The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
For me alone, the instrument will not move; for myself and wife it moves
slightly, but its writing is mostly in monosyllables. With my daughter's
hands upon it, it writes more freely, frequently giving, correctly, the
names of persons present whom she may not know, and also the names
of their friends, living or dead, with other and similar tests. Its
conversations with her are grave or gay, much according to the state
of her own mind at the time; and when frivolous questions are asked,
it almost always returns answers either frivolous or, I am sorry to
say it, a trifle wicked. For example, she on one occasion said to it:
"Planchette, where did you get your education?" To her horror, it
instantly wrote: "In h--l," without, however, being so fastidious as to
omit the letters of the word here left out. On another occasion, after
receiving from it responses to some trival questions, she said to
it: "Planchette, now write something of your own accord without our
prompting." But instead of writing words and sentences as was expected,
it immediately traced out the rude figure of a man, such as school
children sometimes make upon their slates. After finishing the
outlines--face, neck, arms, legs, etc., it swung around and brought
the point of the pencil to the proper position for the eye, which it
carefully marked in, and then proceeded to pencil out the hair. On
finishing this operation, it wrote under the figure the name of a young
man concerning whom my daughter's companions are in the habit of teasing
her.
My wife once said to it: "Planchette, write the name of the article I am
thinking of." She was thinking of a finger ring, on which her eye had
rested a moment before. The operator, of course, knew nothing of this,
and my wife expected either that the experiment would fail, or else that
the letters R-i-n-g would be traced. But instead of that, the instrument
moved, very slowly, and, as it were, deliberately, and traced an
apparently _exact circle_ on the paper, of about the size of the finger
ring she had in her mind. "Will you try that over again?" said she, when
a similar circle was traced, in a similar manner, but more promptly.
During this experiment, one of my wife's hands, in addition to my
daughter's, was resting lightly upon the board; but if the moving force
had been supplied by her, either consciously or unconsciously, the
motion would evidently have taken the direction of her thought, which
was that of writing the letters of the word, instead of a direction
unthought of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account