Free Ghosts & Gallows by Paul Adams Page A

light raincoat he carried over one arm. Lees’ psychic powers allowed him to follow the couple as both turned into a narrow court and penetrate the blackness as they sought out a dark corner. As the woman drunkenly made to raise her skirt the man stepped forward, simultaneously clapping a hand over her mouth and slashing open her throat with a hidden knife. The killer quickly lowered the body to the ground and, with Lees a horrified voyeur, used the same knife to cut into the prone torso. The mutilations took only a few minutes after which the man wiped the blade on the woman’s clothes and, straightening up, he slipped on his overcoat, easily concealing his blood-soaked shirtfront, and casually walked back out into the street at which point, thankfully for the horrified medium, the psychic vision faded away and he found himself alone in the familiar surroundings of his home.
    Shocked and sickened by what he had experienced, Lees regained enough composure to realise that he had been a premature witness to a crime that was yet to take place and hurriedly took a cab to Scotland Yard. Unfortunately for the gentle mystic, he was treated with derision by the duty sergeant and dismissed as a harmless crank, although the policeman went as far as to humour his persistence by making a note of when Lees said he saw the murder take place by recalling the time on the bar-room clock through the gin palace window. The following night, 8 September, Annie Chapman was slaughtered in the back yard at Hanbury Street. Accompanied by a manservant, the medium visited the murder site and was overwhelmed to find the same grim street and shadowy courtyard from his vision. Lees suffered a severe nervous breakdown and, debilitated both by the experience and his inability to make the authorities believe his story, he decided to take his family on a short holiday to the Continent, where, for a couple of weeks, he was untroubled by further visions.
    On his return home from abroad the unwelcome and supernatural connection with the Whitechapel killer soon returned. While riding with Sarah Lees on a London omnibus, the couple had reached Notting Hill when Lees became aware of a man who had just stepped onboard – ‘a man of medium height wearing a dark tweed suit and a light overcoat’. By this time the unknown killer had acquired his famous and chilling title and Lees, who had scanned the newspapers for news of further crimes, was able to confidently whisper across to his wife, ‘That man is Jack the Ripper’. When the stranger got off at Marble Arch, Lees instructed his wife to continue home alone and set out to follow him. As the two men walked along Park Lane, Lees saw a policeman and, hurrying over, pointed out the man ahead. Not surprisingly, the constable was in no mood to believe the claims that the Whitechapel killer was in fact only 100 yards away and as Lees began arguing the stranger hailed a cab and was driven out of sight.
    That night as he sat working, Robert Lees was again overpowered by a paranormal vision, this time the aftermath of another gruesome murder due to take place very soon. Lees was aware of a heavily mutilated body and saw the face terribly slashed, ‘one ear was completely severed, the other remained hanging by a thin shred of flesh’. Again the horrified man went to the police at Whitehall Place and insisted on an interview with a detective involved in the investigation. By this time Scotland Yard had received (on 29 September) a letter dated four days previously addressed to ‘Dear Boss’ in which the writer, again signing himself ‘Jack the Ripper’, had threatened on his ‘next job’ to ‘clip the ladys [ sic ] ears off’ and send them to the police ‘just for jolly’. This time Lees’ description of the murdered woman, the head injuries and lacerated ears, made the policeman less likely to dismiss the psychic as a crank. The following night, the time of the ‘double event’, left the police with two