CHAPTER IV

AN EXPERIMENT ON THE THEORY OF PROTECTIVE VIBRATION

Ghost phenomena do not come into the province of practising Spiritualism. The average Spiritualist is content to follow the Catholic doctrine of offering up a few devout prayers for the rest of the uneasy spirit should circumstances throw him into contact with it. Apparitions as a whole affect the Spiritualist with as much unreasoning terror as falls to the lot of the non-Spiritualist mortal.

The chance-met apparition of the dead is after all a fairly common phenomenon. The theory of the veridic apparition of the recently dead is explainable by various hypotheses, but there is little reason to suppose that the human spirit still animates the astral body that appears.

The luminous quality or phosphorescence of astral light that enwraps the astral body of the apparition is not necessarily a proof of the survival of the identity of the soul whose astral body appears. The phosphorescent radiance associated with certain kinds of fish survives the death of the organism, and luminous bodies or glands extracted from these creatures may be preserved for months after death and still retain elements of luminosity.

The thinking Spiritualist does not disregard the lessons and analogies of science. The great names in the history of Spiritualism have been those of scientists like Lodge and Crookes,[12] and it has ever been their desire to translate the apparent miracles of the supernatural into no less miraculous but more deeply understood parallels with the natural.

The great slogan of Spiritualism is that it is a perfectly natural understandable thing; thus is it the duty of every Spiritualist to reduce those things which non-Spiritualistic thought deems supernatural to the realms of the understood, the explained and the known,--in a word, to the state of the natural.

It is no good to tell a materialistic world that owing to the intervention of spirit force mechanical results contrary to all natural laws were obtained. The sceptic, and above all the logical sceptic--who is the easiest of all to convert, can you but once bring him to see the fallacies that underlie his logic--demands proof, proof not in terms of second-hand evidence, but proof in terms of cold matter-of-fact science.

The missionary effort of Spiritualism must be made a crusade not into the minds of the unintelligent but straight into the citadels of reason of the men of science. It is necessary first of all to demonstrate the spirit forces and then to _prove_ that they are forces of the spirit and not natural, so far as the meaning of the term “natural” may be held to imply limitation to the physical laws governing this mortal earth.

The spirit realm is the realm of the ether, the boundless range of unknown interstellar space. Blindly, gropingly, the men of science are putting out feelers--theories--pragmatical assumptions that serve them as laws. Little by little it is being recognized that the physics of the ether is the underlying superscientific structure of modern Spiritualism. Little by little their discoveries fall into harmony with our claims, and we must look upon science as the handmaiden rather than the antagonist of our truth.

The theories of apparition that are held vary according to the classification of the apparition. There are numerous instances of apparitions of the living[13] and there is an infinite mass of data concerning veridical apparitions of the dead. A statistical analysis of 17,000 cases collected by the Society for Psychical Research resulted in the finding by the Committee that “Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connexion exists which is not due to chance alone.”[14]

A clear distinction must, however, be drawn between apparitions which may appear to relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and then disappear for ever, and those definite and persistently recurring apparitions that go by the name of haunts.

The terminology of matters psychic is loose and inexact, but it is well to have a clear mental distinction between the occasional “apparition” and the periodic or repeating “ghost.”

For purposes of scientific investigation the casual apparition is almost valueless, but the established ghost is the nearest approximation that we can get to a serious test standard for experimental purposes.

There are in England at least half a dozen ghosts whose periodical manifestations are regular enough to serve as test instances. The genuine ghost is so rare that from the point of view of psychical research it is vitally important that the haunt should not be harried by every party of sensation-avid amateurs who think they would “like to see a ghost.” The amateur exorcists, the psychically gifted ladies, and all the ragtag and bobtail of well-meaning idiots that disturb a haunt once it becomes known, can only be compared to a set of egg-stealing, bird-scaring boys who invade a woodland sanctuary and destroy the fruition of the work of a painstaking observer of nature who has been recording the life of the rare birds.

In parenthesis it may be remarked that if the ghost is a full-blooded manifestation it will take more than the well-meaning effort of some anæmic amateur psychic to lay it. The very last person who should go near a violent ghost is anyone whose capacity for mediumship is in any way developed. Mediums should only be present when adequate and experienced mortal controls are there also.

