The Unknown Guest | Page 5

certain Indian jugglers. Though the prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly proved and can doubtless be physiologically explained, there are many other tricks on which we have so far no authoritative pronouncement. I will not speak of the "mango-tree" and the "basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the "fire-walk" and the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain more of a mystery.
The fire-walk, or walk on red-hot bricks or glowing coals, is a sort of religious ceremony practiced in the Indies, in some of the Polynesian islands, in Mauritius and elsewhere. As the result of incantations uttered by the high priest, the bare feet of the faithful who follow him upon the bed of burning pebbles or brands seem to become almost insensible to the touch of fire. Travelers are anything but agreed whether the heat of the surface traversed is really intolerable, whether the extraordinary power of endurance is explained by the thickness of the horny substance which protects the soles of the natives' feet, whether the feet are burnt or whether the skin remains untouched; and, under present conditions, the question is too uncertain to make it worth while to linger over it.
"Rope-climbing" is more extraordinary. The juggler takes his stand in an open space, far from any tree or house. He is accompanied by a child; and his only impedimenta are a bundle of ropes and an old canvas sack. The juggler throws one end of the rope up in the air; and the rope, as though drawn by an invisible hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky until the end disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the blue two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard picks up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and smiling to the spectators.
This is the usual form taken by this particular sorcery. It is pretty rare and seems to be practised only by one sect which originated in the North-West Provinces. It has not yet perhaps been sufficiently investigated to take its place among the evidence mentioned show. If it were really as I have described, it could hardly be explained save by some strange hallucinatory power emanating from the juggler or illusionist, who influences the audience by suggestion and makes it see what he wishes. In that case the suggestion or hallucination covers a very extensive area. In point of fact, onlookers, Europeans, on the balconies of houses at some distance from the crowd of natives, have been known to experience the same influence. This would be one of the most curious manifestations of that "unknown guest" of which we shall speak again later when, after enumerating its acts and deeds, we try to investigate and note down the eccentricities of its character.
Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the raising, without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or even of a person, might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory power; but hitherto the instances have not been sufficiently numerous or authentic to allow us to draw any conclusions. Also we shall meet with it again when we come to the chapter treating of the materializations of which it forms part.
THE UNKNOWN GUEST
CHAPTER I
. PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
1
This brings us without any break to the consideration of veridical apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted houses. We all know that the phantasms of the living and the dead have now a whole literature of their own, a literature which owes its birth to the numerous and conscientious enquiries conducted in England, France, Belgium and the United States at the instance of the Society for Psychical Research. In the presence of the mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this time incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be transmitted instantaneously from one mind to another, however great the distance that separates the mind experiencing the emotion from the mind receiving the communication. It is most often manifested by a visual hallucination, more rarely by an auditory hallucination; and, as the most violent emotion which man can undergo is that which grips and overwhelms him at the approach or at the very moment of death, it is nearly always this supreme emotion which he sends forth and directs with incredible precision through space, if necessary across seas and continents, towards an invisible and moving goal. Again, though this occurs less frequently, a grave danger, a serious crisis can beget and transmit to a distance a similar hallucination. This is what the S. P. R. calls "phantasms of the living."