[1] Proceedings Society for Psychical Research, Vol.  IV., pp. 385-6.

“Now I think it highly improbable that the movement of the juggler entirely escaped the perception of the officer; highly improbable, that is to say, that the officer was absolutely unaware of the juggler’s action at the moment of its happening; but I suppose that, although an impression was made on his consciousness, it was so slight as to be speedily effaced by the officer’s imagination of himself as stooping and placing the coin upon the ground.  The officer, I may say, had obtained no insight into the modus operandi of the trick, and his fundamental misrepresentation of the only patent occurrence that might have given him a clew to its performance debarred him completely from afterwards, on reflection, arriving at any explanation.  Just similarly, many an honest witness may have described himself as having placed one slate upon another at a sitting with a medium, whereas it was the medium who did so, and who possibly effected at the same time one or two other operations altogether unnoticed by the witness.”

In reading through descriptions of slate-writing seances, we very seldom find the statement made as to who placed the slates on the table, or under the table, etc., generally the account reading “the slates were then placed on the table,” without any qualifying statement as to who placed them there.  Accounts of this kind are absolutely worthless, from an evidential standpoint.  We must at once ask ourselves:  who placed the slates in that position? and if it was the medium—­as it probably was in the vast majority of instances—­then that test, in all probability, ceases to have any evidential weight.  Anyone can read over a number of accounts of slate-writing performances, and verify these statements, if he chooses to do so.  Frequently, the statement is made that the sitter did actually place the slate on the table, when in reality the medium did so.  This error is quite unconscious on the sitter’s part, of course, but the account is falsified, nevertheless.  Mistakes of this kind are very common, the sitter thinking afterwards that he (the sitter) must have placed the slates on the table himself!

It will be seen from the above that there is a great difference between what actually transpired, at any given seance, and what the accounts say transpired.  The general public cannot get that all-important fact too strongly rooted in its mind:  that the events which transpired at a seance may not be reported accurately, so that the report of the seance may be altogether wrong and erroneous, though the sitters, and those who drew up the report, may have been thoroughly honest in their belief that the report is accurate in every respect.  The effect of all this is very great indeed.  Many spiritualistic seances are quite inexplicable as de-SCRIBED, but the description is not a true report of what took