The Spirit World and a Future Life
By Geo. W. Rine
V. Materialization and “Spirit Messages”
MR. HAMLIN GARLAND, the famous author and polished scholar, was deputed, about two years ago, by the American Psychical Society, of Boston, to prosecute an independent, scientific investigation of occult phenomena, especially those peculiar to that momentous movement known as Spiritualism. He entered upon his task with the determination to subject Spiritualistic phenomena to a cold, logical, calculating analysis. He aimed solely at sifting out rigidly tested facts. Knowing that all professional psychics are adepts in trickery, he had recourse to private psychics only, as these, not employing their powers for pay, have little or no incentive to resort to fraud. “Spirit” Sings with Polish Sitter
Among a multitude of the thrilling experiences to which Mr. Garland attests, the following is notable. To a friend Mr. Garland said: “I have recently had opportunity to witness a particularly incredible thing—the materialization of a complete human form beside the psychic. . . . The sitting took place in a small private house. The psychic in the case was a young business man who is careful not to advertise his power. . . . The place of the seance was the parlor of his apartment, and his young wife and little daughter were present, . . . and a Polish student whom I will call Jacob. . . . The little girl sat at the window and was under my eye all the time. The wife spent most of the evening at the piano on my right. . . . The light of a far-away street lamp shone in at the window.
“He retired into a little alcove bedroom, which served as a cabinet, and the curtain had hardly fallen between him and our group when the ‘spirit’ voices began. The first one to speak was ‘Evan, the guide.’ . . . Soon ‘Evan’ and other spirits appeared at the opening of the curtain. The wife called them each by name, but I could see only certain curious fluctuating, cloud-like forms, like puffs of fire-lit steam. The effect was that of illuminated vapor. At length came a form that spoke in a deep voice, using a foreign language. Jacob, the young Pole, sprang up in joyous excitement, saying that he had sat many times in this little circle, but that this was the first time that a spirit had spoken to him in his own language. As they conversed together I detected a close similarity of accent and of tone in their speech. It certainly sounded like the Polish language, but I could not rid myself of the impression that the Pole was talking to himself.” Mr. Garland goes on to say that a little later Jacob returned to his seat, and “the Count,” his spirit visitor, called for the Polish national hymn. Jacob then sang and the phantom sang with him. Both Jacob and the spirit Count continued to sing with distinct voices till the end of the hymn was reached, when the “Count” slowly melted away. Jacob never doubted the identity of the spirit. The Psychic’s Painful Encounter with an Apparition
Mr. Garland tells us that toward the end of the evening the psychic emerged from the cabinet, and in a dazed way ordered the lamp to be lit. This was done, and at his request the light was turned low. Now, directing his gaze toward the curtain, he called twice in a tone of command, “Come out!” Garland insists that he could distinctly see every person in the house. In response to the psychic’s second cry, Garland saw a form taller than the psychic suddenly appear before the curtain, and stand bowing in silence. He made out clearly all the features of the specter—arms, shape of the head, shoulders, etc. The skeptical, Garland is certain that it could not have been a mechanical device. All this time the psychic had the air of an anxious man undergoing a dangerous ordeal. His right hand was stretched stiffly toward the phantom, his left was held near his heart; his knees trembled, and his body appeared irresistibly drawn toward the cabinet. Watchfully, fearfully, he approached the spirit. A moment later they met—they clung together, and appeared to coalesce; and the psychic fell through the curtain to the floor of the cabinet. “The psychic seemed under an immense strain to keep the apparition exterior to himself. When they met, the psychic’s fall seemed inevitable, a collapse from utter exhaustion.”5 The psychic afterward related that he was undergoing a tremendous strain as he commanded the “spirit” to appear. He had a fierce pain in the center of his forehead, and could not get his breath. His legs seemed to give way, and all his strength and substance seemed to be drawn out of him. As soon as he touched the spirit form it entered into the psychic’s body. For days afterward the psychic suffered from nervous exhaustion. Materialization of the Psychic’s Deceased Grandfather (?)
