S^tHICS: 
 
 ( ' andTheorie 
 
 . - .- ;X; 0T ; I V V ■ 
 
CiassBF l jS fe i 
 Book> S S c 
 
 /813 
 
psychics: 
 facts and theories, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. MINOT jf SAVAGE. 
 
 Author of " The Irrepressible Conflict between Two World-Theo- 
 ries" " The Religion of Evolution" " The Morals of Evo- 
 lution" " Christianity the Science of Manhood" 
 " The Modern Sphinx," " Bluflton," "Social 
 Problems" etc. 
 
 A beam in darkness : let it grow." 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. ! 
 COPLEY SQTJAEE. 
 
 1893. 
 
1 1^3 
 
 Copyrighted, 1893 
 
 BY 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 By Exchai 
 
 Army And Navy 
 
 Arena Press, 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES, 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy and Professor in Harvard University. 
 
 My Dear Professor, — 
 
 After having worked with you 
 on the problems that Psychical Research seeks to 
 solve, I am glad and proud to associate your name 
 with mine in this little volume. If all seekers'were 
 as unprejudiced as you are, and the jury for the 
 decision of these questions were as fair-minded, we 
 might hope not only_<for speedy but for satisfactory 
 results. 
 
 W/Ch affectionate respects, 
 
 { I M. J. SAVAGE. 
 
 Dec. 28, 1892. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little volume is made up of certain papers 
 which have appeared in The Arena, and of one 
 which was published in The Forum for December, 
 1889. The latter is re-published here by consent. 
 
 Since the appearance of these articles a hundred 
 questions have been asked. I propose to take 
 occasion of this preface to answer some of them a 
 little more fully than is practicable by letter, and 
 also to save myself the labor of writing the same 
 things to so many different persons. 
 
 No end of people write and ask if these phenom- 
 ena may not be explained by this theory or that. 
 It may not be out of the way to say that one who 
 has been studying the matter for eighteen years, 
 has probably considered, with some care, all the 
 theories he could think of. He will be grateful, 
 however, for anything, by way of suggestion, that 
 is not already long familiar. 
 
 A word, also, to those who send accounts of 
 experiences. However interesting they may be, 
 or, however conclusive to those immediately con- 
 
vi PEE FACE. 
 
 cerned, they are generally quite worthless as evi- 
 dence to others. This, for two reasons : First, in 
 most cases, no record is made at the time. So it is 
 always open to an objector to say that the memory 
 is unreliable. And, secondly, they are not accom- 
 panied by any corroborative testimony of others. 
 It cannot be too strongly, or too emphatically said 
 that those who have these experiences should take 
 pains to put their stories into evidential shape, so 
 that they may help in the solution of the great 
 problem. 
 
 There is a class of objectors who say, " If my 
 friends in the spirit world can come and com- 
 municate at all, why do they not come directly to 
 me ? Why must I go to a medium ? ' For reply, I 
 will ask another question. If a man can com- 
 municate with me along a telegraph wire, why 
 can he not as well send the message along a board 
 fence ? I do not know. I only know that elec- 
 tricity will work along a wire, but will not along 
 a fence. Why can I not play the piano as well as 
 Blind Tom, since I may claim, without immodesty, 
 to be more than his intellectual equal ? I do not 
 know. Perhaps it will be as well to recognize 
 facts, and not deny them because we do not know 
 why they are facts. 
 
 Then there are seekers who seem to me quite 
 as unreasonable as are some objectors. They will 
 go to a psychic and ask to be put in communica- 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 tion with a particular friend inside of five minutes. 
 Now, if my friends are alive in a spirit world, and 
 even if they are sometimes able to communicate, 
 is it quite reasonable for me to expect them to 
 be hanging about the door of any particular 
 " medium " I may take a notion to visit ? Per- 
 haps they may have something else to do in the 
 spirit world. I hope so, at any rate. If not, I 
 should not like myself to live there. 
 
 It ought also to be remembered that failures are 
 quite as satisfactory, sometimes, as successes. If 
 it is only a clever trick, then there need be no 
 failures. If the psychic is honest, occasional fail- 
 ures are to be expected. For all that an honest 
 psychic can do is to sit and passively await results. 
 
 One more caution needs to be pointed out. 
 Some person, just interested, starts out and appears 
 to think he is going to settle the matter in a week. 
 Unless prepared for a long, serious and oftentimes 
 disappointing study, people had better let it alone, 
 and leave it to those better fitted for the arduous 
 task. A person needs to be trained and experienced 
 as an observer; he needs to know what is good 
 evidence, and what is not ; he needs to know the 
 possibilities and resources of trickery ; and then, 
 perhaps, his conclusions may be worth something. 
 
 People who propose to visit Boston or NewYork 
 are constantly writing and asking me to give them 
 the address of some " reliable medium." I almost 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 always decline. For, first, I know very few 
 advertising mediums to whom any first-comer can be 
 sent. And, secondly, though I may have had some 
 satisfactory experience, it does not at all follow 
 that it can be repeated or duplicated, to order, in 
 the case of another. Most of my own experi- 
 ences have been in the presence of personal friends 
 to whom I should not be at liberty to send a 
 stranger. 
 
 I am often asked if I am a Spiritualist. Some 
 who hate spiritualism occasionally charge me with 
 being one ; while some Spirtualists express the 
 opinion that I am a sort of Nicbdemus, who fears 
 to avow his belief in daylight. I may as well 
 answer that question here. No, in the popular 
 acceptation of that word, I am not a Spiritualist. 
 As the term is commonly used, it covers much 
 which I do not believe, and much which is most 
 distasteful to me. Should I now adopt that name, 
 I should be seriously misrepresenting my position. 
 Even though I should come at last to hold the 
 theory that communication for the spirit world 
 alone could explain my facts, even that would not 
 make me what is generally understood as a Spirit- 
 ualist. 
 
 Spiritualists, for one thing, seem to think that 
 their ism is a new religion. This claim seems 
 to me to be hasty and absurd. The proof that the 
 " dead " are alive and can communicate with the 
 
P EFFACE. ix 
 
 living would only put certainty in the place of 
 hope as to the destiny of man. It would not touch 
 or change any one of the great essentials of my 
 religious creed or life. I certainly hope that con- 
 tinued existence may be demonstrated. But 
 " Spiritualism" is a good deal more than that, and 
 many other things besides that. So, as the term is 
 now used, I cannot wear it. 
 
 People often ask why, if there is anything in 
 these so-called manifestations, they have waited all 
 these ages and have not appeared before. There 
 are stories of similar happenings as marking every 
 age of history; but, as reported, they have been 
 only occasional, and they have not attracted any 
 serious study. Let us note the stages of evolution 
 as having a possible bearing on this point. First, 
 muscle ruled the world. Then came cunning, the 
 lower form of brain power. Next, the intellect 
 became recognized as king. After that, the moral 
 ideal showed itself mightier than muscle or brain. 
 To-day it is the strongest force on earth. No king 
 dares go to war without claiming, at least, that his 
 cause is a righteous one. Now it is not meant that 
 either of these has ruled the world alone, for they 
 have overlapped each other, as have the advancing 
 forms of life. And as heralding the advent of each 
 new stage of progress, there have been tentative 
 and sporadic manifestations of the next higher, 
 while still the lower was dominant. Is it not then 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 in line with all that has gone before, that the next 
 step should be a larger and higher xnanif estation of 
 the spiritual ? And, in this case, are not the ten- 
 tative and sporadic manifestations reported from 
 the past just what might have been expected? 
 " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn 
 in the ear." " That was not first which is spirit- 
 ual, but that which is natural ; and afterward that 
 which is spiritual." 
 
 With these suggestions, I offer the reader the 
 following facts and some discussion as to theories. 
 If the facts force us to the reasonable conclusion 
 that 
 
 " There is no death, what seems so is transition," 
 
 why should any one shrink from having proved 
 that which all men hope ? I hesitate, as yet, to 
 say that there can be no other explanation ; but I 
 frankly admit that I can now see no other which 
 seems to me adequate to account for all the facts. 
 If any one can find another explanation, I am ready 
 to accept it. For what any reasonable man wishes 
 is only the truth. 
 
 M. J. Savage. 
 Boston, Dec. 26, "92. 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I am to tell some stories ; others are to 
 explain them — if they can. Not that I mean 
 to shirk any responsibility. I am ready with 
 my opinions as to what seems to me reasonable 
 in the way of theory, and what unreasonable, 
 only I do not propose to dogmatize ; and I am 
 ready to listen to the suggested explanations 
 of anybody else. 
 
 The one thing I know about these stories is 
 that they are true. I say this advisedly and 
 weighing my words. If in the case of any one 
 of them, I only think or believe it is true, I 
 shall say so ; but nearly all of them I know to 
 be true — know it in the same sense in which I 
 
6 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 use the word of that which is scientifically 
 demonstrated. 
 
 These stories will lead us into the realm of 
 the supernormal. I do not say supernatural, 
 because I do not believe in any supernatural. 
 In my way of looking at the universe, I regard 
 all that is as natural. If, for example, there 
 are invisible beings who can take part in the 
 events of our lives, their being invisible does 
 not make them either unnatural or super- 
 natural. A blind man would have no right to 
 regard other people as supernatural merely 
 because he could not see them. Science makes 
 it purely rational for us to believe in the pos- 
 sibility of the existence and activity of persons 
 we cannot see. Our senses are limited ; so it 
 is only a question of fact and evidence. But 
 certain things may transcend the range of our 
 ordinary or normal experience. For clearness 
 of thought, then, let us call these super* 
 normal. 
 
 If the claim is made that some supernormal 
 thing has occurred, it is only reasonable that 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. ? 
 
 people should demand adequate proof. The 
 chances are against it, by as much as the 
 normal is more common than the supernormal. 
 If some one tells us that he has just seen on 
 the street a dark-haired man dressed in gray, 
 we do not ask for evidence of such a fact ; but 
 if he tells us that, while he was looking at him, 
 he faded out of sight and disappeared, we 
 naturally and rightly doubt the reality of his 
 experience. We know that people can be mis- 
 taken ; we know that they sometimes lie ; we 
 know that, in certain conditions of the brain, 
 men think they see when no objective reality 
 corresponds with their vision. The probabil- 
 ities, then, are in favor of some one of these 
 explanations. 
 
 But that a real, conscious, intelligent being 
 may exist and not be visible to normal eyes ; 
 that such a being may be seen at one time by 
 a particular person and not at another ; that 
 he may be seen by one person and not by 
 others, — there is nothing in all this that con- 
 travenes scientific possibility. It is not as if a 
 
8 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 man should tell us that he knew of a country 
 where water did not freeze at 32 ° Fahrenheit. 
 The scientifically impossible is one thing ; while 
 the improbable, the uncommon, or the super- 
 normal, is quite another thing. The super- 
 normal may be true. While, then, the prob- 
 abilities are against it, the proof may be such 
 as to render it credible. Indeed, it is conceiv- 
 able that the proof may become so strong as to 
 make incredulity absurd and unscientific. The 
 attitude of caution is rational ; but the attitude 
 of those who " know " a thing cannot be true, 
 merely because it is unusual, or because it does 
 not fit into the theory of things which they 
 happen to hold — this is irrational. 
 
 What looks like proof of certain supernormal 
 happenings has been accumulating so rapidly 
 during the last few years, that public attention 
 has been turned in this direction as never 
 before. Psychic investigation is becoming 
 " respectable." It will be fortunate for it if it 
 does not become a fashionable fad for those 
 who want a new sensation. It is curious, and 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 9 
 
 would be ludicrous were it not sad, to watch 
 the progress of these things. " You ought to 
 be thankful to me," said John Weiss, one 
 morning, as I met him on Washington Street, 
 "for I have been killed to make room for you." 
 Yes, brave men were professionally and socially 
 killed, to make our religious liberty possible. 
 And now even the " Orthodox" get great credit 
 for being " liberal," and the blood-bought lib- 
 erty is the hobby of snobs. Always some 
 Winkelreid makes way for liberty at the price 
 of fatal thrusts of spears. 
 
 A world-famous man, Church of England 
 clergyman and scientist in one, said to me one 
 day, " I do not talk about my psychic experi- 
 ences and knowledge with everybody. I used 
 to think all who had anything to do with these 
 things were fools; and I do not enjoy heing 
 called a fool" But now the danger is that the 
 society fools will go to dabbling in the matter. 
 Said another man to me, a scholar known on 
 two continents, " Suppose you and I should 
 come to believe, it would only be a couple more 
 
10 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 cranks!" But it begins to look as though 
 the "cranks" might get to be in the majority, 
 when a famous German philosopher can say 
 that " The man who any longer denies clair- 
 voyance does not show that he is prejudiced ; 
 he only shows that he is ignorant." 
 
 So much by way of preface to my stories. 
 It seems to me that all these points, at least, 
 ought to be kept in mind by one who reads 
 them and seriously tries to think out what they 
 may mean. Now to the stories themselves. 
 
 I. Let me begin by telling about some rap- 
 pings. Do these ever occur except in cases 
 where they are purposely produced ? Are they 
 always a trick ? A vast amount of ingenuity 
 has been expended by those who have thought 
 they could explain these things as the work of 
 toe joints or other anatomical peculiarities. 
 It will be something to find out that genuine 
 raps do occur, whatever theory may be adopted 
 in explanation of them. 
 
 I know a regular physician living not a 
 thousand miles from Boston. His wife, I 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 11 
 
 should call a psychic, though she does not call 
 herself so. Neither she nor her husband has 
 ever had anything to do with spiritualism, nor 
 are they believers. Where they formerly lived 
 they were continually troubled by strange and 
 unaccountable happenings ; but though they 
 moved to their present residence, the happen- 
 ings — with one important exception — have not 
 ceased. No attempt has been made to reduce 
 these happenings to order, or to find out 
 whether there is any discoverable intelligence 
 connected with them. The doctor vaguely 
 holds the opinion that they indicate some ab- 
 normal nervous condition on the part of his 
 wife. So far the whole matter has been treated 
 from that point of view. But what is it that 
 happens? Sometimes, for two hours on a 
 stretch, the doctor and his wife are kept wide 
 awake at night by loud rappings on the head- 
 board of their bed. In accordance with his 
 nervous theory, the doctor will hold his wife 
 with one arm, while the hand of the other arm 
 is pressed against the headboard, in the attempt 
 
12 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 thus to put an end to the disturbance. Said 
 the doctor to me one day, " If anybody thinks 
 these rappings are not genuine, I should like 
 to have him go through some of my experi- 
 ences." 
 
 He and his wife will be sitting by the draw- 
 ing-room table of an evening. They will be 
 conscious of a stream of cold air passing by 
 them, — an accompaniment of psychic facts 
 well known to investigators, — and then the 
 " trouble " will begin. Sometimes it is only 
 raps. At other times they will hear a noise on 
 the floor of the room above, and will think 
 their boy has fallen out of bed ; but on going 
 up to see, they find him quietly asleep. Some- 
 times there will be a loud crash in the corner 
 of the room over the furnace register, as though 
 a basket of crockery had been thrown down 
 and broken. They occupy the house alone, 
 and have no other way of explaining these 
 unpleasant facts than the one alluded to above. 
 
 I give this case because of the undoubted oc- 
 currence of these things in the house of one 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 13 
 
 who is not a believer nor even an investigator. 
 There is no expectancy or invitation of them, 
 or any superstitious attitude of mind towards 
 them. They are, in this case, plain, bold, 
 apparent facts, as real as is breakfast or supper, 
 or the existence of a brick in the sidewalk. 
 
 The " one important exception " referred 
 to above is this : In the house they formerly 
 occupied, the doctor's wife sometimes saw the 
 figure of a woman. Others were said to have 
 seen it also. It was never visible to the doctor. 
 There is the story of a tragic death which con- 
 nects this woman with this particular house. 
 Those who believe in haunted houses would 
 thus be able to explain why this figure is never 
 seen in the house at present occupied by the 
 doctor's family. 
 
 Here then are raps not to be explained as 
 the conscious, purposed work of any visible 
 person ; nor can they be explained as the result 
 of the shrinking of boards, as the work of rats 
 or mice, or in any ordinary way. Starting 
 with facts like these, many persons have sup- 
 
14 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 posed themselves to get into communication 
 with invisible intelligences who had taken these 
 ways of attracting attention. Nothing of this 
 sort has been even attempted here. I simply 
 set forth the facts and the reality of the raps. 
 
 II. I will now tell a brief story of one of my 
 own experiences in this line. 
 
 Until within the past year or two there lived 
 in New York city a lady who, when a girl, had 
 been somewhat known as a "medium." But 
 for twenty or thirty years she led a quiet home- 
 life with her husband, a well-known business- 
 man. But intimates in the house told stories 
 of remarkable occurrences. For example, a 
 friend of this family has told me how, when at 
 breakfast, after having spent the night there, 
 raps would come on the table ; and by means 
 of them, how long and pleasant conversations 
 would be held with those who once had walked 
 the earth, but now were in the unseen. This 
 is his belief . 
 
 Having occasion to pass through New York, 
 this friend, above referred to, gave me a letter 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 15 
 
 of introduction, saying he knew I would be 
 welcomed if I called at the house of this lady. 
 I had never seen her, nor she me, but one 
 morning I presented myself with my letter. I 
 was shown into the back parlor. Carpenters 
 were at work on a conservatory opening out 
 of this room where the lady had received me. 
 They made more or less noise, but not enough 
 to interfere with our conversation. Soon I be- 
 gan to hear raps, apparently on the floor, and 
 then in different parts of the room. On this, 
 the lady remarked, simply, " Evidently there is 
 some one here who wishes to communicate with 
 you. Let us go into the front parlor, where it 
 will be quieter." This we did, the raps follow- 
 ing us, or rather beginning again as soon 
 as we were seated. At her suggestion I then 
 took pencil and paper (which I happened to 
 have in my bag), and sat at one side of a 
 marble-top table, while she sat at the other 
 side in a rocker and some distance away. Then 
 she said, "As one way of getting at the 
 matter, suppose you do this : You know what 
 
16 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 friends you have in the spirit world. Write 
 now a list of names — any names you please, 
 real or fictitious, only among them somewhere 
 include the names of some friends in the spirit 
 world who, you think, might like to communi- 
 cate with you, if such a thing were possible." 
 I then began. I held a paper so that she 
 could not possibly have seen what I wrote, 
 even though she had not been so far away. I 
 took special pains that no movement or facial 
 expression should betray me. Meantime she 
 sat quietly rocking and talking. As I wrote, 
 perhaps at the eighth or tenth name, I began 
 to write the name of a lady friend who had 
 not been long dead. I had hardly written the 
 first letter before there came three loud, dis- 
 tinct raps. Then my hostess said, " This 
 friend of yours, of course, knows where she 
 died. Write now a list of places, including in 
 it the place of her death, and see if she will 
 recognize it." This I did, beginning with 
 Vienna, and so on with any that occurred to 
 me. Again, I had hardly begun to write the 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 17 
 
 real name, when once more came the three 
 raps. And so on, concerning other matters. 
 I speak of these only as specimens. 
 
