The late 1800s and early 1900s saw a heightened consciousness towards spirituality that included much research and the search for truth. This was evident in the churches through the revival craze, Azusa Street Pentecostalism (which is a form of Spiritualism), Salvation Army, and the great orators and writers within Christianity.
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However, this heightened consciousness was not limited to Christianity. This same time period birthed a revival in Theosophy, alternate religions, Socialism, and Spiritualism - or talking with the dead. Many of the great spiritualists have been forgotten through time and history. Part of the demise of Spiritualism was due to the media exposing many frauds and quacks that attached themselves to the movement out of greed for a quick buck.
Christianity is facing the same scenario a hundred years later, as it only seems to beget the quick buck preacher or evangelist, and the movement is rife with fraud and quacks. There also is a dire vacancy in Christianity of intelligent, truthful researchers and scholars that it was blessed with in times past.
This series of books was not compiled for pleasure reading. The authors and compilers indexed every paragraph, thoroughly cross referenced across three books, outlined texts, topical highlights, and more. These do not make for easy reading, but then again their purpose for compiling these books was not for pleasure, but to document every detail in their personal experiences in Spiritualism. These books would never see a best seller's list, so they were not published for any gain or profit.
From the Introduction
1. J. H. Pratt, his wife, Josephine Pratt, and Mrs. Phoebe Smith, all then of Spring Hill, Kansas, having heard of one W. W. Aber, of Topeka, Kansas, as being a medium for the phenomena of so-called spirit materializations, succeeded in securing the services of this said medium for that capacity, commencing the seances in September, 1888, at the residence of the said J. H. Pratt, where the said Mr. Aber thenceforth made his home, holding sèances there almost daily, to June, 1890.
2. The phenomena presented at these sèances were, the greater portion of them, what are called "bust shadowy forms" shown at the cabinet window.
3. To these seances the public were invited, and many attended; but, for want of more information as to the nature of the phenomena, but few pursued their investigations to a definite conclusion.
4. A few persons, however, saw, from close and careful attention, that the medium did not, in any fraudulent manner, have anything to do with the production of the phenomena, neither as principal nor by mortal confederate.
5. Some of the "bust shadowy forms" shown at the cabinet window were enabled to write, and also to talk in a whisper, and could both talk and write in "tongues" much beyond the knowledge of the medium and of any person in the circle.
6. About December, 1889, these bust forms began to talk and write of having a design to furnish, through full-form visible materializations, matter for a book, and urged that a circle be organized for the purpose of giving the spirit world an opportunity of conditions to that end.
7. At evening-time, and at the residence of J. H. Pratt, Mr. Pratt and wife, Mrs. Phoebe Smith, and J. H. Nixon began a series of meetings with this medium, under promise of the spirits (for we had come to so regard them) that, if we would prove faithful to them, we would be amply rewarded in rare phenomena.
8. The medium being entranced and taken into the cabinet, bust forms appeared at the window, as usual, to eight in number, all very brilliant and recognized.
9. Then the cabinet door opened and ten full-form materializations in quick succession appeared to our sight in the room. Some of them were very plainly seen by us all. They all spoke to us: some aloud, in good oral speech, and some in a whisper; some also spoke through the trumpet while standing in our sight, the form of the spirit holding the trumpet in its hands, as any person would for such purpose; and we also know this form of speech as "the voice of the trumpet."
10. Some of the forms walked out of the cabinet, at the cabinet door, advancing into the room five or six feet; others, to about three feet from the cabinet door. Each talked a moment, then stepped back into the cabinet; and as one would be passing into the cabinet another would be passing out, so that we could see two meet and pass each other in the cabinet doorway.
11. As remarkable to us as anything we had ever seen of psychic phenomena was that a point on the carpet about three feet from the cabinet doorway, between us and the cabinet front, in the clear vision of us all, there appeared something like a small white mist, which gradually increased in size, density, and brilliancy; then gradually arose, elongating from the floor until some five feet high, and there assumed human shape, until finally there unfolded the form of a man fully and genteelly clothed, of rather small stature (as near as we could judge, five feet five or six inches tall), with dark hair and whiskers, and a countenance sparkling with intelligence.
12. This form took especial care in turning its head about and pointing to the region of the front brain where phrenologists locate causality, which we could clearly discern to be of great prominence in outline.
13. This form found a voice, saying: "Please get me a slate." None of us knew just where to find one. The form beckoned one of the circle to look in the northwest corner of the room, and there a slate was found, and then placed on the table by which the form was standing.
14. This form then stooped and took the pencil in its right hand and wrote upon the slate. We could all plainly see the motions of the form and hear the pencil writing.
Then the form took the slate up, turned it over, and stood erect, holding the slate in its left hand, and wrote with the pencil in its right hand; then laid the pencil on the slate and the slate on the table.
15. Again standing erect, looking upward, the form began to go down, as though passing through the floor; and so descended until the chin whiskers touched the carpeting, when the entire head form vanished out of our sight. (37)
16. We now examined the slate, and found on one side of it the words. "William Denton"; on the other side of the slate the words, "We will do all we can"; and the signature, "Denton."
17. Such was the beginning of writing, here, by what we now recognize to be "full-form visible materializations"; that is, writing done by persons who, after having undergone the death change, appear to us in this series of sèances, and "stand again" and write in our presence and in our sight, as plainly and clearly discernible to us and by us as would or could be possible for what is generally called mortal man to be discernible at writing in like attitude and light.
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