Legend
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about in an unintelligible way, and people began calling out for a light. One of the gentlemen appointed to the charge of the candle and match box struck a light, and we found the room strewn all over with the branches of trees—large branches several feet long, wet with rain, and freshly torn from wherever they had been growing. There were not two or three, you will understand, but more than one person could have carried on his arms, all over the floor and table. Darkness was re-established, and other things came; quantities of flowers; and on one occasion, with a tremendous smash on the table, a bier block of ice weighing many pounds. I cannot now relate all that occurred in the order of its occurrence, but as I go on I record my recollections of the whole series of three evenings when I was present. “Spirit hands” came touching us once, and then, to see something that had been brought, a light was called for. While the candle was still burning, spirit hands showed themselves at the hole in the middle of the table. Many of us, as I myself, rested our hands on the table at the edge of this hole, and the spirit hands would flutter up and touch them, thus coming plainly into sight. Much time would be spent in conversation by raps between various persons present and spirits with whom they found themselves, or thought themselves in communication. One evening we had a professional medium present—a Mrs. Hardy—who went into a trance and spoke in strange voices, but I was not interested much in this. Quantities of little objects would be brought to some of the sitters from their own houses at a distance, but this did not happen to mo. Then people would suddenly feel their rings taken off, and these would be as suddenly slipped on to the fingers of people in a different part of the room. All this sort of childishness is very irritating to a person seriously trying to make out the truth about great marvels, apparently hinging on to mysteries of the supremest importance. But, unfortunately, Spiritualism has a great attraction for foolish as well as for intelligent persons, and large stances will generally be leavened with a painful element of silliness. When the seances used to be over and we went downstairs, raps and other phenomena would follow us. It used to be Mrs. Guppy’s hospitable practice to have supper laid out in the dining-room on seance evenings. Once I remember about fourteen people had gathered sitting round this supper table, and a few others, of whom I was one, were standing about the room, when the table began to jerk and jump. Our hostess was more anxious for the safety of her glass and china than for further manifestations just then, and we all, as far as appearance went, tried to hold down the table. I know that one intimate friend of my own, sitting at the end of the table, tried to do this, all he knew; and that I, standing behind and leaning over his shoulder with both hands on the table, pressed down on it with my whole weight, and felt it nevertheless rise up against me with a force far beyond my control. Certainly none of Mrs. Guppy’s guests were underneath the table trying to smash her things; some held on, and some helped to remove the breakables.
My return to India put an end to my Spiritualistic researches, I am sorry to say, and out here it is next to impossible to carry on the subject, in the midst <... continues on page 10-126.1 >
A Private Seance
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Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Slade
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of pressing occupations and social engagements, and, above all, in view of the way one moves about from place to place in India, and the blank ignorance of the whole subject which, for the most part, characterises Indian society. I was very much pleased, however, to read Mrs. Gordon’s letter; and though I did not keep notes of what I saw when spirit hunting myself, I have thought it likely that some of your readers would be interested in my evidence, such as it is. The instinct of a lifetime, meanwhile —perhaps the stupid instinct at war with the plainest facts, bewildered and at bay, but still doggedly asserting itself—leads me to sign myself.
Editor's notes