ADVENTURINGS IN THE PSYCHICAL

Adventurings in the
Psychical

BY
H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1914

Copyright, 1914,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, April, 1914

THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.

PREFACE

The present volume is somewhat in the nature of a sequel to “The Riddle of Personality,” published six years ago. In that book I reviewed the results of modern psychological research in the realm of the abnormal and the seemingly supernormal, with the special purpose of making clear their bearings on the problem of the nature and possibilities of man. Having this special purpose in mind, it was inadvisable to attempt any topical and detailed treatment of the phenomena made the subject of scientific investigation. Such a method of treatment, no matter how it might have added to the interest of the book, would inevitably have obscured its message to the reader.

Now, however, I have undertaken this very thing, in the hope both of reinforcing the view of personality set forth in the earlier work, and of contributing something towards a wider knowledge of the progress science is making in the naturalization of the supernatural, to borrow Mr. Frank Podmore’s happy phrase. Especially have I tried to bring out the exceedingly practical character of many of the discoveries made by those scientists who, despite the often contemptuous criticism of their colleagues, have valiantly persisted in their adventurings in the psychical. The world has undoubtedly been the gainer, and richly the gainer, by their labors; and it surely is well worth while to survey in some detail the field they have explored and the results of their explorations.

H. Addington Bruce.
Cambridge, Massachusetts,
February, 1914.

CONTENTS

ADVENTURINGS IN THE
PSYCHICAL

CHAPTER I
GHOSTS AND THEIR MEANING

A witty Frenchwoman was once asked if she believed in ghosts.

“No, not at all,” was her reply. “But I am terribly afraid of them.”

Most people feel precisely this way about ghosts, though few are candid enough to acknowledge it. In broad daylight, or when seated before a cheery fire among a group of congenial friends, it is easy to be skeptical, and to regard ghosts as mere products of imagination, superstition, credulity, hysteria, or indigestion. But it is notorious that even the most skeptical are liable to creepy sensations and sometimes outright panic if they experience “uncanny” sights or sounds in the darkness of the night, or in lonely, uninhabited places. Churchyards have never been popular resorts of those who go for a stroll in the cool of the evening. And let a house once get the reputation of being “haunted,” it is next to impossible to find tenants for it.

Yet this almost universal attitude is entirely and fundamentally wrong. There is no reason for being afraid of ghosts, and there are many reasons for believing in them.

I do not, of course, mean to say that all ghosts are real ghosts. There are plenty of bogus ghosts, and there always will be, as long as men eat and drink too much, play practical jokes on one another, and allow their houses to become run down and infested by rats and mice.

A single rat, scampering at midnight over the loose planks of an old attic, has often been quite sufficient to produce a counterfeit “poltergeist,” or troublesome ghost, of a highly impressive character. So, too, a pillow-slip swaying from a clothesline is apt to seem most ghostly to a gentleman returning home from a late supper. Ghosts, like