PRIEST AS CONJURER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 143, 20 June 1932, Page 3

PRIEST AS CONJURER

CHALLENGE TO MEDIUMS. SEANCES “BASED ON TRICKS.” A conjuring display of considerable •skill and ingenuity was given by a Roman Catholic priest in Loudon on May 11, to illustrate his contention that seances conducted by Spiritualistic mediums were based upon trickery. Father Knapp, of St. Dominic’s Priory, the only priest member of thi Magic Circle, gave the display in the Priory Haji, Kentish Town, following an address in which he accused mediums of employing every possible means of deception. These mediums, he contended, battened upon the credulity of those who sought their aid by means of skill in conjuring and ven triloquism and in the employment of a highly-perfected system of espionage and mutual exchange of knowledge. Alodiums, Father Knapp alleged, worked hand in glove with each other, and possessed an amazingly complete card index embracing private life, business relations, history and ambitions of the kind of people likely to seek their services. 'l’he actual con duct of their seances, he said, was pure and simple conjuring. Father Knapp is himself a conjurer of no mean attainments, and laid claim to inside information on every “trick” they performed. Father Knapp related exactly how the medium with tied hands wriggled out of her bonds, how trumpets were made to float about the room, and how

an ingenious musical box arrangement took tho part of the guitar which fig fired largely in so many spiritualistic manifestations. He even revealed the chemical compound which renders human flesh impervious to burning. Afterwards Father Knapp performed a number of tricks himself, complete with the stock patter of the professional conjurer, raising a table with the tips of his fingers, summoning loses from tho atmsophere, and directing the movements of a cardbord hand about the alphabet written on a blackboard.