In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1874. Let me pick up the thread and discuss some spooky events reported in the year 1876.
On page 68 of the February 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we read of several remarkable cases. The author Emma Hardinge-Britten states the following about herself, using the term "the somnambulic condition" to refer to a kind of trance:
"The author, for instance, has been known to rise in her
sleep, proceed in thick darkness to her study, and there inscribe musical compositions, and write abstruse exercises in
harmony and composition, entirely beyond her normal
capacity to achieve. On the other hand, she has frequently
been known in the ' somnambulic condition ' to recite
original poems, sing original compositions, and make what
were pronounced to be 'splendid orations,' in a style totally
different to her ordinary methods, and though at the early
period of childhood when these feats of abnormal wonder
were enacted, her friends and associates...attributed them all to the same somnambulic state, there were marked differences between the various phenomena exhibited, proving that some were the action of the sleeper’s own spirit in a state of high exaltation, whilst others must have proceeded from the influence of foreign spiritual intelligences taking advantage of the somnambulist’s unconscious organism to manifest their presence."
On the same page Emma tells of a sleepwalker who displayed similar behavior, writing perfectly in darkness, and having no memory of what was written. We then hear this remarkable claim:
"Dr. A. 0. Stiles, of Bridgeport, Couu., claimed to have, from a boy, possessed the faculty of perceiving, by a clairvoyant sense, the interior conditions of the human system, and pointing out its locale.
In his medical practice he used to give the most invariably correct diagnoses of the diseases of distant persons by holding a lock of their hair in his hand."
On page 246 of the May 26, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by William Oxley (dated May 22, 1876) of events of May 11, 1876. We hear of an astonishing transfiguration of a handkerchief into a human figure, audibly identified with a woman who died four days ago:
"There were present seven of us, including Dr. Monck, the medium. Taking our seats round an oval table, I sat at one end, a good light from a gas lamp being behind me ; Dr. Monck sat at the other end of the table. After a time he became entranced, and, rising from his seat, came up to me on the left-hand side, close to where I was sitting. Samuel was the controlling spirit. He took a white lawn handkerchief from Dr. Monck’s pocket, and placing it on his right hand, the handkerchief appeared to be 'absorbed,' or meta-morphosed, and in a few seconds there, at the extremity of his arm, appeared a beautiful, unmistakable feminine face, as large as a good-sized infant’s; it was a perfect human head, with the features clearly delineated. So clearly are the features and form impressed upon my memory, that if I were an artist I could even now produce them on canvas, The head and face were of pure classic form, and very beautiful to look upon. While I was looking intently on the object before me I heard a whispering voice, at first very faintly, issuing from the head; the words were, 'Do you hear me?' I replied, 'No, not distinctly,' as Samuel, through Dr. Monck, was speaking at the same time. I then said, 'Come closer, so that I may hear you.' The reply was, ' I will try.' I now saw that the lips moved in giving articulation to the words. Dr. Monck then pressed his lips close to my right cheek, which I felt distinctly all the time that the head was within a few inches of my left ear. Listening intently I heard the words, ' My name is Rhondda, and I wish to write to my parents in Cardiff, and tell them not to grieve for me, as I am very happy. I have seen
in my beautiful and glorious home, and I shall often try to come through this medium, and hope to be very useful'....From what I have learnt, the spirit of Rhondda passed
out of the body on Sunday evening, May 7th, at 8 p.m., and
on the fourth day between 8 and 9 p.m. (three clear days
and nights intervening), she appeared to us in the manner
above described."
