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TABLE TURNING, the simplest and crudest form of communication with the subconscious self or with extraneous intelligences. As "mensa divinatoriae" tables were used for purposes of divination in antiquity. Ammianus Marcellinus describes a table with a slab, engraved with the letters of the alphabet, above which a ring was held, suspended by a thread. By swinging to certain letters messages were spelt out. Tertullian appears to be the first who knew of table communications with the unseen world.

Soon after the Rochester knockings table-turning became a veritable epidemic in America and spread from there to Europe. In 1852 afternoon invitations were extended to tea and table turning in England. Wishing to put a stop to the mania a committee of four medical men held seances and published the findings in the Medical Times and Gazette on June 11, 1853. Their conclusion was that the motion of the table was due to unconscious muscular action. A few weeks later Faraday's article was published in The Times in which the unconscious muscular action of the sitters was put forward as an experimentally demonstrated fact. The mesmerizts, however, welcomed table turning as a demonstration of odyllic force, whereas many ecclesiastics claimed to have demonstrated Satanic agency in the movements.

The usual procedure is to form a circle around the table, place hands lightly, with fingertips touching, on the leaf and, with lowered lights or in complete darkness, wait for the manifestations. If someone with psychic powers is present the table may, after a time, show signs of animation. The first such sign is a quivering motion under the sitters' hands; it keeps on increasing until the table pulsates with a mysterious energy. It was this phenomenon in his experiences with D. D. Home which induced Alexander Dumas to conceive, in a fantastic narrative, the table as an intelligence itself * The conception of a spirit entering furniture became a favorite idea with French authors afterwards.

The wooden surface appears to act as a reservoir of externalized nervous force. Hereward Carrington said of his seances with Eusapia Paladino that the table appeared to be somehow alive like the back of a dog. After the vibratory stage the table may jerk, tilt, stumble about and may eventually become entirely levitated. Apparently there is an intelligence behind these movements. If the letters of the alphabet are called over in the dark the table, by tilting, knocking on the floor, or tapping the sitter, indicates certain letters which connectedly spell out a message, often purporting to come from someone deceased. The intelligence which thus manifests has personal characteristics. In repeated sittings it is soon noticed that the skill with which the table is manipulated or the eccentricities of its behavior is indicatory of the presence of the same entity. The strange, stolid or clumsy behavior of the table immediately denotes that a new visitant is tampering with the contact. But the table may disclose much more than that. Its motions may express humor, emotion, personality. It may climb up into the sitters lap as a mark of affection, it may chase others all over the room in a hostile manner. As an additional means of expression the table may convey queer impressions by creaking. P. P. Alexander notes in his book, Spiritualism: A Narrative with a Discussion:

At a particular stage of the proceedings the table began to make strange undulatory movements, and gave out, as these proceeded, a curious accompaniment of creaking sounds. Mr. Home seemed surprised. "This is very curious," he said, "it is a phenomenon of which I have no experience hitherto." Presently my friend remarked that-movement and sound together-it reminded him of nothing he could think of except a ship in distress, with its timbers straining in a heavy sea. ... This conclusion being come to ... the table proceeded to rap out: "It is David." Instantly a lady burst into tears, and cried wildly: "Oh, that must be my poor, dear brother, David, who was lost at sea some time since."

When the table moves under contact there is an obvious possibility for the subconscious mind or a secondary personality to convey ideas by unconscious muscular pressure. This is valid both as regards the medium as the sitters. According to Myers, "the subliminal self, like the telegraphist begins its effort with full knowledge of the alphabet, but with only weak and rude command over our muscular adjustments. It is therefore a priori likely that its easiest mode of communication will be through a repetition of simple movements, so arranged as to correspond to letters of the alphabet." But Myers was inclined to attribute to the subconscious mind the movement of the table without contact as well. "If a table moves when no one is touching it, this is not obviously more likely to have been effected by my deceased grandfather than by myself. We cannot tell how I could move it; but then we cannot tell how he could move it either."

Certainly, there are experiences which bear out this possibility and show how singularly wide the range of deception may be. George E. Long, an acquaintance of Dr. Hodgson, narrates in Proceedings, Vol. IX. p. 65, a strange experience-with a chair. Through a nonprofessional young lady he received what was said to be the most convincing test of spirit return. "First the chair spelt out my name and showed a disposition to get into my lap; then it spelt out 'George, you ought to know me as I am Jim.' But I didn't, and said so. Then without my looking at the board, it spelt out 'Long Island, Jim Rowe' and 'Don't you remember I used to carry you when you were a little fellow,' or words to that effect. I had to acknowledge the truth of it and also to say that as he was an ignorant man he possibly intended 'Cary' for carry. I must own I was puzzled for the moment. To make sure of his power I asked that he count the pickets in the fence. Somehow he could not agree to this, and even the medium objected. As a last resort I asked how long he had been in the spirit land and the answer came, between thirteen and fourteen years. Now to the sequel. First it occurred to me a day or two later, that while all the incidents given were correct the name should have been given as Roe, instead of Rowe. Second I was upon Long Island this summer, and the matter coming to my mind I inquired how long Jim Roe had been dead, and was informed he died last Winter; so when I received this test so convincing to the believers the man was not dead."

Chair or table makes no difference once the available power is sufficient to manifest. The reason why a table should be used for spirit communication is that as a piece of furniture it is generally available, convenient, allows contact around it for a large number of people, its surface acts as a receptacle for the generated force and the space underneath comes very near to a cabinet, especially if it is surrounded by deep hanging table cloth. In olden days they often used a table with a hole in the middle through which materialized hands were thrust.

Eusapia Paladino insisted on a seance-table built entirely of wood. She considered soft pinewood the best to absorb vital magnetism. She allowed no metal in the construction of the table. The color of the table does not matter. Maxwell found an advantage in covering it with some white material of light texture. He also insisted that the table should possibly be fastened with wooden pegs instead of nails for mediums are sometimes extremely sensitive to metals.

With powerful mediums the movement of the table may occur at any time and disclose a tremendous force in operation. "During any meal with Mrs. Elgie Corner (Florence Cook), in one's own house," writes Gambier Bolton in Psychic Force, "and whilst she herself is engaged in eating and drinking-both of her hands being visible all the time-the heavy dining table will commence first to quiver, setting all the glasses shaking, and plates, knives, forks and spoons in motion, and then to rock and sway from side to side, occasionally going so far as to tilt up at one end or at one side; and all the time raps and tappings will be heard in the table and in many different parts of the Taking a meal with her in a public restaurant room. At is a somewhat serious matter." For similar experiences See: Movement.

Books on table turning: Baron de Guldenstubbe:
Pneumatologie positive et experimental; Du Potet: Traite Complet du Magnetisme Animal, Paris, 1856; Marquis de Mirville: Pneumatologie; Extraits de la Pneumatologie; Comte Agenor de Gasparin: Des Tables tournantes, de Surnaturel en general, et des Esprits, Paris, 1854; Comte de Szapary: Tables Tournantes, Paris, 1854; Marc Thury: Les Tables tournantes, Geneva, 1854: Chevreul: De la Baguette divinatoire, du pendule Explorateur, et des tables tournantes, Paris, 1854; Babinet: Etudes et lectures sur les sciences d'observation, Paris, 1856; Dr. Justinus Kerner: Die Somnambulen Tische, zur Geschichte und Erklarungen dieser Erscheinungen, 1853; D. Hornung: Neue Geheimnisse des Tages durch Geistes Magnetismus, Leipsic, 1857; Neueste Erfahrungen aus dem Geisterleben , 1858; Dr. E. V. Hartmann: Spiritismus; Dr. Maximilien Perty: Die Mystischen Erecheinungen der menschlichen Natur, Leipsic, 1861; The Rev. C. H. Townshead: Mesmerizm Proved True, London, 1854; H. Spicer: Facts and Fantasies, London, 1853; Pamphlets: John Prichard: A few sober words of Tabletalk about the spirits, Leamington, 1853; Rev. R. C. Morgan: An Inquiry into Table Miracles, Bath and London, 1833; Rev. F. Close: The Testers Tested or Table-moving ... not diabolical, London, 1853 Rev. R. W. Dibdin: The Theology of Table turning, Spirit Rapping, etc. 1854; Rev. N. S. Godfrey: Table Turning, the Devil's Modern Masterpiece, 1853; Rev. N. S. Godfrey: Table-moving, tested and proved to be the result of Satanic agency, London and Leeds, 1853; Anonymous: Table Turning and Table Talking considered in connection with the dictates of reason and common sense, Bath, 1853; Anonymous: Table Turning by Animal Magnetism demonstrated, London, 1853; Dr. Charles Koch: Table moving and Table-talking reduced to natural causes, Bath and London; Dr. Charles Cowen: Thoughts on Satanic Influence, or Modern Spiritualism Considered, London, 1854. Early American books and pamphlets: D.M. Dewey: History of the Strange Sounds, Rochester, 1850; E. W. Capron and H. D. Barron: Explanation and History of the Mysterious Communication with Spirits, Auburn, 1850; Burr Brothers: Knocks for Knockings, 1851; Rev. H. Mattison: Spirit Rapping Unveiled, New York, 1853; Prof. Charles G. Page: Psychomancy: Spirit Rappings and Tippings Exposed, New York, 1853; C. W. Elliott: Mysteries, or Glimpses of the Supernatural; Joel Tiffany: Spiritualism Explained; Rev. Asa Mahan Modern Mysteries Explained and Exposed, Boston, 1855 E. W. Capron: Modern Spiritualism, its facts and fanaticism, Boston, 1855.

TELEPATHY, the word was coined by F. W. H. Myers in 1882 as the outcome of his joint investigation with Gurney, Sidgwick and Prof. Barrett into the possibilities of thought transference. It was meant as a name for a fact: "a coincidence between two person's thoughts which requires a causal explanation," and it was defined as "transmission of thought independently of the recognized channels of sense." The name involved no attempt at explanation, yet it was soon construed as such and from the comparatively simple fact of experimentally demonstrated thought transference a mighty jump was made to the portentous claim that it is an agency of communication between mind and mind even when consciously no such attempt is thought of, that it is a mysterious link between conscious and subconscious minds, that it is endowed with an intelligence by which incidents either from the memory of the person present or from the memories of distant and unknown persons can be selected, in fact that telepathy is a rival of the spirit theory. This conception spread so widely that many people conceive it now as something distinct from thought-transference and claim a line of division with the following argument: in telepathy the transmitter is often unaware that he acts as an agent and the receiver does not consciously prepare himself for the reception. Telepathy cannot be made a subject of experiments while thought transference can. Thought-transference is a rudimentary faculty. Telepathy is a well-developed mode of supernormal perception and is usually brought into play by the influence of very strong emotions.

