Professor Pepper, director of the Polytechnic Institute of London, invented a clever apparatus to produce spiritual appearances on the stage, and sold his patent in 1863, in Paris, for the sum of 20,000 francs. The phantoms looked real and were evanescent, being but an effect produced by the reflection of a highly-illuminated object upon the surface of plateglass. They seemed to appear and disappear, to walk about the stage and play their parts to perfection. Sometimes one of the phantoms placed himself on a bench; after which, one of the living actors would begin quarrelling with him, and, seizing a heavy hatchet, would part the head and body of the ghost in two. But, joining his two parts again, the spectre would reappear, a few steps off, to the amazement of the public. The contrivance worked marvellously well, and nightly attracted large crowds. But to produce these ghosts required a stage-apparatus, and more than one confederate. There were nevertheless some reporters who made this exhibition the pretext for ridiculing the spiritists — as though the two classes of phenomena had the slightest connection!

What the Pepper ghosts pretended to do, genuine disembodied human spirits, when their reflection is materialized by the elementals, can actually perform. They will permit themselves to be perforated with bullets or the sword, or to be dismembered, and then instantly form themselves anew. But the case is different with both cosmic and human elementary spirits, for a sword or dagger, or even a pointed stick, will cause them to vanish in terror. This will seem unaccountable to those who do not understand of what a material substance the elementary are composed; but the kabalists understand perfectly. The records of antiquity and of the middle ages, to say nothing of the modern wonders at Cideville, which have been judicially attested for us, corroborate these facts.

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Skeptics, and even skeptical spiritualists, have often unjustly accused mediums of fraud, when denied what they considered their inalienable right to test the spirits. But where there is one such case, there are fifty in which spiritualists have permitted themselves to be practiced upon by tricksters, while they neglected to appreciate genuine manifestations procured for them by their mediums. Ignorant of the laws of mediumship, such do not know that when an honest medium is once taken possession of by spirits, whether disembodied or elemental, he is no longer his own master. He cannot control the actions of the spirits, nor even his own. They make him a puppet to dance at their pleasure while they pull the wires behind the scenes. The false medium may seem entranced, and yet be playing tricks all the while; while the real medium may appear to be in full possession of his senses, when in fact he is far away, and his body is animated by his “Indian guide,” or “control.” Or, he may be entranced in his cabinet, while his astral body (double) or doppelganger, is walking about the room moved by another intelligence.

Among all the phenomena, that of re-percussion, closely allied with those of bi-location and aerial “travelling,” is the most astounding. In the middle ages it was included under the head of sorcery. De Gasparin, in his refutations of the miraculous character of the marvels of Cideville, treats of the subject at length; but these pretended explanations were all in their turn exploded by de Mirville and des Mousseaux, who, while failing in their attempt to trace the phenomena back to the Devil, did, nevertheless, prove their spiritual origin.

“The prodigy of re-percussion,” says des Mousseaux, “occurs when a blow aimed at the spirit, visible or otherwise, of an absent living person, or at the phantom which represents him, strikes this person himself, at the same time, and in the very place at which the spectre or his double is touched! We must suppose, therefore, that the blow is re-percussed, and that it reaches, as if rebounding, from the image of the living person — his phantasmal duplicate — the original, wherever he may be, in flesh and blood.

“Thus, for instance, an individual appears before me, or, remaining invisible, declares war, threatens, and causes me to be threatened with obsession. I strike at the place where I perceive his phantom, where I hear him moving, where I feel somebody, something which molests and resists me. I strike; the blood will appear sometimes on this place, and occasionally a scream may be heard; he is wounded — perhaps, dead! It is done, and I have explained the fact.”

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