« Thus far I had been an enemy to
spiritism because I had been told that all the “spiritistic” phenomena were
produced by trickery and fraud. A
believer in spiritism was, to my mind, a long-haired crank with goggle eyes,
who would see the products of his own diseased imagination in the shape of
ghosts in every comer.
Nevertheless,
my curiosity prompted me to visit a certain “materializing séance” held by a
medium by the name of Mrs. Rice or Mrs. Holmes, and there I saw the most
wonderful phenomena of tangible appearances and materializations of ghosts,
known as the spirits of Katie King and certain others.
I became
interested in these things and went to hear the lectures of Professor Peebles,
and the philosophy which he taught seemed to me very rational and plausible;
but it overthrew all the theories of Buchner and Comte.
Just at that
time I had a lady patient whose name was Katie Wentworth. She was a highly
accomplished married lady, with English and Indian blood in her veins.
She was not
a believer in spiritism, and rather unwilling to give credence to the accounts
which I gave her of what I had witnessed; but for the purpose of seeing
“whether there was anything in it,” she consented to sit with me, and after her
recovery we held frequent séances together.
At first the
phenomena were insignificant and the communications received through the “planchette” puerile; but after a while
other influences were attracted, and we had the most astonishing results.
My friend
Katie Wentworth became herself one of the most remarkable mediums for all kinds
of manifestations, including trance, materialization, levitation, apports,
direct writing, etc. And perhaps, owing
to her presence, I myself became to a certain extent clairvoyant and
clairaudient, and I highly enjoyed the intercourse with the “departed.”
Being
accustomed to go easily into extremes I now devoted nearly all my time to the
reading of books on spiritism, such as the works of Andrew Jackson Davis,
Hudson Tuttle, Judge Edmonds, and many others, while my principal amusements
were my séances with my friend and with other mediums whom I had learned to
know.
Some of my
experiences during that time have already been described in the Occult Review.
Katie
Wentworth’s accomplishments as a medium soon became known among the
spiritualists; she received invitations for holding séances from all sides and
accepted many. The consequence was that she was continually vampirized by these
ghosts, lost her vitality, became paralyzed and died.
That these
“spirits” were not what they claimed to be was clearly shown by the fact that,
even within half an hour of that lady’s death, pretended spirits of some of the
most celebrated physicians that ever lived on earth, came and made
prescriptions for her and insisted that there was no danger.
It would
perhaps have been well for me, if I had remained at New Orleans; but desire for
change and adventures, together with glowing reports that came to me from Colorado,
induced me to go to that country. I was tired of fashionable city life and I
longed to see the “Wild West.”
There I made
the acquaintance of Mrs. N. D. Miller, of Denver, one of the most remarkable
“materializing mediums” that ever existed, and as she sometimes stayed at my
house I had occasion to witness the most interesting phenomena, fully
materialized ghosts became my almost daily companions, fresh seaweeds were
brought from the far distant ocean; I was myself levitated to the ceiling and
carried through the air; in short, all the now well-known spiritual phenomena
occurred under test conditions which left nothing to desire.
I was, and
am of course still, a believer in these phenomena, for I cannot “unknow” that
which I have actually experienced and known as well as any other fact in my
daily life; but my experience with my friend Katie Wentworth had already taught
me that these phenomena were probably not always caused by the spirits of
departed human beings, and that they surely often originated in occult but
intelligent forces or powers at present unknown to us.
My desire
was to know the cause of such things. I had no doubt that in some cases,
especially in those of suicides or sudden deaths, the souls of the killed,
being still bound to earth by their own unfulfilled desires, could communicate
with mortals. I had received strong
proof of it and especially the following experience made a strong impression
upon my mind:
I was elected
coroner for the district of Clear Creek Country, to which Georgetown belongs,
and it would have been my duty to order and hold inquest in cases of sudden
death.
One morning,
however, in a town not far from where I resided, a physician committed suicide
by poisoning himself with morphine. I was duly informed of it, but missed the
first train to go to that place, and when I arrived in the afternoon, the other
physicians there had already dissected the body of their colleague and cut it
to pieces without waiting till it grew cold.
That night
the apparition of the suicide rose up before me. He was in a horribly mutilated
shape and seemed to suffer a great deal.
It seems that his astral body had not yet been separated from his
material form at the time of the dissection.
The apparition may have been the product of my imagination, but it
seemed exceedingly real.
I made use
of every opportunity to stay at houses that were reputed to be haunted by
ghosts, and had some remarkable experiences; but the ghosts I saw or heard
showed very little or no intelligence: sometimes they appeared to be birds of
enormous size; their footsteps were audible and the rush of their wings could
be felt.
~ * ~
But despite experiencing a lot I could not find a
tangible explanation that would help me understand these phenomena.
While my
perplexity was at its highest and I despaired of the possibility of knowing
anything certain about these manifestations, a number of The Theosophist, a journal edited by H. P. Blavatsky and published at
Madras, fell into my hands.
It contained
an article describing the sevenfold constitution of man and the seven
principles in the universe. This came to me like a revelation, and seemed to
furnish the key to those mysteries whose explanation I had sought so long in
vain.
I was
delighted with this discovery, and my greatest desire now was to become
personally acquainted with Theosophy and to learn from her more of the secrets
of life and death. »
(Source:
extracts of his autobiography published in the Occult Review, January 1908, p.12-17)
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