As of the the last piece ("An UNEARTHLY Stowaway"), I've posted all the Stuart Palmer Ghost Stories writing that I could find online. But I'm not done!
There are a few other significant pieces that I've requested from various libraries around the country; so far, I've gotten scans of two of the articles I've requested. I'm waiting on a couple more. There are also a couple that I managed to find in some published collections of Ghost Stories material, but those pieces were published in 1931, so I have to wait until next year (when they enter the US public domain) before I post them.
In the meantime, I've also figured out what a few of the missing "non-fiction" articles are about, and I've even been able to find the sources that Palmer likely referenced to write his articles! So if I can't share Palmer's article, I can at least share his sources.
H. Rider Haggard Has a Dream #
The December 1929 issue of Ghost Stories contains an article by Palmer entitled "Rider Haggard's Strange Story." It's an account of how, in July 1904, adventure novelist H. Rider Haggard (She, King Solomon's Mines) dreamt that his daughter's dog, Bob, lay dying, and was trying to communicate this to Haggard. The next day, the family realized that Bob was indeed missing; they eventually found his body in the River Waveney. The dog had been hit by a train.
This incident disturbed Haggard so much that he wrote a letter to the Times of London describing his psychic experience. The New York Times republished that letter about ten days later, and I've reposted that version to my Ephemera blog.
Haggard eventually submitted an extended account and discussion of the event to the Society for Psychical Research; the account appeared in the October 1904 issue of the Society's journal. It seems likely that either the Times letter or the JSPR article (or Haggard's memoir, below) were the source(s) for Palmer's Ghost Stories piece. In the introduction to his 2000 volume Phantom Perfumes, a collection of stories from Ghost Stories, Mike Ashby quotes Sam Moscowitz's speculation that Palmer must have heard this anecdote directly from Haggard's widow, since "the incident is not included in any Haggard biographies." However, as this article shows, there are plenty of places where Palmer might have learned of this story.
Haggard repeated the story again in Chapter 19 of his memoir, The Days of my Life (1926). In that account, he goes on to say that the experience of such an apparently close psychic communion between humans and animals caused him to give up sport hunting. He didn't, however, go so far as to become vegetarian.
References #
Ashby, Mike. "Spectral Memories," Introduction to Phantom Perfumes, Mike Ashby, Editor. Ash-Tree Press, Ashcroft (2000).
Haggard, H. Rider. "Mr. Haggard's Strange Dream," New York Times, July 31, 1904, pg 6.
——. "Case: 1139 Dream," Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. XI, No. CCXII (October 1904), pp 278-290. (Pages 278-283 essentially duplicate the letter to the Times.)
——. "Chapter XIX: Psychical", The Days of my Life, Longmans, Green & Co., London (1926).