The Supernatural Stories: 'My own soul had by this time nearly wasted away''

By Edward Page Mitchell

Edward Page Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine on 24th March 1852 into a wealthy family. When he was eight the family moved to a house on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots and in the aftermath Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. It was there, at the age of fourteen, that his letters were first published in the local newspaper The Bath Times.

In 1872, at age twenty, whilst on a train journey to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window blinding his left eye. After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore his sight his uninjured right eye underwent sympathetic blindness. He was now completely blind. His burnt left eye eventually regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind and was later removed surgically and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his famed story ‘The Tachypomp’.

He became a journalist for the Daily Advertiser in Boston, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale, now also recognized as an early pioneer of science fiction.

Mitchell’s influence on science fiction writing is incredible, pre-dating many major themes. He wrote about a man made invisible (‘The Crystal Man’, 1881), a time-travel machine (‘The Clock that Went Backward’), about faster-than-light travel (‘The Tachypomp’, 1874), a thinking computer and a cyborg (‘The Ablest Man in the World’, 1879), matter transmission or teleportation (‘The Man without a Body’, 1877), superior mutants (‘Old Squids and Little Speller’) and mind transfer (‘Exchanging Their Souls’, 1877). Add to this other stories which predicted travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed at home, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and suspended animation through cryogenics amount to talents that are not as publicly lauded as they should be.

He had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal—several early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings and usually he determined they had rational explanations.

In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch and they had four children.

In 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, then the Nation’s leading newspaper.

In 1912, following Annie’s death, he married Ada M. Burroughs and produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism and writing up to his death.

Edward Page Mitchell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in New London, Connecticut on 22nd January 1927. He was 76.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Aug 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839679995

Book preview

The Supernatural Stories by Edward Page Mitchell

Edward Page Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine on 24th March 1852 into a wealthy family.  When he was eight the family moved to a house on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

In 1863 he witnessed the Draft Riots and in the aftermath Mitchell's father moved the family to Tar River, North Carolina. It was there, at the age of fourteen, that his letters were first published in the local newspaper The Bath Times.

In 1872, at age twenty, whilst on a train journey to Bath, Maine, a hot cinder from the engine's smokestack flew in through the window blinding his left eye.  After several weeks, while doctors attempted to restore his sight his uninjured right eye underwent sympathetic blindness.  He was now completely blind. His burnt left eye eventually regained its sight, but his uninjured right eye remained blind and was later removed surgically and replaced with a prosthetic glass eye. While recovering from this surgery, Mitchell wrote his famed story ‘The Tachypomp’.

He became a journalist for the Daily Advertiser in Boston, where his mentor was Edward Everett Hale, now also recognized as an early pioneer of science fiction.

Mitchell’s influence on science fiction writing is incredible, pre-dating many major themes. He wrote about a man made invisible (‘The Crystal Man’, 1881), a time-travel machine (‘The Clock that Went Backward’), about faster-than-light travel (‘The Tachypomp’, 1874), a thinking computer and a cyborg (‘The Ablest Man in the World’, 1879), matter transmission or teleportation (‘The Man without a Body’, 1877), superior mutants (‘Old Squids and Little Speller’) and mind transfer (‘Exchanging Their Souls’, 1877). Add to this other stories which predicted travel by pneumatic tube, electrical heating, newspapers printed at home, food-pellet concentrates, international broadcasts, and suspended animation through cryogenics amount to talents that are not as publicly lauded as they should be.

He had a lifelong interest in the supernatural and paranormal—several early newspaper pieces are factual investigations of alleged hauntings and usually he determined they had rational explanations.

In 1874, Mitchell married Annie Sewall Welch and they had four children. 

In 1903, Mitchell became editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, then the Nation’s leading newspaper.

In 1912, following Annie’s death, he married Ada M. Burroughs and produced a fifth son. Mitchell remained a popular and respected figure in American journalism and writing up to his death.

Edward Page Mitchell died of a cerebral hemorrhage in New London, Connecticut on 22nd January 1927.  He was 76.

Index of Contents

THE DEVILISH RAT

EXCHANGING THEIR SOULS

THE CASE OF THE DOW TWINS

AN EXTRAORDINARY WEDDING

BACK FROM THAT BOURNE

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE JUDAS ISCARIOT

THE FLYING WEATHERCOCK

THE LEGENDARY SHIP

THE SHADOW ON THE FANCHER TWINS

THE DEVILISH RAT

You know that when a man lives in a deserted castle on the top of a great mountain by the side of the river Rhine, he is liable to misrepresentation. Half the good people of the village of Schwinkenschwank, including the burgomaster and the burgomaster's nephew, believed that I was a fugitive from American justice. The other half were just as firmly convinced that I was crazy, and this theory had the support of the notary's profound knowledge of human character and acute logic. The two parties to the interesting controversy were so equally matched that they spent all their time in confronting each other's arguments, and I was left pretty much to myself.

