An appreciation and occult analysis of a supernatural story by the novelist E. F. Benson
Guest article by John Temple
Foreword by the author
Those sad souls who profess a liking for my seasonal stories will recall that in my analysis of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I mentioned that my old English Master used to treat the class to a ghost story on the last day of Michaelmas Term. It is in the naïve hope of establishing a similar tradition here that I have chosen another ghost story to entertain the readers of Occult Mysteries this year. That is, those who like ghost stories. These should be quite a few since 'spooks' are one of the most common phenomena that first interest people in occultism. The spine-tingler I have chosen is Mr Tilly's Séance by Edward Frederick Benson (1867-1940), or E. F. Benson as he is generally known to distinguish him from his equally talented siblings. The story was first published in 1922 in the USA in Munsey's Magazine, and later in various collections of Benson's tales of the supernatural. Although he was a prolific writer of ghost stories Benson is best known for his enduringly popular series of six comic novels in which he gently but unerringly satirised the lives and mores of the English upper-middle-classes in the 1920's. They relate the battle for pre-eminence and popularity between two very formidable ladies, Mrs Emmeline Lucas and Miss Elizabeth Mapp. Mrs Lucas — known as 'Lucia' to friends and enemies alike — is an ambitious society hostess, whose main affectation is her pretence to know Italian, while Mapp is a scheming busybody with a gift for duplicity that Machiavelli might envy — a characteristic shared with the Spiritualistic medium who presides over the circle in Mr Tilly's Séance.
E. F. Benson (1867-1940)
Benson's combination of wit, clever plot twists and comic invention is somewhat reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse, but he excels the latter in his acute observation and description of the foibles of human nature. These skills are shown to good advantage in Mr Tilly's Séance which has the distinction of being the only one of Benson's many ghost stories told from the point-of-view of the ghost. Mr Teddy Tilly is a fastidious and opinionated gentleman of uncertain age with an eye for the ladies; characteristics which some unkind souls have had the presumption to associate with the writer. I firmly deny and refute all such groundless allegations! On the way to a séance he has the misfortune to be squashed flat by an enormous steamroller and finds himself on the 'Other Side' in a body remarkably similar — if not identical — to the one he inhabited during life on earth.
Once he gets over the shock of his precipitate transition into the Astral World, he decides to attend the séance, possibly because a certain Miss Soulsby — a young woman of considerable physical charms whom he has long admired — would be present. The séance is presided over by the improbably named Mrs Cumberbatch (no relation to the famous thespian of that name), a popular Spiritualist medium. To say any more would be to spoil one of Benson's funniest and most perceptive spine-tinglers. Just how instructive his story is we shall see in my afterword when I come to analyse some of the occult truths it contains. Because those interfering Editors of Occult Mysteries deemed the original too long for publication, I have had to edit Benson’s story down just a teeny little bit. If anything has been lost in this regrettable but unavoidable task, blame them, not me!
Mr Tilly's Séance
By E. F. Benson
Mr Tilly had only the briefest moment for reflection, when, as he slipped and fell on the greasy pavement at Hyde Park Corner, which he was crossing at a smart trot, he saw the huge traction-engine with its grooved ponderous wheels towering high above him.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" he said petulantly, "it will certainly crush me quite flat, and I shan't be able to be at Mrs Cumberbatch's séance! Most provoking! A–ow!"
A steam-powered traction engine very similar to the one that squashed Mr Tilly flat — A–ow!
The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the first half of his horrid anticipations was thoroughly fulfilled. The heavy wheels passed over him from head to foot and flattened him completely. Then the driver (too late) reversed his engine and passed over him again, and finally lost his head, whistled loudly and stopped. The policeman on duty at the corner turned quite faint at the sight of the catastrophe, but presently recovered sufficiently to hold up the traffic, and ran to see what on earth could be done. It was all so much "up" with Mr Tilly that the only thing possible was to get the hysterical engine-driver to move clear. Then an ambulance was sent for, and Mr Tilly's remains, detached with great difficulty from the road (so firmly had they been pressed into it), were reverently carried away.
Mr Tilly during this had experienced one moment's excruciating pain, resembling the severest neuralgia as his head was ground beneath the wheel, but almost before he realised it, the pain was past, and he found himself, still rather dazed, floating or standing (he did not know which) in the middle of the road. There had been no break in his consciousness; he perfectly recollected slipping, and wondered how he had managed to save himself. He saw the arrested traffic, the policeman making suggestions to the gibbering engine-driver, and he received the very puzzling impression that the traction engine was all mixed up with him. He had a sensation of red-hot coals and boiling water and rivets all around him, but yet no feeling of scalding or burning or confinement. He was, on the contrary, extremely comfortable, and had the most pleasant consciousness of buoyancy and freedom. Then the engine puffed and the wheels went round, and immediately, to his immense surprise, he perceived his own crushed remains, flat as a biscuit, lying on the roadway. He identified them for certain by his clothes, which he had put on for the first time that morning, and one patent leather boot which had escaped demolition.
"But what on earth has happened?" he said. "Here am I, and yet that poor pressed flower of arms and legs is me also. And how terribly upset the driver looks. Why, I do believe that I've been run over! It did hurt for a moment, now I come to think of it... My good man, where are you shoving to? Don't you see me?"
