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speak, Olsen exclaimed: "How wonderful that you did get back, Mr. Gorique. You were in such a hurry the last time that we were not able to conclude the final details of our business." Completely stunned, all the argument sapped from his body, Gorique slumped into a chair in Olsen's office. "Tell me," he said weakly. "When was I here?" "Why," Olsen answered, looking puzzled, "just a few months back." With a sigh of resignation, Gorique appealed to the Norwegian glassware dealer. He protested that he had never been to Norway before in his life and that he could prove it; yet everywhere he went, the hotel clerks, the waiters, and now Mr. Olsen, recognized him and spoke of former visits. Olsen listened to the bewildered man's story without interruption, then told him about the Vardogr. "I can offer no explanation for the Vardogr," Olsen told the baffled Mr. Gorique, "but it is really not such a rare thing as psychic phenomena go. You really shouldn't let such an experience disturb you unduly." Perhaps this attitude is not a bad one to hold as one continues to explore deeper into the world of ESP. 9 - From The Edge Of The Grave Dr. Augustus Jessopp was in high spirits on that chilly autumn night in 1879. Lord Orford had invited him to spend the night at Mannington Hall and had given him permission to examine some very old books in his extensive library. Although Dr. Jessopp enjoyed the animated conversation with the other guests, he could hardly wait until the others had gone to bed so that he could begin taking notes from the old books in the library. A dentist by profession, Dr. Jessopp was an antiquarian by hobby. At last, by eleven o'clock, Lord Orford and his other guests had retired for the evening, and Dr. Jessopp was alone in the library with all the treasured volumes. He set immediately to work, taking notes from six small books. He had four large candles on his desk and a crackling fire in the fireplace. The light was excellent. Exhilarated from an evening of stimulating and delightful companionship, he felt as though he could work through the night. At 1:30 A.M., Dr. Jessopp glimpsed something white about a foot from his left elbow. Upon closer examination, the object proved to be a large, extremely pale hand with dark blue veins across its back. Putting his pen aside, Dr. Jessopp turned and saw that he shared the desk with a tall, solidly built man, who seemed to be intent upon examining both the dentist and the books he had been studying. The strange visitor had a lean, rugged profile and reddish-brown hair, which had been closely cut. He was dressed in a black habit of the type worn by clergymen in the early 1800's, and he sat in a posture of complete relaxation with hands clasped lightly together. After a few moments, Dr. Jessop realized that the man was not staring at him at all; rather, the stranger seemed completely unaware of his presence. Dr. Jessopp had not for one moment considered his late evening visitor to be anything other than a living person, but he did think it most peculiar that he had not met the clergyman earlier in the evening and a bit strange that the man would enter the room and seat himself so silently at the same desk. It was not until the man vanished before his eyes that Dr. Jessopp realized he had been visited by a ghost. Dr. Jessopp was a very stolid sort of individual, not easily frightened or easily impressed by anything out of the ordinary. His most pronounced reaction was one of disappointment, because he had not had time to make a sketch of the ghostly clergyman. He had returned to his note-taking and was perhaps wondering how he could sensibly relate the story of his spectral visitor to Lord Orford when he once again saw the white hands appear next to his own. The figure sat in precisely the same position as before and the expression on his face had not changed the slightest. The ghostly clergyman still seemed to sit, hands folded, in an attitude of contemplation or complete relaxation. Dr. Jessopp turned to give the ghost his full attention. It had occurred to him that he might speak to the specter, and he had begun to form a sentence in his mind. He wanted it to be just the kind of provocative statement that would prompt a ghost to utter a response. Then, before his lips could form the sentence and give it utterance, he seemed suddenly to fully realize the eeriness of the whole situation. A sense of deep dread and fear began to permeate his entire being. An unconscious reflex knocked a book to the desk, and the ghost vanished instantly at the harsh sound. The story of Dr. Jessopp's ghost became so exaggerated in the telling and re-telling by others, that the dentist allowed the London Athenaeum to print an authorized account of the incident about two months after the uncanny experience. Dr. Jessopp emphasized in the article that he was not in the habit of engaging in flights of fancy and did not wish to be "looked upon as a kind of medium to whom supernatural visitations are vouchsafed ... or a crazy dreamer whose disorganized nervous system renders him abnormally liable to fantastic delusions." The dentist also stressed the point that he had been in perfect health on the night of the visitation and had been in no way approaching weariness or fatigue. He also stated that the talk at Mannington Hall that evening had concerned itself with travel and art and had in no way touched upon the supernatural. The ghost, he added, did not appear wispy or cloaked in a traditional sheet. The figure appeared lifelike, natural, and so solid that it had blocked the light from the fireplace. After the aforementioned experience, there was no question in Dr. Jessopp's mind - as there is none in mine - that "ghosts" do exist. But the ghosts, which we might suddenly encounter some night on the stairs or in a hotel room where we have elected to spend the night, differ in many respects from the portrayals of ghosts in horror films and stories. These differences will be noted in the examples that follow. Early in 1950, Ted Henty, an ex-cop from Brighton, England, formed his own group of professional "ghost hunters." These men arm themselves with dozens of microphones, six cameras of conventional design, an infrared camera, four wire recorders, an electric eye hookup and several other scientific "ghost catchers." Most of the homes which the crew "de-ghost" have been found to be haunted by pigeons, mice, tree branches, and over-active imaginations. Henty shall be forever forced to keep an open mind, however, because of an experience that occurred to him when his crew was summoned by an estate owner who could not keep servants because of the visitation of the ghost of a female Indian. Henty interviewed the domestics, who had resigned their positions because of the ghost, and gained their descriptions of the unwelcome specter. He learned that it had been a harsh economic strain for two of the maids to quit, yet they had resigned out of fear of something which they could not understand. Henty arrived at the home to make a preliminary investigation and to plan camera and microphone positions. Then: "There it was! What looked unmistakably like the blurred figure of a dark-skinned lady dressed in white, somewhat smallish, smiling, walking toward me. I was stunned. The very thing I had always argued against seemed to be approaching, and I could see it in fairly clear light with my own two eyes. I had no camera with me then and so all I could do was stand there, open-mouthed, until this thing went through an open door into a large bedroom and disappeared without a trace." Later that night, one of Henty's cameramen got an image on film of a small, vaguely defined figure dressed in white. The face was darkly Indian. Each member of Henty's twelve-man crew swears that the film had not been tampered with in any way. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |