Adventurings in the PsychicalBruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Science
Adventurings in the Psychical
Bruce, H. Addington (Henry Addington)
Parapsychology
"On March 1 the only cut flowers in my drawing-room were in two blue
china jars on the mantelpiece; the flowers were large single daffodils.
On the ledge of the window ... were three pots of growing yellow
tulips--the only flowers near any window. The day was dull in the
morning, but about twelve the sun came out and it was warm; it rained
heavily in the afternoon."
There was no "cross-correspondence" in the writings of the two scripts
for this or the next two weeks--the experimenters wrote only once a
week--but in the scripts of the week following Miss Johnson found a
curious coincidence--the presence of notes of music. Only once before
or since, she testifies, have notes of music appeared in the script of
either Mrs. Verrall or Mrs. Holland. In Mrs. Holland's script of that
same date, March 22, there was also a reference to "the ivory gate
through which all good dreams come." Mrs. Verrall, it was learned, on
March 19 or 20, had been reading Virgil's passage in the "Æneid" about
the gates of horn and ivory. She had been reading Dante, too, in the
original Italian, the first time she had read anything in Italian for
months; and, oddly enough, Mrs. Holland's script for March 22 contained
a sentence in Italian.
Later scripts were characterized by even more striking correspondences,
and--which is not without interest--on more than one occasion
the "controls" issued warnings against placing faith in Eusapia
Paladino. For instance, on December 1, 1905, the Myers control wrote
through Mrs. Holland: "There may be raps genuine enough of their
kind--I concede the raps--poltergeist merely--but the luminous
appearances--the sounds of a semi-musical nature--the flower falling
upon the table--trickery--trickery." And the Gurney control added:
"Her feet are very important--Next time can't Miss J. sit with the
sapient feet both touching hers--Let her fix her thoughts on the feet
and prevent the least movement of them."
As American investigators have since discovered, Eusapia's feet are
indeed important.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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