He addressed these two questions to the policeman, who appeared to walk right through him. But the man took no notice, and calmly came out on the other side: it was quite evident that he did not see him, or apprehend him in any way.
Mr Tilly was still feeling rather at sea amid these unusual occurrences, and there began to steal into his mind a glimpse of the fact which was so obvious to the crowd which formed an interested but respectful ring round his body. Men stood with bared heads; women screamed and looked away and looked back again.
"I really believe I'm dead," said he. "That's the only hypothesis which will cover the facts. But I must feel more certain of it before I do anything. Ah! Here they come with the ambulance to look at me. I must be terribly hurt, and yet I don't feel hurt. I should feel hurt surely if I was hurt. I must be dead."
Certainly it seemed the only thing for him to be, but he was far from realising it yet. A lane had been made through the crowd for the stretcher-bearers, and he found himself wincing when they began to detach him from the road.
"Oh, do take care!" he said. "That's the sciatic nerve protruding there surely, isn't it? A–ow! No, it didn't hurt after all. My new clothes, too: I put them on to-day for the first time. What bad luck! Now you're holding my leg upside down. Of course all my money comes out of my trouser pocket. And there's my ticket for the séance; I must have that: I may use it after all."
He tweaked it out of the fingers of the man who had picked it up, and laughed to see the expression of amazement on his face as the card suddenly vanished. That gave him something fresh to think about, and he pondered for a moment over some touch of association set up by it.
"I have it," he thought. "It is clear that the moment I came into connection with that card, it became invisible. I'm invisible myself (of course to the grosser sense), and everything I hold becomes invisible. Most interesting! That accounts for the sudden appearances of small objects at a séance. The spirit has been holding them, and as long as he holds them they are invisible. Then he lets go, and there's the flower or the spirit-photograph on the table. It accounts, too, for the sudden disappearances of such objects. The spirit has taken them, though the scoffers say that the medium has secreted them about his person. It is true that when searched he sometimes appears to have done so; but, after all, that may be a joke on the part of the spirit. Now, what am I to do with myself. Let me see, there's the clock. It's just half-past ten. All this has happened in a few minutes, for it was a quarter past when I left my house. Half-past ten now: what does that mean exactly? I used to know what it meant, but now it seems nonsense."
This was very puzzling. He felt that he used to know what an hour and a minute meant, but the perception of that, naturally enough, had ceased with his emergence from time and space into eternity. The conception of time was like some memory which, refusing to record itself on the consciousness, lies perdu in some dark corner of the brain, laughing at the efforts of the owner to ferret it out. While he still interrogated his mind over this lapsed perception, he found that space as well as time, had similarly grown obsolete for him, for he caught sight of his friend Miss Ida Soulsby, whom he knew was to be present at the séance for which he was bound, hurrying with bird-like steps down the pavement opposite. Forgetting for the moment that he was a disembodied spirit, he made the effort of will which in his past human existence would have set his legs in pursuit of her, and found that the effort of will alone was enough to place him at her side.
"My dear Miss Soulsby," he said, "I was on my way to Mrs Cumberbatch's house when I was knocked down and killed. It was far from unpleasant, a moment's headache——"
So far his natural volubility had carried him before he recollected that he was invisible and inaudible to those still closed in by the muddy vesture of decay, and stopped short. But though it was clear that what he said was inaudible to Miss Soulsby's rather large intelligent-looking ears, it seemed that some consciousness of his presence was conveyed to her finer sense, for she looked suddenly startled, a flush rose to her face, and he heard her murmur, "Very odd. I wonder why I received so vivid an impression of dear Teddy."
That gave Mr Tilly a pleasant shock. He had long admired the lady, and here she was alluding to him in her supposed privacy as "dear Teddy." That was followed by a momentary regret that he had been killed: he would have liked to have been possessed of this information before, and have pursued the primrose path of dalliance down which it seemed to lead. (His intentions, of course, would, as always, have been strictly honourable: the path of dalliance would have conducted them both, if she consented, to the altar, where the primroses would have been exchanged for orange blossom). But his regret was quite short-lived; though the altar now seemed inaccessible, the primrose path might still be open, for many of the spiritualistic circle in which he lived were on the most affectionate terms with their spiritual guides and dear friends who, like himself, had passed over.
From a human point of view these innocent and even elevating flirtations had always seemed to him rather bloodless; but now, looking on them from the far side, he saw how charming they were, for they gave him the sense of still having a place and an identity in the world he had just quitted. He pressed Miss Ida's hand (or rather put himself into the spiritual condition of so doing), and could vaguely feel that it had some hint of warmth and solidity about it. This was gratifying, for it showed that though he had passed out of the material plane, he could still be in touch with it. Still more gratifying was it to observe that a pleased and secret smile overspread Miss Ida's fine features as he gave this token of his presence: perhaps she only smiled at her own thoughts, but in any case it was he who had inspired them.
He felt that he was beginning to adjust himself to the new conditions in which he would now live, or, at any rate, was getting some sort of inkling as to what they were. Time existed no more for him, nor yet did space, since the wish to be at Miss Ida's side had instantly transported him there, and with a view to testing this further he wished himself back in his flat. As swiftly as the change of scene in a cinematograph show he found himself there, and perceived that the news of his death must have reached his servants, for his cook and parlour-maid with excited faces, were talking over the event.
