SEEING WITHOUT EYES

    See “The Amazing D. D. Home” above for more about Sir William Crookes

        In his 1904 book, Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism, Sir William Crookes, who was knighted in 1897 and served as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, mentions a case in which a lady was writing automatically by means of the planchette, a device which holds a pencil and on which the medium simply rests her fingers allowing the spirit communicator to move the planchette and give messages. “I was trying to devise a means of proving that what she wrote was not due to ‘unconscious cerebration’,” wrote Crookes, who discovered the element thallium and invented the radiometer, the spinthariscope, and a high vacuum tube that contributed to the discovery of the X-ray.   

      “The planchette, as it always does, insisted that, although it was moved by the arm and hand of the lady, the intelligence was that of an invisible being who was playing on her brain as on a musical instrument, and thus moving her muscles,” Crookes wrote.  “I therefore said to the intelligence, ‘Can you see the contents of this room?’ ‘Yes’ wrote the planchette.”

      Crookes then asked the invisible intelligence if “it” could read the newspaper on the table behind him without looking at it.  “Yes,” the intelligence replied through the planchette.   Without looking at the paper, Crookes then placed his finger over a word on the newspaper and asked the intelligence to tell him what it was. “The planchette commenced to move,” Crookes continued the story.  “Slowly and with great difficulty the word ‘however’ was written.  I turned around and saw that the word ‘however’ was covered by my finger.”

     Crookes said he purposely avoided looking at the paper and it was impossible for the lady, had she tried, to see any of the words as his body was between her and the table with the newspaper. – Michael E. Tymn