The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist From "The New Decameron", Volume III.

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 seance, 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 the villagers. I rather enjoyed cooking my own meals in those days.

It was fine weather in late May when I went down, and I regarded the visit as a kind of holiday rather than as a serious investigation. Nevertheless, from force of habit I carried out my inquiry in the scientific spirit that is so absolutely essential in these matters. The Slippertons' house was on the outskirts of a small town in Buckinghamshire. The shell of the house dated from the early seventeenth century. (You will find it described in the _Inventory of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments_--the second volume of the Buckinghamshire survey.) But the inside had been gutted and replanned to suit our modern requirements, such as the need for making each bedroom accessible without passing through other bedrooms, the necessity for a fitted bathroom, and so on.

I found the house as Slipperton had warned me that I should, in a chaotic condition inside. Everything movable seemed to have been moved--without any definite intention, so far as I could see, but just for the sake of upsetting the decent order of the household. I found a frying-pan, for instance, hung on the hook that was designed for the dinner-gong, and the gong inside one of the beds. A complete set of bedroom ware had been arranged on the drawing-room table; and apparently some witticism had been contemplated with a chest of drawers, which had become firmly wedged into the angle of the back staircase. In short, the usual strange feats that characterise poltergeist phenomena.

I touched none of these misplaced things with the exception of the frying-pan, which I needed to cook the sausages I had brought with me; but after I had had my meal, I went through all the rooms and entered the position of every article in a large note-book, making plans of each room, besides a full list of the furniture and ornaments it contained. Later, I went up into the roof and disconnected the water supply, afterwards emptying the cistern and all the pipes. And before I went to bed I turned off the electric light at the main switch. All these precautions, as I need hardly tell you, were absolutely essential. It might appear difficult to explain the moving of a large chest of drawers by the sound of water-pipes or the fusing of an electric wire; but the critics of psychical research have essayed far more difficult tasks than that, to their own entire satisfaction.

I went up to the bedroom the Slippertons used to occupy, a little before eleven o'clock. I had with me a couple of spare candles, a new notebook, and a fountain pen. I was even at that time, I may add, a highly trained researcher in every way, and was quite capable of taking a full shorthand report of a seance. I tried my pulse and temperature before getting into bed and found them both normal. So far, there had been no sign of any phenomena; and I was not at all nervous. Indeed, I may say that I have never been nervous with spirits.

I had brought the Pickwick Papers upstairs to read in bed--it is always as well to choose some book that has no kind of bearing on the subject of one's investigation--and I was in the middle of the Trial Scene when my attention was caught by the sound of something moving in the room. I had left both windows wide open and the curtains undrawn, and I thought at first that an unusually large moth had flown in and was fluttering against the ceiling. I laid down my book, sat up and looked round the room, but I could see nothing. The night was very still, and the candle on the table by my bed burnt without a flicker. Nevertheless, the sound continued; a soft, irregular fluttering that suggested the intermittent struggle of some feeble winged creature. It occurred to me that a wounded bat or bird might have flown into the room and might be struggling on the floor out of sight near the foot of the bed. And I was about to get up and investigate when the flame of the candle sank a little, and I became aware that the temperature of the room was perceptibly colder.

I picked up my note-book at once and made an entry of the circumstances, and the exact time.

When I looked up again, the sound of fluttering had ceased and the candle was once more burning brightly; but I now perceived a kind of uncertain vagueness that was apparently trying to climb on to the rail at the foot of the bed. When I first saw it, it could not be described as a form. It had rather the effect of a patch of dark mist, with an irregular and changing outline, that obscured to a certain extent the furnishings of the room immediately behind it. I must confess, however, that my observations at this point were not so accurate as they should have been, owing to the sudden realisation of my stupidity in not having brought a camera and flashlight apparatus. The Slipper-tons had prepared me for poltergeists, and I was, at that moment, distinctly annoyed at being confronted with what I presumed to be an entirely different class of phenomenon. Indeed, I was so annoyed that I was half inclined to blow out the candle and go to sleep. I wish, now, that I had....

The Psychical Researcher paused and sighed deeply. Then producing a large note-book from his pocket, he continued, despondently:

I have got it all down here, and when I come to material that necessitates verbal accuracy, I should prefer to read my notes aloud rather than give an indefinite summary. In the first place, however, I must give you some idea of the form that gradually materialised; of the form, that is, as I originally saw it.

It took the shape, I may say, of a smallish man, grotesquely pot-bellied, with very thin legs and arms. The eyes were disproportionately large and quite circular, with an expression that was at once both impish and pathetic. The ears were immense, and set at right angles to the head; the rest of the features indefinite. He was dressed rather in the fashion of a medieval page.

(The professor was heard to murmur, "The typical goblin," at this point, but made no further interruption.)

He sat with his feet crossed on the rail at the foot of the bed and appeared able to balance himself without difficulty. He had been sitting there for perhaps a couple of minutes, while I made various entries in my note-book before I tried the experiment of addressing him.

"Have you a message?" I asked. "If you cannot answer directly, knock once for 'No,' and three times for 'Yes,' and afterwards we can try the alphabet."

To my great surprise, however, he was able to use the direct voice. His tone was a trifle wheezy and thin at first, but afterwards gained power and clearness.

"I can hear you fairly well," he said. "Now do try to keep calm. It isn't often that one gets such a chance as this."

I will now read my notes.

Myself. "I am perfectly calm. Go on."

Spirit. "Will you try to answer my questions?"

The Researcher looked up from his note-book with a frown of impatience after reading these two entries, and said:

But perhaps I had better summarise our earlier conversation for you. There was, I may say, a somewhat long and distinctly complicated misunderstanding between myself and the spirit before the real interest of the message begins; a misunderstanding due to my complete misapprehension of our respective parts. You see, it is unhappily true--however much we may deplore the fact and try to guard against it--that even in psychical research we form habits of thought and method, but particularly of thought. And I had got into the habit of regarding communications from spirits as referring to what we assume to be the future life. Well, this communication didn't. The spirit with whom I was talking had not, in short, ever been incarnated. He was what the Spiritualists and Theosophists, and so on, call an "Elemental." And to him, I represented the future state. I was, so to speak, the communicating spirit and he the psychical researcher. He was, I inferred, very far advanced on his own plane and expecting very shortly to "pass over," as he put it. Also, I gathered that he was in his own world by way of being an intellectual; keenly interested in the future--that is, in our present state; and that the Slipperton phenomena were entirely due to the experiments he had been carrying out ("on strictly scientific lines," he assured me) to try and ascertain the conditions of life on this plane.