MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

In all seance worth its salt, there were usually more pairs of hands than guests. Floating hands could arise suddenly and from anywhere. You had to be careful not to have your wallet stolen! In the archives of the Society for Psychical Research there are many examples because most of the time spirits did not show full body, and the part of the body that appeared most often used to be the hands. Sometimes they went in pairs, but not always. There were solitary hands, and not because in life the deceased was one-handed. Simply, if with one hand the effect could be produced, why make two appear? However, other spirits were not so saver and showed three, four, five and even six hands, each independent of the other. Each hand did his own thing. There were hands that limited themselves to giving you an envelope with a message or a request from the deceased. There were dancing hands. Other hands could touch you. Others made magical passes over your head. Others played the strings of a lyre or

Every Friday evening the Society for Psychical Research opened its doors to the public to attend the weekly talk given by one of its members. As always, the secretary kept records of everything that was said and everything that happened in those talks. In the end, there was a question time that sometimes lasted until well into the night. The minutes of March 15, 1887, are an example of how embarrassing this weekly contact with the general public could be. That evening the talk was given by Sir William Barret who expanded on the theme of "Apparitions" (without further details: that was the title of the speech). Well, when question time came, one of the attendees took the floor to say: "You have talked about apparitions, but what about disappearances?" There was a murmur of confusion when the man stood up lifting a cuckoo clock. Yes, yes, you have read well: a cuckoo clock. "It's been six days since the clock cuckoo of this cuckoo clock has disappeared and, a

Why does the devil have horns? Dear friend, the devil has horns for the same reason that goats have horns: because they are horned. Following this same logic rule you can deduce all kinds of things by yourself. For example: why do bears have hair? Indeed, dear: bears have hair because they are hairy. If the devil had hair, it would be hairy. If the bears had horns they would be horned. If my great-aunt had a beard, what would it be? My great-uncle?! No, my dear, I see you have not understood. If my great-aunt had a beard she would be bearded. Do you understand now? I advise you to practice a little more until you master this rule completely. And listen to me: you will see how applying this logical rule to all things, you will come to dominate the Universe! It is this same rule that has made possible the great advances of Humanity in all fields of Science. Including the arrival of man to the moon! Why is the devil always painted red? Is red a devilish color? Dear friend: I think y

The amount of magic shows programmed by London theaters at the end of the 19th century is incredible. The West End was full of posters with flying hands, women split in half, heads floating apart from their bodies, legs that were ahead of their trunk. .. Walking through the Victorian West End was like being inside a dream of Jack the Ripper. Of course there were also musicals. But almost everyone swirled around magic, or a magical object, or the life and miracles of a magician, or a pig named Trudy that for a time was very popular for some reason that I do not know but that I would not be surprised if it was related to magic. People were tired of the everyday, of the natural and logical functioning of things, and longed for the implausible, the magical, the out of place. And of course, among the upper classes firstly, the mediums had a field day. There was a visceral hatred on the part of the illusionists towards the mediums. The magicians considered mediums as an unfair competition, a

Aaron Koperman, the famous teaspoon bender, received an invitation from the Society for Psychical Research to demonstrate his skills in a controlled environment. The invitation was accepted, and the night before the experiment, H. G. Myers surreptitiously burst into the large kitchen of the SPR headquarters in order to stock up on teaspoons. When the next morning Koperman arrived, Myers himself accompanied him to the laboratory where the experiment was to take place. For the control of it, had been invited Dominick Cilliano, a famous illusionist who had a successful magic show in the West End. Under the watchful eyes of Cilliano and a select group of SPR members, Koperman grabbed one of the silver teaspoons and, taking it gently with two fingers, stared at it with a frowning face and, leaning towards it, he said something to the spoon in a low voice (according to Crookes, who sat next to him, it had been a threat). The point is that immediately the spoon bent as if it were made of butt

