However grotesque, and indeed often puerile in its bombast and grandiloquence, such a mass of heterogeneous notices may seem we must remember that these people are in deadly earnest, and I doubt not but their meetings and assemblies are well attended by enthusiastic devotees. In a report of an address by the Rev. G. Vale Owen at the “Spiritualist Community Services in the County Hall” on Sunday evening, 15 February, 1925, I read “all seats were filled long before the advertised hour for starting. The doors were closed and many for a time were denied admission. A little later they were allowed to enter and take up positions along the edges of the dais and other odd places about the hall.”[112] This, of course, was possibly some exceptional occasion, but there is no indication that such was the case. Mr. Vale Owen may be a very eloquent speaker and able to hold his audience spell-bound with the magic of his words. It must assuredly be his manner and not his matter, for his so-called revelations of the life beyond the grave, written under control and presumed to be directly derived from spirit agency, which appeared in _The Weekly Dispatch_ are vapid, inept, idle, and insipid to the last degree. Such banal ramblings would provoke a smile, were it not for the pity that any person can be so self-deluded, and can apparently induce others to give credit to his silliness. There have been large numbers of mediums in recent years who owing to one cause or another attracted considerable attention from time to time, and there are many well-known contemporary sensitives widely practising to-day. Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, who were believed to have obtained spirit messages from the late F. W. H. Myers, occupied the serious attention of the Society of Psychical Research[113] for a considerable period; Mrs. Piper is an automatic writer of no little repute; Mr. Vout Peters specializes in psychometry and clairvoyance; Mr. Vearncombe and Mrs. Deane have recently enjoyed their full share of notoriety;[114] the Rev. Josie K. Stewart (Mrs. Y.), a lady hailing from the United States, has a gift for the production of “writing and drawings on cards held in her hand”; Mrs. Elizabeth A. Tomson, in spite of being detected of fraud at a Spiritistic “Church” in Brooklyn, still has devoted followers; Franek Kluski, Stella C., and Ada Besinnet, are in the forefront of American mediums; whilst the famous Goligher circle at Belfast was carefully and patiently investigated for no less than three months by Dr. Fournier d’Albe, who has published the result of his experiences.[115] The very cream of these occult manifestations is materialization, the most complex problem of all, which has been described as “the exercise of the power of using of the matter of the medium’s and the sitters’ bodies in the formation of physical structures on a principle totally unknown to ordinary life, although probably present there.”[116] Recently (1922) Erto, the Italian medium, appears to