The need of differentiation is acknowledged by the old school of telepathists, too, when they speak of spontaneous and experimental telepathy. An as hardened skeptic as Frank Podmore believed that "whilst the attempt to correlate the two kinds of phenomena is perhaps legitimate, we can hardly be justified in making the spontaneous phenomena the basis of a theory of telepathy." (The Newer Spiritualism, p. 26).

Myers pointed out that telepathy as a faculty must absolutely exist in the universe if the universe contains any unembodied intelligences at all. Social life requires a method for the exchange of thought. The belief in telepathy is age old. Prayer is telepathic communion with higher beings. The basis of sympathy and antipathy may be telepathy. The monitions of approach appear to be telepathic messages. The knowledge of victory or disaster which so unexplainably spread in ancient Greece may have been telepathically acquired.

The working of telepathy is apparently demonstrated in suggestion. The case is quite clear when the hypnotisation is effected through a distance. Myers called it "telepathic hypnotism."

A good instance of audibly received telepathy is the following (Proc. S.P.R. I. p. 6.): "On September 9, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R-, C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was severely wounded, and thought himself to be dying, and requested that his ring be taken off and sent to his wife. At the same, time she was in Ferozepore (150 miles distant), lying on her bed between sleeping and waking, and distinctly saw her husband being carried off the field, and heard his voice saying "Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife."

The case was fully verified. All the names were known to the Society.

William T. Stead often received automatic writing from the living. Thinking of a lady with whom he was in such communication more than once, his hand wrote: "I am very sorry to tell you that I have had a very painful experience of which I am almost ashamed to speak. I left Haslemere at 2.27 p.m. in a second-class carriage, in which there were two ladies and one gentleman. When the train stopped at Godalming, the ladies got out, and I was left alone with the man. After the train started he left his seat and came close to me. I was alarmed, and repelled him. He refused to go away and tried to kiss me. I was furious. We had a struggle. I seized his umbrella and struck him, but it broke, and I was beginning to fear that he would master me, when the train began to slow up before arriving at Guildford Station. He got frightened, let go of me, and before the train reached the platform he jumped put and ran away. I was very much upset. But I have the umbrella."

Stead sent his secretary to the lady with a note that he was very sorry to hear what had happened and added: "Be sure and bring the man's umbrella on Wednesday." She wrote in reply: "I am very sorry you know anything about it. I had made up my mind to tell nobody. I will bring the broken umbrella, but it was my umbrella, not his."

The determination of the lady not to tell of the painful evidence apparently indicates that a telepathic message may not only be unconscious, but may directly counteract the conscious mind.

In many instances of cross -correspondence telepathy between the automatic writers would furnish sufficient explanation. When Mrs. Holland describes Mrs. Verral's surroundings and occupation an interaction between their minds is a consistent theory.

The Wave Theory

In his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sir William Crookes said: "If telepathy takes place we have two physical facts-the physical change in the brain of A, the suggester, and the analogous change in the brain of B, the recipient of the suggestion. Between these two physical events there must exist a train of physical causes." He further argued that "with every fresh advance of knowledge it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demandeven to the transmission of thought."

He believed that these ether waves are of small amplitude and greater frequency than the X-rays, continually passing between human brains and arousing a similar image in the second brain to the first. Against this is that the intensity of waves diminishes with the square of distance and that the telepathic image may not only be very vivid despite the remoteness of the agent but that the picture is often modified and symbolical. A dying man may appear in normal state of health, unsuffering. "Mr. L.," quotes Myers, "dies of heart disease when in the act of lying down undressed in bed. At or about the same time Mr. N. J. S. sees Mr. L. standing beside him with a cheerful air, dressed for walking and with a cane in his hand. One does not see how a system of undulations could have transmuted the physical facts in this way."

In cases of collective reception an added difficulty is presented. Why should only a few people in a room be sensitive to the waves and other strangers outside the room not? Take the case of the crystal gazer. Why should he get a telepathic message at the time of his own choosing, when he happens to look into the crystal. How can the pictures in the crystal be sometimes seen to others if they are only produced in his brain by telepathic impact?

In The Survival of Man, 1908, Sir Oliver Lodge was of the opinion that the experimental evidence is not sufficient to substantiate the non-physical nature of thought-transference. Of its reality he had no doubt and as early as 1903 stated in an interview to the Pall Mall Magazine: "What we can take before the Royal Society, and what we can challenge the judgment of the world upon, is Telepathy."

Dr. Hereward Carrington suggests that telepathic manifestations may take place through a superconscious mind, that there may be a mentiferous ether as some writers have suggested which carries telepathic waves, and that there is a species of spiritual gravitation, uniting life, throughout the universe, as physical gravity binds together all matter.

The wave theory of telepathy has been abandoned. Professor Cazzamali of the University of Milan appears, nevertheless, to have proved that the human brain emits short waves of high frequency under the stress of emotion. In an insulated all-metal room he carried out a number of experiments inducing, by means of suggestion, an emotional crisis in his subjects., His very delicate receiving sets placed in the room registered cerebral radiations in the form of waves. They have also been recorded on photographic plates. The reports were published in the Revue Metapsychique, August, 1925, March, May and July, 1927.

Animals and Telepathy

There is evidence to prove that telepathy is not restricted to humans. The best case of telepathy from animal to man was furnished by Mr. Rider Haggard for the Journal of the S.P.R. October, 1904. Mrs. Haggard heard her husband groaning and emitting inarticulate sounds like the moaning of a wounded animal during the night of July 7, 1904. She woke him whereupon her husband told her his dream. It consisted of two distinct parts. In the first, the novelist only remembered having experienced a sense of grievous oppression, as though he were in danger of suffocation. But between the moment when he heard his wife's voice and that in which he regained full consciousness, the dream became much more vivid. "I saw good old Bob lying on his side among brushwood by water. My own personality seemed to me to be arising in some mysterious manner from the body of the dog, who lifted up his head at an unnatural angle against my face. Bob was trying to speak to me, and not being able to make himself understood by sounds, transmitted to my mind In an undefined fashion the knowledge that he was dying." The sequel of the dream is that Bob was found dead four days after, floating in the river, his skull crushed in, his legs broken. He was struck by a train on a bridge and thrown into the water. His bloodstained collar was found on the bridge in the morning after the dream.

William J. Long, in his How Animals Talk produces many instances In evidence of a telepathic faculty in animals. He noticed for instance that if a mother she-wolf cannot head off a cub which rushes away because of the distance which he has already put between himself and her, she simply stops quiet, lifts her head high and looks steadily at the running cub. He will suddenly waver, halt, whirl and speed back to the pack. The famous case of the Elberfeld horses also furnished good evidence that telepathy may operate between animals and the human mind. Edmund Selous in Thought Transference in Birds records many curious observations on the subject from bird life.

Telepathy versus Survival

Obviously telepathy as a fact is of tremendous importance. But those who tried to find in it an all-inclusive solution of supernormal manifestations faced very great difficulties. If a telepathic message is followed by motor movements ' for instance, the automatic announcement of the death of somebody in writing the question is who executes the movements: the subconscious self or the agent himself who sends the message? The similar uncertainty applies if the reception of a telepathic message is accompanied by telekinetic movements.

An attempt was made to explain all apparitions as telepathic hallucinations. Frank Podmore was the greatest exponent of this theory. He was the author of the first book which, published in 1894, under the title: Apparitions and Thought Transference, dealt with the accumulated evidence for telepathy.

Myers was the first to admit the insufficiency of telepathy as an explanation of apparitions. Being forced to concede that collective perception of phantasmal appearances militates for something objective, he worked out a theory of psychical invasion, the creation of a phantasmogenetic center in the percipient's surroundings (See: Apparitions). The theory is a halfway house between telepathy and disembodied spirits and its real value is that it covers many freakish phantasmal manifestations for which no satisfactory solution has yet been offered.

The problem whether telepathy should not be admitted both from the living and the dead forced itself on the attention with an ever-increasing moment.

Apparitions of the dying are on the borderland between telepathy with the living and telepathy with the dead. A similar borderland phenomenon which lacks all the conditions for the evidence of telepathy is visions of the dead appearing to the dying.

The strain of the telepathic theory was growing with instances which made, on one hand the acquisition of certain knowledge by telepathic process wildly improbable but were, on the other hand, easily understood on the basis of the survival theory. The question that awaited answer was not only how certain information could have been acquired but also why should it be associated with definite personalities or be disclosed in a personified form.

In Proceedings, Vol. XCVI. Mr. S. G. Soal reports that in a seance with Mrs. Blanche Cooper a voice came through, claimed to be his deceased brother and as a proof of identity told him that a year before in a playhut at home he had buried a lead disc which, if he will dig there now, he will probably find. Mr. Soal satisfied himself that none of the surviving acquaintances of his brother knew of the incident, dug and found the disc. Nevertheless, he argues that this might have been a case of telepathic transmission in his brother's earth life, the knowledge having remained latent in his own subconscious mind. If yet another man had figured in the telepathic chain we would have an instance of the so-called telepathy a' trois which was first advanced by Andrew Lang in his discussion of the case of Mrs. Piper. (Proc. Vol. XV., pp. 48-51).

Mr. Hugh Browne's book The Holy Truth contains the story of two drowned Australian youths, the author's sons. One of them, in a communication through George Spriggs, told the detailed story of their fatal pleasure cruise and added that his brother's body had been mutilated of an arm by a great shark. This information could not have been telepathically conveyed by anybody living, except by the shark, yet it was found to be true. The shark was caught two days later, and a man testified to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Australia that he himself cut the shark open and found an arm, part of a waistcoat and a watch which identified the dead youth. The watch had stopped at the exact hour indicated by the communicators as that in which they were engulfed by the sea.

There are many cases on record in which missing wills, the whereabouts of which was not known to anyone living, have been found through what alleged to be spirit communication. There are others in which the supposition of the latent information, subconsciously received, must be stretched over ages and successive generations. Such is the case of the finding of Edgar Chapel, Glastonbury Abbey, as narrated in Mr. Bligh Bond's The Gate of Remembrance. The abbey was in ruins, every trace of the Chapel was lost, very little was known as to its location and precise dimensions. Nevertheless, in automatic writing series of communications came through, giving the most precise measurement. When excavations were undertaken in 1908, a year after the receipt of the communications, every statement was verified and the chapel was found.

The personal element puts insurmountable obstacles in the way of telepathic explanation in the following case recorded by Bozzano in notes on the July 14, 1928, sitting at Millesimo Castle. An unknown voice, in Genoese dialect, addresses Gino Gibelli, one of the presents: ' I am Stefano's father. You must tell my son that I insist on his giving the message to Maria with which I entrusted him. He has not carried out my request in the slightest degree.' Signor Gibelli explained that a month before he had been present in Genoa. The father communicated with the son and charged him with a message to his mother. Very probably the young man had not dared to carry out this request. Gibelli stated that he had completely forgotten this incident, it had nothing to do with him personally nor did it interest him in the slightest degree. He was not thinking of Stefano's father, whom he did not know in life, and was unaware of the fact that the request which the father had made to his son had not been carried out.

