The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  Dr. Moore and I dined heartily on roast crown of lamb, spring potatoes with peas, and buttered cabbage. We were served two kinds of bread—German rye and sour-cream rolls; the hotel’s butter was superb; the wine excellent; the dessert—crepes with cream and toasted almonds—looked marvelous, though I had not any appetite for it. Dr. Moore was ravenously hungry. He talked as he ate, often punctuating his remarks with rich bursts of laughter. It was his opinion, of course, that the medium was a fraud—and not a very skillful fraud, either. In his fifteen years of amateur, intermittent investigations he had encountered far more skillful mediums. Even the notorious Eustace with his levitating tables and hobgoblin chimes and shrieks was cleverer than Mrs. A——; one knew of course that Eustace was a cheat, but one was hard pressed to explain his method. Whereas Mrs. A—— was quite transparent.

  Dr. Moore spoke for some time in his amiable, dogmatic way. He ordered brandy for both of us, though it was nearly midnight when we finished our dinner and I was anxious to get to bed. (I hoped to rise early and work on a lecture dealing with Kant’s approach to the problem of Free Will, which I would be delivering in a few days.) But Dr. Moore enjoyed talking and seemed to have been invigorated by our experience at Mrs. A—— ’s.

  At the age of forty-three Perry Moore is only four years my senior, but he has the air, in my presence at least, of being considerably older. He is a second cousin of my mother’s, a very successful physician with a bachelor’s flat and office in Louisburg Square; his failure to marry, or his refusal, is one of Boston’s perennial mysteries. Everyone agrees that he is learned, witty, charming, and extraordinarily intelligent. Striking rather than conventionally handsome, with a dark, lustrous beard and darkly bright eyes, he is an excellent amateur violinist, an enthusiastic sailor, and a lover of literature—his favorite writers are Fielding, Shakespeare, Horace, and Dante. He is, of course, the perfect investigator in spiritualist matters since he is detached from the phenomena he observes and yet he is indefatigably curious; he has a positive love, a mania, for facts. Like the true scientist he seeks facts that, assembled, may possibly give rise to hypotheses: he does not set out with a hypothesis in mind, like a sort of basket into which certain facts may be tossed, helter-skelter, while others are conveniently ignored. In all things he is an empiricist who accepts nothing on faith.

  “If the woman is a fraud, then,” I say hesitantly, “you believe she is a self-deluded fraud? And her spirits’ information is gained by means of telepathy?”

  “Telepathy indeed. There can be no other explanation,” Dr. Moore says emphatically. “By some means not yet known to science … by some uncanny means she suppresses her conscious personality … and thereby releases other, secondary personalities that have the power of seizing upon others’ thoughts and memories. It’s done in a way not understood by science at the present time. But it will be understood eventually. Our investigations into the unconscious powers of the human mind are just beginning; we’re on the threshold, really, of a new era.”

  “So she simply picks out of her clients’ minds whatever they want to hear,” I say slowly. “And from time to time she can even tease them a little—insult them, even: she can unloose a creature like that obnoxious Webley upon a person like Judge T—— without fear of being discovered. Telepathy.… Yes, that would explain a great deal. Very nearly everything we witnessed tonight.”

  “Everything, I should say,” Dr. Moore says.

  In the coach returning to Cambridge I set aside Kant and my lecture notes and read Sir Thomas Browne: Light that makes all things seen, makes some things invisible. The greatest mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration.

  19 March 1887. Cambridge. 11 p.m.

  Walked ten miles this evening; must clear cobwebs from mind.

  Unhealthy atmosphere. Claustrophobic. Last night’s sitting in Quincy—a most unpleasant experience.

  (Did not tell my wife what happened. Why is she so curious about the Spirit World?—about Perry Moore?)

  My body craves more violent physical activity. In the summer, thank God, I will be able to swim in the ocean: the most strenuous and challenging of exercises.

  Jotting down notes re the Quincy experience:

  I. Fraud

  Mrs. A——, possibly with accomplices, conspires to deceive: she does research into her clients’ lives beforehand, possibly bribes servants. She is either a very skillful ventriloquist or works with someone who is. (Husband? Son? The husband is a retired cabinet-maker said to be in poor health; possibly consumptive. The son, married, lives in Waterbury.)

