Joseph, who had grown steadily worse, was meantime secluded from his brother, pending the preparations for his exorcism. On 27 October he was taken very early in the morning to the cemetery chapel near Illfurt. Only the parents, Mons. Ignace Spies, Professor Lachemann, and some half a dozen more witnesses were present, as the affair was conducted in the utmost privacy. At six o’clock the abbé Charles Brey said Mass, after which he exorcized the unhappy victim. During three successive hours they renewed prayers and adjurations, until at last some present began to feel discouraged. But the glowing faith of the priest sustained them, and at length with a loud groan that sounded like a deep roar the boy, who had been struggling and screeching in paroxysms of frantic fury all the while, fell back into a deep swoon and lay motionless. After no long pause he sat up, opened his eyes as awaking from sleep, and was overcome with amazement to find himself in a church with strange people around him. Neither Thiébaut nor Joseph ever experienced any recurrence of this strange malady. The former died when he was only sixteen years old on 3 April, 1871. The latter, who obtained a situation at Zillisheim, died there in 1882 at the age of twenty-five. An even more recent case of possession, which has been authoritatively studied in minutest detail and at first hand, presents many of the same features.[81] Hélène-Joséphine Poirier, the daughter of an artisan family—her father was a mason—was born on 5 November, 1834, at Coullons, a small village some ten miles from Gien in the district of the Loire. Whilst still young she was apprenticed to Mlle Justine Beston, a working dressmaker, and soon became skilful with her needle and a remarkable embroideress. Already she had attracted attention by her sincere and modest piety, and was thought highly of by the parish priest, M. Preslier, a man of unusual discernment and the soundest common sense. On the night of 25 March, 1850, she was suddenly awakened by a series of sharp raps, which soon became violent blows, as if struck upon the walls of the small attic where she slept. In terror she rushed into her parents’ room next door, and they returned with her to search. Nothing at all could be discovered, and she was persuaded to go back to bed. Although they could actually see no cause for alarm her parents had heard the extraordinary noises. “From this date,” says M. Preslier, “the life of Hélène in the midst of such terrible physical and moral suffering that she might well have given utterance to the complaints of holy Job.”[82] These manifestations to Hélène Poirier may not unfittingly be compared with the famous “Rochester knockings,” the phenomenon of the rappings at Hydesville in 1848 at the house of the Fox family, which by many writers is considered to be the beginning of that world-wide movement known as Spiritism or Spiritualism in its modern manifestations and recrudescence.[83]