Joseph Lewis French
The Best Psychic Stories
UUID: 57cc35e8-4b22-11e5-a349-119a1b5d0361
This ebook was created with StreetLib Write (http://write.streetlib.com)by Simplicissimus Book Farm
Table of contents
PREFACE
THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG[1]
THE RETURN[2]
THE SECOND GENERATION[3]
JOSEPH: A STORY
THE CLAVECIN, BRUGES[4]
LIGEIA
THE SYLPH AND THE FATHER[5]
A GHOST[6]
THE EYES OF THE PANTHER[7]
PHOTOGRAPHING INVISIBLE BEINGS
THE SIN-EATER
GHOSTS IN SOLID FORM
THE PHANTOM ARMIES SEEN IN FRANCE[17]
THE PORTAL OF THE UNKNOWN
THE SUPERNORMAL: EXPERIENCES
NATURE-SPIRITS OR ELEMENTALS[18]
A WITCH'S DEN
REMARKABLE PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES OF FAMOUS PERSONS
PREFACE
The
case for the "psychic" element in literature rests on a
very old foundation; it reaches back to the ancient masters,—the
men who wrote the Greek tragedies. Remorse will ever seem commonplace
alongside the furies. Ever and always the shadow of the supernatural
invites, pursues us. As the art of literature has progressed it has
grown along with it. Today there is a whole new school of writers of
Ghost Stories, and the domain of the invisible is being invaded by
explorers in many paths. We do not believe so much more, perhaps,
that is, we do not so openly express a belief, but art has finally
and frankly claimed the supernatural for its own. One discerning
authority even goes so far as to assert that the borders of its
domain will be greatly enlarged in the wonderful new field of the
screen.There
is no motive in a story, no image in poetry, that can give us quite
the thrill of a supernatural idea. If we were formally charged with
this we might resent the imputation, but the evidence has persisted
from the beginning, lives on every hand, and multiplies daily. What
we have been in the habit of calling the "machinery" of the
old Greek drama—its supernatural effects—has come finally to be
an art cultivated with care at the present hour, and has given us
some wonderful new writers. In fact, few of the best masters for a
generation now have been able to resist its persistent and abiding
charm. Every writer of true imagination, almost without exception,
including even certain realists, has given us at least one story,
long or short, in which the central motive is purely psychical in the
Greek sense of the word.The
whole subject opens up a virgin field which has after all only begun
to be tilled. Within the coming generation we may look for great
artists to devote their whole powers to it, as Algernon Blackwood is
doing to-day. A simple underlying reason is enough to account for it
all—the new field
imposes simply no limit on the imagination.
In addition to all that science has taught us, there is illimitable
store of myth and legend to aid, to draw from, to work in, to work
over, as Lord Dunsany has shown us. It is the most significant
movement in literature at the present hour, and whether it is
supported by a special background of interest—as at present in
spiritism—or not, the assertion is logical that it is creating a
new body of fictional literature of permanent importance for the
first time in the history of literature. The human comedy seems to
have been exploited to its final limits; as the art of the novel, the
art of the stage, but too sadly prove to-day. We have turned outward
for new thrills to the supernatural and we are getting them.It
only remains to be added that the present great interest in
spiritualism and allied phenomena has made necessary the addition of
certain material of a "literal" character which we believe
will be found quite as interesting by the general reader as the
purely literary portion of the book.
