The Rapping Spirit of the Aube.

— One of our subscribers transmits to us very interesting details about manifestations that occurred, and still occur, in a locality of the Department of the Aube, whose name we shall keep silent, even considering that the person in whose house these phenomena take place is in no way concerned about being besieged by the visits of numerous curious people, and despite these noisy manifestations having already caused him various annoyances. Moreover, our correspondent reports as an eyewitness, and we know him well enough to know that he is worthy of trust. We extract the most interesting passages from his account: “Four years ago (in 1856), in the city where I reside, at the house of Mr. R…, manifestations occurred that recall, to a certain extent, those of Bergzabern; at that time I did not know that gentleman, only becoming acquainted with him later, so that it was from hearsay that I learned what was happening at that period. The manifestations having ceased a long time ago, Mr. R… already believed himself free of them when, a little afterward, they began again as before. I was then able to witness them for several days in succession. I shall therefore relate what I saw with my own eyes. “The person who is the object of these manifestations is the son of Mr. R…, sixteen years old; he was therefore only twelve when they first occurred. He is a young man of excessively limited intelligence, can neither read nor write, and rarely leaves the house. As for the manifestations that occurred in my presence, with the exception of the rocking of the bed and the magnetic suspension, the Spirit imitated more or less everything done at Bergzabern; the knocks and the scratchings were the same; it whistled, imitated the noise of the file and the saw, and threw into the room pieces of coal coming no one knows from where, since there were none in the room in which we were. The phenomena generally occur when the young man is lying down and begins to sleep. During his sleep he speaks to the Spirit with authority and assumes the tone of command of a superior officer, to the point of deceiving others, although he has never witnessed military exercises; he simulates a combat, commands the maneuver, achieves victory, and believes himself appointed general on the field of battle. When he orders the Spirit to deal a certain number of blows, it sometimes happens that the latter gives more than is ordered. Then the boy asks: “How will you do to take away the knocks that you gave in excess?” Then the Spirit sets to scraping, as if erasing something. When the boy commands, he becomes greatly agitated and at times shouts so loudly that his voice is extinguished in a kind of death rattle. When commanded, the Spirit beats all the French and foreign marches, even those of the Chinese. I could not verify their accuracy, for I do not know them. But it often happened that the boy would say: “That is not it! Begin again!” And the Spirit obeyed. I must say in passing that during his sleep the boy is very coarse in commanding. “One night when I was attending one of these scenes, the R… boy had already been in great agitation for five hours. I tried to calm him by means of a few magnetic passes, but he soon became furious and overturned the whole bed. The following day he lay down upon my arrival and, as usual, fell asleep after a few minutes; then the knocks and scratchings began. Suddenly he said to the Spirit: “Come here; I am going to put you to sleep.” And, to our great surprise, he magnetized it, despite the resistance of the Spirit, which seemed to refuse; at least that is what I could gather from the conversation they had together. Then he woke it, demagnetizing it as a professional magnetizer would have done. I then noticed that he gave the impression of gathering much fluid, which he flung at me, apostrophizing and insulting me. Upon waking, he retained no recollection of what had occurred. “Far from diminishing, the facts grow worse and worse in a distressing manner, to the exasperation of the Spirit, which surely fears losing the dominion it exercises over the young man. I wished to ask it its name and its antecedents, but I obtained only lies and blasphemies. I must say now that it speaks through the mouth of a young man, who serves it as a speaking medium. I tried in vain to awaken better sentiments in it, by means of good words; it answered me that prayer exercises not the least power over it; that it had tried to rise up to God, but found only ice and fog. Then it calls me a bigot, and when I pray mentally, I observe that it becomes furious and deals redoubled blows. Daily it brings very bulky objects, iron, copper, etc. When I ask it where it obtains them, it answers that it takes them from dishonest people. If I give it moral lessons, it grows enraged. One night it told me that as long as I came, it would break everything, and that it would not go away before Easter; then it spat in my face. Having asked why it attached itself in this way to the young R…, it answered: “If it were not he, it would be another.” The father himself is not free from the assaults of this maleficent Spirit. Many times he is interrupted in his work because he is struck, pulled by the clothes in all directions, and even pinched until he bleeds. “I have done what I could, but my resources are now coming to an end. I add that it is all the more difficult to obtain good results inasmuch as Mr. and Mrs. R…, despite the desire to rid themselves of the Spirit, which has caused them real losses, and being obliged to work to live, do not assist me, for their faith in God has no great consistency.”

— We have omitted a number of details that would serve only to corroborate what we have related. Nevertheless, we have said enough to show that one may say of this Spirit, as of certain malefactors, that it is of the worst kind.

