CHAPTER IV

AN EXPERIMENT ON THE THEORY OF PROTECTIVE VIBRATION


Ghost phenomena do not come into the province of practising
Spiritualism. The average Spiritualist is content to follow the
Catholic doctrine of offering up a few devout prayers for the rest of
the uneasy spirit should circumstances throw him into contact with it.
Apparitions as a whole affect the Spiritualist with as much unreasoning
terror as falls to the lot of the non-Spiritualist mortal.

The chance-met apparition of the dead is after all a fairly common
phenomenon. The theory of the veridic apparition of the recently dead
is explainable by various hypotheses, but there is little reason to
suppose that the human spirit still animates the astral body that
appears.

The luminous quality or phosphorescence of astral light that enwraps
the astral body of the apparition is not necessarily a proof of the
survival of the identity of the soul whose astral body appears. The
phosphorescent radiance associated with certain kinds of fish survives
the death of the organism, and luminous bodies or glands extracted
from these creatures may be preserved for months after death and still
retain elements of luminosity.

The thinking Spiritualist does not disregard the lessons and analogies
of science. The great names in the history of Spiritualism have been
those of scientists like Lodge and Crookes,[12] and it has ever been
their desire to translate the apparent miracles of the supernatural
into no less miraculous but more deeply understood parallels with the
natural.

The great slogan of Spiritualism is that it is a perfectly natural
understandable thing; thus is it the duty of every Spiritualist to
reduce those things which non-Spiritualistic thought deems supernatural
to the realms of the understood, the explained and the known,--in a
word, to the state of the natural.

It is no good to tell a materialistic world that owing to the
intervention of spirit force mechanical results contrary to all natural
laws were obtained. The sceptic, and above all the logical sceptic--who
is the easiest of all to convert, can you but once bring him to see the
fallacies that underlie his logic--demands proof, proof not in terms of
second-hand evidence, but proof in terms of cold matter-of-fact science.

The missionary effort of Spiritualism must be made a crusade not into
the minds of the unintelligent but straight into the citadels of reason
of the men of science. It is necessary first of all to demonstrate the
spirit forces and then to _prove_ that they are forces of the
spirit and not natural, so far as the meaning of the term “natural” may
be held to imply limitation to the physical laws governing this mortal
earth.

The spirit realm is the realm of the ether, the boundless range of
unknown interstellar space. Blindly, gropingly, the men of science
are putting out feelers--theories--pragmatical assumptions that serve
them as laws. Little by little it is being recognized that the physics
of the ether is the underlying superscientific structure of modern
Spiritualism. Little by little their discoveries fall into harmony with
our claims, and we must look upon science as the handmaiden rather than
the antagonist of our truth.

The theories of apparition that are held vary according to the
classification of the apparition. There are numerous instances of
apparitions of the living[13] and there is an infinite mass of data
concerning veridical apparitions of the dead. A statistical analysis
of 17,000 cases collected by the Society for Psychical Research resulted
in the finding by the Committee that “Between deaths and apparitions
of the dying person a connexion exists which is not due to chance
alone.”[14]

A clear distinction must, however, be drawn between apparitions which
may appear to relatives, friends, and acquaintances, and then disappear
for ever, and those definite and persistently recurring apparitions
that go by the name of haunts.

The terminology of matters psychic is loose and inexact, but it is well
to have a clear mental distinction between the occasional “apparition”
and the periodic or repeating “ghost.”

For purposes of scientific investigation the casual apparition
is almost valueless, but the established ghost is the nearest
approximation that we can get to a serious test standard for
experimental purposes.

There are in England at least half a dozen ghosts whose periodical
manifestations are regular enough to serve as test instances. The
genuine ghost is so rare that from the point of view of psychical
research it is vitally important that the haunt should not be harried
by every party of sensation-avid amateurs who think they would “like to
see a ghost.” The amateur exorcists, the psychically gifted ladies, and
all the ragtag and bobtail of well-meaning idiots that disturb a haunt
once it becomes known, can only be compared to a set of egg-stealing,
bird-scaring boys who invade a woodland sanctuary and destroy the
fruition of the work of a painstaking observer of nature who has been
recording the life of the rare birds.

In parenthesis it may be remarked that if the ghost is a full-blooded
manifestation it will take more than the well-meaning effort of some
anæmic amateur psychic to lay it. The very last person who should go
near a violent ghost is anyone whose capacity for mediumship is in
any way developed. Mediums should only be present when adequate and
experienced mortal controls are there also.

