Upon the night of April 9, 1927, Alexander Nemko and Pearl Devon were motoring through Hyde Park, London, when their car dashed down an incline, and plunged into the Serpentine. The car sank in fifteen feet of water. Though terrified and drowning, Nemko had his wits with him, so that he opened the door of the car, and dragged his companion to the surface, and, with her, swam ashore.
There was nothing in the lay of the land by which to explain. The newspapers noted that there had never been an accident here before. "The steering gear apparently failed," was Nemko's attempt to explain. Perhaps it is queer that right at this point, so near a body of water, the steering gear failed: but, considered by itself, as mysteries usually are considered, there is little that can be said against Nemko's way of explaining.
Two nights later, a taxicab plunged into the Thames, at Walton. The passenger swam ashore, but the driver was, it seems, drowned. His body was dredged for but was not found. The passenger, who must have been jostled past having any clear remembrance of what occurred, explained that, at the brink of the river, the rear wheels of the car had dropped into a deep rut, and that the car had jolted into the river.
Upon May 3rd— see the London Evening Standard, May 6— William Farrance and Beatrice Villes, of Linomroad, Clapham, London, were driving near Tunbridge Wells, when the car suddenly plunged toward a hedge, at the left of the road. Farrance succeeded in forcing the car to the right. Again something drove it toward the hedge. Farrance was powerless to stop it, and it broke through the hedge, overturning, killing the girl.
A schoolgirl, Beryl de Meza, was shot by somebody unknown and unseen, while playing in the street, near her home, at Hampstead, London.
At Sheffield, there was an occurrence that was atrocious, but that may not be uncanny, but that attracts my attention because of the fiendishness of something else with which it associates. At the Soho Grinding Works, it was found, morning of April 29th, that grinding wheels had been chipped, and that belting had been stripped from pulleys. Nails had been driven, points upward, in chairs upon which the grinders sat. Tools had been thrown into motors, and currents had been turned on, causing much damage. All this looks like sabotage, malicious but scarcely "fiendish": but in a building next door there had been doings that are so describable. Chickens had been tortured: combs cut off, legs broken, the head of one burned: others mutilated, and their injuries smeared with white paint.
London Evening Standard, May 5— "Mystery of four shooting affairs." A boy, playing in Mitcham Park, London, was shot in the head, by an air gun, it was thought, though no air gun pellet was found. At Tooting Bec-common, an "air gun pellet"— though it was not said that an air gun pellet was found— passed through the windshield of a motor car. In Stamford two men were shot by an unknown assailant. London Sunday Express, May 8— Mr. George Berlam, of Leigh-on-Sea, motoring on the road from London to Southend— he heard a report, and his windshield was splintered. In accounts of the punctured windshield, at Tooting Bec-common, the driver of the car was quoted as saying that he had heard a report, and at the same time a laugh, "though nobody was about, at the time."
Wounds have appeared upon people. Usually the explanation is that they were stabbed. Objects have been mutilated. Windowpanes and automobile windshields have been pierced, as if by bullets, but by bullets that could not be found. Such were the doings of the "phantom sniper of Camden" (N. J.). He appeared first, in November, 1927: but the first clipping that I have, relating to him, is from the New York Evening Post, Jan. 26, 1928— a store window pierced by a bullet— the eighth reported occurrence. Later, the stories were definitely of a "phantom sniper" and his "phantom bullets."
New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 9, 1928— Collingswood, N. J., February 8— "The 'phantom sniper,' if it was the work of South Jersey's mysterious marksman, scored his most sensational attack tonight when a window in the home of William T. Turnbull was shattered by what appeared to be a charge of shot.
"Police at first believed it an attempted assassination, but, as in all the other cases, no missile was found.
"Turnbull, a Philadelphia stockbroker, and a former president of the Collingswood Borough Council, who was seated near the window, reading, was spattered with glass. He said that an automobile had stopped in front of the house a few minutes before. The absence of any grains of shot added to the mystery."
I have sent letters of enquiry to all persons mentioned in the various reports. I have received not one answer. It may be preferable to some readers to think that there are no such persons. Still, I note that not one of these letters was dead-lettered back to me.