 Now, I cannot say that in this particular 
 case the raps were not caused by the toe joints 
 of the lady. The thing that puzzles me, in 
 this theory, is as to how the toe joints happened 
 to know the name of my friend, where she died, 
 etc., which facts the lady herself did not know, 
 and never had known. 
 
 Certain theories, as explanations of certain 
 facts, are already regarded as demonstrated by 
 those familiar with the results of psychic inves- 
 tigation. Among these are hypnotism, clair- 
 voyance, telepathy, and the agency of the sub- 
 conscious self as active about matters with 
 which the conscious self is not familiar. Can 
 the simplest, genuine rap be explained as com- 
 ing under either of these? No one has the 
 slightest idea how, and as yet there is nothing 
 in this direction that, even by courtesy, can be 
 called a theory ; but it may be possible that 
 
 these raps are produced by psychic power. If 
 
 2 
 
18 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 so, as in Case I., the psychic herself does not 
 know even that she does it, much less how. 
 Are they the work of the sub-conscious self ? 
 No sub-conscious self has ever claimed to do it. 
 And if so, from what source does this sub- 
 conscious self, as in Case II., obtain a knowl- 
 edge of facts the psychic never knew ? To ex- 
 plain these cases in accordance with any yet 
 accepted theories, mind-reading must also be 
 introduced. This New York lady must have 
 been able, not only to produce the raps, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, but also to read my 
 mind and tell me things she never knew before. 
 But these things, if they do no more, reveal 
 such an extension of mental power as to lead 
 us into a world vastly unlike that which is rec- 
 ognized by ordinary scientific theories ; and it 
 may be well for us to be on our guard lest we 
 invent theories more decidedly supernormal 
 than the facts we seek to explain. 
 
 IV. My next story goes far beyond any of 
 these, and, — well, I will ask the reader to decide 
 as to whether there is any help in hypnotism 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 19 
 
 or clairvoyance or mind-reading, or any of the 
 selves of the psychic, conscious, or sub-con- 
 scious. 
 
 Early on Friday morning, Jan. 18, 1884, the 
 steamer " City of Columbus," en route from 
 Boston to Savannah, was wrecked on the rocks 
 off Gay Head, the southwestern point of 
 Martha's Vineyard. Among the passengers 
 was an elderly widow, the sister-in-law of one 
 of my friends, and the mother of another. 
 
 This lady, Mrs. K., and her sister, Mrs. B., 
 had both been interested in psychic investiga- 
 tion, and had held sittings with a psychic whom 
 I will call Mrs. E. Mrs. B. was in poor health, 
 and was visited regularly for treatment on 
 every Monday by the psychic, Mrs. E. On 
 occasion of these professional visits, Mrs. B. 
 and her sister, Mrs. K., would frequently have 
 a sitting. This Mrs. E., the psychic, had been 
 known to all the parties concerned for many 
 years, and was held in the highest respect. 
 She lived in a town fifteen or twenty miles 
 from Boston. This, then, was the situation of 
 
20 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 affairs when the wreck of the steamer took 
 place. 
 
 The papers of Friday evening, January 18, 
 of course contained accounts of the disaster. 
 On Saturday, January 19, Dr. K., my friend, 
 the son of Mrs. K., hastened down to the beach 
 in search of the body of his mother. No trace 
 whatever was discovered. He became satisfied 
 that she was among the lost, but was not able 
 to find the body. Saturday night he returned 
 to the city. Sunday passed by. On Monday 
 morning, the 21st, Mrs. E. came from her coun- 
 try home to give the customary treatment to 
 her patient, Mrs. B. Dr. K. called on his aunt 
 while Mrs. E. was there, and they decided to 
 have a sitting, to see if there would come to 
 them anything that even purported to be news 
 from the missing mother and sister. Imme- 
 diately Mrs. K. claimed to be present ; and 
 along with many other matters, she told them 
 three separate and distinct things which, if 
 true, it was utterly impossible for either of 
 them to have known. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 21 
 
 1. She told them that, after the steamer had 
 sailed, she had been able to exchange her in- 
 side stateroom for an ontside one. All that 
 any of them knew, was that she had been 
 obliged to take an inside room, and that she 
 did not want it. 
 
 2. She told them that she played whist with 
 some friends in the steamer saloon during the 
 evening ; and she further told them the names 
 of the ones who had made up the table. 
 
 3. Then came the startling and utterly un- 
 expected statement, — "I do not want you to 
 think of me as having been drowned. I was 
 not drowned. When the alarm came, I was in 
 my berth. Being frightened, I jumped up, 
 and rushed out of the stateroom. In the pas- 
 sage-way, I was suddenly struck a blow on my 
 head, and instantly it was over. So do not 
 think of me as having gone through the 
 process of drowning." Then she went on to 
 speak of the friends she had found, and who 
 were with her. This latter, of course, could 
 not be verified. But the other things could 
 
22 PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 be. It was learned, through survivors, that 
 the matter of the stateroom and the whist, even 
 to the partners, was precisely as had been 
 stated. But how to verify the other statement, 
 particularly as the body had not been dis- 
 covered ? 
 
 All this was on Monday, the 21st. On 
 Tuesday, the 22d, the doctor and a friend 
 went again to the beach. After a prolonged 
 search among the bodies that had been recov- 
 ered, they were able to identify that of the 
 mother. And they found the right side of 
 the head all crushed in by a blow. 
 
 The impression made on the doctor, at the 
 sitting on Monday, was that he had been talk- 
 ing with his mother. The psychic, Mrs. E., is 
 not a clairvoyant, and there were many things 
 connected with the sitting that made the strong 
 impression of the mother's present personality. 
 In order to have obtained all these facts, 
 related under numbers 1, 2, and 3, the psychic 
 would have had to be, not only clairvoyant, but 
 to have gotten into mental relations with several 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND TREOBIES. 23 
 
 different people at the same time. The read- 
 ing of several different niinds at once, and also 
 clairvoyant seeing, not only of the bruised 
 body, but of facts that took place on the 
 Friday previous (this being Monday), — all 
 these multiplex and diverse operations, going 
 on simultaneously, make up a problem that the 
 most ardent advocate of telepathy, as a solvent 
 of psychic facts, would hardly regard as reason- 
 ably coming within its scope. 
 
 Let us look at it clearly. Telepathy deals 
 only with occurrences taking place at the time. 
 I do not know of a case where clairvoyance is 
 even claimed to see what were once facts, but 
 which no longer exist. Then there must have 
 been simultaneous communication with several 
 minds. This, I think, is not even claimed as 
 possible by anybody. Then let it be remem- 
 bered that Mrs. E. is not conscious of pos- 
 sessing either telepathic or clairvoyant power. 
 Such is the problem. 
 
 I express no opinion of my own. I only say 
 that the doctor, my friend, is an educated, 
 
24 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 level-headed, noble man. He felt sure that he 
 detected undoubted tokens of his mother's 
 presence. If such a thing is ever possible, 
 surely this is the explanation most simple 
 and natural 
 
 V. The only other case I shall be able to 
 find room for in this chapter is a genuine ghost 
 story, all the better for my purpose because it 
 is simple and clear cut in every particular. It 
 is perfectly authentic, and true beyond any 
 sort of question. 
 
 The lady who furnishes me the facts is a 
 parishioner, and a distant connection. In the 
 year 1859, Mrs. S. and Mrs. C. were living in 
 two different towns in the State of Maine. 
 Both were Methodists, and the husband of 
 Mrs. C. was a clergyman of that denomination. 
 My brother, at one time, was well acquainted 
 with him, and the family was related to my 
 brother's wife. At this time, in 1859, Mrs. C. 
 was ill with dropsy, and her sister, Mrs. S., was 
 visiting her. They both well knew that Mrs. 
 C. could not live for long, and that this was to 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 25 
 
 be their last meeting in the body. One day 
 they were speaking of the then new and 
 strange belief of sniritualisrn, when Mrs. C. 
 said, " Mary, if it is true, and it is a possible 
 thing, I will come to you after my death." 
 
 The day following, Mrs. S. returned to her 
 home, in another part of the state. Some 
 weeks passed by ; it was now October 4. Mr. 
 S. was away from home, and Mrs. S. was alone 
 with her two daughters. No one was on the 
 premises except a farm-hand, who slept in 
 another part of the house. As is the common 
 custom in these country towns in Maine, the 
 daughters had gone to bed early, and were 
 asleep. They were both awakened out of their 
 sleep by their mother, who came and told them 
 that then Aunt Melinda was dead, for she had 
 just seen her standing in the doorway, in her 
 nightdress. They noted the time, and it was 
 9.50 p.m. 
 
 In those days there were no telegraphs. 
 The mails, even, were very irregular, and the 
 post-office was four miles away. They had 
 
26 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 heard nothing to make them think that their 
 aunt was any nearer death than she had been 
 for a long time. Three days after, i. e., on 
 October 7, news came that Mrs. C. had passed 
 away on the evening of October 4, after being 
 dressed for bed. At 9.30 they had left her, 
 for a few moments, sitting comfortably in her 
 chair. At 10 they returned and found her 
 dead, and they said she looked as though she 
 had been dead for some minutes. Of course, 
 when they sent this news, they knew nothing 
 of the fact that, by some subtle express, they 
 had been anticipated by at least three days. 
 
 I am well aware of the policy of the Psychical 
 Society, and that the attempt is made to explain 
 such appearances by supposing that the dying 
 friend is able telepathically to impress, not ideas 
 only, but images on the minds of distant friends, 
 so producing the effect of an objective vision. 
 Indeed, I am in sympathy with this attitude on 
 the part of the society. Let telepathy and all 
 other well-established theories be strained to 
 the utmost. We will go further for explana- 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. £7 
 
 tions only when we have to. But there are 
 some who think that these theories are already 
 being overweighted. No matter. Let them 
 be. For if they break down at last, and compel 
 us to go further, some other theory will come as 
 a necessity ; and the proof at last will seem all 
 the more forcible because the conclusion was 
 not jumped at, but came when all other explana- 
 tions had proven futile. 
 
 Here, then, I stop for the present. Not a 
 third of my authentic cases have been even 
 alluded to. Many of the most striking still 
 remain ; for I wished to begin as near the com- 
 monplace as possible, and so advance from the 
 less to the more complex and difficult. If it 
 shall seem best, somo more of my stories may 
 be told later on. 
 
 Xote. — 1 have not thought best to give names, but I am in 
 possession of names, dates, facts of every kind, sufficient to 
 make these what would be called legal evidence in a court of 
 justice. 
 
26 FSYCRICS; FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Off the truth of what I shall here relate, I 
 am as certain as I am of any fact in my own 
 personal history. I select typical specimens 
 out of a large number. Many, and some of 
 them of the most remarkable kind, cannot yet 
 be told, because they are so very personal in 
 their nature ; and yet, to those who know these 
 they are naturally the most striking of all. 
 
 The first case, which I shall now detail, is so 
 profusely authenticated that it would be ac- 
 cepted as absolutely conclusive evidence, even 
 in a matter of life and death, in any court in 
 Christendom. I shall tell the story in my own 
 words, but I have in my possession eight separ- 
 ate accounts of eio ht living witnesses. To these 
 accounts are attached the autograph signatures 
 of their authors, and these are witnessed to by 
 others who know them. With two of the 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 29 
 
 principal ones I am personally acquainted, and 
 can vouch for both their intelligence and truth- 
 fulness. I shall not give the real names, for 
 all these people are still living, and investigators 
 more zealous than wise might subject them to 
 personal annoyance. 
 
 The events now to be narrated occurred in 
 the year 1864, and in a town not forty miles 
 from Boston. The persons chiefly concerned 
 are these : A Mrs. C, who had been three times 
 married ; a son, a young man, child of the first 
 marriage (I shall speak of him by his first 
 name, Charles) ; two sons by the second mar- 
 riage, William and Joshua, aged respectively 
 sixteen and thirteen ; and Mrs. D., the one who 
 played the principal part, and who tells the 
 principal story. All these, together with the 
 other witnesses, are still living, with the excep- 
 tion of the two boys William and Joshua, 
 around whose fate the story revolves. 
 
 On March 25, 1864, Mrs. C. went into Bos- 
 ton for the day. Her son William had been at 
 work in a wholesale drug house in Boston, but 
 
30 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 for some time preceding this date had been 
 engaged with a similar firm in Portland, Me., 
 during the refitting of the Boston store, which 
 had been burned. On this day, while his 
 mother was absent, he came back from Port- 
 land, and was to return to his former position 
 on the following Monday. This day, March 
 25, was a Friday. He reached home about two 
 o'clock p.m. Not finding his mother, he, 
 with his brother Joshua, started for the station, 
 expecting to meet her as she came out on the 
 five o'clock train. But the mother was de- 
 layed, and did not reach home till two hours 
 later. She was met by a friend of the boys, 
 who told her that William had got home from 
 Portland. But when she reached the house 
 the boys were not there. The last trace that 
 was ever found of them alive was the fact that 
 they had started for the station to meet their 
 mother on the arrival of the five o'clock train. 
 At first the mother consoled herself by think- 
 ing that they must have met some friends, and 
 had been detained by them. But when bed- 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 31 
 
 time came and they did not return, she became 
 very anxious, and passed a sleepless night. 
 At this time her husband, the stepfather to 
 the boys, was in the army, and she had to rely 
 on her own resources. 
 
 The next morning she and the elder son, 
 Charles, began to make inquiries. They not 
 only searched the town, but drove to neighbor- 
 ing towns, searching every place to which it 
 seemed at all likely that they might have gone. 
 Recruiting camps were visited, as it was 
 thought possible that curiosity might have led 
 them on some such expedition. But about five 
 r.M. (this being Saturday) they returned, and 
 reported to the neighbors that no trace had been 
 found. The neighbors then offered their ser- 
 vices, and started out in various directions, as 
 their own ideas might guide them. But all 
 efforts proved in vain. Then they came to 
 the mother, and asked if she had anything else 
 to suggest. She replied that, if her husband 
 were at home, she should have the pond 
 searched, for she felt sure they must be some- 
 
82 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 where where they could not get home, or they 
 would not have stayed away so long. 
 
 But everybody thought it most unlikely 
 that they were in the pond, and this for two 
 reasons. In the first place, they were timid 
 about being on the water ; and in the second 
 place, being in March, it was too cold for them 
 to think of any such thing as swimming or 
 rowing. On Sunday evening, however, to 
 satisfy the mother, and in order that nothing 
 might be left untried, they began to search the 
 pond, and kept on until the darkness compelled 
 them to postpone their labors. On Monday 
 morning early, the engine and church bells 
 were rung, and the citizens were called together 
 to organize a systematic search of the pond. 
 Grappling irons Avere used, and cannon were 
 fired over all the places where it seemed pos- 
 sible that the bodies might be. Still no trace 
 was discovered. 
 
 Such was the situation of affairs when, at 
 about ten o'clock in the forenoon, Mrs. D., one 
 of the neighbors, called on Mrs. C, the mother 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 33 
 
 of the boys, to show her sympathy and ask 
 if there was anything she could do. By this 
 time every known resource had been exhausted. 
 So, as a last resort, the mother asked Mrs. D. 
 if she would not go to Boston and consult a 
 medium. It is important here to note that she 
 was not a spiritualist, but was a believer in 
 Evangelical Christianity, and had never had 
 anything to do with spiritualism. She turned 
 to this as a last desperate resource, because in 
 despair of help from any other quarter. 
 
 It must also be noted that Mrs. D. had no 
 faith in it, and had never consulted a medium 
 in all her life. So, although she had offered 
 her services as being willing to do anything she 
 could, she tried to beg off from this, as being 
 both a disagreeable and hopeless errand. But 
 as Mrs. C. urged it so strongly, and said she 
 wished her, and no one else, to go, she at last 
 and most reluctantly consented. 
 
 She reached Boston at twelve o'clock noon. 
 
 Meantime, and with more efficient grappling 
 
 irons, the search of the pond was continued, 
 
 3 
 
H PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 but with no results. On arriving in town, and 
 not knowing which way to turn, since she was 
 not acquainted with a single medium, she went 
 (as some one had advised her to do) to the 
 office of the Banner of Light, the spiritualist 
 paper. They directed her to a place near Court 
 Street. The medium here was engaged, and 
 could not see her. But the man who answered 
 the door sent her to another one in Dix Place. 
 This one also was engaged, and could not see 
 her. But here they told her to go to a Mrs. Y. 
 on Washington Street near Common Street. 
 By this time it was about three o'clock. A 
 sitter was just leaving, and Mrs. Y. said she 
 was too tired to give any more sittings that 
 day. But when she found that her visitor was 
 from out of town, and that the next day would 
 be too late, she said that if she would wait long 
 enough for her to take a little rest, she would see 
 what she could do. Nothing was said that could 
 give her the slightest clue. Indeed, nothing 
 could be said, for no one had a clue, and it 
 was a clue they all were in search of. It is 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 35 
 
 important here to note another thing. Up 
 to this time Mrs. Y., the medium, had never 
 been in the town where the boys resided. 
 
 When the medium came again into the 
 room, she walked directly to the fireplace and 
 stood with her back to Mrs. D. Then, before 
 either of them had spoken a word, by way of 
 preliminary, she said, " They went east before 
 they went west." The railroad station is east 
 from the house in which they lived, and the 
 pond is west. Then she added, " They saw 
 the fire, and so went to the water." It was 
 afterwards found that some men were burning 
 brush near the lake. So knowing it would be 
 some time before the next train, it is supposed 
 that, boylike, they were attracted by the fire, 
 and went to see what was going on. The 
 medium then went on to speak of a boathouse 
 with a hole in its side. This was not mind- 
 reading, because Mrs. D. knew nothing of 
 there being any boathouse or boat. She con- 
 tinued and described a boat, — " a narrow boat, 
 painted black." Then she cried out, " Oh, 
 
36 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 dear, it was never intended that more than one 
 person should get into it at a time ! " She 
 told how the boys went through the hole in the 
 side of the boathouse, found the boat, got into 
 it, and pulled out onto the water. She said 
 they had gone but a very little way before the 
 younger brother fell overboard ; then the older 
 one, in trying to save him, also fell into the 
 water. Then she added, " The place where 
 they are is muddy, and they could not come to 
 the surface. Why," said she, " it is not the 
 main lake where they are, but the shallow part 
 which connects with the main lake, and they 
 are so near the shore that if it were not this 
 time of the year [March], you could almost 
 walk in and pick them up." She spoke of the 
 citizens' interest in seeking for them, but said, 
 " They will not find them ; they go too far 
 from the shore. They [the bodies] are on the 
 left of the boathouse, a few feet from the land." 
 
 Mrs. D. then said, " If they are in the water, 
 they will be found before I can reach home." 
 
 The medium replied, " No, they will not be 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 37 
 
 found before you get there ; you will have to 
 go and tell them where I say they are, and 
 then they will be found within five minutes 
 after you reach the lake." Then she made 
 Mrs. D. promise to go with them to the lake, 
 and added, " They are very near together. 
 After finding one, you will quickly find the 
 other." 
 
