Norwich bulletin., 1920-02-24
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
seiritism Declared a Fraud.

MT. Editor: I have carefully gone over the articles of D. A. Lyman, AL bert P. Blinn, and the one signed Rox- anna, in answer to my letter on Spir- itism, and I am wondering if either of these writers has said anything tha. he considers proof of spirit commu- nication. MT. Blinn calls me bigot. This is rather to be expected from a man who quotes such men as Flam- marion. Doyle. Lodge and others with out even the faintest knowledge of the works of these men; for they all ad- nit, every one of them, that the spir- it's that purport to communicate with man are deceiVers; and that they do imperSonate others, and many times are not even honest, and that they lie like satan himself
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes this candid admission:
 Guessing on the part of the con- trolled there might be-there some times was and occasionally there were direct Representations but that is part of what we might expect-at any rate it is part of what we got The same writer also says in his book, ''The Vital Message:" Tt must he admitted. however | that in automatic writing you are at one end of the telephone, if one may use such a simile, and you have no as- surance who is at the other end. You may have widely false messages sud i denly interpelated among truthful | ones-messages so detailed in their mendacity that it is impossible to 1 think that they are not deliberately l false"
 Professor Flammarion, who. is al- so quoted by your correspondent, says on this point:
 "As to being different from ourselves what may their nature be? Of this we cannot have any idea: Souls ol the dead? This is far from being 1 demonstrated. The innumerabe ob- 1 servatio which I have collected dur to me the contrary. No satisfactory identification has been made Dr. Hereward Darlington, spirit ist. far and away ahead of the ones l quoted by your correspondent. ant himself a member of the Society fol Psychieal Research, makes this ad- mission.
 T gained the distinct impression throughout the sitting that instead O the spirit of the parsonage who claim
 ed to be present. I was dealing witt an exceedingly sly, cunning, tricky anC
 deceitful intelligence. which threw ou chance remarks, finishing guesses, anC
 shrewd inference leaving the sitter t. pick these up and elaborate them if h, would. If anything could make me be l lieve in the doctrine of evil and lyins spirits it woulwd be the sittings witt
 Mrs. Piper. I do not for one momen duplicate the normal Mrs. Piper il
 this criticism"
 When one considers that the medi
 um referred to in the above extract Ii
 the very one through whom Sir Olive Lodge got his first information, as h.
 confesses in his book, Raymond" i
 must he evident that the testimony 0
 Sir Oliver, is not worth much, ant
 moreover, it is 8 fact that Sir Olive
 dare not meet the question of spiri
 identity in open debate. He has sev
 eral times been challenged, to debat
 the question. but perhaps the spirit
 will not let him.
 The whole thing is a fraud of tn
 devil, an acknowledged fraud, prove
 able out of the mouths of the best ant biggest guns among Spiritists. It i
 even as J. Godfrey Raupert. who wa
 S member of the British Society fo Psychical Research, says:
 we have first of ell to realize tn