Year 1891. In “The Times” of October 12, the population is informed that Spring Heeled Jack, the famous fictional character, is on the loose again in the streets, or rather in the skies of London. In the Society for Psychical Research the news produces a sudden stir. The members believed that Jack had been killed by a duck hunter. (This may serve you as a lesson: one should never trust duck hunters.) They rush up the stairs to the attic. From there they peer over the rooftops of London amid the smoke that flows from the innumerable chimneys. Dr. Lodge thinks he distinguish the evildoer perched on the cross that crowns the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. But Gurney observes with his binoculars and denies it: it is certain that there is someone perched on top of the dome, however it is not Spring Heeled Jack but Gurney's uncle, Joe. Suddenly, they hear a powerful flutter behind their backs and, when they turn around, they find themselves face to face with the sinister character, who

A nice summer morning during breakfast, Gurney proposed to the junior members of the Society for Psychical Research to spend the day at the zoo. Everyone agreed except Roger Davenport, who does not know if he will have enough courage to face that challenge. Gurney reassures him that the animals are caged. But it turns out that what scares Davenport are precisely the cages, since when he was a child he was locked up by accident in the chicken shed. In the end they manage to convince him. For a researcher of the paranormal, facing situations out of the ordinary, however normal, give him a sense of unease. That's why as soon as they entered the London Zoo, Roger Davenport and his colleagues began to see paranormal phenomena everywhere. Cavendish, who remained ecstatic contemplating the neck of the giraffe, proclaimed that such unusual elongation would be a good topic of study. As a man of the world who had had occasion to see exotic animals in their own habitat, Gurney explained him

In the living room of the “Society for Psychical Research”, Mr. Henry Sidgwick was reading “The Times” by the fireplace. Sitting in front of him, Sir Martin Osborne had started nodding during the reading of a chemistry book. “Good heavens!” suddenly Sidgwick exclaimed, causing his friend to wake up and the book to fall to the ground. “What happen?”, inquired the eminent chemist. His companion read aloud an article about a macabre event occurred last night in Highgate Cemetery. A pair of body snatchers had unearthed a coffin from which a vampire had emerged. Osborne let out a loud laugh. He did not believe in vampires nor body snatchers nor coffins nor cemeteries. He only believed in organic chemistry. He got up, picked up his book, his cane, and said goodbye. Arriving at his house in North London, he was still thinking about that bizarre story his friend had told him. "It seems incredible that there are such credible people," he said to himself and giggled. At that moment he

In the Victorian era there was a great passion for everything that came from ancient Egypt. The interest went from the mysterious pyramids to the mummies through the mortal concoction that ended the life of Cleopatra and whose formula (found in excavations in Cairo) was proposed in a parliamentary session by Sir Quincey Fitzpatrick as the national drink instead of tea, whose bitter taste he personally detested. Especially mummies exercised a powerful fascination over the English imagination of that time. In every castle or mansion of the high society, old-fashioned medieval armor had been cornered in the attic in favor of an imposing Egyptian mummy. In the market there were so many mummies for sale that one did not know what to do with them, and all kinds of products made with mummy powder began to be commercialized: medicines, aphrodisiacs, beauty ointments and it was even marketed as an exotic spice for season the most exquisite dishes. Naturally, the Society for Psychical Researc

One day, during breakfast, Sir William Barret announced that he wanted to test his mediumistic gifts. Henry Sidgwick asked him what was he based on to suppose that he possessed such gifts. He replied that when he was ten years old, he once dreamed of his father and when he woke up he found his father in the family room sitting in his favorite chair reading “The Times”. Then, he suddenly lowered the newspaper and, pointing to his son with his finger, asked "Have you read the Bible?". This story had a strong emotional impact on the members of the SPR, until Barret clarified that at that time his father still lived and resided in the old house in Sussex with the rest of the family. Still, Barret was so insistent that Sidgwick ended up agreeing to the whim of his friend and organized a séance for that same evening. In the early afternoon, a wagon stopped in front of the entrance to the SPR headquarters and two large wooden boxes were moved to the living room where the séance was

Another of the warhorse issues of the Society for Psychical Research was what in the Victorian era was known as “sixth sense” and today is called Extrasensory Perception (ESP). For a whole day, through the laboratories of the SPR headquarters in West Kensington, dozens of volunteers paraded, with the help of whom it was intended to establish the frequency with which the “sixth sense” manifested among the population in general. They were given a choice of four alternatives: a circle, a square, a triangle and a dancer named Claire Smithson who was then triumphing at a music hall of the West End. The subjects had to figure out which of these four alternatives Frederic Myers was thinking. During the entire duration of the experiment, Myers remained in a closed room at the other end of the building. The problem is that he turned out to be always thinking about the same alternative (I will not reveal which one of them), which to some extent discredited the statistical results of the experime