On page 316 of the July 7, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account of a seance involving the medium James T. Morris on May 10, 1876. The account states that the medium (Morris) was disrobed and thoroughly examined, and then placed on the right side of a small wooden cabinet divided into two halves, with the two halves separated by wire mesh. We are told the cabinet had been thoroughly examined by the witnesses. We read of several figures mysteriously emerging from this cabinet, including (1) a tall German with blue eyes and a red mustache (unlike the medium with brown eyes and a height of five feet two inches); (2) a blue-eyed man six feet two inches in height (unlike the medium with brown eyes and a height of five feet two inches); (3) a bearded man three inches taller than the medium; (4) a woman. We read this of the disappearance of the woman;
"She remained about fifteen minutes, and on returning
slowly to the cabinet, commenced gradually to dematerialise, so that by
the time she reached the door she had diminished fully two feet in
height, and correspondingly in size of form. Then she seemed to be
slowly drawn by some unseen power into the cabinet, and, while standing
within the door, in full view of all, gradually dematerialised to the size
of a babe not more than eighteen inches in height. She reached out
her little hand and arm, and waved it to and fro, then the door closed,
and she was gone from our sight, to the regret of all.....The next to appear was a gentleman about five feet ten inches in
height, with dark hair and long dark beard, who was recognised by a
gentleman present as his father-in-law, who passed away in August
last."
The account ends up like this:
"The committee again overhauled the cabinet, examined every seal and every bolt and screw, and announced to the audience that everything about the cabinet was satisfactory. The medium then offered to
be searched again, but the committee said it was not necessary.
The hard sceptics admitted that this seance completely puzzled them,
and overturned all theories of the medium personating different characters. At the request of some, the medium stood up inside of the
cabinet, when it was found that his face merely reached a little above
the opening.
A gentleman present then drew up a paper and read it before the
company, and requested them to sign it as an endorsement of Mr. Morris
as a materialising medium. It was very readily signed. The following
is a copy of the statement, with the signatures:
—
Marion County, Indianapolis, Ind., May 10th, 1S76.
We, the undersigned, attended a test seance for materialisation, given by
James T. Morris on the evening of May 10th, 1876, and are fully satisfied that
under the test conditions the faces which appeared at the aperture, and the forms which stepped from the cabinet, were not that of Mr. Morris; also that it was impossible for a confederate to be introduced into the cabinet without being detected. Dr. Wesley Clark, Mrs. Mary A. Potts, Jno. S. Wright, W. B. Potts, Mrs. E. Eveland, Dr. B. Atkinson, Mr. J. Eveland, J. F. Baker, J. W. Garrison, Aug. Siekert, J. Donnelley, Jacob Eldridge, M. B. Moore, Miss C. M. Sharpe, Mrs. J. Donnelley, Dr. W. H. Thomas,
H. L. Austin, S. W. Peese,
Thos. Jordan, A. M. White.
B. Atkins."
There is no imaginable "secret trap door" trickery that can explain such a report. A skeptic's only resort here is to imagine a conspiracy to defraud among the named witnesses, or perhaps a lying writer who made up the names of all the witnesses.
On page 23 of the August 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by J. T. Rhodes of a seance of Miss Fairlamb, attended on July 30 1876. We hear of the materialization of a figure called Cissy who grows from "a small white patch, about the size of a lady’s handkerchief" to "a draped white figure, about two-and-a-half to three feet in height" who speaks in monosyllables.
On page 42 of the August 25, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is one of very many reports made in 1876 of inexplicable phenomena occurring around the medium Henry Slade. Slade was famous for seances in which witnesses would report writing inexplicably occurring on slates. Wallace gives this account of a meeting with Slade "in broad daylight" on August 9, 1876, there being no one present but himself and Slade:
"Writing came upon the upper part of the slate, when I myself held it pressed close up to the under-side of the table, both Dr. Slade’s hands being upon the table in contact with my other hand. The writing was audible while in progress.
This one phenomenon is absolutely conclusive. It admits
of no explanation or imitation by conjuring."
