Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2Wallace, Alfred Russel
Science
Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Naturalists -- Correspondence; Wallace, Alfred Russel, 1823-1913
Dear Miss Buckley,--Our stance came off last evening, and was a
tolerable success. The medium is a very pretty little lively girl, the
place where she sits a bare empty cupboard formed by a frame and doors
to close up a recess by the side of a fireplace in a small basement
breakfast-room. We examined it, and it is absolutely impossible to
conceal a scrap of paper in it. Miss Cooke is locked in this cupboard,
above the door of which is a square opening about 15 inches each way,
the only thing she takes with her being a long piece of tape and a chair
to sit on. After a few minutes Katie's whispering voice was heard, and a
little while after we were asked to open the door and seal up the
medium. We found her hands tied together with the tape passed three
times round each wrist and tightly knotted, the hands tied close
together, the tape then passing behind and well knotted to the
chair-back. We sealed all the knots with a private seal of my friend's,
and again locked the door. A portable gas lamp was on a table the whole
evening, shaded by a screen so as to cast a shadow on the square opening
above the door of the cupboard till permission was given to illuminate
it. Every object and person in the room were always distinctly visible.
A face[59] then appeared at the opening, but dark and indistinct.
After a time another face quite distinct with a white turban-like
headdress--this was a handsome face with a considerable general likeness
to that of the medium, but paler, larger, fuller, and older--decidedly a
different face, although like. The light was thrown full on this face,
and on request it advanced so that the chin projected a little beyond
the aperture. We were then ordered to release the medium. I opened the
door, and found her bent forward with her head in her lap, and
apparently in a deep sleep or trance--from which a touch and a few words
awoke her. We then examined the tape and knots--all was as we left it
and every seal perfect.
The same face appeared later in the evening, and also one decidedly
different with coarser features.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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