The Shadow World

by Hamlin Garland

Fowler was ready with his answer: "But let us take the case that Lombroso cites of the beautiful woman spirit whose hand twice dashed the photographic plates from the grasp of those who wished to secure her picture. Here was plainly an opposing will, for the psychic was lending herself to the experiment, and the spectators were eager for its success. Notwithstanding which co-operation this phantom bitterly opposed the wishes of every one present, and it was afterward learned that there was a special reason why she did not wish to leave positive proofs of her identity. 'It is evident, therefore,' concludes Lombroso, 'that a third will can intervene in spiritistic phenomena.'

"Furthermore, Dr. Venzano, as well as De Vesme, have taken up the same body of facts upon which Foà and Morselli base their theory, and arrive at a totally different conclusion. They call attention to a dozen events that can be explained only on the theory of discarnate intelligences. Venzano observed that the forms occurred in several places at once, that they appeared in many shapes and many guises. Some were like children, some had curly hair, some had beards. In one case identification was made by introducing the finger of one of the sitters within the phantom mouth to prove the loss of a molar tooth. Sometimes the hair of these heads was plaited like that of a girl. Some of the hands were large and black, others fair and pink—like a child's. In short, he argues that the medium could not have determined the size, shape, or color of the phantoms."

"All that does not really militate against the ideoplastic theory," I retorted. "It is as easy to produce a phantom with hair plaited as it is to produce one with hair in curls. If it is a case of the modelling of the etheric vapor by the mind of the psychic, these differences would be produced naturally enough. The forcible handling of the medium by the invisible ones is a much more difficult thing for me to explain, for to imagine the psychic emitting a form of force which afterward proceeds to raise the psychic herself against her will—as Mrs. Smiley testifies happened again and again in her youth—is to do violence to all that we know of natural law. And yet it may be that the etheric double is able to take on part of the forces resident in the circle of sitters, and so become immensely more potent than the psychic himself, as in the case of the 'Man from Mars'—the Hercules I have just been telling you about. Then, as to the content of these messages, they may be impulses, hints, fragments of sentences caught from the air as one wireless operator intercepts communications meant for other stations than his own. So that my interview with 'E. A.' may have been a compounding of the psychic, Blake, and myself, and fugitive natures afloat in the ether. In fact, I am not as near a belief in the return of the dead as I was when I began this last series of experiments. These Italian scientific observers, I confess, have profoundly affected my thought."

"Your idea is, then," said Miller, "that these apparitions are emanations of the medium's physical substance, moulded by his will and colored by the minds of his sitters?"

"That is the up-to-date theory, and everything that I have experienced seems capable of a biologic interpretation against it."

Fowler hastened to weaken the force of this statement. "Spiritists all admit that the forms of spirits are made up—partly, at least—of the psychic's material self, but that does not prove that the mind of the ghost is not a separate entity from that of the psychic. I grant that the only difference between the psycho-dynamic theory and the spiritualistic theory lies in the question of the origin of the intelligences that direct the manifestation. Foà would say they spring from the subconscious self of the psychic. We say they come from the spirit world, and there we stand."

Miller's words were keen and without emotion. "Until all phenomena are explained there will be obscure happenings and things to be explained by some one who can, but it is no final explanation to say 'a man did it' or 'an intelligence did it.' I have often been told that things cannot move in certain ways or certain things cannot be done except by intelligent action or guidance, but it may be remembered that Kepler thought guiding spirits were needful for making the planets move in their elliptical orbits."

"Your scientists are feeding millions of people stones," exclaimed Fowler. "They ask for bread, and you give them slices of granite."

"Better granite than slime," said Miller. "I am with the biologists in this campaign. Let us have the truth, no matter how unpalatable it may be. If these phenomena exist, they are in the domain of natural law and can be weighed and measured. If they are imaginary, they should be swept away, like other dreams of superstition and ignorance."

Fowler was not to be silenced. "I predict that you and your like will yet be forced, like Lombroso, to take your place with Aksakof, Lodge, Wallace, Du Prel, and Crookes, who have come to admit the intervention of discarnate intelligences. Lombroso says, 'We find, as I already foresaw some years ago, that these materialized bodies belong to the radiant state of matter, which has now a sure foothold in science. This is the only hypothesis that can reconcile the ancient and universal belief in the persistence of some manifestation of life after death with the results of science.' He adds: 'These beings, or remnants of beings, would not be able to obtain complete consistency to incarnate themselves, if they did not temporarily borrow a part of the medium. But to borrow force from the medium is not the same thing as to be identical with the medium.'"