The New York herald., 1920-01-18
BY BENJAMIN DE CASSERES.
OOK OUT for Zero Sam!
This is a true and weird story

" OOK OUT for Zero Sam!
This is a true and weird story OF
what has become the greatest OF
all indoor sports--talking and play
ing with the spirits of those who refuse
to lie still in the Morgue of Time
We used to lay ghosts: now we raise
them up. We used to employ Ghost
Catcher Lous to drive noisy spirits out
of the house: now we send for psychics
to put them in the house
Once upon a time no person could rent
a haunted house. Nowadays bonuses are
offered to get them.
No one will admit now that he can't
communicate" with the dead. 1t is a
confession OF solid mahogany ancestry.
Where arc the children OF yesterday that
we used to scare into fits with ghosts.
witches and tales of murderers that come
back without a body in the dead o the
night? Gone forever, with the $l.75 derby
and the penny plug.
Now the children compare ouija-board
notes in the schoolroom and swap tales
Sbout the seance that papa and mamma
gave the night before that would have
raised the hair on the head of Edgar Allan
Poe and put gooseflesh on the body of
Bulwer-Lytton. Instead. the children have
song that ends
''Hear those bells go ting-a-ling-a-ling.
See dead Uncle Sandy do a Highland
fling
For there'll be a hot time in our
haunted house tonight"
Nerves, The human race has done away
with them. The war. the doubling of our
rent between the grapefruit and the cof-
fee every morning and the suspense about
the lifting of the Ban have tempered us
to concrete. We do not hear the air ex-
ftyrt
Jazz band in the steam pipes any longer.
When we can make the bureau do a SHIN
my with the trunk and hear the tramp of
.%apoleon's army in our sugar bowl 1T will
"a kc more than nerves to throw us off
our balance.
And thereby hangs this tale:-
He invited five OF us to his apartment
cotRiyerside Drive one night last week to
tr'oss with him and his wife the Rubicon
af Matter. He is a tired business man
who has found no solace or surcease in
Blasco Ibanez or in THE Entries for To-
day practical man, a civil engineer
in his worldly hours. A hard man
who believes that two and two make four
even in a delicatessen store. A man of
blueprints, who has the tel-it-to-Sweeney
look in his face when you tell him that a
dime is only a state of consciousness. In
p werd, Missouri Scotchman.
In the Psychic Clutch.
But no got caught in the great psychic
tidal wave, and he admitted he could feel
the old weather-beaten lightship of his
certainties swinging loose from her moor
ings. He wanted to test this burned
thing after reading Lodge. Maeterlinck
and Crawford. So he called in three of
the most notorious of the Boob Squad,
with the iron stare. the only man who
has caricatured wraiths, dead Yogi inspec-
tor and nince pie glutton: Captain Frank
Ryan. who helped to do that little job in
the Argonne between gas sandwiches. au-
thor of Bottle Imps I've Tanned" and
cx-secretary to an ex-President Of Pana-
ma, and myself. whose faith in the un-
seen carries me gayly from payday to
payday. The two ladies were wives with
psychic tendencies but who believe that
a hats a hat for a. that
Curtains up and lights down to the bare
point of seeing. the experiments were be-
Kun. The Palisades across the river looked
like the Brocken in Lew Morrison's pro-
duction OF Faust" The leafless trees
looked like witches about TO broomstick
their way to Englewood. brilliant star
sparkled In the heavens like dry re-
pealer IN an agricultural appropriation
bin. The river cleaned like one of Dante's
Hell-bound rivers. Nothing was heard in
the universe except the spark-plug Of our
Ford. anchored near the Tomb.
our host had brand-new plain pine
table in the centre OF the parlor, which
NC said had been made by carpenter
who was so aloof from all modern tenden-
cies- that he had even neglected to join
union. Anyhow, it had never been ghost
charged. mesmerized by spirits or slapped
Ebenezer Y. Gravitation in the face To
me, IL looked like a splendid table to grind
out Sunday specials" on.
Host laid on the table coldly and for
mally three small. square boards with
electric wires running to a bell which he
placed on another table. laden with lot
OF oaSus beHi ante VoLstcdd.
II the combined hands Of the five sitters
pressed down two pounds worth on the
boards the bell would ring. Ills theory
was that less than two pounds pressure
could not move by physical means q fif-
tcen-pound table We all laid our hands
on the boards-host in the corner blowing
ryschic blueprints in the air with q COM
mon. unchanged cigarette--and waited for
a spirit to leave its canteen In spiritland
and get busy.
Remember. the room was as dark as the
brain Of q walking delegate for the Drys-
rrt-r- Ryap snored.
Ten. fifteen. twenty. twenty-five minutes
passed in strict scientific order. Not a
movement. not tap. not a scratch. After
a half an hour. Just as was about TO sug-
gest that we stretch for a noggin of
scotch. peculiar. prolonged and meas
ured sound was heard
II was the hero of the Argonne, Captain
Ryan, snoring.
Lights! Lights!' we all exclaimed al
once. You will remember that that was
King Claudius yelp In Hamlet" at the
moment that the Prince Of Denmark
uprang tho fake murder scene. A light
was turned up and the man who stopped
The Kaiser was seen with one hand on the
1oard end the other with death-like grip
around tho neck OF Il bottle OF Haig ct
Taig.-sporing. sure enoughl
The ladies cried ''Shamei" Carlo. the
inince pie Yogi. uttered Mexican oath
which sounded like Maeterlinck English.
Tie said the spirit OF his old golf partner.
porfiro Diaz. was just coming across 70
raid the board I uttered my well-known
.nNf1icn1 emile 70 tho lady In hlack valN-ef