"Poor little gentleman," said his cook. "It seems a shame it does. He never hurt a fly, and to think of one of those great engines laying him out flat. I hope they'll take him to the cemetery from the hospital: I never could bear a corpse in the house."
Miss Talton, the strapping parlour-maid, tossed her head. "Well, I'm not sure that it doesn't serve him right," she observed. "Always messing about with spirits he was, and the knockings and concertinas was awful sometimes when I've been laying out supper in the dining-room. Now perhaps he'll come himself and visit the rest of the loonies. But I'm sorry all the same. A less troublesome little gentleman never stepped. Always pleasant, too, and wages paid to the day."
These regretful comments and encomiums were something of a shock to Mr Tilly. He had imagined that his excellent servants regarded him with a respectful affection, as befitted some sort of demigod, and the rôle of the poor little gentleman was not at all to his mind. This revelation of their true estimate of him, although what they thought of him could no longer have the smallest significance, irritated him profoundly.
"I never heard such impertinence," he said (so he thought) quite out loud, and still intensely earth-bound, was astonished to see that they had no perception whatever of his presence. He raised his voice, replete with extreme irony, and addressed his cook, Mrs Inglis, "You may reserve your criticism on my character for your saucepans," he said. "They will no doubt appreciate them. As regards the arrangements for my funeral, I have already provided for them in my will, and do not propose to consult your convenience. At present——"
"Lor'!" said Mrs Inglis, "I declare I can almost hear his voice, poor little fellow. Husky it was, as if he would do better by clearing his throat. I suppose I'd best be making a black bow to my cap. His lawyers and what not will be here presently."
Mr Tilly had no sympathy with this suggestion. He was immensely conscious of being quite alive, and the idea of his servants behaving as if he were dead, especially after the way in which they had spoken about him, was very vexing. He wanted to give them some striking evidence of his presence and his activity, and he banged his hand angrily on the dining-room table, from which the breakfast equipage had not yet been cleared. Three tremendous blows he gave it, and was rejoiced to see that his parlour-maid looked startled. Mrs Inglis' face remained perfectly placid.
"Why, if I didn't hear a sort of rapping sound," said Miss Talton. "Where did it come from?"
"Nonsense! You've the jumps, dear," said Mrs Inglis, picking up a remaining rasher of bacon on a fork, and putting it into her capacious mouth.
Mr Tilly was delighted at making any impression at all on either of these impercipient females. "Talton!" he called at the top of his voice.
"Why, what's that?" said Talton. "Almost hear his voice, do you say, Mrs Inglis? I declare I did hear his voice then."
"A pack o' nonsense, dear," said Mrs Inglis placidly. "It's your imagination."
Suddenly it struck Mr Tilly that the séance would afford him much easier opportunities of getting through to the earth-plane again. He gave a couple more thumps to the table and, wishing himself at Mrs Cumberbatch's, nearly a mile away, scarcely heard the faint scream of Talton at the sound of his blows before he found himself in West Norfolk Street. He knew the house well, and went straight to the drawing-room, which was the scene of the séances he had so often and so eagerly attended. Mrs Cumberbatch, who had a long spoon-shaped face, had already pulled down the blinds, leaving the room in total darkness except for the glimmer of the night-light which, under a shade of ruby-glass, stood on the chimney-piece in front of the coloured photograph of Cardinal Newman. Round the table were seated Miss Ida Soulsby, Mr and Mrs Meriott (who paid their guineas at least twice a week in order to consult their spiritual guide Abibel and received mysterious advice about their indigestion and investments), and Sir John Plaice, who was much interested in learning the details of his previous incarnation as a Chaldean priest, completed the circle. His guide, who revealed to him his sacerdotal career, was playfully called Mespot. Naturally many other spirits visited them, for Miss Soulsby had no less than three guides in her spiritual household, Sapphire, Semiramis, and Sweet William, while Napoleon and Plato were not infrequent guests. Cardinal Newman, too, was a great favourite, and they encouraged his presence by the singing in unison of "Lead, kindly Light": he could hardly ever resist that.
Mr Tilly observed with pleasure that there was a vacant seat by the table which no doubt had been placed there for him. As he entered, Mrs Cumberbatch peered at her watch.
"Eleven o'clock already," she said, "and Mr Tilly is not here yet. I wonder what can have kept him. What shall we do, dear friends? Abibel gets very impatient sometimes if we keep him waiting."
Mr and Mrs Meriott were getting impatient too, for he terribly wanted to ask about Mexican oils, and she had a very vexing heartburn.
"And Mespot doesn't like waiting either," said Sir John, jealous for the prestige of his protector, "not to mention Sweet William."
Miss Soulsby gave a little silvery laugh. "Oh, but my Sweet William's so good and kind," she said; "besides, I have a feeling, quite a psychic feeling, Mrs Cumberbatch, that Mr Tilly is very close."
"So I am," said Mr Tilly.
"Indeed, as I walked here," continued Miss Soulsby, "I felt that Mr Tilly was somewhere quite close to me. Dear me, what's that?"
Mr Tilly was so delighted at being sensed, that he could not resist giving a tremendous rap on the table, in a sort of pleased applause. Mrs Cumberbatch heard it too.
