Psychic phenomena : $b a brief account of the physical manifestations observed in psychical researchBennett, Edward T.
Philosophy
Psychic phenomena : $b a brief account of the physical manifestations observed in psychical research
Bennett, Edward T.
Parapsychology
"Now all this time, I imagine you are wondering how the stereoscopic
camera was behaving itself as such. It is due to the psychic entities to
say that whatever was produced on one half of the stereoscopic plates
was produced on the other, alike good or bad in definition. But on a
careful examination of one which was rather better than the other, ... I
deduce this fact, that the impressing of the spirit form was not
consentaneous with that of the sitter. This I consider an important
discovery. I carefully examined one in the stereoscope, and found that,
while the two sitters were stereoscopic _per se_, the psychic figure was
absolutely flat. I also found that the psychic figure was at least a
millimetre higher up in one than the other. Now, as both had been
simultaneously exposed, it follows to demonstration that, although both
were correctly placed vertically in relation to the particular sitter
behind whom the figure appeared, and not so horizontally, this figure
had not only not been impressed on the plate simultaneously with the two
gentlemen forming the group, but had not been formed by the lens at all,
and that therefore the psychic image might be produced without a camera.
I think this is a fair deduction. But still the question obtrudes: How
came these figures there? I again assert that the plates were not
tampered with by either myself or any one present. Are they
crystallisations of thought? Have lens and light really nothing to do
with their formation? The whole subject was mysterious enough on the
hypothesis of an invisible spirit, whether a thought projection or an
actual spirit, being really there in the vicinity of the sitter, but it
is now a thousand times more so....
"In the foregoing I have confined myself as closely as possible to
narrating how I conducted a photographic experiment open to every one to
make, avoiding stating any hypothesis or belief of my own on the
subject."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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