WCP5740

[1] [pp.193]

TO MISS BUCKLEY¹

The Dell, Grays, Essex.² Thursday evening, [? December, 1875].

Dear Miss Buckley, — Our séance came off last evening, and was a tolerable success. The medium is a very pretty little lively girl, the place where she sits a bare empty cupboard formed by a frame and doors to close up a recess by the side of a fireplace in a small basement breakfast-room. We examined it, and it is absolutely impossible to conceal a scrap of paper in it. Miss Cooke [sic]³ is locked in this cupboard, above the door of which is a square opening about 15 inches each way, the only thing she takes with her being a long piece of tape and a chair to sit on. After a few minutes Katie's whispering voice was heard, and a little while after we were asked to open the door and seal up the medium. We found her hands tied together with the tape passed three times round each wrist and tightly knotted, the hands tied close together, the tape then passing behind and well knotted to the chair-back. We sealed all the knots with a private seal of my friend's, and again locked the door. A portable gas lamp was on a table the whole evening, shaded by a screen so as to cast a shadow on the square opening above the door of the cupboard till permission was given to illuminate it. Every object and person in the room were always distinctly visible. A face^* then appeared at the opening, but dark and indistinct.

^*The "spirits" are supposed to produce the faces.⁴ [2] [p. 194]

After a time another face quite distinct with a white turban-like headdress — this was a handsome face with a considerable general likeness to that of the medium, but paler, larger, fuller, and older — decidedly a different face, although like. The light was thrown full on this face, and on request it advanced so that the chin projected a little beyond the aperture. We were then ordered to release the medium. I opened the door, and found her bent forward with her head in her lap, and apparently in a deep sleep or trance — from which a touch and a few words awoke her. We then examined the tape and knots — all was as we left it and every seal perfect.

The same face appeared later in the evening, and also one decidedly different with coarser features.

After this, for the sake I believe of two sceptics present, the medium was twice tied up in a way that no human being could possibly tie herself. Her wrists were tied together so tightly and painfully that it was impossible to untie them in any moderate time, and she was also secured to the chair; on the other occasion the two arms were tied close above the elbows so tightly that the arms were swelling considerably from impeded circulation, the elbows being drawn together as close as possible behind the back, there repeatedly knotted, and again tightly knotted to the back of the chair. Miss C. was evidently in considerable pain, and she had to be lifted out bodily in her chair before we could safely cut her loose, so tightly was she bound. This evidently had a great effect on the sceptics, as I have no doubt it was intended to have, and it demonstrated pretty clearly that some strange being was inside the cupboard playing these tricks, although quite invisible and intangible to us except when she made certain portions of herself visible.

When Miss C. was complaining of being hurt by the [3] tying we could hear the whispering voice soothing her in the kindest manner, and also heard kisses, and Miss C. afterwards declared that she could feel hands and face about her like those of a real person.

During all the face exhibitions singing had to go on to a rather painful extent.⁵

A Dr. Purdon⁶ was present, an Army surgeon, who has been much in India, and seems a very intelligent man. He seemed very intimate with the family, and told us he had studied them all, and had had Miss Cooke [sic] a month at a time in his own house, studying these phenomena.⁷ He was absolutely satisfied of their genuineness, and indeed no opportunity for imposture seems to exist.

The children of the house tell wonderful tales of how they are lifted up and carried about by the spirits. They seem to enjoy it very much, and to look upon it all as just as real and natural as any other matters of their daily life.

Can such things be in this nineteenth century, and the wise ones pass away in utter ignorance of their existence? — Yours very sincerely, | ALFRED R. WALLACE.