The Shadow World | Page 9

know, I can't tell,' moaned the voice. 'It's all so dark and
cold and lonely. Please tell me where I am. I've lost my name. All is so
dark and cold. Oh, pity me! Let me come in. Let me feel your light. I'm
freezing! Oh, pity me. I'm so lonely. It's so dark.'
"'Come in,' I said. 'We will help you.'
"The hands of the psychic crept timidly up my arm and touched my
cheek. 'Thank you! Thank you! Oh, the cheer! Oh, the light!' she cried,
ecstatically. 'I see! I know! Good-bye!' And with a sigh of ecstasy the
voice ceased.
"I can hardly express to you the vivid and yet sombre impression this
made upon me. It was as if a chilled and weary bird, having winged its
way from the winter's midnight into a warm room, had been heartened
and invigorated, had rushed away confident and swift to the sun-lands
of the South.
"One by one other 'earth-bound souls' who, from one cause or another,
were 'unable to find their way upward,' came into our ken like chilled
and desperate bats condemned to whirl in endless outer darkness and
silence--poor, abortive, anomalous shadows, whose voices pleaded
piteously for release. Nameless, agonized, bewildered, they clung like
moths to the light of our psychic.
"Some of them appeared to be suffering all the terrors of the damned,
and as they moaned and pleaded for light, the lovely face of my friend
was convulsed with agony and her hands fluttered about like wounded
birds. Singular conception! Wonderful power of suggestion!
"At length, with a glad cry, the last of these blind souls saw, sighed
with happiness, and seemed to vanish upward, as if into some
unfathomable, fourth-dimension heaven. Then the sweet first spirit, the
woman with the glad children, returned to say to Miss Wilcox, 'Be
happy--George is coming back to you.'
"After she passed, my friend opened her eyes as before, clearly,
smilingly, and said, 'Have you had enough?'

"'Plenty,' said I. 'You nearly took my eye out in your dramatic fervor. I
must say your ghosts are most unhappy creatures.'
"She became very serious. 'Please don't think that these spirits are my
affinities. My work is purely philanthropic, so Theodore Parker used to
tell mother. It was my duty, he said, to comfort the cheerless, to liberate
the earth-bound, and so I had to have these poor creatures waiting
around. That's why I gave it up. It got to be too dreadful. We never
could tell what would come next. Murderers and barnburners and every
other accursed spirit seemed to be privileged to come into my poor
empty house and abuse it, although Parker and his band promised to
protect me. I stopped it. I will not sit again,' she said, firmly. 'I don't
like it. It would be bad enough to be dominated by one's dead friends,
or the dead friends of one's friends, but to be helpless in the hands of all
the demons and suicides and miscreants of the other world is
intolerable. And if I am not dominated by dead people, I fear I am
acting in response to the minds of vicious living people, and I don't like
that. It's a dreadful feeling--can't you see it is?--this being open to every
wandering gust of passion. I wouldn't let any one of my children be
controlled for the world. Don't ask me to sit again, and please don't let
my friends know of my "gift."'
"Of course we promised, but the effect of that sitting I shall not soon
forget. By-the-way, Miss Wilcox 'phoned and proved the truth of her
message. Her mother really was ill and in need of her."
As I closed this story, Cameron said: "Garland, you tell that as if you
believed in it."
"I certainly do believe in my friend. It's no joke with her. She is quite
certain that she is controlled by those 'on the other side,' and that to
submit is to lose so much of her own individuality. You may call it
hysteria, somnambulism, hypnotism, anything you like, but that certain
people are moved subconsciously to impersonate the dead I am quite
ready to believe. However, 'impersonation' is the least convincing
(from my point of view) of all the phases of mediumship. I have paid
very little attention to it in the course of my investigation. It has no
value as evidence. You are still in the tattered fringes of 'spiritism,'

even when you have seen all that impersonation can show you."
"Well, what do you suggest as the proper method for the society?"
"As I told you at beginning, I have had a great deal of experience with
these elusive 'facts,' and it chances that a practised though
non-professional psychic with whom I have held