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The Decline and Fall of Science - Celia Green

My only experience of levitation occurred during a lunch-time break at school when I was seventeen . . . Each girl took her turn lying on a long wooden table at the front of the classroom, with the others gathered tightly around her, so that were no gaps. . . As one lay there, the girls chanted a rhyme-the actual words of which I have forgotten, but which referred to the person on the table as looking white, ill and then dead. It was spoken quite slowly and in unison so that its drone-like tone had great depth and was very penetrating.
Several girls took part before me without much success. Some . . . were quite disillusioned. Others however did admit to feeling a strange sensation . . . and it was this plus the declaration of a friend that she had experienced slight levitation that encouraged me to try it.
I have absolutely no explanation why I was able to rise approximately three feet from the table surface. I was perfectly conscious that I was rising and might even have uttered an exclamation of surprise. . . The rapidity of the rise and indeed the fact that I had risen at all caused me to jerk my body out of the lying position, and with much commotion the girls cushioned my fall.