The old man peered down at the mark, and then stared round the room.
“What has happened?” The wild cry quavered with the terror of the Unseen.
No answer came from the silence.
NOTE
The belief that an injury done to the “astral” body of a spirit is reproduced in the physical body of the medium en rapport with that spirit is found in all countries and in all times, from the most ancient to the present. The old-time witch or wizard is, of course, the same psychologically abnormal type as the “medium” of to-day. The genuineness or otherwise of their powers is beside the point. Phenomena of the same nature as that described above are reported again and again in the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century and in a comparatively recent legal case in France in 1853. Andrew Lang, analyzing this last case, says: “In the events at Cideville, and the depositions of witnesses, we have all the characteristics.... The phantom is wounded, a parallel wound is found on the suspected warlock.” Reporting the evidence in the trial, Lang continues: “Nails were driven into points on the floor where Lemonier saw the spectral figure standing. One nail became red-hot and the wood around it smoked: Lemonier said that this nail had hit ‘the man in the blouse’ on the cheek. Now, when Thorel was made to ask the boy’s pardon and was recognized by him as the phantom, Thorel bore on his cheek the mark of the wound!” The alleged wizard lost his case. (“A Modern Trial for Witchcraft,” in Cock Lane and Common-sense, 1894, p. 278.)
In this case it was the medium’s own spectre which appeared. But the modern spiritualist holds that there exists the same connection between the living body of the medium and the materialized spirit of the dead. “... The clutching of a [materialized] form hits the medium with a force like that of an electric shock, and many sensitives have been grievously injured by foolish triflers in this way.” (Spirit Intercourse, J. Hewat Mackenzie, 1916, p. 53.) Sir Wm. Crookes sounds the same warning note in his description of the famous “Katie King” case (Researches in Spiritualism, 1874, p. 108 et seq.).
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The reference is to The Survival of Man, Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 104-5.