The Lecture

As you enter the large hall of the Upper East Gallery in the Imperial Institute you hear a round of applause filling the air and almost blocking out the smell of expensive cigars.

The Institute's security guide flashes you a quick smile as he vanishes before you enter through the door. The black tails of his tux ruffle behind as he rushes back to the first floor to bring more guest up to the conference.

As you glance up you notice a large stage illuminated at the end of a very dim room. You can make out numerous thin waitresses transversing the labyrinth of tables with older gentlemen giving them the occasional hoot of unwanted attention.

Another round of applause rings out as a young attractive woman dressed in a luxurious red crepe silk evening dress with a slit along the side that seems to go on forever, revealing the top of her stockings, floats about 6 inches above the ground. Her green eyes seem to sparkle in the light.

To her left is a slim middle aged man dressed in a multi-colored shimmering suit. His gloved fingers appear to be flexing as the woman slowly ascends higher and higher. As he moves to the other side of the stage he whips his black cape off in one fluid motion and hurls it at the woman. An instant before it touches her she vanishes.

You find yourself quickly seated at a half full table as a round of drinks are brought out to you. The waitress waits for a moment to see if you want anything else before she returns to her other tables. The show goes on for another fifteen minutes before the performers retire from the stage.


As you glance around you the lights come back on slowly and you see a older man step onto the stage. He smiles at the audience as he runs a hand over his incredibly large and bushy moustache.

"Ladies and gentleman, I am Prof. Julian Smith and I will be presenting some of my research this evening. Please save any questions until the end. As you know, I am a famed debunker of the mystics, pyshics and charlatans. I believe that money is not usually the motive for the misrepresentation of these impossible powers or events; more likely is the chance for individual notice or recognition of personal qualities, preservation or defense of spiritual belief or social benefit to the community."

"There proves to be however," and here his voice turns serious, "categories of repetitious phenomenon offering no simple elucidation. I refer to the "poltergeist," to the "traveler" who suddenly finds himself dozens or thousands of miles or years from where he stood moments before, and to the "haunting." My presentation tonight concerns the last."

"I say haunting" and not "ghost" or "spirit" because alone of such epiphenomena, the subject of a haunting can be buildings, lanterns, coaches-ana-fours, swords and so on, as well as men, women, dogs and even armies. World-Wide, the store of casual anecdote concerning haunters is enormous."

"And I say 'epiphenomena' because the haunters are not linked with specific observers, and the haunting presumably occurs with or without human witnesses, as we shall see. Thus perception of such an event is secondary to the event itself - epiphenomenical to it. "

"The essential characteristics of haunters are simple: the person or thing must have existed, must have disappeared in some sense, and then must reappear once or many times. The location of the phenomenon may stay the same, or may change; that which reappears may be partial and insubstantial, or be as solid and real-seeming as any member of tonight's illustrious gathering. No other conditions are needed."

"I have three hauntings that I wish to discuss in detail. A Breton fishing boat, a Norwegian woman, and a London hansom cab." Smith turns to his manservant and nodds. The man in his mid forties turns on the slide projector and a pale light illuminates the wall.

"Each case was studied and photograph simultaneously from at least three positions, allowing accurate scaling of the apparitions. The three apparitions do not coalesce from points, as most tales describe, but slowly emerge whole from invisible planes, as if passing through 'the curtain of perception'. "

"Each is also semi-transparent." Smith rubs his hand over his brushy mustache as walks up to the projection. He traces the clear passage of a wave through the fishing boat. Showing that the boat in the image causes no ripples and does not resist the water. In the other two images he points out the photographers can be seen through the other apparitions.

Also each image glows appreciably, as Smith demonstrates by isolating the reflection from nearby objects. Sampling attributes part of the glow to ionization, but not all of it. Carefull indexing of the reflections indicates that each level of ionization varies randomly during each event.

The rate at which these three apparitions manifested motion was in comparison to normal movement slowed by a consistent half in each case.

Smith points out a ripple passing across the sail of the fishing boat; when 16mm cinematograph film is sped appreciably, the ripple sees normal while the ocean waves become ridiculous. So does the staircase descent of the Norwegian woman seems less unusual when speeded up. The horse drawing the Hanson cab switches her tail casually, as if discouraging files , rather than making seemingly malevolent and mysterious gestures.

"Historically each of these three apparitions were held as having disappeared not being killed or destroyed. Comparatively very rarely have instances of solid apparitions occurred. But one could wait many lifetimes, I suspect."

"Such apparitions seem not to be uniformly preserved. The south of England has been settled by man for many thousands of years, yet the vast majority of haunting seem to have been produced in the past five or six centuries. Only a handful from Roman times."

"It is my belief that such hauntings represent clues concerning a natural universe much larger and much stranger than we imagine. The walls of what we perceive as normality have a subtle flexibility. Occasionally, and I greatly hope for understandable reasons, conditions allow inter-penetration. The spectral haunting I have discussed represent attempts - perhaps random, perhaps purposeful, certainly unsuccessful ones - to return to this time and space by elements of it somehow removed."

"If we are energetic , and not a little lucky in our observations, students of paraphysicality may one day be able to move up and down time, or to travel globally with minor effort, or to perceive that which at present lies completely beyond our senses. Whether that which waits beyond is light or darkness, or simply different, or evoked by our unstated desires remains the supreme question which, for the present, each must answer for himself."