More Who Seemed Trance-Transported to a Higher Realm

 In a previous post "Did Their Trances Give Them Trips to Heaven?" I gave newspaper accounts of people who reported something like trips to heaven after being in some kind of trance, often one produced by some kind of sickness. Let us look at some more cases of the this type. 

The January 27, 1900 newspaper account below (which you can read here) tells of a trance experience of Mrs. Mahlon Gause:

A similar account (involving the experience of Cora Matton) can be found in this 1891 account which can be read here.

In the newspaper account here, we have an account of a trance trip to heaven, one made by Luella Cameron:

In the newspaper account here, we have another account of a trance trip to heaven, one made by Eliza Wright:

In the newspaper account here, we have another account of a trance trip to heaven, one made by Ida Sharp:

We read here of a minister who went into a trance and claimed to have gone on a journey to heaven:

"After lying as in a trance on the pulpit platform from one o'clock to 5:40 o'clock in the afternoon, Pastor Brown emerged from his mysterious slumber, weakly crumpled into a seat, and later on when he had recovered his strength he related that he really had been to 

heaven, that he had met many former Wilmingtonians including Bishop Cook, the Rev. Dr. Skinner and others whom he mentioned by name. He told of some of the beauteous scenes there, and announced that he would return to the church next Sunday and tell in detail of his pilgrimage to the haven or rest, 'It would take me a year to tell all I saw, ' he declared." 

Below is an account of a woman near death (Mrs. Alexander Taylor) claiming to have visited heaven during a trance-like close encounter with death. You can read the account here. 

On the same page as the first account quoted above, we have this  remarkable account of telepathy between twins. 

Did Their Trances Give Them Trips to Heaven?

Very many people are familiar with the typical account of a near-death experience. A person may have some close brush with death.  The person may report that he floated out of his body, or passed through some mysterious tunnel, or encountered a Being of Light. The person may report visiting some mystical or transcendent realm in which he saw a deceased relative or some religious figure. 

There are some old newspaper accounts suggesting that something similar may happen not during a close brush with death, but in a trance.  For example, there is the account below from 1897, discussing the experience of Tillie Faith:

The account is from the old newspaper page below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86086632/1897-06-05/ed-1/seq-3/

There is also the account below from 1903 (click on the image to read it more clearly). The girl is apparently named Mary A. Kidder. 

You can read the account on the newspaper page here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042224/1903-11-27/ed-1/seq-9/

An account of the same person is told below. We get more details about how she reported learning things on her trance trips that she had not previously learned while awake, details that were later confirmed:

You can read the full newspaper account below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86069313/1903-12-04/ed-1/seq-6/

Below is another newspaper account of someone claiming to have visited heaven while in a trance. The witness is Lulu Mae Satterlae. 

The link below shows the original page on which this account was published:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1912-08-06/ed-1/seq-1/

The image below gives part of a 1907 news story describing a teenager's accounts of visiting heaven during trances. The witness is Mae Mutchlar. 

You can read the full story using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1907-03-28/ed-1/seq-8/

An 1868 newspaper account of a trip to heaven in a trance is below. We should keep in mind that we have no direct quotes from the young teenager, so when the author uses phrases such as "heaven," "hell" and "the Savior" we don't know whether such phrases were used by the woman herself. 

"The people living in the vicinity of Whiteland, Johnson county, have recently been very much excited over a matter which, to say the

least, is very strange. Several weeks since, Miss Van Arsdale, a young woman about seventeen years old, living at the house of a family near Whiteland, in the capacity of servant, was taken sick with something like hysterics. She had been confined to her bed a little over a week, when, to all appearances, she died. The body, however, did not entirely lose its warmth, and a very slight pulse remained. The people with whom she was living supposed that she was dead, and were making preparations to bury her, when the physician interfered, forbidding any such step. After remaining in this state twelve hours, consciousness returned, and the girl pronounced herself much better.

She then went on to describe her sensations and experiences during the trance, averring that she had visited heaven and hell, and had
conversed with the Savior, and many persons whom she had known on earth. She spoke of seeing persons in both places who had recently died; in heaven a young man named Quinn, who, although at one time a professor of religion, had, in the last year or two of his his, led a bad life; in hell the two men, Hatchell and Patterson, who were lynched at Franklin on the night of Oct. 31st, for the murder of
Lyons at Greenwood. Miss Van Arsdale sent for a number of persons in the neighborhood, and not only imparted to them news of lost
friends, but told of sins committed by them, supposed to be unknown by any one. 

