Shadow Land : Light From The Other Side

What a new field for science! A missionary spirit inspired you and you were ready for any sacrifice for the triumph of the truth of spirit intercourse. The greatest mystery of this life is what comes after this life-- this author explores those realms.

From the Author:

I intended to hand over the manuscript to some one to publish after my death; but now having finished my work as a medium, I have come to the conclusion that I have no right to place on the shoulders of another, a burden of responsibility, that I would wish to escape bearing myself, and have decided that it is better to have the opportunity of defending the truths which I have here attempted to record rather than to leave the work to others.

A more weighty reason is the fact that suicides are increasing and I have never known a single instance of a sane man throwing his life away, when once he not only believed, but knew, the truths which have been part of my every day life since childhood.

Excerpt

WHEN one has made up one's mind to relate a story, I suppose it is the proper thing to begin at the beginning. I have therefore been trying to remember a fitting time or incident in my life to start from, but have given up the attempt because I cannot recollect any incident, in regard to which there was not something that led up to it and that would have therefore to be told as well. So I suppose I must go back all the way to where I began myself. This was shortly before the Crimean war, for my very earliest recollections are connected with my fathers home coming, and the rejoicings when peace was proclaimed. I could not understand what it all meant, but as it brought my father home it was to me a sufficient cause for rejoicing.

The experiences I have to relate, when looked on from the ordinary commonplace every-day life of this apparently work-a-day world, are strange and incomprehensible. Sometimes I have tried to put myself in other people's places, to see with their eyes, and judge with their understandings, and I have invariably come to the conclusion that they were not to blame for doubting the reality of the occurrences. For myself, these things have grown with my growth, and have been familiar to me from the beginning, since I can recall no time when they were not familiar and natural; so that the only curious thing to me seemed the fact that other people should not have the same experiences.

As a child I could not understand this fact; indeed the refusal of my companions to accept my version of what was going on around us sometimes irritated me beyond measure, and my frequent exhibitions of temper at their incredulity, gained for me the reputation of being "a little vixen" as well as "decidedly queer".

To my mind it was always the other people who were "queer"; and I thought it a great trial to have to listen to the wonder and incredulity, which frequently greeted my narration of something that to me seemed a trifling incident of every day life.

However, as I grew older I began to understand that all were not gifted alike, and was magnanimous enough to make excuses for others in my mind on the plea that there was something lamentably wanting in them which prevented their seeing, hearing, or understanding so much that was going on around us, which was so plain and real to me. Child as I was, I naturally took upon myself to be their eyes and ears in much the same way as the companion of a blind man would do, till I met with so many rebuffs that I gave up the task, although pitying the infirmities of the ignorant grown up people who, half blind and half deaf, still persisted in rejecting my kind offices.

During my earliest childhood we lived in a gloomy old house situated at the east end of London,-a large house that had at one time been an imposing mansion; but that must have been centuries before, for now it was fast falling into decay and ruin. It was said either to have been built by, or resided in, by Oliver Cromwell, I don't remember which; in any case it was very unlike modern residences. Large, ponderous, gloomy as it was, it had yet an air of superiority and dignity strangely out of place amid the newness of the houses which were springing up mushroom-fashion on all sides of it. The house was doomed to come down, but its final destruction was deferred year after year, and meanwhile we lived in it.

Surrounding the ancient edifice was a courtyard in which one or two trees struggled for existence It was paved by squares of black and white marble reminding one of a chequer board. The house was approached by a flight of marble steps that had once been beautiful but were now stained, worn, and broken. The door at the top of the steps was of ponderous carven oak, studded with iron bolts, and guarded on each side by great griffins which were the terror of my childish soul. Somebody had painted these monsters bright green, giving them red eyes and tongues.

The bolt-studded door gave admission to a gloomy oak-paneled hall, from which opened several disused empty rooms, also a broad staircase leading to the upper part of the house. Most of the rooms were oak-paneled and dark, the small windows never admitting light enough to make them cheerful, though at the back of the house-which looked out over a large piece of ground that had at one time been a garden, but was now only a grass-grown space-the rooms were of a more cheerful aspect, owing to the fact that the original small bottle-glass casements had been removed and French windows opening to the floor put in their places.

These latter were the rooms we lived in; the rest of the house was unoccupied and the rooms kept closed, except the lower part or kitchens, in which lived an old couple supposed to be caretakers.

How we came to live there I do not know, probably because the neighborhood was convenient for my father, and perhaps also because, in spite of its gloomy age and its reputation of being haunted, the building was a more respectable and exclusive place of residence than the locality could otherwise boast.

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