Observations placeholder
Foster, Charles H - Mind reading examples 2
Identifier
020439
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Salem Seer – George Bartlett
The Philadelphia Bulletin April 4th, 1873.
Turning to me with a cheerful smile, the medium instructed me to write as many names as I chose of " spirit-friends." I wrote three, on separate papers, and folded them, and I believe they were not opened till I reached my own home. Immediately three distinct knocks on the table, and a rapid communication from each. Mr. Foster wrote the communications and the signatures corresponding with the names that I had written. Now I shall state a test that I did not acknowledge to him. One of the names had a middle letter that the deceased in his lifetime always ran into the last name, and persons on reading it for the first time always pronounced the two capitals in one sound.
Mr. Foster wrote that signature the same way, though I had separated the letters in my paper, and he made the same mistake in pronouncing, so that for an instant my heart stood still. Another name I wrote in full, and he signed the communication with the abbreviated name I had always used in the lifetime of my friend. The mental questions were answered before I could raise my eyes; the written ones kept the medium busy for twelve minutes, when I was perfectly bewildered with the dispatches, and left the table as I would a telegraph battery after operating the President's Message for the Bulletin. Not one mistake, and all as clear as if we had been confidants for years, though I did not exchange fifty words with the medium, and walked off with my written questions folded as I dropped them from my fingers.
I have no explanation to offer, no theory to suggest ; no advice, no opposition for others to try it ; but I believe that what Joiinson said applies here : ' ' What no mortal can comprehend or explain, must be the power of something more than a mortal."