"I'm sure that's Abibel come to tell us that he is ready," she said. "I know Abibel's knock. A little patience, Abibel. Let's give Mr Tilly three minutes more and then begin. Perhaps, if we put up the blinds, Abibel will understand we haven't begun."
This was done, and Miss Soulsby glided to the window, in order to make known Mr Tilly's approach, for he always came along the opposite pavement and crossed over by the little island in the river of traffic. There was evidently some lately published news, for the readers of early editions were busy, and she caught sight of one of the advertisement-boards bearing in large letters the announcement of a terrible accident at Hyde Park Corner. She drew in her breath with a hissing sound and turned away, unwilling to have her psychic tranquillity upset by the intrusion of painful incidents. But Mr Tilly, who had followed her to the window and saw what she had seen, could hardly restrain a spiritual whoop of exultation.
"Why, it's all about me!" he said. "Such large letters, too. Very gratifying. Subsequent editions will no doubt contain my name."
He gave another loud rap to call attention to himself, and Mrs Cumberbatch, sitting down in her antique chair which had once belonged to Madame Blavatsky, again heard. "Well, if that isn't Abibel again," she said. "Be quiet, naughty. Perhaps we had better begin."
She recited the usual invocation to guides and angels, and leaned back in her chair. Presently she began to twitch and mutter, and shortly afterwards with several loud snorts, relapsed into cataleptic immobility. The room was dark except for the ruby-shaded lamp in front of Cardinal Newman, but to Mr Tilly's emancipated perceptions the withdrawal of mere material light made no difference. Though Mrs Cumberbatch had been moaning and muttering a long time now, Mr Tilly was in no-way conscious of the presence of Abibel and Sweet William and Sapphire and Napoleon. Or any of the other guides which normally flocked to Mrs Cumberbatch's séances.
But while he still wondered at their absence, he saw to his amazed disgust that the medium's hand, now covered with a black glove, and thus invisible to ordinary human vision in the darkness, was groping about the table and clearly searching for the megaphone-trumpet which lay there. He found that he could read her mind with the same ease, though far less satisfaction, as he had read Miss Ida's half an hour ago, and knew that she was intending to apply the trumpet to her own mouth and pretend to be Abibel or Semiramis or somebody, whereas she affirmed that she never touched the trumpet herself. Much shocked at this, he snatched up the trumpet himself, and observed that she was not in trance at all, for she opened her sharp black eyes, and gave a great gasp. "Why, Mr Tilly!" she said. "On the spiritual plane too!"
The rest of the circle was now singing "Lead, kindly Light" in order to encourage Cardinal Newman, and this conversation was conducted under cover of their hoarse crooning voices. But Mr Tilly had the feeling that though Mrs Cumberbatch saw and heard him as clearly as he saw her, he was quite imperceptible to the others.
"Yes, I've been killed," he said, "and I want to get into touch with the material world. That's why I came here. But I want to get into touch with other spirits too, and surely Abibel or Mespot ought to be here by this time."
He received no answer, and her eyes fell before his like those of a detected charlatan. A terrible suspicion invaded his mind. "What? Are you a fraud, Mrs Cumberbatch?" he asked. "Oh, for shame! Think of all the guineas I have paid you."
"You shall have them all back," said Mrs Cumberbatch. "But don't tell on me."
She began to whimper, and he remembered that she often made that sort of sniffling noise when Abibel was taking possession of her.
"That usually means that Abibel is coming," he said, with withering sarcasm. "Come along, Abibel: we're waiting."
"Give me the trumpet," whispered the miserable medium. "Oh, please give me the trumpet!"
"I shall do nothing of the kind," said Mr Tilly indignantly. "I would sooner use it myself."
She gave a sob of relief.
"Oh do, Mr Tilly!" she said. "What a wonderful idea! It will be most interesting to everybody to hear you talk just after you've been killed and before they know. It would be the making of me! And I'm not a fraud, at least not altogether. I do have spiritual perceptions sometimes; spirits do communicate through me. And when they won't come through it's a dreadful temptation to a poor woman to — to supplement them by human agency. And how could I be seeing and hearing you now, and be able to talk to you if I hadn't supernormal powers? You've been killed, so you assure me, and yet I can see and hear you quite plainly. Where did it happen, may I ask, if it's not a painful subject?"
"Hyde Park Corner, half an hour ago," said Mr Tilly. "No, it only hurt for a moment, thanks. But about your other suggestion——"
While the third verse of "Lead, kindly Light" was going on, Mr Tilly applied his mind to this difficult situation. It was quite true that if Mrs Cumberbatch had no power of communication with the unseen she could not possibly have seen him. But she evidently had, and had heard him too. Naturally, now that he was a genuine spirit, he did not want to be mixed up in fraudulent mediumship, for he felt that such a thing would seriously compromise him on the other side, where, probably, it was widely known that Mrs Cumberbatch was a person to be avoided. But, on the other hand, having so soon found a medium through whom he could communicate with his friends, it was hard to take a high moral view, and say that he would have nothing whatever to do with her.
"I don't know if I trust you," he said. "I shouldn't have a moment's peace if I thought that you would be sending all sorts of bogus messages from me to the circle, which I wasn't responsible for at all. You've done it with Abibel and Mespot. How can I know that when I don't choose to communicate through you, you won't make up all sorts of piffle on your own account?"
