Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1895 — SAMPLE LOT OF GHOSTS. [ARTICLE]

SAMPLE LOT OF GHOSTS.

Howard Ft elding Solicits Orders irom Psychical Researchers. Oe Alw*y* Carries a Fall Stock of Ghoeta. Dreams, Vision* and Warning*. AU ■Fully Equal In Quality to Those Here Given. I COPYRIGHT. 18M-] 'Fhave always been deeply interested fa supernatural phenomena. Even when quite young, I could never walk ky a cemetery after dsrk without being disappointed. No ghost ever ventured out of his cage when I was look- • fag. In the matter of visions, warning fa dreams, etc.. I have been equally unfortunate. I once dreamed that I < was lying on a pile of stones when the sacred white elephant came along and stepped on the third button of my waistcoat This happened fa Worcester, where I was working on a newspaper from nine o’clock in the forenoon to three o’clock the next morning, seven days in a week, with an allowance of five minutes for meals, including a piece of mince pio at one a. m. I knew that this dream contained a warning, and at first I thought it referred to the pie. But on second thought I decided to throw up my job. I did it. and have never dreamed the same thing since, which makes it look like a plain case to me. When I think of my existence there, it seems natural that I should never have been warned again. A man cannot reasonably expect Providence to do too much for him. ’ A favor of that size should content-him for life. However, it has been hard for me to listen to so many nice ghost stories and reflect that I have never enjoyed anything of the sort myself. It has been some consolation to investigate, by my own scientific method, the experience of others. Here is a case which I vouch for. I became acquainted while in Boston with an aged victim of the game of policy. It is a game in which a man can bet one cent if he has no more, and tho person to whom I refer had even lost his self-respect. He was a great believer in dreams, and his stories of what they had done for others were worth much more than the small sums which I bestowed upon him from time to time. As he always went to bod hungry, he never lacked dreams. The only trouble, as he explained to me, was in the interpretation. For instance, he would dream of a death, and then play the dead “gig,” 9-19-29, “when,” as he would inform me, after the drawing, “any cussed fool ought to have known that the coffin gig was the right one for that dream.” One day I found him in luck; and also somewhat in liquor. “I hit it this time,” he said. “Dreamed about Ben Butler for three nights running. What did it mean? It took me a long time to study it out. Finally it came to me like a flash. I asked a fellow how old the general was, and he said he was sixty-two. So I played sixty-two dayed, to lead, and In the cap. It was the first number out fa both drawings. I’ve got money to burn.” He had, fa fact, won nearly a hundred dollars. “And the curious thing about it was this,” he continued, thoughtfully, “the fellow that told me Butler’s age lied; the general was really sixty-four!” Some persons might think that this militated against the dream theory* udt, to my mind, it is the best part bl the story. This trifling inaccuracy reminds me of the difficulty experienced by a ghost which appeared in my father's house a good many years ago. ft awakened us all in the dead of night by playing on the piano. I listened to the supernatural music in horror, as the others did, too, no doubt. My musical ear is good, and it is exceptionally accurate in the matter of absolute pitch. Such being the case, I was soon able to make out that the ghost's tune consisted of only two notes, high C and A way down in the bass.

“This means something,” said I, in an awed whisper. “C. A. must be the initials of the ghost.” Then I rose and followed my father down to the parlor, where we found our cat (previously supposed to have wandered away and died) standing on the keys of the piano. She had her left hindfoot on C, her right forefoot on A, and was reaching out after T. Nothing but the system of musical notation prevented her from revealing her Identity completely. My father drove her away, and she never came back, which is good ground for believing that it was not the cat at all. but her ghost. Anotner case even more remarßaoie than this occurred on the banks of the St. Lawrence this summer. A lady whom we will call Mrs. A., because that will make it easier for the Society for Psychical Research to enter this story on its records, had gone to this region with her husband who had i great passion for outdoor sports, and, fa fact, sports of any kind. Mrs. A. retired to rest on the night'of August 13, believing that her husband was then returning down the river, from a fishing trip on which he had started early that morning. And she dreamed a dream. She beheld her husband and old Abe Grover, the i r pilot, coming down through the rapid* fa Abe's boat. The waters whirled around them madly, and Abe grew white around the gills. He caught a crab with his starboard oar. and the boat turned a-dozen flip-flops in the hurrying tide. Mrs. A. beheld her husbaqd struggling with the current. She was conscious of making frantic efforts to reach and save him, probably remembering that be had money in his clothes, although she does not tell the story that way. tn the midst of these struggles she aw.,’j:e. The drcam still ran riot in her mini. It was certainly a warning. Her husband was fa peril. Mrs. A. was So deeply moved by these reflections that she arose, dressed herself hastily, eurled her front hair and sped through the darkness to the cabin of Abe Grover, which stood on the river bank not.far from the cottage in which Mrs. A. had dreamed her dream. Nobody knows what she intended to do there. Probably she wished to weep with Mrs. G., and to ask her how she thought that she (Mrs. A.) would look in black. There was a bright light in one end of Grover's cabin, while the other was dark. Mrs. A. precipitated herself (as they say fa French novels) against the door of the lighted room. She landed almost fa the middle of the floor. Her eye* took fa the scene st a glance Four sien sat around a table. There were card* and chip* and “bait” fa large, blaek bottles Ma A. Mt tebtad an aee-fua. and be

had Just tooted old Abe, that guileless countryman, to the extent of the limit. Mrs. A. seized her husband by the upper flapper of his right ear, and led him gently homeward. And when they were gone. Uncle Abe laid down four five-spots with a sigh that drew tears of sympathy from every face-card in the deck. In the category of remarkable rescues attributed to dream warnings, I think this adventure stands at the very head. One more remarkable case was recently brought to my attention. Mr. 8., a man of the most unimpeachable veracity, was awakened one night bv tnree loud raps on the head board ot his bed. These raps, he tells me, were unquestionably due tc spiritual agencies. The fact that the back of his head was sore all the rest of that week is a mere coincidence. Just as Mr. B. struggled out of sleep into consciousness, he heard a voice say: “Charley is dead.” Now, this happened in New England,where Charley is so common a name that many parents prefer to christen their sons Zimri. Therefore, Mr. B. was not much wiser after the spirit voice had spoken than before. He rapidly ran over the list of persons named Charles who were memoers ot his own family; and, having decided that none of them was likely to have left him any money, he went to sleep. In the morning, however, the remembrance of the dream troubled him. He made inquiries, and learned—to his Satisfaction or the reverse, as it happened fa each individual case—that all the Charleys were alive and well. Nothing had happened to any of them during the night. And yet the dream “came out,” as the fatalists say, for almost a week later he discovered that on the night fa question, and perhaps at that very hour, old man Bowden, who lived nine miles out of town, had suffered the'loss (by death) of a horse named Charley, aged twenty-three years, four months and nine days. I believe that this is the first case of the kind on record. Telepathy between a man and a horse, if it can be established, is likely to become a fad, especially with men who play the races. As for me, I should be inclined to believe that what Mr. B. heard was simply the voice of a nightmare, if the animal had been named Julia. In conclusion, and by way of verification, I will say that my method of investigation is strictly in accord with that employed by the Society for Psychical Research. I always endeavor to learn which one of all the persons cognizant of any unusual happening has the most powerful imagination and the most comprehensive grasp of the elements of successful fiction. Then I get him to tell the story. Howard Fieldijtg.