. Will anyone
who experienced it ever forget that Christmas of 1894. I was laid up
with influenza, and was lying awake coughing, when I heard a loud
shriek, followed by an oath, and a series of groans and gurgles. Then
someone whistled, and a cab came up, after which all was quiet for a
few minutes, when a crowd collected and a babel of voices arose.
In the morning my landlady, with a very white face, told me she had
seen it all through her window; she slept in the basement, and had been
too horrified to move. It appears that, shortly before midnight, a man
had hidden in the doorway of the house, as if waiting for someone,
and about ten minutes later a woman had come along, whom he hurled
to the ground, and stabbed. When the woman had ceased groaning, the
man whistled, and a cab came up. The driver, getting down from his
seat, helped lift the woman into the vehicle; he and the murderer then
climbed into the box, there was the crack of a whip, and the cab was
gone. A few minutes afterwards a couple of policemen appeared on the
scene, talked for some time, and then walked away, after which the
street remained silent till dawn.
I went out and looked at the scene of the incident. There was abundant
evidence on the doorstep and window-sill as to what had taken place,
and seeing the people next door looking at it, I asked them if they
had heard anything in the night. They shrugged their shoulders. “It’s
quite a common occurrence in this neighbourhood,” they said, “and it
would never do for us to take any notice of it. If we did, we should
certainly, sooner or later, share the same fate as that woman.” Thus,
no attempt was made to bring the miscreant to justice, and the matter
ended.
During the time I was with her, my landlady was robbed twice. On the
first occasion two boys came into the front part of the shop and asked
for some sandwiches. Whilst the landlady’s daughter, who was alone
behind the counter, was serving them, one of the boys snatched up a
ham, the other threw down a chair, and both flew out of the shop.
The girl rushed after them, but of course fell over the chair. Her
cries brought her brother Bert and me to the rescue, and we set off
in pursuit of the thieves. Although they had got some distance, Bert,
being an astonishingly fast sprinter, had nearly caught them up, when
the foremost of the boys abruptly halted, and, whirling round, flung
the ham right at him. He ducked, and the ham landed with a splash in a
puddle of rain water. Picking it up, we bore it triumphantly home, and
it was soon resting on the counter, I hope—since it was to be sold as
usual—none the worse for its adventure.
Episode number two did not end quite so happily. A young man with a
clean-shaven face, and innocent, big blue eyes came to look for rooms.
He spoke with a strong American accent, and said he was travelling for
a well-known firm of jewellers in Boston. Whether it was the eyes, or
thoughts of gold bracelets and pearl pendants, I cannot say—perhaps
it was both; anyhow, the landlady’s daughter beamed on him, and from
that day forth I became a person of second importance, if, indeed, of
any importance at all. Whatever he said was law, and whatever he chose
to wear was “most elegant.” Then something happened, for which I was
not altogether unprepared. He came down one morning carrying a somewhat
bulky parcel, which he told the landlady’s daughter was his dress suit.
“It’s too small for me,” he said. “This bracing climate of yours has
given me such an appetite, I’ve grown fat. I’m going to take it to the
tailor down the street to see if he can enlarge it for me. By the way,
can you change me this sovereign?” He handed her a coin, and I saw him
smile tenderly. Then he went out of the shop with a pile of silver in
his hand—and never came back. The sovereign was of course a bad one,
and, worse still, the dress clothes were a new suit of Bert’s, one for
which he must have given at least three pounds.
I was not idle all the time I stayed in York Road. I was thrown on
my own resources and had to find some means of making a livelihood.
Expensive though my education had been, it was of little practical use
to me now. The only subjects I knew anything about were those required
for the Sandhurst and R.I.C. Examinations, and they in no way fitted
me for business. A board-school youth with a knowledge of book-keeping
and shorthand stood a much better chance of obtaining a clerkship than
I did. It was a bitter revelation to me. I had always been brought up
with the idea that breed and manners were a valuable asset.
