After Death 9

One day – if so I can call it – I suddenly recognised an old enemy. I hated this man. He had helped to expose my methods.

As soon as I saw him, a wild desire for revenge arose in my mind. There were plenty of spirits at hand to suggest methods. One was that I should get hold of some hooligans and make them murder him; another, to wreck him financially. A far more ingenious method occurred to me.

I found that he had begun to dabble in the occult. I haunted him more and more and watched his every movement. Whenever an opportunity occurred, I did him an evil turn. If he played cards, I told his opponent what cards he held and so he lost money. I put in men’s minds a vague sense of suspicion and distrust concerning his most innocent acts.

My chance came, as I knew it would. He had been attempting to get outside his body, as he described it. He had no noble aim and his guide’s power had grown weak. When he went out of his body for the third time, I came in. I chuckled as I found a body clothing me – 

This is like old times.

I found that it was only by the exertion of my will that I was able to retain control of this borrowed carcass. Anyone with a weaker personality than mine would soon have been compelled to go out again.

I set to work to pay off old scores and began by wrecking his home.

I seemed to everyone to be him, while he hanged on, unable to re-enter and still attached by the vital cord to the body. I treated his wife so badly that she soon left him in disgust and instituted divorce proceedings. I gave rein to all the lusts which could damage his body. I dragged his good name in the gutter by various shady practices.

I had to work quickly and soon completed my task thus – I went to a jeweller’s shop, stole a quantity of jewels, murdered the man who owned them and managed to get caught in my enemy’s body. I held on to that body until it was formally committed on the charge of murder.

I was there when the case came up for trial. The man maintained that he knew nothing of all the facts stated against him. Though he knew it as a spirit, he had been unable to register it on his physical brain. His barrister pleaded temporary insanity; in summing up, the judge said – 

Some people argue that all sin is insanity but we cannot accept that. There is far too much method in this madness. The facts borne out by all the witnesses show that this was only the culminating and logical conclusion of those other detestable acts to which even his wife in her separation suit has borne witness.

The usual penalty came – death.

My joy was almost complete but things intervened to mar it. He still vowed his innocence and notwithstanding his genuine faults, his wife loved him still and believing him to have no recollection of his various misdeeds accepted that he had been temporarily insane.

This had the effect of softening his rebellious spirit, which had seemed likely to drag him down at death. When we gathered at his execution, expecting an angry and revengeful spirit who would be compelled to join us and over whom I could dominate, we found a guard of spirits of light who surrounded him and kept us at bay.

I became aware that a change was taking place in me. My psychic body seemed to be slipping from me and strive as I would, I could not hold it.

Where am I going? I cried to the evil guide who haunted me.

To Hell – do you not think it is time?

But you said that by doing these things I should keep nourishing this psychic body?

For a time, I said, and so you did. Anyway, you are leaving it now.

What is this other body in which I am clothed? I cried despairingly.

Your spiritual body and in it you will really begin to suffer.

As he spoke, I realised how he gloated over me. How I loathed him!