Manifestations of Poitiers.

— The Journal de la Vienne, of January 21, relates the following fact, which other papers reproduced:

“For five or six days a fact so extraordinary has been occurring in the city of Poitiers, that it has become the subject of conversation and of the strangest commentaries. Every night, beginning at six o’clock, singular noises are heard in a house on Rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, inhabited by Mademoiselle de O…, sister of Count de O… According to what we were told, these noises produce the effect of artillery fire; violent blows seem to be struck upon the doors and shutters. At first the cause was attributed to some pranks of rascals or of ill-intentioned neighbors. A most active watch was organized. Upon the complaint of Mlle de O…, the police took the most minute measures: agents were posted in ambush inside and outside the house. Nevertheless, the explosions occurred, and we know, from a reliable source, that a certain M…, a sailor, during the night before last was seized with such a commotion that to this day he has still not regained consciousness. “Our whole city is preoccupied with this inexplicable mystery. The inquiries made up to now by the police have led to no result. Everyone seeks the key to this enigma. Some persons initiated in the study of Spiritism maintain that the rapping spirits are the authors of such manifestations, to which a famous medium—who, however, no longer resides in the neighborhood—would not be a stranger. Others recall that formerly there existed a cemetery on Rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, and we need not say to what conjectures they give themselves over in this regard. “Of all these explanations, we do not know which is the best. The truth is that opinion is greatly excited by the affair, and last night a considerable crowd had gathered beneath the windows of the house of O…, obliging the authority to call for a picket of the 10th battalion of light infantry, to clear the street. At the moment we write, the police and the guard occupy the house.”

The account of these facts was transmitted to us by several private correspondences. Although they have nothing stranger than the verified facts of manifestations occurring at various epochs, and are within the limits of the possible, it is fitting to suspend judgment until a more ample verification, not of the fact, but of the cause, for one must not impute to the Spirits everything that is not understood. It is also necessary to be wary of the maneuvers of the enemies of Spiritism and of the snares they may set, in order to try to make it ridiculous through the excessive credulity of its adherents. We see with satisfaction that the Spiritists of Poitiers, in this following the counsels contained in The Mediums’ Book, and the warnings we have given in the Review, maintain, until further notice, a prudent reserve. If it is a manifestation, it will be proved by the absence of all material cause; if it is a charlatanism, the authors, as they have so often done, will have contributed, without wishing it, to awakening the attention of the indifferent and to provoking the study of Spiritism. When analogous facts multiply on all sides, as is announced, and when the cause is sought in vain in this world, they will have to agree that it is in the other. In every circumstance the Spirits prove wisdom and moderation; it is the best response to give to adversaries. [Review of March 1864.]

MANIFESTATIONS OF POITIERS.

(2nd article.)

The facts we reported in our last issue, on which we had left our opinion in suspense, seem definitively to fall within the sphere of Spiritist phenomena. An attentive examination of the circumstances of detail does not allow them to be confused with acts of malevolence or of cunning. It seems difficult that ill-intentioned persons could escape the activity of the watch exercised by the authority and, above all, that they could act at the very moment when they are being spied upon, under the eyes of those who seek them, who certainly do not lack goodwill to discover them. Exorcisms had been performed, but after a few days’ suspension, the noises resumed with another character. Here is what the Journal de la Vienne said in this regard, in its issues of February 17 and 18:

“It will be recalled that last January, making their solemn appearance in Poitiers, the rapping spirits went to encamp on Rue Saint-Paul, in the house situated near the old church of the same name; but their stay among us had been of short duration and one had the right to think that all was over, when, the day before yesterday, the noises that had so strongly agitated the population were reproduced with new intensity.

“The black devils, then, have returned to the house of Mlle de O…; only they are no longer rapping spirits, but riflemen, acting by means of formidable detonations. We shall celebrate their feast on the day of Saint Barbara, patroness of artillerymen. There are always those who are satisfied with this, the processions of the curious resume, and the police question every echo to guide themselves through the fog of the other world. “Nevertheless, it is hoped that this time the authors of these mystifications of bad taste will be discovered and that justice will know well how to prove to the exploiters of human credulity that the best Spirits are not those who make the most noise, but those who know how to keep silent and speak only what is fitting.”

A. Piogeard.

“We always return to Rue Saint-Paul, without being able to penetrate the infernal mystery.

