Unholy Relics and Other Uncanny Tales

FOREWORD

These tales are fiction—and yet not fiction. They are all founded upon actual experiences of the author in the realms of the uncanny. The antiquary, perhaps because he is in close touch with the human thought of all time, that is not dead, but sometime sleepeth, comes more into contact with that dim borderline region than most people. This happens to a much greater extent than those whose lives are passed entirely in the turmoil of modern things sometimes realise; they are apt, too, to think of the archæologist as a coldly scientific creature devoted only to hard facts, frowning on phantasy, and laughing at Egyptian curses.

I make little or no effort to explain the happenings on which the stories of this volume are based. The archæologist is not an occultist as such, nor has he any concern with spiritualism as a religion. The present state of our knowledge as to what actually lies beyond the veil, and what simply lives on in human memory timeless, always on earth and indestructible, is not such that we can afford to be dogmatic about it. We owe as much tolerance to the man who believes in ghosts because he is firmly convinced he has seen one, as to the chemist who refuses to believe in them because he cannot reduce them to his test-tube. We are only just beginning to realise how artificial are the conventional divisions we call Time and Space—and the East has forgotten more than the West has learnt on this subject. It would seem that there must always remain some happenings that will defy explanation by man-made science, after we have found a natural reason for many others. At least, I hope so—for if not, of what avail are the strivings and speculations of the human spirit, born as they are of our ignorance as to what really lies beyond the last sleep? As the schoolmen of the middle ages were fond of quoting, from the Vulgate, Quis nimis probat nihil probat—he who proves too much proves nothing.

Long Vacation, 1946.