“But yet, standing on the ledge beside Mrs. Underhill, and asking for the raps, I heard them quite distinctly above the noise produced by the surf. This was several times repeated, with the same result.
“Then Mrs. Underhill and Mrs. S. B. Underhill sat down, and I, stepping on a lower ledge, laid my ear on the ledge on which the ladies were sitting and repeated my request. In a few seconds the raps were heard by me from within the substance of the rock and immediately beneath my ear.
“I then sought to verify the matter by the sense of touch. Placing my hand on the same ledge, a few feet from Mrs. Underhill, and asking for the raps, when these came audibly, I felt, simultaneously with each rap, a slight but unmistakably distinct vibration or concussion of the rock. It was sufficiently marked to indicate to me a rap, once or twice, when a louder roll of the surf for a moment drowned the sound.
“Without making any remark as to what I felt, I asked Mr. U. to put his hand on the ledge. ‘Why!’ he suddenly exclaimed, ‘the whole rock vibrates!’ During all this time Mrs. Underhill sat, as far as I could judge, in complete repose.”—“Debatable Land,” p. 346.
II.
RAPS ON THE WATER AND IN THE LIVING WOOD.
“On the tenth of July, 1861, I joined a few friends in an excursion from the city of New York, by steamboat, to the Highlands of Neversink; Mr. and Mrs. Underhill being of the party.
“It occurred to me, while sitting on deck by Mrs. Underhill, to ask if we could have the raps there. Instantly they were distinctly heard, first from the deck, and then I heard them, and quite plainly felt them, on the wooden stool on which I sat. In the afternoon our party went out in a sailing boat, fifteen or twenty feet long. There, again at my suggestion, we had them, sounding from under the floor of the boat. It had a centre-board, or sliding keel, and we had raps from within the long, narrow box that inclosed it. At any part of this box where we called for the raps, we obtained them.
“In the evening we ascended a hill, back of the hotel, to the Highland light-house. In returning and passing through a wood on the hill-side, I proposed to try if we could have raps from the ground; and immediately I plainly heard them from beneath the ground on which we trod: it was a dull sound, as of blows struck on the earth. Then I asked Mrs. Underhill to touch one of the trees with the tips of her fingers, and, applying my ear to the tree, I beard the raps from beneath the bark. Other persons of our party verified this as I had done.
“In returning, next morning, on another steamer, we had raps on the hand-rail of the upper promenade deck, and also from within a small metal boat that was turned upside down, on the deck below.