  Her stated wish to avoid publicity and her declining of payment may simply be ploys; she may intend to make a great deal of money at some future time.

  (Possibility of blackmail?—might be likely in cases similar to Perry Moore’s.)

  II. Non-fraud

  Naturalistic

  1. Telepathy. She reads minds of clients.

  2. “Multiple personality” of medium. Aspects of her own buried psyche are released as her conscious personality is suppressed. These secondary beings are in mysterious rapport with the “secondary” personalities of the clients.

  Spiritualistic

  1. The controls are genuine communicators, intermediaries between our world and the world of the dead. These spirits give way to other spirits, who then speak through the medium; or

  2. These spirits influence the medium, who relays their messages using her own vocabulary. Their personalities are then filtered through and limited by hers.

  3. The spirits are not those of the deceased; they are perverse, willful spirits. (Perhaps demons? But there are no demons.)

  III. Alternative hypothesis

  Madness: the medium is mad, the clients are mad, even the detached, rationalist investigators are mad.

  Yesterday evening at Mrs. A—— ’s home, the second sitting Perry Moore and I observed together, along with Miss Bradley, a stenographer from the Society, and two legitimate clients—a Brookline widow, Mrs. P——, and her daughter Clara, a handsome young woman in her early twenties. Mrs. A—— exactly as she appeared to us in February; possibly a little stouter. Wore black dress and cameo brooch. Served Lapsang tea, tiny sandwiches, and biscuits when we arrived shortly after 6 p.m. Seemed quite friendly to Perry, Miss Bradley, and me; fussed over us, like any hostess; chattered a bit about the cold spell. Mrs. P—— and her daughter arrived at six-thirty and the sitting began shortly thereafter.

  Jarring from the very first. A babble of spirit voices. Mrs. A—— in trance, head flung back, mouth gaping, eyes rolled upward. Queer. Unnerving. I glanced at Dr. Moore but he seemed unperturbed, as always. The widow and her daughter, however, looked as frightened as I felt.

  Why are we here, sitting around this table?

  What do we believe we will discover?

  What are the risks we face …?

  “Webley” appeared and disappeared in a matter of minutes. His shrill, raw, aggrieved voice was supplanted by that of a creature of indeterminate sex who babbled in Gaelic. This creature in turn was supplanted by a hoarse German, a man who identified himself as Felix; he spoke a curiously ungrammatical German. For some minutes he and two or three other spirits quarreled. (Each declared himself Mrs. A—— ’s Chief Communicator for the evening.) Small lights flickered in the semi-dark of the parlor and the table quivered beneath my fingers and I felt, or believed I felt, something brushing against me, touching the back of my head. I shuddered violently but regained my composure at once. An unidentified voice proclaimed in English that the Spirit of our Age was Mars: there would be a catastrophic war shortly and most of the world’s population would be destroyed. All atheists would be destroyed. Mrs. A—— shook her head from side to side as if trying to wake. Webley appeared, crying “Hello? Hello? I can’t see anyone! Who is there? Who has called me?” but was again supplanted by another spirit who shouted long strings of words in a foreign language. [Note: I discovered a few days later that this language was Walachian, a R
omanian dialect. Of course Mrs. A——, whose ancestors are English, could not possibly have known Walachian, and I rather doubt that the woman has even heard of the Walachian people.]

  The sitting continued in this chaotic way for some minutes. Mrs. P—— must have been quite disappointed, since she had wanted to be put in contact with her deceased husband. (She needed advice on whether or not to sell certain pieces of property.) Spirits babbled freely in English, German, Gaelic, French, even in Latin, and at one point Dr. Moore queried a spirit in Greek, but the spirit retreated at once as if not equal to Dr. Moore’s wit. The atmosphere was alarming but at the same time rather manic; almost jocular. I found myself suppressing laughter. Something touched the back of my head and I shivered violently and broke into perspiration, but the experience was not altogether unpleasant; it would be very difficult for me to characterize it.