In a subsequent sitting with the same psychic, Mr. Garland says he saw the development of a figure apparently from the floor between him and the curtain of the cabinet. He first noticed something shimmering, fluctuating about a foot above the floor. It was neither steam nor flame. It seemed compounded of luminous vapor and puffing clouds of drapery. “It rose and fell in quivering impulses, expanding and contracting, but continuing to grow until at last it towered toward the height of a tall man, and I could dimly discern, through dark draperies edged with light, a man’s figure. ‘This,’ the young wife said, ‘is Judge White [not the real name, of course], the grandfather of the psychic,’ and she conversed with him, but only for a few moments. He soon dwindled and faded and melted away in the same fashion as he had come.” Mr. Garland thinks that the question of spirit identity is the final and most elusive part of the problem, and that it may turn out to be the insoluble part of the problem. (Let us not forget that man has had a final solution of the problem vouchsafed to him ever since he has had a revelation from the Author of the human soul.) He holds hypothetically that all the “spirits” he has met are the secondary or etheric personality either of himself or of the psychic. This is the theory of the “fluidic double” as termed by some, or “astral body” as termed by others. He does not affirm or deny the theory of discarnate human spirits. This theory is held tentatively by many of these learned psychic “researchers.” The following London despatch was published in the newspapers of Sunday, January 31: “W. T. Stead presided this week at a seance attended by the Duchess of Rutland, Sir Albert Taylor, Lady Warbeck, and other notables. The medium was Mrs. Clarence Thompson, an American. Despite scientific precautions to avoid fraud a spirit draped in white appeared seven times.” Remarkable Instances of “Spirit” Messages
Mr. W. T. Stead, the famous English journalist and publicist, who is himself a psychic possessing marvelous powers, has been, during the past fifteen years, the recipient of so many thrilling “messages” purporting to come from the spirits of deceased friends, that he confesses himself convinced of the persistence of human personality after death. He has what is called the gift of automatic handwriting. By making his mind passive, he can place his pen on paper and his hand will write messages from either living friends at a distance or from those “who have experienced the change called death.” One of his many startling experiences he recounts as follows: “I had two friends who were as devoted to each other as sisters. As is not unusual, they had promised each other that whichever died first would return and show herself to the other in order to afford ocular demonstration of the reality of the world beyond the grave. One of them, whose Christian name was Julia, died in Boston shortly after the pledge was given. Within a few weeks she aroused her friend from her sleep in Chicago and showed herself by her bedside, looking radiantly happy. After remaining silent for a few minutes, she slowly dissolved into a light mist, which remained in the room for half an hour.
“Some months after, the friend in question came to England. She and I were staying at Eastnor Castle, in the west of England, when Julia came back a second time. Her friend had not gone to sleep. She was wide awake, and again she saw Julia as distinct and as real as in life. Again she could not speak, and again the apparition faded away.
“Her friend told me about the second visit, and asked me if I could get a message from Julia. I offered to try, and next morning before breakfast, in my own room, my hand wrote a very sensible message, brief and to the point. I asked for evidence as to the identity of the transmitter. My hand wrote:
“‘Tell her to remember what I said when last we came to Minerva.’ I protested that the message was absurd. My hand persisted, and said that her friend would understand it. I felt so chagrined at the absurdity of the message that for a long time I refused to deliver it. When I did so her friend exclaimed: ‘Did she actually write that? Then it is Julia herself and no mistake.’ ‘How,’ I asked, ‘could you come to Minerva?’ ‘O,’ she replied, ‘of course you don’t know anything about that. Julia shortly before her death had bestowed the pet name of Minerva upon Miss Willard, the founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and had given her a brooch with a cameo of Minerva. She never afterward called her anything but Minerva, and the message which she wrote with your hand was substantially the same which she gave to me the last time when Minerva and I came to bid her good-by on her death-bed.’” Getting into Communication with the Beyond
“Here again there was a slight mistake. Minerva had come to her instead of Julia going to Minerva, but otherwise the message was correct. I then proposed that I should try for more messages. Her friend sat at one end of a long table, I sat at the other. After my hand had written answers to various questions I asked Julia if as another test of her identity she could use my hand to call to her friend’s memory some incident of their mutual lives of which I knew nothing. No sooner said than done. My hand wrote:
“‘Ask her if she can remember when we were going home together when she fell and hurt her spine.’ ‘That fills the bill,’ I remarked as I read out the message, ‘for I never knew you had met with such an accident.’ Looking across the table I saw her friend looked utterly bewildered. ‘But, Julia,’ she replied, ‘I never hurt my spine in my life.’ ‘There,’ said I, addressing my hand reproachfully, ‘a nice mess you have made of it. I only asked you for one out of a thousand little incidents you both must have been through together, and you have gone and written what never happened.’
“Imperturbably my hand wrote: ‘I am quite right. She has forgotten.’ ‘Anybody can say that,’ I replied. ‘Can you bring it back to her memory?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘Go ahead,’ I answered. ‘When was it?’ Answer: ‘Seven years ago.’ ‘Where was it?’ ‘At Streator, in Illinois.’ ‘How did it happen?’ ‘She and I were going home from the office one Saturday afternoon. There was snow on the ground. When we came opposite Mrs. Buell’s house she slipped her foot on the curbstone and fell and hurt her back.’
