Happily for the momentous work which the spiritual telegraphers had
undertaken to initiate in this humble dwelling, the first manifestations
did not appeal to the high and learned of the earth, but to the plain
common-sense of an honest farmer's wife, and suggested that whatever
could see, hear, and intelligently respond to relevant queries, must
have in it something in common with humanity; and thus Mrs. Fox
continued her investigations. Addressing the viewless rapper she said
"count ten;" the raps obeyed. "How old is my daughter Margaret?" then
"Kate?" Both questions were distinctly and correctly rapped out. Mrs.
Fox then asked "How many children have I?" Seven, was the reply; this
however proved to be wrong for she had only six living. She repeated her
question and was again answered by seven raps; suddenly she cried "How
many have I living?" Six raps responded. "How many dead?" a single
knock; and both these answers proved correct. To the next question, "Are
you a man that knocks?" there was no response; but "Are you a spirit?"
elicited firm and distinctive responsive knocks.
Emboldened by her success, Mrs. Fox continued her enquiries and
ascertained by raps that the messages were coming from what purported to
be the Spirit of an injured man who had been murdered for his money. To
the question how old he was, there came thirty-one distinct raps. He
also gave them to understand that he was a married man, and had left a
wife and five children; that his wife was dead, and had been dead two
years. After ascertaining so much, she asked the question "Will the
noise continue if I call in some neighbours?" The answer was by rapping
in the affirmative.
At first they called in their nearest neighbours, who came thinking they
would have a hearty laugh at the family for being frightened--but when
the first neighbour came in and found that the noise, whatever it might
be, could tell the age of herself as well as others, and give correct
answers to questions on matters of which the family of Mr. Fox was quite
ignorant, she concluded that there was something beside a subject of
ridicule and laughter in these unseen but audible communications. These
neighbours insisted on calling others who came, and after investigation
were as much confounded as at first.
The reader must endeavour to picture to himself the scene which followed
the introduction of the neighbours to this weird and most novel court
of inquiry. Imagine the place to be an humble cottage in a remote and
obscure hamlet; the judge and jurors, simple unsophisticated rustics;
and the witness an invisible, unknown being, a denizen of a world of
whose very existence mankind has been ignorant; acting by laws
mysterious and inconceivable, in modes utterly beyond all human control
or comprehension, and breaking through what has been deemed the dark and
eternal seal of death, to reveal the long-hidden mysteries of the grave,
and drag to the light secrets which not even the fabled silence of the
grave could longer hide away. Those who have been accustomed to dream of
death as the end of all whom its shadowy portals inclose, alone are
prepared to appreciate the awful and startling reality of this strange
scene, breaking apart, as it did, like a rope of sand, all the
preconceived opinions of countless ages on the existence and destiny of
the living dead.
Those who have become familiar with the revealments of the spirit circle
will only smile at the consternation evoked in this rustic party by the
now familiar presence and manifestations of "the spirits," but to those
who still stand in the night of superstition, deeming of all earth's
countless millions as "dead," "lost," "gone," no one knows whither;
never to return; to give no sign, no echo, no dim vibration from that
vast gulf profound of unfathomed mystery--what a picture is that which
suddenly brings them face to face with the mighty hosts of the vanished
dead, all clothed in life, and girded round with a panoply of power, and
light, and strength; with vivid memory of the secret wrongs deemed
buried in their graves. Our cities are thronged with an unseen people
who flit about us, their piercing eyes invisible to us, are scanning all
our ways. The universe is teeming with them,--"THERE ARE NO DEAD,"--the
air, the earth, and the sky above, are filled with a viewless host of
spirit--witnesses whose messages ever declare "There is no death."