I now discovered that without money and influence they were a handicap
rather than otherwise. The majority of employers I interviewed
were certainly not gentlemen, nor apparently did they care to have
anything to do with such; all they wanted was smartness in figures and
the capacity of standing prodigiously long hours and any amount of
bullying. I worked for a week in an office in Lewisham. My employer
was a kind of jobbing stockbroker with a florid face and yards of gold
watch-chain. My hours, as far as I can remember, were from nine to six,
with twenty minutes interval for luncheon. The second day I was there
I was kept at work till after seven, and the following day, by way of
retaliation, I took a good hour over my lunch. When I got back to the
office, I thought my employer would have died of apoplexy. I have never
seen a man in such a fury.
“What do you think I pay you for?” he shrieked; “to eat?”
“You haven’t paid me yet,” I responded; “it will be time enough to give
way to your emotions when you have. You kept me here last night an
hour longer than the time agreed. Very good! You get an hour less work
out of me to-day. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
He raised his thick, podgy hand, and I thought he was going to strike
me, which I hoped he would do, for I have always been very fond of
boxing, and a scrap with him just then would have been as nectar to me.
To my astonishment, however, he suddenly subsided, and, walking out of
the room, left me to go on with my work undisturbed. I left the office
punctually at six that evening, and for the few remaining days I was
with him, the prearranged hours were rigidly adhered to. That was my
one and only experience in business. I tried to get on the staff of a
newspaper, but although I wrote to almost every editor in London, I did
not succeed. I am convinced that no post, outside that of a reporter,
for which I had neither the training nor the inclination, can be
obtained without the investment of money or colossal influence.
I managed, however, to do some free lance work, and I derived no little
interest and amusement, though not much remuneration, interviewing for
a weekly journal called “Theatricals.” The first man of any note I
met was the late Sir Augustus Harris, to whom I introduced myself on
the stage of Drury Lane. It was during a rehearsal of the pantomime,
at which, if I remember rightly, Harry Nicholls, Herbert Campbell,
Dan Leno, and many other favourites of those times were present. Sir
Augustus listened to what I had to say with great courtesy, and told
me to go to Mr. Neil Forsyth. I did so, with the result that I was
offered a small post on the staff of the theatre. I was grateful to Mr.
Forsyth, who was one of the very kindest men that ever breathed, but
apart from the smallness of the salary, there were obstacles in the
way, and so I had to refuse.
About this time I met a girl with whom I became madly infatuated, and
when she refused to marry me, I seriously contemplated suicide. It was
this episode that gave me the central idea for my first novel, “For
Satan’s Sake,” in which I introduced the girl, and which is written
very much round my own life.
I am only too thankful now that she did not accept me, for I do not
know how I should have kept her, and that, apparently, as far as she
was concerned, was the only thing that mattered.
I fought a desperate battle with myself for some time, and in the
end came to the grim resolution to go on living. It was when I was
recovering from this state of excessive mental dejection that I came
in contact with an old acquaintance, a public schoolman, at whose
suggestion I decided to try schoolmastering, and consequently obtained
a post at Daventry Grammar School.
But I must now return to the principal subject of this narrative,
namely, ghosts.
During the year I was in York Road I thoroughly explored the East
End, and in the coffee houses and restaurants of Poplar, Deptford,
Tilbury and Whitechapel I heard many first-hand accounts of hauntings.
Though it is not generally known, the East End of London is far more
haunted than the West. On one of my nocturnal rambles, I made the
acquaintance of a Russian Jew, who had an extraordinary mania for
spiders, which he kept in specially designed boxes with glass lids.
On their half-holidays he used to set his children to work collecting
flies and other insects, and the whole family used to revel in watching
the spiders gorge themselves on their victims. You could see he was
innately cruel by the hard twinkling of his little black eyes, and the
spasmodic twitching of his flat, greasy, white fingers, but he was
something of a scholar and he had a devout dread of ghosts. “There is a
haunted house close to here,” he said to me one evening; “if you like
to come with me I will introduce you to the owner. He is a Chinaman,
called King Ho, or some such outlandish name, and he keeps an opium
den.”
