I am unfailingly polite to College guests. “Isaiah 51, reading from the first verse,” said I, smiling serenely.

But he won’t be asked again.

More than once, over the past years, Professor Douglas Baines has asked me why I never write a story about a scientific ghost. “You should write something about haunted machinery,” he says. “All the machinery in this College is haunted,” I reply; “Roger has spent countless hours attempting to exorcise our heating system.” “Of course,” he says; “so why don’t you write about that?”

The answer is that I do not write ghost stories. That is to say, I do not invent them. I simply confide to you the uncanny things that have happened to me since I associated myself with this College. If I were to come before you with a merely invented tale, I should feel myself to be an impostor. No: I tell you only what is true. “Literally true?” Professor Baines might ask. No, for literal truth is not the truth of uncanny things. They belong to the realm of psychic, of subjective truth. It would be quite outside my powers to invent a scientific ghost story. My typewriter—which is a scientific marvel, and consequently always in a very delicate state of health—would refuse its task. Nevertheless I am not, I assure you, a stranger to science. I am steeped in it, but it is not of the kind that is in vogue in this university at the moment. It is the science of past ages.

This was brought forcibly to my attention last Christmas, which is to say, during the academic year of 1974-75. It is a period that will go down in the history of Massey College as The Year of the Two Hall Dons. A Hall Don, I should explain for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is the elected head of the Junior Fellows of the College, and a very important person. Last year we had two of them. One resigned at Christmas for reasons of—well, I’m going to tell you why, though at the time we agreed to say that it was because his work on behalf of the NDP became too demanding to permit him to give adequate attention to his College obligations. He was succeeded—for such is politics—by a man who was in almost every way his direct opposite. The second Hall Don was a man of balanced mind and calm and reflective temperament—a natural Conservative. The first Hall Don was a student of law, and it was a matter for wonder that he was able to keep up with his demanding legal study, while apparently giving so much of his time to the NDP. Obviously he possessed, in the highest degree, those qualities which lead to success at the bar. I need not tell you in disgusting detail what those are.

Superficially, both men seemed to be devoted to truth, as it may be determined by argument—hours and hours of complicated argument—and a close consideration of objective evidence. But the Conservative Don was a student of history, and thus a slave of Romance. The Legal Don, as a lawyer, was supposedly wedded to fact, but ah—beneath the surface he was involved in a study which does not accord with truth and evidence as we now know them—though I will not go so far as to say it was a study without its application in legal practice. He was an astrologer.

He made no secret of it. He cast horoscopes right and left. He cast one for me, and indeed published it in the College paper, The Bull. But it was to me alone that he confided its deeper meanings. “You are very strongly under the influence of Jupiter,” he said, in his deep, thrilling voice. “Oh, jolly good,” said I, uneasily. When I am uneasy I often fall into the colloquial speech of an earlier day. “Not jolly good at all,” he boomed, and his splendid, glowing eyes darkened. “Jupiter is the bringer of energy, right? But can we tell what he is going to do with his energy? He may put it at the service of forces that are destructive, right? Now, you have an equally strong influence from Saturn. Just suppose your Jupiter throws himself, thunderbolts and all, behind your Saturn? What then? Saturn is maleficent, so your Saturn backed up by your Jupiter produces an evil influence of incalculable force.” And there he stopped, but he gazed into my eyes hypnotically. “What would you say that indicated?” said I, with a pitiable affectation of carelessness. “Better you shouldn’t know,” said he. “What must be, must be, right?”

I did everything a reasonable man would do under such circumstances. I attempted to dismiss the subject from my mind. Astrology, I told myself, is a science of the past. It is utterly discredited. Its place has been taken by Sociology, Guidance Counselling and Educational Theory. Who believes in astrology now?

Ah, that was the trouble. Though I am not a whole-hearted believer in astrology as such, I was brought up a Presbyterian, and thus I am inclined to believe bad news from virtually any source. And my own observations of history have convinced me that behind what has passed as science, in whatever age and however absurd, there lurk some ill-perceived, phantasmal truths. I began to fret. When would my Jupiter throw all his unthinking, capricious force behind my malignant Saturn, and bring me to—to what? To what abyss of disgrace, to what towering folly, to—? My mind abounded in horrors: the hangnail that turns to gangrene—the safety-belt that becomes a hangman’s noose. Whenever I met the Hall Don, I thought I saw pity in his lustrous eye.

It was at about this time last year—the time when Christmas is imminent—that the presence of this strangely learned man and his grim predictions gave me an unforgettable night—a night which destroyed forever my conception of this College as an abode of peace and academic decorum. It was exactly a year ago this very night—the night of St. Lucy’s Day, and also Friday 13. It is my custom, when I have been working late, to take a turn or two around the quad before I go to bed, in search of fresh air and that quieting of spirit which the darkness of night brings. As I strolled through the early winter mist, I became aware of a strange light in one of the College windows. Some windows were dark, some illumined by electric light, but this window was lit by a blue flame that undulated and quivered in a manner that could only mean one thing. Fire!

I darted into the residence where that window was, and with all the energy of my abundant Jupiter I bounded up the stair. I came to the door, and saw by the card that it was the door of our astrological Hall Don. Easily seen through the crack by the floor the curious blue light darted and flickered.

Never before had I used my master key to open the door of a private room, but this was an emergency, and I did so without hesitation. I threw open the door, ready to leap backward if there should be a rush of flame, but although the room was filled with curious light, there was no fire in the ordinary sense. A wooden box, of handsome workmanship, stood on one of the shelves, and it was from it that the blue light came.

Foolish people have called me impractical, but in an emergency I am lion-like. I rushed into the nearby bathroom, soaked a heavy towel in water, carried it back, and with deft, masterful movements I wrapped the box in it. That, I thought, will settle the hash of whatever conflagration lurks inside. But judge of my amazement when the blue light, instead of being quenched, came through the wet towel and filled the room, as before.

Nor was this the only circumstance that made my eyes start, and my hair stand on end. From beneath the towel I heard sounds—first a heavy sigh, and then a tiny, pleading voice, crying: “If you please, sir! Oh, my preserver, my noble friend! Let me out, I beseech! Let me out in the name of Ahriman, the All Powerful!”

What would you have done? I acted without an instant of indecision. Not, I assure you, from excess of daring, but from a vastly greater positive influence—from curiosity. I was in the room of our astrologer-Hall Don, and it lay in my power to discover some of his strange secrets. I tore away the soaking towel. But of course the box was locked.