ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

Incipient Mediumship. 77
give me some evidence of their genuineness and interest. Mr.'
Moriarty is a real estate man and runs an employment bureau. He
is a Catholic by religious profession and hesitated long to pay any
attention to what now and then invaded him. He told me in his
conversation that he had noticed the phenomena for many years
in his experience, but paid no attention to them until very recently
and then found relief of mind by heeding them and began to realize
thAt they were important and might be helpful to the world.
I soon learned from my conversation with him that the mode of
their occurrence was peculiar. When certain people came into his
office he would have an hallucination, either of vision or hearing,
the latter a voice, which, by inquiry, he found to be pertinent to
that person. It might signify his business, his hobby, or some important
interest in his life, or his disposition. Trying this out in
a number of cases, he resolved to experiment with it more frequently
and interrogate the person present as to its meaning, or
himself seek the interpretation through the voice. He found himself
and the symbol so often correct, and the impressions that he
received so apparently coming from outside intelligence, that he
came to believe in tlre existence of spirits and their power to impress
him. It was at this stage of his experiences that a lady, to whom
he mentioned the facts, sent him to me and our conversation was
the result. I then made arrangements to have some experiments
which I conducted this evening.
He had present two friends, father and son, whom I shall call
Miller, to conceal their identity. He had impressed them with his
phenomena and he seems to have been especially successful with
the young man. When he did not have spontaneous hallucinations,
he would have the person with whom he experimented write down
some name, that of a friend whose habits of life the person knew,
conceal the name, and Mr. Moriarty would proceed to let these
symbolic hallucinations occur and he would interpret them, either
through the voice or through his own inferences and associations.
I took up this method this evening to see what would occur under
his own conditions, using the young man first as the person to write
down the names. He wrote them down on a small pad, usually
when Mr. Moriarty was out of sight in another room or with his
back turned,' there being no mirrors in the office. As soon as the
name was written, the paper was turned upside down on the desk
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