is the commonest of most common experiences. I have known mediums to graphically describe scenes, persons, and incidents with such vividness as to impress one they must be controlled by spirits intimately acquainted with the whole circumstances which were revealed. Closer examination indicates that all the information so given by these mediums was based on the thought-read phase. That is, the information was culled from the minds of spirits in the flesh, and did not come from disembodied sources.
Some years ago I attended a series of seances in Liverpool. Nearly all the family were mediums of some sort. I was at this time very enthusiastic in my investigations. Consequently, the following incident was not lost upon me. One evening the circle met, with the usual members. Shortly after the circle was formed, the daughter of the house went into the trance state. There were several controls, one of whom professed to be a man who, the day before, had been injured on board one of Lambert & Holt’s steamers, which lay in the Bramley Moore Dock. The “spirit” described the accident, how he was injured, and that he was carried to the hospital, and had “passed away.” Owing to the suddenness of his death, he wished us to communicate with his family, and desired the circle to pray for him, etc. As near as I can recollect, when asked for further particulars, name, family, there was no definite reply. The medium quivered, and a new control had taken possession of her. I, however, neither doubted the bona-fides of the spirit nor the medium. I was especially interested in this control. I thought this time I had obtained a test of spirit identity. But alas for the imperfection of human hopes, I was doomed to disappointment. I clung to the idea the spirit would come back again, and when he got “more power,” we would get the particulars he wanted to give us. He did not come back—and no wonder. Four months subsequently, I met the real Simon Pure in the flesh.
To explain more fully: On the day previous to the seance mentioned, I was on board the newly-arrived steamer in question. The lumpers were getting out the cargo. This man had been working on the top of the cargo in the main hold “hooking on.” I paid no particular attention at the time to him, but an hour after I heard a great outcry, and saw a rush of men to the main hold. When I turned back and got there, I found this man senseless and bleeding.
The hooks had slipped off a bale while easing out some cargo. One of them had caught the poor fellow in the mouth, and had torn up his cheek almost to the right ear. He was to all appearance dying. I temporarily dressed his face, and the stevedore had him put on a stretcher and sent to the hospital. I did not know his name or the hospital to which he was removed. That day and the next the whole scene was vividly impressed on my mind. Hence that night the circumstances at the seance seem to me to be quite natural. Everything advanced was wonderfully apposite and convincing. It was not till I saw the man, and conversed with him, that my so-called test of spirit identity resolved itself into so much thought or mind reading, so that, even presuming the medium or sensitive was controlled by “a spirit,” there can be no doubt the source of the spirit’s information was purely mundane.
AUTOMATIC AND PLANCHETTE WRITING,
upon which so much reliance is placed, as furnishing evidence of “disembodied spirit control,” presents similar difficulties. The recording of forgotten incidents, and predicting possibilities in the future, are not beyond the powers of the innate human spirit—wholly and utterly unaided by spirit agency. Therefore automatic writing—when genuine—does not necessarily furnish evidence of spirit control, not even when the person who writes believes, and honestly believes too, he is so controlled to write.
CHAPTER VIII.
Spiritualism.—Continued.
Automatic writing is a phase of phenomenal Spiritualism most difficult to prove. In the majority of cases we are reduced to the awkward position of accepting or rejecting the assertions of the persons who declare that the writing done by them is automatic—that is, written without thought and volition on their part. A close examination of this claim may lead to the conclusion that automatic writing is not impossible. Whether the controlling agent is “the spirit within us,” or a disembodied spirit, or both, is not a matter of much importance, if it is established, the writing is automatic. When messages are written without volition, in the handwriting of deceased persons, signed by their names, such messages must be treated on their merits. I have seen messages written in this way. I have seen messages written, not only automatically, but direct. Some were written the reverse way, and could only be read by holding up to the light or to a mirror. The direct writing was done in an exceedingly short time, two or three hundred words in less time than an expert phonographer could write the same by the most expeditious efforts. The evidence in favour of telepathic writing is not very strong, but of direct writing there appears to be abundant proof.
Dr. Nichols, in his fascinating work, “Forty Years of American Life,” writes:—“I knew a Methodist sailor in New York, a simple, illiterate, earnest man, who became what is called a test medium. He came to see me in Cincinnati, and one evening we had also as visitors two distinguished lawyers: one of them a brother of Major Anderson, “the hero of Fort Sumter;” the other, a gentleman from Michigan, and one of the ablest lawyers practising in the Supreme Court of the United States. I had brought into the drawing-room a heavy walnut table, and placed it in the centre of the room. The medium sat down on one side of it, and the sharp Michigan lawyer, who was a stranger to us and the medium, on the other. The medium placed his fingers lightly upon the table. It tilted up under them, the two legs nearest him rising several inches. The lawyer examined the table, and tried to give it a similar movement, but without success. There was a force and a consequent movement he could not account for. There was no other person near the table, there was no perceptible muscular movement, and in no way in which it could be applied to produce the effect.
“When there was no doubt on this point, the lawyer, at the suggestion of the medium, wrote with careful secrecy on five bits of paper—rolling each up like a pea as he wrote—the names of five deceased persons whom he had known. Then he rolled them about until he felt sure that no one could tell one pellet from the other. Then, pointing to them successively, the tipping table selected one, which the gentleman, without opening, put in his waistcoat pocket, and threw the rest into the fire.