El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-05-13

~ T ALL the arts of deception Of the
e \ commercial medium in spiritual
ism, none is practiced in a wider
or more mystifying variety of ways
| than that of slate writing Mediums
will write message on a slate with
no trace of a pencil or other material
thing with which to write it, You may
take a sponge and wipe the slate to
your hearts content, and then they will
take the slate and by a few magic
words produce the message right under
your very eyes. Or, If you are skepti-
cal and wish to supply your own slate,
never letting it pass out of your hand
from the time of arrival at the seance
to the time of departure, the message
will appear with equal certainty If
not satisfied with that, you can bring
TO the seance pair of states, glued,
screwed, hinged and padlocked togeth-
er. and when you take them back home
there is a message on the inside that is
clear and to the point.
A MystIfying Experience.
1t is absolute folly for any ordinary
person to expect to discover by his own
exertions the explanation of all these
tricks At every point in his investiga-
tiOn he is facing unequal odds. Com
bining the art OF the magician with the
powers of the hypnOtlst, the mediums
have made tic us;l ds willinS swea:
that pair of states has never passed
from their hands throughout the sitting.
But the senses have deceived
Here IS a case in point. A visitor to
seance wished TO test the mediums pow
ers, so he wrote a message on ude side
of a slate He then placed another slate
on top of this and sealed the Two to-
gether with sealing wax, screwed them
together, and then put padlocks on
them. He took them to the medium
and afterward carried his states home
and opened them for examination. There
he found a full and satisfactory ar
swer to mis- question. He declared that
the slate had never left his hands. and
that there was no possible natural way
of accounting for it.
Another TrapDOor.
But let US look into that. When he
seated himself at the table on the oppo-
site side Of which was the medium, he
passed the slate under the table. Here
the medium held one side of the states
and he the other. Then followed a Sc
ries of jerkings and twistings, and
finally, during a fit of coughing which
opportunity seized the medium, the
states were mOmentarily jerked from
the sitters hands
But in that one unconscious moment
a confederate had passed a set of States
through a trap door in the floor and
the sitter caught hold of them He took
the sitter's states out of the hands Of
the medium and substituted the other
set While the medium and the sitter
were wrestling with those states under
the table, deft fingers below were
opening the states. writing the answer
to the question, closing them up again,
and passing them back for substitution.
Another fit of coughing and the orig
inals are substituted for the duplicates.
The sitter then takes his states away
opens them, and reads his message. He
never realizes what happened while he
was holding states under that table.
Joker JOI1ed.
One of the most amusing exposures
was that Of Henry Slade, medium who
was popular some years ago. An inves-
tigator who was up to all the tricks of
the trade went TO Slade seance. While
Slade was absent from the seance room
for a few moments the investigator
slipped around, erased a message that
had been written in advance by Slade
and substituted this one: Henry, you
had better watch this fellow; he's up TO
snuff Alcinda."
Alcinda was The name of SHADES de-
ceased wife. When ne came to pro-
duce the message he read it and was
furious. He could take all sorts of lib
parted ones, but 1t made q difference
when his own dead wife was concerned
Finally, seeing that anger would not !
suffice to hide his predicament he |
wheedled his Investigator into a bond |
of secrecy and told him how he operated !
his tricks. Slade ended his career in |
a lunatic asylum.
Natural Means Used.
A slate writer named Egling.On man /
aged so to impress the spiritualists with !
the belief that he was possessed Of ac- |
tuaI occult powers that hey defied any /
one to disprove his claims. At last. an !
admirer of Eglington agreed with Dr. !
HOdgson to seek to accomplish the same /!
things EglingtOn did by natural means. |
He succeeded in doing so, and then
posed as a medium. He in turn was in
vestigated by the spiritualists. and they
all certified that he was indeed pos
sessed of supernatural powers, and that
they could not discover the faintest |
trace of fraud in his phenomena. Then
he and Dr.. HOdgsOn produced their con-
tract and showed by it that only natural
means were used TO accomplish every
slate writing trick he had performed.
One of the most mystifying of all