A Ghostly Twist to the Story of the Soldier-Poet Who Died a Week Before the End of World War I

The poet Wilfred Owen is widely known for the irony of his death. A soldier in World War I, he died in battle only one week before the end of World War I. Below is the beginning of his antiwar poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth":

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

Another great poem of Wilfred Owen is entitled "Dulce et Decorum Est" and makes use of a Latin slogan ("Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori") claiming that it is sweet and proper to die for one's country.  Below is an excerpt:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind....

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

The story of Wilfred Owen's death a week before the end of World War I has been widely told as a tale of sad irony.  But there is good reason for thinking the story had a happier ending. At the page here of a book, we are told that Wilfred's father saw Wilfred appear as a shining apparition, a week before getting a telegram announcing Wilfred's death in combat. The same page tells us that a week after Wilfred's death Wilfred's brother Harold saw Wilfred before him. 

Whenever I read an account like the one above in a book, and the account gives no source references, I always try to track down the original source material. There is no substitute for examining the earlier source materials describing incidents of the paranormal, and the failure of skeptics to do such a thing is an appalling failure of good scholarship.  In this case I was able to find the original source account written by Harold Owen, Wilfred's brother. The account is found on page 198 of his book "Journey from obscurity : Wilfred Owen 1893-1918; memoirs of the Owen family." We read this account by Harold, of what happened while he was on some boat or ship off of Africa, far away from the European battlefield where Wilfred died:

"I had gone down to my cabin thinking to write some letters. I drew aside the door curtain and stepped inside and to my amazement I saw Wilfred sitting in my chair. I felt shock run through me with appalling force and with it I could feel the blood draining away from my face. I did not rush towards him but walked jerkily into the cabin -- all my limbs stiff and slow to respond. I did not sit down but looking at him I spoke quietly: 'Wilfred, how did you get here?' He did not rise and I saw that he was involuntarily immobile, but his eyes which had never left mine were alive with the familiar look of trying to make me understand; when I spoke his whole face broke into his sweetest and most endearing dark smile. I felt no fear -- I had not when I first drew my door curtain and saw him there; only exquisite mental pleasure at thus beholding him. All I was conscious of was a sensation of enormous shock and profound astonishment that he should be here in my cabin. I spoke again. 'Wilfred, dear, how can you be here, it's just not possible.' But still he did not speak but only smiled his most gentle smile...He was in uniform and I remember thinking how out of place the khaki looked amongst the cabin furnishings. With this thought I must have turned my eyes away from him; when I looked back my cabin chair was empty...I felt the blood run slowly back to my face and looseness into my limbs and with these an overpowering sense of emptiness and absolute loss...The certainty of my conviction of Wilfred's death amounted I realized to absolute knowledge; I could not any longer question it. That I had not heard that he had been killed -- that weeks had now passed since the fighting had stopped -- made no difference to me at all; all that could be explained." 

It was not until around Christmas of 1918 that Harold received written notification of Wilfred's death.  The notification added to the irony of Wilfred's death a week before the war's end. On the very day (November 11, 1918) that the church bells were pealing because of the war's end on that day, his family had got written notification of Wilfred's death. 

Wilfred Owen

We seem to have here a case that falls into both of two different categories of apparition sightings that are particularly powerful as evidence. The first category is that of apparitions seen by multiple witnesses. I give many examples of such cases in my posts below:

When Two or More See the Same Apparition

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 Cases

When an Apparition Is Seen by Multiple Observers: 17 More Cases

More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers
Many an Apparition Is Seen by More Than One
Still More Apparitions Seen by Multiple Observers

When an Apparition Is Seen by Not Just One

The case of the Wilfred Owen apparition also falls into another major category of apparition sightings: examples of what are called "crisis apparitions." Typically in such cases someone will report seeing an apparition of someone he did not know had died. The person will typically then later learn that the person did die, at about the time the apparition was seen. I describe hundreds of such cases in my series of posts below:

An Apparition Was Their Death Notice

25 Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

25 More Who Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

Yet Another 25 Who Were “Ghost-Told” of a Death

Scientific American's Very Lame "Ghost Explanations"

They Also Were "Ghost Told" of a Death

More Accounts of Veridical Apparitions

Even More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Serve as Announcements

Still More Cases of Veridical Apparitions

When Apparitions Act as News Bulletins

They Too Were "Ghost-Told" of a Death

They Seemed to Ghost-Learn of Someone's Death

When Crisis Apparitions Seem to Notify of Someone's Death

Some more examples of such cases are below. In the December 12,1870 edition of Harper's Weekly, we have an account by Florence Marryat involving apparition sightings. Florence describes being summoned on the 27th of July by a friend named Adelaide, who had a husband George who was far away doing military work. Upon meeting with her, Adelaide said, "George has been here; he has been sitting in that chair all night." Despite being told by Florence that her account is nonsense, Adelaide sticks to her story, saying George was wearing his uniform. She said, "I am sure something has happened to him -- that he is dead."  We read this:

"We were to sleep together; but we got little rest. As soon as the lights were extinguished and I had composed myself, I was roused by her assertion that her husband had returned, and was sitting in the same chair as he done on the night before. I sat up in the bed, but I could see nothing; the whole room was dark, excepting where the moon-beams struggled through the window-blind."

The same thing happened on the next night. Later we read that the husband had taken ill on the 25th of July, and had died on the 27th of July, the same night his apparition was seen. 

According to the source here, a similar case occurred in 1840:

"On January 3, 1840 Mrs. Baring-Gould sat at her dining room table reading the Bible by the light of a candle. Looking up, she reported afterward, she saw her brother Henry, sitting

at the other side of the table. The scene appeared entirely

natural -- except for the fact that Henry was at that time

serving aboard a Royal Navy ship in the South Atlantic....The woman stared steadily at her brother for several moments, until the form grew dim and faded away before her eyes. Realizing what this might mean, Mrs. Baring-Gould stated the words 'Saw Henry' and the date in the flyleaf of her Bible. A month later, word came her brother had died at sea -- his death had occurred at the very moment his sister saw his figure sitting across from her."

