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Ernesto Bozzano, Professor - The parapsychological manifestations of animals – 43 The death of a spider results in its spirit being seen, flying away, by a medium
Identifier
028646
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
NOTES on this case by Professor Ernesto Bozzano
If a sufficient number of incidents of this kind could be collected, with appropriate precautions taken to avoid the possibility of telepathic transmission of thoughts from the experimenter to the somnambulist, this would be a major step towards the scientific demonstration of the existence of an animal "perispirit", absolutely similar to that of humans. It is even surprising that no one has tried so far to repeat an experiment that is nevertheless easy, since any hypnotist could undertake it. On the contrary, the exposed incident remains almost unique.
I only remember that something similar happened once during the séances with the medium D.-D. Home, but the book containing the account of the incident is not found, and I must limit myself to reproducing these few lines from an article in the Light, 1907, page 311:
In the book published by the Earl of Dunraven, who did not put it up for sale but only sent it to a small number of friends, there is a report of a séance in which D. -D. Home, then in trance, says he sees the spirit of a small dog, well known to one of the assistants. Now, at that moment, the animal was dying, and the medium had seen the spirit of it at the very moment it was leaving the body.
A description of the experience
Professor Ernesto Bozzano - The parapsychological manifestations of animals - 130 cases proving animal mediumistic abilities
Case 124. – This is a curious case, which was realized in magnetic somnambulism, and which I extract from Adolphe d'Assier's book: The Posthumous Humanity, page 83. This author writes:
Late in 1869, while in Bordeaux, one evening I met a friend who was on his way to a séance on magnetism. He asked me to go with him. I accepted the invitation, wanting to see the magnetic phenomena closely, which I knew only by name at the time. The séance did not present anything remarkable. It was a repetition of what is usually achieved in these circumstances. A young lady was used as a somnambulist. Judging by the way she responded to the consultants, she must have been quite clairvoyant.
Nevertheless, what surprised me most during this séance was an unexpected incident. In the middle of the evening, one of the people attending the experiments, having seen a spider on the floor, crushed it with his foot.
Immediately my somnambulist cried out, "Well, well! I see the spirit of a spider flying away!"
We know that, in the language of the medium, the word "spirit" indicates what I have called the "posthumous ghost". The magnetizer asked:
"In what form do you see it?"
The somnambulist replied: "In the form of a spider."
At that time, I didn't know what to think about this strange incident. I had no doubt about the lucidity of the somnambulist, but since I did not believe in any posthumous human manifestation, it was natural that I would not admit any for animals.
The explanation of the mysterious incident seemed clear to me several years later, when, having acquired the certainty of human duplication, I was working to discover a similar phenomenon in domestic animals. Following my research, I convinced myself that the Bordeaux somnambulist had not been the victim of any hallucination, as sometimes happens in magnetic séances, and that she had observed an objective and real phenomenon.