In the West of England there is an excellent example of a genuinely
haunted house that has so far resisted all attempts to solve the origin
of the haunt, the precise nature of the supernatural intelligence that
directs the manifestation, or the motive of the phenomena.[15]

It is now extremely difficult to get permission to carry out
investigations, as adequate precautions have been taken to safeguard
both the phenomena and the incautious dabbler in matters beyond the
veil.

I may take occasion here to warn my readers against the legal risks
attached to stating that a house is haunted. In the eyes of the law
such a statement is actionable, as it tends to depreciate the market
value of the property. It is for this reason that stories concerning
haunted houses when printed in newspapers have to be obscured in their
indication of the precise locality and silent with regard to the name,
number, or address of the suspected dwelling. The verbal repetition of
such statements is also actionable and such cases as the bogus haunting
of a house by the tenants or by caretakers in order to avoid payment of
rent or the letting of the house are manifest reasons why the matter of
haunted houses should always be treated with the utmost discretion.

Particulars concerning a reputed haunt can, however, be communicated
to a newspaper with safety. All communications to a journal are
privileged, and they can be trusted not to print anything which renders
them party to an action for damages.

In 1913 a well-known student of occult matters announced his theory
of _Protective Vibrations_.[16] It was in effect an analysis of
the actual physical methods reported to be employed by spirit forces
in building up their visible and material forms. His theory contained
several assumptions which it is impossible to disregard and which
certainly do not admit of rejection.

Taken in series he stated that “The presence of human beings was an
essential to the appearance of the ghost.” This admits of no disproof,
as unless human witnesses are present there can be no testimony to
the presence of the manifestation. A general consensus of opinion
discredits ghost photographs unless taken under the strictest test
conditions which again implies the presence of the human element.

“The energy or thought-matter” (i.e. psychoplasm) “extended by the
mortals is the matter out of which the astral form is constructed.
They are, so to speak, the prime motors or the energy and material,
providing units out of which the discarnate intelligence builds its
carnate habit.”

This conception embraces psychoplasm and ectoplasm as one, but the
researches of Schrenck-Notzing were not then known. These and other
similar experiments all point to the essential probability that the
broad sense of his reasoning is correct.

From this point onward he traces the development of the material astral
body as a process of the conversion of the original vibrations into low
forms of actual energy which are able to manipulate the atoms of matter
and under the directing will of the intelligence or entity build up the
materialization.

He makes one notable reservation, asserting that “there is no evidence
to prove that discarnate intelligence is the directing force. Pure
autosuggestion, due to concentrated belief and anticipation that a
specified ghost will appear, may achieve the same result.”

But the purpose of his paper was not to argue concerning the reality of
spirits, but to put forward an ingenious scientific theory concerning
their mechanism. The sum-total of his theory is that the physical
structure of the hallucination-spirit or ghost-form in its early stages
of concentration is destructible by many forms of etheric vibration of
greater force or different wave-length.

Ghosts and spirits are integrally bound up with the conditions of
darkness and dusk. The rays of solar light are admittedly inimical
to all these manifestations. In other words, materialization cannot
be performed under certain conditions of light which means certain
conditions of vibration. The light rays which are visible to the human
eye represent about one-tenth of the complete range of light rays known
to exist from ultra-violet to infra-red.[17] At other points in the
scale of ether waves come the vibrations associated with sound, with
electricity and magnetic phenomena and with radioactivity.

The complexity of these wave-lengths of vibration is enormous, for
within the range of light rays there are rays of another kind of light,
so that the sum-total of two kinds of light is, paradoxically enough,
darkness.[18]

Passing, logically enough, from stage to stage the “Theory of
Protective Vibrations” points out that assuming the existence of ghosts
or malevolent spirits, these cannot take material shape when opposed
by hostile vibrations. Certain kinds of light, sound (such as the
sonorous vibrations of church bells or gongs of special note), and
high-frequency electric currents all destroy the initial stages of
manifestation by purely mechanical means. Lastly he postulates that
“in the presence of a radium salt (of specified intensity) ... a ghost
cannot manifest.”

Protection or exorcism by radium salts is undeniably a
twentieth-century possibility, for the terrific and incessant discharge
of ether waves consequent upon the disintegration of the radium atoms
is so powerful that even such a known and powerful force as electric
energy is completely destroyed by it.

In the presence of a radium salt non-conductors of electricity become
conductors. Differences of potential cease to exist and electroscopes
and Leyden jars fail to retain their charges.