In the West of England there is an excellent example of a genuinely haunted house that has so far resisted all attempts to solve the origin of the haunt, the precise nature of the supernatural intelligence that directs the manifestation, or the motive of the phenomena.[15]

It is now extremely difficult to get permission to carry out investigations, as adequate precautions have been taken to safeguard both the phenomena and the incautious dabbler in matters beyond the veil.

I may take occasion here to warn my readers against the legal risks attached to stating that a house is haunted. In the eyes of the law such a statement is actionable, as it tends to depreciate the market value of the property. It is for this reason that stories concerning haunted houses when printed in newspapers have to be obscured in their indication of the precise locality and silent with regard to the name, number, or address of the suspected dwelling. The verbal repetition of such statements is also actionable and such cases as the bogus haunting of a house by the tenants or by caretakers in order to avoid payment of rent or the letting of the house are manifest reasons why the matter of haunted houses should always be treated with the utmost discretion.

Particulars concerning a reputed haunt can, however, be communicated to a newspaper with safety. All communications to a journal are privileged, and they can be trusted not to print anything which renders them party to an action for damages.

In 1913 a well-known student of occult matters announced his theory of _Protective Vibrations_.[16] It was in effect an analysis of the actual physical methods reported to be employed by spirit forces in building up their visible and material forms. His theory contained several assumptions which it is impossible to disregard and which certainly do not admit of rejection.

Taken in series he stated that “The presence of human beings was an essential to the appearance of the ghost.” This admits of no disproof, as unless human witnesses are present there can be no testimony to the presence of the manifestation. A general consensus of opinion discredits ghost photographs unless taken under the strictest test conditions which again implies the presence of the human element.

“The energy or thought-matter” (i.e. psychoplasm) “extended by the mortals is the matter out of which the astral form is constructed. They are, so to speak, the prime motors or the energy and material, providing units out of which the discarnate intelligence builds its carnate habit.”

This conception embraces psychoplasm and ectoplasm as one, but the researches of Schrenck-Notzing were not then known. These and other similar experiments all point to the essential probability that the broad sense of his reasoning is correct.

From this point onward he traces the development of the material astral body as a process of the conversion of the original vibrations into low forms of actual energy which are able to manipulate the atoms of matter and under the directing will of the intelligence or entity build up the materialization.

He makes one notable reservation, asserting that “there is no evidence to prove that discarnate intelligence is the directing force. Pure autosuggestion, due to concentrated belief and anticipation that a specified ghost will appear, may achieve the same result.”

But the purpose of his paper was not to argue concerning the reality of spirits, but to put forward an ingenious scientific theory concerning their mechanism. The sum-total of his theory is that the physical structure of the hallucination-spirit or ghost-form in its early stages of concentration is destructible by many forms of etheric vibration of greater force or different wave-length.

Ghosts and spirits are integrally bound up with the conditions of darkness and dusk. The rays of solar light are admittedly inimical to all these manifestations. In other words, materialization cannot be performed under certain conditions of light which means certain conditions of vibration. The light rays which are visible to the human eye represent about one-tenth of the complete range of light rays known to exist from ultra-violet to infra-red.[17] At other points in the scale of ether waves come the vibrations associated with sound, with electricity and magnetic phenomena and with radioactivity.

The complexity of these wave-lengths of vibration is enormous, for within the range of light rays there are rays of another kind of light, so that the sum-total of two kinds of light is, paradoxically enough, darkness.[18]

Passing, logically enough, from stage to stage the “Theory of Protective Vibrations” points out that assuming the existence of ghosts or malevolent spirits, these cannot take material shape when opposed by hostile vibrations. Certain kinds of light, sound (such as the sonorous vibrations of church bells or gongs of special note), and high-frequency electric currents all destroy the initial stages of manifestation by purely mechanical means. Lastly he postulates that “in the presence of a radium salt (of specified intensity) ... a ghost cannot manifest.”

Protection or exorcism by radium salts is undeniably a twentieth-century possibility, for the terrific and incessant discharge of ether waves consequent upon the disintegration of the radium atoms is so powerful that even such a known and powerful force as electric energy is completely destroyed by it.

In the presence of a radium salt non-conductors of electricity become conductors. Differences of potential cease to exist and electroscopes and Leyden jars fail to retain their charges.

