ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

Observations of a Jurist. 145
Here, observe, there was no room for the mind-reading
theory ; 2 while a fraud in the case is so remote a possibility as to
be entitled to no consideration.
* * * * *a
I take, fourthly, in the ascending scale, oral communications
through trance mediums. I class with them written communications.
This class of spiritualistic phenomena is to me the most interesting
and the most convincing, and I shall dwell upon it more at
length than I have upon the others. I shall not attempt to reduce
them to any particular order, but shall select a few out of a great
many with reference to their clearer exclusion of the idea of mindreading,
and with less reference to their value than to the proof
which they give of a super-mundane origin.
About eight years ago a gentleman was staying at my house
who proved to be a rare medium. He had no suspicion of it ·(that
is, he said so) though he told us of some strange experiences that
he could not understand, and of his frequently hearing raps in his
room, especially in the night, that he could not account for. He
professed not to believe in spiritualism and seemed inclined to materialistic
views. At the request of my wife and myself he had
several sittings with us. He would go into a state of unconsciousness
or apparent sleep, and after an hour come out of it with no
knowledge (as he declared and we believed) of what had happened
while he was in that condition: but he had given us communications
apparently from spirits, of which we had taken quite full notes,
giving us names that we knew well, but which it was hardly possible
that he could have known of (and he declared that he did not),
and often names of which we knew nothing, but which he recognized
as those of old friends of his who had departed. He had been
brought up in a family of little cultivation, and certain errors of
speech had become embedded in his English and were constantly
appearing in his ordinary conversation ; yet some of the communications,
purporting to come from educated minds, were expressed
in the best of English, with no intrusion of his inaccuracies.
2. Mr. Hooker could not know that the time would come when " the
mind-reading theory" would 'be limited in its divagations only by infinity
and the elasticity of imagination. Even had he foreseen this, he might have
refused to budge from his statement, on the ground that he, as a jurist,
must stick to evidence and common-sense.
3. Two slate-writing incidents are here omitted, for the reason stated
in Note 1.
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