SPIRIT MESSAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18686, 16 October 1922, Page 10

SPIRIT MESSAGE

REMARKABLE STORY. WRITER IN HIERATICS. EXPERIMENT ON MAKURA. A remarkable story of The psychic powers of a woman who received spirit messages and writes them in “hieratics,” used by the priests of Asia Minor 7000 years ago, is told in the London Times. A world traveller who relates the story says; “Soon after leaving the Hawaiian Islands, the flower of the North Pacific, .the captain of our good ship, the Makura, showed mo a loiter that had reached him at Honolulu. “It contained a sequel to the most singular story in tho region of psychic things that ever I heard or imagined. “A British woman—Mrs B.—who lives with her family in one of the Pacific Islands, where her grandfather was a missionary, has received within the last few years strange communications from persons who lived in distant lands and a remote century. “Last summer she was a passenger on the Makura, and tho captain of our ship, hearing some rumour of her ‘psychic powers, asked her if she would care to make an experiment before him. “She agreed to try,* and one day she sat down at his desk with a pen in her hand, and while the captain and her husband sat together looking at a book on Samoa, she waited for her hand to be directed, without any greater concentration than, say, the wireless operator exercises when ho prepares to receive a message. “After a little while she ejaculated: ‘What a nuisance! I have got back to this Eastern writing.’ Lately, on several occasions, she had found herself writing a strange script—it is largely in straight lines—which vaguely suggested to her rand others something Eastern. “After writing for some 20 minutes, she gave tho manuscript to the captain, who determined to seek an interpreter and probe the mystery. “The first people he showed it to were some Indians, who had come on affairs to Pin; but they could make nothing of it. “When the captain reported his failure to Mrs B. she expressed disappointment, adding: ‘I supposes there was nothing in it.’ THE WRITING IDENTIFIED. “In November last, Professor G., one of th e great archaeologists of the world, was a passenger on the ship, and the MSS. were shown to him, without comment. ‘He at .once poured out excited questions, and then gave his surprising verdict. “Jure writing was a very good example of hreratics, which was the popular form of the hieroglyphics used by tho priests. It prevailed up to about 5000 8.C., in Asia Minor. “Only a handful of people now alive can read the script, and the professor did not think that anyone could have written tho document in the short time taken by Mrs B, message began by thanking the writer for having got into communication and went on to clesfribe how differently people travelled now and then, giving a quaint picture of tho contrasted motions of a camel and a ship. . “At the end an accurate description was given of .the scene in the captain’s cabin and of the state of sky and sea. “Tho letter of which I spoke as being delivered to the captain at Honolulu contained a further communication in tho same script, and this, too, is going to the professor 'for translation. “He is also, with the help of his books, accurately and in detail translating the first MS. PROBING THE MYSTERY. "I have seen the seqond MS., and hoard tho story, with the full names of the people concerneu, and give it for what it is worth. “The evidence has been sifted in a scientific spirit, and home of the three, in any sense of the phrase, is professionally psychic—neither the professor, who is a man of science, nor the captain, who is a Scottish New Zealander, nor the woman writer, who is tho mother of a considerable family, ana deprecates any claim to supernatural powers. She certainly has no conscious knowledge whatever of hieratic?. “What does it all mean It surpasses fiction, is more surprising and dramatic than even Kipling’s ‘Finest Story *n the •World.’ Will it have as disappointing a sequel ? "For myself, it is tho only story of the sort that so much as inclined me "to belief. Ill'this I see no loophole for incredulity.”