19. Apparitions of heads.
For my part, I have only seen two: the bearded silhouette at Monfort-l'Amaury, and the head of a young girl with high-arched forehead, in my drawing-room. In the case of the first I had believed that there was a mask held at the end of a rod. But at my own home, there was no possibility of an accomplice, and at present I am not less sure of the first instance than of the other. Moreover, the testimony of other observers is so precise and so often given that it is imperative that it be classed with my own.
20. Phantoms.
I have never seen any of these nor photographed them, but it seems to me impossible to be sceptical about that of Katie King, observed for three consecutive years by Crookes and others who experimented with the medium Florence Cook. One can scarcely doubt, also, the reality of the phantoms seen by the committee of the Dialectical Society of London. We have seen that trickery plays a frequent rôle in this sort of apparitions; but, in the experiments just mentioned, the observations were really conducted with such perspicacity that they are safe from all objection, and have on them the stamp of a purely scientific character.
These phantoms, like the heads and the hands mentioned, seem to be condensations of fluids produced by the powers of the medium, and do not prove the existence of independent spirits.
When the hand is stretched out, the rubbing of a beard can be felt upon it. This happened to me, as well as to others. Did the beard really exist, or was it only a case of tactual and visual sensations? The case here immediately following pleads in favor of its reality.
21. Impressions of heads and of hands.
The heads and the hands formed are sufficiently dense to leave a mould of their features and shape imprinted in the putty or the clay. Perhaps the most curious thing is that it is not necessary that these weird formations, these forces, be visible in order to produce impressions. We have seen a vigorous gesture imprint itself at a distance in clay.
22. Passing of matter through matter.—Transfers, or the bringing in of objects.
A book has been seen passing through a curtain. A bell has passed from a library-room, locked with a key, into a drawing-room. A flower has been seen passing perpendicularly downward through a dining-room table. Some have thought they had ocular proof of the mysterious appearance of plants, of flowers, of fruits, and other objects, which (as the claim went) had passed through walls, ceilings, doors.