sympathetic men and women--persons trained on scientific lines for
choice--all in the best of health; men and women who, whilst strictly on
their guard against anything in the shape of fraud, are still so much in
sympathy with the person who is acting as the sensitive that they are
all the time sending out kindly thoughts towards him; for if, as has
been said, "thoughts are things," it is possible that hostile thoughts
would be sufficient not only to enfeeble, but actually to check
demonstrations of physical phenomena of all kinds in the presence of
such specially organized, highly developed individuals as the sensitives
through whom materializations can be produced.
I shall refer to these men and women as the sitters. We generally select
an equal number so far as sex is concerned; and, in addition, we
endeavor to obtain an equal number of persons possessing either
positive or negative temperaments. In this way we form the sitters into
a powerful human battery, the combined force given off by them (if the
battery is properly arranged, and the individual members of that battery
are in good health) proving of enormous assistance during our
experiments. If in ill-health, we find that a man or woman is useless to
us, for we can no more expect to obtain the necessary power from such an
individual than we can expect to produce an electric spark from a
discharged accumulator, or pick up needles with a demagnetized piece of
steel.
We are told to remember always that "all manifestations of natural laws
are the results of natural conditions."
* * * * *
Minor details too, we find, must be thought out most carefully if we are
to provide what we may term ideal conditions.
The chairs should be made of wood throughout, those known as Austrian
bentwood chairs, having perforated seats, being proved to be the best
for the purpose.
The sitters should bathe and then change their clothing--the ladies into
white dresses, and the men into dark suits--two hours before the time
fixed for the experiment, and should then at once partake of a light
meal--meat and alcohol being strictly forbidden--so that the strain upon
their constitutions during the experiment may not interfere with their
health.
Trivial as such matters must appear to the man in the street, we are
told they must all be carried out most carefully, in order that the
finest conditions possible may be obtained, the one great object of the
sitters being to give off all the power--and the best kind of
power--that they are capable of producing, in order that sufficient
suitable material may be gathered together from the sensitive and
themselves, with which a temporary body may be formed for the use of any
entity wishing to materialize in their presence.
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FRAUD
We are now ready to see what happens at a typical experimental meeting
for these materializations, at hundreds of which I have assisted, having
the services of no less than six sensitives placed at my disposal for
this purpose. I will endeavor to describe what I should consider to be
an ideal one, held under ideal (test) conditions.
Our imaginary test meeting is to be carried out--as it was on one
occasion in London--in an entirely empty house, which none of us has
ever entered before, a house which we will hire for this special event.
By doing this we may feel sure that all possibility of fraud, so far as
the use of secret trap-doors, large mirrors, and other undesirable
things of that description are concerned, can be successfully thwarted.
We are now ready to start our experiment; the general feeling of all
those in the room being that every possible precaution against trickery
has been taken, and that if any results of any kind whatever should
follow they will undoubtedly be genuine.
The sitters having been allotted their seats, so that a person of a
positive and a person of a negative temperament are seated together, we
now join hands, and form ourselves into what we are told is a powerful
human battery; the two persons sitting at the two ends of the
half-circle having of course each one hand free, and from the free hands
of these two persons, it is said, the power developed and given off by
this human battery passes into the sensitive at each of his sides.
Sitting quietly in our chairs and talking gently amongst ourselves, we
soon feel a cool breeze blowing across our hands. In another two minutes
this will have so increased in volume that it may with truth be
described as a strong wind.
On looking at the sensitive now, we see that he is rapidly passing into
a state of trance--his head is drooping on one side, his arms and hands
hang downwards loosely, his body being in a limp _real trance_
condition, and just in the right state for use by any entity desiring to
work through him, we are told.
I have only experimented with one sensitive who did not pass into
trance, who, seated amongst the sitters, remained in a perfectly normal
condition during the whole of the experiment; watching the materialized
forms building up beside him, and talking to and with them during the
process. I shall refer to him shortly.
* * * * *
We now set our clairvoyants to work, and the statements made by one must
be confirmed in every detail by the statements of the other as to what
is occurring at the moment, or no notice is taken of their remarks.
Both now report that they see a thin white mist or vapor[16] coming
from the left side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if a
woman), which passes into the sitter at the end of the half-circle
nearest to the sensitive's left side. It then passes, they state, from
Sitter No. 1 to Sitter No. 2, and so on, until it has gone through the
whole of the sixteen sitters, passing finally from the last one--No.
16--at the end of the half-circle nearest to the sensitive's right side,
and disappears into his right side.
[Footnote 16: Termed teleplasma.]
We assume from this that the nerve force, magnetic power--call it what
you will--necessary for the formation of one of these temporary bodies
starts from the sensitive, passes through each sitter, drawing from each
as much more force or power as he or she is capable of giving off at the
moment, returning to the sensitive greatly increased in its amount and
ready for use in the next process. This, then, we will term the first of
the three stages in the evolution of an entity clad in a temporary body.
