More Great Ghost Stories [antikvár]

Editor's Note In the process of sifting the material for a book such as this, one becomes aware inevitably of the amount of evidence there is in support of ghosts. (I use the word "ghosts" not only in its normally accepted meaning of the ethereal presentation of a dead person to the living, but in the wider sense of psychic manifestations generally —precognition, telepathy, astral wanderings, clairvoyance, clair-audience, the psychical propulsion of physical objects, etc.) Scientific circles, for so long sceptical, have shown a greater tendency than ever before to beUeve that there may be at least a field here for investigation. The Society for Psychical Research in London made a start in 1882; the researches of J. B. Rhine at Duke University have been notable, whilst in Europe the work of Whately Carington and S. G. Soal has attracted attention; and the University of Utrecht has set up a laboratory for the study of para-psychological phenomena. Distinguished men brought up in the discipHnes of science, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, have been among the whole-hearted beHevers in psychic phenomena and life beyond the grave. And in any event the orientation of science has changed to provide an atmosphere much more favourable to the existence of paranormal occurrences. The old Newtonian conception of a universe of three-dimensional space separated absolutely from time has given place in physics to a universe of space-time in which space and time are indissolubly linked. Dunne in his absorbing study of precognition through dreams,* argues impressively for a four-dimensional "serial" universe in which the dreamer, freed from the waking habit of viewing time from moment to moment in a one-directional stream, slips into a four-dimensional space-time consciousness which allows him to travel freely about time both forwards and backwards. Such a consciousness extended occasionally into the waking state could account for such happenings as are recounted in some of the stories in this book—"The Ghosts of Versailles", " 'Steer Nor'West' ", "The Return of Richard Tarwell", and a number of others. (It is *An Experiment with Time,]. W. Dunne.