Message #188409

[Porscha Campbell]

After it is stated that Lord Crawford, not long before, had fancied he beheld an apparition of a man seated in a chair, it is easy to imagine the attitude of credulous expectancy with which he, at all events, would "wait for Home's return" via the open window. And the others were doubtless in the same expectant frame of mind. "Expectancy" and "suggestibility" will, indeed, work marvels. I shall never forget how the truth of this was borne home to me some years ago. A friend of mine—now a physician in Maryland, but at that time a medical student in Toronto—occasionally amused himself by giving table-tipping séances, in which he enacted the rôle of medium. There was no suspicion on his sitters' part that he was a "fraud." One evening he invoked the "spirit" of a little[Pg 169] child, who had been dead a couple of years, and proceeded to "spell out" some highly edifying messages. Suddenly the séance was interrupted by a shriek and a lady present, not a relative of the dead child, fell to the floor in a faint. When revived, she declared that while the messages were being delivered she had seen the head of a child appear through the top of the table.