That Mystery Floating Alongside

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  “The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadow on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship’s side. But even then I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired head. Howev...

Easier to get in than out.

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The time was 1884.
The place: Montgomery, Michigan.

A spiritualist was stricken with a disease and his life was ebbing away. He had such a hatred for Christ that open his death, he requested that his body not be carried to a church for funeral services nor should any pastor be called upon to officiate.

As he lay in his bed dying, he turned his face to the wall and began to talk to himself about his future. His wife, sitting by his bedside, saw that he was greatly troubled and tied to comfort and console him by telling him not to be afraid. She told him that his spirit would return to her and they would still be with each other then as now. But he would not find comfort in her words. With a look of despair, he said, “I see a great high wall rising around me and am finding out at last—when it is too late—that it is easier to get into Hell than it will be to get out.”

A few minutes later he died to receive his reward of unrightousness.

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