THE VAPOR STAGE
In a few moments our clairvoyants both report that the force or power is
issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if
a woman), in the form of a white, soft, dough-like substance, which on
one occasion I was permitted to touch. I could perceive no smell given
off by it; it felt cold and clammy, and appeared to have the consistency
of heavy dough at the moment that I touched it.
This mass of dough-like substance is said to be the material used by the
entities--one by one as a rule--who wish to build up a temporary body.
It seems to rest on the floor, somewhere near the right side of the
sensitive, until required for use: its bulk depending apparently upon
the amount of power given off by the sitters from time to time during
the experiment.
This we will term the second of the three stages of the evolution of an
entity clad in a temporary body.
THE SOLID, BUT SHAPELESS STAGE
We are told that the entity wishing to show himself to us passes into
this shapeless mass of dough-like substance, which at once increases in
bulk, and commences to pulsate and move up and down, swaying from side
to side as it grows in height, the motive power being evidently
underneath.
The entity then quickly sets to work to mould the mass into something
resembling a human body, commencing with the head. The rest of the upper
portion of the body soon follows, and the heart and pulse can now be
felt to be beating quite regularly and normally, differing in this
respect from those of the sensitive, who, if tested at this time, will
be found with both heart and pulse-beats considerably above the normal.
The legs and feet come last, and then the entity is able to leave the
near neighborhood of the sensitive and to walk amongst the sitters, the
third and last stage of its evolution being now complete.
Although occasionally the entity will appear clad in an exact copy of
the clothing which he states that he wore when on earth--especially if
it should happen to be something a little out of the common, such as a
military or naval uniform--they are draped as a rule in flowing white
garments of a wonderfully soft texture, and this, too, I have been
permitted to handle.
Our clairvoyants both affirm that at all times during the
materialization a thin band of, presumably, the dough-like substance can
be plainly seen issuing from the side of the sensitive, if a man, (or
from the pelvis, if a woman), and joined onto the center of the body
inhabited by the entity--just like the umbilical cord attached to a
human infant at birth--and we are instructed that this band cannot be
stretched beyond a certain radius, say ten to fifteen feet, without
doing harm to the sensitive and to the entity; although cases are on
record where materializations have been seen at a distance of nearly
sixty feet from the sensitive, on occasions when the conditions were
unusually favorable.
On handling different portions of the materialized body now, the flesh
is found to be both warm and firm. The bodies are well proportioned,
those of the females--for they take on sex conditions during the
process--having beautiful figures; the hands, arms, legs, and feet are
quite perfect in their modelling, but in my opinion the body, head, and
limbs of every materialization of either sex or any age which I have
scrutinized at close quarters carefully, or have been permitted to
handle, have appeared to be at least one-third smaller in size (except
as regards actual height) than those possessed by beings on earth of the
same sex and age.
Not only have we witnessed materializations of aged entities of both
sexes, showing all the characteristics of old age--for the purpose of
identification by the sitters, as they tell us--but we have seen
materialized infants also; and on one occasion two still-born children
appeared in our midst simultaneously, one of them showing distinct
traces on its little face of a hideous deformity which it possessed at
the time of its premature birth--a deformity known only to the mother,
who happened to be present that evening as one of the sitters.
We are told that, for the purpose of identification, the entity will
return to earth in an exact counterpart of the body which he alleges
that he occupied at the time of his death, in order that he may be
recognized by his relatives and friends who happen to be present. Thus,
the one who left the earth as an infant will appear in his materialized
body as an infant, although he may have been dead for twenty or thirty
years. The aged man or woman will appear with bent body, wrinkled face,
and snow-white hair, walking amongst us with difficulty, and just as
they allege they did before their death, although that may have occurred
twenty years before. The one who had lost a limb during his earth-life
will return minus that limb; the one who was disfigured by accident or
disease will return bearing distinct traces of that disfigurement, for
the purpose of identification only.
But as soon as the identification has been established successfully, all
this changes instantly; the disfigurement disappears; the four limbs
will be seen, and both the infant and the aged will from henceforth show
themselves to us in the very prime of life--the young growing upwards
and the aged downwards, as we say, and, as they one and all state
emphatically, just as they really look and feel in the sphere in which
they now exist.
While inhabiting these temporary bodies, they state that they take on,
not only sex conditions, but earth conditions temporarily too; for they
appear to feel pain if their bodies are injured in any way; complain of
the cold if the temperature of the room is allowed to fall much below
sixty degrees, or of the heat if the temperature is allowed to rise
above seventy degrees; seem to be depressed during a thunderstorm, when
our atmosphere is overcharged with electricity; and appear bright and
happy in a warm room when the world outside is in the grip of a hard
frost, and also on bright, starry nights.
