The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  The three of us returned to the darkroom to develop the plates. There, to Austen’s surprise, but not to mine, on the plate previously indicated by Myers was a perfect extra of Zangwill, much larger than the faces of any of the other sitters shown in the photograph. The extra was, as usual, within a surround of what Austen described as “a whitish substance,” but is, of course, ectoplasm, the substance used in making that which is spiritual material.

  This result gave Austen’s scepticism a mortal blow, for there was no normal explanation as to how Zangwill’s face could have appeared on the plate. The plates which he had bought had never been out of his sight except while they were in the camera, from the time he took them from the assistant in the shop until they were developed in the darkroom.

  “How could this extra have got there except by Zangwill being present in the room?” asked Austen. It was a fair question.

  The sequel, however, was astonishing. A few days after I published the extra in Psychic News, I had a letter from the Press Portrait Bureau, a Fleet Street photographic agency, asking me to pay a reproduction fee. They claimed that the Zangwill extra bore a marked resemblance to one of their photographs, and by my publishing it they were entitled to the normal reproduction fee payable by newspapers in such cases.

  I replied that I could not admit their claim because it would be tantamount to saying that the extra had been fraudulently produced. Moreover it was not an exact copy. I invited them to discuss the matter in all its implications. There followed a visit of two of their representatives, who had previously asked to inspect the negative. Myers met them in my office and produced this plate. I reiterated the test conditions under which this séance had taken place, which meant that any suggestion of trickery was completely out of the question. The photographers examined the negative and were obviously puzzled. In their long experience they had never encountered such a happening.

  As a result of this conversation, Myers agreed to give them a test sitting with their own plates. The conditions were arranged. They were to buy the plates, be present when they were loaded in the slides, sign the plates and watch them being developed. They also promised to sign a report at the end of the test.

  The next day Myers telephoned me to say, “I have a strong impression that Edgar Wallace will come on one of the plates at this sitting. Will you ask Swaffer to be present?”

  This remark needs some explanation. A few days earlier in Swaffer’s flat, Myers had taken some photographs. While he was exposing one plate, he gave clairvoyance, a frequent occurrence, and said: “Edgar Wallace is here. He says he will not come on the plates tonight. He will appear soon in dramatic circumstances.”

  Wallace, one of the greatest thriller writers of his time, and Swaffer had been journalistically associated for many years, for they worked sometimes for the same newspapers. Wallace was also a playwright and Swaffer a dramatic critic, with a reputation for devastating frankness. Thus Edgar was not unnaturally displeased when Swaffer adversely criticized one of his plays. This resulted in a breach in their friendship, which fortunately was healed not long before Edgar’s passing.

  It so happened that soon after I had published in Psychic News the account by Austen of Myers’ mediumship, I received a manuscript in automatic writing that claimed to have emanated from Wallace. This package arrived a few minutes before I was due to call on Swaffer.

  I had no time to read the whole of it, but I noticed that it was dedicated to Swaffer. Knowing their intimate friendship, I took the manuscript with me. When I arrived I said somewhat sceptically to Swaffer, “Here is a manuscript that purports to describe by Wallace his life in the spirit world, starting with his passing.”

  I had expected Swaffer to dismiss it with a peremptory shrug. It is a frequent occurrence, after famous people pass on, for self-styled mediums to believe that they receive communications from them. Alas, I have been plagued with far too many of such “messages.”

  To my surprise, however, Swaffer opened the parcel and began to read the contents. He went on reading and reading. Soon he looked up and said: “I do not know whether Edgar wrote this, but it is certainly a trained reporter’s description of circumstances confronting him in another world. You should not publish it without confirmation.”

  But how could such confirmation be obtained? Suddenly the answer occurred to me. At the time I was a regular attendant at remarkable direct-voice séances with Estelle Roberts, one of the world’s most famous mediums. It was quite usual at each séance for spirit communicators to speak, often reproducing their earthly voices, and to give unassailable evidence of their identity to relatives or friends.

  The presiding spirit genius at these seances was Estelle’s guide, Red Cloud, obviously an evolved being, who always radiated love, wisdom and compassion. He was particularly expert in training would-be communicators so that when they learned the ropes and managed to speak they always produced what was clearly proof of their individuality.

  Having received excellent evidence myself from relatives and friends at these séances, I decided to enlist Red Cloud’s help. “I have a manuscript that claims to emanate from Edgar Wallace,” I said to this guide. “Is it possible for you to find out whether he is responsible?”

  His answer was direct: “I will ask him. Do nothing until I give you his reply.” This was good enough for me. A fortnight later, at the next voice circle, Red Cloud said to me: “I have asked Wallace. He says he is responsible for the automatic writings.”

  With this assurance I published the manuscript in Psychic News under the title, “My Life After Death, by Edgar Wallace.” It caused a sensation. It was attacked by all sorts of people who questioned its authenticity. I merely smiled. I had received the confirmation I wanted.

  It was therefore not without significance that Wallace had promised, through Myers, to produce his psychic photograph. Swaffer and I, together with the two representatives from Press Portrait Bureau, went to Myers’ house. Here these professional photographers produced the plates they had bought.