  And then—

  And then, suddenly, everything changed. There was complete calm. A spirit voice spoke gently out of a corner of the room, addressing Perry Moore by his first name in a slow, tentative, groping way. “Perry? Perry …?” Dr. Moore jerked about in his seat. He was astonished; I could see by his expression that the voice belonged to someone he knew.

  “Perry …? This is Brandon. I’ve waited so long for you, Perry, how could you be so selfish? I forgave you. Long ago. You couldn’t help your cruelty and I couldn’t help my innocence. Perry? My glasses have been broken—I can’t see. I’ve been afraid for so long, Perry, please have mercy on me! I can’t bear it any longer. I didn’t know what it would be like. There are crowds of people here, but we can’t see one another, we don’t know one another, we’re strangers, there is a universe of strangers—I can’t see anyone clearly—I’ve been lost for twenty years, Perry, I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years! You don’t dare turn away again, Perry! Not again! Not after so long!”

  Dr. Moore stumbled to his feet, knocking his chair aside.

  “No—Is it—I don’t believe—”

  “Perry? Perry? Don’t abandon me again, Perry! Not again!”

  “What is this?” Dr. Moore cried.

  He was on his feet now; Mrs. A—— woke from her trance with a groan. The women from Brookline were very upset and I must admit that I was in a mild state of terror, my shirt and my underclothes drenched with perspiration.

  The sitting was over. It was only seven-thirty.

  “Brandon?” Dr. Moore cried. “Wait. Where are—? Brandon? Can you hear me? Where are you? Why did you do it, Brandon? Wait! Don’t leave! Can’t anyone call him back—Can’t anyone help me—”

  Mrs. A—— rose unsteadily. She tried to take Dr. Moore’s hands in hers but he was too agitated.

  “I heard only the very last words,” she said. “They’re always that way—so confused, so broken—the poor things—Oh, what a pity! It wasn’t murder, was it? Not murder! Suicide—? I believe suicide is even worse for them! The poor broken things, they wake in the other world and are utterly, utterly lost—they have no guides, you see—no help in crossing over—They are completely alone for eternity—”

  “Can’t you call him back?” Dr. Moore asked wildly. He was peering into a corner of the parlor, slightly stooped, his face distorted as if he were staring into the sun. “Can’t someone help me?… Brandon? Are you here? Are you here somewhere? For God’s sake can’t someone help!”

  “Dr. Moore, please, the spirits are gone—the sitting is over for tonight—”

  “You foolish old woman, leave me alone! Can’t you see I—I—I must not lose him—Call him back, will you? I insist! I insist!”

  “Dr. Moore, please—You mustn’t shout—”

  “I said call him back! At once! Call him back!”

  Then he burst into tears. He stumbled against the table and hid his face in his hands and wept like a child; he wept as if his heart had been broken.

  And so today I have been reliving the séance. Taking notes, trying to determine what happened.A brisk windy walk of ten miles. Head buzzing with ideas. Fraud? Deceit? Telepathy? Madness?

  What a spectacle! Dr. Perry Moore calling after a spirit, begging it to return—and then crying, afterward, in front of four astonished witnesses.

  Dr. Perry Moore of all people.

  My dilemma: whether I should report last night’s incident to Dr. Rowe, the president of the Society, or whether I should say nothing about it and request that Miss Bradley say nothing. It would be tragic if Perry’s professional reputation were to be damaged by a single evening’s misadventure; and before long all of Boston would be talking.

  In his present state, however, he is likely to tell everyone about it himself.

  At Montague House the poor man was unable to sleep. He would have kept me up all night had I had the stamina to endure his excitement.

  There are spirits! There have always been spirits!

  His entire life up to the present time has been misspent!

  And of course, most important of all—there is no death!

  He paced about my hotel room, pulling at his beard nervously. At times there were tears in his eyes. He seemed to want a response of some kind from me but whenever I started to speak he interrupted; he was not really listening.

  “Now at last I know. I can’t undo my knowledge,” he said in a queer hoarse voice. “Amazing, isn’t it, after so many years … so many wasted years.… Ignorance has been my lot, darkness … and a hideous complacency. My God, when I consider my deluded smugness! I am so ashamed, so ashamed. All along people like Mrs. A—— have been in contact with a world of such power … and people like me have been toiling in ignorance, accumulating material achievements, expending our energies in idiotic transient things.… But all that is changed now. Now I know. I know. There is no death, as the Spiritualists have always told us.”