Wallace reports additional paranormal phenomena occurring. On page 67 of the September 8, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we hear a more dramatic account of a session with Henry Slade, one written by Louisa Andrews:
"Several of the stances which I attended daring my late stay with
Dr. Slade in New York, were held during the day, the clear sunlight streaming in through two large windows. Under these conditions, no one being present but the medium and myself, a double slate placed upon the top of the table was filled inside with writing. This slate was not touched by the medium, whose hands were clasping mine while the communication was being written. Chairs several feet from us were
overthrown and lifted again, being, at my request, replaced as they had stood before, and sometimes held for several seconds suspended in the air. Hands were felt and seen,...At one of these light seances a copy of Webster’s unabridged dictionary, which lay upon a desk some distance off, was brought and fell upon the table, striking the hand of the medium and bruising it severely. On another occasion a large walking-stick, which had been standing against the wall at a distance from where we sat, came towards the table and danced about on the floor, at my right hand and opposite the medium, as if it were alive....During my last visit to Dr. Slade I had only one sitting for materialization,..The medium used no cabinet or curtain, but simply turned the gas partially down in the room in which we had been sitting the greater part of the day. The forms gathered like a rapidly forming cloud, becoming gradually more dense, and taking shape before our eyes. They were extremely ethereal, so much so that objects were sometimes visible through them."
On page 84 to 88 of the September 22, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a long article by scientist William Barrett. Barrett describes witnessing people put under hypnosis who seemed to have powers of telepathy and clairvoyance that blossomed in such a state. On page 87 Barrett becomes the latest of innumerable distinguished witnesses testifying to the reality of mysterious raps. He states this:
"About twelve months ago I was told that the daughter of
a gentleman of good position in society, a child not quite ten
years old, was troubled with knockings, for which no cause could be assigned. These sounds came on whenever the child was in a passive condition, and apparently displayed some intelligence, as they would keep time to a tune, or by rapping at certain letters, would spell out words. As the family were living in my neighbourhood, I made their acquaintance, and obtained permission to examine these mysterious knockings. I found that, in the full, glare of sunlight, when every precaution to prevent deception had been
taken, still these raps would occur in different parts of the room, entirely out of reach of the child, whose hands and feet I was watching closely. A dozen times have I tested the phenomena in every way that the ingenuity of sceptical
friends could suggest, and the result was that I could come
to no other conclusion but that the sounds were real objective raps, displaying intelligence, and yet certainly not produced
by any visible cause. I have often had the sounds occurring
on a small table, above and below the surface of which my hands were placed, and have felt the jarring of the taps on that part of the table enclosed between my hands. I have taken sceptical friends to witness these phenomena, and their testimony agrees with mine. It must be borne in mind that the conditions of the experiment are singularly unfavourable either for fraud or hallucination. To avoid the possibility of the former I have held the hands and feet of the child, and still obtained the knockings ; they have
occurred on the lawn, on an umbrella, far removed from the
possibility of deception by servants."
On page 104 of the September 29, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a letter by a Professor Lankester describing a meeting he had with the previously mentioned Henry Slade. Lankester states a theory of some trickery going on by Slade, one he fails to back up by any good evidence. On the next page we read a quote by anatomist C. Carter-Blake, stating this about Lankester's theory:
"If Dr. Slade plays tricks, his modus operandi is something very different from that which Professor Lankester would suggest. The observers who have visited him, including some of the cleverest minds in
science, have failed to detect any fraud. Professor Lankester has found
out simply nothing."
Similarly, on page 106 Alfred Russel Wallace (a biologist more accomplished than Lankester) disputes Lankester's claims:
"As I have now shown that Professor Lankester commenced his
letter with an erroneous statement of fact, and a ' more than questionable ' statement of opinion, it is not to be wondered at that I find
the remainder of his communication equally unsatisfactory. His
account of what happened during his visit to Dr. Slade is so completely unlike what happened during mv own visit, as well as the recorded experiences of Serjeant Cox, Mr. Carter Blake, and many
others, that I can only look upon it as a striking example of Dr. Carpenter’s theory of preconceived ideas. Professor Lankester went with
the firm conviction that all he was going to see would be imposture,
and he believes he saw imposture accordingly. The 'fumbling,' the 'manoeuvres,' the 'considerable interval of time ' between cleaning
the slate and holding it under the table, and the writing occurring on
the opposite side of the slate to that on which the piece of pencil was
placed, were all absent when I witnessed the experiment ; while the
fact that legible writing occurred on the clean slate when held entirely
in my own hand while Dr. Slade’s hands were both upon the table and
held by my other hand, such writing being distinctly audible while in
progress ; and the further fact that Dr. Slade’s knees were always in
sight, and that the slate was never rested upon them at all, render it
quite impossible for me to accept the explanation of Professor Lankester and Dr. Donkin as applicable to any portion of the phenomena
witnessed by me."
