Knock Twice Interior 6x9

Three of the researchers, Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, and Frank Podmore, sifted through them and published the best in 1886, in two thick volumes called Phantasms of the Living. What surprises most people is how careful they were. They didn’t simply print whatever came in. They wrote back to the witnesses with pointed questions. Were you awake? Had you been worried about this person? Did you tell anyone before the news arrived? Can someone else confirm it? They checked dates against death registers, newspaper notices, and diaries. When a witness’s memory didn’t match the records, they said so, right there in print. And they threw out a great many stories that couldn’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny.

The result is a strange and wonderful document: hundreds of first-hand accounts from people who had nothing to gain by telling them, and who often seemed a little embarrassed to be telling them at all.

Here is what I have done with those accounts, and what I haven’t.

I have retold each story in my own words, staying as close as I could to what the witnesses actually said. I have not invented details, added dialogue, or made anything more dramatic than it was. When you see words in quotation marks, they are the witnesses’ own words, or as near to them as the record allows. When the researchers found a mistake or a weakness in a story, I have told you about it, because I think you deserve to know. And every story ends with a note telling you exactly where it can be found, so you can go and read the original for yourself.

What I haven’t done is try to tell you what it all means. The original researchers had their own theory. They believed that a person in crisis, especially near death, might somehow reach the mind of someone they loved, across any distance. Others who have read these same letters see something more spiritual in them. Others see coincidence, grief, and the tricks memory can play. I have my own feelings, and you will probably catch glimpses of them here and there. But I would rather hand you the stories and let you sit with them yourself.

One thing did become clear to me as I read, and I want to tell you before you begin. These are not really stories about fear. Very few of the people in this book were frightened. Some were puzzled, some were comforted, and a few were a little cross at being disturbed. But almost every single story, when you strip it down, is about love. A mother and her son. A husband and wife. Two brothers who made a promise. A maid who was fond of her mistress. A man who was a good master to the workers who remembered him. Whatever was traveling between these people, it seemed to follow the lines that love had already drawn.

So I hope you won’t read this book only for the shivers, though I think you’ll find a few. I hope you’ll read it for the people. They were real. They lived ordinary lives, much like ours, in kitchens and gardens and railway stations. And one day, something reached them that they never forgot.

Now it’s your turn to listen. Somebody’s at the door. Knock twice.

— Lilly Marrs

End of chapter one. 28 more chapters and about 26,285 words in the full book.