At another seance Chief of Police Crowley, Judge Robert Ferral, Dr. R. E. Bunker, and Attorney Charles L. Patton were the principal investigators, though Captain Wright and many others saw all that was done. At this seance the observations were conducted under the test conditions arranged by Chief Crowley, Dr. Bunker, and Attorney Patton.
The reader should satisfy himself concerning the mental and moral qualifications of all the witnesses named by glancing at the biographical sketches elsewhere in this volume.
At the Mayor’s office Dr. Schlesinger was announced as a resident of No. 1 Polk Street. He said he knew none of the committee, and nobody present except the Examiner’s representative knew the Doctor.[1]
“I can converse with the spirits of your deceased friends,” said the medium, “and I am giving my life to this work. I gave up a great tea business to teach my fellow men that life does not end at the grave. My home is constantly filled with bands of angels from the celestial depths, but I am able to call a few spirits around any box, table, or desk. I want you to satisfy yourself that all that is done here is absolutely honest.”
Before proceeding further the Doctor produced a testimonial from Editor Will S. Green, of the Colusa Sun (afterwards State Treasurer), which explained that Dr. Schlesinger’s performances could not be explained on the theory of trickery. A clipping from the Sun of September 5, 1890, gave an account of matters that had puzzled the people of Colusa. The investigations began, therefore, with a great deal of interest, and before their conclusion the old Doctor had greatly puzzled all present. They could not tell whether it was some psychic power by which he operated, or whether they had been basely deceived.
At his own request, Dr. Schlesinger was not introduced to any of the persons present. He soon called their names, however, and said they were given to him by the spirits in the raps that all could hear on the desk.
The Doctor’s favorite method of communicating startling information was to have the sitters write, before they came into his presence, fifteen or twenty names of living and dead friends. Each name being on a separate piece of paper, the visitors were requested to fold each slip tightly, so as to preclude any possibility of its being read by the medium. This done, the slips, all of equal size, were put into a hat and thoroughly shuffled. The Doctor would then say: “Pick out any slip yourself, and I will read it without looking and before you yourself know what the name is.” There would then be raps, and in a few seconds the Doctor would give the name correctly. These names were written and folded in a room apart from the Doctor.
“Granting that there is such a thing as mind-reading,” said Chief Crowley, “I do not think mind-reading would account for what was done for me, because he read things that were not in my mind, telling me my mother’s maiden name and where she died.”
Dr. Schlesinger calls his gift clairaudient mediumship, and says his right ear is deaf to all terrestrial sounds, but quickened, as with a sixth sense, for communications from the other world. He says he can both see and hear spirits, and that bands of them encircle him, and at times, in the presence of some peculiarly “fit” visitors, manifest themselves with great clearness and power. To prove that the sounds he hears are celestial voices, he does many things which baffle those who witness the strange phenomena which abound in his presence wherever he goes.
It was with much difficulty that those who participated in these seances and whose accounts of what they saw are subjoined, were induced to give the medium a hearing. Chief Crowley was particularly opposed to giving serious attention to what he denounced as “trickery and sleight of hand,” and afterwards called “marvelous and beyond power of explanation.” Finally he wrote down a number of names on separate slips, as explained in the foregoing, and among those names appeared that of his mother—her maiden name. The medium at once told the Chief which pellet contained his mother’s name, then read it, and in a few moments told where she died and where she was buried.