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The Vital Message
By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
APPENDICES
[B]
A PARTICULAR INSTANCE
I have been in touch with a
series of events in America
lately, and can vouch for the facts as much as any man can
vouch
for facts which did not occur to himself. I have not
the least
doubt in my own mind that they are true, and a more
remarkable
double proof of the continuity of life has, I should
think,
seldom been published. A book has recently been
issued by
Harpers, of New York, called "The Seven Purposes."
In this book
the authoress, Miss Margaret Cameron, describes how she
suddenly
developed the power of automatic writing. She was
not a
Spiritualist at the time. Her hand was controlled
and she wrote
a quantity of matter which was entirely outside her own
knowledge
or character. Upon her doubting whether her
sub-conscious self
might in some way be producing the writing, which was
partly done by planchette, the script was written upside
down and
from right to left, as though the writer was seated
opposite.
Such script could not possibly be written by the lady
herself.
Upon making enquiry as to who was using her hand, the
answer came
in writing that it was a certain Fred Gaylord, and that
his
object was to get a message to his mother. The youth
was unknown
to Miss Cameron, but she knew the family and forwarded the
message, with the result that the mother came to see her,
examined the evidence, communicated with the son, and
finally,
returning home, buried all her evidences of mourning,
feeling
that the boy was no more dead in the old sense than if he
were
alive in a foreign country.
There is the first proof of preternatural agency, since
Miss
Cameron developed so much knowledge which she could not
have
normally acquired, using many phrases and ideas which were
characteristic of the deceased. But mark the sequel.
Gaylord
was merely a pseudonym, as the matter was so private that
the
real name, which we will put as Bridger, was not
disclosed. A
few months after the book was published Miss Cameron
received a letter from a stranger living a thousand miles
away.
This letter and the whole correspondence I have seen.
The
stranger, Mrs. Nicol, says that as a test she would like
to ask
whether the real name given as Fred Gaylord in the book is
not
Fred Bridger, as she had psychic reasons for believing so.
Miss
Cameron replied that it was so, and expressed her great
surprise
that so secret and private a matter should have been
correctly
stated. Mrs. Nicol then explained that she and her
husband, both
connected with journalism and both absolutely agnostic,
had
discovered that she had the power of automatic writing.
That
while, using this power she had received communications
purporting to come from Fred Bridger whom they had known
in life,
and that upon reading Miss Cameron's book they had
received from
Fred Bridger the assurance that he was the same person as
the
Fred Gaylord of Miss Cameron.
Now, arguing upon these facts, and they would appear most
undoubtedly to be facts, what possible answer can the
materialist
or the sceptic give to the assertion that they are a
double proof
of the continuity of personality and the possibility of
communication? Can any reasonable system of
telepathy explain
how Miss Cameron discovered the intimate points
characteristic of
young Gaylord? And then, how are we afterwards, by
any possible
telepathy, to explain the revelation to Mrs. Nicol of the
identity of her communicant, Fred Bridger, with the Fred
Gaylord
who had been written of by Miss Cameron. The case
for return
seems to me a very convincing one, though I contend now,
as ever,
that it is not the return of the lost ones which is of
such
cogent interest as the message from the beyond which they
bear
with them.
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