THE Spirit World by George W. Rine

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 31, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 21.

THE Spirit World

By George W. Rine

By PROF. G. W. RINE

Prof. George W. Rine’s pamphlet “The Spirit World,” is a work of unusual interest. In support of his statement that there are really supernatural manifestations, he gives the following account, among many others, of the sitting of a noted medium in the laboratories of Naples and Genoa:

“Her sittings here were under the rigid, unsympathetic direction of Professor Bottazzi, head of the department of physics at the University of Naples. He was sneeringly skeptical of Paladino’s powers. He had scoffed at the reports of Crookes, of Lombroso, and of Richet. He compelled Eusapia to submit to having all her apparel thoroly examined before each sitting. He called in a coterie of cold-blooded scientists to assist him ‘in applying the screws.’ Every movable thing was nailed or screwed fast to the walls of the cabinet. He compelled ‘John,’ Eusapia’s spirit ‘control,’ to have all his movements automatically registered upon a cylinder of smoked glass, effected by the use of a metronome and a dynamometer. Bottazzi determined to secure a grave record so that no wiseacre could say, ‘O, you were all hypnotized, or were all the victims of “collective hallucination.”’”

“Yet under these scientifically rigorous conditions, the following supernormal wonders were observed: A great black hand and arm crept slowly out from the cabinet, and touched Bottazzi’s wife, who happened to be nearest, and then apparently dissolved into thin air. ‘We felt the sensation as of contact with a real hand,’ Bottazzi reported, ‘bony, nervous, often neither hot nor cold, but sometimes hot,—a hand, in fact, of flesh and bones and blood. To whom does this hand belong, which is generally encountered more than half a yard away from the medium’s head, and while her visible hands are rigorously controlled by her two neighbors?’ At a subsequent sitting the same black hand appeared and grasped Bottazzi by the nape of the neck. Bottazzi felt for this ghostly hand and clasped it. It was a left hand, neither hot nor cold, ‘with rough, bony fingers which dissolved under pressure—it dematerialized, melted.’ Again, etheric (spirit) hands and fists would hover over Eusapia’s head. These ghostly hands were actually photographed. Little twirling tongues of flame often floated across the curtains of the cabinet; sometimes they appeared above Eusapia’s head. A mandolin rose automatically into the air, floated there while being played by unseen hands. A table weighing seventeen pounds, at one of these sittings, floated high in the air, and turned itself over. When it had quieted down for a moment, Dr. Arullani, who was skeptical, approached the table to inspect it more closely, but the table ‘moved violently toward him and repulsed him.’ The medium announced quietly, ‘I am going to break the table.’ The table passed behind the curtain, where it was seen to turn over on one of its short sides, while one of the legs of the table came off violently. At this point the table came violently out of the cabinet and ‘continued to break up under the eyes of every one present; at first its different parts were torn off, then the boards themselves went to pieces. Two legs which still remained united by a thin slip of wood floated above us and placed themselves on the séance table.’ Examination showed that ‘the nails were torn out, the rivets and boards were broken. . . . The strength required literally to pull to pieces such a table is enormous, greater than any man could exert.’ The skeptical investigators admitted their complete mystification.”

If these manifestations are not fraud, what is the source of their power? Professor Rine’s pamphlet tells you. Price 10 cents.

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