The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1901-08-10


years old was passing up Full
ton street. Brooklyn. in a car
a Near her destination she sig
nailed the conductor to stop the
car. He did so. 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 SO generally worn by women in
those days. It caught upon the car step,
the lady was dragged almost a block.
adding one more to the tragic list of
accidents caused by feminine long
clothes.
The girl, MoIlie Fancher, was awfully
hurt. her spine being permanently in
jured. Violent spasms began Feb. Z
1866 alternating with frances and cata-
leptic attacks, which at length made
her case the puzzle of medical science
It 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 gail
and tug mercilessly at her conscious
ness in this life
The worst trouble seems to lie at the
base of the brain. There is spot at
the back of ner head which II 1t De
touched ever so tenderly will make her
unconscious. In the years she has lain
h1snf
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 longed
to go all these years, remains The ter
rible spasms from which she has suffer-
ed have drawn her lower limbs back
ward and twisted them in what her ply
stefan has called a three twist,
And yet in the appearance of the in
valid there is no sign of suffering She
looks like beautiful spirit imprisoned
here to show mortals that there really
are beautiful spirits No one would
guess her to be more than % years old,
though she is So. 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,
fit for a sculptor's model
Miss Fancher affords to the psychol-
ogist a 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: i am as one
detained at the moment of dissolution
between life and death. I seem out of
myself, to hover above my body and
think of it as something apart from my
self"
Mollie Fancher, prisoned upon her
bed, yet travels She never sleeps as
we understand the term but passes into
a 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 if they were
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. It is
easiest for her to follow the movements
of those she loves best. Persons, and
they are not a few, who have in sleep
experienced the sensation of flying hith-
er and thither to different localities will
understand. The impression of floating
through the air is even more vivid than
the ordinary consciousness one has of
walking And yet, while Mollie Fancher
is conscious of moving through the air
in visiting different spots, her poor
body lies upon it's bed, seeing. knowing
nothing her face death4ike.
Which is Mollie Fancher-that which
is conscious of travelling through space
or that which lies in her home, abso-
lutely knowing nothing2
The strangest episode of this strange
life came in the nine years beginning
the latter part of May, 1866. At that
time Miss Fancher went into a trance
from which she Weakened normally
Then followed another. In frances al