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SHADOW LAND OR  LIGHT FROM THE OTHER SIDE by Elisabeth d’Esperance(1897)

A lady, who had been unremitting in her appeals for admittance, was one evening allowed to join us. We had been having a series of very successful experiments and assembled with a good deal of hopeful expectation, for we had been promised some special phenomena. We took our usual places, the lady visitor being placed opposite to me. We sat a long time, but to our surprise and disappointment the table gave no signs of moving nor could we obtain a stroke of the pencil. In vain we sang or played. In vain we changed the order of our seats. In vain we begged for some sign of the presence of our invisible friends, but no sign was vouchsafed to us.

Every one complained of a feeling of discomfort, prickling, tingling in various parts of their persons, and one or two felt an unpleasant sensation on the face and hands as though cobwebs were being drawn over them. At last after nearly a couple of hours we gave up in despair.

When taking leave, and on our expressing regret at our non-success, the lady visitor remarked triumphantly:-

"Do you know why your spirits did not come? I'll tell you.

It was because I have been praylng to God without ceasing the whole evening to deliver us from the power of Satan and to prevent his manifestations while I was here. You have had no spirit manifestations, and you may be quite sure you never will have if you pray as I have been doing, for protection against the Evil one. That these manifestations are from the Devil you may be quite sure or you would have had your usual success to-night spite of my prayers."

I had no arguments ready in reply to this. The lady was the mother of daughters older than myself; a good earnest hard working church-woman, whose opinions on religious matters carried great weight, and whose self-imposed duty it was to look after the morals of all her acquaintances. She regarded our experiments with great suspicion and had not hesitated, in her conversations with me on the subject, to express her conviction that we were victims of the wiles of the Evil one.

And now this first failure in our experiments and her explanation of its cause nonplussed me considerably, and I looked on the idea of our having encouraged his Satanic Majesty in our midst with something like consternation! However after discussing the pros and cons of the lady's opinion we passed upon it the verdict of "not proven" and decided to proceed in our investigations and await further developments.

I did not know then, as I know now, how strong a weapon the will can be, and how disastrous to the success of such a seance an antagonistic element may prove. We had all that to learn

Later on we could afford to smile at the opinions of those who gave the devil credit for so much and God for so little, but then we were mere tyros, and easily made afraid, but thank God, we had courage to go on and learn more.