Lo! (6 page)

At 2:30, morning of September 4th, stones, which were found to be “warm,” fell near the
News and Courier
building, some of them bounding into the press room. Five hours later, when there was no darkness to hide mischievous survivors, more stones fell. It was a strictly localized repetition, as if one persisting current of force. At 1:30 in the afternoon again stones fell, and these were seen, coming straight down from a point overhead. If any conviction was forced, it was forced in the same old way as that in which for ages convictions have been forced, and that is by forcing agreements with prior convictions. Other details were published in the
Richmond Whig:
it was told that the stones, which were flint pebbles, ranging from the size of a grape to the size of a hen’s egg, had fallen upon an area of seventy-five square feet, and that about a gallon of them had been picked up. In
A Descriptive Narrative of the Earthquake of August 31, 1886,
Carl McKinley, an Editor of the
News and Courier,
tells of two of these showers of stones, which, according to him, “undoubtedly fell.”

The localized repetitions of showers of stones are so much like the localized repetitions of showers of water, that one, inclusive explanation, or expression, is called for. Insects did them? Or the fishmonger of Worcester had moved to South Carolina?

A complication has been developing. Little frogs fell upon Mr. Stoker and his horses, but we had no reason to think that either Mr. Stoker or his horses had anything to do with bringing about the precipitation. But the children of Clavaux did seem to have something to do with showers of stones, and trees did seem to have something to do with the precipitations of water.

Rand Daily Mail,
May 29, 1922—that Mr. D. Neaves, living near Roodeport, employed as a chemist in Johannesburg, having for several months endured showers of stones, had finally reported to the police. Five constables, having been sent to the place, after dark, had hardly taken positions around the house, when a stone crashed on the roof. Phenomena were thought to associate with the housemaid, a Hottentot girl. She was sent into the garden, and stones fell vertically around her. This is said to have been one of the most mysterious of the circumstances: stones fell vertically, so that there was no tracing of them to an origin. Mr. Neaves’ home was an isolated building, except for outhouses. These outhouses were searched, but nothing to suspect was found. The stones continued to fall from an unknown source.

Police Inspector Cummings took charge. He ordered all members of the family, servants, and newspapermen to remain in the house for a while: so everybody was under inspection. Outside were constables, and all around were open fields, with no means of concealment. Stones fell on the roof. Watched by the police, the Hottentot girl went to the well. A large stone fell near her. She ran back to the house, and a stone fell on the roof. It is said that everything that could be done was done, and that the cordon of police was complete. More stones fell. Convinced that in some way the girl was implicated, the Inspector tied her hands. A stone fell on the roof.

Then everything was explained. A “civilian,” concealed in one of the outhouses, had been caught throwing a stone. If so, whoever wrote this account did not mention the name of the culprit, and it is not said that the police made any trouble for him for having made them work.

Then everything was explained again. It was said that the girl, Sara, had been taken to the police station, where she had confessed. “It is understood that Sara admits being a party to all the stone-throwing, and has implicated two other children and a grown native. So ends the Roodeport ghost story, shorn of all its alleged supernatural trappings.”

Though usually we do not think piously of the police, their stations are confessionals. But they’re confessionals more in a scientific than in a religious sense. When a confessor holds a club over a conscience, he can bully statements with the success of any scientist who slugs data with a theory. There is much brutality in police stations and in laboratories, but I can’t say that we’re trying to reform anything; and if there never has been a Newton, or a Darwin, or an Einstein—or a Moses, or a Christ, or a St. Augustine—who has practiced other than the third degree upon circumstances, I fear me that sometimes we are not innocent of one or two degrees, ourselves.

However, the story reads more as if the girl had been taken to a barber shop. Her story was shorn, we read. It was clipped bald of all details, such as the cordon of police, search of the outhouses, and the taking of precautions, such as will not fit in with this yarn of the tricky kids. In this book we shall note much shearing.