The technical side of communication also disproves telepathy as the means of the medium for gaining knowledge. Telepathy has no allowance for false or confused information, it does not explain the loss of the idea of time, nor the individual style of the different communicators, i.e., the Biblical manner of Imperator, his haughtiness, Pelham's impatience, etc. Names are often inaccurately spelt, giving for instance Margaret instead of Maggie. Telepathy cannot reveal coming events, nor can it explain how children who if recently dead ask for their toys and act childishly, behave years after as grown ups, though no such memory is retained in any living mind.

On the telepathic theory the medium has to be endowed with the potency of omniscience. If such a faculty exists it is apparently not meant for this life as it is latent and only emerges on the rare occasions of mediumistic seances. But if we admit faculties for another life then the position is immediately simplified. There is no need for the supposition of omniscience if a telepathic message may originate as well from the dead as from the living. Once the admission is made one would well understand the futility of the "brain wave" theory. A discarnate spirit has no physical brain. The message must come from the spirit and not from the percipient. But if it may come from the spirit as an agent it may be received by the spirit of the medium as a percipient and transmitted from the spirit to the brain. The meager results of thought-transference experiments against the tremendous scope of telepathy may be explained by the limitations of the brain as a receiver. These limitations are especially demonstrated in the case of possession when clearly an external mind is impressing the medium's brain by direct contact. The lack of adaptation to the ideation of the controlling mind often results in confusion and incoherence in the utterance.

The real insufficiency of the telepathic explanation has been amply demonstrated by hundreds of strange cross-correspondences and book tests and newspaper tests.

The post-mortem letters, many of which are preserved by the S.P.R., and wait for opening until after a communication revealing their contents, comes through a medium after the writer's death, show as yet no complete success and it is doubtful whether this evidence will ever be conclusive in view of the fact that in one instance the content of the letter was revealed, apparently as a result of telepathic operation, by the medium while the writer was yet alive. The telepathist may always argue that the contents of the letter were subconsciously transferred into another brain while the writer was preparing it.

The "Hannah Wild" case is a well-known failure. Mrs. Blodgett, the sister of the deceased, obtained communications through Mrs. Piper which purported to come from Hannah Wild. The communicator, however, could not explain the words in a letter which she left behind and which no one understood. The idea of these post-mortem letters was originated by Myers. As a proof of survival, cross-correspondences are far more conclusive as the part messages coming through several mediums are by themselves nonsensical and they could only be explained away by the supposition of a tremendous conspiracy between several subconscious minds for the purposes of deceit. In the newspaper tests recorded by-the Rev. Drayton Thomas such a subconscious conspiracy will have to be stretched to the utmost as at the time when the contents of a certain column in the next day's paper was indicated neither the editor nor the compositor could tell what particular text would occupy the column in question.

The Arguments of Prof. Hyslop

The original confusion in the ideas which assigned telepathy a rival importance to the spirit theory was, according to Prof. Hyslop---due to the word "transmission," in the first definition of telepathy. He prefers to define it as "a coincidence excluding normal perception, between the thoughts of two minds." It was the word transmission which gave telepathy the implication that "it is a process exclusively between living people and not permitting the intervention of the dead, if the discarnate exist and can act on the living." Hyslop's definition permits the employment of the term to describe the action of discarnate as well as incarnate minds. Hyslop was certainly right in saying: "We are not entitled to assume the larger meaning of telepathy to be a fact because we are not sure of its limitations. Here is where we have been negligent of the maxims of scientific methods and the legitimate formation of convictions."

"Mediumistic phenomena," he writes in Contact with the Other World, "too often suggest the action of spirits, to be cited as direct evidence for telepathy. The possibility of spirits and the fact that an incident is appropriate to illustrate the personal identity of a deceased person forbids using it as positive evidence for telepathy. One can only insist that one theory is as good as the other to account for the facts."

For selective telepathy "no evidence has been adduced ... and I do not see how it would be possible to adduce such evidence. Every extension of the term beyond coincidences between the mental states of two persons is wholly without warrant. The introduction of the assumption that this coincidence is due to a direct transmission from one living mind to another has never been justified, and as there is no known process whatever associated with the coincidences we are permitted to use the term only in a descriptive, not in an explanatory sense."

". . . There is no scientific evidence for any of the following conceptions of it (1) Telepathy as a process of selecting from the contents of the subconscious of any person in the presence of the percipient; (2) Telepathy as a process of selecting from the contents of the mind of some distant person by the percipient and constructing these acquired facts into a complete simulation of a given personality; (3) Telepathy as a process of selecting memories from any living people to impersonate the dead; (4) Telepathy as implying the transmission of the thoughts of all living people to all others individually, with the selection of the necessary facts for impersonation from the present sitter; (5) Telepathy as involving a direct process between agent and percipient; (6) Telepathy as explanatory in any sense whatever, implying any known cause."

"The failures in experiments to read the present active states of the agent and the inability to verify any thoughts outside those states, in the opinion of science is so finite that its very existence is doubted, while the extended hypothesis requires us to believe in its infinity without evidence."

"As a name for facts, with suspended judgment regarding explanation, it is tolerable, but there can be no doubt that spirits explain certain facts, while telepathy explains nothing. At least as a hypothesis, therefore, the spiritistic theory has the priority and the burden of proof rests upon the telepathic theory."

Dr. Hodgson similarly concluded in his second Piper report: "having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the spirit hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the spirit hypothesis is justified by its fruits, and the other hypothesis is not."

Telepathy-The Result of Spirit Agency?

Hyslop was not averse to the possibility that spirits may furnish the explanation of telepathy between the living. He says that Myers saw this implication at the very outset of the investigations into telepathy. He quotes on this point that in the reported experiments of Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden (Proc., Vol. XXI, pp. 60-93) in long-distance telepathy only part of the story was told. Miss Miles was an all-round psychic and in her correspondence with Prof. Hyslop she disclosed that she could always tell when her telepathy was successful by the raps that she heard. She persisted in thinking of the object which Miss Ramsden was to perceive until she heard raps. Raps are not telepathic phenomena and carry an entirely different suggestion. Further, Hyslop says that in communications through Mrs. Smead, Podmore purported to come through and said that telepathy was always a message carried by spirits and that they could do it instantly. Had Mrs. Smead known Podmore such a contradiction could not have been expected as Podmore always pressed telepathy between the living to the exclusion of spirits. Myers also made a curious allusion through Mrs. Chenoweth, saying as regards telepathy "it all depended on the carrier." When Hyslop asked for explanation the answer was that "Telepathy was always a message carried by the spirits." A still more interesting and elaborate statement is to be found in communications purporting to come from the spirit of Mrs. Verrall: "I said yesterday that I would write more about the telepathic theory as I now understand it. I am not sure of the passage of thought through space as I was once, and I had begun to question the method by which thought was transferred to brains before I came here, but you will recall that I had some striking instances of what seemed telepathy tapping a reservoir of thought direct, and the necessity for an intervening spirit was uncalled for; but there were other instances when the message was transposed or translated and the interposition of another mind was unquestionably true. I tried many experiments and I think you must know about them. I will say that I found more people involved in my work than I had known and there seemed more reason to believe that I was operated upon than that I operated, in other words, the automatic writing was less mine than I had supposed."

The dividing line between clairvoyance and telepathy is vague. The telepathic message may take the form of visual or auditory sensation. If the content indicates future events clairvoyance should be suspected at work. Past events may be both telepathic communications and the result of psychometric reading.

A constructive and evidential historic resume of past experiments in telepathy is given by Dr. W. Franklin Prince in an appendix to the sixteenth bulletin of the Boston S.P.R., published under the title: The Sinclair Experiments Demonstrating Telepathy.

THOUGHTFORMS, their existence is definitely claimed by occult science and there is interesting evidence to consider it an important experimental problem of psychical research. The alternative which Sir William Barrett suggested that the operator may so stimulate the mind of the subject that he is able to see the thought-shape, in the former's mind, is not very far from what Sinnett claims in the Occult World: "An adept is able to project into and materialize in the visible world the forms that his imagination has constructed out of inert cosmic matter in the visible world. He does not create anything new, but only utilizes and manipulates materials which Nature has in store around him."

Prof. Hyslop in his Psychical Research and Resurrection quotes a curious communication from a private source. The communicator while commenting on the peculiarities of his spiritual life stated that he "sometimes saw, for instance, a man reading a book, but when he approached to talk with him he found it was only a thought." Prof. Hyslop, however, does not agree with the thought-form theory and suggests that the instance is a case of veridical, or subjective hallucination in the spiritual life. James T. Fields in a lecture on Fiction and its eminent authors, said: "Dickens was at one time so taken possession of by the characters of whom he was writing that they followed him everywhere and would never let him be alone for a moment. He told me that when he was writing The Old Curiosity Shop the creatures of his imagination haunted him so that they would neither let him sleep or eat in peace." G. H. Lewes wrote in the Fortnightly Review: "Dickens once declared to me that every word he said by his characters was distinctly heard by him."

Vincent Turvey writes in The Beginnings of Seership of a discussion that took place between him and a man of the Christian Evidence Society on psychic matters. The man insisted that Turvey's psychic gifts were from the devil and prayed that the devils should leave him. "On lying down in the afternoon in order to rest and meditate, I suddenly saw three or four devils in the room-typical orthodox fiends. Men with goats' legs, cloven hoofs, little horns just over their ears, curly hair like a negro's 'wool,' tails and clawlike hands. In color they were entirely brown, like ordinary brown paper. I candidly profess that I was a bit shaken ... I pulled myself together and rose into the higher state of consciousness. In this state I was able to see not only their fronts, but also their backs. To my utter astonishment they were all hollow at the back, like embossed leather, or the ordinary papier mache mask. Then my guardians caused me to make a sign, say a word, or think a sentence -what I do not know; but directly it was done or said, these forms disintegrated or dissolved and vanished."

Thoughtforms are often perceived in the hypnotic state. Dr. Lindsay Johnson, the celebrated English ophthalmic surgeon, described in the May 21, 1921, issue of Light an experiment of Professor Koenig, of Berlin, in a Paris hospital at which he assisted. A peasant woman was hypnotized. She was suggested to see an imaginary picture on a plain sheet of paper. She saw it perfectly. Twenty identical sheets of paper were taken, a picture was suggested for each and a record was kept of the pictures and tiny identification marks on the back of each sheet. Dr. Johnson added five more sheets, shuffled them and handed them back one after the other to the subject. She described the suggested picture in every case, but saw nothing on Dr. Johnson's sheets.

Dr. Naum Kotic, of Wiesbaden, made similar experiments with a 14-years-old girl, Sophie, and drew the following inference: "Thought is a radiant energy. This energy has physical and psychic properties. It may be called psycho-physical. Originating in the brain, it passes to the extremities of the body. It is transmitted through air with some difficulty, more easily through a metallic conductor and can be fixed on paper." (Richet, Thirty Years of Psychical Research, p. 191).