At the session of the Society, on the 9th of November last, the following questions were addressed to Saint Louis in this regard:

Would you be so kind as to tell us something about the Spirit that obsesses the young R…?

Answer. – The intelligence of this young man is among the weakest. When the Spirit takes possession of him, he becomes completely deluded, all the more so the more deeply he is plunged into sleep. Reason exercising no dominion over his brain, he allows himself to be obsessed by this turbulent Spirit.

Can a relatively superior Spirit exercise upon another Spirit a magnetic action and paralyze its faculties?

Answer. – A good Spirit can do nothing to another, except from the moral point of view; never physically. In order to paralyze by means of the magnetic fluid it would have to act upon matter, and the Spirit is not matter similar to the human body.

How, then, does the young R… claim to magnetize the Spirit and make it fall asleep?

Answer. – He believes it so, and the Spirit lends itself to the illusion.

The father wishes to know whether there would not be a means of getting rid of this importunate guest and whether the son would still be subject to this trial for a long time.

Answer. – When the young man is awake, it will be necessary that, together with him, they evoke the good Spirits, in order to put him in contact with these and, by this means, drive away the evil ones, who obsess him during sleep.

Could we act in this way, evoking, for example, this Spirit, in order to moralize it or, who knows, the very Spirit of the young man?

Answer. – Perhaps it is not possible at the moment; both are too materialized. It is necessary to act directly upon the body of the living being, by means of the presence of the good Spirits, who will come to him.

We do not quite understand the answer.

Answer. – I say that it is necessary to call upon the assistance of the good Spirits, who will be able to make the young man less accessible to the impressions of the evil Spirits.

What can we do for him?

Answer. – The evil Spirit that obsesses him will not leave him easily, since it is not strongly repelled by anyone. Your prayers, your evocations are a weak weapon against it. It would be necessary to act directly and materially upon the person whom it torments. You may pray, for prayer is always good. But you will not succeed by yourselves, if you are not seconded by those most interested in the case, that is, the father and the mother. Unfortunately, they do not have that faith in God which multiplies the forces a hundredfold, and God hears only those who address themselves to Him with confidence. They cannot, then, complain of an evil for which they do nothing to avoid.

How are we to reconcile the subjection of this young man, dominated by such a Spirit, with the authority that he exercises over the latter, since he commands and the Spirit obeys?

Answer. – The Spirit of this young man is little advanced morally, but he is more so than is thought, in intelligence. In other existences he abused his intelligence, not directed toward a moral end, but, on the contrary, toward ambitious objectives. Now he finds himself in punishment in a body that does not permit him to give free course to his intelligence, and the evil Spirit takes advantage of his weakness. The latter allows itself to be drawn by matters of slight importance, because it knows that the young man is incapable of ordering it serious things: he amuses it. The Earth is full of Spirits like this, in punishment in human bodies; that is why there are upon it so many evils, and of the most varied kinds. Observation. – Observation comes to support this explanation. During sleep, the young man demonstrates an intelligence incontestably superior to that of his normal state, which proves a prior development, but reduced to a latent state beneath this coarse envelope. Only in the moments of emancipation of the soul, in which he does not suffer so much the influence of matter, does his intelligence manifest itself, occasion on which he also exercises a kind of authority over the being that subjugates him. But, returning to the waking state, his faculties are annihilated beneath the material envelope that compresses them. Is there not in this a practical moral teaching?

— Someone manifests the desire to evoke this Spirit, but none of the mediums present cares to serve it as interpreter. Miss Eugénie, who had also shown repugnance, suddenly took the pencil in an involuntary movement and wrote:

You do not wish to? Well then! You will write. You certainly think that I will not dominate you. Here I am. But do not be so astonished. I will make you see my strength.

Note. – At this moment the Spirit makes the medium give a great punch on the table and break several pencils.

Since you are here, tell us for what reason you attached yourself to the son of Mr. R…

Answer. – It would be necessary, I believe, that I make confidences to you! Above all, know that I have great need to torment someone. A sensible medium would repel me. I attach myself to an idiot, who offers me no resistance.

Note. – Someone argues that, despite this act of cowardice, this Spirit does not lack intelligence. It answers without having been asked directly:

Answer. – A little. I am not as foolish as you think.

What were you when alive?

Answer. – I was not much; a man who did more evil than good and who is more and more punished.

Since you are punished for having done evil, you ought to understand the necessity of doing good. Do you not wish to improve?

Answer. – If you were willing to help me, I would lose less time.

We ask no more than that, but it is necessary that you have the will. Pray with us, this will help you.

