"Hélène [he writes] was as a child quiet and dreamy, and had occasional visions, but was, on the whole, not specially remarkable. She is, to all outward appearances at the present time, healthy even to robustness. From the age of fifteen she has been employed in a large commercial establishment in Geneva, and holds a position of some responsibility. But it is in 1892 that her real history begins. In that year she was persuaded by some friends to join a spiritualistic circle. It soon appeared that she was herself a powerful medium. At first her mediumship consisted in seeing visions, hearing voices, and assisting in tilting the table, whilst still retaining more or less consciousness and subsequent memory of her experiences. Shortly after M. Flournoy's admission to the circle, in the winter of 1894-95, Miss Smith's mediumship advanced a stage, and she habitually passed at the séance into a trance state, retaining subsequently no memory of her visions and doings in that state. Her development followed at first the normal course. She delivered messages of a personal character to her sitters, purporting to emanate from deceased friends and the like. She offered numerous proofs of clairvoyance. She was from time to time controlled by spirits of the famous dead. Some of her earliest trances were under the guidance and inspiration of Victor Hugo. Within a few months the spirit of the poet—too late, indeed, for his own post-mortem reputation, for he had already perpetrated some verses—was expelled with ignominy by a more masterful demon who called himself Leopold. The newcomer was at first somewhat reticent on his own past, and when urgently questioned was apt to take refuge in moral platitudes. Later, however, he revealed himself as Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro. It then appeared that in Hélène herself was reincarnated the hapless Queen Marie Antoinette, and that others of the mortals represented Mirabeau, Prince of Orleans, etc....
"It is Hélène's extra-planetary experiences, however, which have excited most attention, and which furnished to the attendants at her circle the most convincing proofs of her dealings with the spiritual world. In November 1894, the spirit of the entranced medium was wafted—not without threatenings of sea-sickness—through the cosmic void, to arrive eventually on the planet Mars. Thereafter night after night she described to the listening circle the people of our neighbouring planet, their food, dress, and ways of life. At times she drew pictures of the inhabitants, human and animal—of their houses, bridges, and other edifices, and of the surrounding landscape. Later she both spoke and wrote freely in the Martian language. From the writings reproduced in M. Flournoy's book it is clear that the characters of the Martian script are unlike any in use on earth, and that the words (of which a translation is furnished) bear no resemblance, superficially at least, to any known tongue. The spirits—for several dwellers upon Mars used Hélène's organism to speak and write through—delivered themselves with freedom and fluency, and were consistent in their usage both of the spoken and the written words. In fact, Martian, as used by the entranced Hélène, has many of the characteristics of a genuine language; and it is not surprising that some of the onlookers, who may have hesitated over the authenticity of the other revelations, were apparently convinced that these Martian utterances were beyond the common order of nature."
All his powers M. Flournoy bent to elucidate the mystery. He made up his mind that Hélène must somewhere have come across one of the works containing Flammarion's speculations concerning Mars. The landscapes were suggested by Japanese lacquer and Nankin dishes. As for the language, it is just such a work of art as one might form by substituting for each word in the French dictionary an arbitrary collocation of letters, and for each letter a new and arbitrary symbol. The vowel and consonant signs are the same as in French; so are the inflections, the grammar, the construction. (Take, for example, the negative ke ani=ne pas, the employment of the same word zi to express both la "the" and là "there.") If it is childish as a work of art, it is miraculous enough as a feat of memory. But the reader has not forgotten what the subliminal self is capable of achieving as regards time appreciation mentioned in an early chapter. When, however, it comes to Hélène's telepathic and clairvoyant powers, M. Flournoy, in spite of his long investigation, can find no explanation of the supernormal to fit the case. Her mediumship since 1892 included manifestations of all kinds. They began with physical phenomena, but they soon ceased. Her clairvoyant messages during trance are certainly of a remarkable character. Her reception of distant scenes and persons, of which she was apparently unacquainted, has been carefully investigated and authenticated by numerous persons of reputation. It is this aspect of spiritualism which has of recent years commanded most attention from trained observers. The trance utterances of such well-known clairvoyants as the late Stainton Moses, Mrs Thompson, and Mrs Piper have been subjected to rigid and precise inquiry, and on the whole it is on this type of evidence that the strongest arguments of the genuineness of spiritualism really rests. It is at once the most impressive, the most interesting, and the most voluminous.
Of Stainton Moses I have already spoken. This medium was, as we have seen, a man of character and probity, English Professor at the University College School for eighteen years, a man who was never detected in the slightest fraud, and who died in 1892 regretted by a host of intimate friends. Stainton Moses left a mass of published testimony to his pretended communications from the spirits of deceased persons. He attached great importance to the evidence for spiritualistic doctrines. Altogether the "controls" or communicators numbered thirty-eight. Some of these Moses or other members of the circles had known in life; others—such as Swedenborg, Bishop Wilberforce, and President Garfield—were historical personages. Besides these there was a class of individuals of no particular importance, and apparently unknown to the medium and his friends. Yet it is worthy of remark that the spirits by whom Moses was "controlled" never withheld any data which would faciliate verification. For instance, at one séance a spirit put in an appearance by raps, giving the name "Rosmira." She said that she lived at Kilburn and had died at Torquay on 10th January 1874. She said that her husband's name was Ben, and that his surname was Lancaster. It turned out that a fortnight before the whole particulars were to be found in the "Death" notices in The Daily Telegraph. "Mr Moses' spirits," comments Mr Podmore in his "History of Spiritualism," habitually furnished accurate obituaries, or gave such other particulars of their lives as could be gathered from the daily papers, from published biographies, or from the Annual Register and other works of reference. All the spirits, indeed, gave their names, with one exception—an exception so significant that the case is worth recording. The Pall Mall Gazette for 21st February 1874 contains the following item of intelligence:—
"A cabdriver out of employment this morning threw himself under a steam-roller which was being used in repairing the road in York-place, Marylebone, and was killed immediately."
"Mr Moses was present at a séance that evening, and his hand was controlled, ostensibly by the spirit of the unhappy suicide, to write an account of the incident, and to draw a rough picture of a horse attached to a vehicle. The name of the dead man, it will be seen, does not appear in the newspaper account, and out of the thirty-eight spirits who gave proofs of their identity through the mediumship of Mr Moses this particular spirit alone chose to remain anonymous."
But a great part of Moses' mediumistic career was taken up with trance utterances purporting to come from various spirits. These writings, couched in clear, vigorous English, seems to flow readily "without any conscious intervention on the part of the mortal penman." In fact, so far was this so that he was able to read a book, or otherwise occupy his mind, during their production.
The claims of the celebrated medium Mrs Thompson were carefully investigated by a competent observer, Mrs A. W. Verrall, the wife of an eminent Cambridge scholar, and herself of no mean scholastic attainments.
I will endeavour to summarise Mrs Verrall's conclusions as follows:—
Mrs Verrall says that Mrs Thompson was unable to ascertain the correct statements of facts which have been grouped under the four following heads:—
(a) Things known to the sitter and directly present in his consciousness.
(b) Things known to the sitter but not immediately present in his consciousness.
(c) Things that have been well known to the sitter but are at the moment so far forgotten as only to be recalled by the statements of the medium.
(d) Things unknown to the sitter.