Under these conditions, then, it was hardly conceivable that a
manifestation which depends, in its initial stages, upon the most
delicate of vibrations--the unknown vibrations of the psychoplasm could
take place.

Truth is dependent upon experiment, upon patient repetition and trial
and error. In order to test the theory in actual practice, I determined
to pay a visit to the well-known and malignant ghost at X----[19] and
actually put to the test whether or not a ghost can manifest in the
presence of a radium salt.

The rays of radioactive salts are unable to pass through lead, and pure
radium bromide, which is the nearest that we have got to the isolation
of the element radium, always has to be kept in a leaden box or cell,
as otherwise its rays would pass through and destroy the skin and flesh
of the man carrying it. Before the properties of radium were known,
this destructive faculty of radium vibrations caused several mishaps,
for unwary men of science carried these dangerous salts loose in glass
vials in their pockets.

For the purposes of experiment I obtained the loan of a small supply of
a solution of a radium salt that gives out powerful emanations. This
was enclosed in a glass vial which was in turn encased in a leaden box.

The haunted house is a peculiar old building of no particular
architectural beauty. It stands remote and deserted in its own
overgrown extended grounds, and over it breathes a generally depressing
atmosphere of damp, neglect, oppression, and decay.

Viewed from the outside the house presents no outstanding features that
attract the eye. The lower windows are heavily barred by rusted iron
rails without and closed wooden shutters within. Even creepers seem to
have felt the blight that lies upon the mansion, for no patch of green
or rambling ivy tendril covers the bare surface of the brick.

Three storeys high, mansard-roofed and turreted with a dozen contorted
Tudor chimney-stacks, the roof-line stands out against the sky and the
dull leaf masses of the surrounding trees. The higher windows are also
shuttered, but not even the small boys of the neighbouring village
have dared to break the grimy window frames that lie over the shutters.
Desolate and forbidding, the mansion and its grounds lie derelict,
shunned by all men.

My key is that of the small back door, and it is used but once or twice
a year when the needs of the psychic call upon us to tread a path of
peril and hazard.

Inside one steps into the cold stone-flagged passages that lead to the
empty kitchens and offices. The air is heavy and dank with that queer
smell of earth that one associates with crypts and graves rather than
with the clean new-turned furrow. The whole house is bare of furniture,
the paint of the woodwork dull and dirty. Spots of amorphous fungus
cling to the walls, and here and there wallpaper has peeled off in long
leprous strips, exposing the corpse-grey plaster behind.

The door from the servants’ offices opens into the wide Georgian
hall, from which sweeps up a monstrous wooden staircase. Half-way
up the stair is a landing which marks the limit of activity of the
manifestation. In the rooms beyond that and on the landing itself the
presence is terribly powerful, but it seems that beyond that limit the
terror cannot go.

The actual room where the presence is at its strongest is a chamber at
the end of the first floor. The room walls are outside walls on three
sides, the remaining partition wall is the one in which is the door to
the main corridor that runs through the house. In the centre of the
floor is a deep cavity. This has been a priest’s hiding hole or secret
treasure closet, and from signs in the woodwork it is manifest that the
trapdoor was once concealed beneath a big four-poster bed.

The windows are barred with high shutters that let in no light. The
rays of my electric lantern disclose the mats of cobwebs that hang
from the rusted cross bars, and it is evident that no human hand has
disturbed the shutters for years. A trial shows me that some of the
bolts are indeed rusted home with age-old neglect.

I unpacked my handbag, in which I carry the few simple necessities I
need on these occasions, and wrapping myself up in my travelling rug
composed myself to read by the light of my travelling candles until
the hour of ten was reached.

At ten o’clock I closed my book, put out my candle, and composed
myself to watch for the manifestation, which I _knew_ by inner
consciousness would be forthcoming.

It was a dark and moonless night and not a flicker or ray of external
light penetrated the dark stretches of the haunted room. No wind
stirred the trees or moaned in the chimney-tops and the qualities of
absolute dark and absolute quiet were all that could be desired.

Slowly out of the darkness seemed to come pinpoints of bluish
light--mere specks of phosphorescence scintillant in the still air.
The specks thickened and multiplied till they floated like a maze of
dancing midgets; then too came the dark power of oppression, that sense
of the dread and the uncanny that seems to grip the very heart and the
base of the skull in a numbing grip of fear.

Cold grew the room, colder and colder--that sense of freezing that
experienced psychics associate with the dread phenomena of malevolent
apparitions. It is a coldness of the soul as well as of the body, a
dull biting cold that suggests the limitless freezing eternities of
interstellar space.