She positively squirmed in her chair. "Oh, I'll turn over a new leaf," she said. "I will leave all that sort of thing behind me. And I am a medium. Aren't I more real to you than any of the others? Don't I belong to your plane in a way that none of the others do? I may be occasionally fraudulent, and I can no more get Napoleon here than I can fly, but I'm genuine as well. Oh, Mr Tilly, be indulgent to us poor human creatures! It isn't so long since you were one of us yourself."
Mr Tilly glanced at the other sitters and then back to the medium, who, to keep the others interested, was making weird gurgling noises like an undervitalised siphon. Certainly she was far clearer to him than were the others, and her argument that she was able to see and hear him had great weight. And then a new and curious perception came to him. Her mind seemed spread out before him like a pool of slightly muddy water, and he figured himself as standing on a header-board above it, perfectly able, if he chose, to immerse himself in it. The objection to so doing was its muddiness, its materiality; the reason for so doing was that he felt that then he would be able to be heard by the others, possibly to be seen by them, certainly to come into touch with them. As it was, the loudest bangs on the table were only faintly perceptible.
"I'm beginning to understand," he said.
"Oh, Mr Tilly! Just jump in like a kind good spirit," she said. "Make your own test-conditions. Put your hand over my mouth to make sure that I'm not speaking, and keep hold of the trumpet."
"And you'll promise not to cheat any more?" he asked.
"Never!"
He made up his mind.
"All right then," he said, and, so to speak, dived into her mind.
He experienced the oddest sensation. It was like passing out of some fine, sunny air into the stuffiest of unventilated rooms. Space and time closed over him again: his head swam, his eyes were heavy. Then, with the trumpet in one hand, he laid the other firmly over her mouth. Looking round, he saw that the room seemed almost completely dark, but that the outline of the figures sitting round the table had vastly gained in solidity.
"Here I am!" he said briskly.
Miss Soulsby gave a startled exclamation. "That's Mr Tilly's voice!" she whispered.
"Why, of course it is," said Mr Tilly. "I've just passed over at Hyde Park Corner under a traction engine."
He felt the dead weight of the medium's mind, her conventional conceptions, her mild, unreal piety pressing in on him from all sides, stifling and confusing him. Whatever he said had to pass through muddy water.
"There's a wonderful feeling of joy and lightness," he said. "I can't tell you of the sunshine and happiness. We're all very busy and active, helping others. And it's such a pleasure, dear friends, to be able to get into touch with you all again. Death is not death: it is the gate of life."
He broke off suddenly. "Oh, I can't stand this," he said to the medium. "You make me talk such twaddle. Do get your stupid mind out of the way. Can't we do anything in which you won't interfere with me so much?"
"Can you give us some spirit lights round the room?" suggested Mrs Cumberbatch in a sleepy voice. "You have come through beautifully, Mr Tilly. It's too dear of you!"
"You're sure you haven't arranged some phosphorescent patches already?" asked Mr Tilly suspiciously.
"Yes, there are one or two near the chimney-piece," said Mrs Cumberbatch, "but none anywhere else. Dear Mr Tilly, I swear there are not. Just give us a nice star with long rays on the ceiling!"
Mr Tilly was the most good-natured of men, always willing to help an unattractive female in distress, and he proceeded, by the mere effort of his imagination, to light a beautiful big star with red and violet rays on the ceiling. Of course it was not nearly as brilliant as his own conception of it, for its light had to pass through the opacity of the medium's mind, but it was still a most striking object, and elicited gasps of applause from the company.
"Oh, thank you, Mr Tilly!" whispered the medium. "It was lovely! Would a photograph of it be permitted on some future occasion, if you would be so kind as to reproduce it again?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Mr Tilly irritably. "I want to get out. I'm very hot and uncomfortable. And it's all so cheap."
"Cheap?" ejaculated Mrs Cumberbatch. "Why, there's not a medium in London whose future wouldn't be made by a real genuine star like that, say, twice a week."
"But I wasn't run over in order that I might make the fortune of mediums," said Mr Tilly. "I want to go: it's all rather degrading. And I want to see something of my new world. I don't know what it's like yet."
"Oh, but, Mr Tilly," said she. "You told us lovely things about it, how busy and happy you were."
"No, I didn't. It was you who said that, at least it was you who put it into my head."
Even as he wished, he found himself emerging from the dull waters of Mrs Cumberbatch's mind.
"There's the whole new world waiting for me," he said. "I must go and see it. I'll come back and tell you, for it must be full of marvellous revelations."
Mrs Cumberbatch stirred. "The power is failing," she said, in a deep voice, which Mr Tilly felt was meant to imitate his own. "I must leave you now, dear friends——"
He felt much exasperated. "The power isn't failing," he shouted. "It wasn't I who said that." But he had emerged too far, and perceived that nobody except the medium heard him.
"Oh, don't be vexed, Mr Tilly," she said. "That's only a formula. But you're leaving us very soon. Not time for just one materialisation? They are more convincing than anything to most inquirers."
"Not one," said he. "You don't understand how stifling it is even to speak through you and make stars. But I'll come back as soon as I find there's anything new that I can get through to you. What's the use of my repeating all that stale stuff about being busy and happy? They've been told that often enough already. Besides, I have got to see if it's true. Good-bye: don't cheat any more."