A Dr. Collyer gives this account of a crisis apparition seen by his mother Anne E. Collyer:

"In October, 1857, I visited the United States. When, at my father's residence, Camden, New Jersey, the melancholy death of my brother became the subject of conversation, my mother narrated to me that at the very time of the accident, the apparition of my brother Joseph was presented to her. This fact was corroborated by my father and four sisters. Camden, New Jersey, is distant from the scene of the accident, in a direct line, over 1,000 miles, and nearly double that distance by the mail route. My mother mentioned the fact of the apparition on the morning of the 4th of January to my father and sisters ; nor was it until the 16th, or 13 days after, that a letter was received confirming in every particular the extraordinary visitation." 

In 1861 Anne E. Collyer wrote this letter to a son, a later dated March 27th, 1861, and dealing with the death of Joseph:

"My beloved Son, — On the 3rd of January, 1856, I did not feel well, and retired to bed early. Some time after, I felt uneasy and sat up in bed ; I looked round the room, and to my utter amazement, saw Joseph standing at the door, looking at me with great earnestness, his head bandaged up, a dirty night-cap on, and a dirty white garment on, something like a surplice. He was much disfigured about the eyes and face. It made me quite uncomfortable the rest of the night. The next morning, Mary came into my room early. I told her that I was sure I was going to have bad news from Joseph. I told all the family at the breakfast table ; they replied, ' It was only a dream, and all nonsense,' but that did not change my opinion. It preyed on my mind, and on the 16th of January I received the news of his death ; and singular to say, both William and his wife, who were there, say that he was exactly attired as I saw him. " 

Referring to the apparition of Joseph reported by his mother as a "mental impression," Dr. Collyer adds this about Joseph's death: "My father, who was a scientific man, calculated the difference of longitude between Camden, New Jersey, and New Orleans, and found that the mental impression was at the exact time of my brother's death." 

On page 3 of the document here, we have a report by Mary Dana Shindler quoting an account she received in a personal letter:

"On the 14th of May, 1861, two hours before day, the dear boy called to me, 'Oh ma my dear mamma! it is a glorious thing to be a Christian !' This awoke me, and I then saw him as plainly as 1 see this pen; his head was bleeding violently, and he seemed to lie lying on green grass. My friend, this was not imagination, for I could get  no letters from home during the war, and did not suppose that one so young—only eighteen-would be in thee army. The excitement made me ill, and the day and hour of the occurrence were carefully set down.  In October, five months after, we were allowed to receive an open letter of one page, containing only family news; and mine told me that on the morning of the 14th of May, my dear boy, being on picket duty in Virginia, was shot in the head and instantly killed. I have felt ever since that his spirit was allowed to come to tell me of his death."

Science Educators Are Doing a Poor Job of Educating the Public

Based on my frequent reading of poor-quality literature written by science professors and science journalists, I had the strong suspicion that a large fraction of the general public have a poor understanding about basic facts of science and fundamental theories of science.  I tried to get some data confirming this suspicion, but this turned out to be very hard work, "like pulling teeth." It seems that our science educators are very bad about polling the general public to determine how well average people understand basic facts of science. I could not find a single paper or article involving a poll in which the general public was asked something like 100 multiple-choice questions to determine how well they understand basic facts of science. 

But after spending hours looking for information, I was able to find a few revealing indications of just how poor a job our science educators have done.  One was a Pew Research poll which asked people whether electrons are smaller than atoms. One of the most basic facts of physics you can learn is that atoms are composed of three types of particles: electrons, neutrons and protons.  If our science educators were doing a good job, we would expect that at least a majority of the public would answer "Yes" to the question "Are electrons smaller than atoms?"  But according to the Pew Research poll discussed here, only 47% of the US public think electrons are smaller than atoms. 

In the poll discussed here, over 700 people were asked questions testing their knowledge of the location of bodily organs. For each organ, they were shown four pictures, each depicting the organ in a very different part of the body.  Only 46% of the general public could correctly identify the location of the lungs; only 27% could correctly identify the location of the stomach; and only 40% could correctly identify the location of the ovaries. 

In the paper here ("A Study of Common Beliefs and Misconceptions in Physical Science") about 300 people were asked whether this statement was true:

"An astronaut is standing on the moon with a baseball in her/his hand. When the baseball is released, it will fall to the moon’s surface."

Only about one third of the people answering gave a correct answer identifying the statement as true. The statement tests whether someone understands the basic idea behind the law of gravitation, that all massive bodies exert a force of gravity. 

In some cases when the population is asked a rather basic science question, almost all of the people answering will give the same answer, an answer that is wrong. In the paper "Hints of a Fundamental Misconception in Cosmology" we read of a poll in which 167 college students were asked if they had heard of the Big Bang theory. Only 54% answered "yes." That 54% were then asked if the Big Bang theory described an "explosion from pre-existing matter" or an "explosion from nothing." 80% answered "explosion from pre-existing matter," only 1% answered "explosion from nothing," and 18% declined to answer.  The Big Bang theory does not describe any explosion from pre-existing matter. The theory describes the universe suddenly beginning in an expanding state, with its radius or diameter starting out as zero, something that is best described as "explosion from nothing" rather than "explosion from pre-existing matter." 

It is rather clear from these examples that science educators have done a very bad job of educating the public.  There are two main ways in which such educators have gigantically failed us.

Gigantic Failure #1: Indoctrinating the Public in False or Very Dubious Claims

One of the main ways in which a science educator can fail is by teaching doctrines that are dubious or untrue, selling such doubtful claims as "science." Sometimes such a failure is relatively harmless. For decades cosmologists and astronomers have endlessly taught the dubious speculative ideas of dark matter and dark energy. Neither have been directly observed, and neither has any place in the Standard Model of Physics.  Relatively little harm is done by such poor teaching. We are told that the universe consists mainly of invisible dark energy, and that most of the universe's matter is invisible dark matter. Such dogmas have very little to do with who we are or how we got here, so teaching such dogmas does little harm. 

