Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 71, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1909 — WORDS OF THE DEAD [ARTICLE]

WORDS OF THE DEAD

i It Is possible that some may remember the case of Richard Gell, who was the subject of a few newspaper paragraphs In May and June, 1873. He came to London to exhibit what was supposed tp be a trick and to make what .money lie could of It. His trick wn£ 4Jiis: He took a seat In a room, and a hlghrscreen was placed all round him, so that be could not be seen. In the same room, but at a distance from the screen, a table was placed, with a sheet of paper on It. On the paper was a model of a hand, rather less than life site, made apparently of some kind of pumice stone. This hand held a pencil. Questions were asked by people in the room, and the hand, moving, with no apparent cause, wrote replies. The trick was done In any room, and any screen and table could be used. Eut before he had been In London a fortnight Gell was fined at a police court for being drunk and disorderly. And people who had been Inclined to take him seriously left him alone. They could not think It possible that a man of that type should be possessed of any abnormal psychic power. At the same time, an unprejudiced Inquirer might be disposed to ask why abnormal’ powers of this description should be confined to the respectable and the ascetics. That was the opinion of a few* doctors who had interested themselves In Gell’s case. They paid his fine at the police court and looked after him. They also Investigated his trick, If It could be called a trick. Toward the end of June, 1873, Gell died suddenly in a house in Harley street. The cause of death was some form of heart failure, and the jury found a verdict accordingly. The actual circumstances of the death were not disclosed at the inquest. I am enabled to give them by one of the doctors present at the time. Gell had taken no stimulants that day. ne was shaky and complained that he “felt bad.” But he was quite willing and even anxious that the test of his powers should proceed. The answers to questions that had been written by the model hand so far had contained nothing very extraordinary. They were answers that might have been written by Gell himself directly and even reproduced the misspellings which were habitual with him. The test took place at 8 o’clock in the evening in the drawing room of the bouse on the first floor overlooking the street. Besides Gell, there were four doctors present, one of whom was the tenant of the house. Gell took his place, as usual, in the middle of the room, and a heavy gilt leather screen which had been fetched from the consulting room was placed around him. The table on which the hand and sheet of paper were placed was ten or twelve feet distant from the screen. To the first question the hand wrote a childish answer at once. Then one of the doctors asked, “What is my age?” The hand trembled, but did not move. Gell spoke from behind the screen and asked for something to drink. A glass of water was handed to him behind the screen. The question was then repeated, and the hand began to write and suddenly stopped. Other questions were suggested, but the hand remained absolutely motionless. The host turned around toward the screen and called out, “What’s the matter with you, Gell?” Immediately the hand began to write. It wrote from right to left and In a character which was not that of any language with which any of the doctors present was acquolnted. The writing was done with great smoothness and regularity. Suddenly the hand shot over the side of the table, fell on the floor and broke in frapnents. The host called out again, “What’s the matter with you, Gell?” There was no answer, and for a moment or two there was absolute silence in the room. Then one.of the men said, “We had better look Into this,” and went up to the screen. In attempting to pull it back the whole thing fell over with a crash. Behind It on his chair, with his head back and his jaw dropped, sat Gell, stone dead! He was in his lifetime an ugly man, and now, with the gas flaring above him, he looked very ghastly. He was wearing, I am told, a dirty light suit and a tie of striking colors, with an Impossible diamond in It.

The body was quite cold, and rigor mortis had already set in. One would have said that it had been dead at least three hours. There was little or nothing to be done, but the doctors discussed It and never mentioned what they were all thinking. That was only said when they came downstairs afterward. All were agreed on the point— Richard Gell must have been dead while the hand was still writing. “It can never be proved,” said one of them, ‘’but I believe he died just before the hand reversed and wrote In the strange characters from right to left.” The writing was subsequently shown to a well known orientalist. As he picked up the paper be said, “Why, this is Sanskrit.” On looking at it more closely he saw that this was wrong. “But It Is obviously an oriental language." he said, “ril take it away and let you know in a day or two what it is.” i But he never did. He was found dead In his study with the paper before him.—Black and White.