He dropped his card of admittance to the séance on the table and heard murmurs of excitement as he floated off.
The news of the wonderful star, and the presence of Mr Tilly at the séance within half an hour of his death, which at the time was unknown to any of the sitters, spread swiftly through spiritualistic circles. The Psychical Research Society sent investigators to take independent evidence from all those present, but were inclined to attribute the occurrence to a subtle mixture of thought-transference and unconscious visual impression, when they heard that Miss Soulsby had, a few minutes previously, seen a news-board in the street outside recording the accident at Hyde Park Corner. This explanation was rather elaborate, for it postulated that Miss Soulsby, thinking of Mr Tilly's non-arrival, had combined that with the accident at Hyde Park Corner, and had probably (though unconsciously) seen the name of the victim on another news-board and had transferred the whole by telepathy to the mind of the medium. As for the star on the ceiling, though they could not account for it, they certainly found remains of phosphorescent paint on the panels of the wall above the chimney-piece, and came to the conclusion that the star had been produced by some similar contrivance. So they rejected the whole thing, which was a pity, since, for once, the phenomena were absolutely genuine.
Miss Soulsby continued to be a constant and enthusiastic attendant at Mrs Cumberbatch's séances, but never experienced the presence of Mr Tilly again. On that the reader may put any interpretation he pleases. It looks to me somewhat as if he had found something else to do.
'John' (no relation)
About the author
John Temple is the pen-name of a writer who has studied and practised the occult sciences for more than 60 years. He graduated from Cambridge University with a first in Theology and Religious Studies and was ordained as a Minister in the Anglican Church in 1957. He left the Church in 1972 and has since lectured to students around the world on a wide variety of occult, religious and mystical subjects.
John retired in 2002 and now lives quietly in London with his wife, two Yorkshire terriers and a talkative African Grey Parrot called John, shown in typically meditative mood at left.
Very little is known of E. F. Benson's interest in the supernatural, other than the obvious fact that he, like Charles Dickens, was fascinated by it. Anyone with a modest acquaintance with occultism, who has read even a fraction of Benson's supernatural stories, cannot be left in any doubt that there is some genuine occult information in them. There is also a very great deal of misinformation and guesswork, as we shall see.
Where he obtained his knowledge is not certain. Like many of his contemporaries with an interest in the supernatural, it is likely that Theosophy and Spiritualism provided the source for much, if not all of it. Attentive readers will note that Madame Blavatsky's chair features in the story. In fact, she is mentioned in several of Benson's supernatural tales. She even pops up in the Mapp and Lucia stories mentioned in my Foreword, in the form of a painting of the enigmatic Russian occultist.
We also know that ghosts were a regular topic in the Benson household. At the tender age of sixteen Benson was one of the founding members of The Cambridge Association for Spiritual Inquiry, less formally known as the Cambridge Ghost Club, inaugurated in 1851. Like the Society for Psychical Research which was founded some thirty years later, the 'Ghost Club' collected and investigated reports of hauntings. This, together with his frequent attendance at séances, is the most likely source of most of his knowledge and material.
Despite the occult truths which can be discerned in Mr Tilly's Séance there is no evidence that Benson was inspired by the metaphysical or religious aspects of the supernatural in the same way Charles Dickens was. He openly admitted that he wrote his ghost stories for profit and entertainment and, if at all possible, to scare the living daylights out of his readers! As he wrote in his autobiography Final Edition published in 1940, "The narrator, I think, must succeed in frightening himself before he can think of frightening his readers."
By this criteria, Mr Tilly's Séance is a consummate flop. But that, in my view, is also its greatest success. In failing to tingle our spines it succeeds in stimulating our brains. This begs the question of whether or not Benson was consciously aware of the occult truths in his ghost story. I rather think he wasn't or he would not have included so much misinformation. But that in no way diminishes the validity of the truths he does mention, as we shall see.
The first of these truths and perhaps the most significant is that most people who pass over don't know they're dead. Like Mr Tilly, it takes some considerable time for the reality of their situation to sink in. This is especially true of sudden, unexpected deaths such as the authors of this website illustrate in their marvellous story of the Jihadi and the Jinn when a group of diners find themselves in the next world after having been blown to bits by a suicide bomber. Consciousness, in such cases, is continuous, as Benson correctly says.
The second truth — following on directly from this — is that conditions in the part of the Astral World Mr Tilly finds himself in, are almost indistinguishable from conditions on earth. Were this truth more widely known, much of the fear and distress associated with death and dying would be removed at a stroke.
The third truth is the feeling of 'buoyancy and freedom' Mr Tilly experiences once freed from the physical body, a fact attested to by generations of psychics, as well as many people who have undergone so-called 'Near Death Experiences' (NDEs). We learn that Mr Tilly felt 'extremely comfortable' in his Astral body. Had Benson heard or read this, or was it guesswork on his part? We shall never know. But it confirms the occult doctrine that the Astral body is a much finer vehicle than the physical body, though still material in every way.
The alteration in the perception of time and space Mr Tilly experiences is another occult truth, or we might say fact, proving, as the Chinese Sage Li Wang Ho taught long ago, that neither of these two elements are what we think they are. Some of my readers will have experienced this strange shift in the perception of time during deep mediation when minutes seem like hours and hours seem to pass in a flash.
