I was once acquainted with a man who found himself present by some ill chance at a verse speaking bout. Without a word he hurried outside and tore his face off. Just that. He inserted three fingers into his mouth, caught his left cheek in a frenzied grip and ripped the whole thing off. When it was found, flung in a corner under an old sink, it bore the simple dignified expression of the honest man who finds self-extinction the only course compatible with honour.

Fortunately, these questions about psychic phenomena are answered in a soon to be published book, "Boo!", by Dr. Osgood Mulford Twelge, the noted parapsychologist and professor of ectoplasm at Columbia University. Dr. Twelge has assembled a remarkable history of supernatural incidents that covers the whole range of psychic phenomena, from thought transference to the bizarre experience of two brothers on opposite parts of the globe, one of whom took a bath while the other suddenly got clean.

Donnie Green himself had been a trader at Salomon Brothers in the dark ages, when traders had more hair on their chests than on their heads. He is remembered as the man who stopped a callow young salesman on his way out the door to catch a flight from New York to Chicago. Green tossed the salesman a ten-dollar bill. 'Hey, take out some crash insurance for yourself in my name,' he said. 'Why?' asked the salesman. 'I feel lucky,' said Green.

Everybody has a plan until they get hit.