Real Ghost Stories | Page 2

bringing this Introduction to a close I should like to quote what my
Father wrote in his Preface to the last edition published by him, as it
embodies what many people are realising to-day. To them, as to him,
the reality of the "Invisibles" is no longer a speculation. Therefore I feel
that these thoughts of his should have a place in this new edition of his
collection of Real Ghost Stories.
"The reality," he wrote, "of the Invisibles has long since ceased to be
for me a matter of speculation. It is one of the things about which I feel
as certain as I do, for instance, of the existence of the people of Tierra
del Fuego; and while it is of no importance to me to know that Tierra
del Fuego is inhabited, it is of vital importance to know that the spirits
of the departed, and also of those still occupying for a time the
moveable biped telephone which we call our body, can, and given the
right conditions do, communicate with the physical unconsciousness of
the man in the street. It is a fact which properly apprehended would go
far to remedy some of the worst evils from which we have to complain.
For our conception of life has got out of form, owing to our constant
habit of mistaking a part for the whole, and everything looks awry."
Estelle W. Stead
Bank Buildings, Kingsway, London, W.C.2.

Easter, 1921.

A PREFATORY WORD.
Many people will object--some have already objected--to the subject of
this book. It is an offence to some to take a ghost too seriously; with
others it is a still greater offence not to take ghosts seriously enough.
One set of objections can be paired off against the other; neither
objection has very solid foundation. The time has surely come when the
fair claim of ghosts to the impartial attention and careful observation of
mankind should no longer be ignored. In earlier times people believed
in them so much that they cut their acquaintance; in later times people
believe in them so little that they will not even admit their existence.
Thus these mysterious visitants have hitherto failed to enter into that
friendly relation with mankind which many of them seem sincerely to
desire.
But what with the superstitious credulity of the one age and the equally
superstitious unbelief of another, it is necessary to begin from the
beginning and to convince a sceptical world that apparitions really
appear. In order to do this it is necessary to insist that your ghost should
no longer be ignored as a phenomenon of Nature. He has a right, equal
to that of any other natural phenomenon, to be examined and observed,
studied and defined. It is true that he is a rather difficult phenomenon;
his comings and goings are rather intermittent and fitful, his substance
is too shadowy to be handled, and he has avoided hitherto equally the
obtrusive inquisitiveness of the microscope and telescope.
A phenomenon which you can neither handle nor weigh, analyse nor
dissect, is naturally regarded as intractable and troublesome;
nevertheless, however intractable and troublesome he may be to reduce
to any of the existing scientific categories, we have no right to allow his
idiosyncrasies to deprive him of his innate right to be regarded as a
phenomenon. As such he will be treated in the following pages, with all
the respect due to phenomena whose reality is attested by a sufficient
number of witnesses. There will be no attempt in this book to build up

a theory of apparitions, or to define the true inwardness of a ghost.
There will be as many explanations as there are minds of the
significance of the extraordinary narratives which I have collated from
correspondence and from accessible records. Leaving it to my readers
to discuss the rival hypotheses, I will stick to the humbler mission of
recording facts, from which they can form their own judgment.
The ordinary temper of the ordinary man in dealing with ghosts is
supremely unscientific, but it is less objectionable than that of the
pseudo-scientist. The Inquisitor who forbade free inquiry into matters
of religion because of human depravity, was the natural precursor of
the Scientist who forbids the exercise of the reason on the subject of
ghosts, on account of inherited tendencies to attribute such phenomena
to causes outside the established order of nature. What difference there
is, is altogether in favour of the Inquisitor, who at least had what he
regarded as a divinely constituted authority, competent and willing to
pronounce final decision upon any subject that might trouble the human
mind. Science has no such tribunal, and when she forbids others to
observe and to reflect she is no better than a blind fetish.
Eclipses in old