But there is no question of the dead passing into 'eternity' as Benson writes, if by this he means a place or state of consciousness where time and space cease to exist. The departed experience time and space just as surely as we do on earth, the only difference lies in their perception of them. One cannot just 'wish' oneself somewhere else like the fictional wizards in the Harry Potter books. This is yet more guesswork by Benson. What takes a certain amount of time and space here may seem to take less in the non-physical (but still material) dimensions or planes of the Astral World. I repeat; it is all a question of perception and perception is a function of consciousness which is different on the different planes we may reach after death or during deep meditation.
However, it is true that the dead can make their presence felt, provided the subject is sensitive and receptive like Miss Soulsby in Benson's story. There can be few people who have not experienced this phenomenon at some time in their lives. Sometimes it seems one can almost feel the loving touch of a departed loved one and a pleasant warmth steals over us that cannot be accounted for.
Benson's speculations about the disappearance and re-appearance of material objects, such as the ticket for the séance which Mr Tilly snatches from the hand of the policeman are sheer whimsy. It would require too lengthy and complex a digression to explain why Benson is wrong in this, but I assure you he is. Readers who wish for a fuller answer will find the what's, whys, who's and wherefores of all such supernormal phenomena thoroughly explained in such books as Isis Unveiled and The Golden Star.
Mr Tilly next muses that 'sprit' contact with Miss Soulsby might develop into an actual relationship. This too is wishful thinking on Benson's part. He was probably influenced by the concept of 'angel' guides which was an article of faith among Spiritualists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, such liaisons are not quite so 'charming' as Mr Tilly seems to think! The Spirit 'wives' and 'husbands' of the Spiritualists were simply the succubi and incubi of medieval times clothed in Victorian habiliments.
There can be no crueller or sadder imposture than the personation of our departed loved ones by low, earthbound astral entities. The Spiritualists who succumbed to such contacts generally deteriorated both mentally and physically. Often they met with an untimely death on account of the constant heavy losses of their vital essences which are soaked up by these elementaries, wrongly called 'spirits' by the ignorant.
The modern fascination with channeling is a worrying revival of such unhealthy intercourse and, as we may read in Bombast and Flitterflop's investigation of the practise, one of its principal exponents, Don Elkins, committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a handgun. Prior to his death, he had suffered several months of mental, emotional, and physical deterioration to the point where he was unable to sleep or eat solid foods. Benson does not address these evils in his story, nor, so far as I am aware, was he interested in the grave dangers Spiritualism poses to body, mind and spirit. As I said earlier, he wrote ghost stories for profit and entertainment, not for the moral instruction and spiritual enlightenment of the public. In that regard he was very different to Charles Dickens who was vitally, some might say, obsessively concerned with both.
The ability of the dead to attract the attention of the living with knocks, raps and shouting as Mr Tilly does, is an example of the misinformation I mentioned earlier. It may make for an amusing plot device but unless the deceased is an accomplished magician who learnt certain techniques while alive on earth, it is quite impossible to affect conditions and persons in this world without the services of an elemental, or several. As Mr Tilly was really a rather undistinguished individual, we may safely say that the author is once again indulging in wishful-thinking and guesswork.
Readers who are interested in the 'mechanics' behind such psychic phenomena as raps, knocks, moving furniture, flights of crockery, 'spirit' photographs, gusts of icy wind, and so on and so forth, will find detailed and true explanations about them in Vision Five of The Golden Star. The same chapter also recounts what happened at a séance when a genuine medium was able to get in touch with powerful elementaries and other unsavoury inhabitants of the Astral World.
As we may read in the aforementioned chapter of The Golden Star, "The objective phenomena of Spiritualism are the results of the activities or interventions of Elementals, or semi-intelligent nature forces, and elementaries or shells, retaining very little of the personal memories, but in which the more material or animal instincts survive. The latter survive the body for only a limited time; gradually all consciousness departs and they disintegrate. The purer the personality, the less their vitality; the coarser the human being from whom they were separated, the longer their survival, and the greater their chance of finding their way into the séance room.
"No real good can come of any intercourse with these beings. Even if not actually wicked, they are always imperfect and weak and their influence can never be elevating. Moreover, it is wrong to encourage such remnants into activity or to feed them upon the vital essences coming from the sitters, thus galvanizing them into a fictitious renewal of their existence. Association with these beings can never benefit mankind in any way, and sometimes it causes great harm."
On a lighter note, I particularly enjoyed Mr Tilly's reaction to his servants' gossip about him and I'm sure the reader did too. Which of us has not wondered what people really think about us? Speaking personally, with the singular exception of the lovely lady who 'does for us' twice a week, all my acquaintances, friends and relatives only ever say the very nicest things about me. I should explain that the cleaning woman is an inveterate liar...
The ability to think oneself elsewhere and instantly be there in the afterlife is an example of a half-truth. Movement in the Astral World is not much different to locomotion in this world. The same temporal and spatial laws apply to both. The difference is that, as I explained earlier, one's perception of time and space is altered such that we may seem to be capable of Mr Tilly's prodigious feats of instantaneous relocation.
E. F. Benson, or Fred Benson as he was affectionately known to his friends and family, probably heard this particular half-truth at one of the many séances he attended. The six Mapp and Lucia stories, mentioned in my introduction, teem with episodes in which the characters dabble with the occult. Such was their enthusiasm for all things supernatural that Benson coined a new verb, to 'weej' — meaning to contact 'spirits' using a Ouija board — to describe the phenomenon that obsesses them.
