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Just us here, and what comes into the second floor. Something not right about the whole deal.
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While taking breaks from Ewan’s papers, Seb conducted internet searches for the Society for Psychophysical Research. His slender breakthrough came in the form of comments referencing the society in relation to other similar organizations in the 1960s. But the same secondary articles also led him to the eureka connection with the writer, M. L. Hazzard.
The SPR had no entry on Wikipedia, but was mentioned as a footnote in a long entry on ‘Astral Projection’. It seemed the SPR had been one group, amongst scores of similarly titled societies and organizations, that had flourished from the late Victorian interest in travelling clairvoyance until the 1970s. Many were purely occult organizations, like the Golden Dawn. Others had blended psychology with science and the supernatural. The SPR took its place in the latter category.
On most sites that referenced the SPR, the information never progressed beyond the approximate dates of its existence, in the sixties. There was no mention of the society’s dissolution or start date.
Three commentaries did mention its founding by ‘a writer, M. L. Hazzard’. On an occult site, Hazzard’s theories about ‘planes and spheres’ were referred to once, but without expansion.
Two postings on ‘Astral Projection’ websites were critical of the SPR. But the dismissal in the first piece never extended beyond a reference to it being ‘discredited and disreputable’. The second post commented on Hazzard’s ‘disgrace’ without specifying more than ‘embezzlement’ and of ‘defrauding members of the society’.
No publications seemed to have been produced by the society either, nor were there any available records that tried to formally define its practices or aims. The group appeared to have left almost no trace of itself, at least within the public domain.
It struck Seb that the publications of the British organizations of the time that bore similarities to the SPR may have contained more information on Hazzard’s group, but without recourse to the indexes of the books they’d produced, he’d never know. Nor would he ever reach the end of the published journals and annals from the groups that operated in the same period. There were hundreds of these publications for sale on used-book sites.
He’d also developed an impression that academia’s interest in the phenomenon had never waned. But it repeatedly and comprehensively dismissed, or attempted to dismiss, all of the ideas posed by astral projectors, occultists and pseudo-scientists, like the SPR. Extensive research into the subject had been conducted by several British and American universities, including Cambridge, and recently too. A broad range of physiological causes for the phenomenon were cited. A damn shame, it seemed in hindsight, that they never put the SPR in a laboratory.
Strangely, as often occurred whenever Seb tried to research anything online, he’d also found himself gradually moved away from what he wanted to know. Anything close to relevant about the SPR was inevitably old and buried in the archives of long-abandoned websites. But he did have more luck online when searching for M. L. Hazzard.
The Wiki entry on Hazzard was brief but far more interesting because it had been edited by someone frequently, and recently. Seb quickly recognized four of Ewan’s online reviewer monikers too. So had Ewan considered himself to be the proprietor of the writer’s legacy? If so, why was so little information included in the entry?
Hazzard was listed as the ‘unique and influential author of two collections of strange episodes based upon the author’s actual experiences, while employing his extraordinary ability to travel outside of his physical body’.
Hazzard’s books were listed: Sinking in the Dark Room. Rising in White Light and Hinderers in the Passage. The revelation of the title of the second collection gave Seb such a shock that his vision had blurred. He’d gone and fetched a drink, which he’d consumed while sitting on the toilet, after feeling a hot, urgent need to find one in a hurry.
When he’d calmed down and returned to his office, still dabbing his brow with tissue paper, he’d forced some composure and continued his consideration of the Wikipedia entry. Hazzard wasn’t influential. He’d hardly been read in his lifetime, let alone afterwards. Unique was also an attribute that Seb, at one time, would have considered debatable, though he didn’t question it now. The year of the author’s death was cited as 1982, ‘from cancer’.