Haunted houses

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introductory. 1

Spiritualism and Materialism A Reply to Camille Saint-Saens

Chapter I Experimental Proofs Of Survival

Preliminary reply to certain criticisms—Ascertaining the facts—Blind and prejudiced denials—Laplace and the calculus of probabilities—The choice of precise ob¬ servations .

S ERIOUS and competent readers who know ex¬ actly the state of our problem, and appreciate the value of the results achieved towards its solution, will perhaps consider it superfluous if I devote the first chapter of this volume to the task of answering objections, devoid of intrinsic value, raised by uncompromising sceptics who do not want to admit the existence of metapsychic phenomena at any price. But it seems to me that a clear reply to these negations is not superfluous, for the mass of human beings is inevitably ignorant of these phenomena, and therefore disposed to pass them by. And if I but convinced one reader out of ten of the error of those blind critics, it would be rendering a signal service to general information.

If we wish, by our own personal conviction, to acquire a rooted and permanent opinion concern¬ ing the reality, the nature, and the interest of psychic phenomena, we must first of all know that illusions of sight, of hearing, of touch, and, indeed, of all the senses, occur easily, and may be due to a thousand unexpected causes, so that we must guard against every possible error. Generally, we observe badly, we do not see below the surface, we 20 are content with mere approximations. The scien¬ tific method is here called for more than elsewhere if we personally desire a well-founded conviction. Once we have taken those preventive precautions, none of the opinions of millions of other people avail to impede our free appreciation of observed facts. Let that be understood once for all!

As regards fraud, both conscious and unconscious, I have dealt with that in a long discussion (fifty pages) in my work Les Forces Naturelles Inconnues, so that I need not go over it again.

I am inclined to think, with Emile Boirac, that the chief reason for the bias and mistrust encoun¬ tered by psychic science among some of our con¬ temporaries lies in the form in which it was origi¬ nally clothed, and from which it has not been suf¬ ficiently liberated. It was originally called Occult Science, or it at least formed part of that con¬ fused mass of empirical observations, traditions, hypotheses, and speculations which are known un¬ der that name, and which are mixed up with astrol¬ ogy, alchemy, chiromancy, magic, and other em¬ bryonic sciences of antiquity, of the Middle Ages, and of the Renaissance. It is barely two centuries since psychic science began to emerge from that mass, and among those who devote themselves to it there may remain some of the mystic spirit of the old adepts. It is one more reason why we should take care to introduce, with increasing ardour and vigour, the true spirit of modern science. It is thus that astronomy has finally arisen out of astrology, and chemistry out of alchemy, and neither one nor the other has retained the blemish of a sort of origi¬ nal sin. In the same way psychic science, cradled, so to speak, in magic and sorcery, deserves already, and will deserve more fully in the future, being described as an effective and positive science, thanks to the steady employment of the experimen¬ tal method.

Here we study the greatest of problems. The knowledge of the soul, the enquiry into our destiny, is an all-absorbing pursuit. A biographer has just said that if my life, after being devoted to the in¬ vestigation of the astronomical world and the dem¬ onstration of universal life, had only served to prove the existence of the human soul, it would have con¬ tributed to the progress of humanity. I devoutly hope so.

We require careful discussion nowadays. The publication of the third volume of my metapsychic trilogy, Death and Its Mystery, which deals with manifestations “after death,” has raised a tempest of recriminations from ignorant publicists, some of whom, while apparently sincere and well-bal¬ anced, recover, like other people, lightly and irre¬ sponsibly, while others show signs of bad faith and acrimony, which is as strange as it is useless.

Is it not astonishing? Our legitimate and natural wish to know the nature of the soul, to know whether it really has a personal existence, whether it survives the inevitable destruction of the body, that wish, I say, makes enemies and adversaries for us, who spend their ingenuity inventing a thou¬ sand obstacles to this free and independent re¬ search and in retarding it in every possible way! This systematic opposition is hardly conceivable, and yet it exists.

It is opportune just now to examine the subject with special attention, applying the principles of the positive scientific method. Let us take up the dis¬ cussion at the original incidents which provoked it.

