Mr. Savage then mentions cases which he calls still more inexplicable, because the information conveyed was not known either to the psychic (which seems to be the new name for medium) or to himself. He says:—
“But one more case dare I take the space for, though the budget is only opened. This one did not happen to me, but it is so hedged about and checked off, that its evidential value in a scientific way is absolutely perfect. The names of some of the parties concerned would be recognized in two hemispheres. A lady and gentleman visited a psychic. The gentleman was the lady's brother-in-law. The lady had an aunt who was ill in a city two or three hundred miles away. When the psychic had become entranced, the lady asked her if she had any impression as to the condition of her aunt. The reply was, ‘No.’ But before the sitting was over, the psychic exclaimed, ‘Why, your aunt is here! She has already passed away.’ ‘This cannot be true,’ said the lady; ‘there must be a mistake. If she had died, they would have telegraphed us immediately.’ ‘But,’ the psychic insisted, ‘she is here. And she explains that she died about two o'clock this morning. She also says that a telegram has been sent, and you will find it at the house on your return.’
“Here seemed a clear case for a test. So while the lady started for her home, her brother-in-law called at the house of a friend and told the story. While there the husband came in. Having been away for some hours he had not heard of any telegram. But the friend seated himself at his desk and wrote out a careful account, which all three signed on the spot. When they reached home,—two or three miles away,—there was the telegram confirming the fact and the time of the aunt's death, precisely as the psychic had told them.
“Here are most wonderful facts. How shall they be accounted for? I have not trusted my memory for these things, but have made careful record at the time. I know [pg 026] many other records of a similar kind kept by others. They are kept private. Why? The late Rev. J. G. Wood, of England, the world-famous naturalist, once said to me: ‘I am glad to talk of these things to any one who has a right to know. But I used to call everybody a fool who had anything to do with them; and with a smile—“I do not enjoy being called a fool.” ’
“Psychic and other societies that advertise for strange phenomena, must learn that at least a respectful treatment is to be accorded, or people will not lay bare their secret souls. And then, in the very nature of the case, these experiments concern matters of the most personal nature. Many of the most striking cases people will not make public. In some of those above related, I have had so to veil facts, that they do not appear as remarkable as they really are. The whole cannot be told.”
A quotation from this same writer (“Automatic Writing,” page 14), says:—
“I am in possession of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable theory I am acquainted with.”
In the same work (page 19), the author, Mrs. S. A. Underwood, as the result of her communications from spirits, says:—
“Detailed statements of facts unknown to either of us [that is, herself and her ‘control’], but which weeks afterward were learned to be correct, have been written, and repeated again and again, when disbelieved and contradicted by us.”
On this point, also, as on the preceding, testimony need not be multiplied. The facts are too well known and too generally admitted to warrant the devotion of further space to a presentation of the [pg 027] evidence. The question must soon be met, What is the source of the power and intelligence thus manifested? But this may properly be held in abeyance till we take a glance at: