KNIFE AND FIRE DEFIED.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 August 1925, Page 6

KNIFE AND FIRE DEFIED.

AMAZING SEANCE

BEFORE NINE DOCTORS,

Great interest has been aroused, says the Paris correspondent of The Times, by the seances* of a fakir, Talira Bey, who claims to possess exceptional powers of auto-suggestion. lie gave an exhibition in the presence of an audience of 2000 people and a jury of nine doctors. The fakir threw himself into the cataleptic state, and was laid on two scythe blades one under his neck, the other.under his ankles. A stone weighing a hundredweight was then placed on his stomach and smashed with a sledge-hammer. His body did not show tlie slightest mark of the blades. Talira Bey was then placed on a bed studded with sharp nails,, and a man sat on his chest. "The fakir again was uninjured. When he emerged from the trance* he stabbed himself with a dagger, but the blood did not flow until • he himself allowed it. Then lie himself stooped it when a doctor ordered him to do so. The fakir next burned himself with a torch, and showed’no signs of pain. He permitted himself to be buried rin sand, inside a coffin, and did not breathe for twenty miniites.