When a very small child, Odette Goimbault lived with her mother in a house at Thornton Heath. A lady died of consumption in the flat immediately beneath Mrs. Goimbault’s, and after the burial, Odette, though previously very fond of staying up late, used, every night, precisely at seven o’clock, to beg her mother to take her upstairs to bed, declaring, in a great state of terror and with tears in her eyes, that she saw an old man with only one leg standing in a corner of the room shaking his stick at her. When once she was taken out of the room her fears subsided.
In my opinion she is an ideal young actress for the pourtrayal of soul, for the transmittal of a sense of soul to the audience, and I think there is no one, either on the stage or off it, who looks more in touch with the spiritual world than Odette Goimbault.
But stronger even than its hold upon the theatrical profession is the stand that psychism has taken with regard to the present war.
Ever since the fighting began I have heard speculations raised as to whether our soldiers at the Front have been witnessing ghostly manifestations or not. So far, I must own that I have elicited very little reliable evidence on this point, but the circumstances have established at least one interesting fact, and that is, that to the man in the street the question of another world has at last become a matter of some importance.
The wife of a very eminent official at the War Office told me a few weeks ago that officers who took part in the Dardanelles Expedition assured her that figures believed to be ghosts were on several occasions seen gliding over the ground after an engagement, especially where the dead bodies of the Turks lay thickest. The same lady also told me that when a certain regiment formed up after a brilliant charge, in which it had suffered very severe casualties, some of the gaps in the ranks were observed to be filled by shadowy forms—forms which disappeared the moment anyone attempted to touch them.
Neither my informant nor any of the soldiers from the Front that I have met have been able to give me any information as to the alleged superphysical demonstrations in the sky during the retreat from Mons. But I should like to record here, in connection with the war, a case I heard in Paris. I published an account of it in the November, 1915, number of “The Occult Review,” and now reproduce it through the courtesy of Mr. Ralph Shirley:
“The mention of Ferdinand of Bulgaria brings vividly back to my memory two stories I heard about him, when I was dining one evening in June, 1914, at the renowned Henriette’s Restaurant in Montparnasse. Two men were seated at a table close beside me, and I eventually got into conversation with them. They informed me they were journalists, and that their names were Guilgaut and Bonivon respectively.
“‘You would laugh, if you knew where I spent last night,’ I observed. ‘I was in an alleged haunted flat in Montrouge. I don’t suppose either of you believes in ghosts?’
“‘I do,’ Guilgaut said. ‘I have had more than one experience with an apparition in my life, and so has my friend.’