Precautions Against Fraud

We are now ready to see what happens at a typical experimental meeting

for these materializations, at hundreds of which I have assisted, having

the services of no less than six sensitives placed at my disposal for

this purpose. I will endeavor to describe what I should consider to be

an ideal one, held under ideal (test) conditions.



Our imaginary test meeting is to be carried out--as it was on one

occasio in London--in an entirely empty house, which none of us has

ever entered before, a house which we will hire for this special event.

By doing this we may feel sure that all possibility of fraud, so far as

the use of secret trap-doors, large mirrors, and other undesirable

things of that description are concerned, can be successfully thwarted.



We are now ready to start our experiment; the general feeling of all

those in the room being that every possible precaution against trickery

has been taken, and that if any results of any kind whatever should

follow they will undoubtedly be genuine.



The sitters having been allotted their seats, so that a person of a

positive and a person of a negative temperament are seated together, we

now join hands, and form ourselves into what we are told is a powerful

human battery; the two persons sitting at the two ends of the

half-circle having of course each one hand free, and from the free hands

of these two persons, it is said, the power developed and given off by

this human battery passes into the sensitive at each of his sides.



Sitting quietly in our chairs and talking gently amongst ourselves, we

soon feel a cool breeze blowing across our hands. In another two minutes

this will have so increased in volume that it may with truth be

described as a strong wind.



On looking at the sensitive now, we see that he is rapidly passing into

a state of trance--his head is drooping on one side, his arms and hands

hang downwards loosely, his body being in a limp real trance

condition, and just in the right state for use by any entity desiring to

work through him, we are told.



I have only experimented with one sensitive who did not pass into

trance, who, seated amongst the sitters, remained in a perfectly normal

condition during the whole of the experiment; watching the materialized

forms building up beside him, and talking to and with them during the

process. I shall refer to him shortly.



* * * * *



We now set our clairvoyants to work, and the statements made by one must

be confirmed in every detail by the statements of the other as to what

is occurring at the moment, or no notice is taken of their remarks.



Both now report that they see a thin white mist or vapor[16] coming

from the left side of the sensitive, if a man (or from the pelvis, if a

woman), which passes into the sitter at the end of the half-circle

nearest to the sensitive's left side. It then passes, they state, from

Sitter No. 1 to Sitter No. 2, and so on, until it has gone through the

whole of the sixteen sitters, passing finally from the last one--No.

16--at the end of the half-circle nearest to the sensitive's right side,

and disappears into his right side.



[Footnote 16: Termed teleplasma.]



We assume from this that the nerve force, magnetic power--call it what

you will--necessary for the formation of one of these temporary bodies

starts from the sensitive, passes through each sitter, drawing from each

as much more force or power as he or she is capable of giving off at the

moment, returning to the sensitive greatly increased in its amount and

ready for use in the next process. This, then, we will term the first of

the three stages in the evolution of an entity clad in a temporary body.