The Unknown Guest(陌生客)

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THE UNKNOWN GUEST

THE UNKNOWN

GUEST

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

INTRODUCTION

My Essay on Death[1] led me to make a conscientious enquiry into the

present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I have

endeavoured to render as complete as possible. I had hoped that a single

volume would be able to contain the result of these investigations, which, I

may say at once, will teach nothing to those who have been over the same

ground and which have nothing to recommend them except their sincerity,

their impartiality and a certain scrupulous accuracy. But, as I proceeded, I

saw the field widening under my feet, so much so that I have been obliged

to divide my work into two almost equal parts. The first is now published

and is a brief study of veridical apparitions and hallucinations and haunted

houses, or, if you will, the phantasms of the living and the dead; of those

manifestations which have been oddly and not very appropriately

described as "psychometric"; of the knowledge of the future:

presentiments, omens, premonitions, precognitions and the rest; and lastly

of the Elberfeld horses. In the second, which will be published later, I shall

treat of the miracles of Lourdes and other places, the phenomena of so

called materialization, of the divining-rod and of fluidic asepsis, not

unmindful withal of a diamond dust of the miraculous that hangs over the

greater marvels in that strange atmosphere into which we are about to

pass.

[1] Published in English, in an enlarged form, under the title of Our

Eternity (London and New York, 1913)--Translator's Note.

When I speak of the present position of the mystery, I of course do not

mean the mystery of life, its end and its beginnings, nor yet the great

riddle of the universe which lies about us. In this sense, all is mystery, and,

as I have said elsewhere, is likely always to remain so; nor is it probable

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

that we shall ever touch any point of even the utmost borders of

knowledge or certainty. It is here a question of that which, in the midst of

this recognized and usual mystery, the familiar mystery of which we are

almost oblivious, suddenly disturbs the regular course of our general

ignorance. In themselves, these facts which strike us as supernatural are no

more so than the others; possibly they are rarer, or, to be more accurate,

less frequently or less easily observed. In any case, their deep-seated cause,

while being probably neither more remote nor more difficult access, seem

to lie hidden in an unknown region less often visited by our science, which

after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory espression of our ignorance.

Today, thanks to the labours of the Society for Psychical Research and a

host of other seekers, we are able to approach these phenomena as a whole

with a certain confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner

stories, old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves at

last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground. This does not mean that there

are no other supernatural phenomena besides those collected in the

publications of the society in question and in a few of the more weighty

reviews which have adopted the same methods. Notwithstanding all their

diligence, which for over thirty years has been ransacking the obscure

corners of our planet, it is inevitable that a good many things escape their

notice, besides which the rigour of their investigations makes them reject

three fourths of those which are brought before them. But we may say that

the twenty-six volumes of the society is Proceedings and the fifteen or

sixteen volumes of its Journal, together with the twenty-three annuals of

the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, to mention only this one periodical

of signal excellence, embrace for the moment the whole field of the

extraordinary and offer some instances of all the abnormal manifestations

of the inexplicable. We are henceforth able to classify them, to divide and

subdivide them into general, species and varieties. This is not much, you

may say; but it is thus that every science begins and furthermore that many

a one ends. We have therefore sufficient evidence, facts that can scarcely

be disputed, to enable us to consult them profitably, to recognize whither

they lead, to form some idea of their general character and perhaps to trace

their sole source by gradually removing the weeds and rubbish which for

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

so many hundreds and thousands of years have hidden it from our eyes.

Truth to tell, these supernatural manifestations seem less marvelous

and less fantastic than they did some centuries ago; and we are at first a

little disappointed. One would think that even the mysterious has its ups

and downs and remains subject to the caprices of some strange extra

mundane fashion; or perhaps, to be more exact, it is evident that the

majority of those legendary miracles could not withstand the rigorous

scrutiny of our day. Those which emerge triumphant from the test and defy

our less credulous and more penetrating vision are all the more worthy of

holding our attention. They are not the last survivals of the riddle, for this

continues to exist in its entirety and grows greater in proportion as we

throw light upon it; but we can perhaps see in them the supreme or else the

first efforts of a force which does not appear to reside wholly in our sphere.

They suggest blows struck from without by an Unknown even more

unknown than that which we think we know, an Unknown which is not

that of the universe, not that which we have gradually made into an

inoffensive and amiable Unknown, even as we have made the universe a

son of province of the earth, but a stranger arriving from another world, an

unexpected visitor who comes in a rather sinister way to trouble the

comfortable quiet in which we were slumbering, rocked by the firm and

watchful hand of orthodox science.