  “But, Perry, don’t you think—Isn’t it possible that—”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “It’s as clear to me as if I had crossed over into that other world myself. Poor Brandon! He’s no older now than he was then. The poor boy, the poor tragic soul! To think that he’s still living after so many years.… Extraordinary.… It makes my head spin,” he said slowly. For a moment he stood without speaking. He pulled at his beard, then absently touched his lips with his fingers, then wiped at his eyes. He seemed to have forgotten me. When he spoke again his voice was hollow, rather ghastly. He sounded drugged. “I … I had been thinking of him as … as dead, you know. As dead. Twenty years. Dead. And now, tonight, to be forced to realize that … that he isn’t dead after all.… It was laudanum he took. I found him. His rooms on the third floor of Weld Hall. I found him, I had no real idea, none at all, not until I read the note … and of course I destroyed the note … I had to, you see: for his sake. For his sake more than mine. It was because he realized there could be no … no hope.… Yet he called me cruel! You heard him, Jarvis, didn’t you? Cruel! I suppose I was. Was I? I don’t know what to think. I must talk with him again. I … I don’t know what to … what to think. I …”

  “You look awfully tired, Perry. It might be a good idea to go to bed,” I said weakly.

  “… recognized his voice at once. Oh at once: no doubt. None. What a revelation! And my life so misspent.… Treating people’s bodies. Absurd. I know now that nothing matters except that other world … nothing matters except our dead, our beloved dead … who are not dead. What a colossal revelation …! Why, it will change the entire course of history. It will alter men’s minds throughout the world. You were there, Jarvis, so you understand. You were a witness.…”

  “But—”

  “You’ll bear witness to the truth of what I am saying?”

  He stared at me, smiling. His eyes were bright and threaded with blood.

  I tried to explain to him as courteously and sympathetically as possible that his experience at Mrs. A—— ’s was not substantially different from the experiences many people have had at séances. “And always in the past psychical researchers have taken the p
osition—”

  “You were there,” he said angrily. “You heard Brandon’s voice as clearly as I did. Don’t deny it!”

  “—have taken the position that—that the phenomenon can be partly explained by the telepathic powers of the medium—”

  “That was Brandon’s voice,” Perry said. “I felt his presence, I tell you! His. Mrs. A—— had nothing to do with it—nothing at all. I feel as if … as if I could call Brandon back by myself.… I feel his presence even now. Close about me. He isn’t dead, you see; no one is dead, there’s a universe of … of people who are not dead.… Parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, everyone … everyone.… How can you deny, Jarvis, the evidence of your own senses? You were there with me tonight and you know as well as I do.…”

  “Perry, I don’t know. I did hear a voice, yes, but we’ve heard voices before at other sittings, haven’t we? There are always voices. There are always ‘spirits.’ The Society has taken the position that the spirits could be real, of course, but that there are other hypotheses that are perhaps more likely—”

  “Other hypotheses indeed!” Perry said irritably. “You’re like a man with his eyes shut tight who refuses to open them out of sheer cowardice. Like the cardinals refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope! And you have pretensions of being a man of learning, of science.… Why, we’ve got to destroy all the records we’ve made so far; they’re a slander on the world of the spirits. Thank God we didn’t file a report yet on Mrs. A——! It would be so embarrassing to be forced to call it back.…”

  “Perry, please. Don’t be angry. I want only to remind you of the fact that we’ve been present at other sittings, haven’t we?—and we’ve witnessed others responding emotionally to certain phenomena. Judge T——, for instance. He was convinced he’d spoken with his wife. But you must remember, don’t you, that you and I were not at all convinced …? It seemed to us more likely that Mrs. A—— is able, through extrasensory powers we don’t quite understand, to read the minds of her clients, and then to project certain voices out into the room so that it sounds as if they are coming from other people.… You even said, Perry, that she wasn’t a very skillful ventriloquist. You said—”