The trumpets that blow on the walls are generally manipulated by someone outside the room, and the sound that apparently comes from them, often, in reality, proceeds from an entirely different quarter.
I think, however, that genuine spirits do occasionally materialise, but that when they do, it is as much to the terror of the medium as of his audience. The fear inspired by a bona-fide superphysical demonstration is a very different thing to that produced by a bogus one—the sensations are absolutely unlike, and anyone who has once beheld a spontaneous psychic materialisation in a genuinely haunted house cannot be deceived by the doll-like make-beliefs at spiritualistic séances.
AUTOMATIC WRITING.
Though I have never been able to obtain any very definite results myself with planchette, I have no doubt genuine spirit messages are obtained in this way, and that such messages are always suggested by Elementals. But since these messages cannot be relied upon, owing to the fact that it is impossible to tell by what order of Elementals they are suggested, I think automatic writing is sheer waste of time.
THE LAYING OF PHANTASMS.
Last year, when I was investigating at a notorious haunted house in the West of England, the ghost suddenly and quite unexpectedly appeared in our midst. There were several of us present, and we were all much alarmed, as I believe one always is in the presence of the Unknown. I addressed the phenomenon, challenging it in the name of God and adjuring it to speak; there was, however, no response of any kind, and I think it extremely doubtful if it understood what I said, or even if it heard me.
I have done this on other occasions, and always with the same result—the phenomenon has remained totally unaffected by my words.
I know also of a case in which a Roman Catholic priest tried to lay a spirit, with the startling result that the spirit (figuratively speaking) laid him, for on his mumbling out some form of exorcism, it stretched out a grotesque and shadowy hand, and he fell face downwards on his bed, unable to utter a sound or move a muscle.
I have, however, heard instances in which phantasms have been "laid" by the repetition of prayers, and so can only conclude that the possibility of laying a ghost depends entirely on conditions about which we know nothing.
Whereas I think it highly probable that oral communication may sometimes be held with rational Phantasms of the Dead with possible beneficial results on one or both sides, no mode of address produces other than an irritating effect on Phantasms of the Insane; there is no consistency whatever in the result of exhortation on Elementals.