"Mr M. was floated about, and a large dining-room chair was placed on the table."
Mrs Speer tells us that they sat in the fire-light, and that the séances were held in more or less complete darkness. Moses' own account of the levitation is much fuller. He says that he was fully conscious that he was floating about the room, and that he marked a place on the wall with a pencil, which was afterwards found to be more than six feet from the floor. Subsequently musical sounds became a feature of the manifestations. In September 1874 Mrs Speer gives a list of them, mentioning ten or more different kinds, including the tambourine, harp, fairy-bells, and many stringed instruments, and ascribes their production to eight different spirits.
In the early materialisations of Stainton Moses we find that hands, and occasionally the fore arm, were seen holding lights. These spirit lights are described as hard, round, and cold to the touch. In his description of one incident at a séance Moses himself pens a significant passage, which seems to confirm the suspicion that the spirit lights were really bottles of phosphorised oil:
"Suddenly there arose from below me, apparently under the table, or near the floor, right under my nose, a cloud of luminous smoke, just like phosphorus. It fumed up in great clouds, until I seemed to be on fire, and rushed from the room in a panic. I was fairly frightened, and could not tell what was happening. I rushed to the door and opened it, and so to the front door. My hands seemed to be ablaze, and left their impress on the door and handles. It blazed for a while after I had touched it, but soon went out, and no smell or trace remained.... There seemed to be no end of smoke. It smelt distinctly phosphoric, but the smell evaporated as soon as I got out of the room into the air."
Such candour disarms us: can there be any ground for the theory that here was a case of self-deception on a large scale? Or is there yet an alternative explanation? Perhaps we shall discover one.
CHAPTER X
MORE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
What we have to remember is that by far the greater part of the physical phenomena which is said to occur at a séance is really nothing extraordinary. All physical occurrences are normal that are capable of being produced by a clever conjurer; and there is no doubt that with due preparation such a one could achieve table rapping, introduce flowers and move furniture. But the problem is, how, under the stringent conditions imposed, and in the face of the close scrutiny, to which these manifestations are subjected, they can be done. As Sir Oliver Lodge says: "I am disposed to maintain that I have myself witnessed, in a dim light, occasional abnormal instances of movement of untouched objects." He goes on to say that "suppose an untouched object comes sailing or hurtling through the air, or suppose an object is raised or floated from the ground, how are we to regard it? This is just what a live animal could do, and so the first natural hypothesis is that some living thing is doing it: (a) the medium himself, acting by tricks or concealed mechanism; (b) a confederate—an unconscious confederate perhaps, among the sitters; (c) an unknown and invisible live entity, other than the people present. If in any such action the extraordinary laws of nature were superseded, if the weight of a piece of matter could be shown to have disappeared, or if fresh energy were introduced beyond the recognised categories of energy, then there would be no additional difficulties; but hitherto there has been no attempt to establish either of these things. Indeed, it must be admitted that insufficient attention is usually paid to this aspect of ordinary, commonplace, abnormal physical phenomena. If a heavy body is raised under good conditions, we should always try to ascertain" (he does not say that it is easy to ascertain) "where its weight has gone to—that is to say, what supports it—what ultimately supports it. For instance, if experiments were conducted in a suspended room, would the whole weight of that room, as ascertained by outside balance, remain unaltered when a table or person was levitated inside it? Or, could the agencies operating inside affect the bodies outside?—questions, these, which appear capable of answer, with sufficient trouble, in an organised physical laboratory; such a laboratory as does not, he supposes, yet exist, but which might exist and which will exist in the future, if the physical aspect of experimental psychology is ever to become recognised as a branch of orthodox physics."
Recently, Dr Maxwell, of Paris, published his researches and observations on physical phenomena, and he states that under "material and physical phenomena" are comprised (1) raps; (2) movements of objects (a) without contact, or (b) only with such contact as is insufficient to effect the particular movement in question; (3) "apports"—i.e. the production of objects by some supernormal agency; (4) visual phenomena—i.e. the appearance of lights and of forms, luminous or otherwise, including among the latter the class of alleged phenomena known as materialisations, and (5) phenomena leaving some permanent trace, such as imprints or "direct" writings or drawings, etc. Under the class of "intellectual phenomena" may be included such occurrences as automatic writing, table tilting, etc.