The Stolen Body by H G Wells

Mr Bessel is a conscientious man, and the experiment he agrees to try with his friend Vincey is undertaken in the spirit of honest enquiry. It takes place on a quiet evening, and it concerns nothing more alarming than how far one mind might reach toward another. Yet something has noticed what they are doing, and before long Mr Bessel will have found that the self he has always taken for granted is far less secure than he supposed, and that some questions, once asked, are answered.

First published in The Strand Magazine, November 1898.
Collected in Twelve Stories and a Dream (Macmillan, 1903) and reprinted in Weird Tales, November 1925.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was an English novelist and journalist, a founder of science fiction best known for The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.
A student of T. H. Huxley, he brought a biologist's habit of mind to his scientific romances and to his short stories, a number of which edge toward the supernatural.

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