CHAPTER XVI -
A STARTLING PROPHECY
On the evening of September 26th last, a prophecy
was made in a circle by the spirit "Mrs. Eaton,"
the fulfillment of which will mark an epoch
in the history of modern Spiritualism. She said
that on Sunday, September 19th, 1875, in the Eddy
circle-room, spirits would materialize themselves in a
brightly lighted room, and deliver orations as in life,
with persons sitting all about them on the platform.
In short, by that time they would have so far overcome
or changed the conditions of the manifestations, that
the present annoying drawbacks to a perfect investigation
of the phenomena would no longer exist. This
will be very satisfactory to those who may follow after
me, but it comes too late to be of any service to myself.
I have had to feel my way to a conclusion through
darkened rooms, and at such a physical distance from
the cabinet and its occupants, that I have been like a
blind man in a strange city. But, nevertheless, as even
he may fare on to his journey's end, if he but tread
cautiously and make sure of his foothold before venturing
to take the next step, so, in spite of all difficulties,
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I feel as if, after moving at snail's pace for two months,
the goal were in sight at last.
Did ever a wiseacre "muscular contraction" theorist
hear a spirit speak? Has Dr. Carpenter ever known
of "unconscious cerebration" imparting speech to a
re-incarnated ghost ? Did Sir William Hamilton ever
know of " ire-conscious Activity of the Mind," or
"Latent Thought " covering itself with a corporeal
shape, and give voice to logic and rhetoric? If not,
what business has either of them, to say nothing of
the minnows who swim beside these great whales in
the sea of thought, to pronounce ex cathedra judgment
upon phenomena of which these Chittenden marvels
are a part ? I have heard a spirit talk-yes, a score of
them, and in eight different languages, of which I understood
three, so as to know what was said on both sides,
while I have had the others translated to me. And on
the evening of October 2d I heard one make a speech
of five minutes. That afternoon, I had accompanied
the artist to the graveyard to take a sketch of Mrs.
Eddy's grave, and as we turned to come away I
remarked to him, that it would be a good test of the
genuineness of these Eddy manifestations, if the spirit
of Mrs. Eddy would appear that night and make some
allusion to our present visit. We agreed to keep the
matter to ourselves and see what might come of it.
We reached home without meeting any person, and
even if we had been seen, it would naturally be supposed
that we had merely been taking one of our usual strolls.
The evening came, and we met in the circle-room at the
regular hour. The company numbered fourteen, and
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nine spirits showed themselves. The first was old
William Brown, who spoke a few words to his son;
then a middle-aged lady named Maria Ann Clarke,
dressed in dark clothing; then a Mrs. Griswold, who
was murdered in Vermont not long ago, and who, upon
the occasion of a former visit to this circle-room, gave
all the details of the crime to an old friend of hers, a
Mr. Wilkins, who was present. Then forth stepped Mrs.
Eddy herself, and stood there silent and motionless,
looking at the artier and myself, who sat together.
She bowed and retired, and we exchanged glances as
though not satisfied with the test; but immediately the
spirit returned, and evidently addressing her discourse
to us, said: "Death, where is thy sting ? Graze, where
is thy victory?" I had expected her to speak in the
whispered accents of old Mrs. Pritchard, Maggie Brown,
and certain other lady-spirits, but she pitched her voice
so high and spoke so loud, that she might have been
heard in the largest auditorium in New York city.
The surprise was so great, that the unexpected sound
thrilled me to the marrow, and I sat staring through
the gloom at the woman as I never did at a speaker
before or since. She was of a large frame, and had the
ample figure that is represented in the portrait published
with a former chapter. She wore a white waist
and dark skirt. Her hair was in ringlets, as I discovered
when she bent forward in profile, in the animation
of her discourse. She said, addressing me: "Your
writings are true, and be assured the Truth will prevail.
A thousand spirits are watching your every step, and
wishing you Godspeed. They see the rapid spread of
Truth upon earth.; and they and a countless host besides
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are helping it on. Go on, my friend; we will welcome
you in gratitude and joy when you come to the other
world, for daring to tell the truth, and helping to disseminate
it. I thank you for your kindness to my children,
who have suffered so much and so long for the
good cause." It is needless to say that, barring all
compliments, I needed no stenographer to fix upon my
memory this astounding address, of which I have given
only a fragment. She spoke of her own sufferings and
trials upon earth, and denounced with bitter and
unstinted anger all who slander and persecute mediums,
especially her own children. Her remarks showed
very clearly the deep, and hardly eradicable impression
made upon her soul by the treatment she received while
living here, and the case offers a subject for the thoughtful
consideration of psychologists.