And not only this, but they take on strongly marked characteristics of
the numerous races on earth temporarily too; the materialized entities
of the white races differing quite as markedly from those of the yellow
or brown races, as do these from the black races; and in speaking to us
each one will communicate in the particular language only which is
characteristic of his race on earth.
Five, six and even _seven_ totally different languages have been
employed during a single experimental meeting through a sensitive who
had never in his life been out of England, and who was proved
conclusively to know no other language than English; the latter number,
we were told, being in honor of a ship's doctor who was present on one
occasion, and who--although the fact was quite unknown to any of us at
the time--proved to be an expert linguist, for he conversed that evening
with different entities in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese,
Japanese, and in the language of one of the hill-tribes of India.
On another occasion, when I was the only European present at an
afternoon experimental meeting held in London by eight Parsees of both
sexes from Bombay, during the whole of the time which the meeting
lasted--two and a quarter hours--the entities and the Parsee sitters
carried on their conversation in Hindustani; two entities and one of the
Parsee men simultaneously engaging in a heated controversy, which lasted
for nearly three minutes, over the disposal of the bodies of their dead,
the entities insisting on cremation only, as opposed to allowing the
bodies to be eaten by vultures--the noise which they made during this
discussion being almost deafening. The sensitive, it was proved
conclusively, knew no other language than English, and had only once
been out of the British Islands, when he paid a short visit to France.
CHAPTER II
"_Sit down before a fact as a little child: be prepared to give
up every preconceived notion: follow humbly wherever and to
whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn
nothing._"--THOMAS HUXLEY.
TESTS
The tests given to me and to my fellow-investigators through the six
sensitives who so ably assisted us during our seven years of
experimental work in this little-known field of research--the tests have
been so numerous, and were of such a varied character, that I find it
somewhat difficult to know which to select out of the hundreds which
were recorded in our books officially and elsewhere, the ones which will
prove of the greatest interest to inquirers; but I have made extracts
from ten of these records, and these, with a few taken from Sir William
Crookes's reports on the experiments conducted in his presence, will, in
my opinion, be sufficient to prove that we who have witnessed these
marvels are neither hallucinated, insane, nor liars when we solemnly
affirm that we have both seen and handled the materialized bodies built
up for temporary use by entities from another sphere; all the statements
made here being true in every detail, to the best of my knowledge and
belief.
EXPERIMENT NO. 1
Place--_Lyndhurst, New Forest, Hampshire. Sensitive A, male, aged about
46._
As an example of a simple but exceedingly severe test, I would first
record one given to me and a fellow-investigator on the outskirts of the
New Forest, one for which no special preparation of any kind whatever
had been made.
The sensitive, a nearly blind man, was taken by us on a dark night to a
spot totally unknown to him, as he had only just arrived from London by
train, and was led into a large travelling caravan, one which he had
never been near before, as it had only recently left the builder's
hands.
During the day I had made a critical examination of the interior of the
caravan, and had satisfied myself that no one was or could possibly be
concealed in it. I then locked the door, and kept the key in my pocket
until the moment when, on the arrival of the sensitive, I unlocked the
door and we all passed into the caravan together. I then locked and
bolted the door behind us.
As I have already said, no preparation of any kind had been made for the
experiment. It was merely the result of a desire to see if anything
could be produced through this sensitive, under extremely difficult
conditions--conditions which we considered as so utterly bad as to make
failure a certainty.
We did not even possess a chair of any kind for the sensitive or
ourselves to sit upon, so we placed for his use a board on top of the
iron cooking-range which was fixed in the kitchen-portion of the
caravan, whilst we sat upon the two couches which were used as beds in
the living-portion of the caravan. There was no music, no powerful
"human battery" in the shape of a number of picked sitters; in fact, the
conditions were just about as bad as they could possibly be, and yet,
within ten minutes of my locking the door behind us, the figure of a
tall man stood before us, a man so tall that he was compelled to bow his
head as he passed under the six-foot high partition which separated the
two sections of the caravan.
He said, "I am Colonel -- who was 'killed,' as you say, at the battle of
-- in Egypt. For many years during my earth-life I was deeply interested
in materializations, and spent the last night of my life in England
experimenting with this very sensitive; and it is a great pleasure to me
to be able to return to you--strangers though you both are to
me--through him. To prove to you that I am not the sensitive
masquerading before you, will you please come here and stand close to
me, and so settle the matter for yourself?"
I at once rose and stood beside him, almost touching him. I then
discovered that not only were his features and his coloring totally
different from those of the sensitive, but that he towered above me,
standing, as nearly as I could judge, six foot two or three inches, and
was certainly four inches taller than either the sensitive or myself.
Whilst thus standing beside him, and at a distance of about eight feet
from the sensitive, we could both hear the unfortunate man moving
uneasily on his hard seat on the kitchen-range, sighing and moaning as
if in pain.
