The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars / Being the Posthumous Papers of Bradford Torrey Dodd

with its morbid tendencies, its infatuation and deceit, has not been of any substantial value in this inquiry. It may afford to those who have experi

blished facts, decided to make public almost incontrovertible evidence that in the planet Mars the continuation of our present life, in some instances, has been discovered by myself. I

and was also a patron of the liberal arts. His home was stored with the most beautiful products of the manufacturer's skill in fictile arts, and on its walls hung the most approved examples of the painter's skill. The

tions. These experiments were made in a large building which was especially built for this object. It contained every facility for his various new designs, and in it he anticipated many advances in electrical science and in mechanical devices, which have made the civilization of our day so r

ion of the most beautiful and tender love that a man can bear toward a woman. It was adoration. Though his mind was employed upon the abstruse questions of physics which he investigated, or edified by new acquisitions in art, all his knowledge and all h

mbed oaks. I remember indistinctly his leading me by the hand through the hallway up the stairs, and softly whispering to me to be quite still, entered the large room dimly lit where my mother, attended by a nurse and a doctor, lay on the white bed. I remember being kissed by her and then being led from the room by the nurse. My father doubtless lingered until all was over, and the dear associate of his life, whose tenderness and charity had ma

go or what he would do. It was inevitable, however, that he should revert to his scientific investigations. He found in them a new solace and distraction, but even then his passion for research would not have sufficed to adequately meet his desperate des

a similar habit in her. On one occasion when, as was his wont, before we finally left the old home at Irvington, he had taken me in the summer evenings to the top of the observatory, then situated about half a mile west of the Alba

o the Sun, would she speak to

soul with armies and hosts of other souls, had departed to the sun and that they made the light and heat of this great luminary, and this wise man felt some comfort in the thought that the heat and light of the sun as he felt himself bathed in radiance and war

zenith. I was then about eleven years old, precocious for my years and gifted with a sympathy for occult and difficult subjects that b

a time so long past. I do not pretend or wish it to be thought that these interviews with my father are here literally related. That, of course, is beyond the limits of reasonable probability. But I do insist that in the following pages the occurrences described are ver

ume of Figuer and read, I imagine, that pa

organized life on the earth-why may we not declare that the rays transmitted by the sun to the earth and the other planets are nothing more or less than the emanations of

around him; between the Sun and the planets there would be a continual exchange, a never broken circle, an unending 'come and go' of beamy emiss

s heat. See the soul germs enfolded in animals develop, improve little by little, from one animal to another, and at last become incarnated in a human body. See, a little later, the superhuman succeed the man, launch himself into the vast plains of ether, and begin the long series of transmigrations that wi

n, that would bind together all the beings of Nature

ility of some sort of communication with his wife. Singularly and fortunately he did not have recourse to the fruitless idiocy of spiritualism, nor engage in that humi

the incandescent and Maxim light, or arc light were employed, and indeed the panic caused by Edison's premature announcement of the solution of the incandescent system of lighting had then preceded by two

o introduce its new electric lamps in the offices in the business portion of the city around Wall Street. It consists of a small bulbous glass globe, four inches long, and an inch and a half in diameter, with a carbon loop which becomes

nced by Prof. Avenarius of Austria, a method of dividing the electric current, by the insertion of a polariser in

sing platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recall the singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending out its

in possession of the ideas and projects he cherished. Amongst these projects, one partially reali

stinguished man before the Society of Telegraph Engineers in June, 1880, he referred to his conclusion that "electric light produces the coloring matter, chloroph

aged by electric energy, presumably by the blue rays." In heating and cooking by electricity m

r's great scientific ingenuity was his improvements of the dyn

ange of the former comparatively inert to the latter's dynamic condition, only dreamed of. Yet in my father's notebook I find this suggestive se

s at that time that he concluded to leave Irvington and locate his laboratory and observatory elsewhere. And for the sake of his astronomical interests he determined to find some place peculiarly well fitted, on account of its atmospheric advantages, for astronomical obse

my father who found his wealth was a requisite in establishing the observatory he

xpected to be able to secure an objective of 4 feet diameter, exceeding that of the Lick Observatory by one foot, a hopeless and as it proved an utterly abortive design. He spent an entire year in New York after leaving Irvington examining the various possible locations for his new observatory. The requisites were nearness to t