As the question of personal identity is one of paramount
importance, at any rate in a case of this kind,
let me remark that the figure was plainly that of a
woman, to say nothing of the voice, which, while partaking
of the strong Vermont provincial accent of the
whole family, was sharp and in a high key--the key of
a female voice. Moreover, the lady was recognized by
sundry of her former acquaintances in the room, who
greeted her; in addition to her children, of whom,
there were two present. I have seen this lady several
times, and heard her make several speeches. In one of
these she said: " I am the mother of these mediums,
and they are the children of my body. I want this
understood. I want it known that this is no fraud, but
a real exhibition of spirit-power and spiritual existence.
It is for that, that I come back to this scene of my
earthly sufferings."
250 251-252 drawing
Again, on the evening of October 9th, confining her
discourse to me, she referred to a
conversation I had had that day with the artist about
certain subjects for illustrations, and suggested her
death-bed scene, where, she said, her children in the
spirit-world had materialized, and stood beside their
surviving brothers and sisters, while her own life was ebbing away.
My attention was early called to the question of the
dynamics of these Eddy spirit manifestations, and
after settling the matter of their weight, I determined
to attempt to throw some light upon the direct power
that the spirits could exert. The spring-balance
occurred to me, as it did to Mr. Crookes (whose excellent
pamphlet I unfortunately could not obtain until
some time after my own experiments were concluded),
and I accordingly procured two of standard
quality, of Mr. L. G. Kingsley, of Rutland, the house
that furnished me the platform-scales, each of a weighing
capacity of fifty pounds. I wished to test the
power of the detached hands seen in Horatio's light-
circle, as the demonstration of power by them would
be a more striking and satisfactory test than in the case
of the fully materialized forms, into which the question of
personation was inevitably more or less
entangled.
Let the reader refer to the sketch of the light-circle,
in the XIIth chapter, and notice the relative positions of
the shawl from the railing, and also where the spirit-
hand is thrust through the shawl, and where the feet
253
of the sitters are aligned. My experiment was two-
fold, viz, : to ascertain how much the hands could pull
horizontally, and how much vertically. One of the
balances I fastened with a stout cord to the handrail,
allowing a sufficiency of cord to bring the hook of the
balance within easy reach of the spirit-hand, this was
for the horizontal pull. The other I attached to a
strong ring, made for the purpose, and screwed into the
floor, just between the left foot of the gentleman sitter.
and the right foot of the medium. The horizontal pull ,
was tried on the evening of September 30th. The
audience numbered twenty-six persons. The weather
outside was rainy and blustering; temperature low ;
ten new arrivals that day; and generally the conditions
would be regarded as unfavorable. The persons sitting
beside Horatio were Mr. Goodsell, of Minnesota, and
Mr. Wilkins, of Vermont, whose addresses can be furnished
if desired. Some instrument-playing and card-
writing occurred, and the guitar, tambourine, and several
bells were thrown over the curtain; after which a
left hand was thrust out, and by the opening and closing
of the fingers, indicated to me, standing close by,
that they were ready for my experiment.
I stepped upon the platform and handed the hook
to the hand, which grasped it, moved its fingers on and
off the hook to get a firm hold, as any one naturally
would, if he were about to exert his full force in that
way, and then easily, steadily, and without spasmodic action,
compressed the spring until the pointer ran down to the 40
pound mark. To prove that the force had not been
exhausted, the spring was held there until I reached
254 255-256
out my hand to take back the balance, and then was
allowed to recoil as gradually as it had been compressed.
Forty pounds, therefore, was the measure of
the horizontal pull. The hand was the left one--large,
broad, and white. I stood within a foot of it when it
pulled, and my attention was attracted to a peculiarity
which proved that it did not belong to Horatio's body.
Upon the wrist, at the root of the thumb, there were two
thin parallel lines of tattooing in blue India ink. Horatio
exclaimed, while the spirit was pulling, that it was
bracing itself for it by pressing the other hand
against his (Horatio's) back; and he gave way to the
pressure and leaned slightly forward, as if this were
the case. If he had been pulling, he would naturally
have
leaned back, so as to exert his force against the
spring.
The vertical pull was made on the evening of October 2d,
when I myself sat next to Horatio in the light-
circle. The hand tonight was the right hand of
"George Dix," as I recognized by its mutilation in the
loss of the little finger. It has been asserted, upon the
barest suspicion, that this appearance of the loss of the
finger is deceptive, the medium having the trick of
bending his down so as to seem, but not in reality to
be missing. My answer to this is that this experiment
was made with this hand not more than six inches from
my eyes, and with so good a light in the room that I
could read the small figures on the dial with ease.