Among others, was a man who had participated in the execution of the men named above. She told him that he had been there that night (which he acknowledged), and had in the sight of God committed murder. Previous to this, the names of the band had been kept a profound secret, and this man had not even been suspected. She narrated a good many tragic things, relating mainly to individuals both in this world and the other, many of which would have been almost impossible for her to have invented.

But the strangest part of the story is yet to come. A few hours after the expiration of the first trance, she predicted that she would have
another, and told to a minute the time at which it would commence and at which it would end. Everything turned out as she had
said; at the exact time she fell into the same state. In an ordinary trance, or cataleptic state, respiration is not suspended, but in this
case breathing could not be observed. She was, to all appearances, dead; but the pulse beat faintly, and the body was not cold. All
sensation was gone. The physician made numerous experiments, pricking the body, opening veins, and so forth, to discover if there
could be any deception. In the end he was perfectly convinced that there was none. At the expiration of the time set by herself, she
came to, and in a few hours was well enough to leave her bed and go about the house. The story of her experience, in the second trance,
was similar to the first one, and was confined almost wholly to individuals. She seemed unable to describe the places she had been in, but gave histories of events and persons with remarkable minuteness. She also said that she would never have a recurrence of the trance unless she should commit some flagrant sin;
her authority for this prediction was that the Lord himself had told her so. 

This is certainly a strange thing. The girl is uneducated, and has lived about as a servant ever since she was able to work. She has always borne a good character for truthfulness, and is a member of a church. She is almost the last person in the world to have manufactured such stories, and one thing especially noticeable is the fact of her sending for persons to whom, before her illness, she would have been afraid to have spoken, and conversing with them without the least restraint, and telling them stories and facts not the most palatable to worldly people. She was visited by a great many people, some of them eminently respectable, who vouch for many of the statements of her illness. The physician in attendance is positive as to her condition during the whole time ; and had it not been for him, she would have been buried alive."

The full account can be read using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85026214/1868-01-05/ed-1/seq-3/

The report below is from 1906, and the witness is Mrs. S. A. Griffin. 

The account can be read on the newspaper page below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84037890/1906-02-28/ed-1/seq-4/

Below we read a description of the trance experience of Sophie Fowler:

You can read the account here. 

Taboo Truth: The Reality of Hypnotic Clairvoyance and Hypnotic Telepathy

"The distinguished Parisian Professor of Medicine, Rostan, gave at the time his corroborative testimony to the existence of this power in the article ' Magnetisme,' in the ' Dictionnaire de Medecine,'  wherein he remarked : 'There are few facts better demonstrated than clairvoyance' ....Innumerable instances are recorded of the possession of the faculty of clairvoyance by persons in the normal state, in sleep [hypnotism], and in some abnormal conditions of the system, " -- Edwin Lee, MD, "Animal Magnetism and Magnetic Lucid Somnambulism" page 103 and page 133.

It was documented by many nineteenth century writers and authorities that under hypnosis a person could show paranormal powers of clairvoyance or telepathy.  In the long posts here and here and here I discuss some of the abundant observational evidence for such a thing.  I may note that the reality of clairvoyance under hypnosis was firmly declared by a high-prestige French academic committee, a six-year investigation of the Royal Academy of Medicine that issued its report in 1831. 

During the nineteenth century hynotized people were often asked to engage in a kind of thought sharing or "mind meld" with another person, a state that was called being en rapport with that person. A nineteenth century work on hypnotism (written by Professor William Gregory) gives this summary, using the word "sleeper" for a hypnotized person: 

"Thought reading presents itself in every possible variety of form. The sleeper, being placed en rapport with any person, can often describe, with the greatest accuracy, the subject that occupies the thoughts of that person. It may be an absent friend, or his own house, or that of another, or his drawing-room, bed-room, study, &c. &c. All these things the sleeper perceives, as they pass through the mind of the experimenter, and describes with great minuteness and accuracy, so as to excite our astonishment. Or he goes further ; he not only perceives the present, but the past thoughts of the person en rapport with him ; he shares his memory. Thus he will mention facts, no longer so existing, but remembered by the experimenter. Nay, he goes still further even than this ; for he perceives things once known to, and now forgotten by, the experimenter, who very often contradicts the sleeper, and persists in maintaining his own opinion, until, on further enquiry, he not only finds him to be right, but himself is enabled to recall the fact, which had, as we say, escaped his memory."