It is interesting to compare Prof. Koenig's and Dr. Kotik's experiments with the experience of Warcollier. One evening, partially waking, he saw a large quadrangular corded package in a yellow packing paper on a chair. He inquired what was the package. There was no package on the chair, but it had been there some time before as described. If a package can impress a chair it is no more improbable that thoughts may similarly impress a sheet of paper.

Dr. Baraduc informed the Academie de Medecine in May, 1896, that he succeeded in photographing thought. He experimented with many people. The subjects placed their hands on a photographic plate in the dark room and were asked to think intently of the object they wished to impress upon the plate. Many curious markings were obtained, some of them representing the features of persons and the outline of things.

Dr. Baraduc also contended that thought photography is possible from a distance. He quotes the case of Dr. Istrati who promised M. Hasdeu, a friend of his, to appear on a photographic plate at Bucarest, on August 4, 1893, while he slept in Campana. The distance is 300 kilometers. Dr. Istrati willed, before closing his eyes, that his image should impress the plate with which his friend went to bed. The result was achieved. The plate showed a luminous spot in the midst of which the profile of a man could be traced.

Commandant Darget, of Tours, obtained several good thought photographs. His procedure is to gaze attentively at a simple object for a few moments in order to engrave it firmly on the mind, then go into the dark room and (1) place a photographic plate with the glass side against the forehead for a quarter of an hour, mentally picturing the object decided upon and strongly desiring to make an impression on the plate; (2) Place the hand on a plate (or hold the plate in the hand) for a quarter of an hour, operating as before; (3) Put the plate into a developing bath, placing the fingers of one hand on the edge of the plate for ten minutes. There should always be the desire to imprint on the plate the picture of the object which is very strongly thought of. (Joire: Psychical and Supernormal Phenomena p. 380).

An interesting case is quoted by James Coates from the November, 1895 issue of the Amateur Photographer. W. Inglis Rogers, the experimenter, gazed for a minute at a postage stamp and then went into the dark room and gazed at a sensitive plate for twenty minutes. When the plate was developed two images of postage stamps were plainly visible.

Dr. T. Fukurai, Professor of Kohyassan University, carried out important experiments with Mrs. Ikuko Nagao. If the medium concentrated on Japanese alphabetical symbols they were found printed on photographic plates.

Dr. W. F. Prince reported in the Journal A.S.P.R., April, 1925, the case of the Japanese artist Mikaye. Microscopic symbols were projected by some capillary action from the tip of his brush filled with fluid pigment. The artist simply held the brush downwards whilst he made a mental image of the intended symbol to a large scale.

In his researches with Mlle. Tomczyk Dr. Ochorowicz was deeply puzzled to find that in several of his radiographs the medium's ring appeared on the finger of her etheric hand. This seemed to indicate to him: (1) That there is a kind of link between the organism and the object it wears; (2) That the occult notion that material objects have an astral body is not limited to living bodies. The ring, however, did not always appear on the radiographs. Dr. Ochorowicz tried to find out whether objects frequently worn by the sensitive were more easily produced on the plate than others. He chose a thimble which she rarely used. The medium suggested that he should himself retain the thimble on the finger of his left hand, holding her with his right hand. "Perhaps," she added, "the thimble will pass from your body on to my finger." The experiment appeared absurd, but he was willing. He took a plate from his box, marked it, and laid it on the medium's knees. She was seated on his right; with -his right hand he held up her left hand about sixteen inches above the plate, the thimble being on the middle finger of his left hand, which he kept behind his left knee. A red lamp was burning at a distance of about three feet. After a minute had elapsed the medium said that she felt a sort of tingling in the direction of her forearm, where their hands met. She exclaimed: "Oh, how strange. Something is being placed on the tip of my finger ... I do not know if it is the thimble; I feel something keeps pressing the end of my finger." When the plate was developed it showed the hand of the medium, and on the middle finger was what he called, jokingly, "the soul of her thimble." Dr. Ochorowicz asked in some bewilderment: was the image a double of the thimble, or was it a photograph of the idea of the thimble? A close examination of the photograph and comparison with the thimble showed-that the two corresponded exactly, the one "was a true copy of the other, precise in details and in dimension." This exactness supports the idea of a direct impression from some object rather than a thought-image merely. The finger supporting the thimble is the palest of all the fingers, probably, as Dr. Ochorowicz suggests, because the light by which the radiograph was taken, proceeds from it. He leaned to the conclusion that an etheric hand wearing an etheric thimble produced the image, and that mental desire gave the direction to the light which was necessary in order to make the details of the thimble visible on the plate. When, however, he proceeded to test his conclusion a strange thing happened. Unknown to the medium he held in his left hand an Austrian five-crown piece. Presently she exclaimed: I see behind you a white round object ... it is the moon." "At the same instant," writes Dr. Ochorowicz, "I saw a faint but distinct light pass near my left hand, which held the coin; it was not round, nor a flash, it was like a little meteor, like a thin ray, lighting up the space round my hand on the side away from the medium." When the plate was developed it showed an image of a full moon." The moon floats on the background of a less luminous cloud, and is of a rather different form from that in the preceding experiments." He considered it evident that this time a photograph of thought was obtained though the experiment renders probable the existence of a quasi-physical intermediary as the image represents rather the medium's conception of something which existed outside her mind. The image of the moon was once obtained previous to this experiment. On the night of September 7th, 1911, the medium was much impressed by the superb sight of the starry heavens, and particularly by the full moon, which she looked at for some time with admiration. On the following day instead of the little hand, which was desired, a full moon appeared on the plate against a background of white cloud. The cinematograph representations of the eclipse of the moon on April 17th, 1912, show the image of the moon slightly flattened in the direction of the axis of rotation. This characteristic appears in the radiograph of September 7th. The impression was double and it looks as if the cloud had not been duplicated.

In that case the moon alone must have moved. How can we conceiveasks Dr. Ochorowicz---of this apparent movement of a mental image?

Many of the psychic extras obtained by spirit photographers may be the thoughts of the sitters. Carrington's curious experiences with Mrs. Deane certainly point into this direction. The experiments of Frederick Bligh Bond, with the same medium, one is tempted to say, are tantamount to proofs. He prepared a diagram of four squares by three and made, in one of the twelve squares, a cross of two diagonal lines and drew a small circle over the crossed lines. Having deposited this diagram with the Principal of the British College for Psychic Science he went to meet Mrs. Deane, drew upon a blackboard a similar diagram and asked for a perfect circle over the center of the two, intersecting lines. The camera was filled by him and he did the development himself, Mrs. Deane simply placing her hand during the exposures on the camera top.

The first plate showed the diagram alone, the second a sort of localized fog over the square in question, the third a circular spot of intense blackness, exactly over the intersection. In a second trial Bligh Bond hung upon the, wall of the studio a small picture frame and asked that an image, the exact character of which he did not specify, might be recorded on the space within the frame. The idea was to preclude any successful pre-exposure of a plate for the purpose of fraud. He obtained a cloud of small size which on the first two plates was not quite rightly centered, but was well within the center of the third plate. Mr. Warrick, a manufacturing chemist, repeated the experiments but used no camera, only sheets of paper which he had specially sensitized. By impressing upon Mrs. Deane the exact nature of the image he wanted, and placing the paper beneath Mrs. Deane's hands or feet, he obtained circles, squares, triangles, or images more complex, i.e., a three-legged stool. Bligh Bond believes that his part in the success was dependent upon a power of mental visualization which, as a professional architect and designer of geometric forms he had special opportunities to cultivate.

THOUGHT-READING, thought transference from the reverse aspect. The agent attempts to picture the content of the subject's mind instead of impressing it with his own idea. The higher forms of thought reading are covered by telepathy.

In the religious revivals of the Cevennes thought reading was one of the minor but very practical miracles. It was used for the detection of spies who frequently attended the meetings of the proscribed devotees.

Robert Baxter recorded that when he was possessed by the tongues in speaking to the Irvingite congregations he often could meet the unspoken thoughts of his hearers. Trance controls often show an ability to read the sitters' thoughts.

Thought reading may be achieved by sympathy or by positive perception of the ideas existing in another mind. Musical strings furnish an analogy to the first. A note struck on one will be taken up and echoed by the other. That the analogy may apply to men is shown in cases of panic when the sense of fear is communicated to surrounding people who may be ignorant of the original cause of the terror. "If the Darwinian theory be true," writes Serjeant Cox, "there must have been a time when man had no articulate speech. For intercommunication with his kind he must have then possessed some other faculty than language. Most probably that was what the intercourse of animals is, and the abnormal cases of thought reading that occur among ourselves may be possibly the survival of a faculty which has now almost vanished, because it has gradually fallen into disuse."

THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE was baptised telepathy by the S.P.R. in 1882, but its discovery is not due to its godfathers. Paracelsus wrote: "By the magic power of the will a person on this side of the ocean may make a person on the other side hear what is said on this side ... the ethereal body of a man may 'know what another man thinks at a distance of 100 miles or more." Swedenborg clearly stated that spiritual or sympathetic states of consciousness conquer time and space. The state of rapport discovered by the mesmerizts demonstrated transference of thoughts and emotions. The mechanism was sought. in a magnetic fluid. Somnambulic or hypnotic trance induced from a distance clearly showed direct action between mind and mind. Many experiments in thought transference were recorded in Germany in the beginning years of the last century. The best series was published by Dr. Van Ghert, Secretary of the Royal Mineralogical Society at Jena in the Archive far den Thierischen Magnetismus and by H. M. Weserman, Government Assessor and Chief Inspector of Roads at Dusseldorf in his Der Magnetismus und die allgemeine Weltsprache, Creveld, 1822. Professor Barrett read a paper on the subject before the British Association in 1876. Barrett, Gurney and Myers concluded in 1881 their first report upon thought-transference: "The possibility must not be overlooked that further advances along the lines indicated may, and we believe, will necessitate a modification of that general view of the relation of mind to matter to which modern science has long been gravitating." In an extensive series of experiments in Liverpool in 1883-84 conducted by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie and Mr. James Birchall with Miss Ralph and Miss Edwards impressions of objects, sensations of taste and pain were successfully transmitted. Sir Oliver Lodge participated in some of these experiments and initiated some original ones at a later period. Mrs. Henry Sidgwick's and Prof. Sidgwick's experiments in 1889-90 were classic. In thousands of trials a high percentage of success was registered in transferring simple images. The increase of distance, however, had a marked effect on the results. According to Podmore only Dr. Gilbert's and Professor Janet's experiments with Leonie at Havre in 1885 and 1886 can compare in competence, care and precision of the results with these. In the latter case the effect aimed at was the induction of hypnotic sleep. Clarissa Miles and Miss Gwendolen Ramsden experimented through an intervening distance of 20-300 miles in transferring complex images and obtaining cross -correspondence of thought-transference. The results were carefully noted down and in many cases an impressive agreement was found between the impressions of the two parties. Lombroso found 12 neuropaths in 20 subjects who registered success in thought-transference experiments. In some cases transmission was facilitated by alcoholic drinks or coffee stimulating the nerve centers. He assigned great importance to the hysterical state and expressed the opinion that the disequilibrium, even if transitory, of sensibility in hysterical persons is an essential condition for the production of the phenomena, in that they imply a greater accumulation of nervous energy in certain points of the cortex of the brain, and a diminution in others. He does not, however, exclude the possible influence of other causes and holds, in alluding to transmission of thought in the dying, that the greater accumulation of energy in the cortex during the period just before death may be due to ptomaines which become lodged in it. In reviewing this theory Dr. Guiseppe Venzano declares (Annals of Psychic Science, January, 1906) that the causes of the accumulation of greater energy in the centers of intelligence must be manifold and diverse, and that disequilibrium of sensibility does not constitute more than, at the most, one among these many causes. His conclusions are: (1) Mediumship favors the development of the phenomenon of transmission of thought; (2) In mediumistic seances the thought formulated by the agent may be carried out even by material actions absolutely independent both of the medium and of the experimenters; (3) Under special circumstances thought may be transmitted to the medium in a seance even at a considerable distance-from a person outside the seance (telepathy); (4) The unconscious transmission of thought is possible.

