underground passage and saw a vision of their dead mother, who stopped
them from falling into a well, felt as other children would feel, that
they must think of the one person who is always ready to preserve her
little children from terror and pain; and thinking of her, they
visualised her.
Energy and intelligence are the worst enemies of criminal hypnotism, as
they are of burglary, but social organisation alone can combat crime.
To note some particulars of the haunting of B---- besides those already
mentioned. The butler, Sanders, lived with the H. family at B---- the
year before Miss Freer garrisoned the house. Not one of the people who
were at B---- in 1896 were there with Miss Freer. This bars one type of
fraud being alleged. Sanders, besides hearing thumping, groans, and the
rustling of a lady's dress, had his bedclothes lifted up and let fall
again--"first at the foot of my bed, but gradually coming towards the
head." He held the clothes round his neck with his hands, but they were
"gently lifted in spite of my efforts to hold them."
This simply means that he had cramps, resulting from the effect of
hypnotism on the muscles of his legs. The writer believes that the force
always acts from the feet, or rather one foot, upwards; obviously a man
sitting or standing up must be approached that way, and habit causes the
electric stream to flow in that direction. But this cramp is not felt so
keenly as is the case when cramp arises from a constrained position. The
consequence is that the kicks given to relieve it are not so violent and
decisive. They are repeated automatically, until the bedclothes fly up
finally near the head, as is described. The intervals between the
flights of the clothes seem shorter than they are; this is again due to
hypnotic influence, as in spiritistic performances and in conjuring,
where, as M. Binet has recently remarked, a little hypnotism always comes
in.
Thus in Mr. Austin Podmore's account of Mr. Davey's seance, his attention
was called away for two or three minutes without his noting it. We may
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