University of Pennsylvania. Seybert Commission for Investigating Modern Spiritualism

“ Spiritualism, pure and undefiled, if it mean anything at all, must be something far better than Slate Writing and Raps. These grosser physical manifestations can be but the mere ooze and scum cast up by the waves on the idle pebble, the waters of a heaven-lit sea, if it exist, must lie far out beyond. ”

“ A minute spot of white, no larger than a dollar, is first noticed on the floor; this gradually increases in size, until there is a filmy, gauzy mass which rises fold on fold like a fountain, and then, when it is about a foot and a-half high, out of it rises a Spirit to her full height, and either swiftly glides to greet a loved one in the circle, or as swiftly retires to the Cabinet. ”

“ The Medium who conducted the séance came to me and said, 'There's a Spirit in the Cabinet who says she's your niece.' Very thoughtlessly I replied, 'But I haven't any niece in the Spirit world.' The instant after I had spoken, I felt my mistake. You must never repel any Spirit that comes to you. It throws a coolness over your whole intercourse with that particular Spirit-band; no Spirit from it will be likely to come to you again. No surface of madrepores is more sensitive to a touch than a Cabinet full of Spirits to a chilling syllable of failure. ”

“ PHILADELPHIA, January 26th, 1885.
DEAR DR. SLADE:—I think you need no assurance that the Seybert Investigating Committee have been anxious to deal with you in the fairest spirit of impartial, unbiased, scientific investigation, and I think you will bear witness to their uniformly considerate courtesy throughout our intercourse.
You know how very deaf I am, and do not therefore need to be reminded that one should trust scarcely more to what a deaf man hears than to what a blind man sees. ”

“ If the performances which I have witnessed are, after all, in their essence Spiritual, their mode of manifestation certainly places them only on the margin, the very outskirts of that realm of mystery which Spiritualism claims as its own. ”

“ Hazard assured us, additional Spiritualistic power. As soon as a Spirit has finished writing its communication with the pencil on the inner surface of the slates, the completion of the task is made known by the appearance of the slate pencil on the outside, upon the slates. The slates are always held in concealment under the table, and never has this remarkable passage of the pencil through the solid substance of the slate been witnessed by any one, not even by the Medium herself, in all the years during which this wonderful phenomenon has been a matter of daily, almost hourly, experience. ”

“ She puts herself in an oratorical posture, eyes closed, and reels off the common-places of the Banner of Light: the Spirits are eager for investigation, but benighted men in the flesh cannot make the conditions, and thus continue to wallow in darkness. The Spirits are kind. They do not damn those poor benighted ones, but still hold out, in beautiful optimism, the hope that all those who do want to know the truth will find it! ”

“ I have at times distinctly felt the faint jar caused by the Medium's falling backward within the dark curtains a little too hastily. At times, when the Spirit is wholly within the Cabinet, and visible only through the parted folds of the curtain, the semblance of a gradual sinking is obtained by simply uniting slowly the two folds of the black curtain, beginning at the head and gradually closing them down to the feet; the room is generally so dark that the dark curtain is indistinguishable at a little distance, and the effect of slowly falling is admirably conveyed. ”

“ Not infrequently a Materialized Spirit is seen to subside into the floor between the folds of the curtains at the opening of the Cabinet, This is termed 'de-materialization,' and not a little mystery is ascribed to it. The mystery vanishes when we reflect how easy it is for a lithe and active young woman so to bow down quickly, even to the very ground, as to convey the impression, when her white garments are alone visible against a black background, that she has sunk into the floor. ”

“ The filmy, vague outline of the white figure thoroughly harmonizes with all established, orthodox notions of ghosts, and if this were all of the apparition vouchsafed to us, we might, perhaps, have a harder problem to deal with than when the Spirit actually emerges from the Cabinet with outstretched arms of greeting. A substantial, warm, breathing, flesh and blood ghost, whose foot-falls jar the floor, is slightly heterodox and taxes our credulity ”

“ The Medium then enters the Cabinet; the curtains close; the light is lowered; the organ sounds some solemn chords, gliding into the hymn, 'Nearer, my God, to Thee,' which all join in singing. At its close there is a hush of anticipation; and that nature must be unimpressionable indeed, that is not stirred when the dark, heavy folds of the curtains of the Cabinet are discerned to be tremulously moving ”

“ When the investigator is unknown to the Medium, a Spirit materialized through that Medium will confess to any name in the heavens above or the earth beneath, in the world of fiction or the world of reality. ”