Professor Gregory here makes a very remarkable claim: that under hypnosis a subject may display a mental power beyond mere telepathy: a power not just of mind-reading or thought-reading, but also of memory-reading. The same nineteenth century work (Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism) by Gregory gives some very specific numerical details relating to clairvoyance in hypnotic trances (referred to below as "mesmeric sleep"):

"Major Buckley has thus produced conscious clairvoyance in 89 persons, of whom 44 have been able to read mottoes contained in nut-shells, purchased by other parties for the experiment. The longest motto thus read, contained 98 words. Many subjects will read motto after motto without one mistake. In this way, the mottoes contained in 4860 nut-shells have been read, some of them, indeed, by persons in the mesmeric sleep, but most of them by persons in the conscious state, many of whom have never been put to sleep. In boxes, upwards of 86,000 words have been read; 'in one paper, 371 words. Including those who have read words contained in boxes when in the sleep, 148 persons have thus read. It is to be observed that, in a few cases, the words may have been read by thought-reading, as the persons who put them in the boxes were present; but in most cases, no one who knew the words has been present, and they must therefore have been read by direct clairvoyance. Every precaution has been taken. The nuts, inclosing mottoes, for example, have been purchased of 40 different confectioners, and have been sealed up until read. It may be added, that of the 44 persons who have read mottoes in nuts by waking or conscious clairvoyance, 42 belong to the higher class of society; and the experiments have been made in the presence of many other persons. These experiments appear to me admirably contrived, and I can per- ceive no reason whatever to doubt the entire accuracy of the facts."

Later in the same work we read many detailed descriptions of clairvoyance under hypnosis, one of which is the account below (which uses the term "magnetic sleep" to refer to a hypnotic trance):

 "E., in the magnetic sleep, as I saw more than once, could see perfectly what passed behind her, her eyes being closed ; or any thing placed in such a position, that, had her eyes been open, she could not have seen it ; she could also see very often all that passed outside of the door, and when I was there, told us how many of the servants of the hotel were listening at the door, in hopes of 

hearing wonders ; she would also often tell what was doing in the room above or below her. In short, she frequently exhibited direct clairvoyance in every form, not only in those just mentioned, but also in that of seeing prints or pictures shut up in boxes. Besides seeing various instances of direct clairvoyance, I was able to satisfy myself that Dr. Haddock's experiments were made with the greatest care and judgment ; that he was particularly well acquainted with the various causes of error and confusion, very careful to avoid these, and that in short his accounts of such experiments as I had not seen were entirely trustworthy."

On page 334 in the same work by Professor Gregory, we read this account of clairvoyance under hypnotism:

"We requested her to visit the house of Mrs. P., one of the ladies present. This house was in Greenock, distant from my cottage about a mile and a quarter. She saw her servant in the kitchen, but said that another woman was with her. On being pressed to look earnestly at the woman, she said it was C_____ M______. This, Mrs. P. declared to be true. We then asked her to see if any person was in Mrs. P.'s parlor, when she said that Miss Laing was there, a young lady from Edinburgh, who was boarding with Mrs. P. at the time ; that she was sitting on the sofa ; that she was crying, and that a letter was in her hand. On the party breaking up, I walked into Greenock with the ladies and gentlemen, in order to see if she was right about Miss L. It was true. Miss L. had received a letter by that evening's post from her father in Edinburgh, stating that her mother was not expected to live, and requesting her to come home by the first train in the morning." 

Many specific case examples of such a thing can be found in the three posts mentioned above (the posts here and here  and here).  

Although living mind researchers have usually displayed an appalling failure to research the topic of clairvoyance under hypnosis that was so well-documented in the nineteenth century, we occasionally get evidence of it even in recent years. A 2020 paper found that hypnosis increased success in remote viewing efforts, remote viewing being essentially a synonym for clairvoyance. Using RV for a non-hypotic "remote viewing" attempts, and OB-RV for a hypnotically aided "remote viewing" attempts, in which subjects were encouraged to mentally travel out of their bodies,  the paper states the following:

"The purpose of this study was to compare the ability to identify and describe physical targets, from a distance, in the RV and OB-RV states of consciousness.The results clearly demonstrate that in both conditions, the amount of correct information is clearly greater than wrong information, with a difference of around 20%. The only difference in performance between the two is in the number of correct information, which is slightly greater in the OB-RV condition."

The author Joseph Haddock reported that after hypnotizing a subject, the subject would respond to any pain inflicted on Joseph, just as if the hypnotized person had felt the pain: "I have got individuals to tread on my toes, pull my hair, or pinch different parts of the body ; and I invariably found that, with this subject, not many seconds would elapse before she would complain of exactly similar treatment, and refer the pain to the exact corresponding part; and sometimes I have experienced considerable difficulty in dispelling the illusion." 

