CAN SUCH THINGS BE? or THE WEIRD OF THE BERESFORDS: A STUDY IN OCCULT WILL-POWER

by Keith Fleming

I CANNOT preténd to account for, or in any way attempt to explain, the extraordinary mystery of the following tale. I only try to tell the mere facts of a marvellous unearthly experience in all the same as here related, save that she who went through this great horror lived—though but for a brief week or two—and told the story of that terrible night.

Many will, doubtless, assert that it must have been a dream, an hallucination, or the phantasmagoria of a diseased fancy ; that either insanity, or the strange optical delusions and imaginations engendered by opiates when they fail as sleep inducers, must be the true solution of this weird problem. And possibly they may be right; but one or two unalterable, inexplicable facts remain.

The mysterious music was heard by others besides her to whom the ghastly manifestation was made; and, above all, the singular disappearance of the violin, its reappearance a year later, and its still more marvellous and weirdly-mystic vanishing at the moment of death, are inexplicable phenomena.

I think it necessary to say this little word of deprecation, as apology for offering to the world a tale almost too wild for belief.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 19, 2023