 In spite of all that Mrs. Y. had said, Mrs. 
 D. was still as incredulous as before. But 
 she had undertaken to see it through, and so 
 started for home. She arrived at five o'clock. 
 By this time it was known on what sort of 
 errand she had gone to Boston, and a crowd 
 of the curious and interested was at the station. 
 As she stepped on to the platform, a gentleman 
 asked, "What did the medium tell you?" She 
 replied with the question, "Haven't you found 
 them yet ? " When they said they had not, she 
 delivered her message. Immediately they took 
 a carriage and started for the lake. As they 
 came in sight of the place, Mrs. D. recognized 
 the boathouse, with the hole in the side, as the 
 
88 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 medium had described it. The u narrow boat 
 painted black " had also been found drifting in 
 another part of the lake. So by this time, Mrs. 
 D. began to wonder if the rest might not be 
 true. But no one in the crowd seemed to have 
 any confidence in the medium's statements. 
 They felt that they had thoroughly searched 
 the pond, and that the matter was settled. 
 But they went on, and prepared to follow 
 Mrs. D.'s directions. 
 
 She stood on the shore while two boats put 
 off in which were men with their grappling 
 irons. In one boat was the elder brother, or 
 half-brother, of the missing boys. He was 
 holding one of the grappling irons; and after 
 only three or four strokes of the oars, he ex- 
 claimed, " I have hold of something ! " The 
 boat was stopped, and he at once brought to 
 the surface the body of the older boy, William. 
 In a few minutes more, and close to the same 
 place, the body of the other boy, Joshua, was 
 found. The place was shallow and muddy, as 
 the medium had said ; and, held by the mud, 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 39 
 
 the bodies had not risen to the surface, as 
 otherwise they might have done. The bodies 
 were now placed together in a carriage, and 
 before six o'clock they were in their mother's 
 housa 
 
 At the close of the Boston interview, Mrs. 
 D. asked the medium from what source she got 
 her claimed information, and she said, " The 
 boys' father told me." The boys' father was 
 the second husband of Mrs. C, and had been 
 " dead " for several years, while the mother 
 was then living with her third husband. 
 
 Here, then, is the story. I have in my pos- 
 session the account as given by Mrs. D., who 
 is still living and is a personal acquaintance. 
 I have the account of her daughter, who well 
 remembers it all. I have also the account of 
 Mrs. C, the mother ; of Mr. C, the father-in- 
 law ; of the elder brother, Charles ; of the 
 sister of Mrs. D. ; of the lady who was at that 
 time postmistress of the town ; of a man who 
 came into Boston after grappling irons with 
 which to search the lake ; and also of two or 
 
40 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 three other persons whose names, if given, 
 would be recognized as connected with one 
 of the distinguished men in American history. 
 
 One other item is of sufficient interest to 
 make it worth mentioning. The father-in-law 
 of the boys tells that one day, after his return 
 from the army, the medium, Mrs. Y., visited 
 the town for the first time in her life, and came 
 to his house. She wished to visit the place 
 where the bodies of the boys were found. 
 When within a short distance of the lake, she 
 asked him to fall back. She then became en- 
 tranced ; and picking up a stone, she stood 
 with her eyes closed and back to the water. 
 Then she threw the stone over her head, and 
 landed it in the precise place from which the 
 bodies were taken. 
 
 Mr. C, as well as his wife, was an Evan- 
 gelical in his creed, and had never had any- 
 thing to do with mediums. 
 
 Of the truth of these occurrences, as thus 
 related, there can be no rational doubt. As an 
 explanation, telepathy is excluded, for nobody 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 41 
 
 living was aware of the facts. Clairvoyance 
 seems to be excluded, for Mrs. D. did not tell 
 the medium where she was from nor what she 
 wanted to find out, and clairvoyance requires 
 that the mind should be directed or sent on 
 some definite errand to some particular place. 
 What, then, is left ? Will the reader decide ? 
 The incidents I am next to relate occurred 
 two years ago this winter. The place is a 
 large city in a neighboring state. The three 
 persons concerned are a doctor, his wife, and 
 one of his patients. The story, as T tell it, was 
 given me by the wife. She was an old school 
 friend of some of my personal friends, who 
 hold her in the highest esteem. Her husband 
 I have never seen ; but a connection of mine 
 was once a patient of his, and speaks of him 
 always with enthusiastic admiration, both as a 
 man and a physician. He is a doctor of the 
 old school, inclined to be a sceptic, and had 
 never had anything whatever to do with me- 
 diums. He is not visionary, and this was his 
 first experience out of the normal. 
 
42 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 On a winter night, then, two years ago, he 
 was sound asleep. Being very weary, and in 
 order that he might sleep as late as possible, 
 the green holland shade of his own window was 
 down to the bottom, and there was no way by 
 which any light could penetrate his room. His 
 wife was asleep in a room adjoining, with a 
 door open between. She was waked out of a 
 sound sleep by hearing him call her name. 
 She opened her eyes, and saw his room flooded 
 with a soft, yet intense yellowish light. She 
 called, and said, "What is that light?" He 
 replied, " I don't know ; come in and see ! " 
 She then went into his room, and saw that it 
 was full of this light. They lighted the gas, 
 but the other light was so much stronger that 
 the gas flame seemed lost in it. They looked 
 at their watches, and it was about five full 
 minutes before it had faded away. During 
 this time he explained to her what had occurred. 
 He said he was wakened by a strong light 
 shining directly into his face. At the same 
 time, on opening his eyes, he saw the figure of 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 43 
 
 a woman standing: at the foot of his bed. His 
 first thought was that his wife had come in and 
 lighted the gas, as he knew she intended rising 
 to take an early train in order to visit his 
 mother, who was ill. Being very tired and 
 needing sleep, he was about to reproach her for 
 needlessly waking him, when he saw that the 
 figure, from which now all the light seemed to 
 proceed, was not his wife. By this time he was 
 broad awake, and sat upright in bed staring at 
 the figure. He noticed that it was a woman in a 
 white garment ; and looking sharply, he recog- 
 nized it, as he thought, as one of his patients 
 who was very ill. Then he realized that this 
 could not be so, and that if any one was in the 
 room, it must be an intruder who had no right 
 to be there. With the vague thought of a 
 possible burglar thus disguised, he sprang out 
 of bed and grasped his revolver, which he was 
 accustomed to have near at hand. This brought 
 him face to face with the figure not three feet 
 away. He now saw every detail of dress, com- 
 plexion, and feature, and for the first time 
 
44 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 recognized the fact that it was not a being of 
 flesh and blood. Then it was that, in quite an 
 excited manner, he called his wife, hoping that 
 she would get there to see it also. But the 
 moment he called her name, the figure disap- 
 peared, leaving, however, the intense yellow 
 light behind, and which they both observed for 
 five minutes by the watch before it faded out. 
 
 The next day it was found that one of his 
 patients, closely resembling the figure he had 
 seen, had died a few minutes before he saw his 
 vision, — had died calling for him. 
 
 It will be seen that this story, like the first 
 one in this article, is perfectly authentic in 
 every particular. There is no question as to 
 the facts. It only remains to find a theory 
 that will explain the facts. Was it a telepath- 
 ically produced vision, caused by the strong 
 desire of the dying woman to see her physician ? 
 Or was it the woman herself coming to him a 
 few moments after leaving the body ? I leave 
 my readers to reply for themselves. 
 
 I will now relate a death vision that has 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AIYD TEEOBIES. 45 
 
 about it some unusual features. These visions, 
 of course, are very common. I have known 
 many that were striking ; but generally there 
 is no way of proving that they are not entirely 
 subjective. The dying frequently appear to 
 see and converse with their friends who have 
 preceded them, but how can any one tell that 
 they are not like the imaginings of those in 
 delirium ? I have in my collection two or three 
 that have about them certain characteristics 
 that are hard to explain on that theory. One 
 of the best is the f olloAving . 
 
 In a neighboring city were two little girls, 
 Jennie and Edith, one about eight years of age, 
 and the other but a little older. They were 
 schoolmates and intimate friends. In June, 
 1889, both were taken ill of diphtheria. At 
 noon on Wednesday, June 5, Jennie died. 
 Then the parents of Edith, and her physician 
 as well, all took particular pains to keep from 
 her the fact that her little playmate was gone. 
 They feared the effect of the knowledge on her 
 own condition. To prove that they succeeded 
 
46 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 and that she did not know, it may be mentioned 
 that on Saturday, June 8, at noon, just before 
 she became unconscious of all that was passing 
 about her, she selected two of her photographs 
 to be sent to Jennie, and also told her attend- 
 ants to bid her good-bye. 
 
 Right here is the important point to be 
 noticed in this narration. Dying persons 
 usually see, or think they see, those and only 
 those that they know have passed away. 
 Edith did not know that Jennie had gone, and 
 so, in the ordinary or imaginative vision, she 
 would not have been expected to fancy her 
 present. 
 
 She died at half -past six o'clock on the even- 
 ing of Saturday, June 8. She had roused and 
 bidden her friends good-bye, and was talking of 
 dying, and seemed to have no fear. She ap- 
 peared to see one and another of the friends 
 she knew were dead. So far it was like the com- 
 mon cases. But now suddenly, and with every 
 appearance of great surprise, she turned to her 
 father, and exclaimed, " Why, papa, I am 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 47 
 
 going to take Jennie with me ! " Then she 
 added, " Why papa ! Why, papa ! ! You did 
 not tell me that Jennie was here ! " And im- 
 mediately she reached out her arms as if in 
 welcome, and said, " Jennie, I'm so glad 
 you are here." 
 
 Now, I am familiar with the mechanism of 
 the eye and the scientific theories of vision. I 
 know also very well whatever the world knows 
 about visions. , But I submit that here is some- 
 thing not easily accounted for on the theory of 
 hallucination. It was firmly fixed in her mind 
 that Jennie was still alive, for within a few 
 hours she had arranged to have a photograph 
 sent her. .This also comes out in the fact of 
 her great astonishment when her friend appears 
 among those she was not at all surprised to 
 see, because she knew they had died. It goes, 
 then, beyond the ordinary death vision, and 
 presents a feature that demands, as an adequate 
 explanation, something more than the easy one 
 of saying she only imagined it. 
 
 I have read, of course, a good many stories 
 
/ 
 
 48 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 telling of the apparent seeing of " spirit " 
 forms on the part of animals. One such, and 
 a perfectly authentic one, I have in my collec- 
 tion. The friend who gave it me I will call 
 Miss Z. I have known her for seventeen years, 
 and feel as sure of the truth of her narrative 
 as though I had been in her place. Without 
 any further preface, I will tell her brief 
 story. 
 
 In the spring of. 1885, on a certain evening, 
 she was alone in the house. All the family, 
 even to the servants, had gone out. It was 
 about eight o'clock, but several gas jets were 
 burning, so that the room was light through- 
 out. It was in the parlor, a long .room run- 
 ing the whole length of the house. Near the 
 back of the parlor stood the piano. Miss Z. 
 was sitting at the piano, practicing at a difficult 
 musical exercise, playing it over and over, and 
 naturally with her mind intent on this alone. 
 She had as her only companion a little skye 
 terrier, a great pet, and which, never having 
 been whipped, was apparently afraid of nothing 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 49 
 
 in all the world. He was comfortably placed 
 
 in an easy-chair behind the piano-stool. 
 
 Such, then, was the situation when Miss Z. 
 
 was startled by hearing a sudden growl from 
 
 the terrier, as if giving an alarm of danger. 
 
 She looked up suddenly to see what the matter 
 
 was, when, at the farther end of the room, the 
 
 front of the parlor, there appeared to be a sort 
 
 of mist stretching itself from the door half-way 
 
 across the room. As she watched it, this mist, 
 
 which was gray, seemed to shape itself into 
 
 three forms. The heads and shoulders were 
 
 quite clearly outlined and distinct, though they 
 
 appeared to have loose wrappings about them. 
 
 From the height and general slope of the 
 
 shoulders of one, she thought she recognized 
 
 the figure of a favorite aunt who had died a few 
 
 years before. The middle figure of the three 
 
 was much shorter, and made her think of her 
 
 grandmother, who had been dead for a good 
 
 many years. The third she did not recognize 
 
 at all. The faces she did not see distinctly 
 
 enough so as to feel in any way sure about them. 
 
 4 
 
50 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 The dog, always before very brave, now 
 seemed overcome with terror. He growled 
 fiercely several times, and then jumped trem 
 bling from his chair, and hid himself under a 
 large sofa, utterly refusing to be coaxed out. 
 His mistress had never known him to show 
 fear before on any occasion whatever. 
 
 Miss Z. now watched the figures, while they 
 grew more and more indistinct, and at last 
 seemed to fade through the closed door into 
 the front hall. When they had disappeared, 
 she gave her attention to the frightened terrier. 
 He would not leave his hiding-place, and she 
 was obliged to move the sofa and carefully lift 
 the trembling little creature in her arms. 
 
 Now, the only remarkable thing about this 
 is, of course, the attitude and action of the 
 dog. The " spirits " did not seem to have 
 come for anything. They said nothing, and 
 did nothing of any importance. But — and 
 this is where the problem comes in — what did 
 the dog see ? If his mistress had seen the 
 figures first and had shown any fear, it might 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 51 
 
 reasonably be said that her fear was contagious, 
 and that the dog was frightened because she 
 was. But the dog was the first discoverer ; 
 the discoverer — of what ? If there had been 
 nothing there to see, the dog would have seen 
 nothing. Are dogs subject to hallucinations ? 
 Even if they are, and though it Avere a sub- 
 jective vision on the dog's part, how does it 
 happen that Miss Z. also sees it ? Would she 
 mistake a dog's subjective vision for the figure 
 of her aunt ? 
 
 Turn it about as you will, it is a curious 
 experience, and one worth the reader's finding 
 an explanation for, if he can. 
 
 The limits of this chapter will make room for 
 only one more story. The lady who had this 
 experience is the one who gives us the account 
 of it, though I tell it in my own words. She 
 was a schoolmate of my brother, and her char- 
 acter and veracity are beyond question. In 
 June, 1886, she was a patient in the family of 
 a physician in a well-known city in a neighbor- 
 ing state. She was suffering much from mental 
 
52 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 depression, feeling assured in her own mind 
 that she had an ovarian tumor. On this par- 
 ticular day, she was lying alone in her room, 
 unusually oppressed by foreboding fears. Ly- 
 ing thus, absorbed in thoughts of her own con- 
 dition, she suddenly became conscious as of an 
 open map of the United States being spread 
 before her. Her attention was particularly 
 directed to Virginia, and then westward to, as 
 she then thought, Ohio. At the same time she 
 heard the name " McDowell." At once she 
 thought of General McDowell, as the only one 
 she knew of by that name. But a calm, gentle 
 voice seemed to reply to her unspoken thought, 
 " No, I am not General McDowell, but a phy- 
 sician. I was the first advocate and practi- 
 tioner of ovarian surgery. By the urgent 
 request of your friends, I have examined your 
 case very carefully. Rest assured, madam, 
 your malady is not of that character. In time 
 you will regain your health, but never be very 
 strong." 
 
 With a feeling of awe, gratitude, and wonder. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 53 
 
 which, she says, she could not attempt to 
 express, she rose from the couch on which she 
 was lying, and went at once to the doctor's 
 office in another part of the house. At once 
 she related what had occurred, and asked, 
 " Am I right ? " The physician, a lady, went 
 to her library and took down her Medical 
 Encyclopaedia. From this she read, " Ephraim 
 McDowell, born in Virginia, settled in Ken- 
 tucky. He performed the first operation in 
 ovarian surgery that is recorded in this 
 country." 
 
 She was correct, therefore, in every partic- 
 ular, except the substituting Ohio for Ken- 
 tucky, and this is quite natural, as it is the 
 next adjoining state. 
 
 Several points now it is important carefully 
 to note. 
 
 In the first place, this lady has had many 
 psychic experiences, others of which I hope to 
 obtain. 
 
 In the second place, until these began, she 
 was a complete sceptic as to continued exist- 
 
54 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 ence. She tells me that she was a most un- 
 willing convert, and only gave in when com- 
 pelled to by her own undoubted experiences. 
 
 Again, she has never been surrounded by 
 any atmosphere of belief in these things; for 
 even now most of her friends and relatives are 
 violently opposed to everything of the sort, and 
 she has had to suffer much because she could 
 not help but believe. 
 
 Once more, I have been in recent correspond- 
 ence with the physician in whose house she 
 was at the time. This physician completely 
 confirms all the facts, and testifies in the most 
 emphatic way to the noble character and un- 
 questioned veracity of her patient. And yet, 
 though she offers no other theory, she is 
 strongly opposed to any explanation that calls 
 for the agency of any supernormal intelligence. 
 This, however, grows out of the fact that she 
 has always been bitterly prejudiced against 
 everything of the kind. 
 
 And lastly, both the physician and her 
 patient are perfectly assured that the name of 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 55 
 
 Dr. McDowell and his work as a surgeon were 
 entirely unknown to the teller of this expe- 
 rience at the time when the voice was heard. 
 
 I have many other equally puzzling cases 
 left, but these are enough for the present 
 installment. Who will find a theory that does 
 not lead us into the invisible ? 
 
56 PSYCHICS; FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 After the preceding chapters I need waste 
 no time in words of preface or introduc- 
 tion. Concerning these I shall now relate, I 
 only wish to say, as I have already said con- 
 cerning all the rest, that I think I know they 
 are genuine. These things took place. They 
 took place in the conditions and in the precise 
 way which I shall describe. I shall refrain 
 from dogmatizing as to theories of explanation. 
 Such dogmatism never convinces. People will 
 accept a new and unfamiliar truth only when 
 driven to it by overwhelming force of evidence. 
 I seek only to help in the accumulation of 
 evidence ; the truth — whatever it be — will at 
 last make itself manifest to the minds of all 
 reasonable men. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 57 
 
 For the sake of variety, and to hint at the 
 breadth of the field now open for investigation, 
 I will begin with a case unlike any of those so 
 far presented. 
 
 There is a certain class of sensitives or psych- 
 ics who claim to possess what is called psych- 
 ometric power. Suppose it is a lady. She 
 will take in her hand a letter, and, without 
 reading a word of it or even looking at it, she 
 receives from it certain impressions, which she 
 states. Sometimes she goes into such detail as 
 to the contents of the letter and the character 
 and personality of the writer as is utterly impos- 
 sible on any theory of guess-work. Neither, 
 in my judgment, is it to be classed with clair- 
 voyance; for she does not read the letter nor 
 even seem to see the writer. These phenomena 
 of psychometry seem to constitute a class by 
 themselves. At times it is not a letter that 
 the lady holds in her hands, but any article 
 or substance whatever. But in any case, the 
 article so held appears to give impressions of so 
 precise a nature that the psychic reads the story 
 
58 PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 of its past, calls up distant persons and scenes 
 — distant both in space and in time. In pres- 
 ence of such facts, one finds himself wonder- 
 ing if even inanimate nature — if any part of 
 nature is inanimate — does not carry with it a 
 record or memory of all that ever concerned it. 
 But I will suppress any tendency to dream, and 
 turn to my fact. 
 