The writer, in the
Monthly Weather Review,
is not the only clipper who forces a conviction, when he can. There was a case, in another part of South Africa, not long before the bombardments at Roodeport began. In the
Klersdorp Record,
Nov. 18, 1921, it is said that for several weeks there had been “mysterious stonethrowing by invisible agencies” at the houses of Mr. Gibbon Joseph and Mr. H.J. Minnaar, in North Street. A detective was put upon the case. He was a logician. It was a ghost story, or it was a case of malicious mischief. He could not pinch a ghost. So he accused two Negroes, and arrested them. The Negroes were tried upon testimony given by two boys of their race. But the boys contradicted each other, and it was brought out that they were lying. They admitted that the logical detective had promised them five shillings to substantiate his syllogisms.

In the
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research,
12-260, is published a letter from Mr. W.G. Grottendieck, telling that, about one o’clock, one morning in September, 1903, at Dortrecht, Sumatra, he was awakened by hearing something fall on the floor of his room. Sounds of falling objects went on. He found that little, black stones were falling, with uncanny slowness, from the ceiling, or the roof, which was made of large, overlapping, dried leaves. Mr. Grottendieck writes that these stones were appearing near the inside of the roof, not puncturing the material, if through this material they were passing. He tried to catch them at the appearing-point, but, though they moved with extraordinary slowness, they evaded him. There was a coolie boy, asleep in the house, at the time. “The boy certainly did not do it, because at the time that I bent over him, while he was sleeping on the floor, there fell a couple of stones.” There was no police station handy, and this story was not finished off with a neat and fashionable cut.

I point out that these stories of flows of stones are not conventional stories, and are not well-known. Their details are not standardized, like “clanking chains” in ghost stories, and “eyes the size of saucers,” in sea serpent yarns. Somebody in France, in the year 1842, told of slow-moving stones, and somebody in Sumatra, in the year 1903, told of slow-moving stones. It would be strange, if two liars should invent this circumstance—

And that is where I get, when I reason.

If strangeness be a standard for unfavorable judgment, I damn at a swipe most of this book.

But damnation is nothing to me. I offer the data. Suit yourself.

Nobody can investigate the reported phenomena that we’re taking up, without noticing the number of cases in which boys and girls, but a great preponderance of girls, appear. An explanation by those who disregard a great deal—or disregard normally—is that youngsters are concerned so much, because it is their own mischief. Poltergeist phenomena, or teleportations of objects, in the home of Mr. Frost, 8 Ferrostone-road, Hornsey, London, for several months, early in the year 1921, cannot be so explained. There were three children. Phenomena so frightened one of them that, in a nervous breakdown, she died (London
Daily Express,
April 2, 1921). Another, in a similar condition, was taken to the Lewisham (London) Hospital (London
Daily News,
April 30, 1921).

In attempting to rationalize various details that we have come upon, or to assimilate them, or to digest them, the toughest meal is swallowing statements upon mysterious appearances in closed rooms, or passages of objects and substances through walls of houses, without disturbing the material of the walls. Oh, yes, I have heard of “the fourth dimension,” but I am going to do myself some credit by not lugging in that particular way of showing that I don’t know what I’m writing about. There’s a story in the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat,
Jan. 27, 1888—large stones that were appearing and “falling slowly” in closed rooms in the home of Mr. P.C. Martin, Caldwell County, N.C.
Madras
(India)
Mail,
March 5, 1888—pieces of brick that, in the presence of many investigators, were falling in a schoolroom, in Pondicherry.

I can understand this phenomenon, or alleged phenomenon, of appearances in closed rooms, no more than I can understand the passage of a magnetic field of force through the wall of a house, without disturbing the material. But lines of this force do not transport objects through a dense material. Then I think of X-rays, which do something like this, if it be accepted that X-rays are aggregations of very small objects, or particles. X-rays do, or sometimes do, disturb materials penetrated by them, but this disturbance is not evident until after long continuance.

If there is Teleportation, it is in two orders, or fields: electric and non-electric—or phenomena that occur during thunderstorms, and phenomena that occur under “a cloudless sky,” and in houses. In the hosts of stories that I have gathered—but with which I have not swamped this book—of showers of living things, the rarest of all statements is of injury to the falling creatures. Then, from impressions that have arisen from other data, we think that the creatures may not have fallen all the way from the sky, but may have fallen from appearing-points not high above the ground—or may have fallen a considerable distance under a counter-gravitational influence.

