CHAPTER II.

MOVING PONDERABLE BODIES BY OCCULT AGENCY.

"When they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axehead fell into the water: and he cried, and said [to Elisha], 'Alas, master!' for it was borrowed. And the man of God said, 'Where fell it?' And he shewed him the place. And he cut down a stick, and cast it in thither; and the iron did swim.”—2 KINGS vi. 4-6.

THE raising from the ground of weighty substances, or the moving of these from place to place, is one of the most common, and most easily verified, of physical manifestations. I have elsewhere given many examples of it.* Here I shall add but two or three out of the numerous cases that have come under my eye during spiritual sessions.

A most satisfactory test of the power, by occult agency, to raise ponderable substances was suggested to me by that practical thinker, the late Robert Chambers, the well-known author and publisher, during his visit to the United States, in the autumn of 1860; and we carried it out on the thirteenth of October of that year.

On the evening of that day we had a sitting in Mr. Underhill's dining-room; there being present Mr. and Mrs. Underhill, Kate Fox, Mr. Chambers, and myself. In this room, we found an extension dinner-table of solid mahogany, capable of seating fourteen persons. This we contracted to the form of a centre-table, and, having procured a large steelyard, we found that it weighed, in that form, a hundred and twenty-one pounds. We suspended this table by the steelyard, in exact equipoise

* Footfalis, pp. 110, 112, 113 (note), 252, 256, 276, 279 to 282, and many others.

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TEST SUGGESTED BY ROBERT CHAMBERS.

and about eight inches from the floor. Then we sat down by it; and while our experiment proceeded, Mrs. Underhill sat with the points of both feet touching one of mine; and Kate in the same relation to Mr. Chambers. This was done, at their suggestion, so as to afford us proof that they had no physical agency in the matter. Their hands were over the table, near the top, but not touching it. There was bright gas-light. Thus we were enabled to obtain

A CRUCIAL TEST.

The table remaining suspended, with the constant weight at the figure 121, we asked that it might be made lighter. In a few seconds the long arm ascended. We moved the weight to the figure 100: it still ascended; then to 80; then to 60. Even at this last figure the smaller arm of the steelyard was somewhat depressed, showing that the table, for the moment, weighed less than sixty pounds. It had lost more than half its weight, namely, upward of sixty-one pounds: in other words, there was a power equal to sixty-one pounds sustaining it. Then we asked that it might be made heavier; and it was so : first as the figures indicated, to 130, and finally to a hundred and forty four pounds.

The change of weight continued, in each instance, from three to eight seconds, as we ascertained by our watches: and during the whole time the ladies maintained the same position of feet and hands; Mr. Underhill not approaching the table.

We had given Mr. Underhill no notice of our intention to ask for this experiment. The steelyard was borrowed for the occasion from a wholesale grocer, living in the neighborhood.

How much a Jewish axehead commonly weighed, in the days of Elisha, I know not; it could be but a few pounds. Our miracle (dunamis) exceeded that of the prophet, as far as regards the weight of the body that was made lighter: but the Hebrew seer was at a greater distance from the object raised than were our mediums.

A TABLE SUSPENDED.

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On the evening just preceding that on which we tried the above experiment I had a sitting at Mr. Underhill's, with very satisfactory result.

A HEAVY DINNER-TABLE SUSPENDED IN THE AIR, WITHOUT CONTACT.

Our session was on the evening of October 12, 1860, lasting from half-past nine till eleven.* It was held in the same room and at the same table mentioned above, and by gas-light. Present Mr. and Mrs. Underhill, Kate Fox, Mr. Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, and myself.

We had very loud rappings, from various parts of the room and on the chairs.

Then, while our hands were on the table, it began to move, sometimes with a rotary motion, sometimes rising up on one side, until finally it rose from the ground all but one leg.

Then we sought to induce it to rise entirely from the floor. After (what seemed) strenous efforts, almost successful, to rise, we aided it by each putting a single finger under it; and, with this slight assistance, it rose into the air and remained suspended during six or seven seconds.

