J. D. Beresford

“ Some of us believe that our actual bodies will rise again in the flesh; others that the body perishes and the spirit survives in an uncertain state of which we have very little knowledge; others, again, that death is the end of everything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
Perhaps I can, now, illustrate his attitude by a few quotations from our conversation. For example:
Spirit. "Are you happy where you are?"
Myself. "Moderately. At times. Some of us are." ”

“ One of my fellow-scientists, who has recently been able to press his investigations even further than I have up to the present time, has recently brought forward good evidence to prove that spirits are all black, wear no coverings on their bodies, live in the simplest of dwellings, and, although they have a few ceremonies, certainly have none which in any way corresponds to that you have just described. ”

“ And, as a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of us—that is to say, all but about one in every million—never bother our heads where we came from, or what's likely to happen to us when we die, or are born, as you would call it. ”

“ Try and give me some idea of life on your plane."
Myself. "It varies so immensely with the individual and the set in which one lives. But we—oh! we have a great variety of what we call 'interests' and occupations, and most of us, of course, have to work for our livings." ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ About the hair, you understand, some of us lose our hair—it comes out, we don't know why—in middle life, as mine has, and women and some men are rather ashamed of this and wear—er—other people's hair in the daytime to hide the defect. ”

“ Myself. "We can't live without food, you see. We have to eat and drink and sleep; protect ourselves against heat and cold and the weather generally, which means clothes and shelter—garments to wear and houses to live in, that is."
Spirit. "I have inferred something of this very vaguely from my experiments. ”

“ 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 ”