I think that there may be a counter-gravitational influence upon transported objects, because of the many agreeing accounts—more than I have told of—of slow-falling stones, by persons who had probably never heard of other stories of slow-falling stones, and because I have come upon records of similar magic, or witchcraft, in what will be accepted as sane and sober meteorological observations.

See the
Annual Register,
185970—an account by Mr. E.J. Lowe, a meteorologist and an astronomer, of a fall of hailstones, at Nottingham, England, May 29, 1859. Though the objects were more than an inch across, they fell slowly. In September, 1873, near Clermont-Ferrand, France, according to
La Nature,
7-289, hailstones, measuring from an inch to an inch and a half across, fell. They were under an unknown influence. Notwithstanding their size, they fell so slowly that they did no damage. Some fell upon roofs, and rebounded, and it was as if these shook off the influence. Those that rebounded then fell faster than fell those that came down in an unbroken fall. For other records of this phenomenon, see
Nature,
36-445;
Illustrated London News,
34-546;
Bull. Soc. Astro. de France,
June 19, 1900.

If in the general electric conditions of a thunderstorm there be sometimes a counter-gravitational effect upon objects, somebody might find out how counter-gravitationally to electrify aircraft and aviators. If all work is opposition to gravitation, somebody may make a big discovery of benefit to general laziness. Elevators in skyscrapers might be run with half the power now needed. Here is an idea that may revolutionize industry, but just now I am too busy revolutionizing everything else, and I give this idea to the world, with the generosity of somebody who bestows something that isn’t any good to him.

But mysterious disappearances?

Our data have been upon mysterious appearances.

If I could appeal to what used to be supposed to be known as common sense, I’d ask whether something that mysteriously appears somewhere had not mysteriously disappeared somewhere else.

Annals of Electricity,
6-499—Liverpool, May 11, 1842—“not a breath of air.” Suddenly clothes on lines on a common shot upward. They moved away slowly. Smoke from chimneys indicated that above ground there was a southward wind, but the clothes moved away northward.

There was another instance, a few weeks later. London
Times,
July 5, 1842—a bright, clear day, at Cupar, Scotland, June 30th—women hanging out clothes on a common. There was a sharp detonation, and clothes on lines shot upward. Some fell to the ground, but others went on and vanished. There was a seeming of selection, which, because of possible bearing upon various observations of ours interests me. Though this was a powerful force, nothing but the clothes it seized was affected. I wonder about the detonation, largely because it is in agreement with a detail of still another story.

The closeness in time of these two occurrences attracts my attention. They were a few weeks apart, and I have no other such record, until seventy-seven years later. A sensible suggestion is that somebody, in Cupar, having read the Liverpool story, had faked a similar story from his town. A suggestion that is not so sensible is that, in this year 1842, somebody had learned the secrets of teleportation, and to avoid attracting much attention in any one place was experimenting in places far apart. It seems likely enough to me that, if there be teleportation, human beings may have come upon knowledge of it, and may have used it.

“Likely enough?” a spiritualist would say. “Has he never heard of
apports?”

But whether it’s narrowness and bigotry, upon my part, or not, I do not go to séances for data. I have collected notes upon “mysterious robberies,” wondering whether a teleportative power has ever been used criminally. As to
apports,
if a medium could transport sea shells from the sea to his cabinet, he could abstract funds from a bank to his pocket. If he could, but would not, how account for his being a medium? Looking through newspapers, I have had a searching eye for something like an account of a medium, who had become mysteriously rich, in a town where there had been shortages of funds: clerks accused of embezzlement, and convicted, but upon evidence that was not altogether satisfactory. Although usually I can find data to “prove” anything that I want to “prove,” I have come upon no such account, and I am skeptical as to
apports,
and think that mediums are like most of the rest of us, who are not criminals, having no exceptional abilities. However, there may be criminal adepts who are not known mediums.