After a time we asked whether, if we removed our fingers from the table-top, while it was in the air, it could still remain suspended; and the reply (by rapping) being in the affirmative, after aiding it to rise as before, we withdrew our fingers entirely, raising them above it. The table then remained, nearly level, suspended without any human support whatever, during the space of five or six seconds; and then gradually settled down, without jar or sudden dropping, to the floor.

Then, anxious to advance a step farther, we asked if the table could not be raised from the floor without any aid or contact whatever. The reply being in the affirmative, we stood up and placed all our hands over it, at the distance of three or four inches

* We found, by repeated trials, that our experiments succeeded better when we sat at a late hour, after the servants had gone to bed, when the house and the streets were quiet.

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A HEAVY DINING-TABLE RAISED.

from the table-top: when it rose of itself, following our hands as we gradually raised them, till it hung in the air about the same distance from the ground as before. There it remained six or seven seconds, preserving its horizontal, and almost as steady as when it rested on the ground: then it slowly descended, still preserving the horizontal, until the feet reached the carpet. As before, there was no jar or sudden dropping.

At

The same experiment was repeated, next evening in the presence of Robert Chambers, after we had completed our tests with the steelyard; and with exactly the same results. first, as before, we raised it on our fingers; then, withdrawing them, it remained in the air six or seven seconds. On the second trial it rose entirely without contact, remaining suspended for about the same space.

It should here be remarked that we were in the habit, during these experiments, of moving the table to different parts of the room, and of looking under it from time to time.

Upon the whole I consider this moving of physical objects -les apports, as the French spiritualists term it—to be as conclusively established, in its ultramundane aspect, as the spiritrap. A hundred-and-twenty-pound dinner-table is no trifle to lift. The conditions exclude the possibility of concealed machinery. And by what conceivable bodily effort, undetectable by watchful bystanders, can two or three assistants heave from the ground, maintain in the air, and then drop slowly to the floor, so ponderous a weight, with their hands, the while, in full view, under broad gas-light? No one, in his senses and believing in his senses, can witness what I have witnessed, and yet remain a sceptic in this matter.

It makes not, under the circumstances, at all against it, that Mrs. Underhill and her sister were, at one period of their lives,

* The accounts of this and of the sitting of October 13, were both written out the next morning. To prevent repetition I here remark that notes of all the sittings recorded in this volume were taken either at the time, or next day or (in a few cases) a day or two later.

EXPERIMENT ON STATEN ISLAND.

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in the habit of sitting as professional mediums. But even if it did, still, in the seclusion of a private family and in the ab sence of every one who had ever, till a few months before, been suspected of possessing spiritual powers-I have witnessed occurrences even more marvellous than those above related. Thus it happened:

A TABLE, FLUNG INTO THE AIR, ROTATES.

In the spring of 1870 I was visiting a friend of mine, Mr. B——, whose charming residence on Staten Island commands a magnificent view over the Bay of New York, with the distant city on one hand and the Narrows, opening into the ocean, on the other.

The family had no knowledge of Spiritualism and scant faith in any of its phenomena, until a month or two before my visit, when one of the sons, a young man whom I shall call Charles, suddenly found himself, as much to his surprise as to that of his relatives, gifted with rare spiritual powers.

Passing by, for the present, the most remarkable of these, I here reproduce, from minutes taken next day and submitted for correction to the assistants, part of a record of what I witnessed at two sessions, both held on the second of April, 1870.

The first was in the afternoon. We had been sitting previously in a back parlor; but, on my proposal, we adjourned to the drawing-room, on the front of the house, where, until then, we had not sat. There were present, besides Charles and myself, two other relatives of the family, Mr. N— and Mr. L——. The room was darkened with heavy curtains which we drew close; but sufficient light came through to enable us to see the outlines of objects.

We sat at a heavy deal-table, made, expressly for the purpose, very thick and strong; the legs more than two inches square; size two feet seven inches by one foot eight inches, and weighing twenty-five pounds.

At first there was a trembling motion, then a tilting from