“When I read these messages aloud her friend exclaimed: ‘O, that’s what you mean, Julia? I remember that quite well. I was in bed for two or three days with a bad back, but I never knew it was my spine that was hurt.’” Mr. Stead Receives a Prophetic Message from “Julia”
Those who refuse to accept the “spirit identity” hypothesis, invoke the hypothesis of telepathy from the unconscious mind of the living to account for almost any message said to be transmitted from the dead. But Mr. Stead contends that there is one class of messages which telepathy from the conscious or unconscious mind of the living, can not account for. He refers to that class of messages which foretell an event or events which have still to happen. It is certainly true that telepathy can not, in the very nature of the thing, forecast the future. The following strange predictive communication from “Julia” to Mr. Stead is here appended, in Mr. Stead’s own narrative: “Julia, on the very day on which she gave the test messages recorded above, made a prediction, not as a prediction so much as a friendly warning intended to save her friend from making engagements which she would not be able to keep, as at a certain time she would be three thousand miles away from England. My friend laughed the warning to scorn. The prediction was twice repeated, and both times treated with contempt. Engagements were entered into which when the time came had all to be canceled because my friend found it necessary to go to the distant place Julia had named.
“It will be objected that the prophecy in this case may have helped to bring about its own fulfilment. Let us admit that for the sake of argument. The same objection can not be urged against the next item of evidence I am about to produce. Some years ago I had in my employment a lady of remarkable talent, but of a very uncertain temper, and anything but robust health. She became so difficult that one January I was seriously thinking of parting with her, when Julia wrote with my hand: ‘Be very patient with E. M. She is coming over to our side before the end of the year.’ I was rather startled, for there was nothing to make me think that she was likely to die. I took the advice, said nothing about the message, and continued her in my employ. It was, I think, about the 15th or 16th of January when the warning was given.
“It was repeated in February, March, April, May, and June, each time the message being written as a kind of reminder in the body of a longer communication. ‘Remember, E. M. is going to pass over before the end of the year.’ In July E. M. inadvertently swallowed a tack. It lodged in her appendix and she became dangerously ill. The two doctors by whom she was attended did not expect her to recover. When Julia was writing with my hand I remarked, ‘I suppose this is what you foresaw when you predicted E. M. would pass over.’ To my infinite surprise—‘No, she will get better of this, but all the same she will pass over before the year is out.’ E. M. did recover suddenly, to the amazement of the doctors, and was soon doing her usual work. In August, in September, in October6in November, the warning of her approaching death was communicated through my hand. In December E. M. fell ill with influenza. ‘So it was this,’ I remarked to Julia, ‘that you foresaw?’ Again I was destined to be surprised, for Julia wrote: ‘No, she will not come over here naturally, but she will come before the year is out.’ I was alarmed, but I was told I could not prevent it. Christmas came. E. M. was very ill. But the old year passed and she was still alive. Julia replied: ‘I may be a few days out, but what I said is true.’” “About the 10th of January Julia wrote to me: ‘You are going to see E. M. to-morrow. Bid her farewell. Make all necessary arrangements. You will never see her again on earth.’ I went to see her. She was feverish, coughed badly, and was going to be removed to a nursing hospital where she could receive better attention. All the time I was with her she talked of what she was going to do to carry out her work. When I bade her good-by I wondered if Julia was not mistaken.
“Two days after I received a telegram informing me that E. M. had thrown herself out of a fourth-story window in delirium and had been picked up dead. It was within a day or two of the end of twelve months since the first warning was given.
“This narrative can be proved by the manuscript of the original messages, and by the signed statement of my two secretaries to whom under the seal of secrecy I communicated the warnings of Julia.
“No better substantiated case of prevision recorded in writing, not once, but twelve times, is on record. However you may account for it, telepathy, conscious or unconscious, breaks down here.” “E. M.” Posthumously Fulfils Her Promises.
“The lady whose initials were E. M., and whose tragic fate I have just described, had promised me that if she died before me she would do four things. She had constantly written automatically with my hand during her life. She promised in the first place that she would use my hand if she could after death to tell me how it fared with her on the other side. In the second place she promised that if she could she would appear to one or more of her friends to whom she could show herself. In the third place she would come to be photographed, and fourthly, she would send me a message through a medium, authenticating the message by countersigning it by making the simple mathematical figure of a cross within a circle.
“E. M. did all four.
“1. She has repeatedly written with my hand, apparently finding it just as easy to use my hand now as she did when still in the body.
“2. She has repeatedly appeared to two friends of mine, one a woman, the other a man. She appeared once in a dining-room full of people, through whom she passed unseen by any but her friend, who declares that she saw her distinctly. On another occasion she appeared in the street in broad daylight, walked for a little distance, and then vanished. I may say that her appearance was so original and peculiar no one could mistake her for anybody else.
“3. She has been photographed at least half a dozen times after her death. All her portraits are plainly recognizable, but none of them are copies of any photograph taken in earth life.
“4. There remains the test of a message accompanied by the sign of a cross within a circle. I did not get this for several months. I had almost given up all hopes when suddenly a medium who was lunching with a friend of mine received it on the first attempt she made in automatic writing. ‘Tell William not to blame me for what I did. I could not help myself,’ was the message. Then came a plainly but roughly drawn circle and inside it the cross. No one knew of our agreement as to the test but myself. I did not know the medium, nor was my friend expecting any message from E. M.
“Is it surprising then that after such experiences I have no more doubt of the possibility of communicating with the so-called dead than I have of being able to send this article to the editor of this newspaper?”