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Fisher, of Buffalo, New York, and lasted for twenty-five years, from 1875
to 1900, will be found in Admiral Usborne Moore's book, "Glimpses of the
Next State."
Mrs. Everitt, a very fine non-professional medium, obtained voices in
England in 1867 and for many years after. Most of the great physical
mediums, especially the materializing mediums, produced voice phenomena.
They occurred, for instance, with Eglinton, Spriggs, Husk, Duguid, Herne,
Mrs. Guppy, and Florence Cook.
Mrs. Elizabeth Blake, of Ohio, who died in 1920, was one of the most
wonderful voice mediums of whom we have any record, and perhaps the most
evidential, because in her presence the voices were regularly produced in
broad daylight. She was a poor, illiterate woman living in the tiny
village of Bradrick on the shore of the Ohio River, on the opposite bank
of which was the town of Huntingdon, in West Virginia. She had been a
medium since childhood. She was strongly religious and belonged to the
Methodist Church, from which, however, like some others, she was expelled
on account of her mediumship.
Little has been written about her, the only detailed account being a
valuable monograph by Professor Hyslop.* She is said to have been
repeatedly tested by "scientists, physicians and others," and to have
submitted willingly to all their tests. As, however, these men were
unable to detect any fraud, they did not trouble to give their results to
the world. Hyslop had his attention drawn to her by hearing that a
well-known American conjurer, of many years' experience, had become
convinced of her genuineness, and in 1906 he travelled to Ohio to
investigate her mediumship.
* PROCEEDINGS of the American S.P.R., Vol. VII (1913), pp. 570-788.
Hyslop's voluminous report describes evidential communications that
occurred.
He makes this not unusual confession of ignorance of ectoplasmic
processes in the production of voice phenomena. He says:
The loudness of the sounds in some cases excludes the supposition that
the voices are conveyed from the vocal cords to the trumpet. I have heard
the sounds twenty feet away, and could have heard them forty or fifty
feet away, and Mrs. Blake's lips did not move.
It still remains to get any clear hypothesis to explain this aspect of
the phenomena. Even to say "spirits" would not satisfy the ordinary
scientific man. He wants to know the mechanical processes involved, as we
explain ordinary speech.
It may be true that spirits are the first cause in the case, but there
are steps in the process which intervene between their initiative and the
ultimate result. It is that which creates the perplexity more than the
supposition that spirits are in some way back of it allthe scientific man
cannot see how spirits can institute a mechanical event without the use
of a mechanical instrument.
72
Nor can anyone else, for that matter, but the explanation has been given
again and again from the Other Side. Professor Hyslop's want of knowledge
of the link existing between the sounds and their source would be less
surprising were it not for the fact that the spirits themselves have
repeatedly supplied the answer to the questions he raises. Through many
mediums they have given almost identical explanations.
Dr. L. V. Guthrie, superintendent of the West Virginia Asylum at
Huntingdon, Mrs. Blake's medical adviser, was convinced of her powers. He
wrote:*
* OP. CIT., p. 581.
I have had sittings with her in my own office, also on the front porch in
the open air, and on one occasion in a carriage as we were driving along
the road. She has repeatedly offered to let me have a sitting and use a
lamp chimney instead of a tin horn, and I have frequently seen her
produce the voices with her hand resting on one end of the horn.
Dr. Guthrie gives the following two cases with Mrs. Blake where the
information supplied was not known to the sitters, and could not have
been known to the medium.
One of my employees, a young lady, whose brother had joined the army and
gone to the Philippines; was anxious to receive some word from him, and
had written letters to him repeatedly and addressed them in care of his
Company in the Philippines, but could receive no answer. She called on
Mrs. Blake and was told by the "spirit" of her mother, who had passed
away some several years, that if she would address a letter to this
brother at C-- she would get an answer. She did so and received a reply
from him in two or three days, as he had returned from the Philippines,
unknown to any of his family.
The next case is even more striking.
An acquaintance of mine, of prominent family in this end of the State,
whose grandfather had been found at the foot of a high bridge with his
skull smashed and life extinct, called on Mrs. Blake a few years ago and
was not thinking of her grandfather at the time. She was very much
surprised to have the "spirit" of her grandfather tell her that he had
not fallen off the bridge while intoxicated, as had been presumed at the
time, but that he had been murdered by two men who met him in a buggy and
had proceeded to sandbag him, relieve him of his valuables, and throw him
over the bridge. The "spirit" then proceeded to describe minutely the
appearance of the two men who had murdered him, and gave such other
information that led to the arrest and conviction of one or both of these
individuals.
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