King Ho did not require much of an introduction, for, as soon as we
entered, he fixed his little slit-like eyes on me and said:
“Well, what do you want? A smoke?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve come to hear about your ghosts. I’m interested in
them.”
“There are plenty of them here,” he murmured; “the house is full of
them. Sit down!”
I obeyed, and the Russian Jew went back to his spiders and left me
alone with the Chinaman.
It was a dirty, sordid, ill-ventilated place, reeking with a dozen
different odours, and suggestive of vermin _ad libitum_, and diseases
of an Oriental origin and unspeakable nature. A curtain was drawn
across one end of the room, and noticing that my eyes wandered off in
that direction, King Ho got up and pulled aside the drapery. Two wooden
berths, one above the other, were discovered; the top one was empty,
and the lower occupied by a corpse-like Chinaman, who was lying on his
side, facing us, with absolutely no expression in his eyes or mouth. He
might have been dead the best part of a week.
“He’s away in the rice fields of his native home,” King Ho said,
“talking to his wife and playing with his children. He goes there every
night at this time”—and he glanced at the big, round, wooden clock
hanging on the wall.
“You mean he is dreaming,” I said.
“No, I don’t,” King Ho retorted. “I mean he’s there—his spirit, his
intelligence is there. That thing you are looking at is only his
material body. He, and I, and others we know, don’t set much value
on that, we can get out of it so easily. It’s the immaterial self we
esteem.”
Then, seeing I was interested, he resumed his chair, and stretching
out his long, thin, yellow hand, he touched me on the arm.
“Listen,” he said, “we, Chinamen, who come from the fields and
mountains, and grow up in close touch with Nature, can concentrate.
From our infancy upwards we think deeply. We think of the sky, the
stars, the sun, the moon, the mighty Hoang Ho River and the vast range
of the Pelings. We think of them in a sense quite different from the
sense in which you Londoners would think of them. You would regard
them as so many objects only—sky and land-marks. We think of them
as spirits that can act as magnets to our spirits—as intelligences
akin to ourselves, that can, when once we become thoroughly acquainted
with them, draw us to them. The Pelings live just as much as you and I
live—you might pull down their body, that great, elevated frame you
style the mountains, just as you might overturn that bench; but the
real, the spiritual Pelings would still remain. When once you grasp
the idea that all Nature lives—that everything, even to the chairs
and tables, have immaterial representatives, then you will begin to
understand the principle of the concentration we practise. You must see
the Pelings, the Hoang-Ho, the rice fields, not as they would appear
to the man in the street here, here in London, Piccadilly, but as we,
who live near them and know them, see them—as figures that can see
and hear, figures with intelligence, expression—intense expression in
their eyes. When you see them like that, you will get to love them,
and, when you love them, you will unconsciously concentrate on them, as
you do on all things that you love. Your love will not be in vain, it
will be reciprocated, and the love that reciprocates yours will, as a
magnet, draw you—you—your immaterial ego—your true self—towards it.
Now you begin to understand, I can tell by your face. The Chinaman—the
Chinaman of the plains and hills—like myself, _thinks_—he knows
Nature, and when he leaves China and comes over here, he concentrates
until he hears the voice of that Nature calling to him; and when he
hears it, his spirit is gently freed from his material body, and borne
silently and instantaneously to his home.
“Now, he can think best when he can get some at least of the conditions
of his native surroundings—and the most important of them is silence.
Not silence such as you may understand it, but the silence of the
conscious, inanimate hills, and rivers, and plains—and the only way to
procure it is through opium—the opium I supply. Hence he comes here,
takes it, and lies over yonder, and thinks, till he hears the call and
his spirit is released.”
“But the ghosts,” I interrupted, “the ghosts you spoke about.”
