Tempo:
INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION
The reissue of this astonishing book, more than fifty years after first publication, calls for a brief commentary on the book and its remarkable author.
First of all, the importance of this work bears little relation- ship to its form and style. It seems, at first glance, an amateur- ish affair, a hodge-podge of gossipy notes written around testi- monial letters. The style is inelegant, full of quaint asides and bizarre terminology, and the book itself is approached through a preliminary tangle of Author’s Foreword, Voucher, Preface, and Introduction by W. T. Stead, to which my own Introduc- tion to the American Edition erects an additional threshold— yet none of this really matters, The author has a unique per- sonal story to tell concerning fantastic phenomena for which everyday language is inadequate. This is truly an amazing book.
In 1903 Mr, Turvey wrote a letter to a British newspaper in which he claimed “I leave my body and travel to places I have never seen. . .” But he did much more than that.
As well as Astral (sometimes called ‘Etheric’) Projection, Mr, Turvey exercised all his senses at a distance of several miles—seeing, hearing, communicating, and even touching and smelling! On one occasion he left his body and travelled to a house four miles away, where he lifted a bed with two people in it and spoke to one of them in ‘direct’ voice—at a time when he was an invalid without the strength even to lift a small child! His supernormal achievements did not demand a special setting. While lying in bed at his home one night, he made his presence known to experimenters in the mundane surroundings of a tramcar in motion, He influenced spiritualist
i
The reissue of this astonishing book, more than fifty years after first publication, calls for a brief commentary on the book and its remarkable author.
First of all, the importance of this work bears little relation- ship to its form and style. It seems, at first glance, an amateur- ish affair, a hodge-podge of gossipy notes written around testi- monial letters. The style is inelegant, full of quaint asides and bizarre terminology, and the book itself is approached through a preliminary tangle of Author’s Foreword, Voucher, Preface, and Introduction by W. T. Stead, to which my own Introduc- tion to the American Edition erects an additional threshold— yet none of this really matters, The author has a unique per- sonal story to tell concerning fantastic phenomena for which everyday language is inadequate. This is truly an amazing book.
In 1903 Mr, Turvey wrote a letter to a British newspaper in which he claimed “I leave my body and travel to places I have never seen. . .” But he did much more than that.
As well as Astral (sometimes called ‘Etheric’) Projection, Mr, Turvey exercised all his senses at a distance of several miles—seeing, hearing, communicating, and even touching and smelling! On one occasion he left his body and travelled to a house four miles away, where he lifted a bed with two people in it and spoke to one of them in ‘direct’ voice—at a time when he was an invalid without the strength even to lift a small child! His supernormal achievements did not demand a special setting. While lying in bed at his home one night, he made his presence known to experimenters in the mundane surroundings of a tramcar in motion, He influenced spiritualist
i
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