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Page 7
"I deprecate that attitude, Vane. It may certainly be that our
ghost is a humbug, or, rather, that we have no such thing as a
ghost at all. And that is my own impression. But an idle
generality is always futile--indeed, any generality usually is.
You have, at least, no right to say, 'Ghosts are all humbug.'
Because you cannot prove they are. The weight of evidence is very
much on the other side."
"Sorry," said Colonel Vane, a man without pride. "I didn't know
you believed in 'em, Sir Walter."
"Most emphatically I believe in them."
"So do I," declared Ernest Travers. "Nay, so does my wife--for
the best possible reason. A friend of hers actually saw one."
Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.
"Spiritualism and spirits are two quite different things," he said.
"One may discredit the whole business of spiritualism and yet
firmly believe in spirits."
He was a narrow-headed, clean-shaven man with grey hair and
moustache. He had a small body on very long legs, and though a
veteran now, was still one of the best game shots in the West of
England.
Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir
Walter himself summed up.
"If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the
dead," he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these
spirits, to call them from the next world back to ours, and to
consult people who profess to be able to do so--extremely
doubtful characters, as a rule--that I think is much to be
condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums of
communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should
always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a
charlatan. But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been
recognized by the living, who shall deny?
"My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience.
He actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and
his greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine,
appeared to him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance
could not say that he heard words uttered, but he certainly
recognized his dead friend as he stood by his bedside, and he
received into his mind a clear warning before the vision disappeared.
Is that so, Tom?"
"Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the
man in New York--told four others about it, and three took his
tip and didn't sail. The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He
came out all right."
"The departed are certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly
persons--nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted
Travers. "But I will never believe they are at our beck and call,
to bang tambourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead
as we ring up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable
and indecent. Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that
way, or tell us the present position or occupation and interests
of a dead man--or what he smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such
ideas degrade our impressions of life beyond the grave. They are,
if I may say so, disgustingly anthropomorphic. How can we even
take it for granted that our spirits will retain a human form and
human attributes after death?"
"It would be both weak-minded and irreligious to attempt to get
at these things, no doubt," declared Colonel Vane.
"And they make confusion worse confounded by saying that evil
spirits pretend sometimes to hoodwink us by posing as good spirits.
Now, that's going too far," said Henry Lennox.
"But your own ghost, Sir Walter?" asked Fayre-Michell. "It is a
curious fact that most really ancient houses have some such
addition. Is it a family spectre? Is it fairly well authenticated?
Does it reign in a particular spot of house or garden? I ask from
no idle curiosity. It is a very interesting subject if approached
in a proper spirit, as the Psychical Research Society, of which I
am a member, does approach it."
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