As everybody with the slightest pretension to cosmopolitan knowledge is already aware, the old Schloss Schwinkenschwank is haunted by the ghosts of twenty-nine medieval barons and baronesses. The behavior of these ancient spectres was very considerate. They annoyed me, on the whole, far less than the rats, which swarmed in great numbers in every part of the castle. When I first took possession of my quarters, I was obliged to keep a lantern burning all night, and continually to beat about me with a wooden club in order to escape the fate of Bishop Hatto. Afterward I sent to Frankfort and had made for me a wire cage in which I was able to sleep with comfort and safety as soon as I became accustomed to the sharp gritting of the rats' teeth as they gnawed the iron in their impotent attempts to get in and eat me.

Barring the spectres and the rats, and now and then a transient bat or owl, I was the first tenant of the Schloss Schwinkenschwank for three or four centuries. After leaving Bonn, where I had greatly profited by the learned and ingenious lectures of the famous Calcarius, Herr Professor of Metaphysical Science in that admirable university, I had selected this ruin as the best possible place for the trial of a certain experiment in psychology. The hereditary landgraf Von Toplitz, who owned Schloss Schwinkenschwank, showed no signs of surprise when I went to him and offered six thalers a month for the privilege of lodging in his ramshackle castle. The clerk of a Broadway hotel could not have taken my application more coolly or my money in a more businesslike spirit.

It will be necessary to pay the first month's rent in advance, said he.

That I am fortunately prepared to do, my well-born hereditary landgraf, I replied, counting out six dollars. He pocketed them and gave me a receipt for the same. I wonder whether he ever tried to collect rent from his ghosts.

The most inhabitable room in the castle was that in the northwest tower, but it was already occupied by the Lady Adelaide Maria, eldest daughter of the Baron von Schotten, and starved to death in the thirteenth century by her affectionate papa for refusing to wed a one-legged freebooter from over the river. As I could not think of intruding upon a lady, I took up my quarters at the head of the south turret stairway, where there was nobody in possession except a sentimental monk, who was out a good deal nights and gave me no trouble at any time.

In such calm seclusion as I enjoyed in the Schloss it is possible to reduce physical and mental activity to the lowest degree consistent with life. St. Pedro of Alcantara, who passed forty years in a convent cell, schooled himself to sleep only an hour and a half a day, and to take food but once in three days. While diminishing the functions of his body to such an extent he must also, I firmly believe, have reduced his soul almost to the negative character of an unconscious infant's. It is exercise, thought, friction, activity, that bring out the individuality of a man's nature. Professor Calcarius' pregnant words remained burned into my memory:

What is the mysterious link that binds soul to the living body? Why am I Calcarius, or rather why does the soul called Calcarius inhabit this particular organism? [Here the learned professor slapped his enormous thigh with his pudgy hand.] Might not I as well be another, and might not another be I? Loosen the individualized ego from the fleshy surroundings to which it coheres by force of habit and by reason of long contact, and who shall say that it may not be expelled by an act of volition, leaving the living body receptive, to be occupied by some non-individualized ego, worthier and better than the old?

This profound suggestion made a lasting impression upon my mind. While perfectly satisfied with my body, which is sound, healthy, and reasonably beautiful, I had long been discontented with my soul, and constant contemplation of its weakness, its grossness, its inadequacy, had intensified discontentment to disgust. Could I, indeed, escape myself, could I tear this paste diamond from its fine casket and replace it with a genuine jewel, what sacrifices would I not consent to, and how fervently would I bless Calcarius and the hour that took me to Bonn!

It was to try this untried experiment that I shut myself up in the Schloss Schwinkenschwank.

Excepting little Hans, the innkeeper's son, who climbed the mountain three times a week from the village to bring me bread and cheese and white wine, and afterward Hans's sister, my only visitor during the period of my retirement was Professor Calcarius. He came over from Bonn twice to cheer and encourage me.

On the occasion of his first visit night fell while we were still talking of Pythagoras and metempsychosis. The profound metaphysicist was a corpulent man and very short-sighted.

I can never get down the hill alive, he cried, wringing his hands anxiously. I should stumble, and, Gott in Himmel, precipitate myself peradventure upon some jagged rock.

You must stay all night, Professor, said I, and sleep with me in my wire cage. I should like you to meet my roommate, the monk.

"Subjective entirely,