An entirely different state of affairs involves the false or dubious dogmas taught by biologists and psychologists, dogmas that misinform about who we are, how each of our individual bodies and minds arose, and how humanity itself arose. These include the following very dubious or groundless dogmas endlessly repeated by our science educators:

• The groundless legend that a biologist of the nineteenth century (Charles Darwin) created a theory that explains the origin of species such as the human species.
• The groundless boast that biologists currently understand how there arose fantastically organized organisms such as birds, mammals and humans. 
• The completely fictional claim that scientists have some understanding of how life could have originally started on our planet.
• The untrue claim that DNA or its genes have some blueprint or program for making a human body, and that the progression from a speck-sized zygote to the state of vast organization that is an adult human body occurs because of the reading of such a blueprint or program. 
• The unfounded claim that human minds can be explained as being products of the human brain.
• The falsehood that there is little difference between humans and animals, and that humans are a type of animal (the latter claim being one that is "proven" solely by appealing to senseless and arbitrary classification conventions of biologists).
• The unfounded claim that human memory processes such as memory formation, lifelong preservation of memories and instant memory recall can be explained by processes in the brain. 

By teaching these untrue or very dubious claims, our science educators have committed an enormous crime against the general public: the crime of filling people's minds with false or very dubious ideas about who they are, how their bodies and minds arose, and how their species arose. Such miseducation is not merely a failure, but a kind of intellectual crime of a very bad type. Teaching boastful claims that benefit the prestige of science educators like themselves at the severe cost of filling people's minds with the worst type of false or unfounded ideas, our science educators have been guilty of errors as bad as those committed by medieval educators who taught that sickness is caused by demon possession. 

Gigantic Failure #2: Failing to Properly Educate the Public About Many of the Most Important Realities of Bodies, Minds and Nature

Our biology educators have been extremely bad about educating the public about many of the most important realities regarding life, minds and matter.  Such a failure often seems to have a strategic nature. It is as if our biology educators are deliberately trying to teach "crayon sketch" depictions of living things, so that the public will be more likely to believe in ideas of accidental unguided origins. 

Consider the question of the origin of life. Biology educators are constantly using the very misleading phrase "building blocks of life." We constantly get a phony story that goes like this:

"Long ago there was a primordial soup that was rich in chemical building blocks of life. Then with the help of some lucky event such as lightning or heat, life got started."

The idea of simple "building blocks of life" is profoundly erroneous, for reasons discussed in the visual below. 

 

Beside the deceit depicted in the visual above, there is a lot of additional deceit involving claims of building blocks of life. Science educators often claim without warrant that "building blocks of life" would have been abundant in the early Earth, a claim not supported by any experiments realistically simulating the early Earth. Science educators often make untrue claims such as "the building blocks of life are abundant in space." A look at the abundances of units such as amino acids in space will show that they exist in only the tiniest amounts such as 1 part per billion. 

Our science educators habitually make untrue claims suggesting progress in understanding a natural origin of life, something that has not at all occurred.  The reality of investigative failure is rarely described. 

Our science educators routinely present to us the most preposterous claims about the origin of life, such as claims that life can originate from non-life when some "spark of life" occurs from something like lightning. Our science educators can get away with such deceptions because they have committed the most appalling failure to properly educate people about the vast complexity and enormous organization of even the simplest living things. 

Our science educators routinely fail to properly educate the public about the complexity of cells. Such educators fool people into thinking that cells are thousands or millions of times simpler than they are, by using deceptive diagrams of cells, diagrams that make cells look very simple.  Human cells are so complex it is sometimes said they are as  complex as factories or cities. 

 

Continuing to teach the outdated and groundless legend that the origin of species was explained in the 19th century by Charles Darwin, our science educators fail to educate the public about the enormous hierarchical organization of the human body. That organization is listed in the table below. The items in yellow are facts that Darwin never knew about during his lifetime.

HUMANS CONSIST OF HUMAN BODIES AND HUMAN MINDS.	Human minds have displayed a vast number of capabilities, many of which mainstream scientists fail to properly study.
HUMAN BODIES MAINLY CONSIST OF ORGAN SYSTEMS AND A SKELETAL SYSTEM.	The human skeletal system contains 206 bones.
ORGAN SYSTEMS CONSIST OF ORGANS AND SUPPORTING STRUCTURES.	Examples of organ systems include the circulatory system (consisting of much more than just the heart), and the nervous system consisting of much more than just the brain.
ORGANS CONSIST OF TISSUES.
TISSUES CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX AND VASTLY ORGANIZED  CELLS	There are more than 200 types of cells in the human body, each a different type of system of enormous organization. Cells are so complex they have been compared to factories with many types of manufacturing devices.
CELLS TYPICALLY CONSIST OF VERY COMPLEX MEMBRANES AND THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF ORGANELLES.	A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few mitochondria, but cells typically have many thousands of mitochondria, as many as a million. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few lysosomes, but cells typically have hundreds of lysosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict a cell as having only a few ribosomes, but a cell may have up to 10 million ribosomes. A cell diagram will typically depict one or a few stacks of a Golgi apparatus, each with only a few cisternae. But a cell will typically have between 10 and 20 stacks, each having as many as 60 cisternae.
ORGANELLES CONSIST OF VERY MANY PROTEIN MOLECULES AND PROTEIN MOLECULE COMPLEXES.	There are some 100,000 different types of protein molecules in the human body, each a different type of complex invention. Protein molecule complexes are groups of different types of protein molecules that work together as team members to achieve a function that cannot be achieved by only one of the proteins in the complex. Very many protein complexes have so many parts working together dynamically that such complexes are now being called "molecular machines."
PROTEIN MOLECULES CONSIST OF HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF WELL-ARRANGED AMINO ACIDS, EXISTING IN A FOLDED THREE-DIMENSIONAL SHAPE.	Small changes in the sequences of amino acids in a protein are typically sufficient to ruin the usefulness of the protein molecule, preventing it from folding in the right way to achieve its function.  See "The Fragility of Fine-Tuned Protein Molecules" section of the post here for quotes stating this.
AMINO ACIDS CONSIST OF ABOUT 10 ATOMS ARRANGED IN SOME SPECIFIC WAY.	Some amino acids have 20 atoms. Given 10+ atoms in amino acids, and an average of about 470 amino acids per human protein molecule, a human protein molecule contains an average of about 5000+ very well-arranged atoms. Amino acids in living things are almost all left-handed, although amino acids forming naturally will with 50% likelihood be right-handed.
ATOMS CONSIST OF MULTIPLE PROTONS, NEUTRONS AND ELECTRONS.	A carbon atom has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons.

