Ghosts to be Made Visible.
SPIRITUALISM IN THE PATENT OFFICE.
ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS and other spiritualistic philosophers have repeatedly declared their belief that inventive ingenuity would in time devise some mode of making spirits visible. Behold the achievement! Says a Washington correspondent: “A curious application for a patent has been made by a New Yorker for a process to determine the falsity or truth of spiritualism. It consists of a room closed perfectly, so that all light and air is effectually excluded, except air for breathing, which is admitted from a stop-cock, opened from time to time. Light is only admitted by being passed through a dark blue, violet or black liquid; so that the room is perfectly dark to the unaccustomed eye, but becomes slightly illuminated when remaining long in it, the inventor asserting that the particles of common light are much too heavy and solid compared with the much finer constituents of the bodies of spirits; therefore common light passes through them and is not reflected from their surface; to see spirits at all the light must be filtered. The room is to be painted with spirits of turpentine or any other spirits mixed with substances akin to carbon. The inventor asserts that with these precautions it may become possible for the inmates of the room to see spirits, forms or ghosts. He claims the use of filtered light in a closed room for the purpose of divination. The patent was refused on the ground that when a company of persons were for some time enclosed in such a room, without sufficient air to breathe, they will not only see ghosts, but also give up their own.”