“A Spirited Conversation,” a short story based upon The Spirit Phone, was published in the Summer 2020 issue of Suspense Magazine and the Fall / Winter 2021 issue of The Stray Branch. The story is featured below in its entirety.
It may also be heard as an audio short story narrated by Daniel Penz. Listen to the story here.
A Spirited Conversation
Short Fiction by Arthur Shattuck O’Keefe
The spirit phone has arrived by special delivery: a revolutionary device for communication with those who reside beyond the veil. Sold exclusively by the Edison Manufacturing Company. Patent pending.
Mr. Vanderloop signs for the package. The two delivery men take their leave. He is now alone in the house. (His housekeeper is off today.) He gazes at the corrugated paper box sitting atop the old cherry desk in his study, illuminated through the window by the morning sunlight.
Next to the box sits Mr. Vanderloop’s desk-top calendar. It is beautifully crafted in brass with an ornate floral design, fabric panels behind glass displaying the date. Saturday, 2 September. Being a perpetual calendar, it does not display the year: 1899. Nearly three years to the day since his wife succumbed to the flu. The calendar was a birthday gift from her.
Delivery of the spirit phone had been arranged by a special agreement, made prior to the public announcement of the invention’s existence. Mr. Vanderloop has a friend who has a friend at Tammany Hall, center of New York’s infamous Political Machine, which pulls all the strings on municipal policy in exchange for various favors (see bribes). His friend’s friend is in turn a friend – or at least an acquaintance – of Thomas Edison. (It is an open secret that Edison needed Tammany Hall connections to get approval for his Manhattan electrification project in the ‘80s.)
Mr. Vanderloop, who lives modestly – in his own estimation – on inherited wealth in a less fashionable part of Westchester, considers himself fortunate in not needing to forge such unsavory relationships to gain an advantage. In the case of the spirit phone, the friend of the friend of the Tammany hall functionary who knows Edison brought it to Mr. Vanderloop’s attention out of the blue a week ago, as they were lunching at Delmonico’s Restaurant in Manhattan.
Mr. Vanderloop’s initial reaction was sheer disbelief. Preposterous, he rejoined after a moment of speechlessness. Spiritualist claptrap. Sounds like a glorified Ouija board. Edison, you say? Perhaps the man has simply lost his mind. Didn’t he try some harebrained scheme for magnetically separating iron ore from rocks a few years ago? A complete failure, and an expensive one to boot. Then there was his wrongheaded attempt at discrediting alternating current. This spirit phone thing sounds even less plausible. He scored some wins with his light bulb and phonograph, but the only thing he seems good at these days is self-promotion.
Perhaps so, his friend replied. But the spirit phone is going to be announced in the press on Monday morning, and Edison will be demonstrating it at Columbia College the same evening. He wouldn’t be doing so if it weren’t a sure thing. He wants to get some models out on the market right away, and you know how these things work. Supply and demand. You wouldn’t want to be left out in the cold once a waiting list forms. You can be one of the first hundred people to own one.
I plan to buy one as well, his Tammany Hall-connected friend added.
So Mr. Vanderloop was persuaded. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The price - two hundred dollars - seemed rather steep, but he could afford it, and was assured that if dissatisfied he could return the item for a full refund.
According to the subsequent press accounts of the Columbia College demonstration, Edison definitely attained contact with something. At least there was a voice coming out of the spirit phone, and no evidence of fakery. Whoever spoke identified himself as a being on a higher plane of spiritual evolution, and requested details on the metallurgy of the instrument Edison was using to contact him. Edison demurred, but his assistant then suddenly began shouting that the device contained gold, silver, and silicon carbide before Edison shut him up. (There are apparently five other metals in its composition, but the patent is pending. ) Strange. Was the “spirit” mesmerizing Edison’s assistant somehow? And why should it care what the thing is made of? Mr. Vanderloop found it vaguely disturbing to read, and for several days afterward considered cancelling his order.
He walks up to his desk, opens the box, and peers inside.
Within, attached to a rectangular wooden base, is a slender, dark grey metallic cone, narrow end down. It resembles nothing so much as a phonograph horn. Sharing space with it are two electrical dry cells, 1.5 volts each, about the size of drinking glasses, attached to one another by wires. These in turn attach to a narrow, wire-wrapped metal cylinder set upon its side, and a switch to activate current. The electromagnet. The apparatus more or less matches the descriptions he has read in the papers.
Next to it sits a small booklet titled Edison Spirit Phone Model SP-1 Instruction Manual. He removes the spirit phone from the box and sets it upon the desk.