In Proceedings, Vol. XXIX, Mrs. Verrall reviews 504 previous experiments in thought transference. Proceedings, Vol. XXIV, 1924, contains Mrs. Henry Sidgwick's report on further experiments of Prof. Gilbert Murray which she considers "perhaps the, most important ever brought to the notice of the Society both on account of their frequently brilliant success and on account of the eminence of the experimenter." The percipient of these experiments was Prof. Murray himself. Out of 236 experiments he registered twenty-eight successes in eighty-one, thirty-six in 102, fourteen in thirty, six in eighteen and one in five instances.

On February 16, 1927, V. J. Woolley, research officer of the S.P.R., arranged interesting experiments through wireless. He and the agents were in the society's office, with no means of communication with anyone outside it. Sir Oliver Lodge sat in the broadcasting office at the microphone and directed the wireless listeners to record any impressions they were able to form of the objects willed. They were shown three minutes each with an interval of two minutes. The only information given to the listeners was that No. 1 and No. 4 were playing cards of unusual design and No. 2 a picture. It was a Japanese print: a skull with a bird on top, No. 3 was a bunch of three sprays of white lilac, No. 5 Woolley himself wearing a bowler hat and a grotesque mask. The agents remained in the society's premises through the night without access to a telephone. The morning mail brought in 24,659 answers. According to Woolley's summary in Proceedings, Vol. XXXVIII, the card test gave no evidence Of telepathic transmission but the answers disclose the peculiarity of a strong tendency to choose an ace, especially the ace of spades and that there is a marked preference for odd-numbered cards as against even-numbered ones. Of the third object five listeners gave a skull as the description of the picture, one adding the interesting detail that it represented a skull in a garden, and a sixth noted a human, head. Of these SIX records no less than three gave flowers for No. 3. Of the last object of the test five answers gave the impression of Mr. Woolley, 146 of someone present, 236 of someone dressed up or in masquerading, 73 of masks or faces, 202 of hats, and 499 of feeling of amusement.

Woolley, however, believes that these numbers in themselves are of little importance as there is no definite chance of expectation with which to compare them. The number of double successes was very small. There does seem to be an indication of a supernormal faculty," says Woolley, "on the part of a few of those who took part, though their successes: are swamped by the very large mass of failures on the part of others." The latter part of the conclusion may be objected to as there is nothing to prove that the sensitivity to telepathic impressions is a faculty latent in all of us. The first attempt to link thought-transference with wireless was staged in Chicago some years previous to the S.P.R. experiment by Dr. Gardner Murphy, at that time Hodgson Fellow at Harvard, the next jointly by him and J. Malcolm Bird in Newark. Murphy did not publish a complete record. The Newark tests were reported in the Scientific American, June, 1924.

Interesting results have been obtained by cross-correspondence in thought-transference. The principle is that two people at a stated time think of something, write it down and post it to find out whether their thoughts corresponded.

The conditions as summed up by Prof. Richet for successful experiments in transferring drawings or cards are: (1) The agent must be absolutely motionless and have his back turned to the percipient. (2) The choice of the number, the card, of the drawing must be made by pure chance. (3) No result, whether success or failure, should be told to the percipient before the end of the sitting. (4) Not more than twenty trials should be made on any one day. (5) All results, whatever they may be should be stated in full. (6) The percipient must be unable to see anything, directly or indirectly; it is best that his eyes should be bandaged and his back turned.

It was found that the success of thought-transmission depends upon the moods and health of the experimenters. It requires concentration on the part of the transmitter and passivity of mind on the part of the recipient. It proved helpful if the agent tried to visualize the picture which he wished to convey. It was best to keep an object before the eye and think of it while trying to transmit its image.

Sir Oliver Lodge observed that the transference of drawings is much more distinct when tactual contact is maintained between the agent and the percipient.

He discovered as early as 1883 that when two agents are acting each contributes to the effect and the result is due to both combined. He put down between two agents a double opaque sheet of thick paper with a square drawn on one side and a St. Andrew's cross on the other. Each agent looked on one side without any notion what was on the other. The percipient declared that "the thing won't keep still ... I seem to see things moving about ... First I see a thing up there and then one down there." Finally the percipient drew a square and drew a cross inside from corner to corner, saying afterwards "I don't know what made me put it inside."

Sir Oliver Lodge also attempted to find out what is really transmitted, the idea, or name of the object or the visual impressions. He found that the transmission of irregular drawings was very difficult and that in some cases the idea or name, and not the visual impression at all, was the thing transferred.

The chemical engineer Warcollier made an interesting table of the comparative facility in transmission. He found the percentage of color transmission 70 per cent., of attitudes 55, drawings 45, objects 38, ideas 37, mental images 10, words and figures 10 per cent.

Dr. Kotik found that the percentage of successes increased when the agent and percipient were linked by a wire.

The objection of skeptics against the reality of thought transference is twofold: chance and natural parallelism of kindred minds. The stage demonstrations of thought transference are explained by a secret code. This is undoubtedly so. Sometimes, however, more may be discovered. Mrs. Zancig, for instance, was found by Mr. Hewat McKenzie in the experiments of the British College for Psychic Research to possess a marked gift of clairvoyance to the degree of reading passages in closed books.

TOUCHES. Tactual sensations represent an allied phenomenon to the movement of objects. They are always intentional as the movement of objects is characterised by perfect localisation. Sitters are never hit by accident however swift the motion may be, and the touch is always meant for the one who receives it.

While the objects by which the sitters are touched may be well recognized, in psychic contacts the case is different as there is no apparent material means for their production. If it is by ectoplasmic rods that the touches are produced they may cause an immense variety of sensations according to the manipulation of this mysterious creative substance. There is no doubt as to the reality of the tactual sensation as it is often announced in advance and, in case it is effected by psychic lights or luminous structures, is visible to others. The effect may be as though coming from a soft object, like a rubber ball or an animal's paw sometimes half solid, from feathers, gloves, fur, powderpuff, cobwebs, flowers, fingers, etc. ... The touch itself may be sharp, soft, dry, wet, clammy, cold. It may be a tap, a caress, a stroke, a slap, a kick, a prick, a push, a punch, a kiss. The invisible operator may pull or rumple your hair, he may rub your legs and search your pockets. None of your extremities are safe from him. He works with an extreme rapidity and accuracy.

In old ghost stories psychic touches are full of dramatic elements. Hands of flame are said to have left a fiery mark, an indelible impression behind.

In 1905, in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, Prof. Richet translated a Latin chronicle of the year 1656 dealing with phenomena which occurred around a young girl, called Regina Fischerin of Presbourg, Hungary. The chronicle, which is still part of the records of the Venerable Chapter in the Archbishopric of Pest, narrates the apparitions of Jean Clement, a man of Presbourg, who led an evil life and contains the following dramatic passages:

"Therefore, fearing that she might be the victim of an illusion, Regina asked of the spirit, if it were truly a spirit, to touch her with its finger. Immediately it touched her right arm and she felt the contact instantly. There appeared immediately a blister, giving her the same sensation of pain as though it had been a burn; moreover, fully to attest the phenomenon, the blister remained upon the skin a long time, and all the servants of the house saw it. Thereafter, desirous to be sure that this was not the work of an evil spirit, Regina demanded as proof that the visitor was a good spirit to make the sign of the cross. "Here then," said the phantom "what you ask!" At once a flaming cross appeared outside the cloak which enveloped the figure, and with this it burned deeply the hand of the young girl, leaving thereon a branded cross which everyone could see."

"But the young woman, seeking still further proof, asked another sign. She showed some letters which the Bishop of Smyrne had sent, letters in which the Bishop had asked a number of questions which Regina could not answer, and asked for information. The spirit answered that it did not know how to read these letters. None the less it said it would try to give her satisfaction; but on taking these letters with the thumb and forefinger and second finger of its hand (the hand evidently being a hand of flame) the three fingers passed through the paper of the letters, as though they had been in contact with a flame."

A little later this spirit of Jean Clement recalled with remorse a crime which he had committed during his life, declaring that the money which had been secured from this crime was not all spent (this proved afterwards to be true); that part of it had been used for his subsistence, another part had been otherwise spent, but that some still remained and that this should be restored from the possessions which he had left.

"Regina demanded yet other proofs. Surely the proof of the cross burned on her hand and on her mantle was sufficiently strong, but it did not suffice for the young woman, who, in order to be absolutely sure that the strange visitant was truly a good spirit, insisted that it should make the same Sign of the Cross on a piece of money. The spirit obeyed, took a coin, threw it on the ground, and snatching a piece of cloth from the girl's hands, threw this upon the coin; then, taking Regina's hand violently in his grasp, scorching her deeply as before, burned thereon through the hand and the linen cloth upon the coin the character of a triple cross. "Here is a further sign," said he, and launched forth a flame with so much force that it reached to the heart of the young woman, while another jet of flame crossed the entire room and struck the opposite wall. Whereupon Regina fell unconscious.

"Her sister, who was present, saw and heard all that passed, and a few minutes later the servants came in and were able to see with their own eyes the scorch of the flame upon the linen material, and also upon the coin. Thereafter, many other persons visited the place and were permitted not only to see but also to touch the scorchmarks on the girl's mantle, on the linen material, and on the coin, and also the letters which had been burned through at three places by the spirit's fiery fingers."

