By an extension of
this--though, indeed, it is scarcely an extension--we may expect to find
that mind can have an effect, not only on what we call living tissue,
but on dead things, on pieces of wood or stone. At least it is hard to
see why that should not be so.”

“Table-turning, for instance?” I asked. “That is one instance of how some force, out of that innumerable cohort
of obscure mysterious forces with which we human beings are garrisoned,
can pass, as it is constantly doing, into material things. The laws of
its passing we do not know; sometimes we wish it to pass and it does
not. Just now, for instance, when you and I tried to turn the table,
there was some impediment in the path, though I put down that rap which
followed as an effect of our efforts. But nothing seems more natural to
my mind than that these forces should be transmissible to inanimate
things. Of the manner of its passing we know next to nothing, any more
than we know the manner of the actual process by which fear accelerates
the beating of the heart, but as surely as a Marconi message leaps along
the air by no visible or tangible bridge, so through some subtle gateway
of the body these forces can march from the citadel of the spirit into
material forms, whether that material is a living part of ourselves or
that which we choose to call inanimate nature.”

She paused a moment. “Under certain circumstances,” she went on, “it seems that the force
which has passed from us into inanimate things can manifest its presence
there. The force that passes into a table can show itself in movements
or in noises coming from the table. The table has been charged with
physical energy. Often and often I have seen a table or a chair move
apparently of its own accord, but only when some outpouring of force,
animal magnetism--call it what you will--has been received by it. A
parallel phenomenon to my mind is exhibited in what we know as haunted
houses, houses in which, as a rule, some crime or act of extreme emotion
or passion has been committed, and in which some echo or re-enactment of
the deed is periodically made visible or audible. A murder has been
committed, let us say, and the room where it took place is haunted. The
figure of the murdered, or less commonly of the murderer, is seen there
by sensitives, and cries are heard, or steps run to and fro. The
atmosphere has somehow been charged with the scene, and the scene in
whole or part repeats itself, though under what laws we do not know,
just as a phonograph will repeat, when properly handled, what has been
said into it.”

“This is all theory,” I remarked. “But it appears to me to cover a curious set of facts, which is all we
ask of a theory. Otherwise, we must frankly state our disbelief in
haunted houses altogether, or suppose that the spirit of the murdered,
poor wretch, is bound under certain circumstances to re-enact the horror
of its body’s tragedy. It was not enough that its body was killed there,
its soul has to be dragged back and live through it all again with such
vividness that its anguish becomes visible or audible to the eyes or
ears of the sensitive. That to me is unthinkable, whereas my theory is
not. Do I make it at all clear?”

“It is clear enough,” said I, “but I want support for it, the full-sized
illustration.”

“I promised you that, a ghost-story of my own experience.”

Mrs Aldwych paused again, and then began the story which was to
illustrate her theory. “It is just a year,” she said, “since Jack bought this house from old
Mrs Denison. We had both heard, both he and I, that it was supposed to
be haunted, but neither of us knew any particulars of the haunt
whatever. A month ago I heard what I believe to have been the ghost,
and, when Mrs Denison was staying with us last week, I asked her exactly
what it was, and found it tallied completely with my experience. I will
tell you my experience first, and give her account of the haunt
afterwards. “A month ago Jack was away for a few days and I remained here alone. One
Sunday evening, I, in my usual health and spirits, as far as I am aware,
both of which are serenely excellent, went up to bed about eleven. My
room is on the first floor, just at the foot of the staircase that leads
to the floor above. There are four more rooms on my passage, all of
which that night were empty, and at the far end of it a door leads into
the landing at the top of the front staircase. On the other side of
that, as you know, are more bedrooms, all of which that night were also
unoccupied; I, in fact, was the only sleeper on the first floor. “The head of my bed is close behind my door, and there is an electric
light over it. This is controlled by a switch at the bed-head, and
another switch there turns on a light in the passage just outside my
room. That was Jack’s plan: if by chance you want to leave your room
when the house is dark, you can light up the passage before you go out,
and not grope blindly for a switch outside. “Usually I sleep solidly: it is very rarely indeed that I wake, when
once I have gone to sleep, before I am called. But that night I woke,
which was rare; what was rarer was that I woke in a state of shuddering
and unaccountable terror; I tried to localise my panic, to run it to
earth and reason it away, but without any success. Terror of something I
could not guess at stared me in the face, white, shaking terror. So, as
there was no use in lying quaking in the dark, I lit my lamp, and, with
the view of composing this strange disorder of my fear, began to read
again in the book I had brought up with me. The volume happened to be
‘The Green Carnation,’ a work one would have thought to be full of tonic
to twittering nerves. But it failed of success, even as my reasoning had
done, and after reading a few pages, and finding that the heart-hammer
in my throat grew no quieter, and that the grip of terror was in no way
relaxed, I put out my light and lay down again. I looked at my watch,
however, before doing this, and remember that the time was ten minutes
to two. “Still matters did not mend: terror, that was slowly becoming a little
more definite, terror of some dark and violent deed that was momently
drawing nearer to me held me in its vice. Something was coming, the
advent of which was perceived by the sub-conscious sense, and was
already conveyed to my conscious mind. And then the clock struck two
jingling chimes, and the stable-clock outside clanged the hour more
sonorously. “I still lay there, abject and palpitating. Then I heard a sound just
outside my room on the stairs that lead, as I have said, to the second
story, a sound which was perfectly commonplace and unmistakable. Feet
feeling their way in the dark were coming downstairs to my passage: I
could hear also the groping hand slip and slide along the bannisters.