Spirited

THE MYSTERY OF THE BURIED CROSSES-- Hamlin Garland--Dutton ($3.75).

Corn-fed young Lochinvar of Midwest American writing in 1890 was Hamlin Garland. With sturdy grass-root realism his A Son of the Middle Border (1917) echoed the dissatisfaction of Populist farmers with Eastern banks and business, again surprised seaboard intellectuals into noting that there were literate settlements beyond Manhattan. But Populism was already dead and Garland was left like last year's scarecrow among the corn shocks. With the passing of the middle border he sought a substitute in the borderland of the spirits and its terrestrial outpost in Southern California. From there he still issues books on psychic research, whose pace and intentional humor recall the old Garland. Their unintentional humor now fetches many a chuckle.

In 1935 an ungrammatical grocer's clerk, Gregory Parent, recounted to Garland some queer doings of his late wife, Violet. Guided by the spirit of a dead Indian named Two Bear, Violet Parent for nine years had led gullible neighbors through cactus, poison oak and 3,000 miles of broiling California sunshine. Their reward was to find money in rusty cans and rotted pocketbooks, which the Parents kept. Also found were 1,500 crude lead crosses (Mrs. Parent's first husband was a metal worker). The Parents claimed that these crosses were Indian relics.

Busy with his Forty Years of Psychic Research at the time he heard this, Author Garland discovered too late that Gregory Parent "had passed into the 'fourth dimension.' " But for pan royalties in the present book a medium attempted to con-tact the Parents in the spirit world.

The medium used only an aluminum megaphone. When she held it to her breast, Garland heard a high squeaky voice. He rigged up an amplifier, shut the medium in a room where she could not hear what he asked the spirits. Once he put a lollypop in her mouth so she could not talk for them. The spirits squeaked on. Garland conversed with ghosts of Henry Fuller, an old friend, Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Jack London ("Why not Columbus?" asked one irritated ghost). Violet Parent and an assortment of dead Indians, padres and conquistadors, who told him where more crosses could be found. When they were not, the voice of Henry Fuller took charge. Result: 16 new crosses, found mostly under loose rock and bushes. Five museums to which Garland submitted his finds remained annoyingly skeptical.

Best spirit conversation followed the discovery that two pieces of broken cross exactly fitted. "Fuller," said Garland, "you are the wonder of the Fourth Dimension! That ought to make you laugh." Said Spook Fuller: "It does."

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