In 1870, the famous English chemist William Crookes witnessed and even took part in one incident. From a luminous cloud hanging over the head of the scientist, a human hand materialized in some incomprehensible images. What is more, this hand that descended from heaven shook the hand of the Honorable Sir. Who belonged to the heavenly hand that deserved him to shake hands firmly?
For the first time hands "from nowhere" began to appear at the first seances of the middle of the last century. Here is how an eyewitness describes a session with Hume in 1858:
“The gas light was turned off, but the room was still light enough to see very clearly the faces, the surrounding objects and the hand on the table. There were six of us, hands - twelve. And then on the free side, opposite the medium, the thirteenth hand appeared. It faded as we stared at it, but reappeared - a flickering elbow - and slowly moved towards the middle of the table. We counted our hands again - everyone was in place. This hand extended to the elbow, and then there was nothing. The hand emitted a faint but clearly visible light. Soon it disappeared, and then we saw the whole process of its emergence."
To demonstrate its materiality, the hand took the bell, rang it, and then brought it to the author of these lines. In surprise, he grabbed it: “It was a real hand, with fingers and nails, soft and warm. But it melted in my hand, dissolved, disappeared.
The next eyewitness, the editor of the Hartford Times, was present at Hume's session in 1855, at first a hand appeared, she took a pencil and began to write. The participants' hands were on the table, in full view, so none of those present could write. What was written with this hand turned out to be the name of a relative and close friend of one of the members of the circle, who had died several years before, and the name was written in her own handwriting.
Since inveterate skeptics claimed that this hand belonged to some magician - dressed in all black and smeared with phosphorus on his hand, Barr decided on a little experiment. When this hand began to shake hands with everyone present, Barr held it and examined it carefully. It was a normal, warm human hand, only for some reason white as snow. It ended at the wrist. Barr checked - there was nothing further! Then he, turning his hand with his palm towards him, pierced it with his finger, and the end of the finger came out from the back. When he pulled out his finger, the hole formed closed, and the hand itself disappeared.
The hand that arose during Hume's session in England in the summer of 1855 behaved very instructively. This hand calmly took the Bible lying on the table and opened it. Turning the pages, she wrote in pencil in Matthew chapter 13: “Blessed are your eyes because they see; blessed are your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you: many of the prophets of the righteous would like to see the things that you see, and they did not see them, and to hear the things that you hear, and they did not hear them."
Professor, member of the British Royal Society of Science, Sir William Crookes, not afraid of the ridicule of his colleagues, one of the first outstanding scientists of that time, risked to conduct physical experiments with the phenomena of the "other world". Summarizing his observations of the appearance of hands in sessions of the 70s, Crookes noted:
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“The aforementioned hands and fingers have always seemed to me dense and similar to real ones. Sometimes they looked like a thickened vaporous cloud, part of which was in the shape of a hand. Not everyone present could distinguish them equally clearly. So, for example, when a hand carried a flower or other small object, one saw a glowing vapor above it, the other a vaporous hand, while the others saw only the movement of the flower. More than once I noticed first the movement of an object, then a luminous cloud that appeared around it and, thickening, took the form of a fully formed hand.
Then everyone saw this hand. She looked like a perfectly living human hand. At the hand or elbow, such hands are vaporous and end in a luminous cloud. When touched by a human hand, they sometimes seem cold as ice, sometimes warm and alive. Sometimes, hands of the second type squeezed mine tightly - like an old friend after a long separation. Once I held on to a similar hand, determined not to let go of it. There was no attempt on her part to free herself, but gradually she began to pass into a vaporous state and thus disappeared from my hand."
In cases where a part of the room is fenced off with a curtain during the sessions in order to arrange a room for the medium, hands appear in the slit of the curtains. So, at the sessions of Eddie Horatio in the first half of the 70s of the XIX century, because of such curtains, a great many hands appeared - men, women, children. At the request of the audience, they willingly wrote all sorts of messages, putting their signature under them, and often the audience recognized their dead friends or relatives by the handwriting.
The medium in these sessions sat outside the curtain, and in addition, he was held by the hands, which did not prevent the appearance of phantom hands. An interesting episode took place at the session of Hume, which was attended by the Emperor of France Napoleon III. The Emperor asked Yuma to summon the spirit of his late uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. This case was described by the participant of the session, Count Branitsky:
“The living room was brightly lit. Napoleon was sitting in a deep armchair next to Eugenia. Hume stood before them. The emperor had not yet had time to express his request, when suddenly his face changed, and he, quickly withdrawing his hand, cried out nervously: “Ah, free me from this hand!” It turned out that some invisible hand pressed forcefully the fingers of the emperor lying on the back of the chair.
Seeing the emperor's excitement, Hume approached and began his manipulations. Immediately, a mixed cry of surprise and horror escaped from those present: in full illumination, a human hand appeared, visible to the elbow, which took a heavy bronze candelabrum with twelve candles from a tall marble fireplace, carried it across the living room and placed it in front of the sovereign.
On April 27, 1893, the Russian Society of Experimental Psychology conducted another session with the medium Mikhailov. Those present saw a small whitish cloud appear behind the back of the medium's chair. It began to grow, then took the form of a faintly luminous beam, which then transformed into a hand, visible to the elbow. The hand rose above the medium's head, went to the wall and hit it. Then a luminous hand began to fly near a lamp hanging from the ceiling, tore off the silk lampshade from it and threw it into the next room.
The second hand then formed on the left side of the medium. The right hand reached out to the heavy sofa and began to push it towards the next room with a force and dexterity not characteristic of ordinary people. Simultaneously, the left hand moved the chair along with the medium sleeping in it!
Having analyzed, together with Professor Crookes, the cases of the appearance of phantom hands in the sessions of the famous mediums D. Hume, Eva Cartier, Evzapia Palladin, Franek Klust, Stanislava Popilska and others, known in the century before last, we can conditionally divide them into two fundamentally different types. Hands of the first type are clearly human in appearance and size, so you can determine who they belong to - a man or a woman. When they are observed, only either the hand or the elbow is visible.
Judging even by several cases cited here, these hands "belong" to persons who actually existed and materialized in a way unknown to science with the help of the medium conducting the session. The physical capabilities of these hands also correspond to human ones: they can carry objects, give flowers to ladies and play musical instruments (which the medium himself does not know how to play). That is, these hands are owned or controlled by an intelligent being that acts independently of the will of the medium.
Phantom hands of the second type are formed from a certain substance secreted by the medium and named by Professor Richet (future Nobel laureate) - ectoplasm. These hands often have only three or four fingers (which is recorded in fairly high-quality photographs), can stretch to an unnatural length (for example, the entire room) and possess superhuman strength.
Paradoxically, at the beginning of the 21st century, in this area of parapsychological research, we were not even one step back, but two steps compared to the end of the 19th century.
T. Samoilova
“Interesting newspaper. Oracle №1 2014