Wild Talents by Charles Fort

been mutilated. They learned that the young man had been away from home, that night, “taking a walk,” as told by him. The case against Edalji convinced a jury, which found him guilty, and he was sentenced to seven years, penal servitude.
    I now have a theory that our existence is a phantom—that it died, long ago, probably of old age—that the thing is a ghost. So the unreality of its composition—its phantom justice and make-believe juries and incredible judges. There seems to be a ghostly justice surviving in the old spook, having the ghost’s liking for public appearances, at times. Let there be publicity enough, and Justice prevails. In a Dreyfus case, when the attention of the world is attracted, Justice, after much delay, and after a fashion, appears. Probably in the prison with Edalji were other prisoners who had been sent there, about as he had been sent. They stayed there. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with much publicity, took up Edalji’s case. In his account, in Great Stories of Real Life, Doyle says that when the police inspector found the old coat, upon which, according to him, there were horse hairs, Mrs. Edalji and Miss Edalji examined it and denied that there was a horse hair upon it: that Edalji’s father said: “You can take the coat. I am satisfied that there is no horse hair on it.” Doyle’s statements imply that somewhere near the police station was a stable. As to the statement that Edalji’s shoes exactly fitted tracks in the field, where the horse was ripped, Doyle says that the outrage occurred just outside a large colliery, and that hundreds of excited miners had swarmed over the place, making it impossible to pick out any one track. Because of Doyle’s disclosures—so it is said—or because of the publicity, the government appointed a committee to investigate, and the report of this committee was that Edalji had been wrongfully convicted.
    Sometimes slashers of cattle have been caught, and, when called upon to explain, have said that they had obeyed an “irresistible impulse.” The better-educated of these unresisting ones transform the rude word “slasher” into “vivisectionist,” and, instead of sneaking into fields at night, work at regular hours, in their laboratories. There are persons who wonder at the state of mind of the people in general, back in times when the torture of humans was sanctioned. The guts of a man were dragged out for the glory of God. “Abdominal exploration” of a dog is for the glory of Science. The state of mind that was, and the state of mind that is, are about the same, and the unpleasant features of anything are glossed over, so long as mainly anything is glorious.
    According to a reconsideration, by the English government, in the Edalji case, the slasher of cattle, of Wyrley, remained uncaught. In the summer of 1907, in the same region, again there was slashing.
    Aug. 22, 1907—a horse mutilated, near Wyrley. It was said that blood had been found on the horns of a cow, and that the horse had been gored. Five nights later, two horses, in another field, were slashed so that they died. September 8—horse slashed, at Breenwood, Staffordshire. A young butcher, named Morgan, was accused, but he was able to show that he had been in his home, at the time. For about a month injuries to horses continued to be reported. They had been injured “by barbed wires,” or “by nails projecting from fences.”

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    Sometime in the year 1867, a fishing smack sailed from Boston. One of the sailors was a Portuguese, who called himself “James Brown.” Two of the crew were missing, and were searched for. The captain went into the hold. He held up his lantern, and saw the body of one of these men, in the clutches of “Brown,” who was sucking blood from it. Nearby was the body of the other sailor. It was bloodless. “Brown” was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, but President Johnson commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. In October, 1892,