Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1901-08-10

wUNE S. 1865, a beautiful girl l6
II years old was passing up Ful-
n ton street. Brooklyn, In car
II Near her destination she sig
w nailed the conductor 70 stop inc
car. He ala 80. The young
lady stepped to the street. the conduct
or rang the bell the car whirled on.
But the girl had on one of the hoop
skirts 80 generally worn by women IN
those days. II caught upon the car step
the lady was dragged almost block
adding one more 20 the tragic list OF
accidents caused by feminine long
clothes
The girl, Mollie Fancher was awfulIy
hurt, her spine being permanently IN
jured Violent spasms began FEB l.
1866. alternating with frances and cata-
leptic attacks, which at length made
her case the puzzle Of medical science
1t is now the thirty-sixth year that
Miss Fancher has lain in the same
room, upon the same side Of the same
bed and upon the same side OF her
body The present generation was not
born when she lay down upon that
couch of suffering. Pain is in her head
or heart or some part Of that tortured
body always except during the strange
| trance state which with her takes the
place of sleep. We are all spirits pris-
oned In bodies, but Mollie Fancher Is
half released, so that her chains gall
and tug merciessly at her conscious
ness In this life,
The worst trouble seems to lie at the
base of the brain, There Is a spot at
the back of her head which If II be
touched ever so tenderly will make her
unconscious. In the years she has lain
upon her bed her father, brother and
sister and the beloved aunt to whose
care her dying mother left her in child
hood have all passed away one by one
yet for some strange reason she, the tor
tured one, who has prayed and lcnged
to 20 all these years, remains. The ter
rlble spasms from which she has suffer-
ed have drawn Der lower limbs back
ward and twisted them In what her ply
slclaR has called three twist"
And yet in the appearance OF the In
valid there is no sign Of suffering. She
looks like a beautiful spirit imprisoned
here TO show mortals that there really
are beautiful spirits. No one would
guess her TO be more than rs years old,
/ though she is 49, Her skin is like an in
fants, fair and rosy, and light blond
hair curls softly about her face. Her
hands and arms are Of perfect beauty,
At for a sculptor's model
Miss Fancher affords TO the psychol-
ogist case unparalleled on the earth
today. The one most like her was the
seeress Of Prevorst, who was chained
/ IN the body In much the same way and
who said TO her physician: u am as one
detained at the moment Of dissolution
between life and death seem out Of
myself TO hover above my body and
think OF II as something apart from my.
self"
Molie Fancher, prisoned upon her
bed, yet travels. She never sleeps as
we understand the term, but passes INTO
state different from ordinary uncon-
( seriousness. Then she seems TO fly over
the earth at will. to follow her friends
to their homes In various places and
watch their movements as II they We're
present with her. Time and again her
report OF what they were doing when
she has thus visited them has been eX-
actly verified She seems TO herself to
glide or float upon the air from place to
place, noting objects and persons, 1t is
easiest for her to follow the movements
Of those she loves best Persons, and
/ they are not few, who have In sleep
experienced the sensation OF flying hith-
or and thither TO different localities VIII
understand, The impression OF floating
through the air is even more vivid than
the ordinary consciousness one has OF
walking And yet, while Mollie Fanch-r
is conscious OF moving through the air
1 in visiting different spots, her poor
body lies upon its bed seeing, knowing
nothing. her face deathlike.
I Which Is Mollie Fancher-that which
Is conscious Of travelling through space
or that which Hes IN her home, abso-
lutely knowing nothing2