Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter

by Elliott O'Donnell

I have always looked upon G. R. Foss as one of the greatest stage geniuses I have ever met. He is that rarest of all individuals—the born actor—the man who can perform almost any rôle with equal success. He is the ideal stage manager, a past master in the knowledge of all the technicalities adhering to the theatre, and the possessor of a never-ceasing flow of wit and good humour.

Among the pupils who were at the Studio with me, several have performed in London. I toured with George Desmond, who was quite recently playing in the West End, and I met Miss Yvonne Orchardson again, some two or more years ago, when she was also acting in a London theatre, whilst I constantly see that charming and talented old Nevillite, Miss Lilian North, who delights London audiences with her sweetly told stories and good recitations. Apart from many other personal attractions, Miss North has the most beautiful hands; the fingers are long and tapering and the nails exquisitely shaped. It is the rarest combination of the psychic and dramatic hand, and such as I have very seldom seen saving among Orientals.

If I have spoken somewhat extravagantly of the Neville Studio, its instructors and pupils, it is only what I genuinely feel, and I repeat, again, that the hours there were some of the most delightful I have ever experienced. When I had completed my course of instruction, I went on tour in “A Night Out.” I then came back to London and remained nearly a year in Town, writing in the day-time and playing in one or other of the suburbs in the evening. I lived, for the most part, in St. James’ Road, Brixton, where I wrote my second and third books, both novels, and entitled respectively “The Unknown Depths” and “Dinevah the Beautiful.”

“The Unknown Depths,” founded to a large extent upon my own life, introduces the subject of Spiritualism, or, as it is now more often termed, Spiritism, and, whilst I was engaged on it, I attended many séances.

I am often asked to express an opinion on Spiritualism.

I am very averse from any attempt to invoke spirits, either through the aid of spells or mediums, by table-turning, or by automatic writing. As I have already said, I believe that genuine spirits do occasionally manifest themselves at séances, but that, when they do, the medium is quite as surprised at the manifestation as the sitters, and in no greater a degree, perhaps, responsible for it. I believe the spirit I have named neutrarian is the only type of spirit that takes advantage of a séance, that is to say, takes advantage of the peculiar magnetic atmosphere created at a séance. It adopts the form, or attributes, of some relative or friend of one of the sitters, and, thus disguised, manifests itself merely for the sake of deceiving and misleading over-credulous men and women. But unfortunately these spirits do not stop at mere mischief. Having once gained a footing, so to speak, they can attach themselves to certain people, and by tormenting them continually, drive them in the end to madness and suicide.

In addition to the danger of attracting undesirable neutrarians at séances, there is the risk of being duped by mediums. I have met a good many professional mediums—so-called clairvoyants, aura tellers, psychometrists, materialising mediums, and the like, and none of them have convinced me that they can do all that they profess to do. Besides, even if they could, the mere suggestion that one’s spirit friend or relative is tapping on a wall or blowing through a trumpet, presumably to satisfy the curiosity of a number of strangers, and incidentally to fill the coffers of an illiterate man or woman, only fills one with disgust. If any departed friends of mine wish to visit me, I am sure they could do so without the assistance of a so-called medium and all their paltry paraphernalia. The usual argument in defence of these mediums is that some well-known scientific man believes in them. “If Sir somebody or other says I am genuine,” the clairvoyant exclaims, “then I am genuine, and you’ve no right in the world to doubt me.”

The medium is wrong. I have every right. Scientists may be very shrewd, perhaps infallible in their own legitimate calling, but, outside it, their opinion need carry no more weight than mine, or yours, or anyone else’s.

It by no means follows that because a man is a Professor of Physics he is also a great student of character. Poring over chemicals or figures all day is a very poor training for reading the human mind. An actor is a far more able exponent of psychology than any chemist or mathematician, and this being so, it is the actor who should play a prominent part in psychical research and not the scientist. If a veteran actor were to say to me, “Look here, I have watched that woman very carefully when she was supposed to go into a trance, and to speak in an entirely different voice from her own, and I am convinced she is merely acting,” I should be inclined to believe him. In his wide experience of facial expression, posing, and assumed voices, it would be comparatively easy for him to tell whether the medium was shamming or not. A clever actress can disguise her voice effectually, and no one would know it. She can speak with a French accent one moment and broad cockney the next, and so naturally that few people would know she was the same person. That is why, when I have listened to a clairvoyant, in an alleged trance, speaking in the voice of Tommy Jones or some other presumed obsessing spirit, I have been unmoved. There are a dozen actresses of my acquaintance who could easily do the same. But someone exclaims, “She actually spoke in Russian, a language she knows nothing about.” “How do you know she is unacquainted with Russian?” is my answer; no one can possibly tell that but herself. She has most likely acquired a smattering of it, simply for this purpose. What could be easier? I have a smattering of a good many languages, but I could easily stimulate complete ignorance of any one or all of them; I repeat, no one knows but ourselves how much we have seen, and read, and heard, where we have been, and what we have studied, and, if we are sufficiently clever, we can let the outside world know just as much as we want it to know and no more. Some mediums are said to act in one manner when they are obsessed, and in an entirely different manner when in their normal condition. What futile rubbish! Who knows when they are in their normal condition, or what their normal condition really is? Most of us are complex. I myself have several distinct personalities—and I defy anyone to enumerate them—any one of which might be equally my true, my normal self. Moreover, I might go into a trance, speak with the voice of a Spaniard, and behave like a Red Indian, and those who saw me would think me obsessed. Yet they might easily be mistaken. I might have secretly acquired a smattering of Spanish, and one of my hobbies might be that of imitating, in private, the ways and habits of a Sioux or Crow Foot.

I know a clergyman who attracts large congregations by reason of his eloquence and apparent piety, and who is believed in his parish to be most moral and sincere. I also know him to spend several evenings a week in an East End tavern, singing ribald songs and playing poker. Which is his true self, which his normal condition? His congregation believe him to be one thing, his East End cronies another, and he is apparently quite as much at home in the church as he is in the tavern.