The attacks continued until Feb. 28, 1928. Windowpanes and windshields of automobiles were pierced by something that made no report of a gun, and that was unfindable. Something, or somebody, who was unseen, caused excitement in half a dozen towns from Philadelphia to Newark. Even if I could persuade myself that I am over-fanciful in my own notions, the seemingly veritable stories of the existence of a missile-less gun would be interesting. Authorities in Jersey towns, noting the range of the malefactor, were especially watchful of motorists: but it is my notion that he had no need for anything on wheels in which to do his traveling. I noticed a similar range, in the doings in England, in April and May, 1927.
Snipings by the "Camden phantom" were the show-off, and nobody was injured by him: but a more harmful fellow operated in Boston, beginning about Nov. 1, 1930. I think that these sportsmen, who possibly are sentimental opponents to the shooting of game birds and deer, and practice their cruelties in ways that seem to them less condemnable, divide into the unoccult, and into more imaginative fellows who have found out how to practice occultly. In Boston, a noiseless weapon was used, but, this time, in two weeks, two men and a woman were seriously injured, and bullets of small caliber were removed from their wounds. These attacks so alarmed people that policemen, armed with riot guns, lined the roads south of Boston, with orders to catch the "silent sniper." The attacks continued until about the middle of February, 1931. Nobody was caught.
In this period (Nov. 12, 1931) a dispatch to the newspapers, from Bogota, Colombia, told of a "puzzling crime wave." In the hospitals were forty-five persons, suffering with stab wounds. "The police were unable to explain what appeared to be a general attack, but they arrested more than 200 persons."
Another occurrence of "phantom bullets," in the State of New Jersey, was told of, in the New York Herald, Feb. 2, 1916. Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Repp, of Glassboro, N. J., had been fired upon by "phantom bullets." This was a special attack upon one house. There were sounds of breaking glass, and bullet holes were found in windowpanes, but nothing beyond the windowpanes was marked. It is such a circumstance as was told of in accounts of the "Camden sniper." It is as if somebody fired, not only with a missile-less gun, or with invisible bullets, but as if with intent only to perforate windows, and with the effects controlled by, and limited by, his intent. Consequently, instead of thinking of a shooting at windowpanes, I tend simply to think that holes appeared in window glass. Nobody in the house was injured, but Mr. and Mrs. Repp were terrified and they fled. Members of the Township Committee investigated, and they reported that, though no bullets were findable, the windows "were broken much as a window usually is, when a bullet crashes through it."
That's the story. Of witnesses, I. C. Soddy and Howard R. Moore were mentioned. I sent letters of enquiry to all persons whose names were given, and received not one reply. There are several ways of explaining. One is that it is probable that persons who have experiences such as those told of in this book, receive so many "crank letters" that they answer none. Dear me— once upon a time, I enjoyed a sense of amusement and superiority toward "cranks." And now here am I, a "crank," myself. Like most writers, I have the moralist somewhere in my composition, and here I warn— take care, oh, reader, with whom you are amused, unless you enjoy laughing at yourself.
It seemed to me doubtful that a woman could go along Upper Broadway, and jab, with a hat pin, five men and a woman, before being caught. There has been a gathering of suggestions of not ordinary woundings. In Lloyd's Weekly News (London) Feb. 21, 1909, there was an account of a panic in Berlin. Many women, in the streets of the city, had been stabbed. It was said that the assailant had been seen, and he was described as "a young man, always vanishing." If he was seen, he is another of the "uncatchables." In this newspaper of February 23, it was said that 73 women had been stabbed, all except four of them not seriously.
We have had data that suggest the existence of vampires, other than humans of the type of the Portuguese sailor: but the brazen and serialized— sometimes murderous, but sometimes petty— assaults upon men and women are of a different order, and seem to me to be the work of imaginative criminals, stabbing people to make mystery, and to make a stir. I feel that I can understand their motives, because once upon a time I was an imaginative criminal, myself. Once upon a time I was a boy. One time, when I was a boy, I caught a lot of flies. There was nothing of the criminal, nor of the malicious, in what I did, this time, but it seems to give me an understanding of the "phantom" stabbers and snipers. I painted the backs of the flies red, and turned them loose. There was an imaginative pleasure in thinking of flies, so bearing my mark, attracting attention, causing people to wonder, spreading far, appearing in distant places, so marked by me.