 On a certain morning I visited a psychom- 
 etrist. Several experiments were made. I will 
 relate only one, as a good specimen of what has 
 occurred in my presence more than once. The 
 lady was not entranced or, so far as I could 
 see, in any other than her normal condition. 
 I handed her a letter which I had recently 
 received. She took it, and held it in her right 
 hand, pressing it close, so as to come into as 
 vital contact with it as possible. I had taken 
 it out of its envelope, so that she might touch 
 it more effectively, but it was not unfolded 
 even so much as to give her an opportunity to 
 see even the name. It was written by a man 
 whom she had never seen, and of whom she had 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 59 
 
 never heard. After holding it a moment, she 
 said, " This man is either a minister or a law- 
 yer ; I cannot tell which. He is a man of a 
 good deal more than usual intellectual power ; 
 and yet, he has never met with any such suc- 
 cess in life as one would have expected, con- 
 sidering his natural ability. Something has 
 happened to thwart him and interfere with his 
 success. At the present time he is suffering 
 with severe illness and mental depression. He 
 has pain here (putting her hand to the back of 
 her head, at the base of the brain)." 
 
 She said much more, describing the man as 
 well as I could have done it myself. But I 
 will quote no more, for I wish to let a few 
 salient points stand in clear outline. These 
 points I will number, for the sake of clearness : — 
 
 1. She tells me he is a man, though she has 
 not even glanced at the letter. 
 
 2. She says he is either a minister or a 
 lawyer ; she cannot tell which. No wonder, 
 for he was both; that is, he had preached for 
 some years, then had left the pulpit, studied 
 
60 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 law, and at this time was not actively engaged 
 in either profession. 
 
 3. She speaks of his great natural ability. 
 This was true in a most marked degree. 
 
 4. But he had not succeeded as one would 
 have expected. This again was strikingly true. 
 Certain things had happened — which I do not 
 feel at liberty to publish — which had broken 
 off his career in the middle and made his short 
 life seem abortive. 
 
 5. She says he is ill as he writes. At this 
 very time he was at the house of a friend, 
 suffering from a malarial attack, his business 
 broken up, and his mind depressed by the 
 thought of his life failure. 
 
 Now this lady did not know I had any such 
 friend ; and of all these different facts about 
 him, of course she knew absolutely nothing. 
 She did not read a word of the letter. But 
 (note this carefully) even though she had read 
 it all, it would have told her only the one fact 
 that, as he wrote, he was not well. It contained 
 not the slightest allusion to any of the others. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. (51 
 
 This case cannot be explained by clairvoyance, 
 for the lady did not possess the power. Was 
 it guess-work ? One case might be so explained. 
 But one does not guess after this fashion very 
 often. So, as I put this case alongside the 
 many others which I know, the guess theory 
 becomes too improbable for one moment's seri- 
 ous consideration. 
 
 I will now tell the story of my first sitting 
 with Mrs. P., a psychic famous in the annals 
 of psychical research, both in Boston and in 
 London. In one way the incidents are very 
 slight, but for that very reason they were to 
 me all the more striking ; for it seems to me 
 that such incidents are beyond the wildest 
 theory of guess-work. She might have guessed 
 a great many things about me ; but that she 
 should have guessed these particular things, 
 seems to me most wildly improbable. 
 
 This sitting occurred in the winter of 1885. 
 My father had died during the preceding sum- 
 mer, aged ninety years and six months. Most 
 of his life had been spent in Maine. He had 
 
62 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 never lived in Boston, and there is no conceiv- 
 able way by which Mrs. P. could ever have 
 learned about him any other than the most 
 general facts. But as she had no earthly 
 reason for supposing that I was ever going to 
 call on her, I do not know why she should have 
 taken the trouble to learn anything about him. 
 Even if she had taken such trouble, there was 
 no one in the city who could have told her these 
 especial facts. They were not known outside 
 of one or two members of my own family, and 
 at this time no member of my family had ever 
 seen Mrs. P. 
 
 Such, then, was the condition of affairs 
 when, one morning, I called at her house. She 
 soon became entranced. That these trances, in 
 her case, are genuine, there is no shadow of a 
 question ; and when she returns to her normal 
 condition, she has no knowledge of anything 
 that has been said or done. Her " control " 
 said — what is common enough — that many 
 "spirits" were present. Among them he sin- 
 gled out for description an old man. This de- 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 63 
 
 scription was general only, but correct so far as 
 it went ; for immediately he proceeded to tell 
 me it was my father. Then he added, u He 
 calls you Judson." Soon after this, as though 
 his attention had just been turned to it, he 
 exclaimed that he had a peculiar bare spot 
 " right here." (The hand of the psychic was 
 lifted and laid on the right side of the top of 
 her head, about where the parting of the hair 
 would usually be.) 
 
 This is by no means all that was said or done, 
 but I single out thus these two tiny facts, so 
 that we may look at them a I*'. tie by themselves. 
 As to this matter of the bare spot on his head : 
 Though living to so advanced an age, my 
 father was never bald; but years before I was 
 born, as the result of a burn, this particular 
 place lost its hair. It was about one inch in 
 width and two or three inches long, running 
 back from the forehead towards the crown. He 
 was accustomed to part his hair on the left 
 side, and comb it over this bare place. Gen- 
 erally, therefore, it was entirely unnoticed. 
 
64 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 As I had e^ery reason to suppose that Mrs. 
 P. had never seen him, this struck me as at least 
 worthy ( of remark. 
 
 But the other little matter appears to me still 
 more worthy of notice. When I was born, 
 away up in the middle of Maine, I had a half- 
 sister, my father's daughter, who was then liv- 
 ing in Massachusetts. She sent home a re- 
 quest that I be named Judson. She was to do 
 for me certain things, provided her request was 
 granted. So I got my middle name ; but she 
 died suddenly before ever returning home, and 
 I have never learned the reason for her wish. 
 The only important thing about this bit of auto- 
 biography is to note the fact that (as I always 
 supposed, out of tenderness for the memory of 
 a favorite daughter) my father, all through my 
 boyhood, always called me Judson, though all 
 the rest of the family uniformly spoke to me, 
 and of me, by my first name ; and (this is 
 worthy of note) my father himself, in all his 
 later years, fell into the habit of using my first 
 name, like the rest of the family. I doubt, 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 65 
 
 therefore, if he had called me " Judson " for as 
 many as fifteen or twenty years before his death. 
 Why, then, does the " control " of Mrs. P., 
 after describing correctly this " old man," ex- 
 claim, " Why, it is your father ; he calls you 
 Judson? " 
 
 Neither one of these things was consciously 
 in my own mind at the time, and I can im- 
 agine no way by which either the conscious 
 or unconscious self of Mrs. P. could ever have 
 found them out. 
 
 A very little thing. Yes, and so it was a 
 very little thing to know that a piece of amber, 
 when rubbed with silk, would attract light 
 bodies ; but this little thing had in it the prom- 
 ise and potency of world-revolutionizing dis- 
 coveries. 
 
 One other thing occurred at this same sit? 
 ting. Towards its close, Mrs. P.'s "control" 
 said : " Here is somebody who says his name is 
 John. He was your brother. No, not your 
 own brother ; he was your half-brother." 
 Then, pressing her hand on the base of her 
 
66 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 brain, Mrs. P. moaned and rocked herself back 
 and forth as if in great agony. Then the 
 " control " continued : " He says it was so 
 hard to die, away off there all alone ! How he 
 did want to see mother ! " Then he went on 
 to explain that he died from the effects of a fall, 
 striking the back of his head. The whole de- 
 scription was most strikingly realistic. 
 
 Now for the facts corresponding to this 
 dramatic narration. I had a half-brother John, 
 my mother's son. (The family was a threefold 
 one, my father and my mother both having 
 been married before they married each other.) 
 He was many years older than I, and in his 
 earlier life had gone to sea. A year or 
 two before this sitting, he had been at work 
 in Michigan, building a steam saw-mill. Some 
 hoisting tackle having got out of gear, he 
 had climbed up to disentangle it. Losing his 
 hold, he had fallen and struck the back of his 
 head on a stick of timber, from the results 
 of which he died. No friend was near him at 
 the time, but afterward we learned that he had 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 67 
 
 died talking of "Mother"; and love for his 
 mother had been a most marked characteristic 
 all through his life. 
 
 John was not consciously in my mind at the 
 time of this sitting, and I cannot even dream of 
 any way by which Mrs. P. could ever even have 
 heard that any such person had ever lived. 
 
 I will now relate a very slight incident, but 
 one which I should like to have somebody ex- 
 plain. The psychic, in this case, was not a pro- 
 fessional. She is a personal friend of many 
 years' standing. Most of her friends do not 
 know that she ever has any such experiences. 
 While interested in these matters, she is modest 
 and undogmatic, and as much an inquirer as I 
 am myself. Her present husband (she has 
 been twice married) is a student in these direc- 
 tions, and so encourages her in such investi- 
 gations. 
 
 One day at a little quiet sitting, she unex- 
 pectedly became entranced. It was only occa- 
 sionally that this occurred, the " influences " 
 commonly working in some other way. While 
 
68 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 thus entranced, she personated half a dozen 
 different people, ranging from a little girl to an 
 old man. Her facial expression, voice, gesture 
 and whole being took on and expressed the par- 
 ticular character in each instance. All this was 
 utterly unlike her ordinary demeanor ; for in 
 her normal condition, she is unusually shy and 
 diffident. She would have needed the art of 
 the actress to have purposely assumed and played 
 these various parts. 
 
 But only one incident of this sitting will I 
 now dwell on. Her first husband claimed to 
 be in control and to be speaking to me through 
 her. He talked over many things of which I 
 knew nothing, and left messages, the purport 
 of which were " all Greek " to me, but which 
 were full of significance to her as I related them 
 when the trance was over. Among other things, 
 he said, " Tell my wife that the friend she is 
 expecting to visit her will come on Saturday." 
 Then he added, laughingly, " She won't believe 
 that." 
 
 I knew nothing of any particular friend who 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 69 
 
 was coming to visit her on Saturday or any- 
 other day; so all this meant nothing to me. 
 But when I gave her the message, she smiled 
 and said, " That is surely a mistake, for I have 
 just received a letter from this friend (a lady 
 in New York), saying that I am to expect her 
 next week Tuesday." 
 
 This sitting was on Wednesday morning. 
 In my next day's mail came a letter from my 
 friend, in which she told me that, on reaching 
 home, she found another letter from New York 
 telling her the plans had been changed, and the 
 visitor would arrive on Saturday. 
 
 I leave the explanation of this to the wise. 
 
 I wish now to tell some parts of an experi- 
 ence which a young lady friend of mine had 
 with Mrs. P. , the psychic already referred to. 
 This young lady is remarkable for her level 
 head, clear thought, and self-control. She and 
 Mrs. P. had never met. A sitting was arranged, 
 Miss S. (the young lady) writing and making 
 the appointment under an assumed name, and 
 giving the address of a friend instead of her 
 
70 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 own home : so anxious was she that there 
 should be no clue to her personality. She 
 carried a book, and in it three envelopes con- 
 taining three locks of hair. One of these locks 
 was from the head of her mother, but concern- 
 ing the other two she knew nothing. They 
 had been given her by a friend to be used as a 
 test. When Mrs. P. had become entranced, 
 Miss S. gave her one of the envelopes contain- 
 ing a lock of hair. Immediately her " control" 
 began talking about it. She told whose head it 
 was from, gave the name, and not only this, 
 but the names of other people connected with 
 this one, and described their characteristics and 
 the relations in which they stood to each other. 
 
 Meantime Miss S. was in entire ignorance as 
 to the correctness of the statements being made. 
 She however made a careful record of them 
 all, and afterwards found that all which had 
 been said was true in every particular. 
 
 Now this case is not like the psychometric 
 one mentioned above ; for here the psychic is 
 entranced, and it is the " control " that speaks, 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 71 
 
 In the other case, it is the conscious psychic 
 herself. 
 
 What happened in regard to this one lock of 
 hair happened concerning them all. In each 
 case names were given, facts referred to, per- 
 sons described, and all with complete accuracy. 
 I state the case in this brief and general way ; 
 but I have in my possession all the particular 
 facts written out at the time. 
 
 I am now to relate the story of three most 
 remarkable psychic experiences occurring in the 
 life of the same person, then a girl not more 
 than twelve years of age. The lady in whose 
 girlhood they happened has written them out 
 for me, and they are corroborated by witnesses 
 who had full knowledge of the facts, so that 
 they would constitute evidence in a court of 
 justice. 
 
 Following the method I have uniformly pur- 
 sued so far, I will tell tho stories in my own 
 words. I do this for the sake of simplicity; 
 but the autograph documents are in my pos- 
 session. 
 
72 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 When the first instance occurred, Miss D. was 
 about eleven years old. She was an extremely 
 nervous, sensitive child, afraid of the dark, 
 always I Baring strange sounds, and never will- 
 ing to go upstairs to bed alone. 
 
 Her father was an educated man, a Harvard 
 graduate, and at this time was teaching a class 
 that met in one of the rooms on the second 
 floor of the house in which they then lived. 
 On this particular evening, just after supper, 
 her father sent her up to this classroom to re- 
 move the blower from the Franklin coal stove. 
 This she did, and then started for the sitting- 
 room below again. As she reached the top of 
 the stairs, she saw what appeared to be a very 
 tall man coming up, and he had nearly reached 
 the top. She stepped aside to let him pass ; 
 and as she did so, she lifted her head and looked 
 him full in the face. He looked down in her 
 face for a moment, spoke to her, and said, " I 
 watch over you," and then vanished as if into 
 the side of the wall. 
 
 He was unusually tall, over six feet, and Miss 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 78 
 
 D. says she remembers his face now more dis- 
 tinctly than that of any other face she ever saw. 
 She knew at once that she had seen him by 
 virtue of some strange inner sight. 
 
 So far the word " hallucination " would easily 
 explain it all, but let us go on. 
 
 She went on downstairs, and spent the even- 
 ing quietly with the family. She said nothing 
 that night to any one of what she had seen, only 
 all fear of the dark had gone ; and when 
 bed-time came, and they asked her if some 
 one should go with her, she answered " No." 
 From that time forth all the old timidity had 
 ceased. Instead of being frightened, as at a 
 ghost, she felt cared for and guarded by a lov- 
 ing friend. 
 
 The next morning she went to her mother 
 and told her what she had seen, adding, " I 
 think the" man I saw was my father's father." 
 This grandfather had died when her father was 
 a boy of only eleven. There was no likeness 
 of him in the family, and her father remembered 
 him only as being a very tall man. When her 
 
74 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 father heard her description, he said that it was, 
 so far as he knew, a faithful likeness. The 
 grandmother was still living, but, being a very 
 strict Baptist, knew nothing whatever of these 
 psychical matters ; but she declared that she 
 could not herself have given a better description 
 of her husband than the one her granddaughter 
 gave, from having seen this figure on the stairs. 
 And she always believed that, for some special 
 reason, this visit from the unseen had been 
 permitted. 
 
 A short time after, this same little Miss D. 
 was seated in her father's study one evening 
 reading a book. After a while she looked up 
 from her book, and said, " Father, there is some 
 one here in this room, and she wishes to speak." 
 Her father was writing at his desk in another 
 part of the room, facing away from her. But 
 as she spoke, he turned, and said, " If any one 
 wishes to speak with me, she must give me her 
 name, as I am busy." Then the little girl said, 
 " Her name is Mary," and, waiting a moment, 
 she added, " Mary Pickering." At once her 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 75 
 
 father seemed greatly interested, and said, " If 
 this is you, Mary, tell me something by which 
 I may know that it is you." Miss D. then said 
 (the information seemed to come to her in some 
 inexplicable way, for she heard no words with 
 the outer ear) : " She has been in the other life 
 many years. She was from twenty-two to 
 twenty-four when she died. She died quite 
 unexpectedly, after a very short illness, of a 
 
 fever. She lived in B . You met her and 
 
 became acquainted with her while teaching in 
 that town, and boarding in her father's family, 
 before you left college. You knew her before 
 you went to the divinity school. She has been 
 often, often to you, and you have known it" 
 
 The father had been educated for the Baptist 
 ministry, and at this time had no faith in the 
 possibility of spirits returning, so far as any of 
 the family knew. But he asked his daughter 
 if she could describe this Mary, saying, " She 
 had marked peculiarities in dress and in the 
 manner of arranging her hair." The daughter 
 replied : " Yes, she has hair almost black, dark 
 
76 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 eyes, so dark you would call them black ; but as 
 you look closer, you see they are hazel. She 
 wears this hair in three curls on each side of the 
 face, and these curls reach down in such a manner 
 that they make a frame for the face, while the 
 rest of the hair is combed back and fastened by 
 a comb in a twist at the back of the head. The 
 last time you saw her she had on a cloth dress ; 
 it looks like a black wool, and is cut with a 
 plain, full skirt, and a plain back to the body ; 
 but the front crosses one side over the other in 
 three folds, and the sleeve has a look like a leg 
 of mutton." 
 
 Then the father sat for a few moments in 
 silence. But soon, taking his bunch of keys from 
 his pocket, he unlocked a drawer in his writing- 
 desk which his little girl had never seen opened 
 before. From this he took a daguerreotype, and, 
 passing it to her, he said, " This is a likeness of 
 Mary Pickering ; does she look like this ? " 
 Thereupon the little girl said, " Just like it ; 
 only what I see is spirit." 
 
 The name of this young lady the little girl 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 77 
 
 bad never before heard. She did not know 
 that such a person had ever lived ; and no one 
 in the family, except her father, knew that 
 such a portrait was in existence ; and only he 
 knew of this episode in his past life. Yet 
 everything that Miss D. had seen and said 
 corresponded perfectly with the facts. 
 
 This Miss D., now of course grown up, is a 
 personal acquaintance, and her father testifies 
 to the strict truthfulness of all that is here 
 written down. And here, let it be remembered, 
 is no experience with a professional. This lady 
 lives in the quiet of a wealthy home ; has 
 never " sat " for psychical investigation, either 
 for money or for any other reason. Only all 
 her life long she has been subject to these 
 strange experiences. Also it is worth noting 
 that she is healthy and sane, and practical to 
 an unusual degree. 
 
 But now for one more experience out of her 
 girlhood life. Again she was sitting with her 
 father in his study. She was a great book- 
 lover, and so his study was a favorite place 
 
78 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 with the daughter. This time it was a man 
 she saw. So she said to her father, " There is 
 a man here by the name of Rockwood." Her 
 father said : " Yes, I knew a young fellow by 
 that name once ; but he has been dead for 
 years now. Tell me where I knew him and 
 how I " So she went on, and said, " You knew 
 him in H., when you were attending the class- 
 ical school then kept by G. R." Then she 
 proceeded to describe the house in which he 
 had lived and died. She told him it stood at 
 the forks of the road, was a mile from the 
 town ; that the funeral was from the house, 
 and not the church, as was the custom in the 
 town at that time. She told the manner in 
 which he had died. 
 