Why do our science educators fail to decently educate the public about all these different levels of organization? I suspect because it is such educators may sense that the more you know about the vast amount of complexity and organization in human bodies, the less likely you will be to accept the boast that science educators seem hell-bent on promulgating: the boast that scientists understand how the human species originated. Claims of the accidental origin of something are inversely proportional to the complexity and organization of that thing. The more organized and the more well-arranged something is, and the more well-arranged parts it has,  and the more fine-tuned the arrangement of its parts, the less credible is a claim that the thing arose by blind accidental processes.  For example, someone throwing a deck of cards into the air many times might produce one or two times a "house of cards" consisting of one card leaning diagonally against the other. But if the whole universe was filled with people throwing decks of cards into the air, doing that half of their lives, it would be vastly improbable that even one of them would ever accidentally produce a triangular house of cards consisting of thirty very well-arranged cards.  

We are now in a situation where it is very clear that the wonders of biology are far greater in their hierarchical organization and fine-tuned dynamic complexity than anything that humans have ever constructed. An aircraft carrier is a less impressive work of fine-tuned organization than the human body. Humans know how to make aircraft carriers equipped with all of their aircraft. There is not a corporation in the world or a nation in the world that could construct from lifeless materials a living adult human body. It is notable that humans are completely incapable of creating machines that can reproduce themselves.  There is not a robot in the world capable of building from raw materials a robot just like itself. But self-reproduction is something that occurs throughout the world of biology, as does molecular machinery. 

What we see in biological organism are massive numbers of engineering effects and endless examples of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. Such a reality makes nineteenth century explanations of biology origins sound like old wives' tales. Ink splashes don't produce long functional essays telling how to perform complex tasks; accidents don't engineer things; and random variations don't create novel astonishing works of information-rich fine-tuned architecture. It is not true that we can explain such wonders of biology by a simple principle of "random variations occur, and nature saves the good stuff," because most of the good stuff we see  requires arrangements of atoms so improbable you would never get such good stuff from random variations.  The reason that would never happen is pretty much the same as the reason why ink splashes don't produce well-written essays telling how to do complex things. 

But our science educators keep senselessly claiming that the wonders of biology are not the product of intelligent agency, but mere accidents of nature, as accidental as mountains. They keep telling us that we must follow opinions of the scientist Darwin, reached around the year 1859.  To keep such a legend afloat, our science educators fail over and over again to teach about the reality of the enormous engineering effects in our bodies. As a substitute, they offer the crudest "crayon sketches" of our bodies and our minds. 

Below from page 137 of a PhD thesis is a list of biological systems described as if they were very impressive machinery:

Subcellular assembly	Sample of ‘molecular machine’ language	Source reference
Ribosome	“probably the most sophisticated machine ever made”	Garrett (1999)
Proteasome	“a molecular machine designed for controlled proteolysis”	Voges et al. (1999)
Glideosome	“a molecular machine powering motility”	Keeley et al. (2003)
Spliceosome	“among the most complex macromolecular machines known”	Nilsen (2003)
Blood clotting system	“a typical example of a molecular machine”	Spronk et al. (2003)
Photosynthetic system	“the most elaborate nanoscale biological machine in nature”	Imahori (2004)
Bacterial flagellum	“an exquisitely engineered chemi-osmotic nanomachine”	Pallen et al. (2005)
Myosin filament	“a complicated machine of many moving parts”	Ohki et al. (2006
RNA degradasome	“a supramolecular machine dedicated to RNA processing”	Marcaida et al. (2006)
RNA Polymerase	“a multifunctional molecular machine”	Haag et al. (2007)

An article by scientists discusses molecular machines in the human body:

"A molecular machine (or ‘nanomachine’) is a mechanical device that is measured in nanometers (millionths of a millimeter, or units of 10^-9 meter; on the scale of a single molecule) and converts chemical, electrical or optical energy to controlled mechanical work [1,2]. The human body can be viewed as a complex ensemble of nanomachines [3,4]. These tiny machines are responsible for the directed transport of macromolecules, membranes or chromosomes within the cytoplasm. They play a critical role in virtually every biological process (e.g., muscle contraction, cell division, intracellular transport, ATP production and genomic transcription)...Myosin, kinesin and their relatives are linear motors that convert the energy of ATP hydrolysis into mechanical work."

We do not learn about such impressive realities from the vast majority of our science educators.  Instead of teaching about such sophisticated realities, such educators have endlessly repeated childish "old wives tales" about how a human body originates. The main such tale has been the lie that a human body arises from a reading of a blueprint in human DNA, a blueprint of how to make a body. No such blueprint exists in our DNA, which does not even tell how to make any of the cells in our body.  And if such a blueprint existed, it would not explain how we get our bodies, because blueprints don't build things. 

Our science educators should have very humbly confessed the truth, saying: "We don't understand how humanity originated; we don't understand how any human mind originates; we don't understand how any adult human body originates; and we don't even understand how human cells are able to reproduce."  But instead, having crowned themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation, our science educators kept telling whatever lies they needed to tell to get people to believe their achievement boasts. 

A large part of the failure of science educators has been the failure to teach the public about many important observations having the greatest relevance to the nature of the human mind: observations of spooky events that humans can't explain and anomalous human mental powers that scientists can't explain. Senselessly our science educators declared such observations to be taboo, largely because they help undermine the dogmas that such educators try to promote, such as the dogma that the mind is merely the product of the brain.

When teaching about the brain, our science educators routinely fail to tell us about some of the most important facts we could learn, such as the very heavy signal noise all over the place in the brain, the unreliable transmission of signals across chemical synapses, the lack of any microscopic discovery of learned knowledge in human brains, the lack of any understanding of a neural system by which memories could be encoded, the lack of any thing in a brain that could explain instant memory recall, and so forth. We were not told about such things because our science educators wanted us to believe a dogma that they cherished, that minds are merely the products of brains. 

Some of the main science educators are science journalists, who these days are notorious for their production of misleading clickbait stories with frequently phony headlines. 

Nowadays science journalism is a kind of "anything goes" hall of mirrors in which the chief object seems to be to attract clicks on interesting-sounding headlines that lead to pages containing ads, pages that generate revenues for various parties. 

