Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1889 — HOW I BECAME A SPIRITUALIST. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOW I BECAME A SPIRITUALIST.

BY CHARLES S. BLACKBURN.

AM naturally in.clined to skepticism. If Being ol an investih gs gating turn of mind, Y/jk and my profession (dentistry; leading a me into the realms of physical science, r I® it was ever my habit ff to believe nothing J that could not be most satisfacto; ilv proven. Spiritualism I always con-

3idered to be the work of charlatans who should be declared vagrants and placed on the chain-gang, while its devotees I rated as soft-brained people who ought to be confined in an asylum for imbeciles. But I had an experience that converted me. My wife had read of “seances” that were being given by a medium, and proposed that we go witness them. At first the suggestion so astounded me that I though her crazy; but she said of course she did not believe in such nonsense, only thinking it would be a harmless way to spend a pleasant evening. She enjoyed a sleight-of-hand performance, she said, and she considered these “spiritual” manifestation and materializations as nothing more. I agreed to go, withholding a desperate resolve I made at the time. I am a man of powerful physical strength and proportions—over six feet high—and would, before this occurrence, have bargained to hold a prize-fighter after I had once gotten my hands on him. I determined that when one of those spirits came near me I would catch and hold it, and prove it real flesh and blood. We went. There was a good crowd. It was a small room. The only furniture was a cabinet in a corner farthest from the auditors. The room was darkened. To soft music spirits began to appear. They came from the cabinet, in which the medium, a driedherring old man, weighing one hundred pounds, was seated, and were faintly visible in white raiment. One, larger than the rest, walked off from his fellows and came toward me. “Come a little further,” I said to myself, “and I will see whether you are of diaphanous material or not.” It came. I grasped it firmly around the waist. It made a noise that was neither a groan nor a howl, but seemed like a subdued moan struggling for louder utterances, and dragged me to the cabinet. Here my brea-tli stopped short, my brain reeled, and I lost consciousness for a moment. The next instant the spirit was gone, the lights were raised, and I stood at the door of the cabinet stupidly gazing at the medium who occupied his seat as when first he entered, sleeping as quietly as an infant. Trembling, scarcely able to stand, I tottered to my seat and fell into it as limp as a dishrag. I was frightened, but not fully converted. I felt that nothing short of an immortal eould "escape my strong hold as this had done; but in search of a confederate, Avhom, of course, I suspected, I minutely inspected the room. I found no place where one could be hidden. I had the cabinet taken to pieces. No fraud was there. “Doctor,” said the medium, who called at my office next day, “this was a test case, so I am informed by the control. Your intention was understood, and the spirit approached you in (onsequence. Are vou still a skeptic?” “Count me henceforth as a believer,” I answered. “Truly, are there more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. The fact that any force can shake me off in an instant, as did that last night, is allsufficient proof that it is not of this

world.”

HORACE ADLER.

“Men who think themselves the closest investigators are always the most careless,” said the “medium,” when he had returned to his room. “You converted him;” this to the big fellow who sat beside him,with an arm as hard as railroad iron and a hand as big as a canvased-ham. “He was so frightened he couldn’t understand how his breath left him so quicklv.” “If he could see that,‘now, he’d know,” said the man, holding up a fist as full of knots as a Zulu’s club. “An’ speakin’ of breath, do you know I come mighty nigh suffocatin’ after I got back in that panel closet,” pointing to the wall. “It a tigEt place to be in, in more respects than one.”—Chicago Ledger.