BUSINESSLIKE SPIRITUALISM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17862, 2 June 1926, Page 5

BUSINESSLIKE SPIRITUALISM.

WAITING IN THE DARK FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN. (Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, April 21. “ Door sealed, white light out, red light 60 watts!” In these words, spoken in a very businesslike way, Miss Kay, the official note-taker, opened a seance with “ Stella 0.” at the National Laboratory’ of Psychical Research, South Kensington, writes a special correspondent. The whole sitting, which was held in the new “ fraud-proof ” seance room, was conducted on these unemotional lines. One of the chief aims of the Laboratory is to convince the sceptical man-rn-the-street of the reality of psychic phenomena, and it is recognised that only businesslike, scientific methods can do this. “Stella ('.” is a charming, good-look-ing young woman who has no liking for psychic work, but is willing to take part in experiments in the interests of science. She is now giving a series of about fifty sittings to Mr Harry Price, honorary director of the National Laboratory, to enable him to make an exhaustive investigation into the remarkable physical phenomena which are said to occur under her mediumship. When I entered the seance room I found “ Stella ” -sitting in a chair, with a clinical thermometer in her mouth, while Mr Price was taking her pulse rate. The temperature of the room was also taken. At previous sittings it has been found, I understand, that the room has fallen in temperature during the seance by as much as twenty degrees. When Miss Kay switched off the white light we were lost in almost total darkness. The red light was so heavily shaded that it was impossible for me to see the medium except as an indistinct smudge. In about, ten minutes it was announced that she was “ asleep.” This announcement was made by a hospital nurse, Mrs Pratt, who sat on the. right of the medium and had the responsibility of looking after her. “ Stella ” rested her head on Mrs Pratt’s shoulder and was seeniinglv in a deep trance. Iler left hand was held h- Mr Price, who also controlled her feet by placing one of his own across them. The medium’s other hand was held by Mrs Pratt. The circle was composed of about a dozen men and. women who linked hands with the idea of making “ contact,” and also of preventing trickery by any sitter. After about an hour a sitter said: “We are breaking the circle for a moment. My neighbour wants to blow his nose.” Mr Price (jocularly) : “ He ought, to have a luminous handkerchief, so that we ran see what he’s doing.” But some interesting things happened during the sitting. There were about nine bright flashes of light which looked very like the spark produced by a cigarette lighter, a bell was rung, a mouth organ was faintly played, and what is officially known as the “Isolation Chamber,” and called familiarly the “Meat Safe,” was violently thrown against me. Now, the suggestion is that all these intelligent entity known as “Palma,” who is said to “control” the medium. The mouth organ and the bell were inside the “meat safe,” the door of which was scaled. No one in the room could have touched either of these things. But the mouth organ sounded, and the bell, which was luminous and suspended from the roof of the safe, swayed about and rang when the safe itselfappeared to be stationary. - Sitting there in the almost total darkness, unable even to see one’s neighbour, and waiting for things to happen, was a somewhat uncanny experience. One felt vaguely that we were playing with some unknown force—a feeling that became rather less vague when the heavy “meat safe" lurched violently against my leg and then continued to sway backwards and forwards, while the bell'rang inside. "The medium has shivered,” Mrs Pratt would quietly announce from time to time. “Something will probably happen.” And usually something did happen. "We know nothing about ‘Palma,’ ” explained Mr Price, in a quiet moment. "It may be * a secondary personality of the medium’s or it may, as our spiritualist friends suggest, lie a spirit. Whatever it is, there is no doubt that it has the power of controlling things at a distance. Now then. Palma, give us a fiash inside the safe ! ” Unhappily Palma declined to do this, but there were flashes in various parts of the room. Each flash was accompanied by a distinct sound similar to that made by a cigarette lighter. Mr Harry Price, who has a reputation in Europe and, America as a very critical and sceptical investigator, is staisfiecl that the “Stella” phenomena are genuine. Certainly it was impossible, assuming that the conditions were as fraud-proof as they appeared to he, to account normally for what happened.