A Western Author’s “True” Haunting

 

To prepare for Halloween…

Stewart Edward White was a Western author, historian and big game hunter of some renown in the early 20^th century. Little-read today, his well-researched narratives and pithy prose put him head and shoulders above the bafflingly still known Zane Grey who operated in the same period. [Some of Mr. White’s works are reviewed in this blog.]

In 1937 Mr. White offered a volume titled The Betty Book “written” in tandem with his wife, Betty.

“Written” is in scare quotes as the books claim to be the explorations of the couple’s experiences with the “Invisibles.”

That is, spirits they first contacted via a Ouija board with un upturned whiskey glass as a stand-in for a planchette.

They graduated to automatic writing at some point where more fluid communication could take place.

The Betty Book is a straight-forward, seemingly no-nonsense tale of how a man of action, a man of sense came to delve in these areas.

He enters this realm almost jokingly at the beginning, then the gradual, “Hmm? What’s going on here?” progresses as the oddness persists and grows.

Mr. White went on to write a few more of these “Invisibles” non-fiction volumes.

Now whether they are sincere subjective accounts, the shared delusions of a couple, or one big con, I cannot say.

Here’s Mr. White on the intellectual start of this voyage.

In any research work it is always important to know the equipment of the experimenter. Before March 17, 1919, my occult background might, I suppose, have been called average for a man who had lived an active life. That is to say, I had paid such matters very little attention and formed no considered opinions on them one way or another. By way of considered opinion I suppose I would, if called upon to express myself, have taken my stand on the side of scepticism. This was because, like the average man, I referred all “occult” or “psychic” matters to spiritualism; which is also the savage’s method. And spiritualism meant to me either hysteria or clever conjuring or a blend of both. I knew that it had been “exposed.”

Throughout we are still peppered with Mr. White’s grounded feel that is the earmark of his “fiction” as the next sample demonstrates—regarding what the “Invisibles” will and will not impart.

For instance, there was a steadfast refusal to give advice or opinion on matters of our everyday lives. The argument seemed to be that everyday life is a series of opportunities for making decisions; that those decisions form character; and making another man's decisions for him deprives him unwarrantedly of opportunity. That looked to us like sound common sense.”

My default skepticism finds the premise hard to swallow but…Mr. White writes so well. So convincingly of his move from “Nah, this ain’t true” to “Well, what do ya know” that be it fiction or non-fiction I wound up enjoying it immensely and…thinking about it after closing the book far more than I do most recent volumes.