 Her father then said : " I do not know any- 
 thing more than the fact that he died some 
 years ago. If you can see all this," he added, 
 " you certainly ought to be able to tell me 
 where he is buried ; and this I do not know 
 any more than I know whether his funeral was 
 in a church or in his own house." 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AXD THEORIES. 79 
 
 In a few moments she went on, " I can go 
 over the entire ground." Then, mentally, she 
 went into the house, saw the body as it lay in 
 the coffin, saw the face, and told how he looked 
 and what he had on. Then she saw them take 
 the coffin from the front right-hand room, arid 
 put it into the hearse, and go slowly to the 
 cemetery, which was a mile away. She also 
 described how the bell in the Orthodox Church 
 tolled all the time while the procession was on 
 the way to the grave. She seemed to enter 
 the cemetery by the middle gate. She de- 
 scribed the lot as being on the left side of the 
 mam driveway, just before coming to the new 
 addition to the cemetery at the farther side. 
 
 She had never been in this town in her life, 
 and knew nothing: about it. Her father knew 
 nothing of the circumstances of the death or 
 the funeral, or of there being any new addition 
 to the cemetery. He however became so inter- 
 ested in the matter, that he asked her if she 
 thought she could go unguided from the rail- 
 way station to the cemetery, and then back to 
 
80 PSYCHICS: PACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 the house. She felt so sure that she could, 
 that it was decided that a trial should be made. 
 So one day they together visited the town. 
 Her father kept behind, and let her go on 
 alone. As stated above, she had never before 
 been in the town, and he had not visited it for 
 many years ; but she proceeded directly to the 
 cemetery. When they reached the left-hand 
 corner of the cemetery, she said, " I can go in 
 here instead of going round to the main 
 entrance, where the procession entered, and go 
 straight to the grave." This she did, recogniz- 
 ing the place as the one she had seen mentally, 
 and finding it as familiar as though she had 
 known it all her life. 
 
 Now occurred a curious incident. At the 
 grave they saw a strange gentleman neither of 
 them had ever seen before. He was talking 
 with the town undertaker. Seeing them come 
 to this particular lot, he spoke to them. It 
 turned out that he had married a sister of this 
 Mr. Rockwood, by whose grave they were 
 standing. After falling into conversation, Mr. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 81 
 
 D., the little girl's father, told him what had 
 brought them there. He straightway became 
 so interested in the matter, that he begged 
 them to go to the old home with him, and see 
 if his wife confirmed the story as Miss D. had 
 told it. He said he noticed them enter the 
 cemetery ; and though familiar with all the 
 place, he could not surely have gone more 
 directly to the grave. They accepted the in- 
 vitation, and, her father having renewed his 
 old acquaintance with what was left of the 
 family, they spent the night there. The 
 sister of Mr. Kockwood remembered all the 
 particulars of her brother's death, and con- 
 firmed all that Miss D. had said. He had died 
 in the chamber she had described ; the funeral 
 was in the house and not in the church ; the 
 bell did toll while the procession was in motion. 
 In short, she had been correct in every detail. 
 This case seems to me a most remarkable one, 
 and one not easily to be classified under any 
 one head. She sees this Mr. Kockwood, and 
 
 he tells her what she does not know. Her 
 
 6 
 
82 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 father knows a part of it, but by no means all. 
 So, telepathy might help us in explanation of 
 some of it; it does not cover all. Another 
 part of it looks like clairvoyance ; and yet 
 clairvoyance, as ordinarily understood, sees 
 only what is going on at the time. But here 
 the past is resurrected; not only persons, but 
 places and events. Let who can undertake to 
 explain. All I will say is that it comes to me 
 so supported by evidence, and first-hand evi- 
 dence at that, that I cannot but accept it as true. 
 
 One more case shall close this already long 
 story of psychic experience. It occurred on a 
 certain evening in June in the year 1890. The 
 place is a well-known town in one of the New 
 England States. The psychic is a clergy- 
 man who gives me the account, and it is con- 
 firmed by the autograph indorsement of the 
 other principal man concerned. It seems to me 
 to demand the presence and the activity of 
 some invisible intelligence. 
 
 There were present Mr. and Mrs. B., two 01 
 three friends, and the clergyman. Conversa- 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AJS T D THEORIES. 83 
 
 tion turned on this general subject, when Mr. 
 B. remarked that he wished he could have 
 a satisfactory test. The clergyman, Mr. L., 
 thereupon felt a sudden and very powerful ner- 
 vous shock. This always precedes, in his 
 case, an experience of this kind. He describes 
 it by saying that this strange sensation com- 
 mences at the cerebellum, and passes down the 
 spinal column, and thence branching to his feet. 
 The feeling is very like that produced by the 
 action of an electric current applied to the 
 base of the brain, and passed downward, espe- 
 cially if the surface of the skin is lightly 
 touched by the sponge. 
 
 Immediately he saw (it was a subjective 
 vision) the face and form of a gentleman who 
 was a stranger to him. He bore a resemblance 
 to Mr. B., who sat near. In this same subjec- 
 tive way, he saw the name of "Edward B." 
 (I give only the initial of the last name, though 
 the full name is in my possession). Then he 
 seemed to have uttered these words : " Tell 
 my brother that a piece of property which I 
 
84: PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 once owned, and which by death fell to my 
 heirs, and is now owned by my brother, is in 
 danger of being lost to him. He must look 
 after it at once, or it will pass out of his 
 hands." The "spirit" was very urgent, and 
 the psychic was very strangely thrilled and af- 
 fected by his presence. Those in the room 
 remarked on the changed character of the psy- 
 chic's countenance, it being shining and appar- 
 ently illuminated. 
 
 Mr. B. at once replied, however : " It is not 
 possible that this can be true. I have all my 
 tax bills on the various properties which I own 
 in Nebraska. It is a mistake." 
 
 This Mr. B. is a cautious and careful busi- 
 ness man ; so what occurred is all the more 
 remarkable. He was not a spiritualist, but was 
 a candid inquirer. 
 
 In spite of the denial of Mr. B., the "spirit" 
 was very urgent that the matter be looked up 
 at once. 
 
 A few days later, Mr. L., the clerical psychic 
 (he is still in the active work of the ministry, 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 85 
 
 and not making a profession of this strange 
 power), sailed for a vacation trip to Europe. 
 He was absent several months. 
 
 On his return he met Mr. B. one day, and he 
 said : " Oh, about that matter in Nebraska. I 
 looked over my papers soon after you went 
 away, and found that one of my tax bills on a 
 certain piece of property was missing. I felt 
 sure that I had received it, but I found that 
 I had been mistaken. I at once wrote to my 
 agent (in Nebraska), and requested him to send 
 the tax bill to me. Several days elapsed beyond 
 those required for an answer, but none came. 
 I wrote again, and peremptorily, telling my 
 a^ent that he could attend to the matter im- 
 mediately, or I would transfer my business to 
 another man. This letter brought a prompt 
 reply. The agent wrote that, through his own 
 oversight, the lessee had been allowed to pay 
 the tax on the property, and had taken as 
 security what is called a tax lien. The payment 
 of these taxes, and the taking of such liens for 
 a certain length of time will, in the end, 
 
86 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 entitle the lessee to a warrantee deed of the 
 property'' 
 
 This is Nebraska law ; and many a dodge of 
 this kind is resorted to as a means of swin- 
 dling the real owner out of his property. 
 
 This seems to be a strikingly clear-cut case. 
 At the time of this message, purporting to come 
 from Mr. B.'s brother, no living man this side 
 of Nebraska had any knowledge of the facts as 
 stated. These facts proved to be correct in 
 every particular. And here is one instance 
 that a " spiritualist " might use in rebuttal of 
 the common charge that the " messages," never 
 tell anything that is of any value to anybody. 
 In this case, certainly, a valuable price of prop- 
 erty was saved by the message whatever may 
 have been its source. 
 
 The story is authenticated in such » way as 
 would make it good evidence in the hands o* 
 any judge, or before any jury in Christendom 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AXD THEORIES, 87 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 No matter what my opinion is, for the pres- 
 ent. The reader is not expected to care. I do 
 not mean to reveal it. I may, however, do so 
 quite inadvertently. Perhaps I shall find it no 
 easy thing to keep it from peeping out some- 
 where between the lines. For of course I have 
 one. I am not the " intelligent juror " Avho 
 has not heard of the case. And, having 
 studied it for several years, I cannot claim to 
 be entirely free from bias. Should I claim to 
 be, the reader might justly question my compe- 
 tence to form an opinion on any subject. But 
 I can say — and this is all the reader need care 
 about — that I have no opinion which I am not 
 ready to revise or to reject altogether for a 
 sufficient reason. Neither am I like the old 
 Scotchman who said : " I am open to convic- 
 
88 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 tion, but where is the man that can convince 
 me ? " I am not able to understand how any 
 man should care to hold or defend any opinion 
 that is not true. Since the truth is the only 
 reality, he who seeks or cherishes anything else 
 is only storing up disappointment for himself. 
 
 So much it seems needful for me to say. 
 Not that I am egotistical enough to imagine 
 that my unsupported opinion is so important 
 as to concern any one ; but because my point 
 of view, and the spirit in which I enter on my 
 task, may greatly concern all those who be- 
 come interested in this discussion. It is im- 
 portant that the reader should know that I am 
 not an interested advocate, and that I will join 
 him in being grateful to any one who shall 
 prove to be wise enough satisfactorily to settle 
 the problem that is to be raised. This prob- 
 lem concerns both the reality and the nature 
 of certain alleged facts that are usually as- 
 sociated with, or that pass under the name of, 
 Spiritualism. 
 
 The Spiritualists make two claims that need 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 89 
 
 to be noted, only in order that their real posi- 
 tion may be understood, and that the situation 
 may be stated as fairly as possible. 
 
 In the first place, they say that though there 
 has been an extraordinary and wide-spread de- 
 velopment of these phenomena in the modern 
 world, they are no new thing, and so are not 
 out of keeping with what has occurred in 
 the past history of mankind. Intelligent and 
 credible witnesses, they claim, have reported 
 similar happenings in every age. And, in spite 
 of misreports and exaggerations, they further 
 claim that these stories are so in line with their 
 own experiences as to make the belief entirely 
 reasonable that there are grains of truth in the 
 bushels of chaff. For example, concerning the 
 story of the resurrection of Jesus, few of them 
 would believe that the body which was cru- 
 cified ever lived again. They would say that 
 a spiritual reappearance is a more rational ex- 
 planation than, on the one hand, that the 
 disciples lied, or, on the other, that the story 
 sprang up out of nothing at all. And then 
 
90 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 they point to such well-attested reports as those 
 of the extraordinary happenings in the house 
 of the "Wesleys in England, and in that of Dr. 
 Phelps in Connecticut. 
 
 In the second place, they resent the charge 
 that they believe in the supernatural or the 
 miraculous. They say that if these things 
 occur at all, they are a part of the natural 
 order ; and that they are none the less so 
 because the persons who are the agents and 
 actors in them are invisible to ordinary human 
 sight. So much in order fairly to set forth the 
 situation. And now I must ask the reader's 
 patience for even a little longer, while I make 
 a few more prehminary points. 
 
 As to my reasons for looking into this sub- 
 ject. A minister is expected to be able to 
 help his parishioners in their practical difficul- 
 ties ; and as hundreds of people have applied 
 to me for advice in these matters, I have felt 
 that I ought to have an opinion for them and 
 not merely a prejudice. Then, while I have 
 always hoped for a future life, and while I have 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 91 
 
 felt the force of all the arguments so often pre- 
 sented, I have been compelled to confess that 
 these arguments fell short of demonstration ; 
 and I have been willing to exchange a hope 
 for a demonstration, provided such a thing 
 were possible. In the third place, I have felt 
 that Spiritualism is either a grand truth or a 
 most lamentable delusion • and for the sake of 
 the vast interests involved, and of the thousands 
 who looked to it for light, it has seemed to me 
 that the problem ought to be competently in- 
 vestigated. I agreed with Professor Sidgwick, 
 of Cambridge, England, in saying that it was a 
 scandal to the scientific world that so grave 
 and so important a matter should go so long 
 without any adequate explanation. 
 
 Then, though many had claimed to inves- 
 tigate, and had declared the whole matter only 
 fraud and humbug, I had to remember some 
 things. First, that hypnotism had been ex- 
 amined by a scientific commission and gravely 
 pronounced only charlatanry and delusion ; 
 while to-day it is universally accepted, and is 
 
92 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 used by the regular faculty in the treatment of 
 disease. Secondly, that clairvoyance was once 
 only scouted; while now most competent inves- 
 tigators are compelled to admit that such a thing 
 does really exist. Thirdly, that mind-reading 
 or telepathy was at first* declared to be impos- 
 sible ; but that to-day it seems to be the only 
 way of explaining certain things that do actually 
 occur. 
 
 And then, long study had driven me to the 
 conclusion that, in a universe the size of this, 
 a modest scientific man will hesitate about 
 declaring as to what is or what is not impos- 
 sible. The world is perhaps a little too free 
 with its theories as to what can happen and 
 what cannot happen. Not long ago a work- 
 man in a New York factory came to the over- 
 seer with a strange story as to the behavior of 
 the steam in a certain part of the works. The 
 overseer, who had made steam his life-long 
 study, declared that the thing was impossible ; 
 steam could not act in that way. But investiga- 
 tion proved that the "impossible" was taking 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 93 
 
 place ; and the result was a new invention, 
 more knowledge of steam, and an increase in 
 the modesty of the overseer. It is only the 
 traditional court pettifogger who any longer 
 " denies the fact." If it be a fact, then room 
 must he made for it somewhere, however long 
 the explanation of it may have to wait. 
 
 I have always tried, then, first to see if I 
 could find any facts. I have a horror of being 
 fooled. I have studied sleight of hand, and 
 tried to find out the limits and possibilities of 
 trickery. I have, in all directions, wanted the 
 truth and only the truth. I hold that the 
 "scientific method" is the only method of 
 knowledge, and that it can be applied success- 
 fully to anything that is real, and with which 
 we really come in contact. I may hope a 
 thousand things ; I may believe that many 
 things are probable ; but I have never claimed 
 to know anything that could not be demon- 
 strated as true. 
 
 In my investigations I have ruthlessly set 
 aside everything that has seemed to occur 
 
94 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 where the conditions were such that I could not 
 feel sure of my facts. And when I have had 
 the surest grip on a fact, in reasoning upon it, 
 I have rigidly tried to explain it in accordance 
 with known laws and forces. It is only when 
 all my knowledge of accepted theories and 
 forces failed to help me to a solution, that I 
 have set the fact* aside until some wiser man 
 could tell me what it meant. A study like 
 this, extending over a period of at least a dozen 
 years, has left me where I am to-day. I am in 
 possession of quite a large body of apparent 
 facts that I do not know what to do with. The 
 generally-recognized scientific order of the 
 world has no place for them ; I therefore bring 
 them into the open air of the public to see if 
 any one is wise enough to tell what they mean. 
 Have they any bearing on the nature and 
 destiny of man ? Do they require for explana- 
 tion the agency of invisible intelligences ? Or, 
 can they be referred to the working of embodied 
 minds ? 
 
 That certain things to me inexplicable have 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 95 
 
 occurred, I believe. The negative opinion of 
 some one with whom no such things have oc- 
 curred will not satisfy me. Some of those who 
 know the least about such matters will doubt- 
 less inform me that I have been deluded, and 
 that my supposed facts are not facts at all. 
 But so long as they do not know the care I 
 have taken, nor the circumstances, and are 
 ignorant of how many thnes I have repeated 
 the same experiment, this proposed explanation 
 will hardly satisfy me. Neither will it be quite 
 enough to tell me how a similar thing may be 
 done under other conditions. I know all this 
 already, but this knowledge has no bearing on 
 my particular series of facts. 
 
 After so much preliminary — none of which, 
 under the circumstances, seems to me uncalled 
 for — I am ready to submit some specimens of 
 those things that constitute my problem. They 
 can be only specimens, for a detailed account 
 of even half of those I have laid by would 
 stretch to the limits of a book. 
 
 Though all that has ever been claimed as 
 
96 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 true, under the general heads of hypnotism, 
 clairvoyance, clairaudience, and telepathy, 
 should be proved to be true beyond all ques- 
 tion, it is of course apparent that all of them 
 together would still fall far short of proving 
 the spiritualistic claim. For this claim is 
 nothing less than that those we call dead are 
 still alive, and that, at certain times and under 
 certain conditions, they both can and do com- 
 municate with persons still in the ordinary 
 body. 
 
 And yet, as the very first point in my prob- 
 lem, I wish to submit a case that I suppose 
 falls under the head of telepathy. Out of many 
 I choose this, for the following reasons : It is 
 unquestionably true. Names, dates, and all 
 details are accessible. The distance across 
 which the line of communication stretched was 
 enormous. The fact was not expected, and 
 could not have been anticipated. No ordinary 
 method of communication, not even the tele- 
 graph, was possible. It is not different in kind 
 from a thousand others ; but, like a taller 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 97 
 
 mountain among its fellows, it stands out with 
 peculiar distinctness as a remarkable specimen 
 of its kind. 
 
 A merchant ship, bound for New York, was 
 on her homeward voyage. She was in the 
 Indian Ocean. The captain was engaged to 
 be married to a lady living in New England. 
 One day, early in the afternoon, he came, pale 
 and excited, to one of his mates and exclaimed : 
 " Tom, Kate has just died ! I have seen her 
 die ! " The mate looked at him in amazement, 
 not knowing what to make of such talk. But 
 the captain went on and described the whole 
 scene — the room, her appearance, how she died, 
 and all the circumstances. So real was it to 
 him, and such was the effect on him of his grief 
 that, for two or three weeks, he was carefully 
 watched lest he should do violence to himself. 
 It was more than 150 days before the ship 
 reached her harbor. During all this time no 
 news was received from home. But when at 
 last the ship arrived at New York, it was found 
 that Kate did die at the time and under the 
 
98 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 circumstances seen and described by the captain 
 off the coast of India. 
 
 This is only one case out of hundreds. What 
 does it mean? Coincidence? Just happened 
 so ? This might be said of one case ; but a 
 hundred of such coincidences become inex- 
 plicable. Did some invisible intelligence con- 
 vey the news ? Did he really see her ? Or did 
 she, in that hour, reach out with such a longing 
 that she touched him half-way round the world? 
 
 Now, though this may fall far short of the 
 spiritualistic claim, does it not suggest some- 
 thing strange and generally unrecognized as to 
 the nature and power of mind ? If mind can, 
 under any conditions, or however rarely, assert 
 such a semi-independence of the body and of 
 the ordinary methods of communication, may 
 it not be able to go alone? I do not say or 
 think that such a supposition is proved by a 
 case like this ; but is it not at least suggested ? 
 When the Second Adventist told Emerson that 
 the world was coming to an end, he calmly 
 replied : " Well, I think I can get along 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 99 
 
 without it." Do not cases like the above at 
 least start the surmise as to whether these souls 
 of ours are not such as to be able to " get along 
 without it " ? 
 