“Wait,” he said. “Listen! Sometimes men have come here who have lost
the love of the spirit of the mountain and river. They have lost it
because they have liked too much this London of yours, and have imbibed
too deeply of that detestable immorality, which so weakens the spirit
that it cannot, even if it heard the call, get away from the flesh. I
tell those men that my opium will do them no good, but they take it;
they take it, and dream as Englishmen would dream—with their spirits
chained to their material bodies. When these depraved Chinamen awake
and realise that they can never, never again, be drawn by the mighty,
majestic love of the Spirit of the Mountain and River, and that they
can never again revisit the home of their childhood, so bitter is
their disappointment that they kill themselves—not always here, but
anywhere—in their lodgings, in the river, or in the docks. Their
spirits then invariably come here, where, undoubtedly, they renew their
vain efforts to get back to China—to the mighty, majestic Spirit of
the Mountain and River, whose love they have lost. Look in that top
berth and tell me what you see there?”
“It’s empty,” I said.
“Look again,” he replied.
I did so, but still there was nothing there, only just the bare, dingy
panelling.
“Well,” he asked, “what now?”
“Nothing,” I said; “absolutely nothing.”
“Go up to it and put one hand inside,” he remarked.
I did so, and sprang back with a loud cry. I had touched a face!
“Yes,” he said, as I stepped out into the semi-darkness of the
causeway, “it frightens some people, but it never frightens me, because
I know that the only consolation possible for these unhappy spirits is
to lie next to, or to come in contact with, the bodies of those whose
spirits are walking and talking with their fond ones in distant China.”
Whilst I was at York Road I became acquainted with an Irish doctor,
whom I will call Flynn. He ran a surgery not far from King Ho’s house.
Flynn belonged to a famous secret society, whose fundamental object
was to carry on a doctrine of surreptitious hatred to England and all
things English. Though I had no sympathy with such a society—for I
have always held the opinion that, however badly England behaved to
Ireland in the past, the majority of the English people of to-day are
only too anxious to act fairly to her, and therefore it is better to
let bygones be bygones—I found Flynn a very original and entertaining
character. All his patients were either Irish or of foreign extraction,
and whenever any English person came to the surgery, he flatly refused
to attend them.
One evening, when I was sitting chatting with him in front of a blazing
peat fire—Flynn would never burn English coal—two Swedish engineers
came into the surgery, and Flynn, who, for some peculiar reason, was
particularly partial to the Swedes, asked them to join us at supper.
The meal certainly was not in the approved style of the West End,
nor, perhaps, would it have appealed to the nouveau riche; for there
was no snowy tablecloth, no serviettes, no champagne, no liqueurs; it
consisted of boiled beef, suet dumplings, potatoes—boiled in their
skins, of course—and plenty, yes, plenty, of stout and whiskey; and it
was very welcome to the four hungry, healthy men, who did ample justice
to it. After we had finished, and pipes were produced, I brought up the
subject of ghosts—never very far from my mind—and one of the Swedes
laughed.
“Ghosts,” he said, “there are no such things. Neither ghosts nor
fairies. I believe in nothing. There is no God, no devil, no heaven, no
hell. When we die, we die—there is no future life whatever.”
“Let’s have a séance,” Flynn said, “and see if we can’t convince him. I
have the skeleton of a murderer in the room overhead. I will fetch it
down, and it shall sit round the table with us.”
“All right!” the sceptical Swede, whose name was Nielssen, said. “Fetch
it down; fetch twenty skeletons you like, the more the merrier. Nothing
will convince me.”
Flynn ran upstairs, and presently reappeared with a tall skeleton in
his arms. The table was cleared, and we all sat round it with our
hands spread out after the usual manner of table turners, the skeleton
being placed between the two Swedes, each of whom had hold of one of
its hands. Flynn then turned down the lights, and we started asking
the table questions, many of which, I fear, were of a very ribald and
frivolous nature. Every now and then it gave a big tilt, and Nielssen
shouted, “That’s for me! It’s my mother-in-law—she’s found out I’ve
been making love to my landlady’s daughter.” Once there was a rap, and
for the moment I was taken in. Then the other Swede, Heilborn, cried
out, “It’s only Nielssen. He did it with his foot; he’s incorrigible!”
This sort of thing went on for some time, Flynn and Nielssen constantly
playing some prank, and Heilborn and myself not always too serious.
