The spook slap.
The house of the dancing furniture.
Some weird experiences of a doctor in good practice in the West End of London are related by Mr Inkster Gilbertson in the current number of the “Occult Review.” The doctor – Dr MacDonald – is described as an astute and level-headed Scot who has never dabbled in spiritualism. He has been investigating most uncanny happenings at the house of some friends – the Thompsons.
Disturbances began as far back as July, 1893, when articles of furniture were moved about, lifted up and down and carried from place to place without any visible human agency. One servant had been dismissed for persisting in the statement that someone appeared to her in her room at night; but each of her successors made the same complaint, and matters began to get lively.
On more than one occasion one of the maids was dragged out with the mattress on which she was lying, taken down two flights of stairs, and left outside the door of her mistress’s room. This was really too bad. Mr Thompson watched and searched the house at all hours – but found nothing.
In desperation he decided to call in the police. A burly detective arrived from Scotland Yard, and as he listened to Mr Thompson’s thrilling tale he smiled grimly. “All trickery and nonsense,” he said, scornfully. “We shall soon put that right, sir!”
“I shall be very pleased if you can clear it up,” said Mr Thompson. “I will give you three months to do it in, and pay you handsomely.” “I’ll do it in three hours,” said the officer in buoyant tones. But he didn’t. In less than half an hour he came downstairs looking very pale and distraught. “What has happened?” asked everybody at once. “I went about the work in the ordinary way,” replied the Yard man somewhat sheepishly. “I searched the place thoroughly, right up to the attic, but couldn’t find any clue. I waited about the attic where they say the noise has been, but all was quiet. So I set down my bull’s-eye on the table and sat down there intending to make a comfortable job of it for the night. I laid my revolver on the table, and then I took my slippers from my pocket and laid them on the floor beside me. I had begun to take off my boots when one of the slippers rose up and gave me a stinging whack on the side of the head. Then I thought it was time to clear out. I can tackle anything that I can see; but this is beyond me!”
So the scared detective left, and other means were tried to solve the mystery. Mr Thompson and his son – both armed – watched one beautiful moonlight night. As they stood looking round the room where the “old man” played his pranks they were amazed to see a broad shallow bath 2rise up and go flapping and wriggling about like a living creature.” Then, getting up on edge, it revolved like a wheel, turning several somersaults, and after careering about in a most mysterious manner, it laid itself quietly up against the parapet, where it remained in a state of quietude, as if well satisfied with its performance.
As the days passed lots of other strange things happened. The Thompsons and the doctor tried to solve the mystery by forming themselves into a spiritualistic seance circle in the attic. It was a great success, and the spook replied to all questions with the usual knocks of assent and dissent. “Can you move the sideboard?” asked the doctor. Oh yes – the spook could! Hopping along the landing the sideboard entered the adjoining room by request, and getting inside the circle which had been maintained intact, it kept dancing and jumping about at such a rate that fears began to be entertained that the ceiling of the room underneath would give way. Finally it waltzed lightly downstairs and wedged itself in an immovable position between the bannisters, and stuck there until asked most politely to move out of the way so that the doctor could get out of the house and go home to supper. The sideboard then bowed with old-fashioned grace (it was an antique) and hopped back to its original position!
Motherwell Times, 6th September 1907.
Spooks.
A very amusing account of the doings of a spook is quite the most entertaining thing in the current issue of the “Occult Review.” It seems that a very daring spook took up abode in the house of a family named Thompson, and indulged in such reprehensible pranks as pulling a maid out of her bedroom mattress, blankets and all! Mr Thompson, despairing of a solution of the mystery, consulted the police, and a detective was sent from Scotland Yard to investigate the matter.
This man listened to Mr Thompson’s account of lively doings in the haunted room, and then smiling grimly, in quite a superior way, declared it was all “trickery and nonsense”; he would soon put matters right. But he didn’t. In less than thirty minutes he came rushing downstairs in a state of abject terror. This is his story. After searching the place in the usual way, he sat down intending to make himself comfortable for the night. “I laid my revolver on the table, and then I took my slippers from my pocket and laid them on the floor beside me. I had begun to take off my boots, when one of the slippers rose up and gave me a stinging whack on the side of the head.” This playfulness on the spook’s part proved too much for him – he bolted.
Well, I once read about a man who tried to convince a bench of Magistrates that his nose was broken by the funniest thing in the world happening. He had been walking quietly, peaceably, and soberly along the Queen’s highway, when, without the least warning, the roadway actually rose up and hit him a tremendous blow on the nose. The incredulous Magistrates promptly fined him for being drunk, and my belief is that in the case of the detective’s slipper spirits were certainly also about.
