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Now, when the ghost of the little bride stood upright beside her fallen body, she was sore afraid, and trembled much to leave the habitation she had known in life. She laid her spirit-hands upon the cold dead, and clung to it as though she would not be driven forth. Many and terrifying were the sights that met her when she opened her eyes, after passing through the change of death.
What analogies, then, have we that spirit-hands, similar to those described, can be created by suggestion; and that suggestion can cause a number of investigators, at various times, in various places, to believe that these hands melted in theirs while they were trying to retain them? I venture to think we have no analogies whatever.
I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but, with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollections to himself, as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly an inexplicable phenomenon.
The initiated gazed and passed on, knowing they must not peep; but, alas, one lady who was not initiated, and therefore unaware of the tacitly imposed conditions, imitated the example of Mother Eve, drew aside the curtains and exposed the unspiritual form of Miss S. standing on the chair; the 'spirit-hands' at the same time struggling so convulsively to close the aperture that the head-gear fell off, and betrayed the somewhat voluminous chignon of Miss S. herself.
In other words, and to summarize this part of the discussion, I can only say that there seems to me no valid reason for thinking that the spirit-hands in Home's séances were probably hallucinatory in character because only some of the sitters saw them.
I have forgotten other incidents quite as striking as these; but, with the exception of the spirit-hands, they seemed to be akin to those that have been produced by mesmerism, returning the inquirer's thoughts and veiled recollections to himself, as answers to his queries. The hands are certainly an inexplicable phenomenon.
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