“When we question a person who strolls with a preoccupied air before the house of Mlle de O…, she invariably answers: ‘For my part I heard nothing, but someone told me that the detonations were very strong.’ Which is not without being very embarrassing for the solution of the problem.

“Meanwhile, it is certain that the Spirits possess some pieces of artillery, including of large caliber, because the resulting noise has a certain violence and they say it resembles that produced by small bombs.

“But where do they come from? Impossible so far to determine their direction. They do not come from the subsoil, since pistol shots fired in the cellar are not heard on the first floor.

“It is, then, in the upper regions that they must be caught, and yet all the processes indicated by Science or by experience to attain that result have been powerless.

“Should one, then, conclude that the Spirits may with impunity fire their powder at the sparrows and disturb the repose of the citizens without its being possible to reach them? This solution would be very harsh; indeed, by certain processes, or by virtue of some accidents of terrain, effects may be produced that, at first sight, surprise, but at which one is later astonished for not having understood the elementary mechanism. It is always the simplest things that escape the appreciation of man. “We are strongly led to believe that, if the riflemen of the other world at this moment have on their side those who laugh, they are far from being unreachable. Let the mystifiers be persuaded: the mystified will have their turn.”

A. Piogeard.

Mr. Piogeard seems to struggle singularly against the evidence. One would say that, without knowing it, a doubt insinuates itself into his thought; that he fears a solution contrary to his ideas; in a word, he gives us the impression of those persons who, receiving bad news, exclaim: “No, not that; that is impossible; I cannot believe it!” and who cover their eyes so as not to see, in order to be able to affirm that they saw nothing. By one of the paragraphs above, he seems to cast doubt on the very reality of the noises, because, in his opinion, all those whom he questions say they heard nothing. If no one heard, we do not understand why so much rumor, for there would be neither ill-intentioned persons nor Spirits. In a third article without signature, which the newspaper says to be the last, he gives, at last, the solution of this problem. If those concerned do not judge it categorical, it will be their fault and not his.

“For some time we have been receiving letters, by every post, whether from our subscribers or from persons foreign to the Department, in which they ask us for more circumstantial information about the scenes whose theater is the house of O… We have said all we knew; we have repeated in our newspaper all that is said in Poitiers in this regard. Since our explanations have not seemed complete, here, for the last time, is our answer to the questions addressed to us: “It is perfectly certain that singular noises are heard every night, from six o’clock to midnight, on Rue Saint-Paul, in the house of O… These noises resemble those produced by successive discharges of a double-barreled shotgun; they shake the doors, the windows, and the partitions. No light nor smoke is perceived; no odor is felt. The facts have been verified by the persons most worthy of faith in our city and by police inquiries, at the request of the family of Count de O… “There exists in Poitiers an association of Spiritists; but, in spite of the opinion of Mr. D…, who writes to us from Marseille, it has not come into the thought of any of our fellow citizens, too witty for this, that the Spiritists had anything to do with the appearance of the phenomena. Mr. H…, of Orange, believes in physical causes, in gases released from an old cemetery, upon which the house of O… would have been built. But the house is built upon the rock and there exists no underground passage communicating with it. “For our part, we think that strange and still unexplained facts, for more than a month disturbing the repose of an honorable family, will not always remain in the state of mystery. We believe in a very skillful fraud and we hope soon to see the phantoms of Rue Saint-Paul entering the correctional police court.”

[Review of May 1864.]

MANIFESTATIONS OF POITIERS.

As we were told, the noises that had thrown the city of Poitiers into an uproar ceased completely, but it seems that the noisy Spirits transported the theater of their exploits to the surroundings. Here is what is read in this regard in the Pays:

“The rapping spirits of Poitiers have begun to form a school and populate the neighboring countryside. They write from Ville-au-Moine, on February 24, to the Courrier de la Vienne (not to be confused with the Journal de la Vienne, special for the house of O.):

“Mr. Editor, “For some days our region has been preoccupied with the presence, at Bois-de-Doeuil, of rapping spirits who spread terror in our villages. The house of Mr. Perroche is their meeting point: every night, between eleven o’clock and midnight, the Spirit manifests itself by nine, eleven, or thirteen raps, marked by two and one, and at six in the morning, by the same noise.