The truth of the matter is, men and women conjure up spooks and hypnotise themselves through unreasoning fear and nervousness. It is only necessary to read about the further happenings in the Thompson household (the jumping and dancing about of a heavy sideboard) to understand the extraordinary delusions that afflicted a number of people. Anyone who has studied a London crowd knows that that sort of thing is positively contagious. If a man in the street stopped, stared at the sky for ten minutes, he would have dozens, perchance hundreds about him, all gazing aloft in open-mouthed curiosity. Moreover, if one in th ecrowd declared he saw a comet, he would have dozens of supporters alleging they also saw it, and that it had the most wonderful tail, although as a matter of fact there was nothing in view.
It appears that the Thompson household had been holding spiritualistic seances, and this accounts for the extraordinary stories gravely set forth as a “most wonderful psychical experience.” Beyond doubt, these spiritualistic seances, crystal-gazing, planchette, and other idiotic performances have become the curse of our day. They are relics of dark, superstitious, benighted ages, and in the interest of so-called science they have received by far too great encouragement at the hands of the press and cultured people. If men and women would only consider, they would discover that these silly performances, even when at their zenith, never advanced science or knowledge by one iota, and they never will till the crack of doom.
These practices cannot be too strongly denounced, as they are most mischievous in their tendencies. To show their arrant nonsense and deception, let me give a personal experience. At the earnest persuasion of a now deceased editor, I accompanied him to a seance, and we were ushered into the small room where the performance was to take place. In front of us there was a small space enclosed with curtains where the medium sat. On either side of the entrance to it there were two plates, which we were told to watch carefully, as the spirits would lift them or move them about. A circle was formed, the medium took his place, and the proceedings opened with the singing of the hymn “Lead Kindly Light.” The place was practically in darkness, as the lights had been lowered, so that in the gloom one could scarcely discern one’s neighbour. Presently voices were heard – these were supposed to be spirits trying to get possession of the medium, who was believed to be in a trance. My hearing powers were keen enough to convey the instant impression that the medium himself produced the uproar behind the curtains. I watched the plates very closely, and their antics astounded me till an incident of boyhood came flashing into memory. A painter, by mistake or design, had coated part of a door at the steading with luminous paint, and, after exposure to the sunshine, that door at night behaved in the most eccentric fashion. It seemed to rise and jump about, gleaming in a weird luminous way, exactly like the plates. And the spiritualists, by the use of phosphorous, or luminous paint, did the trick very nicely!
But the greatest and most reprehensible fraud of all was the supposed raising of the dead. How people like Archdeacon Colley and Mr John Lobb, of the L.C.C., and other well-known people, could allow themselves to be deceived by the impudent imposture of the whole thing passes my comprehension. I elected to interview Freskin and those sturdy Saxons Leofstan Moroar, as well as the genealogical puzzle Ralph Hasding. Freskin, ancestor of the Sutherlands, lived between 1130 and 1180, the others all before 1100. To cut a long story short, they all came upon the scene in turn, and I noted with amusement that they were all clean shaven, all under sized, cast in the same mould, the only difference being the arrangement of their white, ghostly draperies. They all offered to shake hands with me in modern fashion – a ludicrous blunder that gave the show away.
Now votaries of spiritualism insist that the spirits of even those who were most ignorant in life are familiar with all languages. Well, these nobles of teh olden time must certainly have known the language of documents of their period, yet when I tackled them with old Gaelic, Latin, Norse, Norman-French, Anglo-Saxon German, and broad Scots, they only looked mystified. Of course they were impersonated by the medium. When I attempted to examine the texture of their draperies, the ghostly shades sprang back instead of gliding away, as ghosts are supposed to do. I tried them with Esperanto, but with no result; so I made the startling discovery that eight-century-old spooks can only talk modern English – a language quite different from the English of centuries ago. If any man of sense reflects for a moment, he will be convinced of the humbug and impudent imposture of spiritualism.
Let me conclude this note with an account of a Highland spook, to show how excited people may deceive themselves. Near the place where I spent a portion of my boyhood there was a rock with an uncanny reputation. Owing to the action of the wind upon a tree on the cliff, and the trickling of water in the recesses of the cavern, the rock seemed to give forth the sound of bagpipes playing. On Sunday morning I met an elder sauntering about, so, to horrify the good man, I told him that up in the rock he would hear a noise like bagpipes playing, even upon Sunday. He at once asked me to accompany him to the spot, and well do I remember the childish glee with which I conducted him. After listening at the spot, he indignantly called on the “vagabond to come out of there,” and stop his playing on the Sabbath. George the grieve, and Robert the cattleman, who had been looking after their charges, came on the scene, and implored the elder to come away as theere was something uncanny in the rock.
