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Hours with the Ghosts, Or, Nineteenth Century Witchcraft : Illustrated

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Hours with the Ghosts, Or, Nineteenth Century Witchcraft : Illustrated &* \3 1<* .• J& ^ *ti ._$& - C> * *> v .'* v %. & «\ : - ^ • ^ r o. **?CT* A • Av 0* »°JL** "*b * . 4* V ,>^>- V%T' , >*."• xWV/,.aA :- ^d* • ,*- **'*0n« .'j w e$^ ,v^. .c, tfv -.- <r% i^^ V S\ r «^ ••«•" ^ ** ' V ^ ** \& ..**' t?' .'J&l-*** V > G°* .^>>o ^o< • * ^ **•:? 0* • L^L'* '^TVi* A o, **T.T« A <> * *£_ %\ % 4» ^-\y V^-'V \y*l*z>\# Sir.- ^% ^ r-\ ..«, A* 1 • o > Ao * ^ i> v;^>°u>;; ^\^^'^, f-' y A C *• #°+ / aO v*^?r- # -^ ,» *. "%/' % ^ i^ /js |: V** :*»t ;*; — Hours With the Ghosts OR NINETEENTH CENTURY WITCHCRAFT Ltf ILLUSTRATED INVESTIGATIONS Phenomena of Spiritualism and Theosophy Henry Ridgely' Evans The first duty we owe to the world is Truth—all the Truth—nothing but the Truth. "Ancient Wisdom." CHICAGO LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS £681 LZ 100 rA *<V Entered according to act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-seven. By WILLIAM H. LEE, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO MY WIFE — ' " It is no proof of wisdom to refuse to examine certain phe- nomena because we think it certain that they are impossible, as if our knowledge of the universe were already completed. ' —Prof. Lodge. ' ' The most ardent Spiritist should welcome a searching in- quiry into the potential faculties of spirits still in the flesh. Until we know more of these, those other phenomena to which he appeals must remain unintelligible because isolated, and are likely to be obstinately disbelieved because they are impos- sible to understand." F. W. H. Myers: "Proceedings of the Societyfor Psychical Research^ Part XVIII, April, 1891. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Author's Preface 11 INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT 13 PART FIRST: Spiritualism 18 /. Divisions of the Subject. 18 II. Subjective Phenomena 23 1. Telepathy 23 2. Table Tilting. Muscle Reading 40 III. Physical Phenomena 46 1. Psychography or Slate-writing 46 2. The Master of the Mediums: D. D. Home 93 3. Rope Tying and Holding Mediums; Materiali- zations 135 The Davenport Brothers 135 Annie Eva Fay 149 Charles Slade 154 Pierre I* O. A. Keeler 160 Eusapia Paladino 175 F. W. Tabor 182 4. Spirit Photography 188 5. Thought Photography 197 6. Apparitions of the Dead 201 IV. Conclusions 207 PART SECOND: Madame Blavatsky and the Theoso= phists 210 /. The Priestess 213 II. Whatis Theosophy? , 237 III. Madame Blavatsky''s Confession 250 IV. The Writings of Madame Blavatsky 265 V. The Life and Death of a Famous Theosophist. 268 VI. The Mantle of Madame Blavatsky 272 VII. The Theosophical Temple 287 VIII Conclusion 290 List of Authorities 298 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Fig. 1. Spirit Photograph, by the author Frontispiece Fig. 2. Portrait of Dr. Henry Slade 47 Fig. 3. The Holding of the Slate ... 51 Fig. 4. Slate No. 1 . 65 Fig. 5. SlateNo.2 71 Fig. 6. Slate No. 3 77 Fig. 7. Home at the Tuileries 97 Fig. 8. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 116 Fig. 9. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 119 Fig. 10. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 120 Fig. 11. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 121 Fig. 12, 13, 14, 15. Crookes' Diagrams 124-125 Fig. 16. Crookes' Apparatus No. 2 . 126 Fig. 17. Crookes' Apparatus No. 2 127 Fig. 18, 19, 20. Crookes' Diagrams 128-130 Fig. 21. Hammond's Apparatus 133 Fig. 22. The Davenport's in their Cabinet 139 Fig. 23. Trick Tie and in Cabinet Work 143 Fig. 24. Charles Slade's Poster 158-159 Fig. 25. Pierre Keeler's Cabinet Seance 162 Fig. 26. Pierre Keeler's Cabinet Curtain 163 Fig. 27. Portrait of Eusapia Paladino 176 Fig. 28. Eusapia before the Scientists 177 Fig. 29. Spirit Photograph, by the author 191 Fig. 30. Spirit Photograph, by pretended medium 195 Fig. 31. Sigel's Original Picture of Fig. 30 199 Fig. 32. Portrait of Madame Blavatsky 215 Fig. 33. Mahatma Letter 221 Fig. 34. Mahatma Envelope 225 Fig. 35. Portrait of Col. H. S. Olcott 233 Fig. 36. Oath of Secrecy of the Charter Members of the Theosophical Society 235 Fig. 37. Portrait of W. Q. Judge 241 Fig. 38. Portrait of Mrs. Annie Besant 273 Fig. 39. Portrait of Mrs. Tingley 285 Fig. 40. Autograph of Madame Blavatsky 293 PREFACE. There are two great schools of thought in the world —materialistic and spiritualistic. With one, MATTER is all in all, the ultimate substratum ; mind is merely the result of organized matter ; everything is translated into terms of force, motion and the like. With the other, SPIRIT or mind is the ultimate substance—God; matter is the visible expression of this invisible and eternal Con- sciousness. Materialism is a barren, dreary, comfortless belief, and, in the opinion of the author, is without philosophical foundation. This is an age of scientific materialism, although of late years that materialism has been rather on the wane among thinking men. In an age of such ultra materialism, therefore, it is not strange that there should