In the area of physics and cosmology, our science educators had the most meaningful and interesting account that they could have told: an account of a universe mysteriously appearing out of nothing, in an incredibly fine-tuned state, equipped with very many fine-tuned fundamental constants and fine-tuned laws necessary for the existence of creatures such as humans.  But our science educators failed to tell that story properly. Instead of learning of such an account in high school, which would have kept students interested, our high school physics students were tortured by boring calculation problems.  

Our science educators taught us a naive, authoritarian model of science, a kind of triumphal "scientists keep gloriously marching towards the truth" story. This was not a correct description of the "a loop of two steps forward, and one step backward" reality of science: the reality that scientists are conformist members of belief communities that often promote outdated dogmas that are balls-and-chains inhibiting the progress of science, and that groupthink and herd behavior frequently chains scientists to bad old ideas that keep being taught way past their proper expiration date. Our science educators constantly advanced a profoundly erroneous "they can explain all the big stuff" portrait of scientists at odds with the reality that human knowledge is merely fragmentary, and that what humans know is very tiny compared to what they don't know. 

When it comes to science education, the public has been very badly misled. The public put its trust in science educators, entrusting them with the enormous responsibility of acting as guides to help understand who we are and what kind of universe we live in.  Very many or most of our science educators have badly betrayed that trust. 

A Professor's Reality Filter

Scientists tend to have what I call a reality filter. A reality filter is a set of habits that tends to prevent a person from receiving observations or analysis or facts that contradict his worldview, while allowing the reception of observations or analysis or facts consistent with his worldview. 

Let's look at a hypothetical case of how such reality filtering works, considering the many ways that a Professor Smith excludes observations that conflict with his belief system, using his power as an editor, a peer-reviewer, an authority to be quoted, and a person yielding power in various ways. 

Researcher #1: Here is my careful set of observations of a truly baffling spooky phenomenon....

Professor Smith: We don't talk about stuff like that in this journal, so I recommend non-publication.  

Researcher #2: So what do you think of out-of-body experiences and reports of seeing apparitions?

Professor Smith: They must just be hallucinations.

Researcher #2: Have you studied them in any depth?

Professor Smith: I don't study that kind of spooky stuff. I leave that to what I call "fringe" researchers. 

Researcher #3: I've written a paper drawing conclusions just like those you have made. 

Professor Smith: Great, I'll give you a laudatory quote you can use for your press release! 

Researcher #4: Here's a paper on a topic you research, but drawing conclusions radically different from yours. 

Professor Smith:  I don't think we need any more papers on this topic right now. 

Researcher #5: Here's my 500-page book challenging the dogmas typically taught by professors such as you. Can you read it and provide a "blurb"?

Professor Smith:  That would be a waste of time, because you're not a professor.

Researcher #5: But I treat some of these topics much more deeply than you have ever have done in your writings. 

Professor Smith:  That doesn't matter. 

Reporter #1: What is your comment on the new paper of Professor Jones offering a new theory challenging the conclusions of scientists such as you?

Professor Smith:  I am not impressed.

Reporter #1: Did you read his paper and his other papers on his theory?

Professor Smith:  I am a busy professor. I don't have time for "fringe studies."

Professor #1: So we have two candidates to be a new professor in our department. There's that "maverick" contrarian independent thinker and that guy who seems to always parrot what we say.

Professor Smith:  That's a "no brainer." Go with the "team player" so we can maintain smooth team dynamics. Nobody likes it when people are having loud arguments. 

Student #1:  Why did you give a C- grade to my original 50-page term paper, when my friend got an A+ grade on his 20-page rehash rush job paper? 

Professor Smith:  You had too much "out of the box" and "fringe" stuff. It's risky to "go contrarian." Remember, always respect the views of your superiors. 

Student #2:  Why doesn't your class mention any of the strange spooky things that scientists can't explain?

Professor Smith:  Professors like me have a rule you might call "nothing fringe" or "nothing spooky." I wouldn't want to get in trouble with the other professors in my department. 

Researcher #6:  I made some important observations as part of our scientific experiment, but you didn't even mention them in the paper.

Professor Smith:  Remember, the typical scientific paper is a particular storyline, and your observations did not fit in with the storyline.  It's harder for papers with "clashing storylines" to get published. 

Researcher #7:  Here's my new book making claims just like the ones you keep making.

Professor Smith:  Great, I'll write a nice little "blurb" line, like saying, "This is a very important contribution of great insight."

Researcher #8:  Here's my new book making a case against the ossified orthodoxy of today's scientists. It includes hundreds of fascinating relevant observations. 

Professor Smith: What makes you think I have time to read "heretic" writings?

Researcher #9:  We did nine experiments trying to show some effect in the brain. One showed the effect with marginal significance, and the others failed to show any such effect. What should we do?

Professor Smith: The answer is obvious. The eight experiments that failed go into our file drawer, and the one success gets written up as a scientific paper. 

Reporter #2: What is your comment on those strange new UFO sightings everyone is talking about?

Professor Smith: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Reporter #2: Have you studied those sightings?

Professor Smith: No, I was just quoting a line that professors like to quote when they are asked about something spooky. 

Student #7: Professor, three in our class including me saw an apparition of that student who died in a car crash. 

Professor Smith: You must all be liars. Don't spread such stories. 

Student #3: Professor, I just read a paper saying that during DNA transcription, cells actually proofread their results, to reduce copying errors. And I read of some human protein molecules with thousands of amino acids that have to be in just the right sequence before the molecule is functional.  How could things so fantastically complex and fine-tuned have arisen through Darwinian processes?

Professor Smith: I need not delve into that, because as we professors like to say, "The answer is always Darwin."

It Seemed the Paranormal Was Her Near-Constant Companion

Recently I had a dream about the late Kate Fox, one that struck me as being perhaps of great significance.  I dreamed I was standing in front of an elevator, and someone said, "Kate Fox wants to see you." I got in the elevator, and pressed a floor number. But it seemed I pressed a series of digits making a number much larger than 1000, as if I was trying to ascend very many times higher than the top of the world's tallest building. The combination of the motif of the deceased person wanting to see me and the motif of an ascent to some super-high elevation made the dream one of 400+ dreams I have had suggesting life after death. 

