One of the most fascinating chapters in Loren Eisele’s autobiography, All the Strange Hours (The Excavation of a Life), is called "The Ghost World." It is the story of a near tragedy in Eisele’s life when he was beginning his career as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He awakened one night and discovered he was "running a fever and babbling a lecture to some unseen audience." "Slowly," he writes, "as my consciousness steadied, I grew aware of something strange. Outside, lightning bolts sporadically split the dark. I could see through the bedroom window a torrential rain in progress. After each stroke of lightning I waited for the following thunder. There was none. I was deaf. The last lines were going down. I was alone with that knowledge in the dark."

Eisele had two concern…