On June 16, 1922, Le Journal did me the honour to publish at the head of its columns the following article I had sent in:

Manifestations of the Dead

Researches on the nature of the soul and its existence after death must be conducted according to the same method as is used in any other science, without prejudice or preconceived opinion, and apart from any sentimental or religious influence. Are there, or are there not, mani¬ festations of the dead? That is the question. Now I de¬ clare that there are. The Journal, to which I had the honour of contributing in the days of its founder, my spiritual friend Xau, having called attention to the so¬ lution of this long-standing problem, I bring before its readers one of two facts which have most convinced me of such a survival, and I defy the most sceptical of my antagonists to explain it without assuming an action by the deceased person. Let them try, indeed.

There was an engineer who owned two factories, one in Glasgow, and the other in London. In his service in the Scottish factory there was a young lad called Robert Mackenzie, who was particularly devoted and bore a deep feeling of gratitude towards him. The employer did not live in Glasgow but in London.

One evening, a Friday, the Glasgow workmen gave their annual ball. Robert Mackenzie, who had no taste for danc¬ ing, asked permission to serve at the refreshment stall. All went off well, and the entertainment was continued on the Saturday.

On the next Tuesday evening a little before eight, in his house at Campden Hill, the engineer saw a manifesta¬ tion which he relates as follows: “I dreamt that I was sitting at a desk engaged in conversation with an unknown gentleman. Robert Mackenzie came towards me. Rather annoyed, I asked him whether he did not see that I was engaged. He retired with a dissatisfied air, then came again as if he strongly desired an immediate conversation. I reproached him even more rudely with his want of tact. Just then the person to whom I was talking took his leave, and Mackenzie advanced again. ‘What does this mean, Robert?’ I said in a tone of some irritation. ‘Don’t, you see that I was engaged?’

“ * Yes,’ he replied, ‘but I must speak to you at once?’

“‘What about? What is the hurry?’

“ ‘I wish to tell you, sir, that I am accused of something I did not do. I want you to know that and to forgive me for what they accuse me of, for I am innocent.’ Then he added: ‘ I did not do what they say I did. ’

‘ ‘ ‘ What is that ? ’ I asked.

‘ ‘ He repeated the same words. Then I asked, naturally: ‘How can I forgive you when you do not tell me what you are accused of?’

“I shall never forget the emphasis of his response with its Scottish accent: ‘You will know soon.’

“My question was repeated at least twice, and the reply three times in the most expressive manner. I woke up, with a certain anxiety regarding this singular dream. I asked whether it had any meaning, when my wife came rushing into the room in great agitation, an open letter in her hand. She cried: ‘Oh, James, a dreadful thing has happened at the workmen’s ball. Robert Mackenzie com¬ mitted suicide.’ I then understood the meaning of my dream and said quietly with an air of certainty: ‘No, he has not killed himself.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘He has just told me.’

“When he appeared—to avoid interrupting the narra¬ tive I did not mention this detail—I had been struck by his queer appearance. His face was a livid blue, and on his forehead were spots resembling drops of perspira¬ tion.

“This is what had happened. Coming home on the Sat¬ urday night, Mackenzie had taken a bottle containing nitric acid thinking it was a bottle of whiskey. He had poured out a small glassful and emptied it at a gulp. He had died on the Sunday in terrible agony. He was believed to have committed suicide, and that is why he had come to tell me that he was innocent of the accusation brought against him. Now the remarkable thing, of which I had no idea, is that when I looked up the symptoms accompany¬ ing poisoning by nitric acid, I found they were just about those I had noticed on Robert’s face.

“It was soon found that the death had been attributed to suicide in error. I heard this next day through my rep¬ resentative in Scotland.

1 ‘ This apparition, in my view, was due to the profound gratitude of Mackenzie, whom I had taken out of a de¬ plorable state of misery, and his ardent desire to retain my esteem.”

That is the story told by the Glasgow manufac¬ turer. Does not the fact of this workman coming, after his alleged suicide, to reveal the truth to him prove survival?

