Do the Dead Return? A True Story of Startling Seances in San FranciscoAnonymous
Religion
Do the Dead Return? A True Story of Startling Seances in San Francisco
Anonymous
Future life; Seances -- California -- San Francisco
"This was a puzzling thing, and I should like for some one to explain how
it was done, if there was not communication with some invisible
intelligence. In regard to Foster's name it should be said that the medium
had not seen nor heard it, and that his hand flew over the paper very fast
while he wrote the backward message. So far as I could see, Dr.
Schlesinger was quite deaf and near-sighted. He was an old man of heavy
weight and clumsy fingers. His manner was that of a devout believer in the
genuineness of his theory. If any one can explain to me how these things
were done, he will interest me far more than Dr. Schlesinger did, and it
should be said that my attention to what he did was held without
interruption from the start. There were several other like tests wherein
he read for me other names by a process equally startling, making one feel
that he had marvelous powers.
"R. E. BUNKER, M. D."
WHAT MR. BONNET SAW.
Theodore F. Bonnet, who was a reporter for the _Daily Report_ at the time
of the seance at the Mayor's office, was a guest of the author during the
seance. Mr. Bonnet, who is now editor and owner of _Town Talk_, an
influential weekly newspaper, wrote the following account of what he saw
and handed it to the author just after the seance:--
"After witnessing the efforts of Dr. Schlesinger as a medium, one cannot
but be impressed by his marvelous powers of divination. They are
impossible of explanation on any hypothesis calculated to reduce his work
to the vulgar plane of legerdemain. Yet the manifestations, as he is
pleased to call his marvelous, puzzling and apparently supernatural
revelations concerning matters with which he could not become familiar
under ordinary circumstances, are after all, unsatisfactory to the person
engaged in testing his power. I must give him credit, however, for having
startled me by one message. I had written on small slips of paper, which
were then carefully folded--all this an hour or more before the meeting.
One of the names was Joseph Touhill, an Oakland burglar, who had been
killed by a policeman who caught him robbing a saloon. I had known
Touhill, and had been quite friendly with him in late years, but had never
suspected that he was of the Jekyll and Hyde species. The medium did not
at once direct me to the piece of paper on which Touhill's name was
written, but afterwards he suddenly said: 'The spirit of the man with
whom you wish to communicate is here now.'
[Illustration: EDITOR THEODORE F. BONNET.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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