mpressed my father and led him along a line of speculation upon which finally rested

land, which he finally chose for the erection of his laboratories, and especially his observatory, I heard him read with the greatest satisfaction

ount of their current as had not leaked away in the earth. Profs. Desains, Jamin, and Berthelot were interested in these experiments, although the suggestion had b

face effect magnetic storms on ours, it is quite evident that a fluid of translatory power or consistency exists between the earth and the sun, then also between all the planetary inhabitants of space, and I cannot see why we may not hope some day to realize a means of communication with these distant bodies. How inspiring is the

ea. He had read at some length the address of Sir William Armstrong before the British Association in 1863, when that distinguished observer speaks of the sympathy between forces operati

he solar surface. This was attended by magnetic disturbances of unusual intensity and with exhibitions of aurora of extraordinary brilliancy. The identica

ng impetuously across the room d

y made orbs, perhaps, in thousands of cases, inhabited by beings throbbing with the same curiosity as our own to reach out beyond their sphere, and learn something of the nature of the animated universe which they may dimly suspect lies about them in the other stars. Why must it not be part of this immeas

k incessantly for that end. Prof. Hertz has generated these magnetic waves; we will; and by means of some sort of a receiver endeavor to find out a clue to wireless telegraphy." These closing remarkable words w

bankers in New York. He also had agreed upon the apparatus to be forwarded, expecting to be largely supplied at Sydney in new South Wales, as it was from this point he intended to sail or steam to New Zealand. M

who had extensive acquaintance and some five years' experience in New Zealand. We found this position ideal, and in the perfection of all the conditions necessa

My seclusion with my father had developed in me a singular inaptitude for companionship with boys of my own age, and furthermore from the influence of his rather poetic and dreaming nature, I began to show a ha

nk that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had its stages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myself incessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists in another, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and in each I

gible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So that gradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotional reces

o a phase of energy, the interpretation of light as an electric phenomenon, the mysteries of the electric force itself, the peculiar hypotheses about the force of gravitation, lead men, studying

upon its expansion and conquests, that further it would be incomprehensible that the colonizing (so to speak) of the central mind occurred only on one sphere, when it doubtless might be embodied in other beings, on hundreds or thousands or millions of other spheres; that continuance of life after death was a truth; feel

r's passionate hope to learn something of his wife's life aft

ocate in Mars the scene, at least, as we surmised in part, of those phases of

t is 35 millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli, Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alt

In 1882 this observation was enormously extended. He then showed that there was a variable brightness in some regions, that there had been a progressive enlargement since 1879 of his Syrtis Magna, that the oblique white streaks previously seen, continued, and, m

sion of our present life, and offered him a sort of scientific basis (without which he was inclined to view all esch

disputable. He quoted Herschell's own words with app

ill the length of the Martial year appear very different from what we enjoy when compared to the surprising duration of the years of Jupiter, Saturn and the Georgian Sidus. If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its polar region frozen and covered with mountains of ice and snow, that only partially melt when alte

lar climatic and atmospheric vicissitudes, with a very probably similar or identical origin with our globe, this planet Mars, now burning red in the evening skies, possesses life, an organic retinue of forms

cumulated in basins and depressed troughs, that atmospheric currents have been started, that meteorological changes in consequence have followed, and that the range of physical conditions embraces ph

his head when he declaimed in this way, always circling about the room in a rapid str

ransference, from one plane of life here to planes elsewhere, and that the stream is pouring in as well as out of this world, and that it may be, i

this assumption, reduce the number of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantly arriving, constantly departing, and that the sum total in the solar system remains perhaps nearly fixed, just as in the electrolysis of water we have

or science. Suppose that this life is one of extreme forcefulness, of stress and storm, like some prehistoric condition on our globe, but invested with more intellectual attributes than the same ages on our earth required or possessed, perhaps reaching a permanent condition not unlike that depicted in the Niebelungen Lied