Under these conditions, then, it was hardly conceivable that a manifestation which depends, in its initial stages, upon the most delicate of vibrations--the unknown vibrations of the psychoplasm could take place.

Truth is dependent upon experiment, upon patient repetition and trial and error. In order to test the theory in actual practice, I determined to pay a visit to the well-known and malignant ghost at X----[19] and actually put to the test whether or not a ghost can manifest in the presence of a radium salt.

The rays of radioactive salts are unable to pass through lead, and pure radium bromide, which is the nearest that we have got to the isolation of the element radium, always has to be kept in a leaden box or cell, as otherwise its rays would pass through and destroy the skin and flesh of the man carrying it. Before the properties of radium were known, this destructive faculty of radium vibrations caused several mishaps, for unwary men of science carried these dangerous salts loose in glass vials in their pockets.

For the purposes of experiment I obtained the loan of a small supply of a solution of a radium salt that gives out powerful emanations. This was enclosed in a glass vial which was in turn encased in a leaden box.

The haunted house is a peculiar old building of no particular architectural beauty. It stands remote and deserted in its own overgrown extended grounds, and over it breathes a generally depressing atmosphere of damp, neglect, oppression, and decay.

Viewed from the outside the house presents no outstanding features that attract the eye. The lower windows are heavily barred by rusted iron rails without and closed wooden shutters within. Even creepers seem to have felt the blight that lies upon the mansion, for no patch of green or rambling ivy tendril covers the bare surface of the brick.

Three storeys high, mansard-roofed and turreted with a dozen contorted Tudor chimney-stacks, the roof-line stands out against the sky and the dull leaf masses of the surrounding trees. The higher windows are also shuttered, but not even the small boys of the neighbouring village have dared to break the grimy window frames that lie over the shutters. Desolate and forbidding, the mansion and its grounds lie derelict, shunned by all men.

My key is that of the small back door, and it is used but once or twice a year when the needs of the psychic call upon us to tread a path of peril and hazard.

Inside one steps into the cold stone-flagged passages that lead to the empty kitchens and offices. The air is heavy and dank with that queer smell of earth that one associates with crypts and graves rather than with the clean new-turned furrow. The whole house is bare of furniture, the paint of the woodwork dull and dirty. Spots of amorphous fungus cling to the walls, and here and there wallpaper has peeled off in long leprous strips, exposing the corpse-grey plaster behind.

The door from the servants’ offices opens into the wide Georgian hall, from which sweeps up a monstrous wooden staircase. Half-way up the stair is a landing which marks the limit of activity of the manifestation. In the rooms beyond that and on the landing itself the presence is terribly powerful, but it seems that beyond that limit the terror cannot go.

The actual room where the presence is at its strongest is a chamber at the end of the first floor. The room walls are outside walls on three sides, the remaining partition wall is the one in which is the door to the main corridor that runs through the house. In the centre of the floor is a deep cavity. This has been a priest’s hiding hole or secret treasure closet, and from signs in the woodwork it is manifest that the trapdoor was once concealed beneath a big four-poster bed.

The windows are barred with high shutters that let in no light. The rays of my electric lantern disclose the mats of cobwebs that hang from the rusted cross bars, and it is evident that no human hand has disturbed the shutters for years. A trial shows me that some of the bolts are indeed rusted home with age-old neglect.

I unpacked my handbag, in which I carry the few simple necessities I need on these occasions, and wrapping myself up in my travelling rug composed myself to read by the light of my travelling candles until the hour of ten was reached.

At ten o’clock I closed my book, put out my candle, and composed myself to watch for the manifestation, which I _knew_ by inner consciousness would be forthcoming.

It was a dark and moonless night and not a flicker or ray of external light penetrated the dark stretches of the haunted room. No wind stirred the trees or moaned in the chimney-tops and the qualities of absolute dark and absolute quiet were all that could be desired.

Slowly out of the darkness seemed to come pinpoints of bluish light--mere specks of phosphorescence scintillant in the still air. The specks thickened and multiplied till they floated like a maze of dancing midgets; then too came the dark power of oppression, that sense of the dread and the uncanny that seems to grip the very heart and the base of the skull in a numbing grip of fear.

