(formerly Miss Nichol), and in this case I can give some personal
testimony. I knew Miss Nichol before she had ever heard of Spiritualism,
table-rapping, or anything of the kind, and we first discovered her
powers on asking her to sit for experiment in my house. This was in
November, 1866, and for some months we had constant sittings, and I was
able to watch and test the progress of her development. I first
satisfied myself of the rising of a small table completely off the
floor, when three or four persons (including Miss N.) placed their hands
on it. I tested this by secretly attaching threads or thin strips of
paper underneath the claws, so that they must be broken if any one
attempted to raise the table with their feet, the only available means
of doing so. The table still rose a full foot off the floor in broad
daylight. In order to show this to friends with less trouble, I made a
cylinder of hoops and brown paper, in which I placed the table so as to
keep feet and dresses away from it while it rose, which it did as freely
as before. Perhaps more marvelous was the placing of Miss N. herself on
the table; for although this always happened in the dark, yet, under the
conditions to be named, deception was impossible. I will relate one
sitting of which I have notes. We sat in a friend’s house, round a
centre table, under a glass chandelier. A friend of mine, but a perfect
stranger to all the rest, sat next Miss Nichol and held both her hands.
Another person had matches ready to strike a light when required. What
occurred was as follows: First, Miss Nichol’s chair was drawn away from
under her, and she was obliged to stand up, my friend still holding both
her hands. In a minute or two more I heard a slight sound, such as might
be produced by a person placing a wine-glass on the table, and at the
same time a very slight rustling of clothes and tinkling of the glass
pendants of the chandelier. Immediately my friend said, “She is gone
from me.” A light was at once struck, and we found Miss N. quietly
seated in her chair on the centre of the table, her head just touching
the chandelier. My friend declared that Miss N. seemed to glide
noiselessly out of his hands. She was very stout and heavy, and to get
her chair on the table, to get upon it herself, in the dark,
noiselessly, and almost instantaneously, with five or six persons close
around her, appeared, and still appears to me, knowing her intimately,
to be physically impossible.
Another very curious and beautiful phenomenon was the production of
delicate musical sounds, without any object calculated to produce them
being in the room. On one occasion a German lady, who was a perfect
stranger to Miss Nichol, and had never been at a séance before, was
present. She sang several German songs, and most delicate music, like a
fairy musical-box, accompanied her throughout. She sang four or five
different songs of her own choice, and all were so accompanied. This was
in the dark, but hands were joined all the time.
The most remarkable feature of this lady’s mediumship is the production
of flowers and fruits in closed rooms. The first time this occurred was
at my own house at a very early stage of her development. All present
were my own friends. Miss Nichol had come early to tea, it being
mid-winter, and she had been with us in a very warm gas-lighted room
four hours before the flowers appeared. The essential fact is, that upon
a bare table in a small room closed and dark (the adjoining room and
passage being well lighted), a quantity of flowers appeared, which were
not there when we put out the gas a few minutes before. They consisted
of anemones, tulips, chrysanthemums, Chinese primroses, and several
ferns. All were absolutely fresh, as if just gathered from a
conservatory. They were covered with a fine, cold dew. Not a petal was
crumpled or broken, not the most delicate point or pinnule of the ferns
was out of place. I dried and preserved the whole, and have, attached to
them, the attestation of all present that they had no share, as far as
they knew, in bringing the flowers into the room. I believed at the
time, and still believe, that it was absolutely impossible for Miss N.
to have concealed them so long, to have kept them so perfect, and, above
all, to produce them covered throughout with a most beautiful coating of
dew, just like that which collects on the outside of a tumbler when
filled with very cold water on a hot day.
Similar phenomena have occurred hundreds of times since, in many houses
and under various conditions. Sometimes the flowers have been in vast
quantities, heaped upon the table. Often flowers or fruits asked for are
brought. A friend of mine asked for a sunflower, and one six feet high
fell upon the table, having a large mass of earth about its roots. One
of the most striking tests was at Florence, with Mr. T. Adolphus
Trollope, Mrs. Trollope, Miss Blagden, and Colonel Harvey. The room was
searched by the gentlemen; Mrs. Guppy was undressed and redressed by
Mrs. Trollope, every article of her clothing being examined. Mr. and
Mrs. Guppy were both firmly held while at the table. In about ten
minutes all the party exclaimed that they smelt flowers, and, on
lighting a candle, both Mrs. Guppy’s and Mr. Trollope’s arms were found
covered with jonquils, which filled the room with their odor. Mr. Guppy
and Mr. Trollope both relate this in substantially the same terms.
(“Dialectical Society’s Report on Spiritualism,” pp. 277 and 372.)
