The mill of Vicq-sur-Nahon.

— Under the title The devil of the mill, the Moniteur de l’Indre of February 1867 contains the following account:

“Mr. François Garnier is a farmer and miller in the village of Vicq-sur-Nahon. He is, we like to think, a peaceful man, and yet, since the month of September, his mill is the scene of miraculous facts, apt to make one suppose that the devil, or at least a mischievous Spirit, has chosen it as his dwelling. For example, it seems beyond doubt that, devil or Spirit, the author of the facts we are about to relate likes to sleep at night, for he works only by day.

“Our Spirit likes to perform juggling tricks with the bedcovers. He takes them without anyone noticing, carries them off and goes to hide them, now in the ceiling beams, now in the oven, now beneath piles of hay. He transports the sheets of the lad’s bed from one stable to another, and more than an hour later they are found beneath the hay or in the bars of the manger. To open the doors, the Spirit of Vicq-sur-Nahon needs no key. One day Mr. Garnier, in the presence of his employees, locked the bakery door with two turns of the key and put the key in his pocket; even so, the door opened almost immediately, before the eyes of Garnier and the servants, without their being able to explain how. “Another time, on the 1st of January — an entirely new way of wishing someone a happy new year — a little before nightfall, the feather bed, the sheets, the blankets of a bed situated in a bedroom are lifted without the bed being disarranged, and these objects are found on the floor, near the bedroom door. Garnier and his people then imagine, in the hope of conjuring away all this sorcery, that they should move the beds from one room to another, which is indeed done; but, the exchange having been made, the diabolical facts we have just recounted begin again with greater intensity. On several occasions, a lad from the stable finds open his chest, where he keeps his personal effects, and these scattered about the coach house. “But here are two circumstances in which all the diabolical skill of the Spirit is revealed. Among Mr. Garnier’s domestic servants is a young girl of 13, named Marie Richard. One day, this girl being in a bedroom, she suddenly saw appear upon the bed a small chapel, and all the objects placed upon the mantelpiece, 4 vases, 1 Christ, 3 glasses, 2 cups, in one of which there was holy water, and a small bottle also full of holy water, go one after another, as if obeying the order of an invisible being, to take their place upon the improvised altar. The bedroom door was ajar, and the wife of little Richard’s brother, near the door. A shadow came out of the chapel, according to little Richard, approached her and charged her to invite the masters to give a blessed loaf and to have a mass said. The girl promises; for nine days calm reigns in the mill. Garnier has the mass said by the curate of Vicq, offers a blessed loaf, and beginning the very next day, the 15th of January, the devilries begin again. “The keys of the doors disappear; the doors, left open, appear locked; a locksmith, called to open the door of the mill, cannot do so and finds himself obliged to dismantle the lock. These last facts took place on the 29th of January. On the same day, around noon, while the employees were taking their meal, the girl Richard takes a pitcher of drink, serves herself, and Mr. Garnier’s watch, hanging from a nail on the mantelpiece, falls into her glass. They put the watch back on the mantelpiece; but the girl Richard, taking a dish served upon the table, brings up the watch with her spoon. For the third time they hang the watch in its place, and for the third time little Richard finds it in a pot that was boiling over the fire, together with a little bottle of medicine, whose cork leaps up into her face. “In short, terror takes hold of the inhabitants of the mill; no one any longer wishes to remain in a bewitched house. At last Garnier takes the course of notifying the commissioner of police of Valençay, who goes to Vicq, accompanied by two guards. But the devil refused to show himself to the agents of authority. They merely advised Garnier to dismiss the young girl Richard, which he soon did. Will this measure have sufficed to put the devil to flight? Let us hope so, for the peace of mind of the people of the mill.”

In a later issue, the Moniteur de l’Indre contains the following:

“We recounted, in due time, all the devilries that took place at the mill of Vicq-sur-Nahon, whose tenant is Mr. Garnier. Comical until now, these devilries are beginning to turn into tragedy. After the farces, the juggling tricks, the sleights of hand, here the devil resorts to arson.

“On the 12th of this month two attempts at arson occurred, almost simultaneously, in Mr. Garnier’s stables. The first happened around five o’clock in the afternoon. The fire took hold of the straw, at the foot of the bed of the milling lads. The second fire arose about an hour later, but in another stable. The fire arose likewise at the foot of a bed and in the straw.

“Fortunately these two fires were extinguished by Garnier’s father, eighty years old, and his employees, warned by the aforesaid Marie Richard.

“Our readers must remember that this young girl of fourteen was always the first to perceive the sorceries that occurred in the mill; nevertheless, following the advice that had been given him, Garnier had dismissed little Richard. When the two fires arose, this young girl had returned to Mr. Garnier’s house a fortnight earlier. It was again she who was the first to notice the two fires of the 12th of March.

