Photo from open sources
In 1870, the famous English chemist William Crookes became witness and even participant in one incident. Of the luminous clouds hanging over the scientist’s head, somehow incomprehensible images materialized the human hand. Moreover, this hand descending from heaven, shook the hand of the honorable sir. To belonged to a heavenly hand that honored him strong a handshake?
For the first time, hands from “unknown where” began to appear on the first spiritualistic sessions of the middle of the century before last. Here is how it describes eyewitness, session with the participation of Hume in 1858:
“They turned on the gas light, but the room was still enough light to see very clearly the faces surrounding objects and hand on the table. There were six of us, twelve hands. And here on the thirteenth hand appeared on the free side, opposite the medium. She faded when we stared at her, but appeared again – a flickering arm — and slowly moved toward the middle of the table. We again counted our hands – everyone was in place. This hand extended to the elbow, and there was nothing further. The hand was emitting faint but clearly visible light. Soon she disappeared, then we saw the whole process of its occurrence. ”
To demonstrate their materiality, the hand took the bell rang into him and then brought it to the author of these lines. From surprise he grabbed onto her: “It was real hand, with fingers and nails, soft and warm. But she melted in mine hand, dissolved, disappeared.
The next eyewitness is the editor of the Hartford Times attended the Hume session in 1855, at the beginning a hand appeared, she took a pencil and began to write. The hands of the participants were on the table, in plain sight, so none of those present could write. That what was written with this hand turned out to be the name of a relative and a close friend of one of the members of the circle who died in a few years before that, the name being written in her own handwriting. ”
Since avid skeptics have claimed that this hand belongs some magician – dressed in all black and anointed his hand phosphorus, Barr decided on a small experiment. When is this hand began to shake hands with everyone present, Barr held her and carefully examined. It was a normal, warm human hand, but somehow white as snow. She ended at the wrist. Barr checked – there was nothing further! Then he turning his hand palm to himself, pierced it with a finger, and the end of the finger came out with the back side. When he pulled out a finger, the hole formed it closed, and the hand itself disappeared.
The hand that arose at Hume’s session in England in the summer of 1855. This hand calmly took the Bible lying on table, and opened it. Turning over the pages, she marked in pencil The 13th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is: “Blessed are yours eyes because they see; blessed are your ears because they hear. Verily I say unto you, many of the prophets of the righteous wished to see the things that you see, and they did not see them, and hear things that you hear and they did not hear them. ”
Professor, Member of the British Royal Scientific Society, sir William Crookes, not afraid of the ridicule of colleagues, one of the first prominent scientists of that time ventured to conduct physical experiments with the phenomena of the “other world”. Summarizing your observations of the appearance of hands in sessions of the 70s, Crookes noted:
“The mentioned hands and fingers always seemed to me tight and like real ones. Sometimes they were like condensed a vaporous cloud, part of which had the shape of a hand. Not all those present clearly distinguished them. So, for example, when hand carried a flower or other small object, then one saw a luminous vapor above it, the other a vaporous hand, while the rest saw only the movement of the flower. I noticed more than once first the movement of the object, then a luminous cloud, which arose around him and, thickening, took the form quite shaped hands.
Then everyone saw this hand. She looked completely alive human hand. In the hand or elbow, such hands are vaporous and end with a glowing cloud. When touching human to the hand they sometimes seem cold, like ice, sometimes warm and alive. It used to be that the hands of the second type held my hand tightly – like the old friend after a long separation. Once I held a similar hand, firmly deciding not to let her go. No attempt to free herself from her was, but gradually it began to turn into a vaporous state and thus disappeared from my hand. ”
In cases where part of the room is closed during sessions curtain to arrange a cabinet for the medium, hands appear in cut through the curtains. So, in the sessions of Eddie Horatio in the first half 70s of the XIX century because of such curtains appeared great many hands – male, female, children’s. At the request of the audience, they willingly wrote all sorts of messages, putting their signatures under them, and viewers often recognized by the handwriting of their deceased friends or relatives.
Medium in these sessions was sitting outside the curtain, and in addition to it holding hands, which by no means prevented the emergence of phantom hands. A curious episode occurred in a Hume session in which attended by the emperor of France Napoleon III. The emperor turned to Hume requesting the spirit of his late uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. This case was described by a session participant Count Branitsky:
“The living room was brightly lit. Napoleon sat in a deep armchair next to Eugene. Hume stood before them. Before the emperor make his request, when suddenly his face changed, and he, quickly pulling back his hand, he cried out nervously: “Ah, free me from this hand! “It turned out that some invisible hand with power shook the emperor’s fingers lying on the back of the chair.
Seeing the emperor’s excitement, Hume approached and began his manipulation. Then a mixed cry of surprise and horror burst from those present: in full light a human hand appeared visible to the elbow, which took from a high marble fireplace heavy, about twelve candles, a bronze candelabrum, suffered and put him in front of the sovereign through the whole drawing room. ”
April 27, 1893 the Russian Society of Experimental Psychology conducted another session with the medium Mikhailov. Those present saw how a medium appeared behind the back of a chair a small whitish cloud. It began to grow, then took the form a faintly luminous ray, which then transformed into a hand, visible to the elbow. The hand rose above the head of the medium, headed against the wall and hit it. Then a luminous hand began to fly near a lamp hanging from the ceiling tore off a silk lampshade from it and threw him into the next room.
After this, a second hand formed on the left side of the medium. The right hand reached for the heavy sofa and began to push it along towards the next room with a strength and dexterity not peculiar ordinary people. At the same time, the left hand moved the chair together with a medium sleeping in it!
Photo from open sources
Having analyzed together with Professor Crookes the famous the century before last, the occurrence of phantom hands in the sessions famous mediums D. Hume, Eva Cartier, Ezapia Palladin, Franek Klost, Stanislava Popilskaya and others, you can conditionally divide them into two fundamentally different types. Hands of the first type on the outside the type and size are clearly human, so you can determine who they belong to a man or a woman. When observed, it is visible only either the hand or the arm to the elbow.
Judging even by a few cases given here, these hands “belong” to persons who actually existed and materialized not in a manner known to science using a medium conducting a session. The physical capabilities of these hands also correspond to human ones: they can carry items, give ladies flowers and play musical instruments (which the medium itself cannot play). That is, these hands belong to or are controlled by a rational being, acting regardless of the will of the medium.
Phantom hands of the second type are formed from a certain substance, distinguished by a medium and named by Professor Richet (future Nobel laureate) – ectoplasm. These hands often have everything three or four fingers (which is fixed on fairly high quality photos) can be pulled to an unnatural length (e.g. to the whole room) and possess inhuman power.
Paradoxically, at the beginning of the XXI century, in this area parapsychological research, we were not even a step back, and two compared to the end of the XIX century.
T. Samoilova “Interesting newspaper. Oracle” №1 2014
Time Napoleon Bonaparte
