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The Life of a Sensitive – Madame Michael Bouissou

About a month after my friends left I received a letter from Madame D-, who had to a certain extent become my guide in the occult experiments which I had continued.

She asked me if she and a mutual friend might come and spend an evening with me. She suggested a date.

I agreed with pleasure, and on the evening in question the three of us were at my flat, talking pleasantly, when Madame D-, after casually asking the time, suggested I should lie down on the divan. Rather taken aback, I refused, but she insisted so charmingly, mentioning my weariness, which was very real, that I accepted. The conversation went on for some minutes and then . . . I was asleep.

On opening my eyes, surprised at what had happened, I saw Madame D- and our friend laughing good-naturedly. She explained to me that the doctor had put me to sleep and had suggested that while I was asleep I should visit them 500 miles away.

I had apparently given an exact description of the room in which he and his wife were sitting and a few of their simple gestures-taking up a book, opening it, putting it back in its place-gestures he had arranged with Madame D-, whom he had asked to be with me at a certain day and hour so that she could check the trance and the words I uttered under hypnosis. The other woman, who had not been told anything about it, acted as a witness. This experiment, attempted with this end in view, proved to me that the hypnotist retains a real power over his subject. But in the conditions under which it had been carried out it could not prove that the subject would obey an order entirely opposed to his moral principles or carry out some grotesque or dangerous act, as has often been related.

This persistent power in spite of absence and time should encourage mediums to be very careful in the choice of their hypnotist. This experiment also proved, as I have already said, that hypnosis and mesmerism must not be mistaken for mere "psychic games".