The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [150]
On February 11, Rector delivered another message from Myers, one that gave some clues as to what he was trying to do. He told Piddington that hope, star, and Browning were all important in Mrs. Verrall’s script.
With that, Nora Sidgwick realized that all those ramblings about stars made actual sense. Myers was ever a lover of poetry—and “Abt Vogler” was a poem written by Robert Browning. It was a tale of a musician, included in that same 1864 book that featured “Mr. Sludge, the Medium.”
Nora hurried to find it among her poetry books:
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star.
“The mystic three,” wrote Miss Verrall on February 17, “and a star above it all / rats everywhere in Hamelin town / now do you understand?” She had been drawing as well—a crescent moon, a star, and a winged bird. Her illustrated message was signed “Henry.”
Mrs. Verrall now wrote down a message, signed from Myers, saying that he was worried that Rector did not know the poem so familiar to the rest of them: “I am most anxious to make Rector understand about the name of that poem.”
Some weeks later, while entranced, Mrs. Piper carefully wrote the words, “Abt Vogler.”
“Now, DEAR MRS. SIDGWICK, in future have no doubt or fear of so-called death, as there is none, as there is certainly intelligent life beyond it.”
Mrs. Verrall was writing messages, purporting again to be from Myers.
“Yes, it’s a great comfort,” Nora replied.
“Yes, and I have helped proclaim it for you all,” the Myers script continued, explaining that he had chosen the Browning poem because it best fitted his own life, wandering the stars. He had more to say, but it was so incredibly frustrating getting even the smallest shred of a thought across. Myers hadn’t realized in life how difficult it would be—even between old friends—to reach through the drawn curtains of death.
“You must patch things together as best you can. Remember we do not give odd or singular words without a deep and hidden meaning.”
MEANWHILE, Piddington found himself fixated on the sequence of recurring words in the messages, the repetition of star, rats, arts, stare. They reminded him of anagrams, which had been one of Richard Hodgson’s favorite recreations. Hadn’t Mrs. Piper written earlier that Hodgson was helping with the translations? And hadn’t Mrs. Verrall made a reference to anagrams?
Piddington wrote to ask William James if there were any papers in Hodgson’s effects, those still remaining in Boston, that contained anagrams. James’s oldest son, Harry, who was co-executor with his father of Hodgson’s estate, obligingly sifted through the personal papers remaining.
In one of the boxes, Harry James found a sheet covered with Hodgson’s cramped scrawl, which he mailed to London. It was a practice for an anagram, and it read:
RATES
STARE
TEARS
TEARS
TARE
ARE ST
STARE
A REST
RESTA
STAR
TARS
RATS
ARTS
TRAS
“I confess that when this came into my hands I felt as I suppose people do who have seen a ghost,” Piddington said, shaken out of his usual calm by that creased sheet of notepaper.
REV. MAY PEPPER continued her career as a star of the New York media and the bane of James Hyslop’s plans for restoring scientific credibility to psychical research.
Traditional psychologists had shown no interest in Hyslop’s institute, scuttling his plans to integrate their work with his less orthodox interests. But thanks to John Piddington’s intervention, he’d gained sanction to rename his research institute the American Society for Psychical Research and build on the old organization’s foundation.
Hyslop had barely started a new round of fund raising and assurances that psychical research was a meaningful science when Pepper went on trial for using her “spiritualistic gifts” to bilk a wealthy industrialist out of home and fortune.
Since her temple days, Mrs. Pepper