Based on his dubious speculations about what Slade was doing and not actual observations of Slade doing anything fraudulent, Lankester caused Slade to be arrested and put under trial for violating the Vagrancy Act prohibiting things such as fortune telling. Alfred Russel Wallace and other witnesses testified in the trial that they had observed inexplicable phenomenon when sitting with Henry Slade, and saw no sign of fraud. You can read Wallace's testimony on page 161 of the document here. He testified to have seen what appeared to be paranormal writing on a slate, occurring in three different meetings he had with Slade. We have this testimony by Wallace in response to questions:
"From beginning to end of your sitting was there anything indicative
of imposture ?—I could see nothing whatever indicative of imposture.
Were there any raps or movements that attracted your attention ?—
I heard the raps and felt the touches which have been described, but the
most remarkable thing was that the flat table, when my hands and
those of Dr. Slade were clasped together, rose up, and almost
instantaneously turned completely over on to the top of my head and
slid down my back. (Laughter.)
Was it possible that this could have been produced by Slade's feet or
legs ?—I think not. It appeared to me to be absolutely impossible."
So not only did Wallace testify in court to seeing inexplicable writing produced in the presence of Slade, but also mysterious raps and the inexplicable levitation of a table (something reported by very many reliable witnesses of the nineteenth century, usually when Slade was not present). The court also allowed to be introduced into evidence the written testimony of Edward W. Cox (sometimes referred to as Sergeant Cox because of some office he held). The testimony is from page 18 of the August 11, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist. Cox testified this about a meeting he had with Slade:
"Instantly upon taking our seats very loud rapping came
upon the floor. This was followed by a succession of furious
blows upon the table, jarring my hands as they were laying
upon it. These blows were repeated at any part of the table
desired, by merely touching that spot with the finger, while
the blows, as forcible as if given with a sledge hammer,
were being made. Dr. Slade’s hands were on the table upon
my hands, and his whole body to his feet was fully before my
eyes. I am certain that not a muscle moved. Then he
took the slate after I had carefully inspected it, to be assured
that no writing was upon it, and placing there a piece of
slate pencil, the size of a small grain of wheat, he pressed
the slate tightly below but against the slab of the table.
Presently I heard the sound as of writing on a slate. The
slate was removed, and on it a zigzag line was drawn from
end to end.
At this moment the chair that I had described as standing
by the table was lifted up to a level with the table, held
in that, position for several seconds, and then dropped to the
floor. While the chair was so suspended in the air, I carefully noted Dr. Slade. It was far beyond his reach. But
his hands were under my hands, and his feet were fully in
view near my own on the side of the table opposite to that
on which the chair had risen."
We have here not merely a report of mysterious slate writing, but also a report of dramatic inexplicable raps and also a report of a dramatic levitation of a chair. On and on Edward Cox's account goes, with him reporting many other inexplicable phenomena such as the appearance of mysterious hands that touch and grab and shake Cox. Cox's report casts no suspicion on Slade.
In the same edition on page 165 we have this written testimony addressed to Slade, testimony by attorney Clarke Irvine:
"I went to see you one afternoon at your house in New York. My
name was never given to you ; I went from here almost direct, and was
a perfect stranger in New York—never was there before; no one in
your room but our two selves, and the sun shone into the window. As
soon as I entered your room it seemed to me that invisible hands manipulated my person; my hands were seized by invisible hands. You did
not offer to hold the little slate; I alone held it, you sitting off quite a
distance. The slate, which I cleaned, was written upon both when I
held it in my hand and when I held it under against the table top. My
own name was written on the slate, and names of friends deceased
twenty or twenty-five years were subscribed. I will swear you did not
know the names, for no name was given to you by me—not even my own.
You tried to hold an accordion, which was violently wrested from you, to
your apparent alarm; I took hold of it and held it tightly in one hand,
with the keys turned toward me. The force pulled violently and
pushed, and the keys raised and fell to the tune of ' Home, sweet
home.' I could not have started the tune had my life been the forfeit.