"This affair seems extraordinary to us; firstly because a cross and an exact form of the hand have been marked in every detail; secondly, because this brand of burning did not extend beyond the limits of the marks, though, upon linen material, fire has a tendency to spread. Finally, the right hand which was thus branded in on flesh and cloth, was an exact replica of the right hand of Clement, just as though he had been operating by his own dead physical hand. And the proof of this is that, during life, the tip phalange of Clement's forefinger had been amputated by a surgeon for a disease which was then known as "Worms" and the absence of the finger-tip is clearly indicated upon the branded hand."

Ancient chronicles contain many similar accounts. In 1908 and 1910 Mrs. Zingarapoli, a Naples lawyer, published a dozen such cases in Luce e Ombra. One was recorded from the XVII century and the brands or scorch marks of the hands of fire are still to be seen at the Convent St. Claire at Todi. The exhibits in Father V. Jouet's Other World Museum at Rome comprise photographic records of the marks. In another instance in the XVIII century the scene of which was the convent of the Franciscan nuns of Saint Anne at Foligno in 1853 the spirit left an imprint as if by an iron hand heated red-hot on the door and on the grave being re-opened the dead hand was found to fit the scorch marks to perfection.

T. M. Jarvis, in Accredited Ghost Stories, a book published in 1823, narrates the story of Lady Beresford. Lord Tyrone, with whom she made a death compact, appeared to her after his decease and on being asked to leave an indelible mark of his presence the apparition seized Lady Beresford's hand and left a mark of burn on her wrist. Throughout her life Lady Beresford wore a dark ribbon to conceal the mark, After her death Lady Netty Cobb, an intimate friend, took off the ribbon and found the burn.

A burn in the shape of a finger from the touch of a spectre is recorded in Dr. Justinus Kerner's Eine Erscheinung aus dent Nachtgebiete der Natur, Stuttgart, 1836.

In Howitt's History of the Supernatural, a story is quoted of an apparition to the grandfather and father of a fellow student of Jung-Stilling. It says in part: "Yet there were circumstances which made the father and son believe that he was far from this purification, for fire streamed from every finger when he became angry at their resistance to his wishes. Still more, when he touched the Bible it smoked, and the marks of his thumb and finger shrivelled up the leather of the binding where he held it, and also the paper where he pointed out the place in the hymn, "From guilt of blood deliver me," was black and singed. The Bible with these marks is preserved in the family, and many creditable persons have seen it and may still see it." Howitt adds: "The fiery touch of the spirit which induced the father and son believe it a bad one, modern spiritualists can testify to belong to many spirits. How often have we seen fire streaming even from the finger of a medium? How often have spirits, before shaking hands with you, desired you, at Mr. Home's, to lay your handkerchief over your hand first? How often have you felt the touch of spirit fingers prick as from the sparks of electricity? "

In the mediumship of Stainton Moses we have two instances of somewhat similar character. According to his note dated April 18, 1874, a psychic light touched his fingers with the result that the skin was broken up and the joint swollen. Mrs. Speer says in her account in Light that a spirit of low order was responsible for the injury.

In the second instance, W.B., a friend of Stainton Moses figures; he committed suicide. His portrait appeared on a plate on May 16, 1876, when S.M. sat for spirit photography. On May 20 in the night S.M. woke up and saw the spirit trying to reach him and struggling with two other spirits. He was inspired with horror and repulsion. The spirit got nearer and stretched out his hand. S.M. did not remember any more. In the morning he found on his forehead an oblong dull red mark in the exact place where his friend wounded himself. The mark was a red discoloration and ' faded in two to three days.

Frank Podmore, in Proceedings, Vol. X., p. 204, quotes a similar case. Miss M.P. slept with her sister and was awakened in the night with a jump with a horrible feeling that there was someone in the room. An icy hand pressed against her face. The next moment her sister cried out and complained of a violent burn on her cheek. "The gas having been turned up higher, we saw, on one side of her face, a very vivid red mark, which rapidly took the form of a hand, with fingers open."

E. Bozzano in analysing this and many similar cases in The Seer, 1931, under the title Spirit Hands of Flame, calls attention to the fact that the elder sister felt an icy sensation and a minute later, apparently by the same hand, her sister was burned. He asks whether the opposed sensation felt by the two percipients may not be explained by "a rapid change in the ectoplasmic condensation of the phantom hand resulting from a sudden modification of the vibratory tonality. This vibratory tonality, under certain circumstances, seems to be very much more intense either on living or inanimate matter, and as a result, like fire, it would destroy living animal or vegetable tissue."

In a seance with Heinrich MeIzer, the Dresden apport medium as reported in the June, 1906, issue of Pie Unbersinnliche Welt, a plant was apported. The sitter at the very same instant that he received the plant felt the sensation of burning on the thumb. When the light was switched on the mark of a burn was clearly seen and a blister formed immediately.

In isolated instances the marks of burning are replaced by marks of blood.

Emma Hardinge in her Modern American Spiritualism vouches for the following occurrences in the family of a well-known merchant of San Francisco in a seance with the eldest daughter, a handsome girl of eighteen about whom very scandalous reports were rife among the neighbors: "Instantly, and while every eye was fixed upon her, she sank back in her chair in a swoon and there, in the broad glare of the sunlight, appeared on her face, which the moment before was perfectly white and colorless, a large patch of wet, reeking blood, one of her cheeks being marked exactly as if struck with a bloody hand. On approaching the swooning figure, a second patch appeared on the other cheek; and as she stretched out her hand as if to ward off an invisible foe, another wet and reeking stain instantaneously became manifest on its palm. The ladies present procured a washbowl and removed the stains from the young woman's face and hand; but though they replaced her in the chair, restored her to consciousness and never for one moment lost sight of her, nor suffered a single movement to escape them, this terrible phenomena was repeated five times in less than an hour." The house in which this occurred was haunted and the scene of frightful disturbances at night. The younger children always insisted that these frightful marks were made "by a Spanish girl" who followed their sister about. She had her throat cut. Another apparition who helped to make the marks was their mother whom they represented as reproaching her daughter with an infamous life. The quality of the fluid was several times analysed and always found to be human blood. The phenomena lasted for many months. Finally the police interfered and the circles were stopped.

TRANCE, a condition of apparent sleep or unconsciousness, with marked physiological characteristics, in which the body of the subject is liable to possession. The true nature of trance is unknown. Much can be learned from subjective experiences.

D. D. Home testified before the Dialectical Committee as follows: "I feel for two or three minutes in a dreamy state, then I become quite dizzy, and then I lose all consciousness. When I awake I find my feet and limbs cold, and it is difficult to restore the circulation. When told of what has taken place during the trance it is quite unpleasant to me, and I ask those present not to tell me at once when I awake. I myself doubt what they tell me."

Lord Adare, speaking of Home's trance state, said:

The change which takes place in him is very striking; he becomes, as it were, a being of higher type. There is a union of sweetness, tenderness and earnestness in his voice and manner which is very attractive."

Stainton Moses added these observations: "By degrees Mr. Home's hands and arms began to twitch and move involuntarily. I should say that he has been partly paralysed, drags one of his legs, moves with difficulty, stoops and can endure very little physical exertion. As he passed into the trance state he drew power from the circle by extending his arms to them and mesmerizing himself. All these acts are involuntary. He gradually passed into the trance state, and rose from the table, erect and a different man from what he was. He walked firmly, dashed out his arms and legs with great power and passed round to Mr. Crookes. He mesmerized him, and appeared to draw power from him."

Eglinton said of his experiences "I seemed to be no longer of this earth. A most ecstatic feeling came over me, and I presently passed into trance."

"I feel a cold shivering," stated Mrs. Mellon, "a sensation as of water running down my back, noise in my cars, and a feeling as if I were sinking down into the earth; then I lose consciousness."

"I feel," said Mrs. Piper, "as if something were passing over my brain, making it numb; a sensation similar to that experienced when I was etherised, only the unpleasant odor of the ether is absent. I feel a little cold, too, not very, just a little, as if a cold breeze passed over me, and people and objects become smaller until they finally disappear; then, I know nothing more until I wake up, when the first thing I am conscious of is a bright, a very bright light, and then darkness, such darkness. My hands and arms begin to tingle just as one's foot tingles after it has been 'asleep,' and I see, as if from a great distance, objects and people in the room; but they are very small and very black."

It is interesting to note that when the Seeress of Prevorst awoke from trance she also said that the persons around her looked so thick and heavy that she could not imagine how they could move.

On awakening from trance Mrs. Piper often pronounced names and fragments of sentences which appeared to have been the last impressions on her brain. After that she resumed the conversation at the point where it was broken off before she fell into trance. These trances had three distinct stages; Subliminal I. in which the medium was partly conscious of her surroundings, but saw things distorted and grotesque, Subliminal II. in which she was possessed by spirits and lost contact with the material world and Subliminal III. deep trance in which the loss of consciousness was complete, the body became anaesthetic and automatic writing commenced.

Describing the development in Mrs. Piper's trances, Sir Oliver Lodge writes in The Survival of Man: "In the old days the going into trance seemed rather a painful process, or at least a process involving muscular effort; there was some, amount of contortion of the face and sometimes a slight tearing of the hair; and the same actions accompanied the return of consciousness. Now the trance seems nothing, more than an exceptionally heavy sleep, entered into without effort-a sleep with the superficial appearance of that induced by chloroform; and the return to consciousness, though slow and for a time accompanied by confusion, is easy and natural ... For half an hour or so after the trance had disappeared the medium continues slightly dazed and only partly herself . . A record was also made of the remarks of Mrs. Piper during the period of awaking from trance ... part of them nearly always consisted of expressions of admiration for the state of experience she was leaving, and of repulsion-almost disgust-at the commonplace terrestrial surroundings in which she found herself. Even a bright day was described as dingy or dark, and the sitter was stared at in an unrecognizing way, and described as a full and ugly person, or sometimes as a negro." It is important to quote from among the mumbled remarks during her return to consciousness "I came in on a cord, a silver cord." Before she became conscious she heard a snap, sometimes two. They were physiological experiences. She said: sounds like wheels clicking together and then snaps."

Prof. James found Mrs. Piper's lips and tongue insensible to pain while she was in trance. Dr. Hodgson later confirmed this by placing a spoonful of salt in Mrs. Piper's mouth. He also applied strong ammonia to the nostrils. Drastic experiments were also tried. Prof. James made a small incision in Mrs. Piper's left wrist. During trance the wound did not bleed and no notice was taken of the action. It bled freely afterwards and the medium bore the scar for her life. In England Prof. Lodge pushed a needle suddenly into her hand. At another time Prof. Richet inserted a feather up her nostril. Harsh experiments in 1909 resulted in a badly blistered swollen tongue which caused the medium inconvenience for several days, while another test resulted in numbness and partial paralysis of the right arm for some time afterwards.

