On 11/12/2014 1:39 PM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote:
>
"The forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on
the credulity of the public." —Harry Houdini
>
/"Pay me one thousand dollars and buy me dinner at Denny's and you can
watch me levitate." /- Frederick Lenz
>
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
But the most striking of the many occasions on which Home was seen to
float in the air was that to which Mr. Crookes so particularly alludes
in the passage I have quoted from him. This event occurred in London,
on December i6th 1868, in the presence of three unimpeachable
witnesses, Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, and Captain Charles Wynne, a
cousin of the latter.
A séance was in progress; and Home, who had been in the trance state
for some time, began to walk about uneasily, and finally went into the
adjoining room. At that moment a startling communication was made to
Lord Lindsay. "I heard," he related in his evidence before the
Dialectical Society, "a voice whisper in my ear, 'He will go out of
one window and in at another.' I was alarmed and shocked at the
thought of so dangerous an experiment. I told the company what I had
heard, and we then waited for Home's return."
Mr. Home was at the moment in the room adjoining that where the three
sitters waited. Besides his evidence given before the Dialectical
Society, Lord Lindsay published a second and more minute description
of the levitation, in which he thus narrated the events that
immediately followed the spirit-intimation he had received, and had
communicated to Lord Adare and Captain Wynne:—
"We heard," writes Lord Lindsay, "the window in the next room lifted
up, and almost immediately afterwards we saw Home floating in the air
outside our window.
"The moon was shining full into the room. My back was to the light;
and I saw the shadow on the wall of the window-sill, and Home's feet
about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few
seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet
foremost, and sat down.
"Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the window from
which he had been carried. It was raised about eighteen inches, and he
expressed his wonder how Mr. Home had been taken through so narrow an
aperture.
"Home said (still in a trance), 'I will show you'; and then, with his
back to the window, he leaned back and was shot out of the aperture
head first, with the body rigid, and then returned quite quietly.
"The window is about seventy feet from the ground. I very much doubt
whether any skilful rope-dancer would like to attempt a feat of this
description, where the only means of crossing would be a perilous leap.
"The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and
there was not more than a twelve-inch projection to each window, which
served as a ledge to put flowers on."
One of the other two witnesses of the scene, Lord Adare, had the
distances between the windows and other details measured, and included
them in the record written by him of the occurrence. Lord Adare's
testimony is as follows:—
"Wynne and I went over to Ashley House after dinner. There we found
Home and the Master of Lindsay. Home proposed a sitting. We
accordingly sat round a table in the small room. There was no light in
the room, but the light from the window was sufficient to enable us to
distinguish each other, and to see the different articles of
furniture. Home went into a trance...
"Lindsay suddenly said: 'Oh, good heavens! I know what he is going to
do; it is too fearful.'
"Adare: 'What is it?'
"Lindsay: 'I cannot tell you; it is too horrible. A spirit says that I
must tell you. He is going out of the window in the other room, and
coming in at this window.'
"We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown up, and
presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window. He opened
the window, and walked in quite coolly. 'Ah,' he said, 'you were good
this time '; referring to our having sat still and not wished to
prevent him... 'Adare, shut the window in the next room.'
"I got up, shut the window, and in coming back remarked that the
window was not raised a foot, and that I could not think how he had
managed to squeeze through. He arose, and said, 'Come and see.' I went
with him: he told me to open the window as it was before. I did so: he
told me to stand a little distance off; he then went through the open
space, head first, quite rapidly, his body being nearly horizontal and
apparently rigid. He came in again, feet foremost; and we returned to
the other room. It was so dark I could not see clearly how he was
supported outside. He did not appear to grasp, or rest upon, the
balustrade, but rather to be swung out and in. Outside each window is
a small balcony or ledge, nineteen inches deep, bounded by stone
balustrades, eighteen inches high. The balustrades of the two windows
are seven feet four inches apart, measuring from the nearest point. A
string-course, four inches wide, runs between the windows at the level
of the bottom of the balustrade; another, three inches wide, at the
level of the top. Between the window at which Home went out and that
at which he came in the wall recedes six inches. The rooms are on the
third floor.
"I asked Lindsay how the spirit had spoken to him. He could scarcely
explain; but said it did not sound like an audible human voice, but
rather as if the tones were whispered or impressed inside his ear.
When Home awoke, he was much agitated; he said he felt as if he had
gone through some fearful peril, and that he had a most horrible
desire to throw himself out of window.
"He remained in a very nervous condition for a short time, then
gradually became quiet.
"We now had a series of very curious manifestations. Lindsay and Wynne
saw tongues or jets or flames proceeding from Home's head. We then all
distinctly heard, as it were, a bird flying round the room, whistling
and chirping, but saw nothing; except Lindsay, who perceived an
indistinct form resembling a bird. There then came a sound as of a
great wind rushing through the room; we also felt the wind strongly:
the moaning, rushing sound was the most weird thing I ever heard."
It will be seen that the testimony of the two observers is in perfect
agreement. Lord Adare's narrative was written quite independently of
that of Lord Lindsay, but precisely the same facts are recorded in
each. It is clearly established that Lord Lindsay, as Home left the
room, received an intimation of what was about to happen, and
communicated it to his two companions, that Mr. Home was carried out
of one window and in at another, at a height of seventy feet from the
ground; that, on Lord Adare expressing surprise at his having been
carried through the aperture of a window only raised a foot, Home,
before his eyes, was a second time floated through that opening into
the space outside, and back again. As Lord Adare gives the
measurements between the windows, etc., his figures are naturally more
precise than those of Lord Lindsay, who judged by the eye. They
establish that the ledges of the two windows were seven feet four
inches apart, between the nearest points. Along the wall ran two
string-courses, the lower of these four inches wide, the upper three.
It was obviously impracticable that anyone could walk along the lower
of these two very narrow shelves, as the space between it and the
upper ledge was only eighteen inches. The sceptic as to the phenomenon
of levitation is reduced therefore to two alternatives — either to
accept the testimony of Lords Adare and Lindsay as an exact narrative
of facts, or to suppose that Mr. Home chose to attempt, late at night,
the impossible feat of walking along a ledge three inches wide, at a
height of seventy feet from the ground, and successfully accomplished
the impossible. Yet even this theory would not explain the second
levitation of which Lord Adare was the witness, when Home, before his
eyes, was floated out of the partly-opened window into the empty air
beyond.
Mme. Douglas Home: D.D. Home, his Life and Mission, edited by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, London, 1888, pp. 165-167
Also at:
D.D. Home - His Life and Mission
<http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/ArthurConanDoyle/Esotera/DDHome.html>
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<http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/ArthurConanDoyle/Esotera/DDHome.html>
D.D. Home - His Life and Mission
<http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/ArthurConanDoyle/Esotera/DDHome.html>
Roy Glashan's Library. Go to Home Page MME. DUNGLAS HOME D.D. HOME HIS
LIFE A...
<http://freeread.com.au/@RGLibrary/ArthurConanDoyle/Esotera/DDHome.html>
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