MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

Year 1871. During Mrs. Cassel's stay in the spa resort of Vichy, she witnessed the discussion between the director of the thermal establishment and a client, who complained that, in the room she shared with her husband, strange noises were heard at night. The director insisted that it was her husband's snoring, to which she replied that she was familiar with her husband's snoring and  this was another kind of noise, more like the one that emits a Patagonian Mara. The director said he wasn't familiar with the noise that a Patagonian Mara emits, but even so he would switch rooms. Intrigued by what the client had told him, the director set out to spend the night in the room in question. Mrs. Cassel got up early the next morning to see with her own eyes the result of the venture. When she was walking down the corridor, she saw from a distance a dozen strange rodents similar to jackrabbits leaving the room in single line. The last one to leave was the director of the thermal...

Judging by the experiences that Jackie Cassel relates in her monograph "Paranormal Waters" (published in 1867 when the passion for the spa resorts was at its peak), the thermal establishments are not only sources of health but also of paranormal phenomena. Mrs. Cassel, a middle-aged and unmarried Frenchwoman resident in Clermont, suffered from cerebral lumbalgia and the doctor prescribed her some purple pills, but as she did not like that color, she preferred to prescribe herself a stay in the spa of Carlsbad in Czechoslovakia. Even with reluctance, her doctor agreed to pay for her stay at the Grand Hotel in that spa city, and that is how Mrs. Cassel began his career as an expert in spas. In that first stay in a thermal establishment, she realized that unusual things happened there. For example, the towels disappeared. You left the towel on a lounger and, when you returned, it was conspicuous by its absence. The jars of aromatic salts also disappeared and, on one occasion, t...

I will explain it to you through an example and you will understand it right away. For this example I will use the detailed account of some paranormal facts that was recently sent to me by Frederick Hermite Sinclair, professor in the Department of Applied Archeology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. It says: I prefer to keep my name and credentials secret, so when I talk about myself I will refer to me with the word "I". A month and a half ago, the University where I work (whose name I prefer to remain anonymous as well) approved my project of excavation in the O'Malley Castle with a view to the end-of-course work of my forty-one students of Applied Archeology. In the company of three students chosen drawing lots (the budget of the department is not very buoyant in recent times, so I am forced to resort to this procedure too often), we moved in the van of one of them to the castle in question. It is a half-ruined medieval castle that has been abandoned for centur...