“According to the investigations made in the mill, suspicion fell upon two female servants.

“The Garnier family is so shocked by the events of which their mill was the scene, that they have become persuaded that the devil, or at least some malevolent Spirit, has fixed his dwelling in their abode.”

— One of our friends wrote to Mr. Garnier, asking him to inform him whether the facts reported in the newspaper were real or tales meant to amuse, and, in any case, what there might be of truth or of exaggeration in the story.

Mr. Garnier replied that everything was perfectly accurate and in accordance with the declaration he himself had made to the commissioner of police of Valençay. He confirms, too, the two fires and adds: The newspaper did not even recount everything. According to his letter, the facts had been occurring for four or five months, and he found himself forced to make the declaration because he could not discover the author. He ends by saying: “I do not know, sir, with what purpose you ask me for this information; but if you have any knowledge of these things, I beg you to share in my troubles, for I assure you that we are not at ease in our home. If you could find a means of discovering the author of all these scandalous facts, you would render us a great service.” An important point to clarify was to know what the participation of the young girl might be, whether voluntarily out of malice, or unconsciously through her influence. On this question, Mr. Garnier said that the young girl, having been absent from the house only for a fortnight, had not been able to judge the effect of her absence; but that he had no suspicion of her, as to malevolence, nor of the other employees; that she had almost always announced what was happening beyond her reach; that, thus, she had said several times: “There is the bed disarranging itself in such a room,” and that, entering there without losing sight of it, they found the bed disarranged; that she also gave warning of the two fires, which occurred after her return. As one can see, these facts belong to the same kind of phenomena as those of Poitiers (Review of February and March 1864; idem, May 1865); of Marseille (April 1865); of Dieppe (March 1860), and so many others that may be called noisy and disturbing manifestations.

First we shall point out the difference that exists between the tone of this account and that of the Poitiers newspaper, on the occasion of what took place in that city. Let us recall the deluge of sarcasms that, in this regard, they made rain down upon the Spiritists, and their persistence in maintaining, against the evidence, that it could only be the work of jokers of bad taste, who would not be long in being discovered, but who, in the end, were never discovered. The Moniteur de l’Indre, more prudent, limits itself to an account, which is not seasoned with any inappropriate mockery, and which implies an affirmation rather than a denial. Another observation is that facts of this kind occurred long before there was any thought of Spiritism, and that, since then, they have almost always taken place among persons who did not know it even by name, which excludes any influence due to belief and imagination. If they accused the Spiritists of simulating these manifestations with a view to propaganda, one would ask who could have produced them before there were Spiritists.

Knowing what took place at the mill of Vicq-sur-Nahon only through the account that was given, we limit ourselves to noting that here nothing departs from that whose possibility Spiritism admits, nor from the normal conditions under which such facts can be produced; that these facts are explained by perfectly natural laws and, consequently, have nothing marvelous about them. Only ignorance of these laws could, until today, cause them to be regarded as supernatural effects, as has happened with almost all the phenomena whose laws Science later revealed. What may seem most extraordinary, and is explained least easily, is the fact of the doors opened, after being carefully locked with the key. The modern manifestations offer several examples of this. An analogous fact took place in Limoges, some years ago (Review of August 1860). Even if the state of our knowledge does not yet allow us to give a conclusive explanation of it, this prejudges nothing, for we are far from knowing all the laws that govern the invisible world, all the forces this world contains, nor all the applications of the laws we know. Spiritism has not yet said its last word; far from it: neither on physical things, nor on spiritual things. Many of the discoveries will be the fruit of later observations. In a certain way Spiritism has done nothing, until now, but plant the first markers of a science whose scope is unknown. With the aid of what it has already discovered, it opens to those who come after us the path of investigations in a special order of ideas. It proceeds only by observations and deductions, and never by supposition. If a fact is established, it says that it must have a cause and that this cause can only be natural; then it seeks it. In the absence of a categorical demonstration, it may offer a hypothesis, but until it is confirmed, it offers it only as a hypothesis, and not as absolute truth. With respect to the phenomenon of the opened doors, as with that of transports through rigid bodies, it is still reduced to a hypothesis, based on the fluidic properties of matter, very imperfectly known, or, better said, only suspected. If the fact in question be confirmed by experience, it must have, as we said, a natural cause; if it is repeated, it is not an exception, but the consequence of a law. The possibility of the deliverance of Saint Peter from his prison, referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 12, would thus be demonstrated without there being any need to resort to miracle. Of all mediumistic effects, physical manifestations are the easiest to simulate. For this reason, one must avoid accepting too lightly, as authentic, facts of this kind, whether spontaneous, like those of the mill of Vicq-sur-Nahon, or consciously provoked by the medium. Imitation, it is true, could only be coarse and imperfect, but with skill one can easily deceive, as they once did with second sight, those who did not know the conditions under which real phenomena can be produced. We have seen supposed mediums of rare skill simulating transports, direct writing, and other kinds of manifestations. Thus, the intervention of Spirits in these sorts of things must be admitted only with full knowledge of the cause. In the case in question we do not affirm this intervention; we limit ourselves to saying that it is possible. Only the two beginnings of fire could make one suspect a human act, prompted by malevolence, which the future will doubtless lead to discover. Nevertheless, it is well to note that, thanks to the clairvoyance of the young girl, its consequences could be averted. With the exception of this last fact, the others were nothing but pranks of no great importance. If they are the work of Spirits, they can only proceed from frivolous Spirits, amusing themselves with the terrors and impatiences they cause. It is known that there are some of every character, as on Earth. The best means of getting rid of them is not to be troubled by them and to exhaust their patience, which is never so long as when they see that no one is concerned about them, which one proves to them by laughing at their malicious tricks and defying them to do more. The surest means of exciting them to persevere is to torment oneself and grow angry with them. One can also free oneself from them by evoking them with the aid of a good medium and praying for them; then, conversing with them, one can learn what they are and what they want, and make them listen to reason. Moreover, these kinds of manifestations have a more serious result: that of propagating the idea of the invisible world that surrounds us, and of affirming its action upon the material world. It is for this reason that they are produced by preference among persons foreign to Spiritism, rather than among the Spiritists, who do not need them in order to be convinced.

