The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  I made an attempt to spoil any image which might have been stencilled upon the developing tray, but such an image might have been capable of resisting my scratches. But I am quite sure that the plates moved too much to make possible the one rather clean-cut face; and at the same time too little to justify the assumption that all the extras represent different exposures to the same image on the tray. The probabilities of successful fraud of this type I think are negligible.

  Another suggestion places the ever-present radio-active image inside the dark slide. This correspondent writes: “I believe that a clever workman could slit the dark slide of the plateholder, paint on the inner side a face in radium paint (or insert a thin piece of paper, etc., carrying such a face), and fasten the slide together in such a fashion that detection would be impossible.” Hope’s dark slide was a thin sheet of metal, and I think would not have permitted this technique, but in any event, such an image on either slide should have affected both plates.

  The suggestion that there was a pin-hole in the bellows, through which Hope exposed the plate to the extra image, I think need not be taken too seriously. This procedure would have called for a nicety of sleight-of-hand manipulation, under the focussing cloth, for which I am sure he had no opportunity. Most suggestions which have been put forward for apparatus inside the camera would call for a lay-out of such complexity as to insure its discovery when I examined the camera; and most such suggestions fail to indicate how one plate caught the extra and the other missed it.

  All these suggestions involve the use of fraud with reference to some part of the apparatus, or of the medium’s hands, which might conceivably be subjected to a betraying search. If fraud were practiced, I should think it more likely to lie in some direction to which it might be anticipated that examination would not extend. Now Hope’s person is one such direction; he was not to be searched, and he knew this. At any time in the dark-room, could he have exposed the plate to the extra, by straightforward sleight of hand, without my detection? The plate was a fast one, to be sure; but in a room receiving fair light from outdoors, and equipped with several ordinary incandescent lamps, a 15-second exposure was not excessive. Some of the marks on the plate could be called flashes, but at least one of the extras is far beyond any such characterization. Moreover such trickery would have to bargain on movement of the plate as I worked with it. On all these grounds a pretty intense luminous effect would have to be used, if ordinary light were the agent; or a radioactive effect of considerable power. But Hope’s dark-room is very dark indeed, and the probability seems small that he could have used anything of sufficient intensity and duration to impress the plate, without impressing my eye at the same time. It must be remembered that if he exposes the plate to the extra in the dark-room, he voluntarily gives up all the advantage of the radioactive class of tricks, for in the dark-room I can see an object so painted or coated.

  We may, I think, abandon the notion that actual X-rays were used in the studio. An X-ray machine is far too expensive, and with it, the expectation that both my plates would show anything shown by either, would be far more acute.

  In the face of all this, fairness demands that I quote the opinion of a photographer of long experience, who has handled the plate and several reproductions in the course of making the half-tones for magazine and book use. He insists that the extras are luminous finger prints; the better one being from a finger on which a crude face had been painted. One or two of the marks near the corner I think are probably finger prints – though not luminous ones; I have already expressed the belief that I touched the emulsion side of one plate in separating them. But as regards the good extra under this suggestion, I leave it to the gentleman who advances it to explain how this came upon the plate – reiterating merely that Hope never touched the glass.

  Another admission that ought to be made is this: Under repeated reproduction, the extras show a decided tendency toward grain, which my own face escapes. Sir Arthur has a lantern slide, made from a print from the original negative. From this slide, a new glass negative has been made, by photography with transmitted light; and in prints from this the best extra looks like the coarsest sort of a newspaper half-tone, the grain being its predominating feature. Examining the original under magnification in the light of this, one realizes that on it, too, the best extra is not so free from grain as the rest of the picture. This may or may not be significant; supporters of the picture’s genuineness will attribute it to the fact that the process of getting the extra upon the plate is, in some respects at least, admittedly and necessarily different from the process of normal photography to which the balance of the plate is due, and that some divergence in appearance ought to occur.

  Of all the suggestions for fraudulent production, the one which in my judgment is least improbable, from the mechanical side alone, is that by some secret and well-concealed optical arrangement, an extraneous image was projected along with the normal image of me, through the camera’s eye and upon the plate. There was no apparatus inside the camera by which such an image, coming in obliquely, could have been turned along the lens axis; the trick image would have had to come straight into the camera, from in front. The wall behind me was quite dark, and apparently unsuitable as a screen from which to reflect such an image. At the same time the completed picture shows marks which, along with the poorer extra, might be interpreted as an image of the path, in the suspended atmospheric dust, of a light beam thrown upon the wall behind me, from a corner of the room. A New York photographer insists that if this beam were of ultra-violet light, rather than the visible kind, the dark wall could have been chemically treated so as to act as a reflecting screen, without any effect visible to the eye; and as regards the light-track on the plate, ultraviolet would presumably be as freely scattered by the dust as visible wave-lengths.

