Fig. 23
Fig. 23a
I have the habit of working out a chapter of a new book in my head, and writing down a few notes on a scrap of paper, and sticking it away in any place that is handy; then, next day, or whenever I am ready for work, it is gone, and there is the devil to pay. I wander about the house for an hour or two, trying to imagine where I can have put that scrap of paper, and reluctant to do the work all over again. On one occasion I searched every pocket, my desk, the trash-baskets, and then, deciding that I had dropped it outdoors, where I work with my typewriter, I figured the direction of the wind, and picked up all the scraps of paper I saw decorating the landscape of our beach home. Then I decided it must be in a manuscript which I had given to a friend in Los Angeles, and I was about to phone to that friend, when Craig asked what the trouble was, and said, “Come, let’s make an experiment. Lie down here, and describe the paper to me.”
I told her, a sheet off a little pad, written on both sides, and folded once. She took my hand, and went into her state of concentration, and said, “It is in the pocket of a gray coat.” I answered, “Impossible; I have searched every coat in the house half a dozen times.” She said, “It is in a pocket, and I will get it.” She got up off the couch, and went to a gray coat of mine, and in a pocket I had somehow overlooked, there was the paper! Let me add that Craig had had nothing to do with my clothing in the interim, and had never seen the paper, nor heard of it until I began roaming about the house, grumbling and fussing. Neither of us know of any “normal” way by which her subconscious mind could have got this information.
My secretary lost two screw-caps of the office typewriter, and I said to my wife, “I will bring him over, and you see if you can tell him where to look.” But my wife was ill, and did not want to meet any one, so she said, “I will see if I can get it through you.” Be it understood, Craig has not been in the office in a year, and has met my secretary only casually. She said, “I see him standing up at his typewriting.” That is an unusual thing for a typist to do, but it happened to be true. Said Craig: “He has put the screw-caps on something high. They are in the south room, above the level of any table or desk.” I went to the phone to ask my secretary, and learned that he had just found the screws, which he had put on top of a window-sash in the south room.
The third incident requires the statement that, a few months back, while my wife was away, our home had been loaned to friends, and I had camped at the little house which I was using as an office. Some medical apparatus had been left there; at least I had a vague impression that I had had it there, and I said, “I’ll go and look.” Said Craig: “Let’s try an experiment.” She took my hand, and told me to make my mind a blank, and presently she said, “I see it under the kitchen sink.” I went over to the office, and found the object, not under the sink, but under the north end of the bathtub. I took it back to the house, and before I spoke a word, my wife said: “I tried to get you on the phone. I concentrated again, and saw the thing and wrote it out.” She gave me a slip of paper, from which I copy: “Down under something, wrapped in paper—on N. side of room—under laundry tub on floor or under bath tub on floor in N. corner.”
You may say, of course, if you are an incurable skeptic: “The man’s wife had been over to the office and seen the object; she had been searching his pockets, and had seen the paper.” Craig is positive that she did nothing of the sort; but of course it is conceivable that she may have done it and then forgotten it. Therefore, I pass on to a different and more acceptable kind of evidence—a set of drawing tests, in which I watched and checked every step of the proceedings at my wife’s insistence. Here again I am a co-equal witness with her, and the skeptic has no alternative but to say that the two of us have contrived this elaborate hoax, making nearly three hundred drawings with fake reproductions, in order to get notoriety, or to sell a few books. I really hope nobody will say that is possible. Very certainly I could sell more books with less trouble by writing what the public wants; and if I were a dishonest man, I should not have waited until the age of fifty-one to begin such a career.
10
Concerning these drawings, there are preliminary explanations to be made. They were done hastily, by two busy people. Neither is a trained artist, and our ability to convey what we wish is limited. When I start on a giraffe, I manage to produce a pretty good neck, but when I get to the body, I am disturbed to note it turning into a sheep or a donkey. When I draw a monkey climbing a tree, and Craig says, “Buffalo or lion, tiger—wild animal”—I have to admit that may be so; likewise when my limb of a tree is called a “trumpet,” or when Craig’s “wild animal” resembles a chorus girl’s legs. I will let you see those particular drawings. Figure 24 is mine, while 24a and 24b are my wife’s.