THE PSYCHIC IN LITERATURE
War,
that relentless disturber of boundaries and of traditions in a
spiritual as well as a material sense, has brought a tremendous
revival of interest in the life after death and the possibility of
communication between the living and the dead. As France became
nearer to millions over here because our soldiers lived there for a
few months, as French soil will forever be holy ground because our
dead rest there, so the far country of the soul likewise seems nearer
because of those young adventurers. The conflict which changed the
map of Europe has in the minds of many effaced the boundaries between
this world and the world beyond. Winifred Kirkland, in her book,
The New Death,
discusses the new concept of death, and the change in our standards
that it is making. "We are used to speaking of this or that
friend's philosophy of life; the time has now come when every one of
us who is to live at peace with his own brain must possess also a
philosophy of death." This New Death, she says, is so far mainly
an immense yearning receptivity, an unprecedented humility of brain
and of heart toward all implications of survival. She believes that
it is an influence which is entering the lives of the people as a
whole, not a movement of the intellectuals, nor the result of
psychical research propaganda, but arising from the simple, elemental
emotions of the soul, from human love and longing for reassurance of
continued life."If
a man die, shall he live again?" has been propounded ever since
Job's agonized inquiry. Now numbers are asking in addition, "Can
we have communication with the dead?" Science, long derisive, is
sympathetic to the questioning, and while many believe and many
doubt, the subject is one that interests more people than ever
before. Professor James Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for
Psychical Research, believes that the war has had great influence in
arousing new interest in psychical subjects and that tremendous
spiritual discoveries may come from it.Literature,
always a little ahead of life, or at least in advance of general
thinking, has in the more recent years been acutely conscious of this
new influence. Poetry, the drama, the novel, the short story, have
given affirmative answer to the question of the soul's survival after
death. No other element has so largely entered into the tissue of
recent literature as has the supernatural, which now we meet in all
forms in the writings of all lands. And no aspect of the ghostly art
is more impressive or more widely used than the introduction of the
spirit of the dead seeking to manifest itself to the living. No
thoughtful person can fail to be interested in a theme which has so
affected literature as has the ghostly, even though he may disbelieve
what the Psychical Researchers hold to be established.Man's
love for the supernatural, which is one of the most natural things
about him, was never more marked than now. Man's imagination, ever
vaster than his environment, overleaps the barriers of time and space
and claims all worlds as eminent domain, so that literature, which he
has the power to create, as he cannot create his material
surroundings, possesses a dramatic intensity and an epic sweep
unknown in actuality. Literature shows what humanity really is and
longs to be. Man, feeling belittled by his petty round of uninspiring
days, longs for a larger life. He yearns for traffic with immortal
beings that can augment his wisdom, that can bring comfort to his
soul dismayed and bewildered by life. He reaches out for a power
beyond his puny strength. Aware how relentlessly time ticks away his
little hour, he craves companionship with the eternal spirits.
Ignorant of what lies before him in the life to which he speeds so
fast, he would take counsel of those who know, would ask about the
customs of the country where presently he will be a citizen. He feels
so terribly alone that he cries out like a child in the dark for
supermortal companionship.Literature,
which is both a cause and an effect of man's interest in the
supernatural as in anything else, reflects his longings and records
his cries. And when we read the imaginings of the different
generations, we find that the spirit of the dead is represented
almost everywhere. Before poetry and fiction were recorded, there
were singers and story-tellers by the fire to give to their listeners
the thrill that comes from art. And what thrill is comparable to that
which comes from contact with the supermortal? The earliest
literature relates the appearance of the spirits of those who have
died as coming back to comfort or to take vengeance on the living,
but always as sentient, intelligent, and with an interest in the
earth they have left. All through the centuries the wraith has
survived in literature, has flitted pallidly across the pages of
poetry, story and play, with a sad wistfulness, a forlorn dignity.A
double relation exists between the literature and the records of the
Psychical Research Society. Lacy Collison-Morley, in his
Greek and Roman Ghost Stories,
speaks of the similarity between ancient tales of spirits and records
of recent instances. "There are in the Fourth Book of
Gregory the Great's Dialogues
a number of stories of the passing of souls which are curiously like
some of those collected by the Psychical Research Society," he
says. Possibly human personality is much the same in all lands and
all times.Conversely,
some of the best examples of ghostly literature have had their
inspiration in the records of the society, Henry James's
The Turn of the Screw
being a notable example. Algernon Blackwood, that extraordinary
adapter of psychic material to fiction, makes frequent mention of the
Psychical Research Society, and uses many aspects of the psychical in
his fiction. Innumerable stories, novels, plays and poems have been
written to show the nearness of the dead to the living, and the
thinness of the veil that separates the two worlds. There is deep
pathos in the concept of the longing felt by the dead and living
alike to speak with each other, to rend the dividing veil, which adds
a poignancy to literature, even for readers incredulous of the
possibility of such communication. There are many who are unconvinced
of the reality of the messages in
Raymond, for
instance,—yet who could fail to be touched by the delicate art with
which Barrie suggests the dead son's return in his play,
The Well-Remembered Voice?