An effect totally inexplicable under materialist assumptions is what is called "community of sensations" under hypnosis. It has been very frequently reported that a hypnotized person may instantly feel sensations felt by the person who hypnotized him. A set of experiments on this effect is reported in the "First Report of the Committee on Mesmerism" pages 225-229 of Volume 1 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (April, 1883), a committee including the illustrious names of Frederic Myers,  Edmund Gurney, Frank Podmore, George Wyld M.D. and the eventually knighted physicist W.F. Barrett.  We read this on page 226: "Thus out of a total of 24 experiments in transference of pains, the exact spot was correctly indicated by the subject no less than 20 times."  These were experiments in which the hypnotized subject was asked whether he felt anything, after the hypnotizer had been given some type of pain or sensation while in another room where the hypnotized person could not see him.  Similar results were obtained by Dr. Edmund Gurney and reported in his paper "An Account of Some Experiments in Mesmerism," published on page 201 of Volume II of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research ( June 1884). As reported on page 205, a hypnotized subject identified with high accuracy many tactile and taste sensations occurring in a hypnotizer sitting behind him. 

On pages 22-23 of one of his books, Professor William Gregory describes various forms of "community of sensation" between hypnotized subjects and hypnotists, or those who they have been put en rapport with:

"There is Community of Taste. If the operator [i.e. hypnotist], or any person, en rapport with the subject, takes any kind of food or drink into his mouth, the sleeper, in many cases, instantly begins going through the pantomime of eating or drinking ; and, if asked, he declares he is eating bread, or an orange, or sweetmeats, or drinking water, wine, milk, beer, syrup, or lemonade, or infusion of wormwood, or brandy, or whisky, according as the operator takes each of them, or any other substance. When the thing taken is bitter or disagreeable, the countenance of the sleeper at once indicates this, while his eyes, as usual, are closed, and the mesmerist or friend may stand behind him, so that he cannot see what is taken....The same thing occurs with regard to Smell. If the person en rapport with the sleeper, smell a rose, the latter at once begins to inhale the delightful perfume. If he smell assafoetida, the sleeper expresses disgust ; and if he place strong hartshorn under his own nostrils, the sleeper starts back, complaining of its pungency....There is Community of Touch. Whatever touches the person en rapport , is felt by the sleeper, in precisely the same part. If the former shake hands with any one, the latter instantly grasps a visionary hand. If a pin be driven into the back of the mesmerist’s hand, the sleeper hastily withdraws his hand, rubs the part, and complains loudly of the injury. This may be tried in all forms with perfect success in very many subjects."

In a discussion of twentieth century research we read this: 

"Summarizing the results of recent ESP research using hypnosis, Honorton points out that, out of 42 series of trials, slightly over half have provided positive results, as against a chance expectation of five per cent. 'I believe the conclusion is now inescapable that hypnotic induction procedure enhance psi receptivity.' "

Beginning on page 223 of the 1841 book Facts in mesmerism or animal magnetism : with reasons for a dispassionate inquiry into it by Chauncy-Hare Townshend, we have many pages of the author describing clairvoyance in a hypnotized subject Anna M.  We hear report after report of Anna identifying things with closed eyes, seemingly as if she had vision rising from her forehead rather than her eyes. On page 231 the same author states this about  another subject he studied under hypnosis: "His eyes being always firmly shut, (as far as the strictest observation could determine,) he was able to read any number of words in the minutest type with perfect ease, and to discern small or large objects, near or distant, with the same felicity of vision which is possessed by a waking person."  We read this:

"This power of perception, analogous to sight, seemed to reside principally in his forehead. Whatever objects he took up to examine he immediately carried there."

Later in the same book we have an account of the most varied and  careful tests consistently showing clairvoyance in a hypnotized subject (subject E. A.), tests involving conditions so stringent they seem to rule out any possibility of trickery:

"1st.  I  laid  the  patient  on  a  sofa,  in  bright  day- 

light, with  his  face  turned  towards  the  window,  and 

made  him  lean  his  head  back  until  I  could  see  com- 

pletely under  his  eyes.  When  he  was  so  placed,  I 

could  have  detected  the  slightest  gleam  of  the  eye 

through  the  smallest  opening  of  the  lids.  I  have 

then  given  him  a  book,  from  which  he  has  read  with 

ease,  (holding  it  nearly  parallel  to  his  forehead,) 

while  all  the  time  I  fixed  my  eyes  earnestly  on  his, 

and  yet  could  perceive  not  the  slightest  tendency  in 

them  to  unclose. 