  The test conditions were fulfilled in regard to loading the slides, developing the negatives and taking the pictures. I did not learn until later that they introduced another “safeguard.” Without mentioning it, when loading the plates, they marked each one with a cutting instrument, in addition to their being signed. This meant that substitution was virtually impossible.

  During the exposure of the second plate, Myers, in semitrance, referred to Wallace. Pointing to Swaffer he said, “Edgar is here.” There followed a message referring to the publication of the automatic writing manuscript.

  Then Myers turned to the photographers and said that, while it was difficult, Wallace was going to make the supreme effort to put a likeness of himself on the plate. Edgar’s message was, “if my picture does come it will be unlike any in existence.”

  When the plates were developed, there was a perfect likeness of Wallace. Naturally, I published it and caused another sensation. I challenged the whole of Fleet Street and Wallace’s relatives and friends to produce a similar picture taken during his lifetime. Nobody could do so nor has since done so. This completely destroyed the idea that there was a photograph like it in existence. Thus its authenticity was assured.

  The two professional photographers, as arranged, signed a statement immediately after the test in which they stated their satisfaction that there had been no substitution of plates. The perfect spirit test had been accomplished.

  MY TALKS WITH THE DEAD

  By Hannen Swaffer

  Swaffer was credited with inventing the gossip column with “Mr Gossip” in the Daily Sketch in 1913, followed by “Mr London” for the Daily Graphic. Born Frederic Charles Swaffer, he adopted his mother’s maiden name “Hannen” for his journalistic work, effecting the Glaswegian rhyming slang for “gaffer”. He helped to develop the Daily Mirror into a major newspaper, edited The People, and championed spiritualism in many articles and pamphlet including My Talks With The Dead, in the mid-1900s.r />
  It all began, as did so many other things in my life, with Lord Northcliffe. Had he really survived death, as a Spiritualist friend told me? Was it true that he could still communicate with this world, and was doing so?

  As an Agnostic, I sneered at the idea. As a cynic to whom Spiritualism was a delusion, I mocked.

  Yet, being a journalist used to probing things, however apparently fantastic they might seem at first hearing, I set out on an enquiry.

  Being an honest journalist, I recorded what happened, produced my evidence at a crowded Queen’s Hall meeting, from which thousands were turned away and which was followed by ironical leading articles slating me in the “Morning Post,” the “Star” and “Truth,” and published “Northcliffe’s Return.” in which the full story was told.

  Spiritualism was true, I was soon convinced. So, being a lifelong crusader, I championed its cause, in the Press and on platforms throughout the length and breadth of Britain, in various parts of the United States, and in Germany, Scandinavia and North Africa.

  In Berlin, I addressed a thronged gathering in the Prussian Parliament House, where Germans eagerly demanded to know what the Northcliffe whom they accused of having made them lose the war by his propaganda for Britain had to say about world affairs of the day.

  That adventure began in 1924, two years after Northcliffe’s passing. Through medium after medium, my old Chief proved the survival of a personality unmistakable to his intimates but incredibly contradictory to those who had not known the man behind the machine, the fascinating humorist behind the iron will that was all that casual acquaintances saw, the baffling paradox that was all things, to all men and women, in different moods.

  No, he was not lying peaceably in a grave in North London, as the materialists thought. Nor was he lying there temporarily, waiting for the Last Trump, as the Fundamentalists believed. It was not his destiny to play a harp on a cloud, or sing hymns continuously beside a Throne.

  So early as the night of his passing in August, 1922, Northcliffe showed his determination to prove to the world that he was not “dead.” He tried to communicate at a circle led by a former Baptist minister in South Norwood. Instead, the very next morning, the correspondence department of the “Daily Mail” received a letter, saying so! It was torn up, no doubt, with contempt.

  A fortnight later, he criticised, at the same circle, a weekly Spiritualist journal that its leader edited: “Third column on Page Two should be improved. The leading article of a paper should always be most attractive.”

  Two years after that, a greatly changed man, he was looking on the Fleet Street in which he had spent his earth life with strangely new eyes.

  “Avoid the Press,” he warned the South Norwood circle, then his only means of contact. “Day after day, my eyes are opened wider and wider to this fact. I have seen what a curse the opinions of a few journalists may be to the world – and when I see what is printed I wonder how men with intellect can read it.”

  “I have learned to murder my old self,” was another burst of self-revelation. “I have taken my old self and put it from me. I have been born anew, so that my real self can come through. I have been as dead as a doornail in the past. I realise that now.”

  He had passed from one life to another – just as your “dead” friends have done – the same individual that he was on earth, continuing a life somewhat similar to that which enthralled him here. He was still a journalist, still an organiser, still an enthusiastic propagandist for truth as he saw it.

  And so, mellowed though by new experiences and broadened by wider knowledge, he persists today. Every time I sit in a mediumistic circle, he is present. Often he butts into the conversation with a new joke entirely in keeping with the irrepressible humours of his earth life. He sneers at Fleet Street just as he did when he was its master journalist, its one real genius and its most vital propagandist.

