Science: Ghosts

Clark University’s symposium on ghosts (TIME, Dec. 13), drew to a close. Frederick Bligh Bond, British psychic researcher and architect, described the helpful conduct of a departed spirit during excavating work at mystical Glastonbury Abbey, 20 years ago. A friend of Architect Bond’s, one John Alleyne, had been the medium for messages in automatic writing. “All knowledge,” the ghost had assured them, “is eternal, and is available to mental telepathy.” Later had followed a rough drawing, which some monkish Latin described as the lost chapel of King Edgar, 30 yards long at the Abbey’s eastern end. This threw light on certain cryptic manuscripts. Architect Bond dug, gave up, consulted the ghost again, received fresh instructions, dug again and found King Edgar’s masonry.

Novelists Margaret Deland and Mary Austin pleaded, Mrs. Deland in person, for further study of life after death. She told how she had been converted to spiritualism by the ouija board and the inexplicable “residue” left in mediumistic trances after all cheating had been subtracted. Mrs. Austin’s faith resulted from her studies of primitive American Indian customs and the behavior of animals at the approach of death.