2dly.  I  laid  the  palms  of  my  hands,  the  fingers 

pointing  upwards,  on  the  eyes  of  various  persons,  in 

such  a  manner  as  that  the  projecting  parts  of  each 

hand  should  exactly  fit  into  the  concavities  about  the 

eyes.  These  persons  assured  me  that,  with  their 

eyes  so  covered,  they  could  see  nothing  whatever.  I 

have  given  them  cards  or  books  in  their  hands,  but 

by  no  efforts  on  their  parts  could  they  distinguish 

these  objects.  I  have  repeated  the  same  experiment 

again  and  again  upon  E.  A.,  in  a  state  of  [hypnotized] sleepwalking,  and  never  found  that  the  palms  of  my  hands  in 

any  way  impeded  his  vision.  He  could  see  cards,  or 

read  in  books,  under  the  above  circumstances,  with 

perfect  ease.  I  never  felt  any  motion  beneath  my 

hand,  as  if  the  patient  were  trying  to  open  his  eyes  ; 

nor  did  he  evince  the  slightest  inclination  to  draw 

his  head  back  from  the  pressure  of  my  hands.

3dly.  Standing  behind  the  patient,  I  have  laid  my 

closed  fingers  over  his  eyes  horizontally,  or  I  have 

forcibly  pressed  down  his  lids  with  one  finger  of  each 

hand.  This,  which,  when  tried  on  others,  effectually 

impeded  their  sight,  made  no  alteration  in  the  visual 

perceptions  of the  [hypnotized] sleepwalker.

4thly.  Having  filled  a  couple  of  china  eye-glasses 

with  wadding,   I,  or  some  other  person,  held  them 

firmly  to  the  patient's  closed  eyes  when  in  sleepwalking.

This  also  made  no  difference  in  his  visual 

perceptions....

5thly.  I  have  tried  various  methods  of  bandaging 

the  patient's  eyes.  I  have  tied  a  broad  and  thick 

silk  handkerchief  over  them,  and  then  I  have  held 

down  with  my  fingers,  or  the  palms  of  my  hands, 

the  whole  of  the  bottom  part  of  the  bandage.  This 

method  seems  to  me  as  perfect  as  any.  It  did  not  at 

all  impede  the  sleepwalker's  vision.  In  addition  to 

this,  (the  same  result  always  ensuing,)  I  have  laid 

strips  of  wadding  over  the  eyes  before  applying  the 

handkerchief,  and  I  have  firmly  secured  every  possible

 interstice  between  it  and  the  cheek  with  cotton. 

In  the  presence  of  Dr.  Foissac,  strips  of  diachylum 

were  added  to  all  the  above  apparatus,  in  order  to 

fasten  down  the  edges  of  the  handkerchief  to  the 

cheek  ;  but  the  sleepwalker  saw  as  well  as  ever.  On 

several  occasions  I  bandaged  his  eyes,  adding  the 

cotton  and  the  wadding  before  beginning  to  mesmerise [hypnotize] him,  when  he  has  assured  me  that  he  could not  distinguish  day  from  night.  Then,  having  passed 

into  sleepwalking,  he  has  immediately  given  proofs  of 

perfect  vision  —  quite  as  perfect,  indeed,  as  that  enjoyed

by  persons  whose  eyes  are  open  and  unbound.

6thly.  I  threw  over  the  patient's  head  two  thick 

and  large  towels,  which  covered  him  in  front  down 

to  the  hips.  Through  these  he  has  read,  holding  the 

book  at  an  angle  with  his  forehead,  and  has  distin- 

guished cards  with  perfect  accuracy.  This  kind  of 

experiment  was  occasionally  varied.  Sometimes  the 

sleepwalker  has  been  bandaged,  and,  in  addition  to 

this,  a  towel  has  been  thrown  over  his  head  ;  but  the 

result  was  equally  satisfactory."

Can we imagine a more stringent series of tests? And the subject kept demonstrating clairvoyance, despite each and every thing impeding normal vision. You will never hear about such tests in the writing of materialists or skeptics. They will only tell you about some poorly designed test in which someone might have peeked by looking down at his chest through a blindfold that was not very tight. They will not tell you about the innumerable successful tests of clairvoyance in which there was no possibility of someone cheating. 