“ In conclusion, let me add that we have by no means exhausted the lessons which Spiritualism, in the hands of some of its votaries, can teach us. To our purblind vision the joint ownership of one skull by two different persons presents a physiological problem more or less difficult of solution. But all difficulty vanishes as soon as 'the river is crossed.' I derived no little comfort and much light from a Materializing Séance which I attended shortly afterwards in Boston, where both Marie St. Clair and Sister Belle appeared together, at the same time, and greeted me with affectionate warmth. ”

“ But no one, not a Spiritualist, we should suppose, can demand of us that we should accept profound mysteries with our eyes tight shut, and our hands fast closed, and with every avenue to our reasoning faculties insurmountably barred. Yet this is precisely what is demanded of us by Mediums in regard to Independent Slate Writing. We must sign a dispensation to forego the exercise of common sense, and accept as 'fact' what they choose so to term. ”

“ We all know the juggler does not break the watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely the juggler's right hand, while the trick was done with his left. The one minute circumstance has been omitted that would have converted the trick into no-trick. It is likely to be the same in the accounts of most of the wonderful phenomena of Spiritualism.
For these two reasons, we laid down for ourselves at the start that in cases demanding close observation we would endeavor to have as many members as possible of the Commission present at every séance. ”

“ If William Shakespeare can appear to me, why not Fair Rosamund? Hereupon a Spiritualist may maintain that if the Spirit said she was Fair Rosamund, and displayed a familiarity with the incidents of that frail woman's life and death, she probably was Fair Rosamund. So be it. I yield, and will go farther, and hereafter find no more difficulty, than in her case, in Tennyson's Olivia, Marie St. Clair, and in the heroes and heroines of Scheherezade's Thousand and One Nights. ”

“ In broad daylight, a slate perfectly clean on both sides was, with a small fragment of slate pencil, held under a leaf of a small ordinary table around which we were seated; the fingers of the juggler's right hand pressed the slate tight against the underside of the leaf, while the thumb completed the pressure, and remained in full view while clasping the leaf of the table. Our eyes never for a fraction of a second lost sight of that thumb; it never moved; and yet in a few minutes the slate was produced, covered on both sides with writing. ”

“ In general, then, let me say at once and emphatically that I have never seen anything which, in the smallest degree, has led me to suppose that a Spirit can be, as it is termed, materialized. It is superfluous to add that I never recognized a materialized Spirit; in only two instances have any Spirits professed to be members of my family, and in one of those two instances, as it happened, that member was alive and in robust health, and in the other a Spirit claimed a fictitious relationship, that of niece. ”

“ MATERIALIZATION. I think it would be difficult to find a psychological study more interesting than that which is afforded by a Materializing séance. I have never attended one that did not yield abundant food for reflection, and present one problem, at least, too deep for any solution I can devise. Although, perhaps, our first experience in such séances makes the deepest impression, yet the novelty never wears off, nor can custom stale its variety. The audiences are never wholly the same, and every Medium has her own peculiar method. ”

“ From the outset your Commission have been deeply impressed with the seriousness of their undertaking, and have fully recognized that men eminent in intelligence and attainments yield to Spiritualism an entire credence, and who can fail to stand aside in tender reverence when crushed and bleeding hearts are seen to seek it for consolation and for hope? ”

“ Every effort is made by the Mediums to heighten the effect. Before entering the Cabinet to undergo her mysterious trance, the Medium generally makes a short address, reminding the circle that this is a solemn hour, that here is the forecourt of the world beyond, thronged with living Spirits, eager to return, bearing visible, tangible assurance of immortality and of enduring love, and that the mysterious agency, whereby they return, is greatly aided by a sympathetic harmony in the circle, and so forth. ”

“ Although I have been thus thwarted at every turn in my investigations of Spiritualism, and found fraud where I had looked for honesty, and emptiness where I had hoped for fulness, I cannot think it right to pass a verdict, universal in its application, where far less than the universe of Spiritualism has been observed. ”

“ Led to view Spiritualism with the respect due to its importance, based on the reflection that many of the most intelligent and honorable of the community had become convinced of its truth, I undertook the investigation of the subject free from conscious prejudice, and with a desire to observe with unbiased judgment the phenomena which might be presented to me in the séances of Spiritualist Mediums. ”