The trance of Eusapia Paladino is described by Lombroso thus: "At the beginning of the trance her voice is hoarse and all the secretions-sweat, tears, even the menstrual secretion-are increased. Hyperaesthesia is succeeded by anaesthesia. Reflex movement of the pupils and tendons are lacking. Respiratory movement grows less frequent, passing from 18 inspirations to 15-12 a minute ' heartbeats increase from 70-90-120. The hands are seized with jerkings and tremors. The joints of the feet and the hands take on movement of flexure or extension, and every little while become rigid. The passing from this stage to that of active somnambulism is marked by yawns, sobs, perspirations on the forehead, passing of insensible perspiration through the skin of the hands, strange physiognomic expressions. Now she seems a prey to a kind of anger, expressed by imperious commands and sarcastic and critical phrases, and now to a state of voluptuous erotic ecstasy. She becomes pale, turns her eyes upward and her sight inward and exhibits many of the gestures that are frequent in hysterical fits. Towards the end of the trance when the more important phenomena occur she falls into true convulsions and cries like a woman who is lying-in, or else falls into a profound sleep while from the aperture of the parietal bone in her head there exhales a warm fluid or vapor, sensible to the touch. After the seance she is overcome by morbid sensitiveness, hyperaesthesy, photophoby and often by hallucinations and delirium (during which she asks to be watched from harm) and by serious disturbances of the digestion, followed by vomiting if she has eaten before the seance; finally by true paresis of the legs, on account of which it is necessary for her to be carried and to be undressed by others. These disturbances are much aggravated if she is exposed to unexpected light."

"MY eyes ache a good deal after a seance," said Mrs. Mellon, "and generally my lower limbs are thin, sometimes very thin, and usually I feel a pain in the left side."

Myers distinguished between three successive stages in trance. In the first stage the subliminal (subconscious) self obtains control. In the next stage the incarnate spirit, whether or not maintaining control of the whole body, makes excursions into or holds telepathic intercourse with the spiritual world. In the third stage the body of the medium is controlled by another discarnate spirit.

The first stage is well illustrated by the case of the Rev. C. B. Sanders whose trance personality has always called itself by the name of "X Y Z" and claimed to represent the incarnate spirit of Mr. Sanders exercising his higher faculties. He spoke of the normal Mr. Sanders as his casket but showed no evidence of direct communication with discarnate spirits.

The Italian Salvioli noticed for the first time that in trance the flow of blood to the brain is greater than in the waking hours, consequently there is a greater psychical activity and an increase in muscular excitability.

Professor Flournoy frequently found complete "allochiry," a confusion between the right and left side, with Mlle. Helene Smith. She would, in trance, consistently look for her pocket on the left side instead of on the right. If one of her fingers was pricked or pinched behind a screen it was the corresponding finger on the other hand which was agitated. Allochiry is one of the stigmata of hysteria.

Lombroso called attention to the fact that Eusapia Paladino who was usually left handed in sittings, became right handed in one seance and Morselli himself became left handed. This confirms Dr. Audenino's hypothesis of transitory left handedness in the abnormal state, and the transference to the sitters of the anomalies of the medium. The left-handedness seems to indicate the increased participation of the right lobe of the brain in mediumistic states.

Prof. Morselli measured the left-handedness of Eusapia in dynamometric figures. He found, after a seance, a diminution of six kilograms for the right and fourteen for the left hand. The spirits of Mrs. Piper always communicated on the left side. The trance, as a rule, begins with hissing intakes of breath and ends with deep expirations. There is a suggestion in it to the Yoga system of breathing. "Like the fakirs," wrote Morselli, "when they wish to enter into trance, Eusapia begins to slacken her rate of breathing." Swedenborg believed that his powers were connected with a system of respiration. He said that in communing with the spirits he hardly breathed for half an hour at a time.

I have tried to simulate the deep and rapid breathing of Rudi in the trance state, writes Harry Price in Rudi Schneider. "This breathing has been likened to a steam engine, a tyre being pumped up, etc. Taking off my collar and tie and with my watch in my hand, I found that in six and a quarter minutes I was exhausted and could not continue. I have known Rudi continue this hard breathing, interspersed with spasms and the usual clonic movements, for seventy-five minutes without cessation. And this while being held and in a most uncomfortable position, while, of course, I was quite free."

Trances do not always come at pleasure and occasionally appear when not desired. At Cambridge, at Myers' request, Mrs. Piper looked into a crystal before going to bed. She saw nothing but looked exhausted next morning and said that she thought that she had been entranced during the night. The next time when she went into a trance Phinuit said that he came and called but no one answered. Mrs. Piper's trances generally lasted about an hour. On one occasion, in Sir Oliver Lodge's experience, it only lasted for about a minute.

The trance as a rule is continuous. In Mrs. J. H. Conant's mediumship much discomfort was caused at an earlier stage by the medium's return to consciousness as soon as the control left. She had to be entranced again for the next communicator. Each change took about ten minutes. In the case of Rudi Schneider the trance was similarly intermittent but the same entity, Olga, remained in control.

To be roused from trance by a materialized spirit is exceptional. Katie King roused Florence Cook when the time of her farewell arrived and a tearful scene was witnessed between the two. Florence Marryat, who was present at this scene, described a similar experience with Miss Showers. "The spirit "Peter" proceeded to rouse Rosie by shaking her and calling her by name, holding me by one hand as he did so. As Miss Showers yawned and woke up from her trance, the hand slipped from mine, and "Peter" evaporated. When she sat up I said to her gently "I am here, Peter had brought me in and was sitting on the mattress by my side till just this moment." "Ha, ha!" laughed his voice close to my ear, "and I'm still here, my dears, though you can't see me.""

Monck was once similarly awakened by the common consent of the materialized spirit and the sitters.

The medium brings back no remembrance of what has passed in the trance. To all intents and purposes he is an entirely different being while in that state. His physiological functions totally differ from the normal ones. Florence Marryat writes that Bessie Williams ate like a sparrow, and of the simplest things. "Dewdrop" (her guide), on the other hand, liked indigestible food, and devoured it freely, yet the medium never felt any inconvenience from it.

The limbs of Mary Jane, the servant girl of Dr. Larkin, of Wrentham, Mass., were, in the years about 1846, under the influence of a rough sailor, thrown out of joint in several directions in a moment and without pain. Dr. Larkin was often obliged to call in the aid of his professional brethren and two or three strong assistants to replace them. On one occasion the knees and wrists of the girl were thrown out of joint twice in a single day. These painful feats were always accompanied by loud laughter and hoarse profane jokes.

On the testimony of S. W. Turner, of Cleveland, the Spiritual Telegraph reported in December, 1847, the peculiar adventure of a medium called William Hume who, in trance, and under the control of Capt. Kidd, threw himself into the lake to recover a ring and was brought out of the water, still in trance, after swimming for 15 to 20 minutes, without any injury to his health.

The first operation on a subject in mesmeric trance was performed in France in April, 1829, by M. Cloquet on Mme. Plantin, a 64-years-old woman who suffered from an ulcerated cancer in the right breast. The operation lasted 10-12 minutes. The pulse and breathing remained unchanged. The patient was not awakened until two days later. The case was reported to the Section of Surgery of the Academy.

In 1836 Dr. Hamard invited a member of the Academy, M. Oudet, to extract a tooth from a somnambulic patient. The operation was a success.

In England the first operation in mesmeric trance took place in 1842 at Welbew, in Nottinghamshire, on James Wombell, whose leg was amputated above the knee. W. Topham, a London barrister, was the mesmerizt, and the operation was performed by Squire Ward, M.R.C.S.

Esdaile's Mesmerizm in India contains a great number of similar records.

There is one instance on record in the mediumship of F. L. H. Willis, who later acquired a medical degree and became Professor of Materia Medica in New York when not the patient, but the operator was in trance. Controlled by the spirit of Dr. Mason, Willis successfully performed a difficult operation on a lady.

Apart from Swedenborg's case the first conversation with spirits of the departed through the instrumentality of trance was recorded in May, 1778, by the Societe Exegetique Philantropique, of Stockholm. The forty-year-old wife of the gardener, Lindquist, was controlled in trance by her own infant daughter and another young child of the town and gave accounts both of their earth lives and their existence in the spirit world.

The somnambulic state in mesmerizm was the discovery of Puysegur. Mesmer himself was aware of something unknown in the magnetic sleep and warned against its deepening. The use of animal magnetism was primarily for healing power. The possibility of intercourse with spirits was shied at. It cropped up as early as 1878 in Tardy de Montravel's writings but he denied it. Kaleph Ben-Nathan admitted it in 1793 but he contended that those spirits with which the somnambule holds intercourse are spirits of an inferior order and the magnetists practice sorcery and divination. Bertrand records the exclamation of his young somnambule: "There are no spirits, they are stories, yet I see them, the proof is perfect." Deleuze conceded in 1818 that the phenomena of clairvoyance establish the spirituality of the soul, but he did not consider spirit intercourse proven by the phenomena of somnambulic trance. In later years, however, under the effect of Dr. G. P. Billot's experiments, he appears to have changed his belief. Billot's somnambules were mediums in the present-day sense. The spirits who possessed them proclaimed themselves to be their guardian angels and produced physical phenomena as well. Cahagnet recorded fully developed trance communications through Adele Maginot. Previous to his appearance an-official acknowledgment of trance took place in 1831 when an investigating commission of the Royal Academy of Medicine reported on the phenomena of animal magnetism and found the phenomena genuine and the state of somnambulism, though rare, well authenticated.

In Germany the theory of spiritual intercourse in trance took a quicker hold on the imagination of magnetizers. Jung-Stilling founded the school with the theory of the psychic body and its elements, the luminiferous ether. Fraulein Auguste Muller, of Carlsruhe, appears to be the first somnambule whose spirit , communications and other phenomena were carefully recorded, Fraulein Romer the second. She was the first planetary traveler, making clairvoyant excursions to the moon. The most stirring account, however, of the intercourse with the spirit world was published in 1826 by Dr. Justinus Kerner. It was the story of the Seeress of Prevorst.

For the difference between mediumistic and hypnotic trance, See: Hypnotism.

TRANSFIGURATION, metamorphic power of the medium to assume bodily characteristics of deceased people for their representation. The phenomenon is well illustrated by the account of the Rev. Will. J. Erwood in The National Spiritualist, of Chicago, of a seance with Mrs. Bullock in 1931. In light, which showed every movement of the medium, he has seen more than fifty faces in an hour and a half. "It was," he writes, "' as though the medium's face were of plastic material being rapidly molded from one form to another by some master worker in plastics. Oriental faces, Indians, calm, dignified, serious, spiritual, in short, almost every type of face was depicted during this most unusual seance. One of the most striking was the impersonation of a paralyzed girl whom I had known in the States. The medium's entire body, as well as face, was twisted out of all semblance of its normal state, to depict the condition of this victim of paralysis."

