Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1869

The latest news we received from Mauritius indicates that the state of that unfortunate country follows exactly the announced phases (Spiritist Review July 1867, and November 1868). They also contain a remarkable fact that provided the subject matter for an important instruction at the Parisian Society.

“The summer heat," says our correspondent, "brought back the terrible fever, more frequent, more tenacious than ever. My house has become a kind of hospital, and I spend my time treating myself or my loved ones. Mortality is not very high, it is true, but after the horrible suffering that each episode causes us, we experience a general disturbance that develops in us new diseases: the faculties are gradually altered; the senses, especially hearing and sight, are particularly affected. Yet our good Spirits, perfectly in agreement with yours in their communications, announce the imminent end to the epidemic, but the ruin and decadence of the rich, which in fact is already beginning.

"I take advantage of the little time I have available to give you the details I promised about the phenomena that has been taken place in my house. The persons to whom it belonged before me, carefree and negligent, according to the custom of the country, had let it fall in real bad shape, and I was forced to do lots of repairs. The garden, metamorphosed into a farmyard, was filled with those large trees from India, so-called multiplying trees, whose roots, coming out of the top of the branches, descend to the ground where they settle, and sometimes form huge trunks by superimposing themselves on each other, sometimes forming quite extensive galleries.

Such trees have a bad reputation in this country, believed to be haunted by evil spirits. With no regard for their so-called mysterious inhabitants, and for not being in no way to my liking, as they unnecessarily cluttered the garden, I had them cut down. From that moment on, it became almost impossible for us to have a day of rest in the house. You really had to be a Spiritist to continue to live in it. All the time we heard knocks from all sides, doors opening and closing, shifting furniture, sighs, confused words; often we also heard steps in the empty rooms. The workers, who repaired the house, were frequently disturbed by these strange noises, but since it took place during the day, they were not much afraid of them, because these demonstrations are very frequent in the region. No matter how much we prayed, evoked these Spirits, lectured them, they responded only with insults and threats, and did not stop noise.

At the time we had a meeting once a week; but you cannot imagine all the bad tricks that were played on us to disturb and interrupt our sessions; communications were sometimes intercepted, sometimes mediums experienced pain to the point of inaction.

It seems that the regulars of the house were too numerous and too wicked to be moralized, for we could not overcome them, and we were forced to stop our meetings in which we could no longer obtain anything. Only one was willing to listen to us and recommend himself to our prayers. He was a poor Portuguese man by the name of Gulielmo, who claimed to be a victim of those people with whom he had done I do not know what misdeed, and who held him there, he said, for his punishment. I did some research and learned that indeed a Portuguese sailor of that name had been one of the tenants of the house, and that he had died there.

The fever arrived; the noises became less frequent, but did not stop; besides, we got used to it. We still meet, but the disease has prevented our sessions from following their course. I make sure that they take place in the garden, as much as possible, because we noticed that good communications are more difficult to obtain in the house, and that we are very tormented these days, especially at night.”



The question of haunted places is a given; noises and disturbances are well known; but do some trees have a particular attractive power? In the case above, is there any connection between the destruction of those trees and the phenomena that immediately followed? Would popular belief have any reality here? This is what the following instruction seems to give a logical explanation for, until further confirmation.



Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, February 19th, 1869

“All legends, whatever they may be, however ridiculous and unfounded they may seem, are based on a real basis, on an indisputable truth, demonstrated by experience, but amplified and distorted by tradition. It is said that some plants are good for driving evil Spirits away; others may cause possession; some shrubs are more particularly haunted; all that is true in fact, in isolation. A fact took place, a special manifestation justified that saying, and the superstitious crowd hastened to generalize it; it is the story of a man who lays an egg. The thing runs in secret from mouth to mouth and amplifies until it takes on the proportions of an indisputable law, and such an inexistent law is accepted because of the aspirations towards the unknown, towards the supernatural by the generality of men.

The multipliers have been and still are, especially in Mauritius, landmarks for evening meetings; people lean against their trunk, breathe the air around it, take shelter under their foliage. Now, when men die, especially when they are in a certain inferiority, they retain their material habits; they go to places they loved while incarnate; they meet there and they stay there; that is why there are places more particularly haunted; it is not the Spirits of the first comers that go there, but the Spirits who used to go there during their lifetime. The multipliers aren’t, therefore, any more attractive to the dwelling of the lower Spirits than any other shelter. Custom designates them to the ghosts of Mauritius, like some castles, some clearings of the German forests, some lakes are more particularly haunted by the Spirits, in Europe.

If these Spirits are disturbed, all still materialized, and who, for the most part, believe themselves to be alive, they become irritated and tend to take revenge, to dispute with those who have deprived them from their shelter; from there, the demonstrations that this lady and many others had to complain about.

The Mauritian population being, in general, inferior from a moral point of view, disembodiment can only make the space a nursery of very little dematerialized Spirits, still imbued with all their earthly habits, and who continue, although Spirits, to live as if they were men. They deprive of tranquility and sleep those who deprive them of their favorite dwelling, and that's all. The nature of the shelter, its gloomy appearance, has nothing to do with that; it is simply a matter of well-being. They are dislodged, and they take revenge. Material in essence, they take material revenge, banging on walls, complaining, expressing their frustration in all forms.

Let the Mauritians purify and progress, and they will return to space with tendencies of another kind, and the multipliers will lose the ability to shelter the revenants.

Clélie Duplantier.”