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. First on page 86 we read this about telepathy between the hypnotized and the hypnotist (called the operator):

"I noticed that if the operator tasted, smelt, or touched anything, or experienced any sudden sensation of warmth or cold, a corresponding effect was instantly produced on the subject, though nothing was said, nor could the subject have seen what had taken place in the operator. To be assured of this, I bandaged the girl’s eyes with great care, and the operator having gone behind the girl to the other end of the room, I watched him and the girl, and repeatedly assured myself of this fact. If he placed his hand over the lighted lamp, the girl instantly withdrew hers, as if in pain; if he tasted salt or sugar, corresponding expressions of dislike and approval were indicated by the girl. If, however, any one else in the room other than the operator tried the experiment, I could perceive no indications on the part of the subject. Certainly, so far as my observations extended, there did seem to be a vast difference between the influence exerted on the subject by the operator, and that which would be exerted by anyone else."

Barrett then tells us on page 86 about witnessing clairvoyance or telepathy in a hypnotized subject:

"Having mesmerised [hypnotized] the girl myself, I took a card at random from a pack that was in a drawer in another room. Glancing at the card to see what it was, I placed it within a book, and in this state brought it to the girl. Giving her the closed book, I asked her to tell me what I had put within its leaves. She held the book close to the side of her head (a peculiar position always resorted to for information), and said 'I see something inside with red spots on it.'  'Count the spots,'  I told her; she did so, and said there were five red spots. The card was the five of diamonds. With another card, chosen in a similar way, the same result occurred; and when an Irish bank note was substituted she said, ' Oh now I see a number of heads; so many I can’t count them.'  She sometimes failed to guess correctly, asserting the things were dim, and invariably I found she could give me no information of what was within the book, unless I had previously known what it was myself. More remarkable still, I asked her to go in imagination to Regent-street, in London, and tell me what shops she saw. The girl had never been out of her remote Irish village, but she correctly described to me Mr. Ladd’s shop, of which I happened to be thinking, and mentioned the large clock that overhangs the entrance to Beak-street. In many other ways I convinced myself that the existence of a distinct idea in my own mind gave rise to an image of the idea in the subject’s mind ; not always a clear image, but one that could not fail to be recognised as a more or less distorted reflection of my own thought. The important point is that every care was taken to prevent any unconscious muscular action of the face, or otherwise giving any indication to the subject."

Barrett quotes another experimenter (W. E. Wilson) who said this:

"You are correct, as I remember several experiments of the same kind. I think we proved beyond all doubt that the subject is able to read the thoughts of the mesmeriser [hypnotist]. Also that they are able to see through things which are optically to us opaque, provided that they could touch them or hold them in their hand....Another instance I remember was with a country boy. He was mesmerised [hypnotized] in a room which we made perfectly dark. Cards were given to him at random from a pack. He told fourteen correctly without a mistake, and I have no doubt would have gone through the pack if we liked. Of coarse you know that they don’t try to use the eyes to see with. They always, without exception, put whatever is put in their hand to the side of their head, a little behind the ear, and about six inches from them."

On March 27, 1887 the New York Sun published this report by one of its correspondents who described a boy who dramatically demonstrated clairvoyance under hypnosis:

"The subject on this night was a boy of fourteen named Wally Andrus. He is what is termed a susceptible subject. Mr. Alderman can draw him across the street by a wave of the hand. He can look at the boy and say to himself, ' I want you to come to my house tomorrow night,' and the boy will come without any further understanding. The lad was placed in an easy chair, a few passes of the hand put him under the influence, and here is the colloquy and the result :

Mr. A. — 'Wally, I want you to go down to the hotel and 

go up one flight of stairs.'

Wally.— 'Yes, sir, I'm there.'

' Now turn to your left and go to the second door, on the left hand side. Is there a number on the door? '

'No, sir, there is a letter L. '

'Very well, go inside and tell me what you see.'

The mesmerized boy entered the room and described and accurately located every article of furniture, described every picture, told the time by the clock, and then gave the colors of the gas globes. Neither Mr. Alderman nor the boy had ever entered the hotel. Some of the articles described had been placed in the room only an hour before. He was sent into three different rooms in the same hotel and did not make one mistake. The hotel is a mile from the residence where the exhibition was given. He was brought out of the hotel and sent to a residence a mile further away, and the colloquy went on.

'Are you there?'

'Yes.'

'What kind of a house is it ? '

'A double brick.'

'Are the steps wood or stone? '

' Neither; they are iron.'

' Now go inside. Is there a carpet on the floor? '

'No; the floor is of tile.'

'Where is the parlor? '

'To the right.'

' Go in and tell me what you see? '

'There's a square piano, a sofa, chairs, etc.' (He described everything, even to photographs, and told the time by the parlor clock.)

' Now go upstairs. Anyone there? '

'Yes; an Irish woman.'

'Ask her name? '

'She won't give it. She wants to know what I am doing here.'