Suddenly the atmosphere of the room seemed to undergo a change, and, as
if by common consent, we were all silent. Then Nielssen uttered a sharp
cry of pain.
“Strike a light quickly,” he cried; “my hand is being hurt frightfully!”
We did so, and Nielssen gave vent to an expression of relief.
“How did it happen?” Heilborn asked.
“I don’t know,” Nielssen said faintly. He was evidently much shaken,
and spoke with the emotion of a man who has undergone some violent
shock. “I was only holding the skeleton the same as you, when I
suddenly felt its fingers close like a vice on mine. It was a grip of
iron. See, my hand is crushed almost out of shape!” He held it out, and
we all bent over it curiously. Compared with the other hand, it looked
singularly white and limp, and when Flynn touched it, Nielssen very
perceptibly winced.
Flynn gave him some brandy, and after a little while he seemed himself
again; but he would not continue the séance. “There’s something very
odd about the skeleton,” he said. “I don’t believe in spirits, as you
know, but there must be something closely akin to one attached to this
thing,” and he gave it a vicious kick with his foot.
A week later, when I called at Flynn’s house, he told me that Nielssen
was in bed. He had fallen downstairs and badly bruised his spine,
besides breaking a leg. “He’ll get over it all right,” Flynn said,
“but it will be some time before he can do anything. His account of
the accident is most remarkable; in fact, he declares that it wasn’t
an accident, that he was deliberately thrown. He swears that he
distinctly saw a skeleton hand suddenly catch hold of him round the
ankle, and that the next moment he felt himself whirling through the
air. He is most emphatic in his declaration that he will never again
scoff at ghosts or play with the invisible. And now,” Flynn added,
“the wretched thing has begun to plague me. I can’t get a decent
night’s sleep. As soon as I begin to doze I am visited by the most
disturbing dreams. I invariably hear knocking at the door, and when I
open it, something rushes in and strangles me. But the worst of it is,
I hear the knocking when I’m awake, too. Sometimes it begins directly
I get into bed, before my head has touched the pillow. Knock, knock,
knock!—the hard, sharp knock of bony knuckles on door, walls and
furniture. I am not actually frightened, but I don’t like it. What do
you make of it?”
“If it’s not the skeleton, the spirit of some depraved human,” I
replied, “it’s some other equally low and vicious earth-bound, one
of the class that visit séances and attach themselves to the unlucky
sitter. You might try getting rid of the skeleton—have it cremated and
see what effect that has.”
Flynn took my advice; the skeleton was reduced to ashes, and the ashes
buried many miles away from Limehouse Causeway, after which, the
disturbances, as far as Flynn was concerned, at any rate, entirely
ceased. Whether Nielssen was victimised again I cannot say. He rejoined
his ship as soon as he had recovered, and since then he has completely
passed out of my existence.
There was a house I used occasionally to go to in Whitechapel, a
rendezvous of itinerant free lance writers like myself, where,
although I never actually saw any ghostly phenomena, I always had
very extraordinary impressions. The moment I crossed the threshold, I
fancied I was in a big funeral procession following a hearse. It was
a dull, winter’s day, I thought; there were inches of slush on the
ground, and the cold was intense. I could not see the faces of the
people walking beside me, but I instinctively knew that they wore an
expression of extreme relief, and that some even of them should-be
mourners laughed. We tramped on till we came to a steep hill, then
there was a loud report, and at once everything became chaotic. After
this my mind gradually cleared and the impressions abruptly ceased.
There was no variation in these impressions, they always began and
ended in precisely the same way; moreover, I invariably received
them whenever I entered the house. I mentioned my experience one day
to an habitué of the place, and he quite casually informed me that
several men who went there had had similar experiences, and he thought
the landlord, if approached tactfully, might offer some sort of
explanation. Acting upon this suggestion, I spoke to the landlord, and
learned from him that half a century or more ago the house was owned by
a wealthy tradesman, who, it was generally supposed, had made his money
by sweating his employés. When he died, all the hands had to attend his
funeral, but far from looking sad, as they followed the coffin, they
had exhibited every manifestation of joy. Just as the procession had
reached the summit of a steep hill, a half-witted man fired a gun from
a cottage window, and the horses drawing the hearse, taking fright,
dashed down the incline and into a wall at the foot of it. Strange to
say, no one was injured, but the coffin was thrown out and broken to
pieces. The event made a great impression upon the minds of all who
witnessed it, and the landlord informed me that I was by no means the
only person who, upon entering the house, had received a vivid mental
picture of the scene.
