Dr. Owen listened attentively while Leroy described his first groping efforts to determine whether or not he personally possessed psychic powers. He began with regular periods of mental concentration, an opening of the soul, as it were, to spirit impressions; he would sit alone, in a state of meditative receptiveness for ten or fifteen minutes every day, and later several times a day, waiting for something to happen—he did not know what.
Day after day the psychologist persisted in this singular experiment and, soon, he began to see small blue figures, irregularly shaped, that moved rapidly about the room and cast no shadows. Some of these blue figures were luminous, and among them were occasional luminous white figures. As weeks passed and his efforts continued, there came a noticeable increase in the number of these moving shapes until, when the doctor desired it, he could make them swarm everywhere, over the walls, the pictures, the bookcases.
“Wait!” interrupted Owen. “Do you see these blue shapes or luminous figures at all times? Do you see them now?”
“No. I only see them when I desire to see them—when I prepare myself to use them—for a case.”
Leroy told how the phenomena continued to increase in frequency and in intensity, how gradually he felt an unmistakable sense of power growing in himself, as if he had somehow tapped a vast source of energy, a kind of spiritual trolley-line, and he was now impelled to use this power. He made his first trial on a poor man who had suffered for years from headaches that seemed incurable.
“Stretch out on that reclining chair, close your eyes, don't think of anything,” ordered the experimenter. Then he laid his hands on the man's forehead and concentrated his mind in the psychic way he had adopted. Almost immediately the blue shapes appeared in great numbers, and began to pour themselves in fine, pulsing streams, like a purplish mist, over the patient's brow and head and shoulders, over his whole body until he was completely enveloped in them, laved by them, penetrated by them.
“That was a crude beginning,” Leroy went on, “but it drove away those obstinate headaches for three months; then a second laying on of hands completed the cure. After that, as months passed, other persons were cured in the same way—especially nervous cases. Whatever these blue streams are, they benefit the patient in most cases. One woman told me, during a treatment, that she saw blue shapes about her!”
“You hypnotized her,” declared Owen.
“Possibly. I did not intend to.”
“What I want to know is, have you ever treated a case like this one of Mrs. Wells?”