We have hundreds of similar observations, made by responsible people who simply relate what hap¬ pened to them. The only way to evade all explana¬ tion is to say that the stories are not true, that they are imagined or invented, that the alleged witnesses are not telling the truth. Now the Glasgow manu¬ facturer was a personal friend of Gurney, one of the founders of the English Society for Psychical Research, known to him as a sincere and upright man, and his veracity is beyond doubt. Well, if we do not accuse all the observers of imposture if we do not think that they were feeble-sighted and that everybody is more or less mad or subject to halluci¬ nation, we must admit these facts just as we are bound to admit a strange and unexplained flash of lightning. One cannot deny everything. We must frankly acknowledge that we have here a whole region of things unknown to scientific investigation. In the particular case which I have just related, the young man, poisoned by mistake in the night from Saturday to Sunday, at Glasgow, appeared the fol¬ lowing Tuesday in London to his employer, who did not know of his death, to declare that he had not committed suicide. He was, therefore, forty-eight hours dead. We cannot here admit the coincidence of any dream with such a detailed occurrence, nor chance, nor anything else.

Those who deny these facts are ignorant, or il¬ logical, or insincere, for if they know them I can¬ not imagine how they eliminate the action of the deceased person.

Camille Flammarion.

That was the article published in the Journal . I admit that, against my usual custom, I had employed a rather aggressive style, in order to provoke dis¬ cussion and see what happened. The effect came soon. The next day, our comrade, M. Clement Vautel, who is particularly sceptical in these mat¬ ters, replied by the following radical denial:

My Film

In the year 1861, on a fine summer evening, Mr. Harry Cower was sitting in his dining room at Sydney, Australia. He had no appetite and could not dispel the melancholy ideas which crowded upon him.

Suddenly he heard a crisp and very faint noise. The mirror over the mantelpiece had split. “That is queer!” said Mr. Harry Cower. Some weeks afterwards he heard that at the moment when the mirror broke, his old aunt, Mrs. Dorothy Elizabeth MacClure, had suddenly died at Minneapolis, Minnesota, U. S. A.

Does this authentic fact not prove in an undeniable fashion the reality of manifestations from Beyond?

Another time it is a certain Archibald B. Blackburn of Chicago, who in 1874, at Woodston, Ohio, saw appear be¬ fore him his friend John William Hercules O’Sullivan, of New Tipperary (Mass.). O’Sullivan’s face was con¬ vulsed. He seemed to breathe with difficulty and made queer gestures. “What is the matter?” asks Mr. Black¬ burn. “Help, I am drowning,” says O’Sullivan, and disappears.

Blackburn, much distressed, goes home. And, eight days afterwards, he hears that his friend is drowned in the Missouri, at the time and on the day when his phantom called for help.

Those who deny these eloquent facts, says M. Flammarion, are either ignorant, or illogical, or insincere.

Well, then, I deny them.

I deny them all, en bloc, in the most categorical fashion.

I have read in the psychic books of M. Flammarion and other mystery mongers innumerable cases which strangely resemble the story of Harry Cower and Archibald B. Blackburn. I consider them devoid of any kind of docu¬ mentary value. They all occurred at a fabulous epoch, and guarantees are absolutely lacking. When I think that we cannot be trusted to describe exactly a street accident which we saw, I say to myself that it is foolish to base a whole philosophy, a sort of religion, on ancient anecdotes told in their own way by people we know nothing about.

Besides, there is too much English spoken in these stories of another world. The spirits, spectres, phantoms, etc., are never natives of Pontarlier or Romorantin; it is always in England or America that they indulge in their little manifestations. Is the Beyond also an Anglo-Saxon colony ?

Why, for instance, did not the late Bessarabo appear to the President of the Assize Court, to the Jury, or even to Maitre de Moro-Giafferi, to tell in what circumstances he took up his quarters at the bottom of a trunk?

That would more surely overcome our scepticism than the collection of psycho-canards collected by the gentle and pensive Camille Flammarion.

Clement Vaijtel.

It is by these pleasantries, this playing with words, etc., that our confrere of the Grand Press thinks he can explain the posthumous apparition of Robert Mackenzie! I venture to remark that this “solution’’ bears no relation to the problem. It is equivalent to these simple words: “There is nothing in it.” “Nothing”—that is, very little, considering all the facts established beyond a doubt.