I will tell you how the Society for Psychical Research first heard about what we call today flying saucers or Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO), but in 1890 (when this story is placed) they still did not have a name. (The testimonies referred to them as "that"). It turns out that in Burnley, County of Lancashire, lived a man capable of interpreting the song "If Ever I Cease to Love" with the laces of his shoes. For Sir Henry Sidgwick, this was an unprecedented paranormal phenomenon. As Sidgwick was the president of the Society nobody dared to contradict him, and that is how an expedition was organized to the county of Lancashire. (For the musician in question it was impossible to travel since he lacked other shoes than those he used to make music and they went out of tune if he walked with them.) Early in the morning, the four members chosen for the mission embarked on a stagecoach surrounded by the expressions of affection and gratitude from the rest of the SPR mem

William Barret came and went constantly from London to Brighton. Not for work reasons. Nor for pleasure. In fact, there was no reason whatsoever, simply he had that compulsion, he could not help it. One evening, in an after-dinner conversation he mentioned that, on each of his round trips, he sighted a very tall figure standing at the edge of the road saying goodbye with his hand as if in slow motion and with a swing of his whole body. This figure managed to stay always in the shade, so that Barret could never see its face. Of course it could not be someone known to him, since Barret did not know anyone who measured three meters high. That was the approximate height of the figure according to his calculations. Also, it did not do any other gesture, just that swaying saying goodbye with its arm up. Gurney said that this was extremely rare and that it deserved to be investigated. But all the other members started to cough and make excuses, so he was left alone with his proposal. Gurney

Professor Stewart, distinguished member of the SPR, did not believe in coincidences. Gurney used to prod him, commenting on some coincidence that had happened to him. Then Stewart burst into a loud laugh and mocked him for being so gullible. “There is no need to believe in coincidences to explain the phenomena of the universe”, he used to say, “things are much simpler". According to him, everything obeyed a perfectly structured secret plan and in that plan there was no room for the slightest error. Once, he received a bill addressed to another person and he paid without question. Since then, other people's bills never stopped arriving. But he could afford it, he was a rich man. The controversy over Destiny versus Chance was one of the highlights of all the after-dinner conversations in the Society for Psychical Research. William James believed that coincidences existed but only by chance. Frederic Myers believed that such statement was a “supreme nonsense” and that James had a

In the West Kensington spacious loft where the SPR files are gathering dust on the shelves, I discovered under old canvases a drawer full of folders that had been torn from their filing cabinet. It was, I think, a kind of graveyard where the cases over which someone intended to draw a thick veil finished their days. Among these, I found the case that I am going to refer now. Its protagonist was a young girl of the London high society. One day the president of the Society for Psychical Research received the visit of an elegant woman who requested the services of the SPR to find her daughter. Mr. Sidgwick kindly informed her that this was not a detective agency but a scientific institution dedicated to the investigation of parapsychology and paranormal phenomena. The woman said she was aware and that was precisely why she had resort to them. Then she explained that she thought his daughter had evaporated, literally. A few minutes before her disappearance, she had left her daughter absorb

It was his interest in sleepwalking that put the father of Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud in relation with the Society for Psychical Research. One night Sir William Barrett was walking on the sidewalk after leaving a pub in Soho when he crashed into a man who walked with his eyes closed and arms outstretched. The man woke up at that moment, and a few meters behind him Barret heard a voice grumbling and complaining. It was Freud, who was following one of his patients in order to discover where he went every night after leaving home in a state of somnambulism.   At the advice of Freud, the man’s wife did not dare to stop him. And precisely that night Freud had decided to find out where his patient was going every night. (Later it was discovered that his destination was the same tavern that Barret frequented and that sleepwalking was just a stratagem of the man to escape from home at night without his wife preventing him from doing so.) Barret apologized and offered Freud his card with th