Surely these are phenomena about which there can be no mistake. What
theories have ever been proposed by our scientific teachers which even
attempt to account for them? Delusion it cannot be, for the flowers are
real and can be preserved, and imposture under the conditions described
is even less credible. If the gentlemen who came forward to enlighten
the public on the subject of “so-called spiritual manifestations” do not
know of the various classes of phenomena that have now been indicated,
and the weight of the testimony in support of them, they are palpably
unqualified for the task they have undertaken. That they do know of
them, but keep back their knowledge, while putting forward trivialities
easy to laugh at or expose, is a supposition I cannot for a moment
entertain. Before leaving this part of the subject, it is well to note
the fact of the marked individuality of each medium. They are not copies
of each other, but each one develops a characteristic set of phenomena—a
fact highly suggestive of some unconscious occult power in the
individual, and wholly opposed to the idea of either imposture or
delusion, both of which almost invariably copy preëxisting models.
_Investigations by some Notable Skeptics._—In giving some account of how
a few of the more important converts to Spiritualism became convinced,
we are of course limited to those who have given their experiences to
the public. I will first take the case of the eminent American lawyer,
the Hon. J. W. Edmonds, commonly called Judge Edmonds; and it may be as
well to let English skeptics know what he is thought of by his
countrymen. When he first became a Spiritualist he was greatly abused;
and it was even declared that he consulted the spirits on his judicial
decisions. To defend himself, he published an “Appeal to the Public,”
giving a full account of the inquiries which resulted in his conversion.
In noticing this, the New York Evening Mirror said: “John W. Edmonds,
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of this District, is an able
lawyer, an industrious judge and a good citizen. For the last eight
years occupying without interruption the highest judicial stations,
whatever may be his faults no one can justly accuse him of a lack of
ability, industry, honesty or fearlessness. No one can doubt his general
saneness, or can believe for a moment that the ordinary operations of
his mind are not as rapid, accurate and reliable as ever. Both by the
practitioners and suitors at his bar he is recognized as the head, in
fact and in merit, of the Supreme Court for this District.” A few years
later he published a series of letters on Spiritualism in the New York
Tribune; and in the first of these he gives a compact summary of his
mode of investigation, from which the following passages are extracted.
It must be remembered that at the time he commenced the inquiry he was
in the prime and vigor of intellectual life, being fifty-two years of
age:
“It was in January, 1851, that I first began my investigations, and it
was not until April, 1853, that I became a firm believer in the
reality of spiritual intercourse. During twenty-three months of those
twenty-seven, I witnessed several hundred manifestations in various
forms. I kept very minute and careful records of many of them. My
practice was, whenever I attended a circle, to keep in pencil a
memorandum of all that took place, so far as I could, and, as soon as
I returned home, to write out a full account of what I had witnessed.
I did all this with as much minuteness and particularity as I had ever
kept any record of a trial before me in court. In this way, during
that period, I preserved the record of nearly two hundred interviews,
running through some one thousand six hundred pages of manuscript. I
had these interviews with many different mediums, and under an
infinite variety of circumstances. No two interviews were alike. There
was always something new, or something different from what had
previously occurred; and it very seldom happened that only the same
persons were present. The manifestations were of almost every known
form, physical or mental; sometimes only one, and sometimes both
combined.
“I resorted to every expedient I could devise to detect imposture and
to guard against delusion. I felt in myself, and saw in others, how
exciting was the idea that we were actually communing with the dead;
and I labored to prevent any undue bias of my judgment. I was at times
critical and captious to an unreasonable extreme; and when my belief
was challenged, as it was over and over again, I refused to yield,
except to evidence that would leave no possible room for cavil.
“I was severely exacting in my demands, and this would frequently
happen. I would go to a circle with some doubt on my mind as to the
manifestations at the previous circle, and something would happen
aimed directly at that doubt, and completely overthrowing it as it
then seemed, so that I had no longer any reason to doubt. But I would
go home and write out carefully my minutes of the evening, cogitate
over them for several days, compare them with previous records, and
finally find some loophole—some possibility that it might have been
something else than spiritual influence, and I would go to the next
circle with a new doubt, and a new set of queries.
“I look back sometimes now, with a smile, at the ingenuity I wasted in
devising ways and means to avoid the possibility of deception.
“It was a remarkable feature of my investigations that every
conceivable objection I could raise was, first or last, met and
answered.”
The following extracts are from the “Appeal”:
“I have seen a mahogany table, having a centre leg, and with a lamp
burning upon it, lifted from the floor at least a foot, in spite of
the efforts of those present, and shaken backward and forward as one
would shake a goblet in his hand, and the lamp retain its place,
though its glass pendants rang again.
