Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations: Demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals. Doctrine of the spirit world respecting heaven, hell, morality, and God. Also, the influence of Scripture on the morals of Christians.Hare, Robert
Religion
Experimental Investigation of the Spirit Manifestations: Demonstrating the existence of spirits and their communion with mortals. Doctrine of the spirit world respecting heaven, hell, morality, and God. Also, the influence of Scripture on the morals of Christians.
Hare, Robert
Bible and spiritualism; Spiritualism
289. “At a request, the table commenced its motion, with moderate
speed, occasionally halting, and then gliding on a foot or two at once.
It seemed as if its motion would have been continuous, if the hands
above it had followed along _pari passu_. On reaching the folding-doors
dividing off the two parlours, and which were open, it rose over an
iron rod on which the door-trucks traversed, and which projected half
or three-quarters of an inch above the level of the carpet. It then
entered the other parlour, and went its whole length until it came near
the pier glass at its end—a centre-table having been pushed aside by
one of the party to allow its free course.
290. “At request, for they during this time spoke as if to actual
beings, the motion was reversed, and it returned until it again reached
the iron rod. Here it stuck. The table hove, creaked, and struggled,
but all in vain; it could not surmount the obstacle. The medium was
then ‘impressed by the spirits’ to write, and seizing a pencil, hastily
wrote that if the fore legs were lifted over the bar, they (_i. e._ the
spirits) thought they could push the others over. This was done, and
the motion kept on. Once or twice Dr. Bell requested all to withdraw
a little farther from the table, ‘to see how far the influence would
extend.’ It was found that whenever a much greater distance, say two
feet, was reached, the movement ceased, and a delay of three or four
minutes occurred before it recommenced, giving the idea that, if broken
off, a certain reaccumulation of force was needful to put it in motion
again. The table reached the upper end of the parlour, from which
it had started, but was left some four feet from the medial line of
the room. Dr. Bell expressed the thanks of the company for the very
complete exhibition with which they had been favoured, but remarked
that the obligation would be enhanced if the ‘spirits’ would move the
table about four feet at right angles, so that the chairs would come
right for their late occupants. This was immediately done, and the
performance was deemed so perfectly full and satisfactory that nothing
more was asked at this session.
291. “Dr. Bell was understood to say that this made some five or six
times in which he had seen the table move without human contact, and
all under circumstances apparently as free from suspicion as this
just related. He also stated that the Rev. Mr. P., a clergyman of
extraordinary sagacious perceptions and mechanical skill, took this
same medium to his own house, without previous thought, where she never
before had been, and where his own table, in the presence of his own
family alone, went through the fullest locomotion without human touch.
Dr. Bell mentioned that in his last experiment, that just narrated, the
entire space moved through was over fifty feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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