在这个过程中叙述描述了一个无形的精神返回地球，并导致新的和陌生的地面读者。
    不是在午夜默默无闻，但在一天中搜索灯，做了超自然influence断言本身。无论所揭示的愿景，也不是一个声音宣布，它达成的感觉是通过最不容易自我欺骗：凡人的意义上，认为知识。
    这一事件的记录将必然产生冲突的印象。这将提高一些头脑，这是怀疑的理由断言，它会在其他振兴头脑，信念，希望这证明，并会离开的人，在几百年的徒劳调查已离开这可怕的命运问题，在黑暗中。
    不过只有在当前开展的领导叙事沿着继承的事件方式，作家拒绝遵循逆冲自己和对市民的意见，他认为现代的例子。他返回到他从已经出现的阴影，和叶子的怀疑和信仰的反对势力作斗争的旧战场上一次又一次的旧地面。
    二。
    事件发生后第一个30年，在本世纪即将结束了。
    ===
    THE course of this narrative describes the return of a disembodied spirit to earth, and leads the reader on new and strange ground.
    Not in the obscurity of midnight, but in the searching light of day, did the supernatural influence assert itself. Neither revealed by a vision, nor announced by a voice, it reached mortal knowledge through the sense which is least easily self-deceived: the sense that feels.
    The record of this event will of necessity produce conflicting impressions. It will raise, in some minds, the doubt which reason asserts; it will invigorate, in other minds, the hope which faith justifies; and it will leave the terrible question of the destinies of man, where centuries of vain investigation have left it--in the dark.
    Having only undertaken in the present narrative to lead the way along a succession of events, the writer declines to follow modern examples by thrusting himself and his opinions on the public view. He returns to the shadow from which he has emerged, and leaves the opposing forces of incredulity and belief to fight the old battle over again, on the old ground.
    II.
    THE events happened soon after the first thirty years of the present century had come to an end.