The ubiquity of fraud and cheating in all and any psychic activities is beautifully exposed by Benson during the séance presided over by Mrs Cumberbatch. One cannot help liking this awful woman who is so very typical of the many troubled psychics I've met and known over the years. They cannot altogether ignore their 'gift' which so often proves to be a curse, though many try. Should they attempt to profit from it for their own personal gain — which many do — they invariably find it becomes weaker and weaker, until in the end it deserts them entirely.
There is a little-known occult law which seemingly governs these matters. I do not pretend to know how or why it works in the ways it does, but time and time again I have observed that those who accept payment for psychic readings, whether by phone, face-to-face, or in any other way, sooner or later lose the ability to see beyond the veil. I am speaking of people who possess genuine supernormal abilities, not the pretenders to psychic powers who bamboozle the unwary seeker.
Benson may have known about this law or he may not, it doesn't matter very much. What matters is that there is an important moral lesson in this, just as there are lessons to be learned from the motives of the sitters who attend the séance. Three suffer from the vices of avarice, anxiety and pride, while the fourth, the delectable Miss Soulsby, is both vain and greedy in claiming no less than three spirit guides!
Mr Meriott was there to solicit 'insider' tips about his financial investments, his wife craved advice about her health, and Sir John Plaice wanted to learn about his previous life as a Chaldean priest. It is amusing that those who profess an interest in discovering who they were in a previous incarnation never consider the possibility that they might have been kitchen maids or boot boys. They all want to be Napoleon, Cleopatra, Odysseus or Helen of Troy. No one ever wants to recall a life lived collecting human excrement!
I am not making that last avocation up. The grandfather of a very good friend of my youngest daughter was employed in exactly that capacity in a small English village in the mid 19th century. The job even had a title: "night soil collector." Night soil being a euphemism for the contents of people's privies which, to save embarrassment, was usually collected at night in horse-drawn carts. I would like to think he was reincarnated as a chartered accountant or even a hedge fund manager but knowing how fond the gods are of irony, he probably spent his next life flogging useless shit to trendy women of a certain age in a boutique in Notting Hill!
But back to our story. Mr Tilly 'dives' into Mrs Cumberbatch's mind and experiences the 'oddest sensation. He feels 'the dead weight' of the medium's mind' and likens sharing it to passing through 'muddy water.' Whether Benson had himself experienced elevated states of consciousness in which the Higher Mind is entirely freed from the low vibrations of the body, or was merely repeating what he had read or heard about them, I cannot say, but his description is quite correct.
The mental atmosphere of those whose thinking is firmly glued to the physical, material world (which, frankly, is most people!), is exactly like 'muddy water', dark, sluggish and oppressive. Here we encounter another important occult truth which is not obvious. Angels — by which I mean highly evolved discarnate human beings — find the mental atmosphere of the average human being so suffocating and repellent they will not approach, much less enter it. The only beings who do are the elementaries mentioned earlier.
In the story Mr Tilly is able to read the medium's mind. This is another half-truth. The departed do not acquire mental powers in death they never possessed in life. Neither, with very rare exceptions, are they able to contact the living in the manner Mr Tilly does. However, it is perfectly possible to perceive the general tenor of another person's thoughts. Many of us do this quite unconsciously when we remark that "I was just going to say that", or "I was thinking the same exact thing!"
What is not possible is for the departed to take possession of the living. What really happens in such cases is that an elemental or elementary impersonating the deceased may possess the medium or sitters at a séance.
Benson's stories abound with irony and this one is no exception. The only time Mrs Cumberbatch did not cheat was when the recently deceased Mr Tilly attended her séance. Not only was he a genuine 'guide', but the phenomena he manifested was genuine too. All of which remained undetected and unsuspected by the clever boffins from the Psychical Research Society who pronounced the séance a fake and the medium a thoroughgoing fraud!
The final truth I would like to leave you with is that the dead do not appear at séances, or rather what we might call the average human being who is neither especially good nor especially bad, does so. Hence, Mr Tilly's appearance at the séance is another piece of wishful thinking by Benson.
The disintegrating shells of the personalities of erstwhile human beings may and do appear, but these should be classed among the elementaries I mentioned earlier. Mr Tilly, on the other hand, as Benson tells us in his final paragraph, 'found something else to do'. Which was very sensible of him as I'm sure you'll all agree!
Life after Death. The true facts about death explained from the standpoint of Occult Science.
Consciousness after death. In the fourth of their Astral Conversations two occult students, Bombast and Flitterflop, meet to discuss what happens to us after death and what parts of our consciousness survive.
Psychicism and Spirituality. An investigation of the difference between the psychic and the spiritual and the dangers of psychic powers.
Channeling: the dangers it poses for practitioners and believers alike.
In addition to the resources listed above, John Temple has written several further articles for us. These are listed in order of publication below, oldest first.
The Search for Truth. In this series of twelve articles the author explores and investigates the links between Religion and the Occult. In November 2024, a slightly different collection of these twelve articles approved and edited by the author was published by Aula Lucis in a limited edition hardcover book. See our Occult Books page for more information.
