Not so strange, the belief in ghosts was just as strong in the early 1900s as those beliefs are today. Instead of sitting on their butts to watch paranormal shows, people of the past would dabble and attempt to communicate with the dead. Below is an article written in a 1912 newspaper on communicating with spirits.
Are Living Drawing Closer to Spirit World?
[Instructions for communicating with the dead.]
Go into a dim room alone.
Close the door tightly behind you.
Sit there quietly and concentrate your mind on the dead.
And in a few minutes, maybe, you will get a message from a ghost!
For — and here you had better stop reading if you’re “skeery” of spooks — there are such things as ghosts. They sail around your bedroom at night and try to tell you things of “the other side.” Sometimes in their anxiety to communicate with you, they brush you in the halls or on the stairs, but you shiver and run away from them and wonder what “touched” you.
This declaration, that “there are spooks” in this world is not the assumption of some superstitious or untutored man. Prof. Jas. H. Hyslop, late head of the department of psychology at Columbia university, and now leading spirit in the American Society for Psychical Research, is himself responsible for it. And Prof. Hyslop not only makes this declaration, but he cites as proof “case after case” of testimony.
If you don’t believe in “spooks,” Prof. Hyslop suggests that you try to get into communication with them yourself. If you follow his directions, given above, you almost certainly will succeed, he says.
“The world has come to that place,” Hyslop said to The Day Book reporter, “where the psychic — the things of the soul — are going to occupy more and more attention. We are beginning to stretch our hands out to ‘the other side’.
“The big question nowadays is ‘after death — what?’ And the one way to solve this question is to talk to — ghosts!
“Since the death last August of Prof. William James of Harvard, the famous philosopher, I have had some tremendous psychic experiences. Prof. James himself has sent messages to me that absolutely could not have come from anyone but from him. And I have had a spirit conversation with Carroll D. Wright, late United States labor commissioner.
“Prof. James, for instance, told a medium, the young son of a minister, that he should give me a pair of pink pajamas and a black necktie for Christmas. This boy lives in an out of the way place and knew neither James nor myself. And yet the message is marvelously significant. James and I had a joke about his once borrowing a pair of pajamas in England which turned out to be a ridiculous shade of baby pink. It was a joke of which probably nobody else ever heard. As for the black necktie, I was, at the time, wearing a black tie which had belonged to James, and very few persons had an idea that this tie had not always been my own.
“One of the greatest proofs is the experience of a Mrs. Smead, Wife of a minister living in the hills of Maryland. The place is a dozen miles from any railroad station and it takes 24 hours for the news of the world to penetrate to it. And yet the same night Prof. James died, Mrs. Smead, who possesses mediumistic qualities to a marked extent, saw him pass before her in cap and gown.
“Six months afterward, when she saw a picture of James and an article about his death, she recognized who her ghostly visitor was. Consulting her diary, she found that James had been visible to her just one hour after his death!
“I am about to announce the results of my spirit communication with Carroll D. Wright to the world. Of the mass of details he gave me, a great deal has been absolutely verified by his daughter. One detail in particular is worth noting. He mentioned a red brick building covered with vines where he had been at one time. We could not locate this. At length we discovered that four years ago Wright had visited just such a laboratory. It was back in some hills near the Hudson river. Everyone in his family had forgotten the incident.
“The next great object of the human race is to develop the psychic. We must reach out our hands over that ‘gulf’ and see what we can learn from those over there. They may not be permitted to tell us everything, but as we go on trying, the means of our communication will be strengthened and we shall learn marvelous things. We shall know that the body is more than flesh.”
The future great work of the American Society for Psychical Research, Prof. Hyslop says, is to raise enough money to begin a great number of experiments in mediumistic phenomena, testing them by cross references to establish the degree of their veracity. To do this Hyslop would have many mediums interview the same spirits and see if results jibe.
Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). July 12, 1912.