He peruses the manual. It is very brief. Three pages detailing how to activate and use the device (which has been amply described already in the press), and advice to keep ferromagnetic metals away from it, so as not to potentially impede its function. It should also be kept indoors and, so far as possible, away from dampness, extreme cold, and extreme heat. Dry cell replacement should be performed at approximately three-week intervals, or whenever the spirit phone’s function begins to diminish.
He sits down, regards the thing on his desk for a long moment, then switches on the electromagnet.
A low hum emanates from the horn of the spirit phone, and even in the bright morning sunlight he detects a faint blue aura, a glow that envelops it.
Now or never, he thinks, and begins to concentrate intensely upon the personality of she whom he wishes to contact. He then speaks.
“Gladys Vanderloop, I wish to speak with you.”
Silence, but for the low drone from the horn.
“Gladys Vanderloop, I wish to speak with you.”
“Howard.” The voice is faint, tinny, slightly distorted. But unmistakable. It is the voice of Gladys. His wife. His dead wife.
And so begin their conversations, which are wonderful, and moving, and joyful. At first.
Gladys wants to know how he has been doing since she passed on, and he tells her. At her urging, he does most of the talking. It is a spirited if rather one-sided conversation.
It is like this every day, and he spends most waking hours in his study. He has barely eaten or slept. His housekeeper seems concerned, and gently reminds him whenever the hour grows too late, or dinner has been waiting on the table for over an hour. She crosses herself whenever she has no choice but to be in the spirit phone’s presence. The days pass.
It is Wednesday, the 6th of September, their fifth day of conversation. The sun has just set, and the blue glow of the spirit phone is the room’s only illumination.
“Gladys,” he says.
“Yes, Darling?” comes the sweet, tinny voice.
“I’m so happy we can talk. I’ve missed you so. It’s been hard.”
“Yes. I’ve missed you too, dear.”
“Yes. It’s just that … I’ve been doing almost all the talking. I want to hear how you’re doing. About life where you are. About everything.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then. Can you describe daily life in the spirit world? Is it like a replica of the physical world, or something completely different?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes, that’s wonderful, dear.”
“What? Perhaps you’re growing a bit too tired to converse any more. We could try again tomorrow.”
“Yes, Darling.”
“All right, then. Good night, Gladys.”
“Good night, Howard.”
It is the evening of Thursday, the 7th of September. The spirit phone again faintly illuminates the study in blue.
Mr. Vanderloop has spent much of the previous twenty-four hours considering his situation. He has decided to try an experiment. He dreads what he is about to do, yet is anxious to do it.
“Gladys.”
“Yes, Darling?”
“Is reincarnation real?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Is reincarnation false?”
“Yes, dear.”
“There is one true religion, correct?”
“Yes, dear.”
“So there is no one true religion, correct?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I had a very nice dinner prepared by Mrs. Hogan, my new housekeeper. Roast turkey with giblet gravy. Apple pie for dessert.”
“That’s wonderful, Darling.”
“It was much better than the lunch she prepared. Cow dung sandwiches on rye bread with live maggots on the side.”
“That’s wonderful, Darling.”
“Lately I’ve been thinking about setting fire to a few orphanages.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You see, I’m actually Jack the Ripper.”
“That’s wonderful, darling.”
“Oh, shit,” whispers Mr. Vanderloop.
“Oh, shit,” says the sweet, tinny voice.
“Are you Gladys Vanderloop?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Are you something else, pretending to be Gladys Vanderloop?”
“Yes, dear.”
“My God. Whatever you are, you can’t even think.”
“That’s wonderful, darling. My God, whatever you are, you can’t even think.”
“You’re like a parrot. A damned parrot.”
“Damned parrot. Damned Parrot. That’s wonderful, dear.”
Mr. Vanderloop switches off the spirit phone, then places it with its manual in the corrugated paper box it was delivered in. He sits, not quite perceiving his own thoughts. His gaze shifts to the perpetual calendar on his desk, and he understands.
He feels empty, cheated, devastated. Yet there is also a deep, abiding relief as he sits, head on his desk, and releases the great, wracking sobs that resonate through his body. The fallen tears on his desk stare back at him as, silently, he asks his wife for forgiveness. If somehow she can hear him.
It is now the next morning: Friday, the 8th of September. Mr. Vanderloop wishes to contact his Tammany Hall-connected friend to arrange to return the spirit phone. Also to warn him, though he has probably already figured out what’s wrong. For Mr. Vanderloop’s friend was also among the first one hundred spirit phone purchasers. He recalls that the man is, like himself, a widower who has not remarried.
The man’s housekeeper answers the door, and in a grave voice informs Mr. Vanderloop that his friend has passed away of a sudden illness. He senses something amiss in the housekeeper’s story, and will later learn through mutual friends that it was not in fact an illness. His friend hanged himself in his study, the spirit phone on his desk, switched on.