Moreover, I noticed how the skin was drawn down
into the cavity of the cicatrix, when the wound had
healed. I, furthermore, remarked that the hand was as
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white as marble, the wrist broad and with no depression
where it joined the hand; and when the fingers clutched
the hook to pull, the inside was partially turned toward
me so that I could see the blue veins half concealed
beneath the fat, and the projection of the tendons as
they contracted in the strain. The pull was steady, as
before, but more powerful, for the whole 50 pounds was
indicated by the pointer on the dial. The balance was
then relinquished, and in testimony of his satisfaction
at the result, Dix slapped me heartily on the back and
tickled me in the ribs. I said: "It seems as if the
spirit could pull 100 pounds more, if the apparatus
would allow of it," and assent was given by vigorous
pounding upon the table behind me.
Mr. Charles Goodsell's address is Howard Lake,
Wright Co. Minn., and he writes me as follows, about
the light-circle at which the above events occurred
" If you recollect, I was sitting beside Horatio, when you first tried
the power of the materialized hand which pulled the spring balance.
The indicator showed that it pulled forty pounds. I know that I
held Horatio by the left hand, while his right clasped my wrist. I
am positive that it was a left hand that hooked the middle finger in-
to the hook of the balance, and pulled. Furthermore, two hands
reached out and patted me on the head and shoulders. While my
hands were clasping Horatio's, the iron ring was put upon his left
arm, and slipped down on to the back of my left hand."
If I had been in any doubt about seeing the baby-hand, previously described, there was no occasion for
it to continue, for on this occasion the hand of a child
touched me in the back, and upon my mentally requesting
it to show itself, was thrust out and patted me on
the cheek. It disappeared, but when I mentally asked
that it might be held at my lips, it came again, and
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remained there until I could kiss it (for it was said that
it was the hand of one who bore to me the tenderest
of ties). Several other hands, large and small, women's
and men's, wrote cards before my eyes, each being
closely scrutinized as it appeared. My senses were
wide awake, beyond all question, for this was the first
opportunity given me to sit with the medium, in a
whole month's sojourn in the house, and I determined
that no detail, however slight, should be overlooked.
I was more than glad to be able to satisfy myself wholly
as to the famous " ring test," the philosophy of which
the mediums, the Spiritualists, and the spirits themselves
had tried to explain to me. I had seen the thing done
in the light a number of times, the ring dropping from
off Horatio's arm, as he sat before me with his hands
bound ; but all this was not entirely satisfactory to one
who was furnishing to a wide circle of readers the materials
for the formation of belief, and whose duty was to
make no mistake. When the ring test was about to be
given, I was requested by the medium to take both his
hands in mine and keep a firm hold. It must be remembered
that, up to this moment, he had been grasping my
bared left arm with his two hands. At the beginning of
the séance his hands were very cold, but I noticed that
they gradually grew warmer, until, just before the ring-test,
a shiver ran through his frame, a sudden chill passed
into them and they became icy cold. I never felt hands
so cold before, except upon a corpse that had been laid
in ice.
Our hands crossed, my right holding his right, and his
left my left. The iron ring used for the experiment
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was then exhibited through the shawl by another hand, so
that all could see it, and then dropped upon the floor at
my feet, striking it with a metallic sound, and rolling off
the platform. After all who chose had had an opportunity
to examine it, it was passed back, and taken behind
the curtain by the detached hand. I then felt an arm and
shoulder pressing against my back, as I sat touching the
edge of the table behind me, and the ring, and a cold
hand that held it touched the bare, warm skin of my left
forearm. Another tremendous shock ran through the
medium's body, and instantly the iron ring slid down
from his arm over my right wrist and hung there.
There was just distance enough between our arms for
the large ring to touch both his and mine, and at the
moment of the shock, it seemed to me that the side of the
ring next to Horatio's, dissolved into a vapor, while the
one next to mine remained solid, for it moved away from
my skin directly through his arm, or else opened so as to
permit his to pass through its own substance, and the
next instant it dangled upon my wrist.
This is an astounding story, I know, but everything
happened just as described. I neither relaxed my hold
upon his hands for an instant, nor lost sight of the smallest
detail of the experiment. I was neither psychologized
nor deceived, and no theory of "muscular contraction"
is sufficient to explain or cover the facts. The
explanation given to me of the phenomenon by a spirit
is that, the medium's system being negative and the sitter's
positive, a strong current of a fluid, which, for lack
of a better name, they call refined electricity, is sent
through from the one to the other, and as it passes
260 261-262 drawing
through the intermediate metal, being obliged to escape
at the poles, it overcomes the cohesion of the particles,
and the solid is changed into a vapor. By suddenly
reversing this process, the substance is re-solidified, and
the ring becomes as it was before. They claim that they
have the same control over the cohesion of the particles
of our gross matter as they have over what we term gravity ;
that is, that by an exercise of their own subtle power
they can as readily dissolve a solid as they can lift it.