Kate Fox was one of the famous Fox sisters involved in the events in  Hydesville, New York beginning in 1848, and the events not long after in Rochester, New York, events that were the beginning of a series of dramatic manifestations that lasted for decades, and were reported in very many places in the United States and Europe, mostly when none of the Fox sisters were present.  The manifestation began as inexplicable sounds that were called "rappings" or raps.

The important American newspaper figure Horace Greeley reported on the visit of the Fox sisters to New York City:

"Mrs. Fox and her three daughters left our city yesterday, on their return to Rochester, after a stay here of some weeks ; during which they have subjected the mysterious influence by which they seem to be accompanied to every reasonable test and to the keen and critical scrutiny of hundreds who have chosen to visit them, or whom they have been invited to visit. The rooms which they occupied at the hotel have been repeatedly searched and scrutinized ; they have been taken without an hour's notice into houses they had never before entered ; they have been unconsciously placed on a glass surface, concealed under the carpet in order to interrupt electrical vibrations ; they have been disrobed by a committee of ladies, appointed without notice, and insisting that neither of them should leave the room until the investigation had been made, etc. , etc. ; yet we believe no one to this moment pretends that he has detected either of them in producing or causing the 'rappings,' nor do we think any of their contemnors has invented a plausible theory to account for the production of these sounds, nor the singular intelligence which [certainly at times] has seemed to be manifested through them. Some ten or twelve days since they gave up their rooms at the hotel, and devoted the remainder of their sojourn here to visiting several families, to which they had been invited by persons interested in the subject, and subjecting the singular influence to a closer, calmer examination than could be given to it at an hotel, and before casual companies of strangers, drawn together by vague curiosity more than rational interest, or predetermined and invincible hostility. Our own dwelling was among those they thus visited, not only submitting to, but courting the fullest and keenest inquiry with regard to the alleged ' manifestations' from the spirit-world by which they were attended.

'' We devoted what time we could spare from our duties, out of three days, to this subject ; and it would be the basest cowardice not to say that we are convinced beyond a doubt of their perfect integrity and good faith in the premises.  Whatever may be the origin or cause of the 'rappings,' the ladies in whose presence they occur do not make them. We tested this thoroughly, and to our entire satisfaction."

In 1855 Canadian author Susanna Moodie described a meeting she had with Kate Fox, who Moodie describes as having the most beautiful eyes she ever saw, eyes of a dark purple color:

"Miss F. [Kate Fox] told me to write a list of names of dead and living friends, but neither to read to her, nor to allow her to see them. I did this upon one side of a quire of paper, the whole thickness between her and me, writing with her back to me. She told me to run my pen along the list, and as a test the spirits would rap five times for every dead, and three times for every living, friend. I inwardly smiled at this. Yet strange to say, they never once missed."

Moodie reports a name being spelled out by raps, apparently under the common system of this time by which the alphabet would be recited, and a letter would be written down whenever a mysterious rap occurred after a letter was named.  The name spelled out (Anna Laura Harral) was someone whose name was unknown to Kate Fox, but who Moodie had made a compact with, under which either of the two people surviving death would try to communicate evidence of survival to the surviving person.  Moodie reports a wide variety of inexplicable sound phenomena occurring around Kate Fox (as did quite a few distinguished authors), including sounds (combined with vibrations) coming from the dirt or rocks Moodie stood on. Moodie reports a piano playing by itself, soon after Kate Fox suggested that it would. 

Moodie reports asking that the birth year and death year engraved under a ring Mr. Moodie was wearing be identified by the mysterious raps. The correct years were given, she says, as was her father's name and the date of his birth and death, and the place and cause of her father's death. Like countless other witnesses, she reports such questions were correctly answered, even though posed only mentally rather than orally. 

In an 1861 book Benjamin Coleman gives this remarkable account of meeting Kate Fox:

"The rappings in her presence are very loud and precise. When I  called on her one morning, the room resounded on all sides as if a host were giving me a joyous welcome. I asked if the spirits who were present would give me their names, and the names of Harry, Isabel, and Sylvester were spelt out, no names having been mentioned by me in Miss Fox's presence, and of course I and my family relations were wholly unknown to her. These were followed by other names of friends, spelt out in full, and one, a relative of my wife's said, 'Let me speak.'  A message followed, of a specially significant and touching character, which I am precluded from giving, as it relates to private family affair; but I may mention that the tenor of the message is an actual apology offered for an assumed injustice done to me during her life-time, now 20 years ago."

Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection) stated this about Kate Fox in 1874:

"Miss Kate Fox, the little girl of nine years old, who, as already stated, was the first ‘medium ' in the modern sense of the term, has continued to possess the same power for twenty-six years. At the very earliest stages of the movement, sceptic after sceptic, committee after committee, endeavoured to discover ' the trick ;' but if it was a trick this little girl baffled them all, and the proverbial acuteness of the Yankee was of no avail. In 1860, when Dr. Robert Chambers visited America, he suggested to his friend, Robert Dale Owen, the use of a balance to test the lifting power. They accordingly, without pre-arrangement with the medium, took with them a powerful steelyard, and suspended from it a dining-table weighing 121 pounds. Then, under a bright gaslight, the feet of the two mediums (Miss Fox and her sister) being both touched by the feet of the gentlemen, and the hands of all present being held over but not touching the table, it was made lighter or heavier at request, so as to weigh at one time only 60, at another 134 pounds. This experiment, be it remembered, was identical with one proposed by Faraday himself as being conclusive. Mr. Owen had many sittings with Miss Fox for the purpose of test ; and the precautions he took were extraordinary. He sat with her alone ; he frequently changed the room without notice ; he examined every article of furniture; he locked the doors and fastened them with strips of paper privately sealed ; he held both the hands of the medium. Under these conditions various phenomena occurred, the most remarkable being the illumination of a piece of paper (which he had brought himself, cut of a peculiar size, and privately marked), showing a dark hand writing on the floor. The paper afterwards rose up on to the table with legible writing upon it, containing a promise which was subsequently verified. (‘ Debateable Land,'  p. 293.)