I silently requested (mentally as it is called) that 'Hail, Columbia,' be
played, and it was played. Also a dinner bell was rung in mid air,
while whirled about by a power to me unseen."
Despite so many witnesses testifying in writing to have seen a wide variety of extremely dramatic paranormal phenomena in the presence of Henry Slade, with some of this testimony being introduced into court, we learn on page 162 of the November 3, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist that Slade was found guilty in the court case, and sentenced to three months of hard labor on a charge of violating a Vagrancy Act prohibiting fortune-telling and similar activity. On the same page we read the judge's ruling, which makes it clear that he paid no attention to all the testimony that was providing indicating that authentic paranormal phenomena had been produced near Slade, but that he only paid attention to the speculations of Lankester. According to the document here, Slade was "released on a law quibble," which makes it sound like the case was eventually dismissed on a technicality. The page here says that " the conviction was afterwards quashed on appeal to the Middlesex Sessions, for a formal error in the conviction."
Skeptics mentioning Slade typically claim inaccurately that he was convicted of fraud. He was merely convicted of the much lesser charge of vagrancy, and that charge was later overruled and thrown out, as the two previous quotes show. In the Psi Encyclopedia we read this about the trial:
"Finally, Slade’s trial is typically reported as a case in which Slade was convicted of fraud. But as a matter of fact, the testimony presented against Slade at the trial was weak in the extreme, and the judge based his verdict largely on the intuition that Slade’s phenomena could not possibly have been genuine because they conflicted with established natural laws."
In the coming years the astronomy professor Johann Carl Friedrich Zöllner published an account of a test he did with Slade on May 8, 1877, one in which Zöllner reported a paranormal-seeming result that apparently could not possibly have been produced by fraud. On page 165 of his book Transcendental Physics, we read this:
"I obtained one of the most remarkable confirmations of this apparent suspension of the law of impenetrability of matter in a sitting on the 9th May, 1878, from eleven to a quarter-past eleven in the morning. Immediately after I had sat down with Slade at the card-table, I conversed with him at first on the power of his invisible intelligent beings, by means of which material bodies could be apparently penetrated with as much facility as if they were permeable. Slade shared my amazement, assuring me that never until now had such an abundance of this sort of phenomena been observed in his presence. Immediately after this remark he took up with his left hand two slates of equal size from among the slates which lay on the table at his left, and which had been bought and cleaned by myself. He handed me these two slates, and desired me to press the one upon the upper surface, the other against the under surface of the table, with my left hand, so that the thumb of my left hand pressed the upper, my other four fingers the under slate, against the flat of the table, as may be seen from the woodcut, Plate VII. Beneath the upper slate on the table, a splinter of slate-pencil had first been laid, so that it was thus completely covered by the upper slate. Slade then placed both his hands on the middle of the table, about a foot from the two slates, and requested me to cover his hands with my right hand. Scarcely was this done when I distinctly heard writing on one of the slates which were pressed firmly by me against the table. After the conclusion of the writing was signified, as usual, by three ticks quickly in succession, I took the slates apart, and of course expected that the one which had been above the table would be that written on, since on the table still lay the bit of pencil in the same place in which I had laid it a minute before. How great was my astonishment to find the under slate written on, on the side that had been turned to the table. Just as if the bit of pencil had written through the three-quarter inch of oak table, or as if the latter had, for the invisible writer, not been there at all. Upon the slate was the following message in English : —
"We shall not do much for you this morning, — we wish to replenish your strength for this evening; you will require to be very passive, or we shall not be able to accomplish our work."
Below is the Plate VII referred to in the text above:
Faced with this testimony of the paranormal and much other testimony of the paranormal in Zöllner's book, a book by an accomplished scientist, skeptics resorted to the worst type of gaslighting, by claiming that Zöllner had lost his mind. But the book shows no sign of any such mental decline, but instead reads exactly like the work of a calm and careful observer.
