Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History

Book

Open Original Text

s seemed to me that it may be quite possible that the
repetition of their least pleasant characteristics here is a sort of
punishment, and-well, all this will doubtless strike you as different
from what you had imagined. It shall be my pleasant task to tell you
anything you may wish to know so far as it lies in my power."

"I should like to know very much whether you ever want to see your
families, and how you manage to see them, and how it is that you seem to
know everything that goes on above ground."

"We lie here in the dark alone, for except for this one night in the year
our bones are imprisoned in our coffins, or wherever we lie, if, as many
of us have no coffins to lie in. That silence and isolation naturally
creates a necessity for thought, concentrated and intense. This thought
is most often connected with those whom we have left, and with whom we
have been the most closely associated in life, and so the thought becomes
desire. Thoughts are things, and they crystallize into a vehicle for our
transportation to wherever we wish to go. We then become in a measure
disassociated from the material part of ourselves, and the freed spirit
can go where it will, and as it retains its ego, it is as a general rule
anything but pleasant to go and hover around places and persons we have
left. Sometimes it has occurred to me that some of our punishment was
thus intended.

"In my life I was one of that kind of men that thought the world could
not go on without me, and I was sure that my death would leave a void
that never could be filled. And, above all, I thought that all my
well-laid plans for the benefit of my family would be allowed to relapse
into confusion. All I ever did for my family was to advise them, and the
only real benefit I ever conferred upon them was by dying, so that they
could collect the insurance I had placed on my life. Well, I have since
been obliged to float around in space, unnoticed and unheard, and
probably unremembered, while things were being done which would have had
no approbation from me, and they came out right after all. I am obliged
to admit that my family and the world at large have gained by my death.
Yet I was a very religious man and was class leader in church, and always
had prayers every morning before breakfast. I am ashamed to tell you the
epitaph they put on my stone, but I must admit in the light of what I
know now I deserved much worse."

"I should like very much to know what it was," said the reporter
eagerly.

"Very well; I will repeat it, leaving out the 'here lies,' etc.: 'He gave
Each day to Almighty God, advice of considerable worth; But his wife Took
in sewing to keep him going, While he superintended the earth.'"

"But it is much when you get to such a point that you see what were your
shortcomings in the upper world." "How much of it is out?" said another
ghost who was standing by interested in this recital.

"Oh, you know that is truth and so is easy."

"I suppose we all have shortcomings against our record when it comes to
count all the things we did and didn't do to our wives. We seemed to
think that when we had married a woman there was nothing further to do to
make her happy, and the better and more willing she was the more we
imposed upon her. I was rather bossy myself, and I thought as you did
that this world could not get along without me, and I guess I must have
carried my bossiness a little too far. One morning Marinthy was tired of
it and fixed a plan that made me a little ashamed, for the time. She
slipped out of bed before daylight and set all the clocks ahead four
hours and then rang the dinner bell and when the family had all gathered
she told them that she did not know what was going to happen now, for
their father had forgotten to tell the Lord that it was time for the sun
to rise."

 "I found her sitting at the piano"

"You are not the only one to have a rise taken out of you, for I had a
little of that sort of experience myself," said another ghost with a very
long under jaw. "I, too, liked to lay down the law for all my family to
obey. My wife was generally a meek little soul, and never questioned my
right to order even the most trifling things. But, at last she revolted
and one day during protracted meetings when two clergymen and the
vestryman of our church were at my house to dinner and we were all in
the parlor waiting for it to be ready, she opened the door half way and
crept timidly into the parlor, with a meek and browbeaten air, and asked
permission of me to breathe through her mouth as her nose was stopped
up."

Everybody within hearing laughed at this, but the ghost who had told it,
and he glared at the first speaker, but they happened to think of
something else and calmed down. One of them turned to the reporter,
saying: "Is there anything that you would like to know more than we have
told you?"

"Yes; you said that you could float around and see all that is going on.
I should like to know if any one of your friends feels or in any way
recognizes your presence?"

"They do not. We are intangible and invisible, and there is nothing to
show them that we are there, and the most ridiculous side of it is that
every one would be scared nearly to death if he or she knew that there
was a spirit in the room. Then is the time that they need have the least
fear, for there is nothing of us that could do the least possible harm."

"Are there no persons whose natures are so attuned to the spiritual life
that they can see you or feel your presence, and keep silent?"

"If there is one I do not know him or her, and frankly, I do not think
that any one ever saw a spirit. There is nothing to see. As to the return
of disembodied spirits to their old habitations, that is certainly true,
but no one knows it or can know it, and so it does no harm and no special
good."

Here the first speaker took up the question and said: "I believe that we
can influence some dreams by entering into the mind of one who sleeps and
is therefore in a measure free from all earthly thrall save life itself.
I know that three times I have been able to enter into the mind of my
daughter in her sleep, and I have impressed her so that she has shown
clearly that she recognizes my direction. But her case is a peculiar one,
as she is one whose mind is absorbed to a degree by her work so that
every waking thought is occupied with it and she elects to be alone as
much as she can. Being thus removed from most outside influences and
having no distractions aside from her own thoughts, and having what one
might define as an indwelling nature, as well as a highly sensitive
organization, she has become almost like a sensitized photographic plate,
only it is in her brain that she receives these unconscious impressions
in her sleep. When she awakens she believes she has dreamed, but the
impression is so strong that she obeys the line of conduct laid out for
her in this way. She feels somehow that it is from me that the direction
comes, and acts on it. 

Previous Next