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T C Lethbridge – A Step in the Dark

IN my last book, E.S.P., I described how the pendulum appeared to be able to detect traces of the human beings who had made or used various objects. These traces, showing as pendulum rates, survived for very long periods in things which had been deliberately fashioned by man. Elizabethan ironwork gave the male sex rate (24 inches) of the blacksmith who had made it and a rate of 27 inches for the thought he had put into his work. The rates had persisted for four hundred years.

Flint implements, made perhaps 3,500 years ago, also gave male, 24 inches, or female, 29 inches, rates for their makers, or users.

I decided to try to see what happened to objects which man had used, but which he had not made. Entirely natural objects that is to say, which man had used without altering them for the purpose. Could the pendulum tell us whether, for instance, a particular pebble had been used by prehistoric man as a sling-shot, or not?..................

I took one of the untouched pebbles and held it in my hand for half an hour. Then I tested it. It gave the 14-inch rate for silica as before; but it now reacted to the 27-inch rate for thought as well. There was no male sex rate as there was with the sling-stones. I thought it over for some time. Perhaps the male rate was induced in the field of the object by some feeling of violence on the part of the slinger. I took the pebble out into the garden and flung it as hard as I could against a stone wall.

I picked it up and tested it again. It now reacted to 14, 24 and 27 inches. My violence had apparently induced my sex rate into the field of the pebble. Of course the term 'sex rate 'may well be incorrect. It is simply a term of convenience. It is a rate common to males when it is 24 inches and to females when it is 29 and it is different from what I am calling a thought rate of 27 inches.

Memory, as distinct from Thought, is 7 inches.

20 inches is the rate for living things.

Thought on the pendulum appears to be memory plus life. The experiment was then repeated by my wife. She took two untouched pebbles and threw them in turn against the wall. When examined they reacted both to the 27-inch thought rate and to the 29 inches for female sex. They would not react to the male rate………………..

Many more stones have to be tested in various ways.

But we are beginning to see here something which is well known to the students of parapsychology as psychometry; an art by which a medium, now called a sensitive, can hold an object and give information about the past life and actions of its former owners.

This is not the first time in which I seem to be rediscovering psychometry by attempting to approach the subject in general in a scientific manner. The art undoubtedly exists and it can be most impressive to listen to a sensitive when holding an object; unfortunately many factors may interfere with its accuracy.

Of course the pendulum cannot give us the vivid pictures obtained by a sensitive. I have been told by one that she saw something comparable to a minute cinema film; so small that it was difficult at times to be sure of detail.