Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European SavantsFlammarion, Camille
Philosophy
Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
Flammarion, Camille
Parapsychology -- Investigation; Spiritualism
This girl's radiations of psychic force (_emanations_) are not
permanently present during all the hours of the day. They are
especially strong in the evening, from seven to nine o'clock,--which
leads me to surmise that perhaps her last meal (taken at six o'clock)
is not without its influence.
The emanations are given forth only from the front part of the body,
especially at the wrist and at the bend of the arm. They only occur on
the left side, and the arm of this side is of a higher temperature
than that of the other. It gives off a gentle heat, as from a part
where a lively reaction is going on. The arm trembles and is
continually disturbed by unusual contractions and quiverings which
seem to be imparted to the hand that touches it.
During the time I observed this subject, her pulse varied from 105 to
120 pulsations a minute. It seemed to me frequently irregular.
When she is isolated from the common reservoir of electric or magnetic
power, either by being seated upon a chair without her feet touching
the floor or when placing them upon the chair of a person in front of
her, the phenomena do not take place. They also cease when she is made
to sit down on her own hands. A waxed floor, a piece of oiled silk, a
plate of glass under her feet or on the chair, all have the effect of
antagonizing and destroying for the time the electro-dynamic property
of her body.
During the paroxysm she can touch scarcely anything with her left hand
without throwing it from her as if it burned her. When her clothes
touch the articles of furniture in a room she attracts them, displaces
them, and overturns them.
One will understand this more easily when it is realized that at every
electric discharge she runs away to escape the pain. She says "it
pricks" or "stings" her in the wrist or bend of the elbow. Once when I
was feeling for her pulse in the temporal artery (not having been able
to locate it in the left arm) my fingers chanced to touch the nape of
the neck. She uttered a cry and drew back quickly from me. I several
times assured myself of the fact that, near the cerebellum, at the
place where the muscles of the upper part of the neck are joined to
the cranium, there is a spot so sensitive that she allows no one to
touch it. All the sensations she feels in her left arm are here echoed
or repeated.
The electric emanations of this child seem to move by waves,
intermittently, and in succession through different parts of the
anterior portion of the body. But be that as it may, _they are
certainly accompanied by an aeriform current which gives the sensation
of cold_. I plainly felt upon my hand a quick puff of air like that
produced by the lips.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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