TRAVELLING CLAIRVOYANCE.
As a public entertainer at one time, giving demonstrations of mesmeric phenomena, I have had naturally many opportunities of seeing different types of clairvoyance. During a course of entertainments given by me in Rothesay, 1881, I was able to introduce clairvoyance to public notice by the most difficult method, that of public experiments.
M. C., the clairvoyante, was a native of Newcastle-on-Tyne. All her clairvoyant experiments were satisfactory. Her husband was also a clairvoyant, but not so striking for public exhibition. M. C. seemed to possess all phases. One or two experiments out of many will be interesting not only as illustrative of clairvoyance, but because what I relate can be easily ratified.
M. C. arrived in Rothesay for the first time about four hours previously to taking her seat upon the platform, in the New Public Halls. It was neither possible nor probable she could have obtained the information she possessed by other than psychic means. The clairvoyant was mesmerised and blindfolded before the audience. After some experiments in objective clairvoyance were given, such as describing a watch, telling the time, and the number, by having the watch held silently over her forehead, she gave several experiments in travelling clairvoyance. Many visitors in the hall—for Rothesay is a well known and fashionable seaside resort—sent up requests to the platform, and desired the clairvoyante should visit their homes in Kent, Cornwall, Island of Jersey, in the Isle of Man, Glasgow, and other places. Her visits and descriptions were in all instances extremely satisfactory. How far thought-transference and objective clairvoyance commingled and entered into her descriptions it would be difficult to say, but the results were simply marvellous.
Test case, by the late Dr. Maddever, M.D., M.R.C.S., and Dr. John Maddever, his son. These medical gentlemen resided in Rothesay, and were present in the hall. Dr. Maddever desired me to send the clairvoyante into a certain room in his house and that she should describe it.
All the directions the clairvoyante obtained were, “to go out of the hall, down the front steps; when out turn to the right and proceed onward till she came to an iron-railed gate, on which was a small brass plate, bearing the name of ‘Dr. Maddever,’ she was to open the gate, go up to the hall-door, enter, pass the first door to the left, and turn round a passage to the left and enter the first door to which she came, and describe what she saw.”
Sitting still upon the platform in silence for a minute or two, she suddenly exclaimed:—“I am at the gate—at the door—now in the hall—I have found the room, and I am now inside, and stand with my back to the door.” She then proceeded to describe the room, the book-cases which surrounded it, their peculiar structure; the mantel-piece, the form of the clock, the time, and the appearance of the ornaments. The table in the centre of the room, its form, the colour and style of the cloth upon it, books, albums, and papers thereon, the flower vase support in the window, and a number of other particulars.
At the conclusion Dr. Maddever arose in the audience and said:—“Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Coates is a stranger to me, I only know of him by report. The young lady on the platform I do not know. I have not seen either till this evening, and they have never been in my house. The experiment we have had is most remarkable, and should be of deep and profound interest to all. The young lady has described the room, as far as I can remember, most correctly—in fact very much better than I could have done myself.” This statement was received with applause.
After one or two instances of travelling clairvoyance, a young gentleman rose in the body of the hall and desired I should send the sensitive to a house or villa not far from the juncture of Marine Place and Ardbeg Road.
The directions given to the clairvoyante were briefly to the effect, she was to leave the place, on reaching the front street she was to turn to her left and keep on past the Post Office, Esplanade, past the Skeoch Woods, etc., till she came to the house. She nodded her head in compliance, and presently announced she “had found the house.” Then she shivered and appeared to draw back, and said “I won’t go in.”
Some persons in the audience laughed, and one (I think it was the young gentleman who asked that she might be sent) said: “The whole thing is a swindle.” Now, considering there was not a single flaw in the experiments that night, surprise after surprise being given, and the audience had risen in enthusiasm, this opinion was not favourably received.
I asked the gentleman “to have patience.” I had no doubt but we would know soon enough the reasons. “Whatever they were I would try and ascertain them.”
With much hesitancy she declared that “the house was not one any respectable female would enter, and she would not.” When I repeated this statement to the audience, there was what the newspapers call “sensation.” The sensation was intensified when one of the Rothesay Magistrates, Bailie Molloy, the then senior Bailie of the Royal Burgh, declared “the young woman was right, perfectly right, this was a house which had been inadvertently let to persons of ill-fame, and he, for one, had recently had the facts of the case placed before him, and he was most anxious that these people should be put out, and they would be, as soon as the proper steps could be taken.”
The young gentleman retired somewhat discomfited, and the excitement produced by these and other experiments brought crowded houses during my professional stay.
When my “mesmeric exposition” was concluded, the two medical gentlemen referred to, were good enough to introduce themselves, and invited me to call next day to see the room. I accepted the invitation during the following day and saw how truly correct and vivid her description had been. In the first experiment the sensitive described the state of the doctor’s library, pointing out what had not been recollected by either of the medical men, and I believe the other case comes under the heading of direct and objective clairvoyance. Dr. Maddever’s house was about a quarter of a mile, and the other house about a mile and a half from the hall.
The persistent and reliable clairvoyance evinced by this sensitive was induced. She was a mesmeric subject, and when such subjects are properly treated they make the very best clairvoyants.