Answer. – (Here the Spirit gives a blasphemous answer).

Enough! We do not wish to hear any more. We hoped to awaken in you some good sentiments; it was with that objective that we called you. But since you answer our benevolence only with vile words, you may withdraw.

Answer. – Ah! here is where your charity halts! Because I was able to resist a little, I see that this charity soon stops; it is that you are worth no more than I. Yes, you could moralize me more than you think, if you knew how to give proof of it, first in the interest of the idiot who suffers, of the father who is not much frightened, and finally in mine, if it so pleases you.

Tell us your name, so that we may call you.

Answer. – Oh! my name matters little. Call me, if you wish, the Spirit of the young idiot.

If we wished to make you fall silent it is because you said a sacrilegious word.

Answer. – Ah! Ah! you were shocked! To know what is in the mud one must stir it up.

Someone says: This image is worthy of the Spirit: it is ignoble.

Answer. – You want poetry, young man? Here it is: To know the perfume of the rose one must smell it.

Since you said that we could help you to become better, one of the gentlemen present offers to instruct you. Will you heed him when he evokes you?

Answer. – Above all, I want to see whether it suits me. (After a few instants of reflection it adds): Yes; I will come.

Why did the son of Mr. R… grow enraged when Mr. L… wished to magnetize him?

Answer. – It was not he who grew angry; it was I.

Why?

Answer. – I have no power over that man, which is why I cannot endure him. He wishes to snatch from me the one I have under my dominion, and that I do not allow.

You must perceive around you Spirits happier than yourself. Do you know why?

Answer. – I know very well; they are better than I.

Do you understand, then, that if instead of doing evil, you did good, you would be happy like them?

Answer. – I desire nothing more than that; but it is difficult to do good.

Perhaps it is difficult for you, but not impossible. Do you know that prayer can exercise great influence on your improvement?

Answer. – I do not say it cannot; I will think about it. Call me sometimes.

— Observation. – As one sees, this Spirit did not belie its character. Nevertheless, it revealed itself less recalcitrant in the end, which proves that it is not altogether inaccessible to reasoning. It holds the solution, but, in order to dominate it, a concurrence of wills is needed which at present does not exist. This must be a lesson for those persons who might find themselves in similar cases.

Without doubt this Spirit is very evil and belongs to the rabble of the spirit world. One may say that it is brutally evil, but that in such beings there are more resources than in hypocrites. Surely they are far less dangerous than the fascinating Spirits who, aided by a certain dose of intelligence and a false appearance of virtue, know how to inspire in certain persons a blind confidence in their words, a confidence of which sooner or later they will be victims, since such Spirits never act with a view to good: they always have an ulterior motive. We hope that The Mediums' Book will have as its result to put us on guard against their suggestions, which, certainly, will not please them. But, as is easy to see, we trouble ourselves as little about their ill will as about that of the incarnate Spirits, whom they may excite against us. The evil Spirits, as much as men, do not look with favor upon those who, unmasking their baseness, take from them the means of doing evil.

— [NOTE: The text below is an extract from the Review of January 1863: Study on the possessed of Morzine.]

On our journey we saw the obsessed young man, of whom we spoke in the Review of January 1861, under the title of The Rapping Spirit of the Aube, and we heard from the father himself and from eyewitnesses the confirmation of all the facts: The young man is now sixteen years old; he is healthy, strong, perfectly constituted, and yet he complains of pain in the stomach and weakness in the limbs, which, according to what he says, prevents him from working. Seeing him, one may easily believe that laziness is his principal illness, which takes nothing from the reality of the phenomena produced five years ago and which, in many respects, recall those of Bergzabern. (Review of May, June, and July 1858). The same is not the case with his moral health; as a child he was very intelligent and at school learned with ease. Since then his faculties have weakened appreciably. It must be added that only recently did he and his parents come to know Spiritism, and that still by hearsay and very superficially, for they have read nothing; before, they had never heard it spoken of. One could not, then, see in this any provoking cause. The material phenomena have practically ceased or, at least, are today much more rare; but the moral state is the same, which is all the more deplorable for the parents, who live by their work. The influence of prayer in such cases is known; but since nothing can be expected of the young man in question, the concurrence of the parents would be necessary; these are convinced that their son finds himself under an evil hidden influence, but their belief goes no further and their religious faith is among the weakest. We told the father that it was necessary to pray, but seriously and with fervor. “That is what I have already been told,” he answered; “I prayed a few times, but without result; if I knew that by praying a number of times over twenty-four hours this would come to an end, I would do it now.” From this one sees in what manner, in this circumstance, we can be seconded by those who are the most interested.