  And, whether you believe it or not, he still occasionally issues “communiqués” criticising newspapers – in the “Daily Mail” office, when he was its Chief, the arrival of his daily “communiqué” was awaited with anxiety and even dread – although nowadays the only detailed ones point out the faults in “Psychic News,” which he helped to found. Years after he “died,” he persists in criticising its leading articles, its make-up and its policy. For that policy he is largely responsible.

  When it prints something good, he claims the credit for it, just as, in the old days, he claimed all the credit for what was right in the “Daily Mail,” whether it had been his idea or not. When it is not “hot” enough, to use his own phrase, the editor is blamed. That was what his editors had to suffer in Carmelite House, Fleetway House and in Printing House Square before his control passed into other hands.

  Northcliffe has changed politically since his passing. As a sign of that he always refers to the “Daily Herald” as “the pink paper,” meaning it is not red enough for him. “It wants a blood transfusion,” was one phrase.

  But, then, most newspapers come under the lash of his tongue at various times.

  When, because the marketing to readers of cheap sets of Dickens sent up the sale of the “Daily Herald” by perhaps 300,000 in a day, the “Daily Mail,” the “Daily Express” and the “News Chronicle” followed suit, so that four of the most largely circulated newspapers in the world were selling Dickens, at the same time, Northcliffe waxed sarcastic.

  “There’s an awful row amongst the other dead authors,” he said. “They ask ‘Hasn’t any editor heard of us?’ They are all jealous of Dickens!”

  A recent sneer about a former rival was his remark, made to me in my present home circle: “Whenever I see the ‘Daily Express,’ I ask it, ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ ”

  Generally, his attitude towards Fleet Street is summarised in the biting phrase, “They have poisoned the wells of Truth.”

  His early purgatory was the realisation that, although the vast newspaper machine of his own creation was being used for purposes out of harmony with his newfound convictions, he could do nothing to change its policy.

  For, in his own way, he wanted to save the world – or to show it, rather, how it could save itself. Yet he could not. Mankind was blundering into new catastrophes, and he was unable to warn it. Surely that is a more logical result of earth blunders and misdeeds than a lake of eternal fire!

  “I often go along to the ‘Daily Mail’ conference,” he once told me, “and shout ‘You’re all wrong.’ But they can’t hear me. And although I am standing there while they plan and plot, they can’t see me. Sorrowfully, I come away, helpless. That is my punishment.”

  “My God, Beaverbrook, if only you knew how difficult it is,” he shouted at a sitting, with Evan Powell as the medium, to which I had invited Lord Beaverbrook so that he could get a message from Bonar Law, who wanted to advise his executor about his will. “This is the new revelation. Don’t you understand? This is the great reality.”

  The phase of Northcliffe’s self-condemnation is now past. In a higher sphere of activity, he is a propagandist for Spiritualism, for world peace and for universal betterment, ever busy, always working.

  Yet his irrepressible humour persists. So does his zest for the journalism his unceasing energy did so much to evolve.

  “I’m running the ‘St Peter’s Gazette’,” Northcliffe chuckled, in one of his merry moods. This was a joke, not only about the St Peter who is supposed to guard the Gate, but the fact, which I had at the time forgotten, that he lived at St Peter’s, in Thanet.

  Northcliffe, as of yore, thinks little of statesmen and their doings.

  His former colleagues – slaves and friends at the same time – will recall his frequent gibes about politicians and his wittily-expressed impatience with public men.

  Even in the height of our present Prime Minister’s popularity, he gave us, from the spirit world, a warning about the world’s adulation of a man it had ignored during his long years in the wilderness.

  “Why is Churchi
ll worship a national religion?” he asked. “Wasn’t the Church ill enough before that?”

  Northcliffe’s comments on the first number of “Psychic News” were characteristic. Page One, which contained “A Challenge to the ‘Daily Mail’,” he said was “very good.” Of Page Two he said “Dull.” Page Three was “nearly right,” Page Four a “mix-up,” Page Five “very good” and Page Six “wrong.”

  Of Page Seven, for which I had written an article, “Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live,” he said, “I will pass that,” while two pages devoted to a weekly debate on Spiritualism were “nearly right.” “But the paper wants more humour,” he added. “It’s not hot enough,” is his constant advice. “Attack! Attack!”

  The spirit guide through whom Northcliffe spoke said, “He calls himself ‘the all-watching one’.”

  “He used to say ‘the all-seeing one’,” I replied, remembering the humorous postcards he sent his staff when he was away.

  “That is what he means,” said the guide. “He also says, ‘I am the omniscient one.’ I do not myself like that phrase. He is not God.”

  Well, that is Northcliffe as he is today.

  “If I were in Fleet Street now,” he insists, “I would start a new kind of journalism. People want the truth. Don’t editors know it?

  “I now call it Flight Street. It always runs away from the facts.”

  Orthodox people brought up on the old harp-playing and shining-thrones idea may not like to know it. But people, in the other world, change only gradually.

  When, on another plane, you again meet your lost ones, they will be the lost ones that you know. Time will have tempered their faults. Broader experiences will have developed them.

  But, despite the hymns and the creeds and the litanies and the prayers, they will be working out their own redemption.