Cold grew the room, colder and colder--that sense of freezing that experienced psychics associate with the dread phenomena of malevolent apparitions. It is a coldness of the soul as well as of the body, a dull biting cold that suggests the limitless freezing eternities of interstellar space.

The blue specks spun their dance and slowly became more luminous. They collected in little nebulæ of light like cigarette ends of intense blue radiance. Every particle of the air was filled with this luminosity, so that the room seemed to be filled with a dull moonlight.

Slowly the nebulæ changed from their spinning movement to a slow weaving motion. Strands and floating webs of phosphorescence drifted like smoke wreaths about the room.

The points of light gave place to clouds of luminous mist like softly rolling, utterly silent globes of dull blue light. Little by little the dance of the globes speeded up. They spun and whirled and wove in and out among themselves till they had drawn into one mass all the luminous matter in the room.

Like a terror-charged cloud this mass hovered some eight feet high, a clear two feet off the floor; its brilliance waxed and waned and its confines drew in. Slowly the cloud was taking shape as a pillar and within the pillar one could see the ghastly shaping of the rudimentary form.

Here before my eyes was the actual form of the stranger--for this ghost is a malevolent strangling demon--on the very point of concentration.

Carefully I stretched out my hand to the leaden box, unscrewed the cylindrical lid, and threw into my right hand the precious vial of radium salt.

The energy-charged tube glowed in the dark with all the beauty of intense phosphorescence, and as I held it at arm’s length toward the pillar of semi-materialization that represented all the evil forces of discarnate Hate--_the mists of vapour rolled away. As if by magic the whole apparition was dissipated_, and in twenty seconds was as if it had never been.

There is little more to be said. The theory had been brilliantly vindicated in practice, but it is impossible to generalize from one particular instance. Physicists know the wide range of differences that exist between the different radium salts,[20] and there the matter must rest until opportunity for further experiments is available.

The analogous protective vibrations that the author of the monograph alleges would work are all probable, but require considerably more apparatus. To my mind the use of radioactive salts as talismans with which to exorcise a case of malignant haunting is at once a great and practical step in the direction of relieving humanity of these troublesome psychic intruders. The discovery and the theory are one of the most remarkable contributions to psychic science in our time.

Pitchblende, from which radium is extracted, does not appear to have attracted the attention of the ancients and there is no trace of its use in any process of alchemy or the allied sciences. Dr. Dee’s magic mirror is reported to have been of a black substance and it is possible that it may have been of radioactive material, although this quality is not necessary for the purposes for which he required it.[21]

It is after all only a few years since the theory of ether waves and vibrations was formulated. Research into psychic phenomena gives us a chain of disconnected phenomena which nevertheless are obviously connected. The distance from telepathy or thought-transference to exteriorized energy or power-transference is but a short one. Science will soon enable us to understand the mechanism of phenomena, and when we once know the true rules or laws governing these phenomena we shall be able to establish spirit communication at will.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perhaps to-day an even greater name. But he is not a scientist and is greater as a publicist than as a healer despite his medical degree. But then too--all the Apostles were not of one trade.

[13] _Proceedings S.P.R._

[14] _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 394.

[15] This particular ghost has been exorcised without effect. The house has been visited by psychic experts of considerable eminence, including H. Barson and others. The results of all these investigations were uniformly disastrous and disagreeable, and there is reason to believe that in some cases the health and mentality of less experienced investigators were adversely affected.

[16] Capt. Hugh Pollard was the author of this theory. His monograph was never printed, but typescripts of his sensational lecture before the members of the now defunct Odic Club were circulated to certain interested parties. He tells me that he had previously spent an interesting night at a haunted house. He was in the company of Mr. Eliott O’Donell and obtained a puzzling and unsatisfactory flashlight photograph of the manifestation that occurred on that occasion.

[17] A complete scale of all known ether waves, including the visible spectrum, has been drawn by Professor Lebedeff and is given on page 383 of the English edition of Kolbe’s _Electricity_.

[18] This is a little-known fact, but nevertheless a commonplace of physics demonstrable in any lecture room.

[19] The actual locality of X---- will be clear to many investigators.

[20] The solution used was a solution of radium emanations which gives out α, τ, and γ rays together. It is not well known which ray affects the dissolution of psychoplasm.

[21] The mirror of Dr. Dee is still in existence, but the material the mirror is made of is a surface of polished coal.