“In order to gain the perfect, full confidence of Dr. Slade,
and to have him give a seance in my home, and in order to
counteract and overcome his explicit aversion as to do writing
on or between a sealed slate or a locked book--I showed him
letters from (two eminent and confiding Spiritist Authors)--Dr.
Heinrich Tiedemann and Tiedemann’s intimate friend Hudson
Tuttle, promising to me that they would be present at that
seance (at 148 Fairmount Avenue).
“Dr. Slade had handled and inspected that Book and Slate,
during a Seance, at my residence (at 148 Fairmount Avenue,
Phila., Pa.), where I, together with Mr. Wertheimer (then a
student of Jurisprudence)--and in presence of other witnesses
(who were concealed and not seen, nor suspected by Dr. Slade,
nor his ‘Spirits’) detected the manipulations, pedalations
(foot, leg and other bodily movements)--and the general _modus
operandi_ of his simple Legerdemain at the seance. I had ready,
for that seance, three different suites of Furniture, and thus,
I found out that he would, or could, perform only at, or on a
certain kind of plain, square or drop-leaf table and ordinary
wooden chairs or cane seat chairs.
“Each person present at the Seance, wrote, _independent_ of
and _before_ communicating with, the others, a personal,
individual report of the Seance and signed it within the next
few days. A day or two after, I put these papers in my pocket
and also another paper I had prepared, to serve or use as Dr.
Slade’s confession to be signed by him. I went to the Girard
Hotel, Room 24 (N. W. corner of 9th and Chestnut Streets,
Philadelphia, Pa.), to have Dr. Slade arrested for obtaining
money under false pretense,--or to get him to sign his own
confession. There, in his room, No. 24, in the Girard Hotel,
I had another, a different Seance, with Dr. Slade. He again
carefully scrutinized the book and the slate, and then,
holding the book under the table, secretly and carefully,
attempted to open the lock, with a small key, hidden in his
handkerchief.
“Dr. Slade and his pretended ‘_Spirits_’ could not write in
the book. While holding it under the table, he attempted to
pull out of the book that thin, wooden, square frame, I had
put there at the edges of the leaves so that the small piece
of lead pencil could move about.--Then, in a similar attempt,
he worked and perspired, on, and over the double slate. His
‘Spirits’ could not write in the locked slate and he could not
open it.
“He said, ‘The Spirits seem to be angry at your skepticism,
it’s no use to lose more time by trying. My guide don’t want to
have anything more to do with you.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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