There are other experiments which also point the same way. Consider for example those of MacDougal who weighed a number of patients at the moment of death and found in each case that this coincided with a sudden loss of weight of about threequarters of an ounce, more than could be accounted for by loss from perspiration or from the emptying of the lungs. He claims that "We have experimental proof that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the body at death." It is of course most important that these experiments should be confirmed by independent investigators but there seems no reason to doubt the facts as stated, although I cannot agree with MacDougal's view that what leaves the body is the "soul."
Dr. Baraduc, again, took photographs of his son and wife shortly after death and found that in each case a luminous, cloudlike mass or masses were visible over the bodies.
This case is of exceptional interest in that the observations were not personal but were photographic records. Unless the case is inaccurately reported it follows that there must have been some objective foundation for the results, and it would also seem that, since the object photographed affected the plate but was invisible to the eye, it must not only have been material or quasi-material in nature but also have emitted light of a frequency above the range of normal vision, i.e., "ultra-violet" light. Here again there is great need for confirmation but so far as it goes the evidence continues to point the same way.
Surely this concatenation of evidences from such different sources cannot be purely fortuitous?
The foregoing are the most important and representative experiments on these lines but the whole of the literature of Psychic Research abounds with minor pointers which all indicate the same sort of thing.
Let us turn again to the work of Crawford, to which I have already referred.
He started out to investigate the causes of telekinetic phenomena and had at the outset no sort of notion of what the explanation was likely to be and he found that his table is supported, during levitation without contact, by a rigid structure.
This structure is invisible to the eye and is practically impalpable. It appears to be composed of matter taken from the medium. The main conclusion is, I think, inevitable, but for the experiments and reasoning which have led to it the reader must consult Dr. Crawford's book.
Again we have this same curious substance exteriorised from the body.
But there are two points in particular which bring it closely into line with the phenomena which we have been considering.