< Spiritualism and Theosophy (continued from page 11-10) >
along the front edge of the platform. Every evening, after the last meal, William Eddy, a stout-built, square-shouldered, hard-handed farmer, would go upstairs, hang a thick wool-len shawl across the doorway, enter the closet and seat himself on a low chair, that stood at the extreme end. The visitors, who sometimes numbered forty of an evening, were accommodated on benches placed within a few feet of the platform. Horatio Eddy sat on a chair in front, and discoursed doleful music on a fiddle and led the singing—if such it might be called without causing Mozart to turn in his grave; a feeble light was given by a kerosene lamp placed on the floor at the end of the room farthest from the platform, in an old drum from which both heads had been removed. Though the light was certainly very dim yet it sufficed to enable us to see if any one left his seat, and to distinguish through the gloom the height and costumes of the visitors from the other world. At a first sitting this was difficult, but practice soon accustomed one’s eyes to the conditions.
After an interval of singing and fiddle scraping, sometimes of five, sometimes twenty or thirty minutes, we could see the shawl stirred, it would be pushed aside, and out upon the platform would step some figure. It might be a man, woman or child, a decrepit veteran or a babe carried in a woman’s arms. The figure would have nothing at all of the supernatural or ghostly about it. A stranger entering at the other end of the room would simply fancy that a living mortal was standing there, ready to address an audience. Its dress would be the one it wore in life, its face, hands, feet, gestures, perfectly natural. Sometimes, it would call the name of the living friend it had come to meet. If it were strong the voice would be of the natural tone; if weak, the words came in faint whispers; if still more feeble there was no voice at all, but the figure would stand leaning against the chimney or hand-rail while the audience asked in turn— “Is it for me?” and it either bowed its head or caused raps to sound in the wall when the right one asked the question. Then the anxious visitor would lean forward, and scan the figure’s appearance in the dim light, and often we would hear the joyful cry, “Oh; Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Son, Daughter,” or what not, “I know you.” Then the weird visitor would be seen to bow, or stretch out its hands, and then seeming to gather the last strength that remained to it in its evanescent frame, glide into the closet again, and drop the shawl before the hungry gaze of the eyes that watched it. But, sometimes, the form would last much longer. Several times I saw come out of the closet an aged lady clad in the Quaker costume, with lawn cap and kerchief pinned across her bosom, grey dress and long housewifely apron, and calling her son to the platform, seat herself in a chair beside him, and after kissing him fondly talk for some minutes with him in low tones about family matters. All the while she would be absently folding the hem of her apron into tucks, and smoothing them out again, and so continuing the thing over and over just as —her son told me—she was in the habit of doing while alive. More than once, just as she was ready to disappear, this gentleman would take her arm in his, come to the baluster, and say that he was requested by his old mother, whom we saw there, although she had been dead many years, to certify that it was, indeed, she herself and no deception, and bid them realize that man lives beyond the grave, and so live here as to ensure happiness then.
Spiritualism and Theosophy
I will not attempt to give you in these few minutes of our lecture, even the bare outline of my observations during those eventful weeks. Suffice it to say that I saw as many as seventeen of these revenants in a single evening, and that, from first to last, I saw about five hundred. There were a certain few figures that seemed especially attached to the medium’s sphere or influence, but the rest were the appearances of friends of the strangers who daily flocked to the place from the most distant localities-some as far away as 2,000 miles. There were Americans and Europeans, Africans and Asiatics, Red Indians <... continues on page 11-12 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Spiritualism and Theosophy by unknown author, London Spiritualist, No. 438, January 14, 1881, pp. 21-3
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 438, January 14, 1881, pp. 21-3