“I have known a mahogany chair thrown on its side and moved swiftly
back and forth on the floor, no one touching it, through a room where
there were at least a dozen people sitting, yet no one was touched;
and it was repeatedly stopped within a few inches of me, when it was
coming with a violence which, if not arrested, must have broken my
legs.”
Having satisfied himself of the reality of the physical phenomena, he
came to the question of whence comes the intelligence that was so
remarkably connected with them. He says:
“Preparatory to meeting a circle, I have sat down alone in my room,
and carefully prepared a series of questions to be propounded, and I
have been surprised to find my questions answered, and in the precise
order in which I wrote them, without my even taking my memorandum out
of my pocket, and when not a person present knew that I had prepared
questions, much less what they were. My most secret thoughts, those
which I have never uttered to mortal man or woman, have been freely
spoken to as if I had uttered them; and I have been admonished that my
every thought was known to, and could be disclosed by, the
intelligence which was thus manifesting itself.
“Still the question occurred, ‘May not all this have been, by some
mysterious operation, the mere reflex of the mind of some one
present?’ The answer was, that facts were communicated which were
unknown then, but afterwards found to be true; like this, for
instance: when I was absent last winter in Central America, my friends
in town heard of my whereabouts and of the state of my health several
times; and on my return, by comparing their information with the
entries in my journal, it was found to be invariably correct. So
thoughts have been uttered on subjects not then in my mind and utterly
at variance with my own notions. This has often happened to me and to
others, so as fully to establish the fact that it was not our minds
that gave forth or affected the communication.”
These few extracts sufficiently show that the writer was aware of the
possible sources of error in such an inquiry; and the details given in
the letters prove that he was constantly on his guard against them. He
himself and his daughter became mediums; so that he afterwards obtained
personal confirmation of many of the phenomena by himself alone. But all
the phenomena referred to in the letters and “Appeal” occurred to him in
the presence of others, who testified to them as well, and thus removed
the possibility that the phenomena were subjective.
We have yet to add a notice of what will be perhaps, to many persons,
the most startling and convincing of all the Judge’s experiences. His
own daughter became a medium for speaking foreign languages of which she
was totally ignorant. He says: “She knows no language but her own, and a
little smattering of boarding-school French; yet she has spoken in nine
or ten different tongues, often for an hour at a time, with the ease and
fluency of a native. It is not unfrequent that foreigners converse with
their spirit-friends through her in their own language.” One of these
cases must be given:
“One evening, when some twelve or fifteen persons were in my parlor,
Mr. E. D. Green, an artist of this city, was shown in, accompanied by
a gentleman whom he introduced as Mr. Evangelides, of Greece. Ere long
a spirit spoke to him through Laura, in English, and said so many
things to him that he identified him as a friend who had died at his
house a few years before, but of whom none of us had ever heard.
Occasionally, through Laura, the spirit would speak a word or a
sentence in Greek, until Mr. E. inquired if he could be understood if
he spoke Greek? The residue of the conversation for more than an hour
was, on his part, entirely in Greek, and on hers sometimes in Greek
and sometimes in English. At times Laura would not understand what was
the idea conveyed either by her or him. At other times she would
understand him, though he spoke in Greek, and herself while uttering
Greek words.”
Several other cases are mentioned, and it is stated that this lady has
spoken Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Hungarian and
Indian; and other languages which were unknown to any person present.
This is by no means an isolated case, but it is given as being on most
unexceptionable authority. A man must know whether his own daughter has
learnt, so as to speak fluently, eight languages besides her own, or
not. Those who carry on the conversation must know whether the language
is spoken or not; and in several cases—as the Latin, Spanish, and
Indian—the Judge himself understood the language. And the phenomenon is
connected with Spiritualism by the speaking being in the name of, and
purporting to come from, some deceased person, and the subject matter
being characteristic of that person. Such a case as this, which has been
published sixteen years, ought to have been noticed and explained by
those who profess to enlighten the public on the subject of
Spiritualism.
Our next example is one of the most recent, but at the same time one of
the most useful, converts to the truths of Spiritualism. Dr. George
Sexton, M. D., M. A., L. L. D., was for many years the coadjutor of Mr.
Bradlaugh, and one of the most earnest and energetic of the secularist
teachers. The celebrated Robert Owen first called his attention to the
subject of Spiritualism about twenty years ago. He read books, he saw a
good deal of the ordinary physical manifestations, but he always
“suspected that the mediums played tricks, and that the whole affair was
nothing but clever conjuring by means of concealed machinery.” He gave
several lectures against Spiritualism in the usual style of
non-believers, dwelling much on the absurdity and triviality of the
phenomena, and ridiculing the idea that they were the work of spirits.
