The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life
Science
The Lock and Key Library: The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations: Real Life
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Parapsychology
It will be remembered that the room and cabinet were carpeted with
a dark carpet, and that the ceilings were of wood. The ceilings
were decorated by being put on in panels. The ceiling of the
cabinet would not have been like that of the room had the closet
been a part of the architect's plans of the house. It was not, but
was made by the medium. He simply built a lath and plaster
partition from the corner of a wide chimney to the wall, thus
inclosing a space of six by four feet. The panel in the ceiling of
the closet was twenty inches square. This panel was "doctored" and
could be displaced, leaving an aperture large enough for the
"spooks" to get through with perfect ease. A light ladder which
reached within three feet of the floor of the cabinet was hooked
fast above and furnished the means of getting down and up again.
There were eight persons connected with the seance described by Mr.
Smith, seven upstairs and the medium in the cabinet. Of course it
was not necessary that the medium get out of his fastenings, and
the facts are that he did NOT. The table was placed across the
cabinet door, not to lay the instruments on, but to be very much in
the way should anyone make a rush and "grab" for the materialized
forms. In case this occurred, the "spooks" above would close the
light, making the room perfectly dark, and the manager would do his
utmost to turn the table on end, or side, with the legs out in the
room. Before the "grabber" could get the lay of things and get
past it, the spooks would have gone through the trap, closed it,
pulled up the ladder, and the "grabber" would have found the medium
writhing and groaning and bleeding from the mouth. The bleeding
was for effect, and was caused by sucking very hard on his teeth or
gums.
The table also served a convenient purpose in the materialization
and dematerialization through the floor. You now know where the
spooks came from, in this particular house, and how they got in and
out. Now let us see how they managed the materializations, and the
properties used to produce them. The trap and ladder were
practically noiseless in their operations, but the music box made
assurance doubly sure that the least sound from the cabinet should
not he heard in the seance room.
When the box began its first air the trapdoor was opened and down
the ladder came a young man clad in a suit of black tights. He was
entirely covered with black with the exception of his right arm,
which was bare to a point a little more than halfway from the elbow
to his shoulder. The bare arm glowed with a luminous bluish light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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