 I pass now to such phenomena as are usually 
 classed under the head of Spiritualism. I shall 
 avoid the use of the word so far as possible, for 
 the reason that it assumes an explanation ; and 
 it is an explanation of which I am still in search. 
 I shall present specimens of three different 
 classes of manifestations. 
 
 1. And first, I note some of such as are 
 usually spoken of as " physical/' though I have 
 never seen any that were purely physical, for 
 the intelligence of somebody has always been 
 mixed with them. These physical experiments 
 are justly regarded with more suspicion than 
 are those of the higher order, because the op- 
 portunities for trickery are great, and they seem 
 to be more nearly on a level with the work of the 
 prestidigitator. But the conditions, the time, 
 the place, and one's capacity as an observer, 
 must be taken into account. Surely it is pos- 
 
100 PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 sible, at least in some cases, for one to know 
 what really happens. I will instance a few 
 cases, and the reader must judge. 
 
 I went to the house of a woman in New 
 York. She was not a professional. We had 
 never seen each other before. We took seats 
 in the parlor for a talk, I not looking for any 
 manifestation. Raps began. I do not say 
 whether they were really where they seemed to 
 be or not ; I know right well that the judgment 
 is subject to illusion through the senses. But 
 I was told a "spirit friend" was present; and 
 soon the name, time and place of death, etc., 
 were given me. It was the name of a friend 
 I had once known intimately. But twenty 
 years had passed since the old intimacy ; she 
 had lived in another State ; I am certain that 
 she and the psychic had never known or even 
 heard of each other. She had died within a 
 few months. 
 
 I have had several experiences that have 
 demonstrated to me that physical objects are 
 sometimes moved in a way that cannot be ac- 
 
PS Y CHICS : FA CTS AND THEORIES. 101 
 
 counted for by any muscular power, or by any 
 mere physical force with the workings of which 
 I am acquainted. I was sitting one evening at 
 the house of a friend, a lady whom I had known 
 for eight or ten years. Neither she nor her 
 husband was a Spiritualist ; but that which, for 
 want of a better name, we call psychic force, 
 was sometimes manifested in her presence. 
 Both she and her husband were simply inquir- 
 ers, as I was. At the end of the evening I rose 
 to go. Many inexplicable things had already 
 occurred. Then I thought I would try a simple 
 experiment. She and I stood at opposite sides 
 of the table at which we had been sitting. 
 Both of us having placed the tips of our fingers 
 lightly on the top of the table, I spoke, as if 
 addressing some unseen force connected with 
 the table, and said : " Now I must go ; will you 
 not accompany me to the door?" The door 
 was ten or fifteen feet distant and was closed. 
 The table started. It had no casters, and in 
 order to make it move as it did we should have 
 had to go behind and to push it. As a matter 
 
102 PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 of fact, we led it, while it accompanied us all 
 the way and struck against the door with con- 
 siderable force. I then lifted it and carried it 
 back into the middle of the room. My friend 
 then stood at the end of it opposite to me, while 
 I stood at some distance away, between it and 
 the door. I addressed it again, as though talk- 
 ing to an intelligent being, and said : " Will 
 you not lift for me the other end of the table ? " 
 My friend stood with only the tips of her fin- 
 gers touching the upper side of the table near 
 the end. Immediately the end of the table next 
 to her was lifted into the air, and the table went 
 through a motion as if bowing to me, bending 
 over as far as her arms could reach. In this 
 case, I might have been suspicious of some pos- 
 sible trick, but for two considerations. First, 
 I knew and trusted my friend ; secondly, I 
 could plainly see the hands, and knew that the 
 thumbs were not under the edge of the table. 
 Besides, I had learned before, under other con- 
 ditions, that this power of moving physical 
 objects did exist. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 103 
 
 I acid one more experiment of my own. I 
 sat one clay in a heavy stuffed arm-chair. The 
 psychic sat beside me, and laying his hand 
 on the back of the chair, gradually raised it. 
 Immediately I felt and saw myself, chair and 
 all, lifted into the air at least one foot from the 
 floor. There was no uneven motion implying 
 any sense of effort on the part of the lifting 
 force ; and I was gently lowered again to the 
 carpet. This was in broad light, in a hotel par- 
 lor, and in presence of a keen-eyed lawyer friend. 
 I could plainly watch the whole thing. No 
 man living could have lifted me in such a posi- 
 tion, and besides, I saw that the psychic made 
 not the slightest apparent effort. Nor was 
 there any machinery or preparation of any kind. 
 My companion, the lawyer, on going away, 
 speaking in reference to the whole sitting, said : 
 " I've seen enough evidence to hang every man 
 in the State — enough to prove anything except- 
 ing this ! " 
 
 Professor Crookes, of London, relates having 
 seen and heard an accordion played on while it 
 
104 PSFCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 was inclosed in a wire net-work and not touched 
 by any visible hand. I have seen an approach 
 to the same thing. In daylight, I have seen a 
 man hold an accordion in the air not more than 
 three feet away from me. He held it by one 
 hand, grasping the side opposite to that on 
 which the keys were fixed. In this position, 
 it, or something, played long tunes, the side 
 containing the keys being pushed in and drawn 
 out without any contact that I could see. I 
 then said : " Will it not play for me ? " The 
 reply was : " I don't know ; you can try it." 
 I then took the accordion in my hands. There 
 was no music ; but what did occur was quite as 
 inexplicable to me, and quite as convincing as 
 a display of some kind of power. I know not 
 how to express it, except by saying that the 
 accordion was seized ' as if by some one trying 
 to take it away from me. To test this power, 
 I grasped the instrument with both hands. The 
 struggle was as real as though my antagonist 
 were another man. I succeeded in keeping it, 
 but only by the most strenuous effort. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 105 
 
 On another occasion I was sitting with a 
 " medium." I was too far away for him to reach 
 me, even had he tried ; which he did not do, 
 for he sat perfectly quiet. My knees were not 
 under the table, but were where I could see 
 them plainly. Suddenly my right knee was 
 grasped as by a hand. It was a firm grip. I 
 could feel the print and pressure of all the 
 fingers. I said not a word of the strange sensa- 
 tion, but quietly put my right hand down and 
 clasped my knee, in order to see if I could feel 
 anything on my hand. At once I felt what 
 seemed like the most delicate finger tips play- 
 ~ag over my own fingers and gradually rising 
 in their touches toward my wrist. When this 
 was reached, I felt a series of clear, distinct, 
 and definite pats, as though made by a hand of 
 fleshy vigor. I made no motion to indicate 
 what was going on, and said not a word until 
 the sensation had passed. All this while I was 
 carefully watching my hand, for it was plain 
 daylight and all was in full view ; but I saw 
 nothing. 
 
106 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 If anybody will explain these things I shall 
 be very grateful, whether the explanation take 
 me to another world or leave me in this one. 
 
 I should like merely to suggest that, so far 
 as we know, the only force that under any 
 circumstances ever opposes or overcomes the 
 force of gravity, is will force, or some power 
 under the direction of intelligent will. If, there- 
 fore, a single pin's weight of matter is ever 
 moved contrary to the natural pull of gravity, 
 and the motion is not explainable by any of the 
 known forces of nature, we must in its presence 
 regard ourselves as standing on the border line 
 of some undiscovered power. If the signifi- 
 cance of such a fact is once appreciated, people 
 will hardly sneer at such things as unworthy, 
 undignified, or of no account even if true. 
 
 And when people ask me why this, and why 
 that, and why not something else, if anything 
 at all is going to happen, I have a ready reply. 
 The three great questions that the world is 
 always asking are, " What/' " How," and 
 " Why." Thus, science begins with What \ 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 107 
 
 this is observation of facts, the first step in 
 rational inquiry. Some of the world's Hows 
 we can answer ; this is the region of methods 
 and laws. But Why is a question that very 
 few people are ever able to answer in regard to 
 anything. It is wiser, then, to begin with the 
 What, and we should be thankful if we can get 
 as far as the How. Until I know more about 
 these, I will let the Why rest. 
 
 2. In the second place, I will cite some ex- 
 amples of psychic power more exclusively mental. 
 Here I am bewildered with the mass of material. 
 I confine myself, at present, to a certain class 
 of cases — those in which I have been told things 
 which I knew, but which I know the psychic 
 did not know. Such instances have been so 
 numerous in my experience that, like the tele- 
 phone and telegraph, they have become almost 
 commonplace. Of course they may be mind- 
 reading — if some one will only tell me what 
 mind-reading is. Since this may be telepathy, 
 I must be brief with them, as I have more 
 important cases still to relate. 
 
108 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 The first time I was ever in the presence of 
 a particular psychic, she went into a trance. 
 She had never seen, and so far as I know had 
 never had any way of hearing of, my father, 
 who had died some years previously. When I 
 was a boy he always called me by a special name 
 that was never used by any other member of 
 the family. In later years he hardly ever used 
 it. But the entranced psychic said : " An old 
 gentleman is here " ; and she described certain 
 very marked peculiarities. Then she added : 
 "He says he is your father, and he calls you 
 " using this old childhood name of mine. 
 
 On another occasion a friend went to the 
 same psychic, taking an unmarked lock of my 
 hair in an envelope. This envelope was put into 
 her hand after she had become entranced. She 
 not only at once told my name, but also details 
 of many occurrences that had taken place in my 
 study — things that were said and done, the 
 peculiar way in which the lock was cut off, and 
 the like. Nothing whatever had been said about 
 me, and there was nothing that, in the mind of 
 
PSYCHICS ; FACTS AND THEORIES. 109 
 
 the psychic, could have associated the visitor 
 with me. 
 
 One case more only will I mention under 
 this head. A most intimate friend of my youth 
 had recently died. She had lived in another 
 State, and the psychic did not know that such a 
 person had ever existed. We were sitting alone 
 when this old friend announced her presence. 
 It was in this way : A letter of two pages was 
 automatically written, addressed to me. I 
 thought to myself as I read it — I did not speak — 
 " Were it possible, I should feel sure she had 
 written this." I then said, as though speaking 
 to her : " Will you not give me your name ? " 
 It was given, both maiden and married name. 
 I then began a conversation lasting over an 
 hour, which seemed as real as any I ever have 
 with my friends. She told me of her children, 
 of her sisters. We talked over the events of 
 boyhood and girlhood. I asked her if she 
 remembered a book we used to read together, 
 and she gave me the author's name. I asked 
 again if she remembered the particular poem 
 
110 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 we were both specially fond of, and she, named 
 it at once. In the letter that was written, and 
 in much of the conversation, there were apparent 
 hints of identity, little touches and peculiarities 
 that would mean much to an acquaintance, but 
 nothing to a stranger. I could not but be 
 much impressed. 
 
 Now, in this case, I know that the psychic 
 never knew of this person's existence, and of 
 course not of our acquaintance. But I got 
 nothing that I did not know, and so I am not 
 sure that this went beyond the limits of tele- 
 pathy. But, if telepathy, it was entirely un- 
 conscious on the psychic's part. And in this 
 case there was no trance. I could fill a good- 
 sized book with cases of this sort. I will, 
 however, only set up an interrogation point 
 and pass on. 
 
 3. In the third place, I wish to offer two or 
 three typical cases in which the mystery, to my 
 mind, grows deeper still. In these instances 
 the information imparted was not known, and 
 could not have been known, either to the 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. HI 
 
 psychic or to myself, the only other person 
 present. It was afterward found to be true. 
 These are peculiarly interesting to me, because 
 I do not see how the theory of telepathy can 
 be so stretched as to include them. 
 
 As in some of the cases already described, I 
 was sitting with my psychic friend, who is not 
 a professional and whose powers are known 
 only to a few intimate friends. I will also say 
 of her that she does not always possess the 
 power, and has over it no voluntary control. 
 She simply sits and waits, and sometimes some- 
 thing occurs and sometimes nothing. 
 
 On one of these occasions a dead friend 
 claimed to be present. She had one living 
 sister, married and settled two hundred miles 
 from Boston. After the ordinary conversation, 
 it occurred to me to attempt a little test. I 
 had reason to suppose that, at the particular 
 time, the married sister was in another town 
 than that in which she resided ; so the bias of 
 my mind was in that way. I note this because 
 a mind-reader could not have <uven the answer 
 
112 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 I received. I asked this supposed " spirit " 
 friend if she knew where her sister was at that 
 hour. The answer came that she did not ; and 
 that she had no way of knowing, any more 
 than I had, unless she should go or send and 
 find out. Then I said : " Can you go or send 
 for me ? " I was told that she would try, and 
 was directed to wait. For fifteen minutes 
 everything was quiet. Then came a signal. 
 I asked what it meant, and got the reply that 
 it was my friend, who had returned. I said : 
 " Have you found out for me ? " The answer 
 was : " Yes ; she is at home in her own house. 
 She is getting ready to go out." 
 
 The reply was entirely contrary to my ex- 
 pectation, and the psychic knew nothing about 
 either of the parties concerned. I wrote a 
 letter at once to this sister of my dead friend, 
 and asked where she was and what she was 
 doing on this day and at this hour, telling her 
 I would explain later why I wanted to know. 
 In due course the answer came, saying : " I 
 was at home on that particular forenoon, and 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEORIES. 113 
 
 at about the hour you mention I made a call 
 on one of my neighbors." 
 
 At another sitting with the same psychic 
 friend, again there purported to be present the 
 " spirit " of a lady I had known for years. 
 Her father's family and mine had been intimate 
 when we were young. If still conscious, she 
 knew I was greatly interested in all that per- 
 tained to their welfare. She told me of a 
 sister married and living in another State. 
 She said : " Mary is in a great deal of trouble. 
 She is passing through the greatest sorrow of 
 her life. I wish I could make her know that 
 I care. I wish you would write to her." As 
 we talked the matter over, she explained it 
 to me, telling me \t first vaguely, as though 
 shrinking from speaking plainly, and then 
 more clearly, making me understand that the 
 husband was the cause of her sorrow. I had 
 not seen her husband more than once, and had 
 never dreamed that they were not happy. And 
 the psychic had never heard of any such people. 
 In this case, also, I wrote to the lady. I told 
 
114 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 her I would explain afterward, but for the 
 present asked her only to let me know if she 
 was in any special trouble ; and provided she 
 was, and the nature of it was such that she 
 could properly do so, to tell me what it was. 
 I received a reply, "private and confidential," 
 confirming everything that had been told me 
 in the privacy of my own study. And she 
 closed by asking me to burn the letter, adding 
 that she would not for the world have her 
 husband know that she had written it. 
 
 But one more case dare I take the space for, 
 though the budget is only opened. This one 
 did not happen to me; but it is so hedged 
 about and checked off that its evidential value 
 in a scientific way is absolutely perfect. The 
 names of some of the parties concerned would 
 be recognized in two hemispheres. A lady and 
 gentleman visited a psychic. The gentleman 
 was the lady's brother-in-law. The lady had 
 an aunt who was ill in a city two or three hun- 
 dred miles away. When the psychic had be- 
 come entranced, the lady asked her if she had 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 115 
 
 any impression as to the condition of her aunt. 
 The reply was, " No." But, before the sitting 
 was over, the psychic exclaimed : " Why, your 
 aunt is here ! She has already passed away." 
 " This cannot be true," said the lady ; " there 
 must be a mistake. If she had died, they 
 would have telegraphed us immediately." 
 " But," the psychic insisted, " she is here. 
 And she explains that she died about two 
 o'clock this morning. She also says a telegram 
 has been sent, and you will find it at the house 
 on your return." 
 
 Here seemed a clear case for a test. So, 
 while the lady started for home, her brother-in- 
 law called at the house of a friend and told the 
 story. While there, the husband came in. 
 Having been away for some hours he had not 
 heard of any telegram. But the friend seated 
 himself at his desk and wrote out a careful 
 account, which all three signed on the spot. 
 When they reached home — two or three miles 
 away — there was the telegram confirming the 
 
116 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 fact and the time of the aunt's death, precisely 
 as the psychic had told them. 
 
 Here are most wonderful facts. How shall 
 they be accounted for ? I have not trusted 
 memory for these things, but have made care- 
 ful record at the time. I know many other 
 records of a similar kind kept by others. They 
 are kept private. Why ? Sometimes it is for 
 fear of being thought superstitious ; at other 
 times it is because of a wish to avoid wound- 
 ing the feelings of friends who, for religious 
 or other reasons, are opposed to these things. 
 Then, again, the communications are of so 
 personal a nature that they are spoken of only 
 to intimate friends. 
 
 Psychic and other societies that advertise for 
 reports of strange phenomena must learn that 
 at least a respectful treatment is to be accorded 
 or people will not lay bare their secret souls. 
 And then, in the very nature of the case, these 
 experiences concern matters of the most per- 
 sonal nature. Many of the most striking cases 
 people will not make public. In some of those 
 above related, I have had so to veil facts that 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 117 
 
 they do not appear as remarkable as they really 
 are. The whole cannot be told. 
 
 Of course I have detailed only successful ex- 
 periments. At many a sitting I have gotten 
 simply nothing. Many times things have been 
 told me that were not true : many times I could 
 not find out whether they were true or not. 
 Large numbers of so-called "mediums" are 
 impostors, smart knaves, finding it easier to 
 trick for a living than to work for it. Not 
 only is there much of fraud, but there is also 
 a large amount of self-delusion, on the part 
 both of psychics and sitters. There is no 
 end of misinterpretation of things that actu- 
 ally occur. They are made to mean all sorts 
 of things that they need not mean at all. 
 But all this ought not to lead the careful 
 student to disregard one genuine fact, however 
 small it may appear. Each case is to be taken 
 by itself. Scientific men know the value of 
 even slight things. If it be a fact, place must 
 be made for it, and an explanation found if 
 possible. 
 
118 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 
 
 When I began this article I intended to 
 offer some carefully-verified cases of vision on 
 the part of both the dying and the living, as 
 well as some instances of the appearances of 
 those newly dead to friends at a distance. Of 
 the first I have seen some most remarkable, 
 where the dying person, along with those 
 known to be dead, suddenly recognized some 
 one supposed to be still living, expressing the 
 greatest astonishment at seeing this one with 
 the others. Of the second, I have cases occur- 
 ring in the experience of personal friends, which 
 I have so carefully verified that I do not know 
 how to get rid of them or to disregard them. 
 But I must pass them by for the present. 
 
 I have given only selected specimens out of 
 a large collection. I do not know what they 
 mean ; but I believe that the statements I have 
 made are true. Some reader will doubtless 
 sneer. Some will say " crank." Some will 
 think the writer easily " gulled." But, if not 
 this year, at some time, a wiser person will 
 explain them. Then, if we do not know any 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. U\) 
 
 more about any next world, perhaps we may 
 have an extension of our knowledge about this 
 one. It is a great universe, and a strange 
 one. We are strange beings, and as yet know 
 but little as to our own selves. Only the shal- 
 lowest think they know it all. 
 
