SPIRIT RAPPING.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1007, 5 July 1862, Page 4

SPIRIT RAPPING.

The following interesting letter on the fashionable vice of spirit rapping appears in the ' Times,' 24th March:— Sir, —You have expressed a wish to examine witnesses who have had some " experiences" in modern magic. Allow me to offer you some of mine. . ' . Some years ago a medical friend gave me Reichenbach's book which I read carefully, enticed by the author's scientific treatment of mysterious subjects. About the same time a near relation took up mesmerism, and we tried to form an opinion. Mesmerism, clairvoyance, electro-biology, and table turning had their turn, and now I have survived to meet a medium. I set out with the conviction that truth is discovered by investigation and experiment; that untrue witnesses are discovered by taking them off their guard; and that a detected cheat makes a bad witness. If a man says that he does not see or hear , or feel, and shows that he does, no hard swearing and no authority can convince me that his senses are absent; and nothing short of demonstration can prove,that the senses are independent of their proper organs. Men see with eyes; they must prove that they see with their elbows.

My first supernatural acquaintance was Alexis, and I confess that the roots of my hair moved uncomfortably when I saw him playing ecarte with a bandage over his eyes; but when the gymnastics began I recovered. The patient, being in rigid state, was set in a chair, and a man stood on his out ■ stretched legs. They did not bend, but the weight overbalanced Alexis, and lie, forgetting himself in a small matter, bent his " rigid " knees, got up, reseated himself, and stuck out his legs once more. I did the same in the next room. Thus the experiment was a feat of strength. Alexis, when he pretended to be mesinerically rigid, tried to deceive, and all his proceedings then assumed the value of conjuring tricks. For example, the card-playing melted into a code of signals, for the assistant looked ,into both hands, and spoke continually during the game. I next spent some hours in a dark room with a large magnet, striving earnestly to see the electric fluid. I knew by sounds that my companion was mesmerising me all the time, but there was no result. Our experiments failed, so we held a keen argument. My friend at last poured out some water, and, holding the glass in a particular manner, said, " If I give that mesmeric fluid to any one he will sleep." This could be tested ; there was no drug, so I drank the water, and did not sleep. My friend became a mesmerist, but this experiment convinced me that he habitually deceived himself, and many subsequent experiments confirmed the conviction. But I have seen my friend exercise an influence over another friend which amounted to an exaggeration of the power which Napoleon I. exercised over the nation which he commanded, but to nothing more. The most famous clairvoyante of her day described the symptoms of a sick person, and«l wrote them down in silence till the list covered most maladies ; but when a companion, who had been directed to keep silence, spoke and asked a, leading question, the sitting became a mixture of guessing and of the game of Yes and No. All symptoms were neglected but those indicated by. the questioner, aud there was no subsequent cure.' At a public electro-biological meeting I, with some 20 others, stared hard at bits of tin without any result, but a man of very suspicious exterior was affected, and he went through all sorts of contortions at the word of but these might be acted. Finally, the patient was told that he could not see the candles. The operator, who was the most famous of. his day, summoned the audience to examine the patient, and a medical spectator did so with a candle. The rigid, unwinking eyes, and the grim, stony face of the biologized were something to remember,, but the doctor said quietly, "The pupils expand and contract freely under the influence of light." There was still a chance—the muscles might contract, though the man was unconscious of the luminous cause; but the audience were sceptical, and the angry patient removed all doubt by shouting, "I should like to see you bear ■the candle as near your eyes as I did without winking." He had seen the caudle, then. The cheat betrayed itself in a small matter, and soon after this lecturer disappeared. On mentioning this incident to another famous American biologist, who called himself " Doctor," he said that the retina expanded and contracted involuntarily under the influence of light. The medical sceptic said it was the pupil. Again, a mesmerised patient of a then well-known operator declared that she was unable to hear, but a hard-headed medical sceptic walked quietly about muttering "How wonderful!" "How extraordinary!" "Cannot hear!" Then, suddenly addressing the patient in the same tone, he said, "You can't hear at all, can you?" No, sir," said the girl, "not a word." Another patient, who could not feel, was, slyly pinched in a tender place by another doctor, and, being taken unawares, sprang up, exclaiming ".You brute!" The doctor was " perfectly satisfied," and so, with others within my experience, whenever the senses were tested the wonders of mesmerism, clairvoyance, and electro-biology disappeared. A mechanical model explained table-turning. Hands laid on a scale weigh considerably, so they do when laid on the edge of a table, on a hat, or on the spokes of a windlass. In like manner pens press upon the edge of a compass card when the point rests on it, and the pens lean outwards against the sides of the case. It is very difficult thus to arrange a dozen of pens so evenly as not to turn the card, one way or the other; and, if it moves at all, the whole system presses in one direction. All the pens come to slope one way and push one way, and the card whirls round: And so table-turning is but a mechanical force exercised unconsciously. When Faraday*B index proved that fact, table-turning went out of fashion, but it still survives in mental corners. Now we have a new phase of magic in spirit rapping, and I hold it to be a yricked imposture, trading upon the best affections and feelings of human nature. The medium's charge confines his general audience to those whose family history is recorded in the ' Peerage' aud similar books. His professed dealing with deceased friends draws those Who suffer and are least fitted to detect imposture. Grief, with its tearful eyes, trembling awe, veneration, and blank wonder,are ill fitted to cope with an imposture. Argument is useless where men wish to be deceived, but yet the cheat is transparent. The whole system is based on the assertion that dead men's ghosts'follow a medium; the most famous of the tribe assured me in an unguarded moment that if he were haunted by a spirit it would drive liitri mad.

The system of communication is by raps. I saw the same man rapping while lie asserted that the spirit of my aunt was communicating with him by raps.,; I saw the muscular motion in one kuckle of his right hand which lie masked with his left arm,

and each muscular contraction answered: to each

sound as a pendulum auswers to thetick of a clock. I tried the experiment, and produced the same sound by moving the same musclei so as to jerk the b&ek of the nail of the fore finger against an edge cut in the side of a pencil; the point of which was pressed hard against the table. When the medium said that my dead aunt rapped for him, and had no sympathy for me, and when he made an audible noise with a pencil, before my eyes, it was a barefaced, wicked attempt to deceive through human

affections; but when he did that which I had done that evening at dinner, and kicked up the whole table with his knee, it was simply ludicrous, and there was a general shout of laughter. When he wrote with one hand under the table, and said it was a spirit who wrote, he said the thing which was not, for I can write with one hand; and generally it is too absurd to suppose that a room full of ghosts assemble to inform their relations that they know the month in which they died. Let them tell me how to make my fortune honestly, and I will try to believe. Table-turning did little harm, and promoted flirtation. Mesmerism breaks no bones. If a man when biologized thinks himself a pump and assumes the attitude, that is his lookout; but spirit-rapping is different. In the first place, it is obtaining money under false pretences; and in the second, it has driven hundreds of Americans as mad as March hares.

I appeal to you, sir, to use your pen to.save out wits, to stir up the police, who are ready enough to pounce upon the poor gipsy who tells fortunes, and so earns a few pence, but who let slip these larger fish who make fortunes out of human weakness.

I am, sir your obedient servant, A Denizen of this World,