' But ask her name? '

'She says it's Mollie.'

Such, in truth, was and is the name of the Irish servant. He afterward located a girl reading at a table, and gave the name of the book in her hand, and the next' day we verified his statements."

It is important to understand the history of hypnosis. Although there is reason to suspect that it existed before the time of Mesmer, the modern practice of hypnosis began with the work of the physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). Mesmer introduced a psychological medical practice he called animal magnetism. He thought that it involved some mysterious fluid that could be manipulated using magnets or rods.  Mesmer seemed to have produced mysterious new results of great importance, although he and his disciples seemed to have been too dogmatic in theorizing how the results were produced. The disciples of Mesmer made claims that his techniques could produce various mysterious and wonderful effects. A disciple of Mesmer (Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, the Marquis de Puységur) developed a technique called "artificial somnambulism" that was equivalent to hypnosis. 

For the first half of the nineteenth century, hypnotism was very widely practiced and studied, but was not yet recognized by most mainstream authorities. During this time it was very widely reported in print that clairvoyance could be produced under hypnosis.  Before 1850 hypnotism was called various things other than hypnosis, such as "Mesmerism," "animal magnetism" or "artificial somnambulism."

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, James Braid coined the term "hypnosis." Braid seemed to have had the goal of taking a fraction of the phenomena reported under the names of  "Mesmerism," "animal magnetism" or "artificial somnambulism" (a less remarkable and more easily explicable fraction) and positioning that as something that could be understood within the assumptions of mainstream science. Under the new name of "hypnosis," a fraction of the observational phenomena described before as "Mesmerism," "animal magnetism" or "artificial somnambulism" was then recognized by mainstream science professors as an observational fact.  But this was all a case of severe "reality filtering," in which half of the reported phenomena were still denied.  A rough analogy might be if someone who did not want to believe in very bad weather reluctantly confessed the reality of hurricanes, while still refusing to believe in the reality of tornadoes, denying the truth of all the observational reports of tornadoes.  

The diagram below illustrates the situation. Psychology textbooks and psychology professors will typically confess the reality of hypnosis, and describe various hypnotic phenomena (represented by the blue circle). But such textbooks and professors will discuss only the less impressive phenomena observed under hypnosis.  No mention will be made of the more impressive phenomena, even though the written evidence for such phenomena is very abundant.  

There are some ways to become familiar with the more spectacular phenomena that have been reported in hypnotic subjects, phenomena that today's professors typically avoid discussing. One way is to read my long post "Prevailing Brain Dogmas Cannot Explain Hypnotic Phenomena," which can be read here. Another way is to study the works I refer to above, and also the work "Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism and Its Phenomena" by Professor William Gregory, which can be read online here. Being careful to sidestep the dubious theorizing that sometimes occurs in it, the book can be read for its wealth of fascinating observational reports. For example, on page 13 Gregory states this: "If the mesmerist [i.e. hypnotist] speaks German or Italian, languages perhaps quite unknown to the subject, and with the greatest rapidity, the sleeper will speak after him so exactly, that it is often impossible, when his ear is acute in catching the minute shades of the sound, to perceive the slightest difference." Such a feat would seem to be possible only by some vast increase in short-term memory.  An ordinary person could not repeat a twenty-word sentence spoken in a language he did not know. 

On page 18 Gregory states this, discussing a kind of "telepathic knockout": 

" After the operator [i.e. hypnotist] has succeeded in producing the sleep [i.e. hypnosis] easily and in a short time, he can, in many cases, produce it by the silent exertion of the will, without any passes, or other process of any kind. This I have myself done, and in one case, where the subject was deeply engaged in conversation without any idea that I intended any thing of the kind, as I had taken, up to that moment, an active share in the conversation, I put him into a sound mesmeric sleep in 25 seconds (his eyes having been directed to other persons present), by the silent power of the will. I sat about four or five feet from him, to one side."

This claim of a kind of "telepathic knockout" was also made by Emilie Boirac (as I discuss in my post here). On page 104 of the book "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, we read a chapter discussing many examples of so-called "telepathic knockouts." During such events it would appear that a person was put into a state of deep sleep or unconsciousness solely because of the mental suggestion of some other person.  We read, "The ability to put people to sleep and wake them up telepathically from a distance of a few yards to over a thousand miles became the most thoroughly tested and perfected contribution of the Soviets to international parapsychology." After reading of countless successful experiments of such an effect, we read of such a test being successful at a distance of a thousand miles.  At a scheduled time, one scientist mentally commanded a subject a thousand miles away to fall asleep. We are told, "A thousand miles away Ivanova lost consciousness on schedule as she talked to Dr. Doubrovsky."   