As M. Clement Yautel declares that they “all occurred at a fabulous epoch, and guarantees are absolutely lacking , 9 9 1 brought him up against a fact observed in France, and not at the Antipodes, and neither an ancient anecdote nor belonging to a fab¬ ulous epoch. Here is the fact. It is an observation by Mr. Frederick Wingfield, made at Belle-Isle-en- Terre (Cotes-du-Nord):

On the night of March 25, 1880, he writes, I dreamed that I saw my brother Richard sitting on a chair in front of me. I spoke to him. He simply nodded in reply, then rose and left the room. I awoke, and found that I was standing with one foot on the floor by my bed and the other on the bed, and I was trying to pronounce the name of my brother. The impression that he was there was so strong, and the whole scene so vivid, that I left the bedroom to look for my brother in the drawing-room, but found nobody.

I then had the idea of an impending calamity, and I noted the “apparition’* in my diary, with the remark: “God forbid it!” Three days afterwards I received the news that my brother had died that day, at 8.30, of the consequences of a fall while hunting.

The death had therefore occurred several hours before the clear vision.

The very Parisian and very subtle sceptic of the Journal kindly acknowledged the receipt of this communication in a quite amiable letter, from which I quote only the following lines:

This took place in the Cotes-du-Nord. True, but your personages are Anglo-Saxons. Richard Wingfield, Baker, is not very Breton. Now this story, like all the others, I deny. Illusion. Vanity. Humbug.

This very characteristic observation is of no value, because the narrator is not French! If he were French, it would be just the same. It is

* i humbug/ ’ and there is nothing but humbug in all these stories: Death, mourning, pain, despair, all this does not count, and we can only laugh. This explanation of unexplainable things is extremely simple! Let us add that all this is just as usual. All the sciences had that sort of treatment when they began.

Besides, the objection itself is valueless, inasmuch as an observation made in London or Rome is as respectable as one made in Paris. These facts are observed in the whole world, and France has no monopoly of them.

Some days afterwards, June 18, the following letter was sent to me from Bologne, as a really French observation:

I read your article of June 16 (Manifestations of the Dead). I also read the “film” of our amusing Clement Yautel (17th), who denies the facts you mention on the excuse that they always take place in distant countries. Very well, I shall quote one which happened in Paris, in 1911, and you may communicate it to our Clement Vautel.

My father died of the consequences of an operation at the Cochin hospital in February, 1906. My mother not possessing at the time the money necessary to bury him, the hospital undertook the expense, and my father was buried in the fosse commune of the Bagneux cemetery.

Five years later I was at home and living in the Rue Etex. One morning I was walking up and down in my room. I turned towards the kitchen to have my early breakfast (it was 7 a.m.). I suddenly saw my father, standing upright in the kitchen, his right hand resting on the rim of the sink. It was he, indeed, with his calm manner which he always had during his life.

Some months passed and I told nobody about the oc¬ currence. But one evening I found myself on a visit at my sister’s and told her. She said: “Look here. That was just the day on which father was exhumed!”

Not knowing this, I asked why I had not been told.

“Because we thought you would not come at such an early hour. ” “ What hour V* “ Seven in the morning. ’ 1

And it was just at seven that I had seen my father.

Why did he appear to me? Was it to reproach me for not being there when his grave was changed? Yet I was not guilty, because I had not been told.

At that time I believed nothing, for I had not been brought up in any religion, but I assure you that since the day when I saw my father I have believed in God and the immortality of my soul.

Please accept my declaration of the most scrupulous sincerity.

Mlle. H. H. (my name for you only).

We may still assume a hallucination without cause. But how account for the coincidence of the vision with the exhumation of the narrator’s father? That is where the problem arises. Can it be vanity, humbug? What do you think? Is it not better to confess that we know nothing, but that there is “something in it,” and that we ought to admit the facts?