Misinformed people tend to believe that in the Society for Psychical Research everybody was very naïve and willing to believe in anything. That you could tell them that you were a vampire about to transform into a bat and they ran to close the windows for fear that you would fly away. And well, I will not deny that there was someone who was very credulous (talking about vampires, a certain member wore several strings of garlic as necklaces). But it was the exception. As a rule, they were eminent personalities from various fields of science with a high degree of skepticism. There were even one who carried his skepticism to the point of fanaticism, which caused him to end up very badly. I will omit his name for delicacy and call him Mr. Skeptic. When they tested the mediums with whom they collaborated, the members of the Society set traps to find out if they were being cheated. But Mr. Skeptic took this tactic to the extreme. At the end of the summer season of 1879, Mr. Skeptic returned

The issue of bilocation (the supernatural presence of a person in two places at the same time) drove the “Society for Psychical Research” nuts. For example, in Edinburgh there was one George Nottage who, without ever leaving that city, served as mayor of London for two terms. Sir Sidgwick was skeptical and thought it was a case of twins. William Barret advocated another rational explanation: according to him, it was a single individual who constantly came and went from one city to another. Myers, on the other hand, considered it a genuine case of bilocation, albeit not entirely perfect since, unlike the George Nottage of London, the one in Edinburgh used to wear a Tyrolean hat. This case generated a lot of controversy among the general public since the citizens of Edinburgh ended up electing their Nottage as mayor of the city coinciding with the London Nottage mandate. In a convention of British mayors, somehow the two Nottages managed to avoid each other, so nobody ever got to see the

Another of the famous expeditions of the Society for Psychical Research was the one organized to unravel the mystery of the Loch Ness “Monster”. I place the word monster between quotation marks because Conan Doyle was exasperated when he heard that they called it that way. He said that it was an inconsiderateness and a great lack of respect towards a creature that they didn't even know if it exists. “And how the hell do you want us to call him?!” Gurney blurted out. “The Enigma!”, he answered. The same thing happened with the “Abominable” Snowman. He thought it was a lack of respect towards a stranger to call it "abominable". He also wanted them to call it "The Enigma". Doyle was a hypersensitive man. Even the word "ghost" was offensive to him: for him a ghost was also "The Enigma". The truth is that it was quite difficult to have a conversation with him, because he was always talking about the enigma and you never knew for sure what he was t

A man named John Burgess spent the nights in Highgate Cemetery with the hope of contacting some dead person, that is, a lost soul. For that tortuous way he aspired to be admitted as a member in the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). That was his great aspiration in life, but he did not have a qualification that would support him. He had tried to impress them by doing some somersaults, but Gurney was a much better acrobat, besides they did not need any acrobat at all. What they required -he was told- was someone who maintained contact with the dead. So Burgess made that decision to walk at night among the tombs, which for any other would have been unbearable, but not for him. Burgess was not afraid of anything except of his wife Mildred, and that only when she was present. In fact, that was an added reason to spend the nights away from home. He invented an excuse: he told her that he hunted owls and other nocturnal raptors. However, he never brought any wild game, to which he argued

When the senior staff of the Society for Psychical Research learned that the city of Savannah in Georgia had the largest number of haunted houses per square kilometer in America, an expedition was organized with that destination. They went to a real estate agent and asked him to rent the most enchanted house of all. The greatest specialist in haunted houses of the SPR was Frederic W. H. Myers, who for a whole year had lived with a ghost in his house in London: the spirit of a woman with an apron, cap and broom who had an obsession for cleanliness. At the end of the year he discovered that she was the cleaning lady that the SPR had provided him without mentioning it. In any case, this misunderstanding had helped him acquire the experience required to coexist with a ghost. The house they rented had a most dismal aspect, consistent with its long history of tragic events that had happened in it, the most recent of which had been the accidental drowning of its previous owner in a washbasin.