Let every one do as he likes with the explanation : I give
it as it was received.
I must say that I felt no shock whatever at any time,
but perhaps, being so positive as they say I am, the thing
worked the other way, and the medium got a charge of
my surplus "magnetism."
One night Mayflower told me, as an evidence of the
superior knowledge of the spirits, that she herself could
harden and weld copper, and make a small machine that
would lift the house we were in, as easily as I could my
hat. When I asked her why she would not impart some
of her knowledge for the benefit of the world, her reply
was that, when our men of science got so far progressed
as to lose their empty conceit, and discover that they
hardly knew the alphabet of science, and were prepared
to learn, these and many more important discoveries
would reward them. We must hasten slowly on our path
up the Parnassian hill, learning, little by little, and as the
child acquires by degrees to creep, walk, and run, all that
goes to make up the sum of human knowledge.
There was another, and unsolicited, exhibition of spirit-
power this evening. In the corner of the recess behind
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Horatio stood an extra chair, which had not been noticed
when the shawls were hung. During the séance this
chair was lifted perpendicularly twice or three times
directly behind Horatio's head, so as to show above the
top of the curtain, and it was at last surmised that they
desired to have it taken away; so William Eddy, who was
standing near by, took it from the invisible holder. The
perpendicular height of the lift and weight of the chair
being ascertained, I allowed two seconds as the time consumed
in the raising, and then made the following calculation,
to arrive at the measure of force exerted
Chair weighed................. 8 3-4 pounds.
Perpendicular height........ 5 feet 5 inches.
Time (estimated)............. 2 seconds.
1 horse power is 33,000 pounds lifted 1 foot in 1 minute; consequently
8.75 x 30 x 5.16 = 1,354 33,000 /1,354 = 24.36, or nearly
one-quarter of a horse power.
Next to Honto, and old Mr. Brown, the talking spirit,
who usually open and close the séances, the spirit I have
most frequently seen is that of the mother of Mr. Pritchard,
of Albany; who has been recognized over and over
again, not only by him, but by his sister and her grand-
children, some of whom have been invited to come up
to the platform and receive the old lady's embraces and
blessings. She almost always speaks, sometimes addressing
a few sentences to the audience, but usually confining
her remarks to her own friends. Her materialization is,
all in all, the most satisfactory I have ever seen, for there
have been so many and satisfactory opportunities to be
satisfied of her identity. Her son is an elderly gentleman,
whose height I have verified as five feet five inches
scant. His mother has frequently made him stand beside
264 265-266 drawing
her, and then called our attention to their respective statures.
One night, I got Mr. Pritchard to place her back against
my scale, and he reported her height as just five feet;
which I am satisfied is correct, as he is almost, if not
quite, a full head taller. On the evening of September
27th
she seated herself in a chair by her son's side, and
held a long private conversation with him about a projected
visit of her daughter, Mrs. Packard, of Albany, to
Chittenden. They were both absorbed in themselves,
and I noticed the old lady fingering her white muslin
apron in a peculiar manner, with both hands, pinching it
up little by little into folds, until she reached the bottom
hem, and then, smoothing it out, beginning the same
trick again. Upon calling Mr. Pritchard's attention to
this after the séance, he told me that this was an old
habit of his mother's in life, and would serve to identify
her spirit to any of her former acquaintances. She could
sit in this way, he said, by the hour, while interested in
conversation, pinching up and smoothing out her apron
in an absent-minded fashion; just as some persons tie
strings around their fingers, and others tear paper into
bits.
My old chemical professor used to sit in his laboratory.
and lecture to me, keeping the thread of his thought
together by cutting foolscap into strips, which he would
proceed to roll into spills and then toss away. A certain
other friend of mine, the handsome young president of
a New York insurance company, has the trick of cutting
up all the envelopes on his desk, with a business-like air,
as though he intended to put the scraps to an important
267
use; but they are finally divided into square bits and
litter the floor of his office. If I should see the returning
shade of either of these persons, in a room even
darker
than the Eddy hall, I think I should recognize
them all the
easier by the exhibition of these little habits
which were so
closely identified in my mind with their earthly selves .
These unconsidered trifles go farther towards proof of the
identity of the appearing spirits, than even the pronunciation
of names, or the giving of information about
affairs within the
knowledge of the sitter. No theory of
probabilities appears
broad enough to cover the chance
of William Eddy's perfecting
the details of a personation
to such minuteness as to imitate little,
personal tricks and
habits, too unimportant to be remarked by any
but those
who are on the most intimate terms with the one simulated,
and at the same time, too trivial to be suggested
in advance of their
occurrence, even to the minds of such.
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