On page 126 of the October 13, 1876 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account by Henry D. Jencken. He describes a seance occurring on September 6, 1876 "at 51, Holland-street, Kensington, the house of Mr. S. C. Hall, the well-known Editor of the Art Journal." Several witnesses are named, including "Mr. and Mrs. Hall, Mr. and Mrs. Mayo, Dr. Nethereliff of the Chelsea infirmary," Jencken and his wife. We are told of the appearance of an apparition:
"After a short pause, the door of the room in which we
were sitting was gently opened, and a form was distinctly
seen in the semi-light, as it streamed into the darkened room, from the hall lamp. The apparition—for I cannot describe it otherwise—appeared to be semi-transparent. I could all but see objects through it, and yet the outline was complete. To make sure that no optical delusion was carrying us away, questions as to who saw the figure were put all round, and answered affirmatively, save in the case of two members present who were seated with their backs to the door."
We are told of the appearance of a spirit hand, which raised a pencil and wrote briefly:
"A luminous, small, beautifully-shaped hand then descended from the side at which I was sitting, that is to say, at, the opposite side to Mrs. Jeneken. The hand seized a pencil which was lying on the table and wrote the letters ' E. W. E.' . The power of holding the pencil then evidently failed, The pencil, which had been held between the forefinger and third finger, dropped on the table, and the hand raised itself high, over head, and disappeared. After a short pause it reappeared, descended, touched the table, took hold of the pencil, and wrote the words ' God bless y—.' At the letter y the strength again appeared to give way, the pencil dropped, the hand rose quickly, and was gone."
Jencken provided a sketch of what he saw, and stated five others saw it. His sketch is below. He stated, "The luminosity around the wrist was singularly beautiful."
Many people in the nineteenth century made claims similar to the one above. For example, there had occurred in the January, 1874 edition of the Quarterly Journal of Science the publication of the paper "NOTES OF AN ENQUIRY INTO THE PHENOMENA CALLED SPIRITUAL, DURING THE YEARS 1870-73" by the leading physicist William Crookes, inventor of the Crookes tube that was the technological ancestor of the television set, and the co-discoverer of the element thallium. On this page, Crookes describes seeing a writing "spirit hand" similar to that reported by Jencken above. Crookes states, "A luminous hand came down from the upper part of the room, and after hovering near me for a few seconds, took the pencil from my hand, rapidly wrote on a sheet of paper, threw the pencil down, and then rose up over our heads, gradually fading into darkness."
The Jencken account quoted above meets high standards of evidence, as it is a first-hand account, it was published within a month after the reported sighting, and several witnesses are listed. The account is only one of many cases in which more than one witness reported seeing the same apparition. For many other cases, see my posts below:
The 1878 book
Psychography by the respected scholar William Stainton Moses (writing under a pen name) documents numerous cases of witnesses reporting mysterious writing occurring in the presence of Henry Slade, with the accounts often describing observation conditions seeming to allow no possibility of fraud, or events (such as furniture levitations) seemingly incapable of being faked. On
page 123 of a later (1882) edition we have an interesting list of distinguished people who reported seeing paranormal phenomena. We get this list (with an asterisk indicating someone no longer living when the list was compiled):
"TESTIMONY TO PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA.
Science. — The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, F.R.S., President E.A.S.; W. Crookes, Fellow and Gold Medallist of the Royal Society; C. Varley, F.R.S., C.E. ; A. R. Wallace, the eminent Naturalist; W. F. Barrett, F.R.S.E., Professor of Physics in the Royal College of Science, Dublin ; Dr. Lockhart Robertson ; *Dr. J. Elliotson, F.R.S., sometime President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; *Professor de Morgan, sometime President of the Mathematical Society of London; Dr. William Gregory, F.R.S.E., sometime Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh ; *Dr. Ashburner, *Mr. Rutter, *Dr. Herbert Mayo, F.R.S., etc. etc.
