Some persons in the audience laughed, and one (I think it was the young gentleman who asked that she might be sent) said: “The whole thing is a swindle.” Now, considering there was not a single flaw in the experiments that night, surprise after surprise being given, and the audience had risen in enthusiasm, this opinion was not favourably received.
I asked the gentleman “to have patience.” I had no doubt but we would know soon enough the reasons. “Whatever they were I would try and ascertain them.”
With much hesitancy she declared that “the house was not one any respectable female would enter, and she would not.” When I repeated this statement to the audience, there was what the newspapers call “sensation.” The sensation was intensified when one of the Rothesay Magistrates, Bailie Molloy, the then senior Bailie of the Royal Burgh, declared “the young woman was right, perfectly right, this was a house which had been inadvertently let to persons of ill-fame, and he, for one, had recently had the facts of the case placed before him, and he was most anxious that these people should be put out, and they would be, as soon as the proper steps could be taken.”
The young gentleman retired somewhat discomfited, and the excitement produced by these and other experiments brought crowded houses during my professional stay.
When my “mesmeric exposition” was concluded, the two medical gentlemen referred to, were good enough to introduce themselves, and invited me to call next day to see the room. I accepted the invitation during the following day and saw how truly correct and vivid her description had been. In the first experiment the sensitive described the state of the doctor’s library, pointing out what had not been recollected by either of the medical men, and I believe the other case comes under the heading of direct and objective clairvoyance. Dr. Maddever’s house was about a quarter of a mile, and the other house about a mile and a half from the hall.
The persistent and reliable clairvoyance evinced by this sensitive was induced. She was a mesmeric subject, and when such subjects are properly treated they make the very best clairvoyants.
PSYCHIC VISION POSSESSED BY THE PHYSICALLY BLIND.
Mrs. Croad resided at Redland, Bristol. My attention was called to her case about fifteen years ago by Dr. J. G. Davey, of Bristol. Unfortunately circumstances at the time prevented a personal visit and report. Her psychic gifts and wonderful supersensitivity have been amply testified to, by most reliable witnesses, such as Dr. Davey, Hy. G. Atkinson, F.G.S., and others.
Clairvoyance in Mrs. Croad’s case was and is (for I believe the lady is still living) a singular admixture of subtle sense transference so well known to mesmerists of the old school, and spontaneous psychic vision. Thought-transference and indirect clairvoyance, more or less induced, by intense voluntary concentration.
Mrs. Croad is deaf, dumb, and paralysed, and stone blind. She can see and hear, read with powers “denied to ordinary mortals,” and discern pictures and writings in the dark. She is aware of her daughter’s thoughts when the latter touches her, and becomes at once acquainted with what her daughter wishes to communicate. She possesses supersensitivity of touch, and discerns colour by their degrees of heat, roughness or smoothness. She can also identify photographs and pictures in the same way. From time to time she has exhibited the highest phases of clairvoyance. Reports have been made in this case by medical experts in the Journal of Psychological Medicine, and other magazines and journals several years ago. The most recent was contributed by the Rev. Taliesin Dans, The Cottage, Claptons, to The Review of Reviews in January, 1891.