(M. Yautel has a good sense of humour. So had Voltaire. The great spirits of science—Co¬ pernicus, Galileo, Newton, Columbus, Gutenberg, Denis Papin, Fulton, Volta, Ampere—were less hu¬ morous, but progress owes its existence to them.)

Here is an observation in which the hypothesis of hallucination is not even admissible, for there are two independent witnesses. It was sent to me from Strassburg, on June 17 of the same year, 1922:

My brother, Hubert Blanc, was Almoner of the Marist Brethren at Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux (Drome). There was in the monastery a Brother who had been bedridden for a long time and was then in extremis . My brother went regularly to pass some minutes at his bedside. One day, in the course of conversation, the sick man said: “You know, Mr. Almoner, I shall not depart hence without taking leave of you.” “I should hope not,” said my brother in a tone of pleasantry.

Two or three days afterwards, my mother and my brother, having retired about 10 p.m., were hardly in bed when they heard at the same time, though their rooms were at a distance from each other, a well-marked noise of a key in the front door of the house, and then the steps of someone walking in the hall. Greatly disturbed, my mother called her son as loudly as she could, saying: “Hubert, somebody is in the house.”

My brother, who had heard the same noises, arose at once, went through the rooms, found the hall door shut and nothing out of the ordinary. But hardly had that visitation taken place when the telephone bell sounded. “Hullo, hullo, Mr. Almoner, come quickly, so-and-so is dying.” My brother hurried up and found in fact that the patient was breathing his last sigh.

This event, related by witnesses whose good faith cannot be doubted, produced a sensation in the monastery. The story was told me often by my mother and my brother. I authorise you to publish it if you think fit. My brother died at Grignan (Drome) where he was parish priest.

Marius Blanc

(Technical Director of the Biscuit Works, “La Cigogne,” Strassburg).

These manifestations and noises, the cries, the key in the lock, the steps in the hall, etc., are unex¬ plained, and yet they were undoubtedly and incon¬ testably observed. There are thousands like them. They cannot have been invented. (Those I have received number more than 5,600, and there are more in other countries.) It is nonsense to ascribe them all to practical jokers.

Out of the numerous letters received in connection with the article in question, I shall select the follow¬ ing, which I give verbatim:

Dampierre, Seine-et-Oise.

Monsieur et illustre MaItre,

I pray you will excuse my indiscretion and impor¬ tunity. Having this day read your article in Le Journal, I have remembered the following fact which I can certify as being true. I take the liberty of reporting it to you.

My grandfather, now deceased, who used to be a district surveyor, had retired. He descended one morning from his room and said: ‘ ‘ Last night I dreamed a strange dream: M. J. P., our cousin, appeared to me and told me he had just died and asked me to accompany him to the notary, where he would communicate his will to me.”

As my grandfather was saying this, the postman brought a telegram announcing the death of this cousin, whose illness had been unknown to us. We were very much struck by the coincidence. The subsequent reading of the will of M. J. P. astonished his family. He did not leave any of his goods to those he had loved. The heir was even accused of a forgery. Had M. J. P., when he appeared in the dream, wanted to call attention to the strangeness of his will? If you will read these lines you will, illustrious master, be able to draw a conclusion.

Paul Brustier

(Of Dampierre, Tax-collector).

To these unexplained (and inexplicable) observa¬ tions we could add a large number of similar ones. One may try to understand them by telepathic or unconscious transmission. But to deny them is ab¬ surd.

What is the explanation?

Before assuming the action of an intelligence out¬ side ourselves, all normal hypotheses must be ex¬ hausted, not only that of an unconscious activity of the spirit, but also that of a memory from which nothing escapes. This vigorous procedure is nec¬ essary.

But let us go back to the case, above cited, of Robert Mackenzie and its interpretation. Let us analyse and dissect it. This demonstration is of such importance that all possible objections must be examined and rigorously weighed. The dream apparition of Robert Mackenzie, coming to defend himself against an imagined attack, raises several of these.

