Ghostwriting

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With “real” ghosts. Essay. 1000 words, 5-minute read.

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Ghostwriting

By Ray Tabler

The famous physicist Richard Feynman maintained that the entire universe consists of nothing more than interacting fields of various types.  According to Feynman matter, the stuff that makes up you and me and everything else, is simply particularly dense zones of these interacting fields. Our minds interpret those interactions as solidity, hallucinating the world around us into being.

Heady stuff, and one reason I for one can’t dismiss ghost stories out of hand. True, there’s no solid evidence of the existence of ghosts, spirits, or the supernatural in general. But physics also tells us that the solid table in front of me isn’t really solid, but a complex collection of opposing wriggles in space time. Which I must admit leaves some room for other things we cannot perceive.

All that said, there are examples of books written with the aid of ghosts. Or so the authors claim. Taking dictation from a spirit is, technically speaking, a form of ghostwriting. In that one individual is telling the story and another is writing it down. If that is so, the main difference appears to be that the ghostwriter for a ghost gets to keep more of the royalties. On the assumption that ghosts no longer care about money. I’ll try to remember to ask if that’s true, the next time I see a ghost.

 The most famous example of a book written, allegedly, by a ghost is Jap Herron (1917), “by” Emily Grant Hutchings. She claimed that this tale was told to her by the ghost of Mark Twain, who had died in 1910. Jap Herron is the story of a poor Missouri boy who turns his life around and becomes a success. Hutchings swore that Twain communicated the entire book to her via a Ouija board. That must have been tedious. I’m not a scholar of Twain’s work, so I can’t render an opinion as to Jap Herron’s authenticity. Mark Twain’s daughter, Clara, brought a civil suit, arguing that the book was either a fraud or Mark Twain’s actual writings. In which case, Hutchings owed all profits to Clara, as the owner of Mark Twain’s publication rights. Evidently, Clara hired a good lawyer. Hutchings agreed to cease publication and destroy all copies.

Cora Linn VS Richmond wrote under the name of Water Lilly. She was prominent spirit medium in 1800s America, channeling departed spirits from the 1850s on. Ouina’s Canoe and Christmas Offering: filled with flowers for the darlings of earth, published in 1882, claims to speak for a Native American princess. Ouina did not have a long or happy life. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father, a chief, was reluctantly forced to sacrifice the young lady at the age of 15, to stave off misfortune for the tribe. Despite the sorrow heaped upon her in life, Ouina delivered hopeful, upbeat messages from the beyond. Which were welcome during and in the aftermath of the Civil War. Approximately 600,000 Americans died in that bloody conflict, 2.5 % of the population at the time. So, charlatan or not, Richmond and her book comforted many who lost loved ones.

Mary McEvilly was an American spirit medium, living in Paris, when she published To Woman From Meslom: A Message From Meslom In The Life Beyond (1920). A spirit, Meslom, revealed to her that women should not seek equality, and will always be subservient to men… Not exactly a popular message these days. But you can still buy it on Amazon if interested.

Pearl Curran was a prolific writer for a spirit medium, publishing several books revealed to her by dead people via the Ouija board. Her most famous work is Hope Trueblood (1918), revealed to her by a 17th century English woman Patience Worth. Patience emigrated from England to the new world and was killed in a Native American raid upon her settlement. Or so the book claims.

In 1918 spirit medium Albert Houghton Pratt published My Tussle With the Devil, And Other Stories. Which he swore was related to him by prominent (and deceased in 1910) writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter). Pratt maintained that O. Henry passed on with a pile of tales left to tell. The supernaturally transmitted collection of short stories was O’Henry’s way of not letting that material go to waste. Critics pointed out that the stories did not read like O. Henry’s typical works. Pratt replied that life in the afterlife had changed O. Henry’s style. Witnesses to the seances where Pratt received the stories reported that O. Henry’s spirit would self-edit mid-session, insisting on changes to text. Also, O’ Henry expressed a negative view of silent film adaptations of his work, produced after his death.  Well, that part sounds valid at least.

Roman Emperor Julian (died 363 AD) channeled to American writer Thomas Cushman Buddington his profound dissatisfaction with the corruption Christianity had wrought upon western civilization. In Historical Revelations of the Relation Existing Between Christianity and Paganism Since the Disintegration of the Roman Empire (1886 AD), Julian recommended a return to traditional pagan values. Gimme that ol’ time religion, I suppose.

The authors of the publications listed above all claimed to have been inspired by voices from beyond. Honestly, can any writer say with certainty where inspiration originates? Maybe these authors were just more aware of the source of the voices in their heads.

Were any of these books actually written by ghosts? I don’t know. You decide. As a writer myself, I can sympathize with deceased authors, sitting upon the veranda of writers’ heaven, bedeviled with story ideas they can no longer get down on paper. The urge to game the system and dictate via some suitable psychic might be overwhelming. Although, I’m in no hurry to find out myself.

END.

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