Let us first be content to enumerate them. We shall find that we have

table-turning, with its raps; the movements and transportations of

inanimate objects without contact; luminous phenomena; lucidite, or

clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or hallucinations; haunted houses;

bilocations and so forth; communications with the dead; the divining-rod;

the miraculous cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly

the famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be not

mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently attested, constitute the

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

residue or caput mortuum of this latter-day miracle.

Everybody has heard of table-turning, which may be called the A B C

of occult science. It is so common and so easily produced that the Society

for Psychical Research has not thought it necessary to devote special

attention to the subject. I need hardly add that we must take count only of

movements or "raps" obtained without the hands touching the table, so as

to remove every possibility of fraud or unconscious complicity. To obtain

these movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those who

form the "chain" should include a person endowed with mediumistic

faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the reach of any one who cares

to try it under the requisite conditions; and it is as incontestable as the

polarization of light or as crystallization by means of electric currents.

In the same group may be placed the movement and transportation of

objects without contact, the touches of spirit hands, the luminous

phenomena and materialization. Like table-turning, they demand the

presence of a medium. I need not observe that we here find ourselves in

the happy hunting-ground of the impostor and that even the most powerful

mediums, those possessing the most genuine and undeniable gifts, such as

the celebrated Eusapia Paladino, are upon occasion--and the occasion

occurs but too often--incorrigible cheats. But, when we have made every

allowance for fraud, there nevertheless remains a considerable number of

incidents so rigorously attested that we most needs accept them or else

abandon all human certainty.

The case is not quite the same with levitation and the wonders

performed, so travelers tell us, by certain Indian jugglers. Though the

prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly proved and can doubtless

be physiologically explained, there are many other tricks on which we

have so far no authoritative pronouncement. I will not speak of the

"mango-tree" and the "basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the

"fire-walk" and the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain more of a

mystery.

The fire-walk, or walk on red-hot bricks or glowing coals, is a sort of

religious ceremony practiced in the Indies, in some of the Polynesian

islands, in Mauritius and elsewhere. As the result of incantations uttered

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

by the high priest, the bare feet of the faithful who follow him upon the

bed of burning pebbles or brands seem to become almost insensible to the

touch of fire. Travelers are anything but agreed whether the heat of the

surface traversed is really intolerable, whether the extraordinary power of

endurance is explained by the thickness of the horny substance which

protects the soles of the natives' feet, whether the feet are burnt or whether

the skin remains untouched; and, under present conditions, the question is

too uncertain to make it worth while to linger over it.

"Rope-climbing" is more extraordinary. The juggler takes his stand in

an open space, far from any tree or house. He is accompanied by a child;

and his only impedimenta are a bundle of ropes and an old canvas sack.

The juggler throws one end of the rope up in the air; and the rope, as

though drawn by an invisible hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky

until the end disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the

blue two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard picks

up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic words over it and

opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and smiling to the spectators.

This is the usual form taken by this particular sorcery. It is pretty rare

and seems to be practised only by one sect which originated in the North-

West Provinces. It has not yet perhaps been sufficiently investigated to

take its place among the evidence mentioned show. If it were really as I

have described, it could hardly be explained save by some strange

hallucinatory power emanating from the juggler or illusionist, who

influences the audience by suggestion and makes it see what he wishes. In

that case the suggestion or hallucination covers a very extensive area. In

point of fact, onlookers, Europeans, on the balconies of houses at some

distance from the crowd of natives, have been known to experience the

same influence. This would be one of the most curious manifestations of

that "unknown guest" of which we shall speak again later when, after

enumerating its acts and deeds, we try to investigate and note down the

eccentricities of its character.

Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the raising,

without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or even of a person,

might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory power; but hitherto the

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

instances have not been sufficiently numerous or authentic to allow us to

draw any conclusions. Also we shall meet with it again when we come to

the chapter treating of the materializations of which it forms part.

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

CHAPTER I.

PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

This brings us without any break to the consideration of veridical

apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted houses. We all know

that the phantasms of the living and the dead have now a whole literature

of their own, a literature which owes its birth to the numerous and

conscientious enquiries conducted in England, France, Belgium and the

United States at the instance of the Society for Psychical Research. In the

presence of the mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in

denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this time

incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be transmitted

instantaneously from one mind to another, however great the distance that

separates the mind experiencing the emotion from the mind receiving the

communication. It is most often manifested by a visual hallucination, more

rarely by an auditory hallucination; and, as the most violent emotion

which man can undergo is that which grips and overwhelms him at the

approach or at the very moment of death, it is nearly always this supreme

emotion which he sends forth and directs with incredible precision through

space, if necessary across seas and continents, towards an invisible and

moving goal. Again, though this occurs less frequently, a grave danger, a

serious crisis can beget and transmit to a distance a similar hallucination.

