The Spirit LandEmmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Religion
The Spirit Land
Emmons, Samuel B. (Samuel Bulfinch)
Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Spiritualism
Many of the performances of jugglers and ventriloquists puzzle us, and
yet we do not believe there is any thing supernatural in them. Signor
Blitz once called upon the ladies in the hall where he was giving an
exhibition to pass him a handkerchief with their name stamped upon it,
and he would put it into a pistol and fire it off in their presence,
and it should be found in the steeple of a church some quarter of a
mile distant, and yet not a window or a door should be open on the
occasion. A committee of honest and respectable men were despatched
from the hall to the house of the church sexton, the keys procured,
with a lantern, when the belfry was ascended, the handkerchief found
hanging on the tongue of the bell, and returned to the lady, who
instantly recognized it as the identical handkerchief she passed into
the hands of the performer. Now, who could prove that the thing alleged
was not _actually_ done? and yet who will _believe_ that it was?
We have heard distant sounds of music, and other imitations of men,
birds, and animals, that deceived our sense of hearing, knowing that
they were produced by the power of ventriloquism. We have seen things
moved from place to place by _magnetic attraction_, and we do not think
it at all strange that so light an instrument as a guitar could be thus
attracted to different parts of a room by an _unseen power_, especially
in a _dark_ room, and its tones be imitated by a being as yet in the
_normal_ state. A guitar will give vibrations of its tones to the
concussions of the air, caused by the conversation of persons present;
and a stranger to the fact might possibly interpret these vibrations as
something quite mysterious, and suppose the instrument, as it stood
alone, to be touched by some spirit hand. When people's minds, or their
imaginations, get wrought up to a certain pitch, the most trifling
things are looked upon as wonderful phenomena. Every thing is _new_,
and _strange_, and _appalling_. We hear of the doings of the spirits at
Rochester, and other places, and which are called the "ushering in of a
_new science_." "We know of what we speak," says the pamphlet before
us, "we _know_ they are _facts, strange, new_, and to many
_wonderful_!" (See page 43.) And yet the authors introduce several
pages from a work by Dr. Adam Clarke to show that, as early as 1716,
the Wesley family were troubled by noises made by the "knocking
spirits," and that "the present manifestations have no claim to the
credit of originality." The cracking of hazel nuts upon Martin Luther's
bed posts, and the racket and rumbling upon his chamber stairs, as if
many empty barrels and hogs-heads had been tumbling down, claim still
greater antiquity, and belong to the same category or chapter of
wonderful events.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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