The light was again turned down and a luminous shape came from the cabinet, followed by others, until seven of them stood on the floor.  The light was turned up until we could see the seven spirits.  Five were females and two males.  They were of different sizes.  The curtain at the door of the cabinet was pulled aside and we could see the medium sitting in the chair in which he was bound.  The forms now filed into the cabinet again, while the music box played.  After they had disappeared the light was turned up, an investigation made of the cabinet, and the seance was over.

There, reader, is a truthful description of what can be witnessed at the seances of mediums who are artists.  None of your bungling, amateur work here.  The work of such a medium is always satisfactory for the reason that if a man feels sure that the medium is a fraud, he has been so well entertained that he does not regret the money paid for the opportunity to witness it.  This is the class of medium also who frequently succeed in getting large sums of money from wealthy persons they have converted to spiritualism.

Did the writer not give you the true explanation of the manner in which these things were produced, you would probably say it was conceived by a very fertile imagination.  If you believed that he saw these things you would perhaps offer the preacher’s explanation, by saying, “it is the work of the devil”; or that of the scientist, by asserting that “it is the mesmerist’s power over your mind”; or “the operator has discovered an odd force in nature”; or go off on a long dissertation on hypnotism and fourth dimension of space problems.  However, it is not the work of the devil, neither are there any but natural laws necessary to its production.

The seance described actually occurred and was described in writing by Mr. Smith in the language used, although it was not printed, and the writer was one of those who assisted in its production.  He will now proceed to explain this particular seance. . . .

It will be remembered that the room and cabinet were carpeted with a dark carpet, and that the ceilings were of wood.  The ceilings were decorated by being put on in panels.  The ceiling of the cabinet would not have been like that of the room had the closet been a part of the architect’s plans of the house.  It was not, but was made by the medium.  He simply built a lath and plaster partition from the corner of a wide chimney to the wall, thus inclosing a space of six by four feet.  The panel in the ceiling of the closet was twenty inches square.  This panel was “doctored” and could be displaced, leaving an aperture large enough for the “spooks” to get through with perfect ease.  A light ladder which reached within three feet of the floor of the cabinet was hooked fast above and furnished the means of getting down and up again.  There were eight persons connected with the seance described by Mr. Smith, seven upstairs and the medium