“I got up, shut the window, and in coming back remarked that the window
was not raised a foot, and that I could not think how he had managed to
squeeze through.
“OUT, HEAD FIRST
“He arose and said ‘Come and see.’ I went with him; he told me to open
the window as it was before, I did so; he told me to stand a little
distance off; he then went through the open space, head first, quite
rapidly, his body being nearly horizontal and apparently rigid. He came
in again, feet foremost, and we returned to the other room.
“It was so dark I could not see clearly how he was supported outside.
He did not appear to grasp, or rest upon, the balustrade, but rather to
be swung out and in.”
“Such are the facts as narrated at the time. I make no comment except
this. Rigorously speaking, it is incorrect to say, as I think has been
said, that we _saw_ Mr. Home wafted from one window to the other.
“As to whether he was or was not, I am concerned only to state the
facts as observed at the time, not to make deductions from them.”
In view of this publication, it is quite natural to infer that Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle was cognizant of it at the time of its appearance,
because of his controversy with Mr. Joseph McCabe, on that subject;
therefore, it is difficult to reconcile that thought with the fact of
Sir Arthur’s unmitigated praise and endorsement of a man such as all
adduced evidence has branded a charlatan.
D
_Luther R. Marsh and the Huylers_
In 1903, Luther R. Marsh again fell into the hands of charlatans as Mr.
Isaac K. Funk tells in his book “The Widow’s Mite and Other Psychic
Phenomena.” A court set aside the assignment of several insurance
policies which Marsh had made to a medium known as Mrs. Huyler. Mr.
Funk tells the story as follows:
“On the day Mr. Marsh transferred the policies he (Huyler) and his
wife had gone to Mr. Marsh’s room, where Mrs. Huyler claimed to hold
communication with the Spirits and told Mr. Marsh there was a terrible
uproar in Spiritland because he declined to transfer the policies. She
told him that his Spiritualistic wife, Adelaide Neilson, was tearing
her hair and weeping, and heaping reproaches upon him. His wife, Mrs.
Marsh, was acting in the same fashion, and his father-in-law, ‘Sunset,’
Alvin Stewart, was exceedingly wroth.
“Mr. Marsh was alarmed at this manifestation of Spiritualistic
displeasure, and agreed to transfer the policies. At the last moment he
hesitated and claimed that because his will was made out he thought it
better to postpone the matter a little while; but Mrs. Huyler insisted
that he go across the way to a lawyer’s office, and he did so.
“While he was gone Mrs. Huyler admitted that the trance was a ‘fake’
and said that she wanted to get all she could from the ‘old fool’
before he died.
“Mr. Marsh returned to the room presently and assured her that the
transfer had been made as she desired. As soon as this evidence had
been given by Huyler, Justice Marean ended the proceedings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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