Then came another old friend and fellow-secularist, Mr. Turley, who,
after investigating the subject for the purpose of exposing it, became a
firm believer. Dr. Sexton laughed at this conversion, yet it made a deep
impression on his mind. Ten years passed away, and his next important
investigation was with the Davenport brothers; and it will be well for
those who sneer at these much-abused young men to take note of the
following account of Dr. Sexton’s proceedings with them, and especially
of the fact that they cheerfully submitted to every test the doctor
suggested. He tells us (in his lecture, “How I became a Spiritualist,”)
that he visited them again and again, trying in vain to find out the
trick. Then, he says—
“My partner—Dr. Barker—and I invited the Brothers to our houses, and,
in order to guard against anything like trickery, we requested them
not to bring any ropes, instruments, or other apparatus; all these we
ourselves had determined to supply. Moreover, as there were four of
them, viz., the two Brothers Davenport, Mr. Fay, and Dr. Ferguson, we
suspected that the two who were not tied might really do all that was
done. We therefore requested only two to come. They unhesitatingly
complied with all these requests.
“We formed a circle, consisting entirely of members of our own
families and a few private friends, with the one bare exception of
Mrs. Fay. In the circle we all joined hands, and as Mrs. Fay sat at
one end she had one of her hands free, while I had hold of the other.
Thinking that she might be able to assist with the hand that was thus
free, I asked, as a favor, that I might be allowed to hold both her
hands—a proposition which she at once agreed to. Now, without entering
here at all into what took place, suffice it to say that we bound the
mediums with our own ropes, placed their feet upon sheets of writing
paper, and drew lines around their boots, so that if they moved their
feet it should be impossible for them to place them again in the same
position; we laid pence on their toes, sealed the ropes, and in every
way took precautions against their moving. On the occasion to which I
now refer, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Charles Watts were present; and when
Mr. Fay’s coat had been taken off, the ropes still remaining on his
hands, Mr. Bradlaugh requested that his coat might be placed on Mr.
Fay, which was immediately done, the ropes still remaining fastened.
We got, on this occasion, all the phenomena that usually occurred in
the presence of these extraordinary men, particulars of which I shall
probably give on another occasion. Dr. Barker became a believer in
Spiritualism from the time that the Brothers visited at his house. I
did not see that any proof had been given that disembodied spirits had
any hand in producing the phenomena; but I was convinced that no
tricks had been played, and that, therefore, these extraordinary
physical manifestations were the result of some occult force in Nature
which I had no means of explaining in the present state of my
knowledge. All the physical phenomena that I had seen now became clear
to me; they were not accomplished by trickery, as I had formerly
supposed, but were the result of some undiscovered law of Nature,
which it was the business of the man of science to use his utmost
endeavors to discover.”
While he was maintaining this ground, Spiritualists often asked him how
he explained the intelligence that was manifested; and he invariably
replied that he had not yet seen proofs of any intelligence other than
what might be that of the medium or of some other persons present in the
circle, adding, that as soon as he did see proofs of such intelligence
he should become a Spiritualist. In this position he stood for many
years, till he naturally believed he should never see cause to change
his opinion. He continued the inquiry, however, and in 1865 began to
hold séances at home; but it was years before any mental phenomena
occurred which were absolutely conclusive, although they were often of
so startling a nature as would have satisfied any one less skeptical. At
length, after fifteen years of enlightened skepticism—a skepticism not
founded upon ignorance, but which refused to go one step beyond what the
facts so diligently pursued absolutely demonstrated—the needful evidence
came:
“The proofs that I did ultimately receive are, many of them, of a
character that I cannot describe minutely to a public audience, nor
indeed have I time to do so. Suffice it to say, that I got in my own
house, in the absence of all mediums other than those members of my
own family and intimate private friends in whom mediumistic powers
became developed, evidence of an irresistible character that the
communications came from deceased friends and relatives. Intelligence
was again and again displayed which could not possibly have had any
other origin than that which it professed to have. Facts were named
known to no one in the circle, and left to be verified afterwards. The
identity of the spirits communicating was proved in a hundred
different ways. Our dear departed ones made themselves palpable both
to feeling and to sight; and the doctrine of spirit-communion was
proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. I soon found myself in the
position of Dr. Fenwick in Lord Lytton’s ‘Strange Story.’ ‘Do you
believe,’ asked the female attendant of Margrave, ‘in that which you
seek?’ ‘I have no belief,’ was the answer. ‘True science has none;
true science questions all things, and takes nothing on credit. It
knows but three states of mind—denial, conviction, and the vast
interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of
judgment.’ This describes exactly the phases through which my mind has
passed.”