I am often asked if I am a consistent medium. No, I am not. It is only
at times I see ghosts, only at times I receive vivid impressions, and
I do not believe that any person, however mediumistic, can depend upon
his or her psychic faculty for consistency. I have been to several
public séances, where professional mediums have had the audacity to say
they see spirits standing beside practically everyone in the assembly.
They rattle off the description of an alleged spirit, as if it were a
part in a well-rehearsed play—and play it undoubtedly is to anyone
who pauses to reflect. Genuine phantasms do not come to order quite so
readily.
In olden times, when people were really psychic, those versed in the
art from their childhood upwards could only raise a ghost with great
difficulty, and often, only by resorting to spells, many of which were
of a very subtle and complex nature. And when, in the end, they did
succeed, such manifestations invariably had a very alarming effect on
the medium as well as the spectator. How is it, then, that so many of
the professional mediums of to-day can not only see visitants from
the other world, whenever they like, all around them, but can view
these ghostly visitants without being in the least disconcerted,
without—as the saying is—turning a hair? Have they really stronger
nerves than had Saul, and a closer, far closer intimacy with the
Unknown than had the Witch of Endor, or can it be that the Spirit
World has so participated in our age of quickness—our rapid forms
of locomotion—that a medium has only to raise his or her eyebrows
and a host of spirits at once whiz into the room? I do not think so.
I believe that such mediums—the mediums whose psychic vision is
apparently inexhaustible, and can be turned on and off to order—are
either unmitigated humbugs or hysterical dupes, who mistake the baldest
impressions for actual spiritual phenomena.
The unmitigated humbug has only to describe the alleged presence with a
little elasticity, and the description will surely fit—albeit somewhat
loosely—one or another of our departed friends. Who amongst us does
not know someone on the other side passably good-looking, rather tall,
of medium colouring, and somewhat stout? And if we plead that we do
not, it is of no consequence—the medium glibly asserts that the spirit
he or she describes has got behind our chair by mistake, and is really
searching for someone else. But apart from this obvious fraud, can we
believe that any one of those whom we have loved and lost would so
degrade themselves and us as to appear at a public séance before a
company of strangers. Surely we would rather not see them at all, than
see them in such circumstances. At any rate, we would rather—much
rather—possess our souls in patience, until our departed loved ones
can appear to us in private—as they sometimes can—without the
intervention of any medium whatsoever.
With regard to automatic or spirit writing, there is, I believe, just
as much fraud practised. The mere fact that Sir somebody or other
has a touching belief in one or two of these automatic scribes is
quite enough for most people, and, consequently, they never dream of
questioning the integrity of any medium who professes to convey to them
messages from the dead. It is sufficient that the man with the title,
the great man of science, believes. But they forget, often wilfully
forget, that the cleverest man is often the most simple; that a great
judge has not unfrequently had his pockets picked; and that eminence in
one direction by no means denotes ability in another.
Snobbishness is responsible for much. The big man is credulous, and
because he is credulous the little man is credulous too. Hence,
consistency in the spirit world, in clairvoyance, in automatic
writing, is, for the moment, almost universally accepted, and direct
communication with the spirit world erroneously looked upon as an
every-day occurrence. It will be otherwise when the man in the street
wakes up and discovers the occult for himself. Experience will, I
think, teach him, as it has taught me, that although ghosts may on very
rare occasions come to order—and when they do, their coming is, I
believe, quite as surprising to the medium as it is to the audience—by
far the greater number of superphysical phenomena appear spontaneously;
and it is through such spontaneous appearances only that we can hope to
make any progress in our communication with the other world.