Fraud, in such a case, can sometimes be merely innocent jest, or a means of giving oneself importance, by making others believe in a faculty that one does not possess, or possesses imperfectly. But in most cases it has for its motive a patent or concealed interest, and for its object to exploit the confidence of persons too credulous or inexperienced. It is then a true fraud. It would be superfluous to insist on saying that those who become guilty of any deceptions of this kind, even if they were prompted only by self-love, are not Spiritists, even though they pass themselves off as such. Real phenomena have a sui generis character, and are produced in circumstances that defy all suspicion. A complete knowledge of these characters and these circumstances can easily lead to discovering the trickery. If these explanations come to the knowledge of Mr. Garnier, he will find therein the answer to the request he makes in his letter.

— One of our correspondents transmits to us the account, written by an eyewitness, of analogous manifestations that occurred last January, in the village of Basse-Indre (Loire-Inférieure). They consisted of obstinate rappings, lasting several weeks, which threw all the inhabitants of a house into an uproar. The searches and investigations made by the authority to discover their cause led to nothing. Moreover, this fact presents no more notable particularity, except, like all spontaneous manifestations, to draw attention to the Spiritist phenomena. As a fact of physical manifestations, those that are produced thus spontaneously exert upon public opinion an infinitely greater influence than the effects provoked directly by a medium, either because they have greater repercussion and notoriety, or because they give less occasion to suspicions of charlatanism and sleight of hand.

This reminds us of a fact that took place in Paris, in the month of May of last year. Here it is, just as it was reported at the time by the Petit Journal.

MANIFESTATIONS OF MÉNILMONTANT.

A singular fact repeats itself frequently in the Ménilmontant district, without anyone having yet been able to explain its cause.

“Mr. X…, a manufacturer of bronzes, lives in a pavilion at the back of the house; one enters it through the garden. The workshops are on the left and the dining room on the right. A bell is placed above the door of the dining room; naturally the cord is at the garden door. The walk is long enough for a person, having rung, to flee before someone has come to open.

“Several times the foreman, having heard the bell, went to the door and saw no one. At first they thought of a mystification; but, however much they watched and assured themselves that there was no wire leading to the bell, they discovered nothing, and the trick always continued. One day the bell rang while Mr. and Mrs. X… were precisely below, and an apprentice was in the walk in front of the cord. The fact was repeated three times on the same evening. Let it be added that sometimes the bell rang very softly and at other times in a very noisy manner. “For some days the phenomenon had ceased, but the night before last it was renewed with more persistence.

“Mrs. X… is a very pious woman. There is a belief in her region that the dead come to ask prayers of their relatives. She thought of a dead aunt and believed she had found the explanation. But prayers, masses, novenas, nothing settled it: the bell always rings.

“A distinguished metallurgist, to whom the fact was recounted, thought it was a scientific phenomenon and that a certain quantity of aqua fortis and of vitriol, which was in the workshop, could release a force great enough to move the iron wire. But, the substances having been removed, the fact did not cease to be produced.

“We shall not try to explain it, for it is a matter for the scientists, says the Patrie, who might well be mistaken. These sorts of mysteries often end by being explained without Science noting therein the least phenomenon still unknown.”