come a great reaction on the part of spiritually mi?ided people. This reaction takes the form of an in- creased vitality of dogmatic religion, or else culminates in the formation of Spiritualistic or Theosophic societies for the prosecution of occult phenomena. Spiritualists are now numbered by the million. Persons calling them- selves mediums present certain phenomena, physical and psychical, and call public attention to them, as an evi- dence of life beyond the grave, and the possibility of spiritual communication between this world and the next. The author has had sittings with many famous mediums of this country and Europe, but has seen little to convince him of the fact of spirit communication. The slate tests and so-called materializations have invariably been frauds. Some experiments along the line of auto- matic writing and psychometry, however, have demon- strated to the writer the truth of telepathy or thought- transference. The theory of telepathy explains many of the marvels ascribed to spirit intervention in things mundane. In this work the author has endeavored to give an accurate account of the lives and adventures of cele- brated mediums and occultists, which willprove of interest to the reader. The rise and growth of the Theosophical cult in this country and Europe is of historical interest. Theosophy pretends to a deeper metaphysics than Spirit- ualism, and numbers its adherents by the thousands; it is, therefore, intensely interesting to study it in its origin, its founder and its present leaders. THE AUTHOR. HOURS WITH THE GHOSTS. INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT. "If a man die, shall he live again?"—this is the ques- tion of the ages, the Sphinx riddle that Humanity has been trying to solve since time began. The great minds of antiquity, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were firm in their belief in the immortality of the soul. The writings of Plato are luminous on the subject. The Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, as practiced in Egypt, and those of Eleusis, in Greece, taught the doctrine of the immortality of the individual being. The Divine Master of Arcane knowledge, Christ, proclaimed the same. In latter times,we have had such metaphysical and scientific thinkers as Leibnitz, Fichte, Schdling, Hegel and Schleiermacher advocating individual existence be- yond the grave. l 4 INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT. It is a strange fact that the more materialistic the age, the deeper the interest in spiritual questions. The vi- tality and persistence of the belief in the reality of the spiritual world is evidence of that hunger for the ideal, for God, of which the Psalmist speaks—"As the heart panteth after water brooks so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!" Through the passing centuries, we have come into a larger, nobler conception of the Universal Life, and our relations to that Life, in which we live, move, and have our being. Granting the existence of an "Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Intellectual Organizer of the mathe- matical laws which the physical forces obey," and con- ceiving ourselves as individualized -points of life in the Greater Life, we are constrained to believe that we bear within us the undying spark of divinity and immortality. Evolution points to eternal life as the final goal of self- conscious spirit, else this mighty earth-travail, the long ages of struggle to produce man are utterly without meaning. Speaking of a future life, John Fiske, a lead- ing American exponent of the doctrine of evolution, says ("The Destiny of Man"): "The doctrine of evolution does not allow us to take the atheistic view of the position of man. It is true that modern astronomy shows us giant balls of vapor INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT. 15 condensing into fiery suns, cooling down into planets fit for the support of life, and at last growing cold and rigid in death, like the moon. And there are indications of a time when systems of dead planets shall fall in upon their central ember that was once a sun, and the whole lifeless mass, thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous cloud like that with which we started, that the work of condensation and evolution may begin over again. These Titanic events must doubtless seem to our limited vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. From the first dawning of life we see all things working together toward one mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritual qualities which characterize Humanity. The body is cast aside and re- turns to the dust of which it was made. The earth, so marvelously wrought to man's uses, will also be cast aside. So small is the value which Nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter! The question, then, is re- duced to this: Are man's highest spiritual qualities, into the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest? Are we to regard the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, 16 INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT.
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