Ever since they had moved in, calamities, great and small, had increasingly befallen them. In as many months, half-a-dozen deaths had occurred, ranging from domestic pets to the girl’s own mother. This accumulation of misfortunes had so preyed on her mind that she was beginning to be obsessed with unreasoning fear for the life of her small son. Of course, all this might have been a chain of circumstances simply explained by an overlong streak of bad luck. Or there might be something in the hoodoo theory. Colonel Castello asked…

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As we had done all we could in the gallery for the time being, we left to the comfort of the drawing room. Here Red Cloud took control and speaking through me, he told us what lay behind these visitations. The spirit form I had seen was a brother of a former owner of the house who had been strangled to death in an upstairs room. Before his death the murdered man had concealed some ancient manuscripts which his earthbound brother was now perpetually hunting. “Is there anything distinctive about…

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The owner had several times been awakened by the piteous howling of a Dalmatian dog which shared his bedroom. Each time the howling was followed by the sound of footsteps moving about the house in places where there was no human being. The secretary had been awakened several times at night to find a ghostly face peering at her from the darkness. The housekeeper had a similar unnerving story to tell. Altogether it was not the sort of atmosphere in which anyone could live comfortably for any length of time.…

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The present owner agreed that these details confirmed the information she had obtained from other sources. She told us that, though many potential customers had come to look at the bed, none had liked it well enough to buy it. Her opinion, with which I agreed, was that prospective buyers were influenced by the bed’s evil emanations, though they were not conscious of this being the reason. She told of a craftsman she had called in to make some repairs to the bed shortly after she had bought it. After…

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CHAPTER FIVE,HAUNTING Haunted houses and sometimes the furniture in them are of special interest to people sensitive to psychic emanations because of the immense energy that is nearly always present. Even people who are not normally receptive of psychic phenomena can often sense its presence, though they may not appreciate its source. Tax them with it and they will tell you vaguely that it is “just a feeling” and will probably deny it if you suggest they are being influenced by the supernormal. Because of my mediumship a visit to…

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“How did he die? What does he say happened to him?”“He was in The Navy, in Scotland. There was an air raid. He was blown overboard and drowned. He says his mother still lives in the old house.” Terry waited to hear no more. He pulled his companion to her feet, saying: “I know where Mac used to live. We’ll go along and check.” They came back two hours later, tired but convinced. They had spoken to Jimmy’s mother. She had been reluctant to discuss the details of her son’s…

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The day of his enlightenment occurred during the war when he came home on a week-end leave from the Royal Air Force, bringing a young woman with him. He had told her I was a medium and she, never having come into contact with the occult before, was eager to learn what it was all about. In this she got no encouragement from Terry, who was almost belligerent in his antipathy to Spiritualism. She persisted in her questions until Terry, with such good grace as he could muster, offered to…

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Discussing it with me after the sitting, the wife was disposed to think a mistake had been made somewhere, though she couldn’t think where. Determined to inquire closer, she decided to write to the foster-mother in Ireland to see if she could throw any light on the strange affair. It was some weeks before she received a reply to her letter and, reading between the lines, I thought the interval might well have been spent by the writer in wrestling with her conscience as to the propriety of revealing a…

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Nor could telepathy explain the following case in which neither the medium nor the two sitters had knowledge of what was communicated.The first of these sitters had a private sitting for clairvoyance. A message came from her father in the spirit world. I said: “Your father is giving me the name Florence. Do you know who she is?”“Yes,” she replied. “Florence is my mother.”“The message is: ‘Florence has an affliction of the heart. Soon it will show itself and she will be very ill. But she will not die.’” My…

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As the doctor himself was quick to acknowledge, at the time of the séance he had known of the suicide, but none of the details, which I had supplied. He had been astonished to have them confirmed in every particular by his Canadian correspondent. He asked if there were some way by which we might convince his Canadian friend of Red Cloud’s existence. I suggested an experiment. At my request the doctor wrote to the widow asking her to choose some object connected with her husband and post it to…

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From time to time I have enjoyed discussions with sceptical men and women from all walks of life. Mostly they were intelligent, fair-minded folk who came in a spirit of genuine inquiry. I always did my best to answer their questions as fully as I could. Often they would counter my explanations with their own theories. The trouble with all such theories is that they never stand up to examination over a wide field of experiment. They may provide a complete and satisfactory explanation of the particular phenomenon under discussion…

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“But how can you possibly know?” The women asked incredulously.“I know because I was told by the voices of my spirit friends,” I replied. “How else could I know?” They looked at me in wide-eyed wonder, apprehensive that they should be in the presence of all-seeing spirits whose voices I could hear but they could not. Many and varied have been the personal possessions of deceased loved ones which their friends have brought to me in the hope that the vibrations of the objects would help me to contact the…

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