On page 178 of the work here, Professor Gregory begins to describe very many specific cases of clairvoyance under hypnosis.  For example, we read this test:

"Case 29. — 1. Before I had seen E., I sent to Dr. Haddock the writing of a lady, without any details, requesting merely to know what E. should say of it. I did not even say it was a lady’s writing, and, indeed, as the hand is a strong hold one, Dr. H. supposed it was that of a man. E. took it in her hand, she being in the sleep, and soon said 'I see a lady. She is rather below middle height, dark-complexioned, pale, and looks ill.'  She then proceeded to describe the house, the drawing-room in which the lady was, her dress, and the furniture, all with perfect accuracy as far as she went. She said the lady was sitting at a long table close to the wall, something like a sideboard, writing a letter; that on this table were several beautiful glasses, such as she had never seen. (In fact, this lady writes at a long sofa-table at the wall, on which then stood several Bohemian glasses.) She further detailed, with strict accuracy, all the symptoms of the lady’s illness, mentioning several things, known to the lady alone. She also described the treatment which had been followed, and said, among other things, that the lady had gone over the water, to a place where she drank ' morning waters'  for her health ; that the waters had a strange taste, but had done her good. (The lady had been at a mineral water in Germany, and had derived benefit from it. The water was always taken in the morning.) I need not enter into all the details ; it is enough to state, that not only Dr. H. did not know the lady, nor even her name, but that he had had no means of knowing any one of the details specified."

This is only a small part of a very long narrative involving this hypnotized subject E., one in which we hear many similar accounts of her clairvoyant prowess. Here is an excerpt from another page, in which Professor Gregory describes giving E. some paper with writing from his son:

"She then put it on her head, and said that it was written by a little boy, whom she described very accurately, dwelling particularly on the peculiarities of his disposition, his old-fashioned ways, as she called them, his love of reading, and various other points all more or less characteristic. His dress astonished her very much, and she described it most minutely in every part. It was the Highland dress, and she gave the colours and pattern of the tartan, as well as every other detail of the boy’s dress and accoutrement. It appeared that she had never seen the Highland dress worn, and she thought it must be very cold. The boy was my own son, then in Edinburgh, and neither E. nor Dr. H. knew that I had a son, or that he wore the Highland dress."

On the next page Professor Gregory tells us this: "After I returned to Edinburgh, I had very frequent communication with Dr. H., and tried many experiments with this remarkable subject, sending specimens of writing, locks of hair, and other objects, the origin of which was perfectly unknown to Dr. H., and in every case, without exception, E. saw and described with accuracy the persons concerned." This occurred before the invention of the telephone and the internet, and cannot be accounted for without admitting the reality of clairvoyance or telepathy, except by appealing to some fantastically improbable set of coincidences.  In Case 31 discussed here, E. describes the exact details of a watch stolen very far away, merely referred to as a gold watch, and provides exact details (unknown to her) about the watch's owner and the place where it was stolen, and also provides information that leads to the recovery of the watch. 

On another page Professor Gregory states this:

"I have mentioned before, in this work, a remarkable case, in which this same clairvoyante, with the aid of handwriting, traced the progress of a gentleman, Mr. W. Willey, then in California, as well as of another person who accompanied Mr. W., and whose writing was also shown to her. In this case, which was published in the newspapers, E. gave a multitude of details in regard to the persons, their voyage, their occupations, and various occurrences, the whole of which details were, in so far as concerned the period subsequent to their embarking at Liverpool, entirely unknown to their families, but were afterwards fully confirmed in every point by Mr. W. on his return." 

On page 246 of the May 21, 1880 edition of The Spiritualist, Percy Wyndham tells of visiting a clairvoyant, unannounced. He asks the person to mentally travel to his son's school. We read this about what happened after Percy asked for details of a particular room:

"He described it as a very long room, wainscoted with oak ; I then said, ' Do you see anything else in it ?” He replied, ' I see a row of busts round the room, and the tops of the heads are covered with dust.' This was the feature which I wished to see whether he would notice or not, the peculiarity of the upper school at Eton being the row of busts of distinguished men who have been educated there placed round the room." 

On pages 61 to 64 of the document here, we have an account of very powerful clairvoyance in a 15-year-old boy, when he was hypnotized. 

Below is a 19th century diagram trying to express the complexity of the human mind and its relation to a hypothesized "world mind."

Spookiest Years, Part 13: The Year 1876

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:

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 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."