Seen and Unseen

by E. Katherine Bates

I have given this case and its treatment very much in extenso, not only because it may be helpful to others dealing with erring and revengeful spirits, but because on my return to London every important point in this true narrative was amply corroborated.

It took some time and a good deal of tact before the case was complete.

First, I learned that Henry Halifax was by no means a persona grata in the house where I first met him, and that my young friends there had only been allowed to ask him under some protest, and because the rest of his family were to be present.

Asked why this should be the case, their answers were naturally vague: they only knew he was not very welcome.

Of course, I did not pursue the matter with these young people. They told me, however, that he was very much changed of late, and seemed so often moody, unhappy, and discontented.

"I am sure we should be happy enough if we had such a luxurious home and all that money," said one of them naïvely.

Now I happened to know rather intimately at that time another friend of the Halifax family; a woman considerably older than the young girls mentioned, and as she had some little knowledge of psychic possibilities I determined to lay the whole story before her, trusting to her honour to keep it to herself, and not to allow any prejudice against Henry Halifax to arise in her mind should she know nothing of the circumstances.

She had known the family from her childhood, and I knew, therefore, would not be influenced by the word of an outsider under these circumstances. But I discovered that the confession of Henry Halifax, the spirit, was no illusion on my part, but the absolute truth.

Young, handsome, rich, with all the world before him (he was only twenty-four at the time), this lady had been greatly puzzled by his intense depression of the last few months, and told me that he was constantly speaking of suicide. It was supposed to be a purely physical condition by his parents and others. She, however, knew an intimate man friend of his. By one of those not uncommon mistakes, whereby each one supposes the other to be in the confidence of a mutual acquaintance, she had discovered that the real trouble was mental rather than physical, and that the death of the young woman of lower social position, in child-birth, "last midsummer" was an actual fact!

Needless to say how great was her astonishment to find that the whole story had been made known to me through such a curious train of circumstances—first, my experience of the malignant spirit; secondly, my happening to go to Wimbledon next day and mention the circumstances to the wife of the florist there; thirdly, her strong and, as it proved, quite accurate impressions upon the subject; and fourthly, my two interviews:—first, with the betrayer, and then with the betrayed on the psychic plane.