"Beyond"

People who believe in ghosts met last week in Paris--the International Spiritualist Congress. How to greet a ghost when you meet him, was one question that immediately arose. The French delegates said to say: "Welcome, friend." English folk present demurred, said to teach children so would be to frighten them of apparitions in advance.

Then there was the question as to whether or not spiritualism is a religion, a philosophy or a moral code. None could decide that, save for himself alone.

There was the matter of an international spiritualist flag, and one was adopted, white with a golden sun (the astral body) spreading bright rays (psychic emanations) after the pattern of Japan's rising sun. There was the matter of mourning, and they passed a resolution denouncing rites by the "living" for the "dead" as "egotistical". There was laying of wreaths on the grave of the Unknown Soldier, ("They live always," read Sir Conan Doyle's wreath. "There is no death; there are no dead," read that of Mrs. M. D. Cadwallader of Chicago.); and there was denunciation of medium-denunciators such as Harry Houdini, the skeptical handcuff king.

Mrs. Cadwallader and Sir Arthur took lively parts in this denouncing, the former inducing her hearers to accept her plan for erecting a monument at Rochester, N. Y., to the Fox sisters* as "the founders of spiritualism." When it was Sir Arthur's turn to speak--malicious spirits had interruped him at the opening meeting -- an over-flow crowd of some 1,500 excitable French people milled about the doors of the auditorium, pushing and shoving and grunting to get in and hear. Lady Doyle took the platform, expostulated, when over the stage came a bursting-party of rowdies, who jostled her rudely and tore down the draperies. Cane and papers in hand, Sir Arthur prepared to flee. Peace returned, however, and the famed ghost-seer was enabled to second everything that Mrs. Cadwallader had said.

It was the exhibits and testimonials that most interested those hard-headed rowdies from Paris streets. Your Frenchman is a logical fellow, outside of his religion, and the evidence for spiritualism that was brought before the Paris Congress had a decidedly practical turn.

Kissing Ghost. There was Madeleine, for instance, an amorous apparition, whose medium was a rough country cartman with a thick blond mustache. Delegate Thibault, who related Madeleine's doings, said he thought she was a materialization of a 19-year-old girl who died in 1908. She was summoned, he explained, by an arrangement of red lights and phosphorescent screens, which went sailing around the room when she had begun to osculate. She was quit partial to a member of the Portuguese delegation (on the cheek), but often stayed with Delegate Thibault, for hours at a time.

Ghost Stories. At a soiree held to swap stories, the Duchess of Hamilton, who specializes in healing, told of flooding one patient so strongly with her curative power that his watch stopped as though electrically shocked. Some one else told of having summoned Edward VII of England, who exclaimed upon arrival: "There are no kings here. Call me Teddy!" A Scotch doctor had spoken from "beyond" with a rich burr. A baritone spirit had sung Love's Old Sweet Song quite loudly.

Painting Ghost. Prom the north of France had came a middle-aged coal miner, Augustin Lesage. In 1912, working as he had worked for 20 years far down in a black bowel of the earth, Augustin heard "voices," like those Joan of Arc declared called her, telling him to stop mining and go to draw and paint. Thinking himself feverish, he went home to bed, whence a power drove him to a city to buy complete painter's equipment, none of the names for which had Augustin ever before known. Back in his cottage, he painted--or rather a spirit within him did, who signed the canvases "Leonardo da Vinci"--exotic decorative designs, Oriental arabesques of rich color and a draughtsmanship at once high- ly technical and naive. An impartial critic described the work as looking "like the work of the great master executed during an attack of de-lirium."

Ghostly Cure. Jeanne Devors, 23, of Belgium, had been operated upon twice and given up as hopeless with her deformed, tubercular hip. Delegate Connecks had treated her, including direct prayer to God and magnetic passes by mediums, and behold! the hip regains its shape! Jeanne walks!

Ghost Radio. The Congress agreed that human mediums are quite unreliable for communication with departed spirits. They have a way of picking up irrelevancies and fragmentary messages that confuse. It was thought desirable (none said possible or likely) that delicate radio equipment should be perfected soon for direct communication with "beyond."

*The Fox sisters were four--Margaretta, Kate, Maria, Leah--of whom the first two were famed, beginning with Kate's interpretation (at the age of 9) of knockings heard in the Fox house at Hydesville, N. Y., in 1848. Margaretta concurred in her sister's decision that the ghost was a murdered peddler. They translated one knock for "no," two for "yea," pointed at the alphabet to enable the spirit to spell out words. At Maria's home in Rochester, Kate and Margaretta established contact with deceased relatives, spread their fame, went to Buffalo where their public seances, first of the kind in history (excepting necromacy, etc.), were packed to the guards. Editor Horace Greeley and Publisher William Cullen Bryant displayed intense interest when the sisters went to New York City. The seeming phenomena were popularly regarded as "a new revelation." In 1867, a learned U. S. judge estimated there were 10 million spiritualists in the U. S. (2/5 the population) ; more modest estimators said 3 million. Europeans, especially the English, embraced the movement with equal fervor. Late in life, Margaretta called a newspaper reporter, confessed that all the rappings she and Kate had caused to be heard, had been fraudulently perpetrated. Loose-jointed, she had created the sounds by loudly cracking, dislocating her knees and toes. Margaretta repeated this confession from many public stages. Bearing in mind that Margaretta was paid well for her theatrical engagements, convinced spiritualists today suspect more trickery in the confession than in the spirit manifestations.