How I Know That The Dead Return by William T. Stead

A Spirit's Explanation
I then proposed that I should try for more messages. My friend sat at one end of a long table, I sat at the other. After my hand had written answers to various questions, I asked Julia, as another test of her identity, if she could use my hand to call to her friend's memory some incident in their mutual lives of which I knew nothing. No sooner said than done. My hand wrote: "Ask her if she can remember when we were going home together when she fell and hurt her spine." "That fills the bill," I remarked, as I read out the message, "for I never knew that you had met with such an accident." Looking across the table, I saw that my friend was utterly bewildered. "But, Julia," she objected, "I never hurt my spine in my life." "There," said I, addressing my hand reproachfully, "a nice mess you have made of it! I only asked you for one out of the thousand little incidents you both must have been through together, and you have gone and written what never happened." Imperturbably my hand wrote, "I am quite right; she has forgotten." Anybody can say that," I retorted; "can you bring it back to her memory?" "Yes," was the reply. "Go head," I answered; "when was it?" Answer: "Seven years ago." "Where was it?" "At Streator, in Illinois." How did it happen?" "She and I were going home from the office one Saturday afternoon. There was snow n the ground. When we came opposite Mrs. Buell's house she slipped her foot on the curbstone and fell nd hurt her back." When I read these messages aloud her friend exclaimed, "Oh, that's what you mean, ulia! I remember that quite well. I was in bed for two or three days with a bad back; but I never knew it was y spine that was hurt."

I Was Always Skeptical
I need not multiply similar instances. The communication thus begun has been kept up for over fifteen years. I have no more doubt of the existence and the identity of Julia than I have of the existence of my wife or of my sister. Here we had the appearance of the deceased in bodily form twice repeated on fulfilment of a promise made before death. This is followed up by the writing of messages, attested first by an illusion to a pet name that seemed to reduce the message to nonsense, and, secondly, by recalling to the memory of her friend with the utmost particularity of detail an incident which that friend had forgotten. No other medium was concerned in the receipt of these messages but myself. I had no motive to misrepresent or invent anything. As my narrative proves, I was skeptical rather than credulous. But things happened just as I have put them down. Can you be surprised if I felt I was really getting into communication with the Beyond?

1909