III
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

 

I WAS decorated by France. You can find my record in 'The Story of the Red Cross,' possibly…," (Here another title was given, which I withhold lest it identify Stephen.) "A book—I cannot quite tell the name—recently published, and to be had at any bookstore."

 

These words were spelled by Stephen on the evening of January 15, 1917.

 

The next day Joan visited a bookstore. No one there had ever heard of "The Story of the Red Cross." Nor was any book, bearing the other title Stephen had given, known.

 

"That clinches the matter," Joan said to me.

“It's subconscious mind, Darby. But whose? Not mine, surely. Yours, I suppose. Yet this philosophy of Stephen's— how unlike you!"

"The subconscious-mind theory is most convincing," I answered, "until connected with either you or me. Stephen's philosophy is beyond the two of us put together."

 

A day or so later Joan again was in the bookstore, her work taking her there occasionally. The owner came to her and said he thought he knew what book she had been looking for. A volume, new to Joan, was handed her. It bore a title differing from either of the titles Stephen had given, but related to both in sense. Joan leafed through it, called me at the office, and asked if I could come to the store. I went. She banded me the book, new to me as to her, and asked me to turn to such and such a page.

 

And there, in black and white, was the story of Stephen L— —, of his service in the Allied army, and of his death. There were the facts the ouija-board had told us on the night of December 7, 1916. Had we been investigators searching for proof of the survival of personality after death, with what more challenging evidence could we have been confronted? Stephen of the ouija-board had demonstrated there actually was a Stephen L——, an American, killed in the service of the Allied cause at such and such a place, on such and such a date and in such and such a way.

 

We were not elated, however. We who had feared lest we catch Stephen up in an untruth were frightened now by his very truthfulness.

 

Wherein was the occurrence extraordinary?

 

Something on the night of December 7, 1916, caused a ouija-board to spell for Joan and me,

 

"I am Stephen L——." The same something caused the ouija­board to spell what purported to be the facts of Stephen L—— 's death. On January 15, 1917, something prompted the ouija­board to direct us to look for a certain book. We looked, found the book, and therein was the story of a real Stephen L——, how he had died, and when and where; and the statements of this story were the same as those of the narrative that had been spelled out on the ouija-board over a month before.

 

Obviously the chain of circumstances is extraordinary only in the event that Joan and I, prior to December 7, 1916, were ignorant of Stephen L——. We have testified to that ignorance. To the best of our knowledge and belief we were ignorant, not only of the death of Stephen L——, but of his ever having lived.

 

Of what are these extraordinary circumstances evidence? On what basis can they be explained?

 

Four possible explanations suggest themselves. They are:

 

1. Guess.

2. Telepathy.

3. The subconscious-mind theory. 4. The spiritistic theory.

 

And at least one other explanation might be offered—the cosmic-mind theory. But this, it would seem, is pure theory, having neither traditional nor experimental backing. Perhaps it can be best discussed later, in the light of Stephen's philosophy.

 

Is not the "guess" explanation hopeless? Joan and I were not guessing that night of December 7, 1916. We were not doing anything of which we were aware, save that, while waiting for the storm to stop, we sat with our fingers resting on a piece of wood. Yet granted we were guessing and didn't know it, granted one or the other of us unconsciously chanced the opinion that there was once a person named Stephen L——, and that he was killed in the course of military service in Europe, would it not have been an impossible coincidence that our guess, wholly without foundation, should have proved true, not simply in a general way, but in detail?

 

Was telepathy at the root of the occurrence? Was the thought of some person here on earth to whom Stephen was known transferred in strange fashion to Joan and me as we sat at the ouija-board? Granted thought can and does transfer itself from one person to another through channels other than the senses, is it conceivable that so circumstantial a story as that of Stephen's death was thus transferred—accurately?

 

The subconscious-mind theory has already caused us to pause; even in the present case it must, I feel, arrest most thoughtful consideration. This theory implies that, though Joan and I had no conscious knowledge of Stephen L——, his existence and death had, as a matter of fact, been brought to our attention prior to December 7, 1916; that we forgot what we had known; and that in some way or other the ouija-board called this knowledge back into conscious thought. This seems unlikely. Stephen L—— had been dead only a matter of months. If Joan and I, or one of us, once knew of his death, how brief a time had been required to wipe the fact clean from our memories!

 

Concerning the spiritistic theory I shall say at this time only that Stephen's philosophy, which is the primary theme of this record, goes to the entire question of the possibility and reasonableness of survival after death.

 

It was a startling test Stephen had given us. Yet when the shock of it had passed we found ourselves still vacillating, though there was an added difficulty:

 

Up to the day of Stephen's identification we could, when so inclined, dismiss him as a mere fiction. With Stephen thus out of the way, we were free to regard his philosophy as the product of our own subconsciousness. This explanation of the mystery we might, and assuredly did, doubt, yet there was no external evidence to the contrary. Now we had to square with the subliminal theory, not only Stephen's philosophy, but Stephen himself.