There were seven of us at the séance: the medium and six visitors. Between the six of us there was everything from a hardened sceptic to a passionate believer.
My frame of mind at the start was inquisitive and … definitely open to see what might happen. If I had been asked for an opinion about seances just a week earlier, I would not have been described that way. I was much more of a sceptic. But not today.
What changed me? I’d had a very vivid dream just a few nights prior to this meeting. The dream had bothered me so much that I felt I had to attend this particular séance and at least ‘give it a go’.
So here I was, attending my first ever séance – and with a relatively open mind. Who would’ve picked that to ever happen!
I looked around the room. The lights were dimmed and the room heavily curtained on every wall. The guests were showing a full range of emotions, and there was some soft chatter between people who knew each other.
The medium was a Ms Bristol. She insisted we call her Patricia. She welcomed us and invited each person to introduce themselves. We were to speak to the rest of the group, and to briefly say why we were there. My response was succinct. I simply said I was wanting to have an open mind and that I was visiting a séance for the first time. I said nothing to anyone about my dream, or that I had been instructed in that dream to speak with a deceased author, Jacob Higgins.
As the séance began, we were asked to hold hands around the table. Patricia tilted her head back and half closed her eyes. Her long silk scarf dropped backwards as she drifted into a trance of some kind. After a minute or more, she spoke. It was not to any of us around the table though. Rather she spoke to… others.
“Is there anyone needing to communicate with us tonight?” she asked. “Yes…I see you. I can see that you are insistent that you should go first. Alright. You may speak through me.”
Her body jerked and she looked straight at me. It was still her voice, but it was harsher now. Angry.
“You!” she said staring with wide opened eyes that pierced straight into my heart. “You slander my name!”
“Who are you?” I asked – already knowing the answer. But I wanted to hear Patricia say it.
“You know who I am. I’m Jacob, and you have slandered my name.”
A shiver when down my spine. How could she know? It seemed she must be genuine. The spirit that visited me in the dream had said as much: “It has to be Ms Bristol the medium, no one else. There are a lot of phonies out there, but she can really reach through to connect with our side.”
I sensed my breathing pace had become faster, and despite it not being a particularly warm night, I felt a bead of sweat slowly moving down my face.
Despite how strange and disturbing this all was I was determined to give the appearance of being in control. “How did I slander you?” I responded confident of my argument. “It wasn’t slander, Jacob: you actually did commit plagiarism. Surely you can’t keep denying that.”
“I will answer you and I’ll explain why you’re wrong,” he said loudly but still very matter-of-factly. “But first tell me: why are you even here?” His volume got even louder and more intimidating. “I’m so angry with you!”
There was a sudden shaking of the table we were all sitting around. It only lasted a second or so, but everyone jumped, (except Patricia).
Jacob continued. “I can’t settle fully into this new realm while I’m so agitated and aggrieved. It has to be remedied before I can be fully immersed into the light.” Patricia’s head turned and looked up at nothing – at least nothing we could see but she (or Jacob) seemed to be focused on something very specific.
I became the focus again, and Jacob continued. “You decided after my death, to write an unkind article about me and my works. I was barely cold in the grave and you took advantage of that to write a piece on me? And mock me?”
I could not totally disagree with his comments about my timing. Nevertheless, I made my defence: “I wrote the article, partly because you did suicide. I was not happy to hear of your death. I was well aware of the likelihood that that articles like the one I was then writing, probably contributed to your decision to kill yourself. But in a way it was because you had suicided, that I felt compelled to write. The natural sympathy that comes from such tragic news might have softened people’s attitudes to the very real unethical behaviour you demonstrated in your acts of plagiarism.”
Patricia – or rather Jacob – let out a frustrated groan. “You’re wrong! You think I plagiarised? No! Plagiarism? What a stupid word. There’s no such thing as Plagiarism. It’s a term invented by immature minds – people who pretend their own work it original.”
“No, it’s a term for when people like you, take other writers’ works, and use them in your own work, and then pretend it’s your own creation.”
“That’s not what I claim to do. I am just more honest that the rest of you! Everyone who writes, plagiarises. Everyone. Most are in denial. But everything we have read over the course of our lives, is buried deep in our minds. Everything. When we write it is a combination and reordering of all that has gone in before that: all that we have read, all that we have seen, and all that we have ever experienced. Some words and phrases are identical to what we have read elsewhere. Sometimes whole sentences are.”
“But not whole paragraphs and whole sections of material. That’s not subconscious memory, that is conscious copying.”
“It is a mere step along the spectrum of a continuum which suddenly become ‘plagiarism’ to you and others like you. But it is a part of the continuum. It is utterly arbitrary to draw a point on that endless line of actions and influences, and say, ‘Here is the point where it is wrong to be influenced by the works of others’!”
Our argument – for that it what it was: I was arguing with a dead man – went on for at least fifteen minutes. Jacob was adamant he was simply an honest creative writer utilizing all the available tools and resources that were legitimately available to him. I was sure he had broken a well-known and well-established convention that he was certainly aware of.
The disagreement did soften a bit as the conversation continued. I became less dogmatic as he kept emphasising his ‘relativist’ position, and Jacob became less loud as I listened to him more. In the end I acknowledged he could well argue as he had, even if I still personally disagreed. He said I was entitled to my opinion even if it was not fully fleshed out and therefore mistaken.
As it neared its natural end, Jacob asked me if I would write another article to share his philosophy as I heard it from him. He wanted a more balanced piece: one that at least offered his views for consideration. I promised I would, even though my own position on plagiarism was still more strict than his. He even said “thank you,” in a softer voice. And then words that all of us at the table were glad to hear: “Now I can go.” (I assume he meant into the light he had referred to earlier.)
The séance went on for another hour or so, but to be honest I can’t remember much more about it. Different spirits spoke to different people there, but my head was swimming with the conversation I had had with Jacob Higgins.
I did keep my promise to Jacob. Hence my second article that was published yesterday. Perhaps I should not have shared the way I found out his more detailed defence. Perhaps I should have left out that part about the séance. But it seemed necessary to me to give the full context of my material.
Since that second article, I have had no end of phone calls, a few from sympathetic ‘believers’, but mostly from sceptics and rationalists, who are now certain I am either crazy or a conman. Some compared me to Jacob: he was a plagiarist, and I was a deceiver who fabricated stories and pretended they were true. Some even suggested I was in league with Ms Bristol to help her scam more people!
I had interviewed a dead man. I know I’m no conman. But maybe I have lost my mind.