'Twixt two worlds : a narrative of the life and work of William Eglinton

"
:
South African Experiences. 45
one of their feet over each of his feet ; all their hands and feet were in full view. After
sitting for a short time, all the other sitters having their hands, palm downwards, flat on the
table, and their feet drawn under their chairs, the medium began to tremble and shiver, owing
to power or heat being extracted from his body, causing the temperature of his body to decrease
considerably (as experiments have shown). He then became partly entranced.
At this stage we were told by the spirit that he would try to communicate, if possible, in
full light, by means of the dial. The arrow of the dial began to oscillate and revolve alternately,
first one way and then the other, and finally becoming steady, it pointed to the following letters
" Godunderstandsiloveyoualljoeyiswithyou
"— " God understands. I love you all. Joey is with yon."
This proved to our minds that the same intelligence who spoke to us by means of the raps was
the invisible operator, as no blind force could act on the apparatus, and make it spell out
intelligent messages ; and we could not come to any other conclusion than that the spiritual
hypothesis is true. The medium began to show symptoms of "— great nervous exhaustion, when
the arrow moved to the following letters "
: Isolatethemedium " Isolate the medium," which
I did by letting the friends holding him move away from him about two feet, but having a
full view of his feet and hands. The arrow now began to spin round at a very rapid rate, then
stop, and oscillate, and vibrate strongly ; the sensitive shivered, and was much agitated whilst
the arrow was in motion, establishing the statements of the spirits that the power used for
producing the manifestation was extracted -from the body of their medium, as in the case of
full form materialisation, during which the weight of the medium varies whilst materialised
forms are in view.
Mr. Eglinton then suggested that his eyes should be blindfolded and his hand be allowed
to guide the arrow ;
and with eyes tightly bandaged, the pointer was guided to these letters :
" Godundcrstandsiloveyoualljoey — " God understands. I love you all, 'Joey.' " The message was
word for word like the one we obtained by the pointer moving without mortal intervention in
the previous experiment, except that " is with you " was left out. When the eyes of the medium
were unbandaged, I remarked that, speaking from a sceptical point of view, the experiment was
not altogether satisfactory, as I thought the bandage did not fit down closely under his eyes
owing to the prominence of the nose, whereupon he solemnly declared that he could not see a
ray of light. To leave not a shadow of doubt that he did not see, Mr. Eglinton said he would
try for another message blindfolded, but, in addition, somebody should press a finger tightly
over each of his eyeballs at the same time, to keep the folds of the handkerchief well under, so
that all the sitters in the room could know for themselves. Accordingly, I appointed one of
the sitters to place a finger over each eyeball, and at the same time to keep the handkerchief
well down ; under these conditions it was simply a physical impossibility for any human being
to see anything normally. The medium's hands were then placed on the arrow ; it began to
rotate and pointed to these letters "
: Yourmediumistrueiloveyoualljoeyiswithyou — " " Your medium
is true. I love you all. 'Joey' is with you." Thus the same intelligence who gave us the former
manifestations sent this last message indirectly by mesmerically guiding the hand of the
sensitive to the letters. Any practical mesmerist will understand the process. To dispel any
doubts which my previous remark might lead the listeners to think I had, the intelligence wrote,
" Your medium is true ; " and again, for the third time, under different conditions, repeated his
message, " / love you all. 'Joey ' is with you."