Observations placeholder

Madam Home - D D Home his life his mission

No seance with Mr. Home was ever held in total darkness; but occasionally messages were rapped out, desiring the lights to be momentarily extinguished, in order that the phenomenon of the production of other lights by the spirits might be witnessed to advantage. These evanescent, but wonderful manifestations, were of a very varied character. Sometimes a white, purlight would fill the room, rendering every object distinctly visible; sometimes vivid meteors darted through the air, or rested on the heads and hands of the sitters.

The ridiculous theories thrown out by persons who were never present at a seance with Mr. Home did not suggest themselves to the minds of the investigators who beheld and were impressed by these strange phenomena.

"I have taken precautions to avoid being imposed upon by phosphorized oil, or other means," wrote Mr. Crookes, in the Quarterly Journal of Science for January 1874. "Moreover, many of these lights are such as I have tried to imitate artificially, but cannot."

Yet Mr. Crookes, who could not in his laboratory imitate these lights that were beheld in the houses of a hundred different people during seances with Mr. Home, is one of the most distinguished of modern chemists. The notes of Mr. Crookes on Luminous Appearances refer principally, but not entirely, to his experiences with Mr. Home. The following describe phenomena witnessed at seances with Home.

"I have seen," says Mr. Crookes, "luminous points of light darting about and settling on the heads of different persons; I have had questions answered by the flashing of a bright light a desired number of times in front of my face. I have had an alphabetic communication given by luminous flashes occurring before me in the air, whilst my hand was moving about amongst them. In the light, I have seen a luminous cloud hover over a heliotrope on a side table, break a sprig off, and carry the sprig to a lady."