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Savage, Dr Minot Judson - Psychics : facts and theories – 17 The table accompanied us all the way and struck against the door with considerable force
Identifier
028568
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Psychics : facts and theories – M J Savage
I have had several experiences that have demonstrated to me that physical objects are sometimes moved in a way that cannot be accounted for by any muscular power, or by any mere physical force with the workings of which I am acquainted. I was sitting one evening at the house of a friend, a lady whom I had known for eight or ten years. Neither she nor her husband was a Spiritualist ; but that which, for want of a better name, we call psychic force, was sometimes manifested in her presence. Both she and her husband were simply inquirers, as I was.
At the end of the evening I rose to go. Many inexplicable things had already occurred. Then I thought I would try a simple experiment. She and I stood at opposite sides of the table at which we had been sitting.
Both of us having placed the tips of our fingers lightly on the top of the table, I spoke, as if addressing some unseen force connected with the table, and said :
" Now I must go ; will you not accompany me to the door ? "
The door was ten or fifteen feet distant and was closed.
The table started. It had no casters, and in order to make it move as it did we should have had to go behind and to push it. As a matter of fact, we led it, while it accompanied us all the way and struck against the door with considerable force. I then lifted it and carried it back into the middle of the room. My friend then stood at the end of it opposite to me, while I stood at some distance away, between it and the door. I addressed it again, as though talking to an intelligent being, and said :
" Will you not lift for me the other end of the table ? "
My friend stood with only the tips of her fingers touching the upper side of the table near the end. Immediately the end of the table next to her was lifted into the air, and the table went through a motion as if bowing to me, bending over as far as her arms could reach. In this case, I might have been suspicious of some possible trick, but for two considerations. First, I knew and trusted my friend ; secondly, I could plainly see the hands, and knew that the thumbs were not under the edge of the table.
Besides, I had learned before, under other conditions, that this power of moving physical objects did exist.