“Note, sir, that these blows are struck at the head of a bed where a woman, half dead with fright, lies down, who assures us that she receives the communications of an uncle of her husband, who died in our city a month ago. As it is difficult to believe in these things, I and several of my friends wished to know the truth, and, for this, we went to sleep at Bois-de-Doeuil, where we witnessed the facts that had been pointed out to us; we even saw the cradle of a child being shaken, in the longitudinal direction, which seemed not to be in contact with anyone. “At first we laughed at the thing, but seeing that all the precautions taken to discover a stratagem had given no result, we withdrew with more stupor than desire to laugh.

“If the noise continues, the house of Mr. Perroche will not be large enough to receive the curious who, from Marsais, Priaire, Migré, Doeuil and even from Villeneuve-la-Comtesse, come in crowds to spend the night there and try to discover the depths of this mystery.

“Accept, etc.”

We shall make only a brief reflection on such events. In reporting them, the Journal de la Vienne had repeatedly announced that they were on the track of the jokester or jokesters who caused those disturbances, and that they would not be slow to arrest them. If they did not succeed, they cannot accuse the authority of negligence. How is it possible, in a house occupied from top to bottom by its agents, that these jokesters could continue their maneuvers in their presence, without its being possible to catch them? It must be agreed that they had, at the same time, much audacity and much skill, since they got away from the police force without being seen. Moreover, this band of crafty fellows must be very numerous, for they play the same pranks in various cities and at years’ interval, without ever being surprised; let the cases of Rue des Grès and of Rue des Noyers, in Paris; of Grandes-Ventes, near Dieppe, and so many others, that likewise came to no result, attest to it. How is it that the police, who possess such great resources and outwit the most skillful and the most cunning malefactors, cannot overcome the resistance of a few noisy ones? Have they reflected on this? Moreover, these facts are not new, as may be seen by the following account. [See: Tasso and his sprite]

[Review of May 1865.]

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE NOISES OF POITIERS.

Extracted from the Journal de la Vienne, of November 22, 1864.

The logic of the adversaries of Spiritism is known. The following passage, from an article signed by David, of Thiais, furnishes a sample.

“Friendly reader, “Like me, you must have in your study a little brochure (in-8º) by Mr. Boreau, of Niort, whose title—How and why I became a Spiritist—bears the facsimile of the autograph of the direct writing of a familiar Spirit.

“It is the most curious of stories: that of a sincere man, convinced, a lover of lofty things, but who deifies his illusions and incessantly runs after dreams, believing that he grasps reality. Pursuing, with Jeanne, the somnambulist, a treasure buried in an old battlefield of the Vendée, he finds, instead of the gold promised to him, deceitful, malevolent, fearful Spirits, who almost kill his companion with terror and expose him to the most painful anguishes. Suddenly he becomes a Spiritist, as if the apparitions that obsess him reproduced the miracles of the marvelous lamp and, at the same time, lavished upon him all the goods of body and soul. “Fiction must be one of the greatest necessities of the human genius, for such beliefs to become possible.

“There are there jesting geniuses, who mock; cruel Spirits, who threaten and strike; coarse Spirits, with their mouths always insulting, and one wonders what they come to do here, since death has not chiseled them in its fearful crucible.

“There too they entertain themselves with couplets and quatrains of a good angel, who did not bring from heaven the secrets of his poetry, showing how far a preconceived idea leads us on the path of illusions.

“In matters of Spiritism, Mr. Boreau has the naive faith of the simple man; he even comes to like those who strike and molest him. We have nothing to say as to this, all the more so as his brochure contains very amusing pages, proving that he can easily dispense with exterior Spirits, for his own must suffice him very well.

“We shall say only that the facts he relates are not of yesterday. One still recalls the emotion that took hold of the city of Poitiers, at the time of the formidable artillery heard on Rue Saint-Paul, last year. A long procession of the curious circled for eight days around that house haunted by the demon; the police established their headquarters there and each one watched for the fluttering of the Spirits, in the hope of surprising the secrets of the other world; but they saw only fire. The Spirits reveal themselves to believers only by making all the noise in the world. (Spiritist Review, February, March, and May 1864). “A strange thing, reader! these parts seem to have the monopoly of this noisy and mocking race.

“Gorres, a celebrated German physician, who died in 1836, teaches in volume III of his Mystica—at least so says Guillaume d’Auvergne, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249—that, about the same time, a rapping spirit had introduced itself into a house of the said neighborhood of Saint-Paul, in Poitiers, and that it threw stones there and broke the windowpanes.

