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

Drawings and Writings Produced by Abrormal Means. Sj
the likeness of the cast, though about a third smaller, strikes every one who sees it. It
is not like the conventional hands of statues. It is a purely natural, anatomical hand, with
every bone and tendon, and the finest skin marks distinctly visible. It is the hand I knew so
well in its mortal life, and which I have so often seen and felt since when materialised.
The little mould was given to the mother, who had it cast, and she has no doubt that
it is the hand of her child. I know as absolutely as I can know any fact, that the cast upon
my mantel is from a mould formed upon the materialised spirit-hand of my daughter. The
whole process was in my hands, and there could not be more stringent test conditions. Had
the mould been formed upon any human hand, it could never have been removed. The circumference
at the wrist is an inch and a half less than the smallest compass of the palm and
thumb. To disengage a hand from such a mould would break it into many pieces. The only
explanation that can be given, or that suits the case, is that the hand which formed the mould
must have dissolved, or dematerialised, to get out of it.
On the mantel, under a second glass shade, is another cast of a hand, entirely different.
It came from a mould procured under precisely the same conditions at a subsequent seance.
It is the broad, square hand of a man, which I think I recognise but cannot identify with the
same certainty as in the case of the other. It is like my father's hand. I inherit the form
of mine from my mother. But there it is, a solid human hand, but most certainly not a cast
from the hand of any one living in the flesh. The curved lines on the inside of the fingers
and the palm are very clearly given. There are hundreds of skilled Italian moulders in
plaster of Paris in London, but no one of them can make such a cast of a hand as either of
these, and no one can imagine how these could be done, except in the way they were done.
There have been speculations about the use of some elastic substance in making the
moulds, like india-rubber or glue : but there is no known method of working either—besides,
the moulds in which these hands were cast were solid paraffin, which I had melted, and were
floating in the pail of water I had placed to cool the paraffin. The difficulty was to produce
the mould, and remove the hand when the paraffin was hard and brittle. Only one way to
do that is conceivable, which is the partial, if not complete, dematerialisation, or dissolution,
of the hand enclosed within the hard, inflexible mould.
In the second, as in the first experiment, I found two moulds floating in the pail of water.
When I had poured the liquid plaster of Paris into the smaller mould, let it harden, and then
melted off the paraffin, I found a curiously deformed little foot. The size is that of a child
six months old, but it is cramped, distorted, deformed, as I have never seen in a living child.
Yet there it is, in every bone and tendon, and the five cramped little toes, a child's foot. It
is not pretty as an object of art, but as a test it is better than the most perfectly formed
foot or hand could be.
This ended our experiments with moulds and casts. The results are very solid facts
which will trouble any sceptic to explain. When I show my plaster hands to anyone, the more
he knows of such work, and the more clever and ingenious he is, the more he is puzzled to
account for them. Were I able to pay a thousand pounds, I would offer that reward to any
one who would show me how such hands could be produced in any way but that in which
they were produced, viz., from moulds in one piece, from the hands of materialised spirits.