The Psychical Researchers Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist

The Psychical Researcher's Tale -
The
by J. D. Beresford

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Title: The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist From
"The New Decameron", Volume III.
Author: J. D. Beresford
Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22479]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER'S TALE--THE SCEPTICAL

POLTERGEIST
From "The New Decameron"--Volume III.
By J. D. Beresford
There was once a time (he began) when I decided that I was a fraud;
that I could not be a psychical researcher any longer. I determined to
give it all up, to investigate no more phenomena nor attend another
séance, nor read a word about psychical research for the remainder of
my life. On the contrary, I planned an intensive study of the works of
the later Victorians, of that blissful period in the history of Europe
when we could believe in the comforting doctrine of materialism.
"Oh!" I thought, "that one had a Haeckel or a Huxley living now to
console us with their beautiful faith in the mortality of the soul!" The
Neo-Darwinians failed to convince me; the works of H. G. Wells left
me cold.
I will tell you the events that brought me to this evil pass.
It is not likely that anyone here will remember the Slipperton case. It
attracted little attention at the time. In 1905 there was still a little sanity
left in the world. A few even of the London dailies were nearly sane
then, and refused to report ghost stories unless they were known to be
untrue. And the Slipperton case had hardly any publicity--an inch in the
Daily Mail, headed "Family Evicted by Ghosts," was the only
newspaper report that I saw; though there may have been others. In
these days the story would be given a couple of columns opposite the
leader page; and the Sunday papers...
I was connected with the thing because Edgar Slipperton and his wife
were friends of mine; quiet, old-fashioned people who believed that
when you were dead you were dead, and that that was the end of it.
The phenomena that drove them out of their house at last were of the
ordinary poltergeist type that date back to the days of John Wesley. The
Slippertons had a fat and very stupid cook, whom I suspected of being
an unconscious medium; but they were so attached to her that they

refused to give her notice, as I strongly advised them to do. They told
me that although she was constitutionally unable to grasp a new idea,
such as the idea of a different pudding, she was entirely dependable,
always doing the same things in the same way and with the same
results. And while this confirmed my suspicions that she was a
spiritualistic medium, I recognised that she might have useful qualities
as a cook.
The Slippertons stood it pretty well for a time. At first they were only
mildly inconvenienced. Things used to disappear mysteriously, and
turn up in unexpected places. Slipperton's pince-nez, for example, were
lost, and found inside the piano. And Mrs. Slipperton's "false front"
would be moved in the night from the dressing-table to the brass knob
of the bed-post, even after she took to pinning it to the toilet cover.
Things like that; irritating, but not really serious.
But the trouble increased, grew to be beyond endurance in the end. The
poltergeists, with that lack of imagination which always characterises
them, started to play the old trick of pulling off the Slippertons'
bed-clothes in the middle of the night--one of the most annoying of the
spirits' antics. And they followed that by experimenting with the heavy
furniture.
I was out of England when the trouble came to a head, and I heard
nothing of the later developments until after the Slippertons had left the
house. I happened to meet Slipperton by accident in the Haymarket,
and he took me into his club and gave me the whole story. Naturally, I
was glad of the chance to investigate, although I thought it very
probable that the phenomena would cease with the departure of the
cook. I determined, however, to go down and spend a week in the
house, alone. I was not dismayed by the fact that I should be unable to
get any help with my domestic arrangements, owing to the superstitious
fears of