320 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 I have now given my readers a large 
 number of facts. But facts are worth little 
 unless one knows what to do with them. Aris- 
 totle was in possession of certain facts, and 
 from them he argued that the earth was a 
 sphere ; but for hundreds of years after his time 
 the wise men of the world came to quite other 
 conclusions. This was either because they 
 were not wise enough to comprehend their sig- 
 nificance, or, as was more commonly the case, 
 because they were dominated by some bias that 
 led them to adopt a contrary theory. It is 
 this latter thing that stands more in the way of 
 truth than does ignorance itself. In religion, 
 in politics, in political economy, in all direc- 
 tions there are facts enough ; but the majority 
 of people are prepossessed by theories which 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 121 
 
 hinder their seeing the real meaning of the 
 facts. 
 
 I shall then have rendered a very incomplete 
 service to those who have taken note of my 
 facts if I stop with these. It remains for me 
 therefore to indicate the present status of 
 psychical inquiry, and to point out what seems 
 to me the significance of my facts. I do not 
 claim to be so wise here that my conclusions 
 will be free of all error, but without immodesty 
 I can claim one thing : I am not dominated by 
 any theory, and am under no bias to come 
 to any particular conclusion. Indeed, I have 
 reached a point in my thinking where I find it 
 hard to comprehend how any sane man should 
 even wish to discover anything but the truth. 
 I know there are such people, because they 
 have told me that they were content with their 
 present beliefs, and even though they were 
 wrong, they did not want to find it out. But 
 I do not wish to be even pleasantly fooled. I 
 wish to know the truth and adjust myself to it. 
 
 I cannot, indeed, agree with those who say 
 
V22 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 that, if there be no other life, this present life 
 is not worth having. For — 
 
 — When I look upon the laughing face 
 Of children, or on woman's gentle grace ; 
 Or when I grasp a true friend by the hand, 
 And feel a bond I partly understand ; 
 When mountains thrill me, or when by the sea 
 The plaintive waves rehearse their mystery ; 
 Or when I watch the moon with strange delight 
 Treading her pathway 'mid the stars at night ; 
 Or when the one I love, with kisses prest, 
 I clasp with bliss unspoken to my breast ; — 
 So strange, so deep, so wondrous, life appears, 
 I have no words, but only happy tears. 
 I cannot think it all shall end in naught ; 
 That the abyss shall be the grave of thought ; 
 That °'er oblivion's shoreless sea shall roll 
 O'er love and wonder and the lifeless soul. 
 But e'en though this the end, I cannot say 
 I'm sorry I have seen the light of day. 
 So wondrous seems this life I live to me, 
 Whate'er the end, to-day I have and see ; 
 To-day I think and hope : and so for this, — 
 If this be all, — for just so much of bliss, 
 Bliss blended through with pain, I bless the Power 
 That holds me up to gaze one wondrous hour ! 
 
 If, then, this is all, I want to know it and 
 make the most of it. If it is only the begin- 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND II1E011IES. 123 
 
 ning, I want to know that, and lay out my life 
 on a scale proportioned to the magnificence of 
 its possibilities. And I can conceive of no 
 knowledge that for one moment matches this 
 in importance. 
 
 Before treating the present standing of 
 psychical inquiry, it is needful to note certain 
 preceding conditions of human thought out of 
 which present conditions have been evolved. 
 In the pre-critical and unscientific ages, the be- 
 lief in continued existence and some sort of in- 
 tercourse between spirits and mortals was practi- 
 cally universal. In the general ignorance of nat- 
 ural laws, people were not troubled by questions 
 of possible or impossible. All forces and hap- 
 penings were interpreted in terms of will or cap- 
 rice ; and the supernatural presented no difficulty 
 because there was, in their minds, no natural 
 order. There being no standards of proba- 
 bility, what to-day is meant by proof was not 
 only not demanded, it was not even understood. 
 The journey of Odysseus to Hades was as be- 
 lievable as was the voyage of the latest Phoeni- 
 
124 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 cian navigator. The appearance of spirits, 
 messages from the invisible world, and celestial 
 or demoniac interferences with human affairs 
 were a part of all religions and of daily life. 
 The Bibles of all peoples and all ancient litera- 
 tures are abundant witnesses to these facts. If 
 any one wishes to come in personal contact 
 with this condition of the human mind, he need 
 not go further than to the devout Catholic 
 servants of his own household. 
 
 As children now are afraid of the dark, the 
 lonely, the mysterious, so it was natural that in 
 the childhood of the world men should be afraid 
 of the invisible. They were in terror at the 
 thought of the possible return of even their 
 most intimate friends. The gods themselves 
 were not regarded as over kind, and their wrath 
 must be placated or their favor purchased by 
 gifts. Perhaps, therefore, it is not strange that 
 these feelings linger still. Most people to-day, 
 like Madame de Stael, are afraid of ghosts even 
 though they do not believe in them ; and there 
 are few who are brave enough to spend a night 
 
PSYCHICS : FACTS AND THEOBIES. 125 
 
 alone in the room with the body of the one 
 they have loved best in all the world. This 
 state of mind makes it exceedingly difficult for 
 people to treat these psychical investigations 
 in a rational way. Among those who believe 
 that "the dead" are still alive, there is a gen- 
 eral impression that the fact of death has pro- 
 duced some marvellous and magical change so 
 that they are real human folks no longer. 
 The imagination is full of either angels or 
 devils, so that they are troubled with all sorts 
 of theories as to what is fitting or becoming, 
 instead of being ready to note facts first and 
 then see what they mean afterwards. 
 
 But as one of the results of modern science, 
 there has been, in the minds of the learned, a 
 violent reaction against the superstitions or 
 over-beliefs of the past. This is entirely healthy, 
 provided science itself does not become a super- 
 stition. But a scientific theory may become 
 as serious a barrier against the acceptance of a 
 new truth as vulgar prejudice itself. Witness 
 the scientific authority of Newton as it blinds 
 
126 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 the eyes of the learned to the truth of Young' s 
 theory of light, or note the attitude of Agassiz 
 in the matter of evolution. Professor Huxley 
 has written, with all his power of sarcasm, 
 against modern spiritualism. And yet Profes- 
 sor Wallace, at least his peer in scientific 
 eminence, told me that he had repeatedly tried to 
 get Huxley to join him in investigating these 
 matters, and he would not. To the mind of 
 the ultra-scientist all these stories of the child- 
 hood world are so childish that they are to be 
 rejected in the lump, without being accorded 
 even the dignity of an investigation. I agree 
 with this scientific reaction to the extent of 
 holding that they are all to be put aside and 
 labelled " Not proved " ; that is, the basis on 
 which they rest, whether in Bibles or out of 
 Bibles, is inadequate, and does not in any case 
 amount to demonstration. But it is going 
 away beyond any truly scientific warrant to 
 say that none of them may be true. And if, in 
 the modern world, any similar stories should be 
 scientifically established as true, then it would 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 127 
 
 be fully in accord with the scientific method to 
 reconsider all or any one of these traditional 
 stories, and estimate the degree of probability 
 in its favor. 
 
 Curiously various and contradictory have 
 been the positions of different classes of think- 
 ers and of those who do not think in the 
 modern world. One class has held that all 
 these things were childish and superstitious, 
 and that only ignorant or flighty people could 
 take any stock in them. Members of this class 
 smile wisely, not to say superciliously, when 
 any of these matters are mentioned. It is this 
 attitude of the " Unco " wise (for there is an 
 " unco " wise as well as an " unco guid ") 
 which led a philosopher, known in two hemis- 
 pheres, to say to me : " Well, Savage, suppose we 
 become convinced that these things are true, it 
 will only be a couple more cranks.'" Then there 
 are the ordinary Protestant Christians, who ac- 
 cept such stories as are told in the Bible, and 
 reject all others, whether ancient or modern. 
 Of course this is a matter of religious " faith," 
 
128 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 not reason. Again, there are the Catholics, 
 who believe not only the stories told in the 
 Bible, but all such as are indorsed by the 
 Church, either in mediaeval or modern times. 
 Once more, there are the Swedenborgians, who 
 accept the stories of their founder. They also 
 believe in the possibility of spirit intercourse 
 to-day, but hold it unwise if not dangerous. 
 Then there are men like the late Professor Aus- 
 tin Phelps of Andover, who "know" that 
 spirits do interfere with human affairs, but 
 believe that they are always evil spirits. Per- 
 haps it is consistent with that theology which 
 he represented, to believe that God will permit 
 devils to overrun the earth, but forbid the good 
 spirits to make their presence known. Such, 
 then, are some of the points of view from which 
 these matters have been regarded up to the 
 time when they began to be approached in a 
 rational and scientific manner. 
 
 It is doubtless due to the experiments of 
 Mesmer in France, and the Rochester rappings 
 that the era of scientific psychical research has 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 129 
 
 at last been reached. I do not at all mean to 
 say that the former were the cause, in the 
 ordinary sense of the word, of the latter. I only 
 mean that mesmerism and spiritualism, with 
 then* allied phenomena, resulted at last in such 
 a widespread and popular interest in the prob- 
 lems involved as to lead certain people to feel 
 that the question was worthy of serious atten- 
 tion and ought not longer to be postponed. 
 The attitude of Professor Henry Sidgwick of 
 Cambridge, England, the great writer on ethics 
 indicates what I mean. In his first address as 
 president of the English Society for Psychical 
 Research, he declared it to be " a scandal " 
 that a matter of so great importance, and in- 
 volving the life interests of so many people, 
 was not scientifically investigated and settled ; 
 and the first time that so significant a thing 
 ever occurred, Professor Oliver Lodge of Liver- 
 pool, in his address as president of the Physi- 
 cal and Mathematical Section of the British 
 Association for the Advancement of Science, 
 
 only last year, took similar ground, and chal- 
 
 9 
 
130 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 lenged the attention and interest of the leading 
 scientific men of Great Britain. 
 
 Men had come to feel, in view of the fact 
 that so many thousands uncritically accepted 
 the claims of spiritualism on the one hand, and 
 so many were hungry for a belief that their 
 reasons forbade, on the other, that the truth, 
 if possible, ought to be known. They saw 
 that either thousands of people were deluded, 
 and that it was worth while to help them out 
 of their delusion, or that something was true 
 which might comfort and help other thousands 
 who stood helpless and hopeless in the presence 
 of " the great mystery." It Avas out of such 
 convictions that the movement for psychical 
 research was born. 
 
 Every little while, still, some presumably wise 
 scientific man sneers at the whole thing, and 
 treats the search as though it were on a level 
 with the " Hunting of the Snark." A certain 
 class of newspapers also treat it as though it 
 were fair game for the jester's column, classing 
 the "spook" and the sea serpent as equally 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 131 
 
 legitimate prey for the limp-minded humorist 
 of the " silly season." It will not therefore be 
 time thrown away if we spend a little in con- 
 sidering as to whether psychical research is 
 really a rational scientific inquiry. 
 
 There are two great universe theories, some 
 variety of one or other of which we all hold. 
 One is the materialistic theory, which teaches 
 that in some way life is the outcome of matter, 
 the product of organization. It is generally 
 supposed to be the necessary consequence of 
 this theory that the conscious life of the in- 
 dividual ceases with the death of the visible 
 body. I have not been quite able to see why, 
 however, for there may be an invisible body ; 
 and if matter is able to produce a conscious, 
 thinking person, who is wise enough to say 
 that this same matter may not be able to con- 
 tinue the life in some invisible form ? For it 
 seems to me that Thomas Paine did not at all 
 exceed the bounds of reason when he said, " It 
 appears more probable to me that I shall con- 
 tinue to exist hereafter, than that I should have 
 
132 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 existence, as I now have, before that existence 
 began." 
 
 But whatever may be the truth of this, the 
 old, crude theories of materialism are anti- 
 quated, and Si dead matter " is philosophically 
 and scientifically unknown. The only mate- 
 rialists to-day are a few belated survivals, fossils 
 of a bygone period of human thought. Even 
 Clifford, before he died, was talking of " mind- 
 stuff " as connected with matter. Haeckol, the 
 nearest to a materialist of any great living 
 thinker, must have his " atom-souls " in order 
 to account for facts. Schopenhauer must have 
 his " world-will," and Hartmann his " Uncon- 
 scious" with a capital U. Huxley, though the 
 inventor of the term " Agnostic," declares that 
 sooner than accept the old materialism he could 
 adopt the ultra-idealism of Bishop Berkeley. 
 And Herbert Spencer, easily prince of them 
 all, says that the one thing we know, more 
 certainly than we know any isolated or individ- 
 ual fact, is the existence of the one Eternal 
 Energy back of all phenomena, and of which 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 133 
 
 all phenomena are only partial manifestations. 
 Materialism, then, is dead, and spiritualism 
 (of course I am using the term philosophically 
 now) is taking its place. This theory puts 
 life back of form, and makes it the cause, and 
 not the product, of organization. This does 
 not teach that man has a soul. That sort of 
 talk belongs to the old theology : — 
 
 " A charge to keep I have, 
 A God to glorify ; 
 A never-dying soul to save 
 And fit it for the sky." 
 
 If man is thought of as " having " a soul 
 which he may " lose," it is but a step to think- 
 ing of him as a being independent of his soul, 
 and as getting along without it. This theory 
 rather teaches that man is a soul, and has a 
 body ; and on that theory, it is purely a rational 
 question as to whether he may not be able to 
 get along without the present and visible body. 
 
 And here we need to note to what an extent 
 we are the fools of our eyes and ears. It is 
 common to imagine that we can see all that is, 
 
134 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 if only it is near enough to us, and that we can 
 hear all " sounds " that are not too far away. 
 As matter of fact, it is only the very smallest 
 part of the real world of things about us that 
 we are able either to see or hear. Vibrations 
 that reach a certain number in a second pro- 
 duce an effect on the eye which, when trans- 
 mitted to the brain is, in some way, quite in- 
 comprehensible to us, transformed into vision. 
 When these vibrations pass a certain other 
 number in rapidity, then they lose the power to 
 produce the sense of seeing. It is then only 
 within very narrow limits that we see ; while 
 on both sides of these limits there is a practical 
 infinity that to us is invisible, though no whit 
 less real than that which we speak of as seeing. 
 And all the while it isn't the eye, nor the brain, 
 nor any visible thing that sees even the com- 
 monest object ; it is the I, the self, the soul 
 only that ever sees. A precisely similar thing 
 is true of hearing. 
 
 It is not science, but only shallow sciolism 
 that assumes that our present senses are a meas- 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 135 
 
 ure of the universe. Men like Professor Crookes 
 and Nicola Tesla are already on the eve of phys- 
 ical discoveries that promise to reveal to us 
 forms and conditions of matter quite unlike 
 those with which we are already familiar. For 
 anything at present known to the contrary, the 
 soul or the self may emerge from the experi- 
 ence we call death with a body as real and much 
 more completely alive than the present visible 
 body, and which shall yet be invisible, inau- 
 dible, and intangible to our ordinary senses. 
 
 Indeed " spirit photography," whether true or 
 not, is not at all absurd or scientifically impos- 
 sible in the nature of things. The sensitized 
 plate can " see " better than the ordinary human 
 eye, for it can photograph an "invisible" star. 
 It may then photograph an invisible " spiritual 
 body," provided any such body really exists. 
 
 As to the possible existence of a " spiritual " 
 world in the neighborhood of the earth, I need 
 only quote Young, who lived not long after 
 Newton, and who is the famous scientist who 
 discovered and demonstrated the present uni' 
 
136 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 versally accepted theory of light. Jevons, m 
 his " Principles of Science " (Third edition, 
 Macmillan & Company, 1879), page 516, says, 
 " We cannot deny even the strange suggestion 
 of Young, that there may be independent worlds, 
 some possibly existing in different parts of 
 space, but others perhaps pervading each other, 
 unseen and unknown in the same space." It 
 is not scientific wisdom, then, but only scien- 
 tific ignorance or prejudice that supposes that 
 the student engaged in the work of psychical 
 research need apologize to science. There is 
 nothing which his work pre-supposes that in 
 any way whatever contradicts any established 
 principle or verified conclusion of science. 
 
 In the light of these facts, and considering 
 the character and the learning of those engaged 
 in the work, it is time that the silly attitude to- 
 ward it were given up. The time is passing 
 away when such a remark as the following should 
 be possible. The Reverend J. G. Wood was a 
 clergyman of the Church of England, and a 
 world-famous naturalist. As the result of years 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 137 
 
 of careful investigation, he became a firm be- 
 liever in the " spirit " world, and in communi- 
 cation between that world and this. Some years 
 ago he was in Boston, giving a course of lec- 
 tures before the Lowell Institute. In conver- 
 sation with him at that time, he spoke freely of 
 his experiences, and told me stories as wonder- 
 ful as any I have ever heard. He said : " I do 
 not talk about these things with everybody. 1 
 used to think anybody who had anything to do 
 with them was a fool, and " — he added with a 
 look that told of frequent contact with the 
 " unco " wise — " / do not enjoy being called a 
 fool" It is time, I say, that this sort of thing 
 were gone by. The wise man whose whole 
 stock in trade on this subject is an ignorance 
 only less than his prejudice, will soon learn that 
 it is not entirely scientific to " know all about" 
 a matter about which he really knows nothing 
 at all. 
 
 This, then, is a subject as fairly open to 
 scientific investigation as is the germ theory of 
 disease, or the present condition of the planet 
 
138 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 Mars. It is purely a question of fact and evi- 
 dence. 
 
 I had begun a careful study of these questions 
 when as yet there was no English Society for 
 Psychical Research. Before touching on the 
 work that has been done, and the theories pro- 
 pounded since that organization, I wish to say 
 a few things concerning my own personal atti- 
 tude. I do this, not because I imagine that 
 my own motives and actions are of any public 
 importance in themselves ; but in one way they 
 may be of a good deal of importance to those 
 who may be interested in the work I have done, 
 and the conclusions I have reached in the 
 matter of psychical study. If, in the case of 
 the so-called exact sciences, — like the work of 
 observation in astronomy, — the " personal equa- 
 tion " has to be taken account of, much more 
 is it necessary in studies like these, where ex- 
 perience, power of exact observation, motive, 
 and purpose may either practically assure or 
 vitiate results. Since then I have ventured to 
 lay before the public so large a number of 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 139 
 
 cases, my readers have a right to know so much 
 of my personal attitude and methods as will 
 help them to estimate the value of these cases. 
 
 My evangelical training had prepared me to 
 look upon all these things with suspicion. I 
 believed the whole business to be either fraud 
 or delusion or " nerves." I do not think I 
 traced it to the devil, as so many others did, 
 but I felt sure that it had "better be let alone. " 
 I felt towards it as all the "respectable" people 
 of Jerusalem and Corinth and Rome felt towards 
 Christianity — that at best it was "a pestilent 
 superstition." On the basis of " invincible 
 ignorance/' I once delivered a scathing lecture 
 against it, and perhaps wondered a little that 
 certain obstinate people still continued to be- 
 lieve in it after I was done. 
 
