by Colonel Cornwallis West as having occurred in a country house of his own. Visitors had met the wraith in the passages and had afterwards, when they saw the portrait of Nell Gwynne which hung in a sitting-room, exclaimed, “Why, there is the woman I met.”
The adventure of the terrible occupant of the deserted house is taken with very little change from the experience of Lord St. Audries in a haunted house near Torquay. This gallant soldier told the story himself in The Weekly Dispatch (Dec., 1921), and it is admirably retold in Mrs. Violet Tweedale's “Phantoms of the Dawn.” As to the conversation carried on between the clergyman and the earthbound spirit, the same authoress has described a similar one when recording the adventures of Lord and Lady Wynford in Glamis Castle (“Ghosts I Have Seen,” p. 175).
Whence such a spirit draws its stock of material energy is an unsolved problem. It is probably from some mediumistic individual in the neighbourhood. In the extremely interesting case quoted by the Rev. Charles Mason in the narrative and very carefully observed by the Psychic Research Society of Reykjavik in Iceland, the formidable earthbound creature proclaimed how it got its vitality. The man was in life a fisherman of rough and violent character who had committed suicide. He attached himself to the medium, followed him to the seances of the Society, and caused indescribable confusion and alarm, until he was exorcised by some such means as described in the story. A long account appeared in the “Proceedings of the American Society of Psychic Research,” and also in the organ of the Psychic College, “Psychic Science,” for January, 1925. Iceland, it may be remarked, is very advanced in psychic science, and in proportion to its population or opportunities is probably ahead of any other country. The Bishop of Reykjavik is President of the Psychic Society, which is surely a lesson to our own prelates whose disassociation from the study of such matters is little less than a scandal. The matter relates to the nature of the soul and to its fate in the Beyond, yet there are I believe fewer students of the matter among our spiritual guides than among any other profession.
NOTE ON CHAPTER X
RESCUE CIRCLES
The scenes in this chapter are drawn very closely either from personal experience or from the reports of careful and trustworthy experimenters. Among the latter are Mr. Tozer of Melbourne, and Mr. McFarlane of Southsea, both of whom have run methodical circles for the purpose of giving help to earthbound spirits. Detailed accounts of experiences which I have personally had in the former circles are to be found in chapters IV and VI of my “Wanderings of a Spiritualist.” I may add that in my wife’s mediumship, we have been privileged to bring hope and knowledge to some of these unhappy beings.
Full reports of a number of these dramatic conversations are to be found in the last hundred pages of the late Admiral Usborne