But Miss Fox’s powers were most remarkably shown in the séances with Mr. Livermore, a well-known New York banker, and an entire sceptic before commencing these experiments. These sittings were more than three hundred in number, extending over five years. They took place in four different houses (Mr. Livermore’s and the medium’s being both changed during this period), under tests of the most rigid description. The chief phenomenon was the appearance of a tangible, visible, and audible figure of Mr. Livermore’s deceased wife, sometimes accompanied by a male figure, purporting to be Dr. Franklin. The former figure was often most distinct and absolutely life-like. It moved various objects in the room. It wrote messages on cards. It was sometimes formed out of a luminous cloud, and again vanished before the eyes of the witnesses. It allowed a portion of its dress to be cut off, which though at first of strong and apparently material gauzy texture, yet in a short time melted away and became invisible. Flowers which melted away were also given. These phenomena occurred best when Mr. L. and the medium were alone; but two witnesses were occasionally admitted, who tested everything and confirmed Mr. L.’s testimony. One of these was Mr. Livermore’s physician, the other his brother-in-law ; the latter previously a sceptic. The details of these wonderful séances were published in the Spiritual Magazine in 1862 and 1863 ; and the more remarkable are given in Owen’s ' Debateable Land,' from which work a good idea may be formed of the great variety of the phenomena that occurred and the stringent character of the tests employed. Miss Fox recently came to England, and here also her powers have been tested by a competent man of science, and found to be all that has been stated."

The scientist who Wallace refers to was William Crookes, not merely a "competent man of science" but one of the most accomplished physicists of his time, being the discover of the element thallium and inventor of the Crookes tube that was the technological ancestor of the television set. In the same year (1874) Crookes published his "Notes of an Enquiry Into the Phenomena Called Spiritual" in which he described various classes of inexplicable phenomena. Crookes listed as Class II "The Phenomena of Percussive and other Allied Sounds."  Describing that class of phenomena he stated this:

"The popular name of 'raps' conveys a very erroneous impression of this class of phenomena. At different times, during my experiments, I have heard delicate ticks, as with the point of a pin; a cascade of sharp sounds as from an induction coil in full work; detonations in the air; sharp metallic taps ; a cracking like that heard when a frictional machine is at work; sounds like scratching; the twittering as of a bird, &c.

These sounds are noticed with almost every medium, each having a special peculiarity; they are more varied with Mr. Home, but for power and certainty I have met with no one who at all approached Miss Kate Fox. For several months I enjoyed almost unlimited opportunity of testing the various phenomena occurring in the presence of this lady, and I especially examined the phenomena of these sounds. With mediums, generally, it is necessary to sit for a formal séance before anything is heard; but, in the case of Miss Fox it seems only necessary for her to place her hand on any substance for loud thuds to be heard in it, like a triple pulsation, sometimes loud enough to be heard several rooms off. In this manner I have heard them in a living tree—on a sheet of glass—on a stretched iron wire—on a stretched membrane—a tambourine—on the roof of a cab—and on the floor of a theatre. Moreover, actual contact is not always necessary; I have had these sounds proceeding from the floor, walls, &c., when the medium’s hands and feet were held—when she was standing on a chair—when she was suspended in a swing from the ceiling—when she was enclosed in a wire cage—and when she had fallen fainting on a sofa. I have heard them on a glass harmonicon—I have felt them on my own shoulder and under my own hands. I have heard them on a sheet of paper, held between the fingers by a piece of thread passed through one corner. With a full  knowledge of the numerous theories which have been started, chiefly in America, to explain these sounds, I have tested them in every way that I could devise, until there has been no escape from the conviction that they were true objective occurrences not produced by trickery or mechanical means.

An important question here forces itself upon the attention. Are the movements and sounds governed by intelligence? Ata very early stage of the enquiry, it was seen that the power producing the phenomena was not merely a blind force, but was associated with or governed by intelligence: thus the sounds to which I have just alluded will be repeated a definite number of times, they will come loud or faint, and in different places at request ; and by a pre-arranged code of signals, questions are answered, and messages given with more or less accuracy."

Wallace's account above refers to accounts in The Spiritual Magazine in 1862 and 1863. You can read some of those accounts here (pages 193 -201) and here (pages 260-264).  We read of some dramatic phenomena, but as evidence the accounts are far inferior to the accounts involving the materialization seances of Florence Cook. The reason is that there are not multiple named witnesses. Conversely, the seances of Florence Cook were promptly described in the greatest detail for very many months by very many named witnesses, who quickly published their accounts, typically within weeks (as I describe in my posts here and here). 

Wallace refers to the account of the Livermore seances with Kate Fox given by Robert Dale Owen in his book "The debatable land between this world and the next : with illustrative narrations." You can read the account by using the link here to access pages 483 and the next ten pages or so. On page 487 we have this narrative from Livermore of an event at a seance with Kate Fox:

"At last a luminous globe which had remained stationary some six feet to my left floated in front, and came within two feet of me. It was violently agitated, crackling sounds were heard, and a figure became visible by its light. Then there was revealed the full head and face of Estelle, every feature and lineament in perfection, spiritualized in shadowy beauty, such as no imagination can conceive or pen describe. In her hair, above the left temple, was a single white rose ; the hair being apparently arranged with great care. The entire head and face faded and then became visible again, at least twenty times ; the perfection of recognition, in each case, being in proportion to the brilliancy of the light." 

The physicist William Crookes gave this account of a meeting with Kate Fox:

"I was sitting next to the medium, Miss Fox, the only other persons present being my wife and a lady relative, and I was holding the medium's two hands in one of mine, whilst her feet were resting on my feet. Paper was on the table before us, and my disengaged hand was holding a pencil.  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."

From such accounts above, you can get an idea of why a man like me might take it very seriously upon having a dream in which someone says,  "Kate Fox wants to see you." 

