Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
I confess that I experienced a disenchantment. I felt that I was going
to doubt the extent of the occult power, which had, nevertheless,
manifested itself very clearly. Why could it not sound the alarm of
this watch? In making my request, had I overstepped the limits of its
powers? Was I going to be the cause of all the well-proved phenomena
of which we have had testimony losing the half of their value? I said
aloud:
"Am I to show how the alarm is operated?"
"No, no!" Eusapia warmly replies, "it will do it."
I will note here that at the moment when I proposed to point out the
mechanism, there passed through my mind the method of pressing upon
the little tube. Immediately the watch was brought back to the table;
and, very distinctly, three separate times, we heard it sound a
quarter to eleven.
Eusapia was evidently very tired; her burning hands seemed to contract
or shrivel; she gasped aloud with heaving breast, her foot kept
quitting mine every moment, scraping the floor and tediously rubbing
along it back and forth. She uttered hoarse panting cries, shrugging
up her shoulders and sneering; the sofa came forward when she looked
at it, then recoiled before her breath; all the instruments were
thrown pell-mell upon the table; the tambourine rose almost to the
height of the ceiling; the cushions took part in the sport,
overturning everything on the table; M. M. was thrown from his chair.
This chair--a heavy dining-room chair of black walnut, with stuffed
seat--rose into the air, came up on the table with a great clatter,
then was pushed off.
Eusapia seems shrunken together and is very much affected. We pity
her. We ask her to stop. "No, no!" she cries. She rises, we with her;
the table leaves the floor, rises to a height of twenty-four inches,
then comes clattering down.
Eusapia sinks prostrated into a chair. We sit there troubled, amazed,
in consternation, with a tense and constricted feeling in the head, as
if the atmosphere were charged with electricity.
With many precautions, M. F. succeeds in calming the agitation of
Eusapia. After about a quarter of an hour she returns to herself. When
the lamps are again lighted, she is seen to be very much changed, her
eye dull, her face apparently diminished to half its usual size. In
her trembling hands she feels the pricking of needles which she asks
us to pull out. Little by little she completely recovers her senses.
She appears to remember nothing, not to comprehend at all our
expressions of wonder. All that is as foreign to her as if she had not
been present at the sitting. She isn't interested in it. So far as she
is concerned, it would seem as if we were speaking of things of which
she had not the faintest idea.
What have we seen? mystery of mysteries!