* Professor F. Zollner, of Leipzig, author of 'Transcendental Physics,' etc.; Professors G. T. Fechner, Scheibner, and J. H. Fichte, of Leipzig ; Professor W. E. Weber, of Gbttingen ; Professor Hoffman, of Wiirzburg ; Professor Perty, of Berne ; Professors Wagner and Butleroff, of Petersburg ; *Professors Hare and Mapes, of U.S.A. ; Dr. Robert Friese, of Breslau ; Mons. Camille Flammarion, Astronomer, etc., etc.
Literature. — The Earl of Dunraven ; T. A. Trollope; S. C. Hall; Gerald Massey ; Captain R. Burton ; Professor Cassal, LL.D. ; *Lord Brougham; *Lord Lytton; *Lord Lyndhurst; * Archbishop Whately; *Dr. Robert Chambers, F.R.S.E.; * William M. Thackeray; *Nassau Senior ; *George Thompson ; *Wm. Howitt ; *Serjeant Cox ; *Mrs. Browning, etc., etc.
Bishop Clarke, Rhode Island, U.S.A.; Darius Lyman, U.S.A.; Professor W. Denton ; Professor Alexander Wilder ; Professor Hiram Corson; Professor George Bush; and twenty-four Judges and ex Judges of the U.S. Courts ; Victor Hugo ; Baron and Baroness von Vay ; *W. Lloyd Garrison, U.S.A.; *Hon. R. Dale Owen, U.S.A.; *Hon. J. W. Edmonds, U.S.A.; *Epes Sargent; *Baron du Potet; *Count A. de Gasparin ; *Baron L. de Guldenstubbe, etc., etc.
Social Position. — H. I. H. Nicholas, Duke of Leuchtenberg ; H.M.S.H. the Prince of Solms; H.S.H. Prince Albrecht of Solms ; *H.S.H. Prince Emile of Sayn Wittgenstein; Hon. Alexander Aksakof, Imperial Councillor of Russia ; the Hon. J. L. O'Sullivan, sometime Minister of U.S.A. at the Court of Lisbon; M. Favre Clavairoz, late Consul-General of France at Trieste ; the late Emperors of *Russia and *France....etc., etc".
Postscript: An 1876
newspaper article notes the death of Daniel Dunglas Home. Below is a quote from the article (I'll correct the misspelling of Home's middle name):
"The death of Daniel Dunglas Home, as reported by cable dispatch from Paris, recently, terminates the career of the most famous Spiritualist and medium of modern times. The New York World affects to doubt his departure from this life, as if only the half of what has been told of Mr. Home is true. To suppose him dead merely because he happened to leave his corpse would be as absurd as to suppose so because he happened to leave his great-coat or his umbrella behind him.
He was born in Scotland, and came to this country when a mere child. He made his first conspicuous successes in Springfield and in Boston between the years 1851 and 1853. In this city he was hailed as a prophet by numbers of highly-educated persons, but. finally in 1855 he went to Europe. In London he was warmly welcomed by several coteries of the aristocracy, and he made a very strong impression upon the mind of Queen Victoria herself. The Duchess of Sutherland was one of his most open proselytes and believers. In Paris be was made for a time 'the rage' by the undisguised interest which the Emperor Napoleon took in him and in his alleged miracles. He was frequently summoned to the Tuileries, and he gradually acquired a very considerable influence with the Emperor.
He married a Russian lady of noble birth in 1856. She died in 1862, and Mr. Home married a Russian princess. He was a particular favorite at the court of the Czar, and claimed in private to have converted the Czar to spiritualism. The many strange tales of spiritual phenomena contain nothing to rival the demonstrations of Mr. Home. Besides the ordinary phenomena of rapping, table tipping, writing and playing upon musical instruments, they include in his case visions seen by the medium, appearances of hands, arms and spirit forms seen by other persons, 'levitation' or the preternatural uplifting of the medium, elongation and shortening of his body by several inches, and his handling of fire and heated objects without hurt. It has been again and again affirmed of Mr. Home by witnesses of unimpeached character that they have seen him plunge his hands with impunity into a blazing coal fire, seat himself upon heavy mahogany dinner-tables and rise with them several feet into the air, and after floating horizontally head foremost out of the window at a height of many yards from the ground, sail tranquilly around a castle tower and come in again unharmed at the other side."
