For some minutes planchette was motionless, but almost immediately I felt the curious sense of vitality, very difficult to describe, that precedes movement. It is like touching something alive and feeling its latent power. Presently it began to move. Unfortunately no exact record of those first messages was kept, and this report of them is taken from my letters to Cass, written immediately after each interview, and from the typewritten record begun a week or ten days afterward, in which was included what I could remember of details not written to him. At first there was little capitalization, but within a few days capitals were used freely. The punctuation throughout has been added, except in cases noted.
From a letter dated Monday morning, March 4th:
... Instead of doing the usual loop sort of thing, it made straight runs across the table. I asked, “Are you ready to write?” “Yes.” Then, as nearly as I can remember, it went like this:
“Are you Frederick?” “No.”
“Are you Mary Kendal?” “No.”
“Are you Anne Lowe?”[1] “No.”
“Did I know you in life here?” “Yes.”
“Recently?” “No.”
“Are you my father?” At this it ran sharply toward me, point first, but for some time did not reply, perhaps because I so hoped it would write “yes.” Eventually, however, it wrote a very clear and uncompromising “No.”
“Can you tell me who you are?” “Yes. Mary.”