Then, apart from the question of personalities, I believe another evidence of trickery lies in the non-usefulness of any of the communications alleged to be made by the spirits. If professional mediums could receive bona fide communications from the other world, I am quite sure that they would acquire some knowledge of a practical nature, and that we should, in consequence, soon see them all multi-millionaires. That they are not all Vanderbilts and Rothschilds is, I think, a very strong argument that their alleged spirit friends have told them nothing.

And that is what it all amounts to—nothing. Automatic writing, table-turning, and trances have taught us absolutely nothing concerning either this or the other world, and the messages purporting to come from the spirits have hitherto, at all events, consisted of trivialities and commonplaces of such an unedifying nature that we cannot dissociate them from factory girls and nursemaids.

Our friends on the other side, who have passed through the valley of the shadow of death, might reasonably be expected to know something that we do not; and yet not even the smallest fragment of their knowledge has so far been transmitted to us through any of the channels resorted to by Spiritualists. Neither, as far as I know, have the police benefited by any information imparted to them by mediums or automatic writers. On the other hand, although the Unknown has refused to confide to those claiming to be its chosen few any messages that would right the wrong, bona fide phantasms of the dead have certainly been known to appear spontaneously, to other than professional mediums, with this intent.

......

I am acquainted with an old lady, who tells me that she often talks with Charles Dickens, Napoleon Bonaparte, Cardinal Newman and other eminents. I have enquired how, and she has reluctantly admitted that the spirits of these eminents come to her at a séance conducted by a professional medium, who, of course, is paid very liberally for her services. The medium, I gather, sits behind a screen, where she is supposed to wait, until she is obsessed. When everything is ready, she glides out, and in a voice purporting to be that of Napoleon, or of someone equally distinguished, she converses with this foolish and conceited old lady. It seems incredible that anyone outside a lunatic asylum could believe that the spirits of such great men as Napoleon, Newman and Dickens should take the trouble to obsess a medium, in order to chat with some nonentity, who is neither extraordinarily clever nor particularly interesting. And yet there are dozens of people, apart from the old lady I have mentioned, who know so little of genius and eminence, and even ordinary talent, as to believe this incongruous happening to be possible. I, myself, have heard a Spiritualist, who lays down the laws respecting the Unknown, as if he were actually the Creator, declare that, whenever he lectures, the hall is full to overflowing with spirits. Amongst them, he says, are the shades of Charles Dickens—there must be at least a hundred shades of Dickens, for there is hardly a spiritualistic meeting or séance that I hear of at which Dickens is not alleged to be present—Sir Isaac Newton and Napoleon. (Soon, perhaps, there will be the Kaiser and the Crown Prince. I hope so.)

Family séances are, of course, quite another matter. I have not the least doubt that when the friends and relatives of some departed person meet together, and, concentrating very earnestly on that dead one being present, create the right magnetic atmosphere, that sometimes a real spirit manifestation does take place, and the phantasm of the deceased, or what at any rate purports to be the phantasm of the deceased, does actually appear.

The phenomenon may possibly be a neutrarian—for, of course, there is always that risk—or it may really be the soul, spirit, or whatever else we like to call it, of the dead person. And here let me urge again, the utter absurdity of attempting to dogmatise on the Unknown. At one time it was the parson, who unfolded to us, with all the sageness of one who had been there, the mysteries of the other world. He not only told us what we must do and not do in order to ascend to Heaven, but he went a step further: he told us what Heaven was like, and what actually was taking place there. The parson of to-day, however, does not seem quite so sure of his knowledge on these points as he was formerly, and his statements have become far less assertive; indeed, they have become somewhat tentative. It is the Occultist now who dictates. He talks with an air of absolute authority of Astral Planes, Elementaries, Elementals, vitalised shells, Karmas, and goodness knows what besides, and uses such a variety of high-falutin’ terms, that our brains at last become bewildered, and we begin to wonder with Goldsmith how it is possible that one small head can carry all he knows. But when we have boiled it all down, when we have analysed his dissertation, we find that it is, in the last resort, merely a repetition of all the old doctrines with which we have been familiar from our earliest youth. The only difference is that our Occultist, chiefly by discarding the old names of dogmas, and adopting a superfluity of new ones, has made of these same doctrines a hotch-potch of such rare quality, that few—if indeed any—of us can digest it.

CHAPTER XII
A HAUNTED MINE IN WALES

While I was at Brixton, paying daily visits to various well-known theatrical agencies in search of work, I ran across the manager of a fit-up company, who wanted a man of about my age and build to play second lead in a melodrama. I closed with his offer, and for the next four weeks, which was as long as his funds held out, I paid three night visits to various towns in Wales, winding up at Llandudno, no better off financially than when I commenced, and having to pay my own fare back to London.

If, however, my excursion into Wales was unprofitable from the monetary standpoint, it was by no means lacking in other respects, for, apart from the experience I gained from playing four entirely different parts a night, with two electric changes, I came across several interesting cases of hauntings.