“I departed this earth-life a few hours ago, in —— Street, No. ——. You will find my children mourning over my lifeless form. Go to them at once and assist them to bury my body.
(Signed) Mary.”
He read the communication to his wife, who remonstrated, saying that she doubted it; but after considering the matter they both started to find the distressed family. It was not very far from them; but judge of their astonishment when they found no such place as had been mentioned. The street was there, but no house, and no number like the place designated. The communication, in its essentials, was an entire fabrication. In the evening they both called on me, and desired, if possible, that Spirits would explain through the rappings why he should have been so deceived. The rapping said, “My dear friend, this is an experience which you will not forget. You have been led by ambition, mistaking it for a higher motive. You have besought Spirits to direct you, when you should have acted according to your own best judgment. Thus you have attracted a class of Spirits who are unreliable.” This was something which many were necessitated to learn in the school of experience, especially in those early days of Spiritualism.
I do not approve of sitting in promiscuous circles for development. I remember several years ago there was a circle held in New York for the purpose of making mediums. Our friend, Mr. George Willets, visited the rooms of the “developers” several times, and reported to us the unfavorable effect it produced upon him. My sister Katie on one occasion went with him. When she returned she felt badly and complained of strange sensations, caused (she believed) by sitting in that circle. It affected her unfavorably for some days. She was sad, and complained of seeing disagreeable things whenever her eyes closed. This gradually changed, but she could never be persuaded to visit such circles again.
In the case of the Dr. Phelps’s manifestations I think there was abundant evidence to prove that a natural development took place there. And I am sure that we fought against it long enough and hard enough to prove that we were not knowingly instrumental in bringing about anything of our own mediumship. We were all annoyed at the idea of being called mediums.
Another well-known case—were I to mention the name it would be clearly remembered—was that of a wealthy gentleman doing a large business in this city. He came to see me at No. 1 Ludlow Place, rejoicing in his newly developed mediumship. He was a large, finely organized man, and came to explain to me how wonderfully he was affected. He told me that his wife was not pleased because he sat in circles for development, and she thought he was losing his mind. This gentleman lived in Brooklyn, and if this should come under his eye he will recollect the circumstance. He was not a disciple of the “Rochester knockings,” but a professed admirer of speaking, writing, and impressible mediums. He thought it would be very fine to become a great public speaker (as he had been told he would be), and astonish the world; and therefore he believed it. He soon began to whirl around and pound himself and snort like an animal. I thought he was a raving madman; but when he spoke he seemed rational enough at times, but his lucid moments were few and far between.
At length the Spirit rapped out the following: “My son, sit down at the table.” He did so, apparently delighted. Again the alphabet was called for, and this was spelled: “Enclose the extremities of your fingers within your hands, cross your feet and rest your heels on the floor, and permit me to give you advice, namely: When you sit in the circle, exerting every faculty of mind and body, with your hands on the table and your feet on the floor, all your brain forces escape through your extremities and are absorbed by the more receptive members of the circle.”
He followed the directions of his guardian Spirit, and became quiet, and was so deeply interested in the rappings that he engaged a private hour and brought his wife the next day, who became equally interested and honestly confessed to me that she had blamed and condemned me as an impostor; and although her husband had not met in my circles, she charged me with being the original cause of her husband’s “misfortune”—as she considered it. From that time he was cured.
I think he was on the high road to the lunatic asylum; and, although some writers term the Spirit-rapping a manifestation of “lower grade,” in my own opinion communications come more direct from Spirits through the rappings, or when accompanied by them, than when written or spoken, etc., in magnetic circles where the mediums are quite as susceptible to an action exerted upon them by Spirits embodied as by the disembodied.
I have found it so in my own experience, and I never place entire confidence in anything unless the Spirits sanction it to me by sounds in connection with the alphabet, which was their first chosen method with us. Nor do I rely on the rappings unless what is said through them bears in itself the evidence of truth. I regret to see persons too much carried away by this or any ism. Give me a good amanuensis, one who can take down each letter as it is indicated (and not interrupt me by asking very often, “What does it say?” which breaks the telegraphic connection, for the time, through which Spirits operate, exactly as the telegraphic wires are affected by a thunder-storm)—give me, I say, such an amanuensis, and I can sit, as I have often sat, for hours at a time, receiving the letters through the raps and alphabet, with no idea of their connection or meaning, nor any such knowledge possible to any listener, and at the close every letter, word, and sentence will be found perfectly correct, and the whole intelligible only when the whole is read in connected sequence.
It is impossible for any mortal to sit and reiterate the letters of the alphabet as fast as they can be repeated, hour after hour, and retain in the mind the structure of the sentences and chapters communicated. I defy any one to do it. Even Theodore Parker pronounced it a quietus on the Buffalo doctors. Try it yourselves, dear readers. Under the right conditions, I can sit and call the letters for hours together, and when the message is finished it will be found to be perfect and unbroken from beginning to end—in accordance with the intelligence of the Spirit, not that of the medium.