“Pierre Mamoris, professor of theology in our university, author of the Flagellum maleficorum, recounts what was happening, in 1447, on Rue Saint-Paul, in a house in which a certain Spirit, giving itself over to its ordinary evolutions, threw stones, moved the furniture about, broke the windowpanes, and even struck the persons, though gently, without its being possible to discover how it acted.

“It is told that on that occasion Jean Delorme, then curate of Saint-Paul, a very learned man of great probity, came, accompanied by several persons, to visit the theater of these strange exploits and, furnished with blessed and lighted candles, holy water, and Gregorian water, went through all the rooms of the house, sprinkling and exorcizing them.

“But all the exorcisms were powerless; no devil showed itself. Nevertheless, from that moment on, the malign Spirit ceased to manifest itself. ”

“Thus, with some centuries’ distance, the same Spiritist phenomena are repeated three times in the same city and in the same neighborhood. But what should be concluded from this? Absolutely nothing. Indeed, there is no important consequence to draw from a vain noise, from puerile pranks, from lamentable facts that, evidently, cannot be attributed to the Spirits, imponderable bodies that, hovering over the world, must escape human infirmities, drawing incessantly nearer to the light and the goodness of God. “Besides, this question is not under discussion. Each one is free to choose his Spirits, to adore them in his own manner, to lend them a virtue, a power, a character conformable to his aspirations. Only we prefer, to the somewhat material geniuses of the modern school, the enchanting creations, born of the poetry of olden days, which, marching fraternally with man on the boundary of the two worlds, so gently gave him their hand, to draw him nearer to the sources of immortal life and of endless happiness. “For us, no rapping spirit will be worth those adorable images painted by the genius of Ossian upon the vaporous clouds of the North, whose melancholy harps still make the most intimate fibers of the heart vibrate so well. When the soul takes flight, it is careful to lighten its wings and repels all that can make them heavier.”

We are grateful to the author of this article for having made known to us this notable fact, of which we were ignorant, of the same phenomenon, reproduced in the same locality at an interval of several centuries. Without suspecting it, he could not better serve our cause, because from this repetition he means to draw an argument against the manifestations. It seems to us that in good logic, when a fact is unique and isolated, no absolute consequence can be deduced from it, since it may be due to an accidental cause, whereas, when it is repeated under identical conditions, it is because it depends on a constant cause; in other words, on a law. To seek that law is the duty of every serious observer, because it may lead to important discoveries. That, despite the duration, the special character, and the accessory circumstances of the noises of Poitiers, some persons persisted in attributing them to malevolence, is understandable up to a certain point; but when they are repeated for the third time, on the same street, at several centuries’ distance, there will certainly be matter for reflection, because, if there are ill-intentioned persons, it is hardly probable that in so long an interval they should have chosen precisely the same place for the theater of their feats. Yet, what to conclude from this? The author says: Absolutely nothing. Thus, from a fact that moves an entire population, several times repeated, there is no important consequence to draw! Truly, it is a very singular logic! “They are vain noises, puerile amusements that, evidently, cannot be attributed to the Spirits, imponderable bodies that, hovering over the world, must escape human infirmities, drawing incessantly nearer to the light and the goodness of God.” So Mr. David believes in Spirits, since he describes their attributes with such precision. Where did he draw such knowledge? Who told him that the Spirits are just as he imagines them? Has he studied them in order to decide the question so categorically? He says that the Spirits “must escape human infirmities”; corporeal infirmities no doubt; but moral infirmities, too? So he believes that the perverse man, the assassin, the bandit, the vilest of malefactors, and he will be on the same level when they are Spirits? Of what use will it have been to them to be honest during life, since, after death, they will be so as if they had been? Since the Spirits draw incessantly nearer to the light and the goodness of God, which is truer than the author perhaps believes, then there was a time when they were far off, because, in order to draw near to a goal, one must have departed from it. Where is the point of departure? It can only be in the opposite of perfection, that is, in imperfection. Surely it is not perfect Spirits who amuse themselves with such things. But if there are imperfect ones, what is there astonishing that they should commit mischief? From the fact that they soar over the world, does it follow that they cannot draw near to it? It would be superfluous to carry this refutation further. All the arguments of our adversaries being more or less equivalent, we would not even have refuted this article, were it not for the precious document it contains and for which we again thank the author. [1] See the brochure of Mr. [Alfred] Bonsergent in the Imperial Library.