In one of the halls of the headquarters of the Society for Psychical Research in West Kensington, one of the most conspicuous debates of the celebrated Society took place. The subject of the debate was Numerology, and to elucidate it two prestigious mathematicians were invited: the English Professor H. D. Killyar and the American Daniel Sokorovitzi. In the hall only the presence of the secretary of the Society was allowed with the order to record all that was said. The senior staff of the SPR would have preferred to attend the debate, but Mr Sokolovitzi alleged that he miscounted in the presence of more than three people, so this format was decided. It would be long to transcribe the debate in its entirety, so here we will stick to its highlight. At one point, Professor Kylliar expressed the distrust that the number 8 inspired to him. Mr Sokorovitzi laughed openly at that prejudice, "typical of individuals with the intellectual coefficient of a shrimp", and confessed for his

October 1885. A man named Persky is arrested by the police for standing on his head in front of the Scotland Yard offices. Only a few hours later, an overweight and respectable banker from the City is found frantically trying to stand on his head before Weistminster Parliament. Almost at the same time, another exemplary citizen is arrested for standing on his head facing towards number 10 Downing Street. The three of them excuse themselves saying that suddenly they felt an unstoppable need to stand on his head in front of official buildings. The government organizes a Crisis Cabinet in the course of which the minister of finances stands on is head without asking for permission. Then, at the request of the prime minister, comes into play the Society for Psychic Research (SPR). Sir Oliver Lodge interrogates witnesses and concludes that all the arrested acted under the effect of hypnosis. The next day all the newspapers have on the cover the sketch of a man in a turban to whom is attribut

Telepathy generated a lot of quarrels within the Society for Psychological Research. And not because their members did not agree on their existence: they were all convinced of it. Everything was the fault of a dreadful gossip with extraordinary telepathic gifts. The SPR, which had informants all over England, was informed of the existence of a certain Leonard Onion who guessed the thoughts of the people around him. Before inviting him to spend a week in the SPR’s headquarters, Sir Oliver Lodge should have noticed that Mr. Onion never had people around him. People fled from him like from the plague! The fact is that, as soon as Mr. Onion was surrounded by the respectable members of the SPR, his mind began to capture the most intimate thoughts of each one of them. Through this unique medium he learned of the true opinion that each member had of his colleagues, and ignoring the favorable opinions, he dedicated himself to place moles among the members. Henry Sidgwick took offence at Charl

Personally I am an avid reader of ghost novels. But the fact that such stories are always located in dreary and gloomy mansions outrage me. The reality is quite different, as demonstrated by the hundreds of files of the Society for Psychical Research. The case that I am going to refer is registered under file number 426 and it happened in the year 1869 in a dreary and gloomy mansion located in the county of Leicestershire. This mansion was inhabited by Lady Louisa Fanshow, a dreary and gloomy woman who many visitors confused with the ghost. Because the mansion housed a dreary and gloomy ghost, you know? (This is another of the topics that outrage me: the SPR files show that many ghosts are nice and lively.) According to most testimonies, this ghost wore a three-cornered hat and dragged chains (or continuously hit a pan with a ladle, according to some). The people of the county bind together the ghost’s existence and a gruesome episode that took place in the mansion many years ago. App

In the year 1882 (as recorded in the archives of the SPR) an antiquary of the city of Bristol received the visit of an old woman whom he would describe later as a witch. She wanted to sell him an oval mirror that she wore wrapped in a dirty cloth that in the past would have been colored but now it was as black as soot. The mirror was already old when the old woman had not yet been born, so the antiquarian was predisposed to buy it at a reasonable price, which for him meant dirt-chip. "Why do you want to get rid of it?" he asked. "Because it does not work anymore". The antiquary saw the opportunity to depreciate the mirror and, contemplating in it his own reflection, confirmed that the patina was worn and consequently the reflection obscured. "That's not the problem," replied the old woman, and clarified that it was a magic mirror. Upon hearing this, the antiquarian felt like laughing, but repressed laughter and instead made an offer to the old woman.

I would play dead! Modesty aside, I'm a real artist playing dead. They are many years of practice, you know? At school I began to play dead in math class. “Philip Rimoney, get on the blackboard!”, called the teacher.  My colleagues shook me but I just like that, as if I were dead. When at home it was about setting the table or making the bed, the same thing: like a deceased person. More than once my mother thought that this time I did not pretend, that I had really died, and she  made a scene: "Oh, my only son has died! What a disgrace my God!" Then, during the funeral, I resurrected and everyone shouted "Miracle, miracle!" and they hugged me and gave me kisses and gave me gifts. But as I still had not reached perfection, other times my mother was not fooled and gave me a slap. But with the practice I reached such a degree of credibility that I deceived even the doctors, who signed the death certificate without hesitation. Thanks to that, my wife has been receiv