  If this suggestion is plausible mechanically, it suffers greatly when we consider it from the human side. The apparatus would be far too expensive for Hope, and presumably for the College, even. Besides, all the indications are that if Hope is a fraud, the College is a dupe rather than a collaborator. Even if the McKenzies were inclined to be conspirators, I doubt that they could get the apparatus from any firm of such low standing as to make the transaction a safe one.

  One mechanical difficulty inherent in this or any other use of the ultra-violet part of the spectrum would be the difficulty of finding a source of the ultra-violet that is sufficiently free from the visible wave-lengths. Indeed, I am by no means convinced that such a source exists.

  If the thing is a fraud, I am inclined, on mechanical and psychological grounds combined, to believe that it is a comparatively simple one. I think that the average person of some scientific knowledge is far too prone to look for elaborate scientific tricks, and to pass clean over some absurdly simple little home-made artifice which goes under his feet rather than over his head. But if Hope is a fraud, of this or any other sort, it is pretty certain that he has more than one bow to his string. For if he is a fraud, he has certainly substituted plates or plate-holders with other sitters, and this is one thing which he certainly did not do with me.

  THE RACKET OF THE POLTERGEIST

  By Arthur Machen

  Machen, now recognized as one of the leading writers of horror fiction, began his working life as a journalist in London contributing to magazines and daily newspapers, including the Evening News and The Referee. His legendary short story “The Bowmen” which was believed to be fact when published in the Evening News in September 1914, unfortunately caused doubts to be cast over his later work, including this story for The Referee in January 1928.

  The Battersea Poltergeist – or Racket-spirit – certainly looked promising when it first came to our notice a few days ago. Potatoes, lumps of coal and soda, and a moderate number of pennies were thrown and sown broadcast.

  People who kept watch at night in a garden near the afflicted house heard stones pattering about them. One man declared that heavy stones were thrown in his direct
ion with remarkable vigour and accuracy.

  Glass doors were smashed, heavy furniture was treated lightly: in fact, the classical programme of the poltergeist was carried out in a thorough and whole-hearted manner. I had hoped a great deal from this troublesome devil of Battersea; but now it seems that there are suggestions of a purely natural explanation – that issue of all most odious to the investigator of secret things.

  Setting on one side, then, the Battersea business as probably nonsignificant, we may say that the poltergeist trick – if it be a trick – is both ancient and widely diffused.

  The Wesley family were terribly troubled by it in the eighteenth century, and six years ago Dr Weston, then Bishop of Zanzibar, gave a lively account of rackety doings in his dark diocese. The Bishop was summoned to a native mudhut which was disintegrating, not slowly, by the work of time and weather, but violently and after the manner of a volcano. Before the bishop’s eyes, as he went in, a portion of wall burst from its place and flung itself into the centre of the hut. A lump of roof fell on Dr Weston’s head.

  He cleared the hut of its inhabitants and set a cordon of men about it; still it disintegrated. Then the bishop began to exorcize, and the trouble ceased.

  Here, then, is the remarkable point. Things are inexplicably thrown and dashed about in England – a case gets into the newspapers once in every three or four years – and things are inexplicably thrown and dashed about in Africa. In most cases, it is just to observe, there is a young person, a boy or girl between ten and fifteen, in the house vexed by these uncouth demonstrations. Are we, then, to conclude that there is a world-wide tradition of this particular kind of mischief handed down amongst the children of the whole earth from remote ages?

  This seems difficult and improbable, and all the more so when we consider the handing-down part of the business. You have, let us say, a lonely farmhouse with a boy of twelve or a girl of fifteen amongst its inhabitants. The coals begin to fly, the crockery to smash, the plates to leap off the dresser. You cannot see how it is done, but you say the boy (or the girl) did it.

  It may be so; but who taught the young person his tiresome trick? Not the boy or girl at the next farm, since the poltergeist is not a sporadic, but a solitary manifestation. It is not catching, and it doesn’t spread. And the secret of the racket is certainly not imparted by the elder members of the family. About nine years ago there were some extraordinary manifestations of this kind in a northern suburb of London. I saw something of the matter, and I remember very vividly the annoyance and distress of the elder members of the family. Their possessions were broken – perhaps three or four pounds’ worth of damage was done – and their house was besieged night after night by a noisy mob. They were far indeed, from enjoying the notoriety that the poltergeist had brought them.

  There is, of course, the spiritualist hypothesis, though I think that many professed Spiritualists are disinclined to accept this explanation. The manifestations are utterly purposeless; one is inclined to ask with Dickens why a ghost should make such a fool of himself. There is not the faintest evidence of a directing mind behind the phenomena of smashed china and broken glass. Though, by the way, there may possibly be a link between the bangs of the poltergeist and the raps which were a prominent feature in the Cock-lane ghost imposture and in the earlier days of Spiritualism.