In some of our stories there is much suggestion that there was no "vanishing man"— that wounds appeared upon people, as appeared— or as it was said to have appeared— a wound on the head of a sailor. See back to the story told by the captain of the Brechsee. Or that wounds appeared upon people, and that the victims, examined by the police, were more or less bullied into giving some kind of description of an assailant. However, some of the stories of the "vanishing man" look as if he, too, may be. There may be several ways of doing these things. Early in the year 1907, a "vanishing man" was reported from the town of Winchester, England. I take from the Weekly Dispatch (London), Feb. 10, 1907. Women of Winchester were complaining of an "uncatchable," who was committing petty assaults upon them, such as rapping their hands. "A mysterious feature of the affair is that the man disappears, as if by magic."
The "phantom stabber" of Bridgeport, Conn., appeared first Feb. 20, 1925, and the last of his attacks, of which I have record, was upon June 1, 1928. That was a long time in which to operate uncaught. In the daytime, mostly, though sometimes at night, girls were stabbed: in the streets; in such public places as a department store, and the entrance of a library. Descriptions of the assailant were indefinite. In almost all instances the wounds were not serious. One of the stories, as told in the New York Herald Tribune, Aug. 27, 1927, is typical of the circumstances of publicity, or of the confidence of an assailant that he could not be caught. If my stories will be regarded as ghost stories, a novelty about them is the eeriness of crowded thoroughfares— a lurk near Coventry Street, London, and the sneak of an invisible in Broadway, New York. I expect sometime to hear of a haunted subway, during rush hours. Edgar Allan Poe would say of me that I'm no artist, and don't know how to infuse atmosphere. One would think that I had never heard of the uncanniness of dark nights in lonely places. Some of the stories are of desperate plays for notoriety. I have a story now, not of doings in a graveyard, but in a department store. Bridgeport, Conn.— staged on a staircase, with an audience of hundreds of persons, there was a very theatrical performance. A review of this melodrama was published in the Herald Tribune—
"The stabber who has terrorized Bridgeport for the last thirty months suddenly appeared this afternoon and claimed his twenty-third victim in a crowded down-town department store. The victim was Isabelle Pelskur, fourteen, 539 Main Street, messenger girl employed in the D. M. Read store. The girl was stabbed in the store where she is employed.
"The stabbing occurred at 4:50, just two minutes before closing time of the store. Already some of the store doors had been locked, and the large crowd of shoppers were being ushered from the store. The employees were leaving their counters, and the victim had started up the stairs from the arcade side of the first floor to the women's dressing room.
"The girl had scarcely ascended more than half a dozen steps when she was attacked by the assailant who lunged his sharp blade into her side, causing a severe wound."
He got away. Nobody reported having seen him escaping. The girl could give only a "meager" description of him.
Chapter 10
RELATIVELY to the principles of modern science, werewolves cannot be. But I know of no such principle that is other than tautology or approximation. It is myth-stuff. Then, if relatively to a group of phantoms, werewolves cannot be, there are at least negative grounds for thinking that they are quite likely.
Relatively to the principles, or lack of principles, of ultra-modern science, there isn't anything that can't be, even though also it is not clear how anything can be.
So my acceptance, or pseudo-conclusion, is that werewolves are quite likely-unlikely.
Once upon a time, when minds were dosed with the pill-theory of matter, werewolves were said to be physically impossible. Very little globes were said to be the ultimates of matter, and were supposed to be understandable, and people thought they knew what matter is. But the pills have rolled away. Now we are told that the ultimates are waves. It is impossible to think of a wave. One has to think of something that is waving. If anybody can think of crime, virtue, or color, independent of somebody who is criminal, virtuous, or colored, that thinker— or whatever— may say that he knows what he is talking about, in denying the existence of anything, upon physical grounds. To say that the "ultimate waves" are electrical comes no closer to saying something. If there is no definition of electricity better than that of saying that it is a mode of motion, we're not enlighteningly told that the "ultimate waves" are moving motions.