“ When we resumed our seats, I could not help asking her: 'Are you sure you recognized him?' Whereupon she instantly retorted, with much indignation, 'Do you mean to imply that I don't know my husband?' Again, at another séance, a woman, a visitor, led from the Cabinet to me a Materialized Spirit, whom she introduced to me as 'her daughter, her dear, darling daughter,' while nothing could be clearer to me than the features of the Medium in every line and lineament. Again and again, men have led round the circles the Materialized Spirits of their wives, and introduced them to each visitor in turn ”

“ All that now remains for the Medium to do is to hold the two slates under the table for awhile, or rest them on the shoulder close to the ear of the sitter on the Medium's right, and, by scratching with the finger nail on the frame of the slate, to imitate the writing by the Spirits with the enclosed pencil. When there are two or more sitters it is only the one on the right of the Medium who is privileged to hear the writing. To apply the slate to the ear of any other would disclose the way in which the sound of the writing is counterfeited. ”

“ Slade winks rapidly three or four times in a sort of mental abstraction, I suppose, while thinking out an answer, but he always breathes freer when this crisis is passed, and the violent convulsions are over, which attend his hurried writing and the re-turning of the slate. His eyes can now be fixed in turn on each of his sitters, and he can rest a minute or two. (One one occasion I saw the slate as he held it between his index and second finger, his index-finger and thumb held the slate pencil.) ”

“ The bare statement of the conditions whereunder the Mediums maintain that the manifestations of Independent Slate Writing are alone possible, involves the extreme difficulty, we might almost say the impossibility, of any genuine or rational investigation. Even the very spirit of investigation, or of incredulity, seems to exercise a chilling effect and prevents a successful manifestation. ”

“ This communication from the Spirit world gave me pause. Here was food for reflection. It settled many points in dispute among the scientific Ghosts. First: they were all right on the question of sex; but Hare, Combe and Cornelia Winnie were wrong as to color. Sister Belle is not a negress, her hair is not black and in kinks, it is golden, and its curls are three feet in length, moreover, a white rose is her emblem. ”

“ How the writing came in the slate I could not surmise.
The following are specimens of the communications which were written by the Medium's controlled, possibly self-controlled, free, right hand, at my first visit:—
(In a fine, light, legible hand.)
Cannot say wether we can control the slate or no. will do our utmost to do so there are times when we cannot get the proper influences nor find the right conditions. C HERING
(In a close, heavy hand.)
we have quite as much power over you as over any other medium, mediumistic forces are not confined to a few, but exist to some extent in all. ”

“ We have heard the sounds. We are conscious that they are raps. It is exceedingly important, in deference to the Medium herself, that we should prove that she has nothing to do with the production of the sounds other than in a Spiritualistic capacity. I would like to ask her if there is any test that she herself can propose which would be capable of satisfying us that she does not produce the sounds.
The Medium: I could name a great many tests, but they might not be satisfactory to you; for instance, the one of standing on glass tumblers, where the raps are produced on the floor. ”

“ Had I met in material existence one like yourself my past might have been far different. In this beautiful life, the sources and courses of all earthly misfortunes and sins appear to us like a figure seen in a dream. ”

“ But the phenomena of Spiritualism have no such support; they are commonly regarded as in contravention of the ordinary experience of mankind (in that they are abnormal and extraordinary lies their very attractiveness to many people) , and no indirect testimony concerning them can be admitted without the most thorough, the most searching scrutiny. We doubt if any thoughtful Spiritualist could be found to maintain that we should unquestioningly accept all the so-called 'facts' with which their annals teem. ”

“ Sellers, Mr. Furness and Dr. White, can, with one hand, perfectly simulate the double grip.
It is specially worthy of note that Mrs. Gillespie declared that, when the Medium first laid hold of her arm with his right hand before the curtain was put over them, it was with an under grip, and she felt his right arm under her left. But when the Medium asked her if she felt both his hands upon her arm, and she said yes, she could feel the grasp, but no arm under hers, though she moved her elbow around to find it—she felt a hand, but not an arm, and at no time during the séance did she find that arm. ”

“ Wherefore, I want you, for my sake, and that the Committee may feel sure of their ground, to confirm in writing what you have more than once said to me, namely, that the Committee must conform to the conditions which the Spirits impose; that you cannot consent to submit to any tests, and that rather than do so you will return at once to New York; that we must accept the manifestations as given by the Spirits; and that, since these manifestations are the result of a gradual growth, it is impossible, in the space of six séances, to repeat or to verify Professor Zoellner's experiments ”