Dennis Bradley, in The Wisdom of the Gods, describes a case with Mrs. Scales: "Gradually the whole of the expression of the medium's face changed completely. It was a transformation. Whilst the outline remained, the eyes and the expression became beautiful ... At first it was only with very great difficulty that the first few words were articulated. It was as if they were produced with considerable effort. Within a little while, however, the power strengthened considerably, and the spirit of my sister was able to assume complete control. It was my sister. It was her spirit, using the organism of another physical body, and speaking to me in her own voice."

Dr. J. Maxwell vouches for the following case of transfiguration in sleep, narrated by one of his colleagues in the magistracy: "On January 1, 1903, my father began to feel the first attacks of the painful disease from which he died after six months of terrible suffering ... I watched him as he slept, and was not long in noticing that his physiognomy gradually assumed an aspect which was not his own. I finally observed that his face bore a striking resemblance to that of my mother. It was as though the mask of her face was placed over his own. My father had had no eyebrows for a long time, and I noticed above his closed eyes the very marked black eyebrows which my mother had retained to the last. The eyelids, the nose, the mouth, were those of my mother ... My father wore his moustache and a pointed, but rather short beard. This beard and moustache, which I saw, helped, contrary to what might have been expected, in forming the features of my mother. The appearance lasted for ten or twelve minutes; then it gradually disappeared, and my father resumed his habitual physiognomy. Five minutes later he awoke, and I immediately asked him if he had not been dreaming, especially about his wife. He answered in the negative." The phenomenon was witnessed by a woman servant who came into the room while it lasted. She was told: "Jeanne, look at Monsieur sleeping!" She cried out, "Oh, how he resembles poor Madame. It is striking, it is quite extraordinary!"

In the experiences of Allan Kardec there is an extraordinary case of a young girl of 15 whose metamorphic power extended to the duplication of the stature, mass and weight of deceased persons, especially of her brother, as well. Of another metamorphic medium, Mme. Krooke, Allan Kardec records that she saw one evening her own face changed. She observed a thick black beard and by it her son-in-law recognized his dead father. A little after her face changed into that of an old woman with white hair. She preserved her consciousness in the meantime, yet felt through her entire body a prickling like that of a galvanic battery.

No such miracles are recorded in modem experience. It is usually in materialization seances that transfiguration is witnessed. It means grave risks for the medium. During the experiments at the British College of Psychic Science with Miss Ada Besinnet in 1921 light was flashed on a face which was illuminated by a spirit lamp. It was seen that the medium was leaning over the table and illuminated her own face with a light held in her hand. The light quickly vanished. So did the white drapery which enveloped her head. She was in trance and complained of great pain in the solar plexus when awakened. For three days she was shaken with muscular contractions.

There are many past experiences on record of the entire disappearance of the medium during materialization. In such cases the entire bodily substance of the medium appears to have been withdrawn for the purpose of building up phantom bodies. Such occurrences are also spoken of as transfigurations. Col. H. S. Olcott and Dr. J. N. Newbrough experienced it with Mrs. Elizabeth Compton. While phantoms were parading in front of the sitters before the cabinet she vanished from the chair into which she was tied in such a way that the least effort to liberate herself would have given her away. Not only her body was missed, but the fastenings, threads, wax-ends, seals, nails as well. Yet something must have been left in the chair for Col. Olcott when he was allowed to go in was expressly forbidden to touch the chair. Where was the medium? According to Col. Olcott and Dr. Newbrough she must have been transfigured into the phantom bodies. Frail girls, six foot Indian warriors, whose weight varied between 50 and 150 lbs., were seen to emerge from the cabinet. Many of the phantoms were recognized as departed relatives and divulged intimate knowledge of the lives of their relations. If they were seized, and they were sometimes, they resolved into Mrs. Compton whom such an ordeal always rendered ill.

Aksakof had a similar experience with Mme. d'Esperance in 1890 at a seance in Gothenburg. While the phantom, Yolande, was outside the cabinet he slipped his arm through the curtains and felt for the medium's chair. He found it empty. At the same time his hand was flung aside. At the very moment Yolande retired into the cabinet, the seance came to an abrupt end, the medium was discovered on her chair in her red dress (Yolande was in white) and asked for water. Through automatic writing Aksakof, who did not tell his part in the sudden disturbance, was told by Walter, Mme. d’Esperance's control, that if the contribution of the circle is insufficient there may not be enough left of the medium to be visible, a clairvoyant may still see the body, but in reality there may not be much more in her place than her organs of sense.

In such cases a simple touch may do the medium serious injury. When Aksakof asked what would happen if in such a case he should pull the band of cloth which encircles the medium's waist whether it would not cut her body in two he was answered in the affirmative. Mme. d'Esperance summed up her only sensations in this sentence: I felt as if I were empty inside."

For other instances in which the medium's body disappeared, See: Ectoplasm.

TRANSPORTATION of human bodies through closed doors and over a distance is a comparatively rare but fairly well authenticated occurrence. It is a composite phenomenon between levitation and apports, and according to the testimony of the Bible by no means new in human experience. We find in Ezekiel XI, 1: "Moreover the spirit lifted me up, and brought me unto the East gate of the Lord's house which looketh eastward." Elijah, walking with Elisha, was carried away by a whirlwind. Habakkuk was carried from Judea to Babylon to bring food to Daniel in the lion's den, then carried back to Judea through the air. In the Acts of the Apostles the warders of St. Peter's prison testify: "The prison house we found shut in all safety, and the keepers standing before the doors; but when we opened we found no man within." St. Philip baptized the Ethiopian: "And when they were come up out of the water, the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip that the eunuch saw him no more . . .

But Philip was found at Azotus." The distance between Gaza, the scene of the baptism, and Azotus was thirty miles.

In the history of modern spiritualism we meet with the phenomenon at an early age. "From as good testimony as I have of any fact that I can accept without personal knowledge," stated the Rev. J. B. Ferguson, of the Davenport Brothers, "I believe that these young men have been raised into the air to the ceilings of rooms, and have been transported a distance of miles by the same force and intelligence, or intelligent force, that has for eleven years worked in their presence so many marvels."

In England accounts of transportation were published in the spiritualistic press between 1871-74 of Mrs. Guppy, of Williams and Herne (Spiritual Magazine, July, 1871), of Miss -Lottie Fowler (The Spiritualist, March 15, 1872) and of Dr. Monck (Spiritual Magazine, 1875), the latter having made an aerial journey from Bristol to Swindon.

Mr. Thomas Blyton writes of his reminiscences in Light, April 11, 1931: "I was present on one occasion at a private home seance at Hackney in London, when without warning or preparation, in total darkness, Mr. Frank Herne was suddenly placed in the midst of the sitters; and after recovering from our surprise and resuming the seance, Mr. Herne's overcoat, hat and umbrella were dropped on the table. John King, speaking in the direct voice, explained that his band of spirit people had found an unexpected opportunity to transport Mr. Herne from where he had been with friends, witnessing a theatrical play that evening; on his appearance at Hackney he was in a semi-conscious condition."

Very little evidential value can be attached to the episode in Catherine Berry's Experiences in Spiritualism according to which, at the studio of Mr. Hudson, the spirit photographer, between the hours of 2 and 5 p.m., in the presence of Mr. Herne and herself "Mr. Williams was seen to descend from the roof of the studio; he fell on the ground very gently. I do not think he was hurt, but sadly frightened. The spirit 'John King' was rather vexed with him for not obeying a summons to come into the studio, and told Mr. Williams that this putting him through the roof bodily was done as a punishment, and he hoped it would teach him not to disobey in the future. We all went immediately to see if there was an opening in the roof, but there was none, and the boards had all the appearance of not having been disturbed."

Mrs. Guppy's transportation is the best corroborated early case. It occurred on June 3, 1871. There were ten witnesses; two mediums; Williams and Herne and eight sitters. It was a sequel to Herne's previous transportation to Mrs. Guppy's house. In answer to a facetiously expressed wish of a sitter in a moment of time Mrs. Guppy was bodily carried from her home in Highbury (North London) to the house of Williams at 61, Lamb's Conduit Street, a distance of over three miles. The case was the occasion of much drollery in the daily Press. The Echo printed the only serious report. The story was summed up, on the basis of the sitters' written testimony, by Dr. Abraham Wallace in Light, 1918, p. 259, as follows Neither door nor window could have been opened without the admission of light. After various phenomena usual in dark seances had taken place someone asked Katie King, one of the controls, to bring something. Another member of the circle observed, in a joking sort of way, "I wish you would bring Mrs. Guppy." Upon which a third remarked: "Good gracious, I hope not, she is one of the biggest women in London." Katie's voice at once said "I will, I will, I will." Then John's voice was heard to exclaim, "Keep still, can't you?" In an instant somebody called out: "Good God, there is something on my head" simultaneously with a heavy bump on the table and one or two screams. A match was struck and there was Mrs. Guppy on the table with the whole of the sitters seated round it closely packed together as they sat at the commencement. Mrs. Guppy appeared to be in a trance, and was perfectly motionless. Great fears were entertained that the shock would be injurious to her. She had one arm over her eyes, and was arrayed in a loose morning gown with a pair of bedroom slippers on, and in a more or less decollete condition. When telling me the story, Mrs. Volkman very naturally said how much she disliked having been brought in such a state into the presence of strangers. There was a pen in one hand, which was down by her side. From the first mention of bringing her to the time she was on the table three minutes did not elapse."

After Mrs. Guppy had shaken off the effect of the shock the seance was continued with her presence. During this her boots, hat and clothes arrived from her home, also a lot of flowers. Both Herne and Williams were levitated and disappeared in turns.

The seance over, Mr. Harrison, editor of The Spiritualist, with three of the sitters offered to escort Mrs. Guppy to her home. Then their inquiries convinced them that Mrs. Guppy was really sitting in the room with Miss Neyland, her companion, at the time that one of them wished her to be brought. Her husband also bore testimony to the fact that his wife, shortly before her disappearance had been up to the billiard room where he was playing with a friend. This visitor corroborated his statement.

Regarding this visit of inquiry Frank Podmore in Modern Spiritualism (Vol. II, p. 259) adds: "They there learnt from Miss Neyland, a friend of Mrs. Guppy's, who had come out as a medium under her auspices, that an hour or two previously she had been sitting with Mrs. Guppy near the fire making up accounts when suddenly looking up she found that her companion had disappeared, leaving a slight haze near the ceiling."

The report of the marvelous phenomenon gave rise to repetitions.

In one case the authenticity of which is difficult to establish, the subject of transportation was a sitter in Mrs. Guppy's house. His name was Henderson. The seance was held on November 2, 1873, with ten sitters. Suddenly it was discovered that Henderson broke the chain and disappeared. The doors and windows of the room were locked. About the same moment of his disappearance he was discovered at a distance of a mile and a half in the backyard of the house of his friend. Mr. Stoke. Nine people noticed his sudden arrival. The night was wet. His boots and clothes were almost dry.