I shall mention at once that the account is ex¬ tracted from my book After Death, slightly abridged for Le Journal, and that among the possible ob¬ jections I pointed out in the book, that of “retarded suggestion. ’ ’ Since the public is, generally speak¬ ing, unacquainted with these studies, I did not men¬ tion it in the article. Let us here examine the hypothesis of a thought transference made by the dying person before his death to his employer, which remained latent in the brain of the recipient, and only manifested itself after the calm of a night of sleep. A reader sends me his comments which specify this objection very clearly, and also deal with the transmission of thought by the reading of the letter received by the engineer’s wife.

It is possible [writes my honourable correspondent] that Mackenzie, in the course of his long agony, perceived the guesses of those about him without being able to answer them. The honest and timid youth was haunted in his delirium by the fixed idea to undeceive his benefactor, and to cry out the truth to him. And since his thought, being gagged, could not express itself in words, his instinct would no doubt seek, and possibly find, such means of communication as are admitted in the phenomena of telepathy, and which you do not deny. Would a message launched into space get through at once to the person intended, if he were not warned? In the first place, the factory owner, much absorbed in business—even in his dream, as the story shows—shows himself recalcitrant to the interview. Perhaps he had already several times dis¬ missed this importunate buzzing. But the night, appeas¬ ing one by one the other dissonant voices, may have made his unconscious self more amenable to the imperceptible appeal. Harassed by the insistence of the phantom, he would at last give it audience. You know the rest.

But on what grounds can you maintain that it repre¬ sents a being returning from the Beyond rather than one who was still living at the time of emission? Examples of retarded communications are quoted and accepted by you in analogous cases (see especially Avant la Morte, pp. 137 and 162). Why exclude them in the present case?

Besides, another hypothesis presents itself, inspired by your narrative itself: We know that a letter was already on its way, though unknown to the engineer. It brought him details of this tragic end. Its context was therefore of a nature to furnish his dream with the first elements of the scene, and the imagination—more imaginative than ever in the dream state—could easily bring out the dra¬ matic element in the apparition. The remark, “You will know it soon,” repeated three times by the phantom, does it not seem to you to be a clear and direct allusion to the imminent arrival of the letter which suggested it at a distance? And thus we come back to the rather less dis¬ cussed phenomena of second sight, telepathy, etc. And these, to those who accept them, do not conclusively prove survival, which, after all, is the sole object of the con¬ troversy.

Your interpretation, dear master, is not excluded by mine. Both can subsist parallel to each other. But the fact that yours allows room for concurrent hypotheses makes it indecisive in itself.

Georges Izambard.

Neuilly, Seine.

The above letter must be taken seriously (unlike the article of Clement Vautel). It puts forward two hypotheses towards an explanation. Let us ex¬ amine the first of these. I can deal with it the bet¬ ter for having studied it for a long time.

Since the commencement of my enquiry in 1899

1 have received more than 5,600 different psychic observations, and I had received 500 before I de¬ cided upon the enquiry. Of the quantity of psychic facts reported by societies devoted to such studies in France, England, Italy, Germany, or other coun¬ tries I estimate that an equal number has come to my knowledge. This gives ten or eleven thousand at least. Among these there was none which equalled in all its aspects the case of Mackenzie. The narrative which approaches it most closely, and concerns a retarded cerebral impression, is that which can be read in vol. n. of Death and its Mystery, and which is specified above (p. 6): the sister of Louis Noell, a beautiful girl of eighteen, suddenly attacked by diphtheria during a walk at Perpignan, dying after a cruel agony and appear¬ ing after her death to her brother, a student at Montpellier. I have enumerated this fact, which is absolutely authentic and undeniable, among tele¬ pathic communications between the living, and not the dead, while leaving the door open for the lat¬ ter hypothesis, for we must look for an explana¬ tion first in the mentality of the living. Frederick Myers, the discoverer of the “retarded latent im¬ pression,” who studied it with so much care, ad¬ mits that the retardation can only extend over a few hours, twelve at the most (Human Personality , vol. ii, p. 13), and that it is explained by the daily occupation of the brain which does not allow the impression to manifest itself until the spirit is suf¬ ficiently rested. On the day of the catastrophe, the student had been at a pleasure party. His sister was attacked on the afternoon of November 22 and died the next morning. The student did not get home until the evening of the 23rd, or rather at