Meantime my collie – “Lyon”- spotted a hare in a dwarf birchen bush immediately behind the trio and he (the dog) was wagging his tail in most delighted way. None of the men noticed the dog or the hare, and the elder, getting no reply from the denizen of the rock, Moses-like, smote the cliff with his stick and commanded the thing to come out in the name of God! Just at that precise instant, “Lyon” pounced upon the hare, and the startled creature emitted the most appalling, blood-curdling squeals – such as only a hare can give – half-human, half-diabolic. There is nothing more awesome than the squeal of a hare. The men fled headlong at top speed, never once looking back, the elder sprinting away in fine style with his breacan streaming behind him. I never mentioned a word about the hare, and next day the elder solemnly told my father that the Devil was in the Craig playing the bagpipes and that when he commanded him in the Lord’s name to come out, he gave such a yell! My father stared at the elder, never said a single word, but thought much. These men will go to their graves protesting that they once heard his Satanic Majesty’s roar, all through nervous tension and needless fear. – D.M. R.
Northern Chronicle and General Advertiser for the North of Scotland, 11th September 1907.
Ghost-Ridden House.
A Detective’s Ears Boxed.
A Scotland Yard detective has had a strange problem to solve, his task being to “run in” the ghost which has been causing trouble in a house in the West End of London. It sounds like a libel on the force, but it is seriously alleged – and they are very serious these believers in ghosts – that he retired from the unequal contest after having his ears boxed with his own slippers, vigorously wielded by the unseen. to use a phrase of double meaning, he “gave up the ghost.”
Since then the strangest things have been happening in Mrs Thompson’s house. Dr McDonald and two of the children went up into the haunted attic and watched in the dark. They heard something come through the skylight and fall with a flop on the floor. Then followed the sound of a silk dress rustling, and with a scream one of the children fainted. Matches were struck, but in their feeble glimmer nothing was seen.
“On the skylight being examined it was found that no mortal could have come through it, as it consisted of a single pane of glass securely fixed into the roof, and, of course, it was intact.” Another spiritualistic “sitting” was arranged, and at this “a favourite trick of the unseen was to bring objects into the room from the other apartments or from outside altogether.” These included: Freshly gathered flowers, tomatoes, tobacco, hot cinders (which didn’t burn anything or anybody), Mr Thompson’s revolver and cartridges.
A billiard-table which stood in the dining-room was frequently operated upon. It was covered over with “leaves” forming an artificial covering so that it might be used as a dining table. These leaves, under unseen influence, one evening shot over each other to one end of the table, and dropped down on to the floor.
Another strange thing was a self-folding screen. The Thompsons and the doctor were sitting round the fire one evening awaiting developments, when suddenly they heard a sound in the room behind them, and, on looking round, they saw a four-leaved folding screen deliberately fold itself up! The doctor rushed forward and straightened it out, and then stood by and watched it closely. Three times, at intervals of about ten minutes, the screen folded itself up as before.
Unaccountably the doors of some of the bedrooms locked themselves, and the keys vanished. The “Occult Review” thus describes the incident: One evening the party sat in the front bedroom in order to watch the progress. The doctor determined to keep his eye on the key which was inside the door, turned half-round, the door being shut. By and by, as they sat the key began to move round. The doctor immediately got up and rushed over to the door; but the key was before him, and as he knelt and put his eye to the keyhole, he saw the last of the key disappearing through the hole. This means that the ring of the key, which is always larger than that part which goes into the keyhole, and projects very much on one side, as also the flange which projects for the very purpose of preventing the key slipping too far into the lock were both compressed so as to pass through. The key had also apparetly been turned in the lock, for the door was found to be locked, and no trace was to be seen of the key!
Once the key of the hall-door was seen sliding back to its place on the nail where it generally hung. It had been absent for some days, and was seen distinctly by the doctor to slip on to the nail.
On another evening the drawing-room door was locked and the key filched by the ghost. It was unlocked by another key to let the doctor out, and as he went downstairs he called out, “Will you not send us down the key before we go?” They were passing down the stairs at the time, and before they reached the bottom the key was gently dropped on the doctor’s head.
The hauntings have now ceased, and the house is quite normal. No explanation of all these strange happenings is vouchsafed, beyond that they may have been due to “spirit manifestations.” But, as the recorder of these weird occurrences says, “There was an abundance and varied supply of the marvellous to gratify the most fastidious fancy, leaving no room for clumsy frauds.”
Somewhat similar “manifestations” have been taking place in other parts of London recently.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 28th September 1907.