Kate Fox (later Kate Fox Jencken)

Postscript: The 1851 book "Pittsburgh and Allegheny Spirit Rappings" can be read here. On page 45 we have an account by William T. Coggshall dated June 6, 1851. It describes a meeting Coggshall had with Kate Fox on that date, June 6, 1851. We read of intelligent messages being received by raps, Coggshall describes a table in the room moving in mysterious ways -- away from him, and then towards him, with the movements sometimes being several feet, with Kate Fox being away from the table.  Similar spooky movements occurred to a chair, according to Coggshall. He describes mysterious raps coming from quite a few different places in the room, We read this:

"Numerous raps were now heard on the table, upon the floor, on the legs of the table, upon the under side, on one of the chairs, and the scratchings were repeated while the raps were being heard with great force. Again the table was moved back and forth, and presently there was a call for lie alphabet, and the word 'Done' was spelled."

The account is corroborated by another witness, E. F. Norton, in a statement dated June 6, 1851. We have here several hallmarks of first-class observational evidence: a named witness giving first-hand testimony of what he saw on the day he wrote such testimony, with someone else corroborating his statements.  The book is filled with similar testimonies, signed by named witnesses who date their statements. 

The SSOC page on www.iapsop.com (http://iapsop.com/ssoc/) is a valuable resource for contemporaneous accounts involving figures such as Kate Fox. I am able to find the an 1850 document by Dewey that gives one of the earliest accounts of a meeting with Kate Fox, an account by C. W. Hammond. He describes getting communications under a tedious system in which the alphabet is recited, and mysterious raps are heard after particular letters were recited, with the corresponding letter being written down. When he refers to "the family" he means the three Fox sisters (including Kate Fox) and their mother. On page 27 of the document, C. W. Hammond states this in a letter to Dewey:

"In compliance with your solicitation, I will proceed to lay before you a brief statement of  what has fallen under my observation, in regard to the 'mysterious sounds' and 'demonstrations,'  purporting to be made by intelligent spirits, who once inhabited an earthly tabernacle....On my next visit I was much-more successful. During the interval I had prepared my mind with certain questions, touching events unknown to the family, and of a remote date. The  sounds told me my age precisely, though my appearance is such as to indicate a difference· of eight or ten years. The names of six of my nearest deceased relatives were given me.  I then inquired, ' Will the spirit, who now makes these sounds, give me its name?' Five sounds directed me to the alphabet, which I repeated until the name of 'Charles' appeared, which answered to an infant child whom we consigned to the grave in March, 1843. To my inquiries, it gave me a true answer in regard to the time it had been in the spirit-land, and also the period since my eldest sister's death, which was nearly eighteen years, the latter fact ·not being recollected then, I found true by dates on my return home. Many other test questions were correctly answered; and yet, notwithstanding . the origin of these sounds seemed inexplicable, I was inclined to impute them to mesmerism or clairvoyance. However, as the spirit promised to satisfy me by other demonstrations when I came again, I patiently awaited the opportunity.

On the third visit, I was selected from a halfdozen gentlemen, and directed by these sounds to retire to another room, in company with the ' three sisters' and their aged mother. It was about eight o'clock in the evening. A lighted candle was placed on a large table, and we seated ourselves around it. I occupied one side of the table, the mother and the youngest daughter the right, and two of the sisters the left, leaving the opposite side of the table vacant. On taking our positions the sounds were heard, and continued to multiply and become more violent until every part of the room trembled with their demonstrations. They were unlike any 1 had heard before. Suddenly, as we were all resting on the table, I felt the side next to me move upward. I pressed upon it heavily, but soon it passed out of the reach of us all, full six feet from me, and at least four from the nearest person to it. I saw distinctly its position ; not a thread could have connected it with any of the company without my notice, for I had come to detect imposition, if it could be found. In this position we were situated, when the question was asked, ' Will the spirit move the table back where it was before V — and back it came, as though it were carried on the head of some one, who had not suited his position to a perfect equipoise, the balance being sometimes in favor of one side and then the other. But it regained its first position. In the meantime the ' demonstrations' grew louder and louder. The family commenced and sung the ' Spirit's song,' and several other pieces of sacred music, during which, accurate time was marked on the table, causing it to vibrate; a transparent hand, resembling a shadow, presented itself before my face ; I felt fingers taking hold of a lock of my hair on the left side of my head, causing an inclination of several inches; then a cold, death-like hand was drawn designedly over my face ; three gentle raps on my left knee ; my right limb forcibly pulled up, against strong resistance, under the table ; a violent shaking, as though two hands were applied to my shoulders ; myself and chair uplifted and moved back a few inches ; and several slaps, as with a hand, on the side of my head, which were repeated on each one of the company, more rapidly than I could count. During these manifestations, a piece of pasteboard, nearly a foot square, was swung with such velocity before us as to throw a strong current of air in our faces ; a paper curtain attached to one of the windows was rolled up and unrolled twice ; a lounge, immediately behind me, was shaken violently ; two small drawers in a bureau played back and forth with inconceivable rapidity ; a sound resembling a man sawing boards, and planing them, was heard under the table ; a common spinning-wheel seemed to be in motion, making a very natural buzz of the spindle ; a reel articulated each knot wound upon it ; while the sound of a rocking cradle indicated maternal care for the infant's slumbers  These were among many other demonstrations which I witnessed that evening, amid which I felt a perfect self-possession, and in no instance the slightest embarrassment, except a momentary chill when the cold hand was applied to my face, similar to a sensation I have realized when touching a dead body. That any of the company could have performed these things, under the circumstances in which we were situated, would require a greater stretch of credulity on my part than it would be to believe it was the work of spirits. It could not, by any possibility, have been done by them, nor even attempted, without detection. And I may add, that, near the close of the demonstrations at this visit, there was a vibration of the floor, as though several tons in weight had been uplifted, and suddenly fallen again upon it. This caused everything in the room to shake most violently for several minutes, when the force was withdrawn.

I have also tested the intelligence of these spirits in every way my ingenuity could invent. On one occasion, I wrote a word on a slip of paper privately, placed it in my wallet, went there, and the sounds, through the alphabet, spelled that word correctly as I had written it. That word was ' Sybil.'

 On the 29th of February, inst., the two youngest sisters made my family a visit. Here the sounds were heard — questions involving subjects wholly unknown to them were answered — a large, heavy dining-table was moved several times — and, on expressing thanks at the table to the Giver of all Good, some six or eight sounds responded to every sentence I uttered, by making loud and distinct sounds in various parts of the room. 

Yours, truly,

 C. Hammond. 

Rochester, Feb. '22, 1850."