Buchanan came to believe that every object in the universe has its whole history ‘recorded’ on it—rather like a videotape recording—and that the human mind has the power to ‘play back’ this recording.But before we proceed any further, let us consider a practical example.In the winter of 1921, a number of people had come together in a room of the Metapsychic Institute—the French version of the Society for Psychical Research—in Paris, to test a clairvoyant, Madame De B-. Dr Gustav Geley, a leading French investigator, and director of the Institute, asked someone to pass a letter to her. A painter and novelist called Pascal Forthuny grabbed it. ‘It can’t be difficult to invent something that applies to anybody!’ He began to improvise jokingly. ‘Ah yes, I see a crime . . . a murder . . .’ When he had finished, Dr Geley said: ‘That letter was from Henri Landru.’ Landru was at the time on trial for the murder of eleven women—crimes for which he was guillotined in the following year.No one was very impressed by Forthuny’s performance; after all, Landru’s trail was the chief news-event of the day, so murder was an obvious topic to come into Forthuny’s mind.