  Then there is another explanation: the racket is said to be caused by Elemental Earth Spirits, presumably gnomes. I do not think we need trouble to discuss gnomes.

  Of course, in spite of all difficulties, the whole business may be the work of mischievous and mystifying children. There may be something in certain cases – in comparatively few cases – of adolescence which urges the human boy or girl to play these puzzling and outrageous tricks; some secret, morbid, and obscure instinct which is as powerful in Africa as in a London suburb. If this be so, then the actions performed, the insensate throwing about of stones, coals, plates, and pots and pans are done consciously, but yet in obedience to an irresistible impulse, closely allied to the impulses of acute mania.

  Or, perhaps – it is, I confess, a wild hypothesis – the ferment of the change from childhood to manhood or womanhood, affecting profoundly the whole being, physical, mental, spiritual, may generate a force which transcends all our capacity of definition or explanation, which acts as blindly, with as little sense of direction, as the lightning flash.

  And, it is barely possible; the “medium” of the Spiritualists may be a poltergeist child who has grown up.

  EDGAR WALLACE RETURNS

  By Maurice Barbanell

  A London journalist and devoted psychic investigator, Barbanell founded and edited the long-running Psychic News in 1932 to investigate and debate the supernatural and paranormal world. Among his many contributions to the paper was this story, published in the autumn of its inaugural year and some nine months after the death of the famous novelist on 10 February 1932.

  I did not expect that a controversy would ensue from what seemed a routine newspaper happening. It began when I had engaged a new reporter named A. W. Austen. Dissatisfied with his predecessor, I telephoned the National Union of Journalists with a request to send a suitable applicant for the post. Austen came for an interview.

  He was a young man in his early twenties whose previous journalistic experience had been confined to a local newspaper. He knew nothing at firsthand about Spiritualism or psychic phenomena. So far as religion was concerned, he was an agnostic by outlook. Only once had he attended a public demonstration of clairvoyance, but it had been some years earlier and he could not recall the impression it had made.

  He seemed to possess the necessary qualities for a reporter, particularly as he was an expert shorthand writer. His scepticism of psychic matters, which was natural to an agnostic, appeared to me a desirable rather than an undesirable qualification, for he would bring to his work an unbiased mind that could not be accused of credulity or incredulity.

  In the course of his labours he interviewed mediums and edited reports of psychic happenings that reached us through the post. But he lacked personal experience, which rightly he considered essential before he could form any opinion.

  A few weeks after Austen’s appointment, I suggested that he should participate in a “friendly test” with Myers, who at the time was getting an average of two or three extras on every six plates that he exposed. As part of the conditions, it was agreed that Austen would buy a packet of half-a-dozen quarter-plates at a branch of a well-known chain of chemists.

  The plates remained in Austen’s possession all the evening, except when they were loaded into slides in his presence, when they were exposed in the camera and, later, when they were developed in the darkroom while he watched. To make the test complete, I signed each plate as it was loaded into its slide.

  Austen’s report revealed that he regarded the proceedings with no little apprehension. The thought that there might be a spirit form standing next to him, perhaps even touching him, was, he said, rather frightening.

  The proceedings began with Myers offering a prayer. After that, the plates, still in their unopened packet, were passed round to the group, which numbered ten, to be “magnetized.” There is a prevailing belief that each individual possesses some quantity of psychic power and that mediums are mediums because they have it in a larger degree. Every sitter held the packet for a few seconds before passing it on to his neighbour.

  Next some sacred music was played on a gramophone, again as part of a belief that this helps the conditions needed to obtain psychic results. Presently Myers, Austen and I retired to the darkroom and loaded the slides with the plates while I signed each one to make identification certain, and to answer sceptics who might later say that they were substituted for others.

  The three of us returned to the room in Myers’ house where the remainder of the group were waiting. Throughout, the room was brightly lit by two powerful electric lamps, a fact which surprised Austen, as he had erroneously believed that all such test
s were held in the dark.

  During the exposure of the first plate nothing happened. Austen began to feel that he had been frightened for no reason, but his composure disappeared during the second exposure when Myers went into a semitrance state in which he wandered about the room apparently aimlessly. In this state he transmitted spirit messages or made references to what would appear on the plates.

  The thing which struck Austen as extraordinary was that two of the plates were exposed to the light for so long that he expected them to be blacked out completely when developed. But the medium’s psychic power countered what should normally have happened and produced sharp images on these overexposed plates.

  During one exposure Myers, still in his trancelike state, said that a man, who had been known to me before his passing, was present and that he had a message: “Keep the flag flying. We are still in the melting pot.” After that Myers said: “It is Israel Zangwill. Do you know him?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “I know him.” I had met him when he lectured for a literary society of which I was secretary. The significance of one part of his message was that Zangwill, who earned fame with his novels depicting Jewish life, called one of his plays, The Melting Pot.