The entity remained with us for about three minutes, and his place was
then taken by a slightly built young man, standing about five feet nine
inches, one claiming to be a recently deceased member of the royal
family. He talked with us in a soft and pleasing voice, finally
whispering a private message to my companion, asking him to deliver it
to his mother, Queen --.
EXPERIMENT NO. 2
Place--_Peckham Rye, London, S. E. Sensitive A, male, aged about 46._
An almost equally hopeless task was set this sensitive by the owner of
the caravan and myself when we experimented with him at midday on a
brilliant morning in July, with sunlight streaming into the room round
the edges of the drawn down window-blinds, and round the top, sides, and
bottom of the heavy window-curtains, which we had pinned together in a
vain attempt to keep out the sunlight during the experiment.
And yet once again, and in spite of the conditions which we regarded as
utterly hopeless, the figure of a man appeared in less than ten minutes,
materialized from head to foot, as he proved to us by showing us his
lower limbs. He left the side of the sensitive, walked out into the room
and stood between us, talking to us in a deep rich voice for nearly
three minutes. As he stood beside us we could hear the sensitive, twelve
feet away, moving uneasily on his chair and groaning slightly.
Five minutes after he disappeared the same (alleged) recently deceased
member of the royal family walked out to us and held a short private
conversation with my companion, and sent another message to his mother,
Queen --.
EXPERIMENT NO. 3
Place--_West Hampstead, London, N. W. Sensitive B, female, aged about
49._
Persons of middle age or older who happened to be in England a few years
ago at the time that two lawsuits were brought against a celebrated
conjurer by the clever young man who had succeeded in exposing one of
his most mystifying tricks, will well remember the sensation caused by
the giving of both verdicts against the conjurer; and the young man--to
whom I shall refer as Mr. X--at once became famous as the man who had
beaten one of the cleverest conjurers of the day.
A friend of mine, who had been present on several occasions when Sir
William Crookes's sensitive--Florrie Cook (Mrs. Corner), referred to
above as Sensitive B--had produced materializations in gaslight at my
house in London, asked her to visit his house at West Hampstead one
evening to meet several friends of his, and to see if it were possible
for any entity to materialize in my friend's own drawing-room.
She at once accepted his invitation to sit there under strict test
conditions; and, talking the matter over with some of his friends a day
or two before the one chosen for the experiment, he told me that they
had arranged to have the sensitive securely tied to her chair, to have
strong iron rings fastened to the floor-boards, through which ropes
would be passed, these ropes to be securely fastened to the sensitive's
legs; all knots of every size and kind to be sealed, so as to prevent
any attempt on her part to leave her chair and to masquerade as a
materialized entity.
One of his friends happened to know the celebrated Mr. X--, and, as he
had so recently succeeded in beating so notable a conjurer, he was
invited to be present and to take entire charge of the tying up, the
binding and sealing arrangements, in order to render the escape of the
sensitive from her chair an impossibility.
When I joined the party in the drawing-room, Mr. X--, to whom I was
introduced, was busily engaged in tying the sensitive up with his own
ropes and tapes, sealing every knot with special sealing-wax and with a
seal provided by our host. The room was a large one, and a portion at
one end had been cleared of all furniture, and in the center of this
space only the sensitive seated upon her chair, and Mr. X-- busily at
work, were to be seen; and the latter, after another fifteen minutes of
real hard labor, was asked by our host if he was thoroughly satisfied
that the sensitive was fastened to her chair securely. He replied that
so securely was she fastened, that if she could produce phenomena of any
kind whatever under such conditions, he would at once admit their
genuineness.
The sensitive was all this time in a perfectly normal state, and not
flurried in any way, her one anxiety being lest we should lower the
lights, as she was so terrified at the thought of darkness.
Mr. X--, after stepping backwards to have a final look at the result of
his labors, then walked close to the spot where the sensitive was
sitting in gaslight, and put one hand up towards the top of the curtain,
and was in the act of drawing this round her to keep the direct rays of
the gaslight from falling upon her, when a large brown arm and hand
suddenly appeared, the hand being clapped heavily upon Mr. X--'s
shoulder, whilst a gruff masculine voice asked him in loud tones, "Are
you really satisfied?"
I have witnessed some strange happenings in connection with my
investigation of occult matters, but to my dying day I shall never
forget the look of blank astonishment on Mr. X--'s face at that moment.
Quickly recovering himself, however, he at once examined the
sensitive--a little woman, far below the average height, having small
hands and feet, as we could all see quite clearly--and declared that
every seal and every knot was unbroken, and just as he had left them not
sixty seconds before.
Amongst other entities who materialized that evening was a young girl of
about eighteen years of age who stated that when she left her
earth-body she had been a dancer at a cafe in Algiers.