 But about seventeen years ago, a year or so 
 after coming to Boston, the father of one of 
 my parishioners died. Soon after she came to 
 me, saying she had been with a friend to con- 
 sult a " medium." As she thought, certain 
 very striking things had been told her, and she 
 
140 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 wished my counsel and advice. Then it came 
 to me with a shock that I had no business to 
 offer advice on a subject concerning which my 
 entire stock of preparation consisted of a 
 bundle of prejudices. Then I began to reflect 
 that this one parishioner was not alone in want- 
 ing advice on this subject ; and I said to my- 
 self, whether this be truth or delusion, it is 
 equally important that I know about it so as 
 to be the competent adviser of those who come 
 to me for direction. I should have felt ashamed 
 to have had no opinion on the Old Testament 
 theophanies or the New Testament stories of 
 spirit appearances or demoniacal possessions. 
 Why should I pride myself on my ignorance 
 of matters of far more practical importance to 
 my people ? As a part of my equipment for 
 the ministry, then, I said to myself, T must 
 study these things until I have at least an in- 
 telligent opinion. Such, then, were the cir- 
 cumstances and motives that led to my pro- 
 longed investigation. 
 
 Since then I have improved every available 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 141 
 
 opportunity to study these things. I have had 
 no prurient curiosity as to any other possible 
 world, neither have I made it my chief object 
 to see if I could set into communication with 
 personal friends. I have studied these phenom- 
 ena, first, as bearing on the nature and powers 
 of the mind, as here embodied, and then with 
 a view to finding out if any proof could be ob- 
 tained that personal, conscious existence sur- 
 vives the experience we call death. For only 
 a superficial knowledge of the drift of popular 
 opinion is needed to show that if the belief in 
 a future life is to continue as a life-motive 
 among men, it must be based on something 
 more recent and authentic than a shifting 
 ecclesiastical tradition two thousand years old. 
 The Catholic church is wise enough to see this. 
 And the attitude of the Protestant church is a 
 curiously inconsistent one, particularly when 
 one remembers that the " facts " on which it 
 relies are of precisely a similar kind to the 
 modern ones it contemptuously rejects. 
 
 In my studies I have sought faithfully to 
 
142 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 follow the scientific method, which I regard as 
 the only method of knowledge. By careful 
 observation and rigid experiment I have tried, 
 first, to be sure that I have discovered a fact. 
 Of this fact I have made a record at the time. 
 I have paid no attention to results apparently 
 obtained in the dark, or in circumstances where 
 I could not be certain as to what was taking 
 place. I have not' said that all these were 
 fraud, but I have never given them weight as 
 evidence. I have made a study of sleight of 
 hand, and am quite aware of all the possibilities 
 of trickery. But to imitate an occurrence, 
 under other conditions, is not to duplicate a 
 fact. The larger number of those occurrences 
 which have actually influenced my belief have 
 taken place in the presence of long-tried per- 
 sonal friends, and not with professional " me- 
 diums " at all. 
 
 When at last I have been sure of a fact, I 
 have stretched and strained all known methods 
 and theories in the attempt to explain it without 
 resorting to any supposed " spiritual " agency. 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 143 
 
 I say " spiritual " and not supernatural, for I 
 do not believe in any supernatural. In my 
 conception of the universe whatever is, is 
 natural. If "spirits" exist, their invisibility 
 does not make them supernatural any more 
 than the atom of science is to be regarded as 
 supernatural for a similar reason. And when 
 at last I discovered facts which I am utterly 
 unable to explain without supposing the pres- 
 ence and agency of invisible intelligences, 
 even then I have not positively taken that step. 
 For the present, at least, I only wait. The 
 facts will keep ; and if the wisdom of the world 
 is able to discover any other explanation, I am 
 quite ready to accept it. Stronger than my 
 desire to conquer death is my desire not to be 
 fooled, or to be the means, ever so honestly, of 
 leading astray any who might put their trust 
 in my conclusions ; but I have discovered facts 
 which I cannot explain, and they seem to point 
 directly to the conclusion that the self does not 
 die, and that it is, in certain conditions, able to 
 communicate with those still in the flesh. It 
 
144 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 may be proper to add here that the leading 
 man in the English Society for Psychical 
 Research, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, has published 
 the fact that, as the result of his investigations, 
 he has become convinced of " continued per- 
 sonal existence and of at least occasional com- 
 munication." The secretary of the American 
 Branch of the English Society, Mr. Richard 
 Hodgson, LL.D., has given to the world a 
 similar conviction. 
 
 It is time now for me to indicate certain 
 results which I regard as well established. 
 There will be no room here for detail. For 
 illustration, and for cases other than those I 
 have already given, the reader is referred to 
 reports and books published by the English 
 Society. What, then, are some of the results? 
 
 1. Mesmerism, under its new name of hyp- 
 notism, is now recognized by all competent 
 investigators. Not only this, but it is being 
 resorted to in the treatment of disease by the 
 best physicians of France, Germany, England, 
 and America. It is found that it can be used 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 145 
 
 in surgical operations as an anaesthetic, in place 
 of ether. In the hypnotic state many strange 
 phenomena sometimes appear, such as the dual 
 personality, clairvoyance and clairaudience, that 
 lead the student into other departments of 
 psychical research. 
 
 2. Clairvoyance and clairaudience are well 
 established. This means that, in certain con- 
 ditions, people can see without their eyes and 
 hear without their ears. Facts like these do 
 not take one " out of the body," but they do 
 suggest, with somewhat startling force, the 
 query as to whether the mind is necessarily so 
 dependent on our ordinary senses as is com- 
 monly supposed. 
 
 3. Next comes telepathy, or mind reading. 
 
 It is found that communication of thoughts, 
 
 feelings, and even events in detail, is possible 
 
 between minds separated by distances ranging 
 
 from a few feet to thousands of miles. It is 
 
 suggested that the explanation may be found 
 
 in the theory of ethereal vibrations set up by 
 
 the activity of the brain particles whose motion 
 
 10 
 
146 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 accompanies all thought and feeling; but in anj 
 case the facts are none the less wonderful. 
 
 4. Next come what are ordinarily classed 
 together as "mediumistic phenomena." The 
 most important of these are psyehometry, 
 " vision" of "spirit" forms, claimed communi- 
 cations, by means of rappings, table movements, 
 automatic writing, independent writing, trance 
 speaking, etc. With them also ought to be 
 noted what are generally called physical phenom- 
 ena, though in most cases, since they are 
 intelligibly directed, the use of the word 
 "physical," without this qualification, might 
 be misleading. These physical phenomena 
 include such facts as the movement of material 
 objects by other than the ordinary muscular 
 force, the making objects heavier or lighter 
 when tested by the scales, the playing on 
 musical instruments by some invisible power, 
 etc. I pass by the question of " materialization," 
 because I have never seen any under such con- 
 ditions as rendered fraud impossible. I do not 
 feel called on to say that all I have ever seen 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 147 
 
 was fraudulent ; I only say that it might have 
 been. Consequently, I cannot treat it as evi- 
 dence of anything beyond the possible ingenuity 
 of the professionals. 
 
 Now all of these referred to (with the excep- 
 tion of independent writing and materialization) 
 I know to be genuine. I do not at all mean 
 by this that I know that the " spiritualistic " 
 interpretation of them is the true one. I mean 
 only that they are genuine phenomena ; that 
 they have occurred ; that they are not tricks or 
 the result of fraud. I am not saying (for I 
 must be very explicit here) that imitations of 
 them may not be given by fraudulent "mediums" 
 or by the prestidigitator; but that they are 
 genuine phenomena, in many cases, I have 
 proved over and over again. I ought to say a 
 special word here in regard to slate writing. I 
 put this one side, because I know it can be 
 done in many ways as a trick. More than once 
 have I detected a trick as being palmed off on 
 me for genuine ; but it is only fair to say that 
 T have had experiences of this sort when I 
 
148 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 could not discover any trick, and in conditions 
 where it seemed impossible. I leave it out of 
 present account only because I do not feel 
 justified in saying I know, as I do feel justified 
 in saying in regard to most of the others. 
 
 But a thousand experiences of these kinds 
 may occur, and yet find a possible explanation 
 without crossing the borders of the possible 
 " spirit " world. Psychometry, visions, voices, 
 table movements, automatic writing, trance 
 speaking — all these may be accounted for by 
 some unusual activity of the mind as embodied. 
 They may throw great and new light on the 
 powers and possibilities of the mind here, and 
 yet not lead us to the land of " spirits.' ' 
 
 But — and here is the crucial point to be 
 noted — by any one of these means a com- 
 munication may be made that cannot be 
 accounted for as the result of the mental activ- 
 ity of any one of the persons visibly present. 
 Was the statement made such as was known, 
 or might ever have been known, by any of the 
 (visible) persons present ? In that case, the 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 149 
 
 cautious and conscientious investigator will feel 
 compelled to hunt for an explanation on this 
 side of the border. For since mind-reading is 
 a known cause, he will resort to that as long as 
 he can, and only go further when absolutely 
 compelled to do so. But if none of the people 
 (visibly) present ever knew or ever could have 
 known the communicated fact, then what ? 
 
 It seems to me that the Rubicon, whether 
 ever crossed or not, is here. This, therefore, 
 calls for clear discussion by itself ; but one 
 other point, not yet sufficiently noted, needs to 
 be disposed of first. When enumerating some 
 of the phenomena called " mediumistic," I re- 
 ferred to the movement of material objects in 
 a way not be explained by muscular force, and 
 to musical instruments played on by some in- 
 visible power. Is there any way to account for 
 these without supposing the presence and 
 agency of some invisible intelligence ? I 
 frankly confess I do not know of any; and 
 here let me refer to the opinion of Dr. Elliott 
 Coues. For years he was connected with the 
 
150 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 Smithsonian Institution in Washington ; and 
 a professor there is a personal friend of mine. 
 He is, if not a materialist, an out and out 
 agnostic I asked him one day as to the scien- 
 tific standing of Professor Coues, leaving out of 
 account what he regarded as his "vagaries" 
 in connection with psychical matters. He re- 
 plied that he was " one of the ablest and most 
 brilliant scientific men in Europe or America." 
 Professor Coues then has said — I quote from 
 memory — " All material objects are under the 
 power of gravity. If, then, any particle of 
 matter, though no larger than a pin's head, be 
 moved in such a way as not to be explained by 
 purely physical forces, this fact marks the bound- 
 ary line between the material and the spiritual, 
 between force and will." 
 
 But now for a brief consideration of the most 
 important psychical cases with which I am ac- 
 quainted. More than once I have been told 
 by a psychic (and in the most important cases 
 of all the psychic was not a professional) cer- 
 tain things that neither the psychic nor myself 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEOBIES. 151 
 
 knew, had known, or (in the nature of the 
 case) could by any possibility ever have known. 
 These communications claimed to come from 
 an old-time and intimate friend who had 
 " died " within three months. The facts were 
 matters which mutually concerned us, and 
 which she would have been likely to have 
 spoken of if it were possible. There was an 
 air of naturalness and verisimilitude about the 
 whole experience, though some parts of it were 
 so "personal" as to render it impossible to 
 publish the whole case, and so make it as forc- 
 ible to others as it was to me. 
 
 Now, will somebody tell me what I am to do 
 with facts like these ? In one or two cases 
 the facts communicated to me concerned 
 happenings, mental conditions, and spiritual 
 suffering in another state, two hundred miles 
 away. I wish to note briefly the ordinary at- 
 tempts at explanation and see if they appear to 
 be adequate. 
 
 1. Guess-work; coincidence; it happened so. 
 This might be true of one ca^e, however extra- 
 
152 PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 
 
 ordinary ; but when you are dealing with sev- 
 eral cases, the theory of guess-work or coinci- 
 dence becomes more wonderful than the origi- 
 nal fact. 
 
 2. Clairvoyance. But my friend, the non- 
 professional psychic, has no clairvoyant power; 
 and, besides, clairvoyant power does not ordi- 
 narily reach so far, nor does it deal with mental 
 and moral states and sufferings. 
 
 3. Telepathy. But this is based on sympathy 
 between the two persons concerned, and deals 
 with something in which they are mutually 
 interested. But my friend, the psychic, not 
 only was no friend of the parties concerned ; 
 she did not even know that any such persons 
 were in existence. 
 
 4. As a last resort, it has been suggested 
 that we are surrounded by, or immersed in, a 
 sort of universal mind which is a reservoir con- 
 taining all knowledge ; and that, in some mys- 
 terious way, the psychic unconsciously taps this 
 reservoir, and so astonishes herself and others 
 with facts, the origin of which is untraceable 
 
PSYCHICS: FACTS AND THEORIES. 153 
 
 and unknown. But this seems to me explana- 
 tion with a vengeance ! The good old lady, 
 after reading " Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress " 
 with " Scott's Explanatory Notes," said she 
 understood everything except the notes. So in 
 this case, it seems to me we might conceivably 
 explain everything except the explanation. No, 
 I must wait still longer. Unless my friend was 
 there telling me these things, I confess I do no,, 
 know how to account for them. 
 
 Here, then, for the present, I pause. Do 
 these facts only widen and enlarge our thoughts 
 concerning the range of our present life ? Or 
 do they lift a corner of the curtain, and let us 
 catch a whisper, or a glimpse of a face, and so 
 assure us that "death" is only an experience 
 of life, and not its end ? I hope the latter. And 
 I believe the present investigation will not cease 
 until all intelligent people shall have the means 
 in their hands for a scientific and satisfactory 
 decision. 
 
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 under National- 
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 YOUNG WEST. 
 
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 humor are too fine, and have their origin in emotions too 
 human and ennobling, to serve the purposes of coarse and 
 mean, degraded natures. In human nature, the sources 
 of laughter and tears lie close together ; we need not, 
 therefore, be surprised to find wit and humor in the Bible, 
 in which every human passion is mirrored, in which the 
 whole philosophy of life is to be found, with some con- 
 solation and sympathy for every mood of humanity. This 
 book of Dr. Shutter's is the work of one who loves and 
 knows the Great Book thoroughly and reverently. 
 
 Cloth . Price , post-paid, $1.25. 
 
 Christ the Orator : or, Never flan Spake 
 
 Like This Man. 
 
 This brilliant work, the only one of its kind which has 
 been given to the world, is a monograph upon the third 
 side of Christ's nature — the expressional. The Rev. 
 Thomas Alexander H>de, the author, is a vivid and vigor- 
 ous thinker, and before the publication of this book, 
 which has made his name as f imiliar in the religious world 
 as that of any contemporary religious teacher, he had 
 made a reputation as the author of " The Natural System 
 of Elocution and Oratory.'" "Christ the Orator" has 
 already awakened widespread interest, and received high 
 endorsement from leading editors, preachers, scholars and 
 thoughtful laymen everywhere, representing every phase 
 of Christian thought. Its earnest spirit, sympathetic and 
 finished style and lofty purpose, render it a welcome guest 
 in every family. 
 
 Mr. Hyde is a vivid writer and a vigorous thinker. His 
 mind eviden ly does not run in the old theological grooves, 
 though we conclude that he is sufficiently conservative. His 
 attempt to prove Christ an orator is at least unique. His book 
 is suggestive, full of bright and beautiful sayings, and is quite 
 worth a careful reading. — New York Herald. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass, 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 fiction : Social, Economic an6 Reformatiue* 
 
 E. Stillman 
 Doubleday 
 
 A story of the 
 Struggles of 
 Honest Industry 
 under Present 
 Day Conditions. 
 
 Charles S. 
 Daniel 
 
 K Story of the 
 Transformation 
 of the Slums 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents-, cloth, $1.25. 
 JUST PLAIN FOLKS. 
 
 A novel for the industrial millions, illustrating two stu- 
 pendous facts : — 
 
 1. The bounty and goodness of nature. 
 
 2. The misery resulting from unjust social conditions 
 which enable the acquirer of wealth to degenerate in 
 luxury and idleness, and the wealth producer to slave him- 
 self to death, haunted by an ever-present fear of starva- 
 tion when not actually driven to vice or begging. It is an 
 exceedingly interesting book, simply and affectingly told, 
 while there is a vast deal of the philosophy of commun- 
 ism in the moralizing of Old Bat. All persons interested in 
 wholesome fiction, and who also desire to understand the 
 conditions of honest industry and society-made vice, 
 should read this admirable story. 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 AI : A Social Vision. 
 
 One of the most ingenious, unique and thought-provoking 
 stories of the present generation. It is a social vision, and in 
 many respects the most noteworthy of the many remarkable 
 dreams called forth by the general unrest and intellectual activ- 
 ity of the present generation. But unlike most social dreams 
 appearing since the famous " Utopia " of Sir Thomas More, 
 this book has distinctive qualities which will commend it to 
 many readers who take, as yet, little interest in the vital social 
 problems of the hour. A quiet humor pervades the whole vol- 
 ume which is most delightful. 
 
 The brotherhood of man and various sociological and philan- 
 thropic ideas, such as the establishment of a college settlement 
 and the social regeneration of Old Philadelphia, are a few of 
 the topics discussed in " Ai," a novel by Charles Daniel, whf 
 calls it " A Social Vision." It is alternately grave and gay; am 
 the intellectual freshness reminds one constantly of Edward 
 Everett Hale's stories, with which "Ai" has much in common. 
 This is a clever book, and, what is much more important, one 
 whose influence is for good. — Public Ledger. 
 
From the fir ess of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 Ihe Latest Social Uision. 
 
 Byron A, 
 Brooks 
 
 Richmond, Va. 
 Star 
 
 Chicago Times 
 
 Review of 
 Reviews 
 
 Lyman Abbott's 
 Paper, The 
 Outlook 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 Banner 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 EARTH REVISITED. 
 
 The New Utopia, " Earth Revisited," is the latest social 
 vision, and in many respects the most charming work 
 of this character which has ever appeared. In it we see 
 the people, the state and the church under true civilization, 
 and the new psychology is introduced in such a manner 
 as to interest students of psychical research. 
 
 Here are a few press opinions : — 
 
 " As a story, it is very interesting." 
 
 " Worthy of consideration for its study of the social and other 
 questions involved." 
 
 "The story is written in an autobiographical form and pic- 
 tures the social, industrial, religious and educational America of 
 1992. As a work of fiction the volume embodies in a fanciful 
 way a view expressed in the closing words : ' To live is to love 
 and to labor. There is no death.' The style is clear and direct." 
 
 " Mr. Brooks is an earnest man. He has written a religio- 
 philosophical novel of life in the coming century. The hero of 
 this story has lived the life of the average man and at length, 
 when he finds himself dying, he wishes that he might have a 
 chance to live his life over. The wish is granted and he is born 
 again on the earth a century later. Social and scientific and 
 religious evolution have in a hundred years contrived to make an 
 almost irrecognizable world of it. Human nature is changed ; 
 altruism is fully realized; worship has become service of man; 
 the struggle for wealth and social rank has ended. Mr. Brooks' 
 book is worth reading by all sincere people, and in particular 
 by those interested in Christian socialism and applied Christian- 
 ity." 
 
 " If you should happen to pick up Byron A. Brooks' ' Earth 
 Revisited ' and read the first chapter, the chances are that you 
 would follow the story on to the end, even if you had other 
 things on hand spoiling for your attention. Summed up, 
 ' Earth Revisited ' is a wild though delightful story, short 
 enough to be filled from end to end with throbbing interest and 
 long enough to fully round off the things that are introduced." 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
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