She tells of her brother-in-law coming into the room after rifle practice and while showing his rifle it was “accidentally discharged, the ball passing through the wall within two inches of my eldest daughter’s head.” She claims that she foresaw the occurrence the night previous.
She writes of having joined Mr. d-Oyley Carte’s “Patience” company to play the part of Lady Jane, and tells that the different members of the company on different occasions mentioned the fact that although she was standing on the stage she appeared to be seated in the stalls. This always occurred at the same time, just before the end of the second act.
In another place she says: “We unanimously asked for flowers. It being December and a hard frost, simultaneously we smelt the smell of fresh earth, and we were told to light the gas again, when the following extraordinary sight met our eyes. In the middle of the sitters, still holding hands, was piled up on the carpet an immense quantity of mold, which had been torn up apparently with the roots that accompanied it. There were laurestenius, laurels and holly and several others, just as they had been pulled out of the earth and thrown in the midst of us. Mrs. Guppy looked anything but pleased at the sight of her carpet and begged the Spirits to bring cleaner things next time. They then told us to extinguish the lights again and each sitter was to wish mentally for something for himself. I wished for a yellow butterfly, knowing it was December, and as I thought of it a little cardboard box was put in my hand. Prince Albert whispered to me ‘Have you got anything?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not what I asked for. I expect they have given me a piece of jewelry.’ When the gas was relit I opened the box and there lay two yellow butterflies, dead of course, but none the less extraordinary for that.”
While talking of a seance with Katie King she said: “She told me to take the scissors and cut off her hair. She had a profusion of ringlets flowing to her waist that night. I obeyed religiously, hacking the hair wherever I could whilst she kept on saying ‘Cut more! cut more! not for yourself you know, because you cannot take it away.’ So I cut off curl after curl and as fast as they fell to the ground, the hair grew again on her head. When I had finished, ‘Katie’ asked me to examine her hair and see if I could detect any place where I had used the scissors, and I did so without any effect. Neither was a severed hair to be found. It had vanished out of sight.”
In another place she says: “Once a conductor spoke to me. ‘I am not aware of your name,’ he said (and I thought ‘No, my friend, and won’t be aware of it just yet either!’) ‘but a Spirit here wishes you would come up to the cabinet.’ I advanced, expecting to see some friend, and there stood a Catholic priest, with his hand extended in blessing. I knelt down and he gave me the usual benediction, and then closed the curtain. ‘Did you know the Spirit?’ the conductor asked me. I shook my head and he continued, ‘He was Father Hayes, the well known priest in this city. I suppose you are a Catholic?’ I told him ‘Yes’ and went back to my seat. The conductor addressed me again ‘I think Father Hayes must have come to pave the way for some of your friends,’ he said. ‘Here is a Spirit who says she has come for a lady by the name of Florence, who has just crossed the sea. Do you answer to that description?’ I was about to say yes when the curtain parted again and my daughter ‘Florence’ ran across the room and fell into my arms. ‘Mother,’ she exclaimed, ‘I said I would come with you and look after you, didn’t I?’ I looked at her. She was exactly the same in appearance as when she came to me in England under the different mediumships of Florence Cook, Arthur Coleman, Charles Williams and William Ellington.”
She tells of a business man who attended a seance every night and presented a white flower to the Spirit of his wife who had died on her wedding day eleven years before.[123] The book is full of such incidents as these but I think enough have been repeated to show the reader what it is necessary to believe to be a good Spiritualist.[124]
In Judge Edmonds’ book “Spiritualism,” we read that it was customary to receive on blank sheets of paper messages from the Spirits of well-known men; that Benjamin Franklin came in accompanied by two other Spirits; that a pencil got up of its own accord and wrote five lines of ancient Hebrew; that books were levitated from a table numerous times, and a number of other incidents which drew upon the reader’s imagination.
Daniel Dunglas Home in testifying in July, 1869, as reported in the London Times, told of an incident which had occurred several years previous. “We were,” he said, “in a large room in the Salon de Quatorze. The Emperor and Empress were present,—I am now telling the story as I heard the Emperor tell it,—a table was moved, then a hand was seen to come. It was a very beautifully formed hand. There were pencils on the table. It lifted, not the one next to it, but the one on the far side. We heard the sound of writing, and saw it writing on fine note paper. The hand passed before me and went to the Emperor, and he kissed the hand. It went to the Empress; she withdrew from its touch, and the hand followed her. The Emperor said, ‘Do not be frightened,’ and she kissed it too. The hand seemed to be like a person thinking and as if it were saying, ‘Why should I?’ It came back to me. It had written the word ‘Napoleon’ and it remains written now. The writing was the autograph of the Emperor Napoleon I, who had an exceedingly beautiful hand.” Mr. Home also said that the Emperor of Russia as well as the Emperor Napoleon, had seen hands and had taken hold of them, “when they seemed to float away into thin air.”
Such are the things Spiritualists are expected to believe and do believe. I could continue to recite incidents ad infinitum, ad nauseam, but I believe the reader can form his own judgment from the above. It is the kind of material which drives people insane for when some poor, sick, human being is just on the verge of recovery such nonsensical utterances often overthrow reason. Is it any wonder that the population of our insane asylums is swelled with “followers” who have attempted to believe these things?