A year or two after we took a cottage on the Thames, and there, during our summer visits, I had an uncomfortable time.
There was something wrong with the sideboard end of the dining-room. For a long time I could not make out what it was. My attention was constantly being attracted to the spot. If I passed the door I thought instantly of the sideboard. In plain language, I was constantly being invited, by some invisible person, to come in and have a drink. If I was putting anything away in the sideboard the suggestion was always very strong. On the outside stood a tantalus of spirits and soda water, ready to refresh any calling boating men. Inside the cupboards were wine decanters.
I always resisted the suggestion, I suppose because I did not happen to want anything to drink—for years I have been a total abstainer, and at the time I certainly did not realize the menace of those suggestions.
Now and again I caught sight of a small oblong gray cloud hovering in front of the sideboard but it was not till many months afterwards that I saw something much more definite. The gray shadow had become the clearly defined shade of a small woman. She hovered about the spot in a wavering, undecided manner. It was apparent that she was seeking something. One day, in a flash, I recognized the truth, the suggestion came from her. She was inviting me to drink with her.
My husband and I set to work to find out who this unfortunate woman had been when she dwelt on earth. We discovered a very sad story. She had been a celebrity of the half world, and I had actually seen her in the flesh. She had traveled to Monte Carlo one winter in the next sleeping compartment to ours, and she had lived for some years in our riverside cottage. Latterly she had fallen an incurable victim to drinking, and had died of it. Poor little soul; my heart went out to her in deepest pity, but I was glad to leave the cottage forever, when in 1898 we went to live at my husband's place, Balquholly, Aberdeenshire.
Some people, perhaps once in their lives, become sensitive enough to recognize a visitor from the Astral plane. If the occasion is not repeated they believe themselves to have been victims of hallucinations. Others find themselves seeing and hearing, with increasing frequency, something to which those around them are blind and deaf. They realize, in fact, that they are in touch with the Astral plane, the region lying next to our world of dense matter, and often some Astral entity on the lowest levels of that plane is continuously striving to work through their mediumship. The world is very far from realizing this danger. What are those entities working for?
The man or woman who has led a decently pure life on earth will have no attraction to the lowest levels, contiguous with earth, of the Astral plane, and will, at so-called death, pass swiftly through it. But, alas! the vast majority have by no means freed themselves from all lower desires before passing over, and it takes a considerable time before the evil forces generated on earth work themselves out on "the other side."
The length of man's detention on the lower level will depend entirely on the earthly life he has lived, and the quality of the desires he has indulged in.
The desires of a drunkard, a debaucher, are as strong after death as before. The present Bishop of London made that very clear in one of his Easter addresses, but the subject finds it impossible, without a physical body, to gratify his lusts. Occasionally it can be done in a vicarious manner, when he is able to seize on a like minded person and obsess him or her, or when he finds a medium who consciously or unconsciously panders to his desires. For this reason I hold it to be imperative for safety's sake, that every genuine medium should be a total abstainer.
How often one is asked the question: "What is a medium?"