Venus, a period perchance resembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour life of Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which in our pla

uated in their final fixed stages at brawn and sense. In Venus, too, the brawn stage preceded the sense period. In us both have preceded the scientific stage. There has been, may we not think, constant interchanges between these planets of such lives as survive material d

evolution. That is, that on Mercury the period of brawn develops to the possibility of the period of sense without fully exemplifying it, so in Venus the period of sense develops to

ociety, and accompanied by an accomplishment in its physical features, also, of those ideals of living which the great and good unceasingly labor to secure for us here and unceasingly fail to secure. O my ch

sy in completing the station we had selected, in receiving apparatus, ge

hile the broken intermediate landscape, with interrupted agricultural domains and forests was in front of us and far above us rose the grander peaks of the New Zealand Alps, a constant charm through the changing atmosphere, now brought near to us through the optical refraction of the clear air, and again veiled and shadowed and removed into spectral evanescent forms. The pic

ned enthusiasm for the beautiful had been curiously discouraged by association with my fathe

t gone to school nor passed three years of muscular and buoyant activity in the usual pastimes and pleasures of childhood. I had a precocious nature and it had been unfolded in an atmosphere of str

nsuming love. He saw in me the representation in face and partially in temperament of his wife. He lavished on me every care. Yet because of his eager affection, and his complete suspense from social connections I was made too largely depende

yself at times to the incoherent struggles of my nature, to find someone, something, more responsive to my young feelings than essays on magnetism, and a man, father though he was,

les, almost at the other extremity, we placed a smaller station. Our whole work was to achieve telegraphic communication between these points without wires. At night my father bent his telescopic gaze upon the heavens, and as the earth appr

th others by magnetic waves, but as it slowly assumed a theoretical certainty

used gelatine in place of collodion from which innovation rose the present system of dry plate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest in the use of photography in astronomy. He

reat number of photographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charming illustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook we enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, and amongst the first thoughts of my father

telescope, the photographic plate can be studied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and the results thus obtained placed at the disposal of as

of two feet diameter. It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye piece adjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of the objective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave us an image of surprising clear

it was well in 1885 before we were able to u

less telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit of the non-scientif

nsiderable, and yet so far as I am able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the intercept

e the wave length so that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it. [There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as the Slaby-Arco system, which American

lings were mixed with carbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumably from Mars, and later, as t

pace moving in an ethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly than in our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, that they could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it-(In the Slaby-Arco system an apparatus

storms upon the ocean travel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutively dissipated by the resistan

ng we sent magnetic waves both when the tube was filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuring the time required in both cases were quite inad

a sender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I did so and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready to transmit a message I had attended an attractive church service-it was toward the close of Lent in the year 1889-and as my father was ent

transmitters) and receivers for long distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up at the observatory, which-needlessly I think-was to serve as the

ad broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusual meteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting off the views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lasted an hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wide glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and islands, was readil

ring radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time of the opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As is well known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the same longitu

t settled down upon us we had taken our seats for a few instants at a table in a lower room engaged in one of those innumerable desultory talks upon our project and their, even to us, somewhat problematic character. Everything connected with that evening, apart from its havin

na, or rendered so indistinct by unfavorable conditions as to defy measurement and observation. Moreover, it may be taken for granted that the features of Mars are permanent objects on the actual surface of the planet, whereas the markings displayed by our telescopes on some of the other planetary members of our system are mere effects of atmospheric changes, which, though visible for several years and showing well defined periods of rotation cannot be accepted as affording the true periods. The behavior of the red sp

it has been suggested that the visibility of certain spots has varied in a manner which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on ordinary grounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planet itself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless been more imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so r

tional hopes, drew the blood from our faces, and seemed almost like a voice from the red orb then glowing in the southeastern sky. We sprang together up the stairs to the operating-room and saw with our eyes the moving lever of the little Morse machine. We had made ourselves familiar with the ordinary telegraphic codes, the international Telegraphic Code and that in use in Canada and the United Sta

of our hearts-could it be that we had indeed received an extra-terrestrial communication? The register of the dots and dashes cannot be all reproduced here, though a very long record of them, indeed almost complete, was made by myself. During the whole time that the register moved hardly a word of conversati

tually remain a proof of my sincerity in this matter, and will, I have the firm conviction, be repeated in the future, not exactly or at all, as I ha

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