While one may be repelled by what he feels is fraud and trickery in
some of the psychic records, it is impossible not to be moved by such
an impressive piece of symbolism as Granville Barker's
Souls on Fifth,
where the lonely, futile spirits of the dead are represented as
hovering near the place they knew the best, seeking piteously to win
some recognition from the living. The repulsive aspects of spirit
manifestations have been treated many times and with power, as in
Joseph Hergesheimer's
The Meeker Ritual,
to give one very recent example. The subject has interested the minds
of many writers who have dealt with it satirically or
sympathetically, or with a curious mixture of scoffing and respect,
as did Browning in
Sludge, the Medium.
Even such pronounced realists as William Dean Howells and Hamlin
Garland have written novels dealing with attempts at spirit
communication.Any
subject that has won so incontestable a place in our literature as
this has, possesses a right to our thought, whatever be our attitude
of acceptance or rejection of its claims to actuality. No person
wishes to be ignorant of what the world is thinking with reference to
a matter so important as the spirit. Hence this volume,
The Best Psychic Stories,
in presenting these studies in the occult, will have interest for a
wide range of readers, and Mr. French, the editor, has shown critical
discrimination and extensive knowledge of the subject. Many who are
already interested in psychic phenomena will be glad to be informed
concerning recent and startling manifestations recounted by special
investigators. The sincerity of a man like W. T. Stead, well known
and respected on both sides of the Atlantic, cannot be doubted, so
that his article on
Photographing Invisible Beings
will have unusual weight. Hereward Carrington, author of various
books on psychic subjects, and considered an authority in his field,
gives in The Phantom
Armies Seen in France
a report of occult phenomena widely believed in during the war.Helena
Blavatsky, author of
A Witch's Den, will
be remembered as the sensational medium who mystified experimenters
in various lands a few years ago. While most of us can be content not
to touch a ghost, we may find subject for surprise and wonder in
Gambier Bolton's
Ghosts in Solid Form,
describing spirits that can be weighed and put to material tests,
while Dr. Walter H. Prince, well known as a psychic investigator,
relates remarkable experiments of famous persons, that challenge
explanation on purely physical bases. These accounts show that modern
scientific investigation of spiritual manifestations can be made as
enthralling as fiction or drama. Hamlin Garland remarks in a recent
article, The
Spirit-World on Trial,
"When the medium consented to enter the laboratory of the
physicist, a new era in the study of psychic phenomena began."Even
those who refuse credence to spirit manifestations in fact, but who
appreciate the art with which they are shown in literature, should
read with interest the stories given here. The genius of Edgar Allan
Poe was never more impressive than in his studies of the
supernatural, and
Ligeia has a
dramatic art unsurpassed even by Poe. The tense economy with which
Ambrose Bierce could evoke a dreadful spirit is evident in
The Eyes of the Panther,
and the haunting symbolism of Fiona Macleod's
The Sin-Eater is
unforgetable. Lafcadio Hearn, author of
A Ghost, held the
belief that there was no great artist in any land, and certainly no
Anglo-Saxon writer, who had not distinguished himself in his use of
the supernatural. The subject of the soul's survival after death and
its attempts to reveal itself to those still in the folding flesh is
of interest to every rational person, whether as a matter of
scientific concern or merely as an aspect of literary art. And the
possibilities for further use of the psychic in literature are as
alluring as they are illimitable.Dorothy
ScarboroughNew
York CityMarch
29, 1920
WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG[1]
By
Jack London
I
He
was a very quiet, self-possessed sort of man, sitting a moment on top
of the wall to sound the damp darkness for warnings of the dangers it
might conceal. But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him
save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of
leaves on swaying branches. A heavy fog drifted and drove before the
wind, and though he could not see this fog, the wet of it blew upon
his face, and the wall on which he sat was wet.
Without
noise he had climbed to the top of the wall from the outside, and
without noise he dropped to the ground on the inside. From his pocket
he drew an electric night-stick, but he did not use it. Dark as the
way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in
his hand, his finger on the button, he advanced through the darkness.
The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with
dead pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been
undisturbed for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body,
but so dark was it that he could not avoid them. Soon he walked with
his hand stretched out gropingly before him, and more than once the
hand fetched up against the solid trunks of massive trees. All about
him he knew were these trees; he sensed the loom of them everywhere;
and he experienced a strange feeling of microscopic smallness in the
midst of great bulks leaning toward him to crush him. Beyond, he
knew, was the house, and he expected to find some trail or winding
path that would lead easily to it.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