The blue specks spun their dance and slowly became more luminous. They
collected in little nebulæ of light like cigarette ends of intense blue
radiance. Every particle of the air was filled with this luminosity, so
that the room seemed to be filled with a dull moonlight.

Slowly the nebulæ changed from their spinning movement to a slow
weaving motion. Strands and floating webs of phosphorescence drifted
like smoke wreaths about the room.

The points of light gave place to clouds of luminous mist like softly
rolling, utterly silent globes of dull blue light. Little by little the
dance of the globes speeded up. They spun and whirled and wove in and
out among themselves till they had drawn into one mass all the luminous
matter in the room.

Like a terror-charged cloud this mass hovered some eight feet high, a
clear two feet off the floor; its brilliance waxed and waned and its
confines drew in. Slowly the cloud was taking shape as a pillar and
within the pillar one could see the ghastly shaping of the rudimentary
form.

Here before my eyes was the actual form of the stranger--for this ghost
is a malevolent strangling demon--on the very point of concentration.

Carefully I stretched out my hand to the leaden box, unscrewed the
cylindrical lid, and threw into my right hand the precious vial of
radium salt.

The energy-charged tube glowed in the dark with all the beauty of
intense phosphorescence, and as I held it at arm’s length toward the
pillar of semi-materialization that represented all the evil forces of
discarnate Hate--_the mists of vapour rolled away. As if by magic the
whole apparition was dissipated_, and in twenty seconds was as if it
had never been.

There is little more to be said. The theory had been brilliantly
vindicated in practice, but it is impossible to generalize from one
particular instance. Physicists know the wide range of differences
that exist between the different radium salts,[20] and there the matter
must rest until opportunity for further experiments is available.

The analogous protective vibrations that the author of the monograph
alleges would work are all probable, but require considerably more
apparatus. To my mind the use of radioactive salts as talismans with
which to exorcise a case of malignant haunting is at once a great
and practical step in the direction of relieving humanity of these
troublesome psychic intruders. The discovery and the theory are one of
the most remarkable contributions to psychic science in our time.

Pitchblende, from which radium is extracted, does not appear to have
attracted the attention of the ancients and there is no trace of its
use in any process of alchemy or the allied sciences. Dr. Dee’s magic
mirror is reported to have been of a black substance and it is possible
that it may have been of radioactive material, although this quality
is not necessary for the purposes for which he required it.[21]

It is after all only a few years since the theory of ether waves and
vibrations was formulated. Research into psychic phenomena gives us
a chain of disconnected phenomena which nevertheless are obviously
connected. The distance from telepathy or thought-transference to
exteriorized energy or power-transference is but a short one. Science
will soon enable us to understand the mechanism of phenomena, and when
we once know the true rules or laws governing these phenomena we shall
be able to establish spirit communication at will.


FOOTNOTES:

[12] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perhaps to-day an even greater name. But
he is not a scientist and is greater as a publicist than as a healer
despite his medical degree. But then too--all the Apostles were not of
one trade.

[13] _Proceedings S.P.R._

[14] _Ibid._, Vol. X, p. 394.

[15] This particular ghost has been exorcised without effect. The
house has been visited by psychic experts of considerable eminence,
including H. Barson and others. The results of all these investigations
were uniformly disastrous and disagreeable, and there is reason to
believe that in some cases the health and mentality of less experienced
investigators were adversely affected.

[16] Capt. Hugh Pollard was the author of this theory. His monograph
was never printed, but typescripts of his sensational lecture before
the members of the now defunct Odic Club were circulated to certain
interested parties. He tells me that he had previously spent an
interesting night at a haunted house. He was in the company of Mr.
Eliott O’Donell and obtained a puzzling and unsatisfactory flashlight
photograph of the manifestation that occurred on that occasion.

[17] A complete scale of all known ether waves, including the visible
spectrum, has been drawn by Professor Lebedeff and is given on page 383
of the English edition of Kolbe’s _Electricity_.

[18] This is a little-known fact, but nevertheless a commonplace of
physics demonstrable in any lecture room.

[19] The actual locality of X---- will be clear to many investigators.

[20] The solution used was a solution of radium emanations which gives
out α, τ, and γ rays together. It is not well known which ray affects
the dissolution of psychoplasm.

[21] The mirror of Dr. Dee is still in existence, but the material the
mirror is made of is a surface of polished coal.