The Psychical Researchers Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist | Page 4

from my experiments. For instance, I gather that you put on hair in the daytime, and take it off when you are--where you are at the present time. Also, I have noticed that when the coverings which at present conceal you are pulled away, you invariably replace them. Am I to deduce from that that you try to keep your bodies warm and your heads cool at night?"
Myself. "Well, that's a trifle complicated. About the hair, you understand, some of us lose our hair--it comes out, we don't know why--in middle life, as mine has, and women and some men are rather ashamed of this and wear--er--other people's hair in the daytime to hide the defect."
Spirit. "Why?"
Myself. "Oh, vanity. We want to appear younger than we really are."
Spirit. "Why?"
The Researcher bent a little lower over his notebook as he said:
I seem to have written "Damnation" at this point; but so far as I can remember I did not speak the word aloud. You will see, however, that I tried my best to be patient in what were really the most exasperating circumstances. But I will miss the next page or two, and come to more interesting material. Ah I here:
Spirit. "This thing you call death, or dying? Am I to understand that it corresponds to what we call incarnation?"
Myself. "We are not sure. Some of us believe that our actual bodies will rise again in the flesh; others that the body perishes and the spirit survives in an uncertain state of which we have very little knowledge; others, again, that death is the end of everything."
Spirit. "In brief, you know nothing whatever about it?"
Myself. "Uncommonly little."
Spirit. "Do you remember your lives as elementals?"
Myself (definitely). "No!"
Spirit. "Then where do you suppose yourselves to begin?"
Myself. "We don't know. There are various guesses. None of them particularly likely."
Spirit. "Such as?"
Myself. "Oh, some of us believe that the soul or spirit is a special creation made by a higher power we call God, and breathed into the body at birth. And some that the soul or spirit, itself eternal, finds a temporary house in the body, and progresses from one to another with intervals between each incarnation."
Spirit. "Then this being born is what we should call dying?"
Myself. "Quite. It makes no difference. And, as a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of us--that is to say, all but about one in every million--never bother our heads where we came from, or what's likely to happen to us when we die, or are born, as you would call it."
I have a note here that after this we were both silent for about ten minutes.
Spirit (despondently). "I wish I could get some sort of idea what you do all the time and what you think about. I thought, when I so unexpectedly got into touch with someone in the future state, that I should be able to learn everything. And I have, so far, learnt nothing--absolutely nothing. In fact, except that I have been able to correct my inferences with regard to one or two purely material experiments, I may say that I know less now than I did before. And, by the way, those things over there--he pointed to the washstand--I noticed that at certain times you go through some ceremony with them upstairs, and as I wished to discover if there was any reason why you should not perform the same ceremony downstairs, I moved the things. Well, I noticed that the spirit who was here before you was apparently very annoyed. Can you give me any explanation of that?"
Myself. "Our bodies become soiled by contact with matter, and we wash ourselves in water. We prefer to do it in our bedrooms."
Spirit. "Why?"
Myself. "We use a certain set of rooms for one purpose and another set for other purposes."
Spirit. "Why?"
Myself. "I don't know why. We do."
Spirit. "But you are sure of the fact, even if you can give no reason?"
Myself. "Absolutely."
Spirit. "I wish I could prove that. One of my fellow-scientists, who has recently been able to press his investigations even further than I have up to the present time, has recently brought forward good evidence to prove that spirits are all black, wear no coverings on their bodies, live in the simplest of dwellings, and, although they have a few ceremonies, certainly have none which in any way corresponds to that you have just described."
Myself. "He has probably been investigating the habits of the Australian aborigines."
Spirit. "What are they?"
Myself. "Men, or, as you would say, spirits, like us in a few respects, but utterly different in most."
Spirit. "Have you ever seen them?"
Myself. "No."
Spirit. "Or met anyone who has?"
Myself. "No."
Spirit. "Then this account of them tallies with nothing in your experience."
Myself. "No, but they exist all right. There's no doubt of that."
Spirit. "I question