This is what the S. P. R. calls "phantasms of the living." When the

hallucination takes place some time after the decease of the person whom

it seems to evoke, be the interval long or short, it is classed among the

"phantasms of the dead."

The latter, the so-called "phantasms of the dead," are the rarest. As F.

W. H. Myers pointed out in his Human Personality, a consideration of the

proportionate number of apparitions observed at various periods before

and after death shows that they increase very rapidly for the few hours

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

which precede death and decrease gradually during the hours and days

which follow; while after about a year's time they become extremely rare

and exceptional.

However exceptional they may be, these apparitions nevertheless exist

and are proved, as far as anything can be proved, by abundant testimony

of a very precise character. Instances will be found in the Proceedings,

notably in vol. vi., pp. 13-65, etc.

Whether it be a case of the living, the dying, or the dead, we are

familiar with the usual form which these hallucinations take. Indeed their

main outlines hardly ever vary. Some one, in his bedroom, in the street, on

a journey, no matter where, suddenly see plainly and clearly the phantom

of a relation or a friend of whom he was not thinking at the time and

whom he knows to be thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa

as the case may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom

says nothing; its presence, which is always brief, is but a sort of silent

warning. Sometimes it seems a prey to futile and trivial anxieties. More

rarely, it speaks, though saying but little after all. More rarely still, it

reveals something that has happened, a crime, a hidden treasure of which

no one else could know. But we will return to these matters after

completing this brief enumeration.

The phenomenon of haunted houses resembles that of the phantasms

of the dead, except that here the ghost clings to the residence, the house,

the building and in no way to the persons who inhabit it. By the second

year of its existence, that is to say, 1884, the Committee on Haunted

Houses of the S. P. R. had selected and made an analysis of some sixty-

five cases out of hundreds submitted to it, twenty-eight of which rested

upon first-hand and superior evidence.[1] It is worthy of remark, in the

first place, that these authentic narratives bear no relation whatever to the

legendary and sensational ghost-stories that still linger in many English

and American magazines, especially in the Christmas numbers. They

mention no winding-sheets, coffins, skeletons, graveyards, no sulphurous

flames, curses, blood-curdling groans, no clanking chains, nor any of the

THE UNKNOWN GUEST

time-honoured trappings that characterize this rather feeble literature of

the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear

to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say

dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious and go to no

expense in the matter of staging or costume. They are clad as they were

when, sometimes many years ago, they led their quiet, unadventurous life

within their own home. We find in one case an old woman, with a thin

grey shawl meekly folded over her breast, who bends at night over the

sleeping occupants of her old home, or who is frequently encountered in

the hall or on the stairs, silent, mysterious, a little grim. Or else it is the

gentleman with a lacklustre eye and a figured dressing-gown who walks

along a passage brilliantly illuminated with an inexplicable light. Or again

we have another elderly lady, dressed in black, who is often found seated

in the bay window of her drawing-room. When spoken to, she rises and

seems on the point of replying, but says nothing. When pursued or met in

a corner, she eludes all contact and vanishes. Strings are fastened across

the staircase with glue; she passes and the strings remain as they were. The

ghost--and this happens in the majority of cases--is seen by all the people

staying in the house: relatives, friends, old servants and new. Can it be a

matter of suggestion, of collective hallucination? At any rate, strangers,

visitors who have had nothing said to them, see it as the others do and ask,

innocently: "Who is the lady in mourning whom I met in the dining-

room?"

[1] Proceedings, vol. i., pp. 101-115; vol. ii., pp. 137-151; vol. viii., pp.

311, 332, etc.

If it is a case of collective suggestion, we should have to admit that it

is a subconscious suggestion emitted without the knowledge of the

participants, which indeed is quite possible.

Though they belong to the same order, I will not here mention the

exploits of what the Germans call the Poltergeist, which take the form of

flinging stones, ringing bells, turning mattresses, upsetting furniture and so

forth. These matters are always open to suspicion and really appear to be

nothing but quaint frolics of hysterical subjects or of mediums indulging

their sense of humour. The manifestations of the Poltergeist are fairly

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THEUNKNOWNGUEST1THEUNKNOWNGUESTMAURICEMAETERLINCKTranslatedbyAlexanderTeixeiradeMattosTHEUNKNOWNGUEST2INTRODUCTION1MyEssayonDeath[1]ledmetomakeaconscientiousenquiryintothepresentpositionofthegreatmystery,anenquirywhichIhaveendeavouredtorenderascompleteaspossible.Ihadhopedthatasinglevolumewouldbeable...

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