Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/175

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Poltergeists
155

on personal matters—his exact age, the number of letters in the names of his children and in the name of his house and commune. Further, the raps executed correctly Rossini's Stabat Mater and several popular tunes. The only physical phenomenon which M. de Mirville witnessed he described as follows:

One of the children said to me, "Look, Sir, look at this desk knocking against the other"; but as the child was in front of the desk I did not attach much importance to this fact,—not that I believed him to be the cause of it.

Madame de Saint Victor, aged fifty-six. said that she had heard the Angelus and one or two popular tunes rapped correctly. Further,

after Vespers, when I was at the Presbytery of Cideville standing quite apart from the other people there, I felt an invisible force seize me by the mantle and give me a vigorous shake. The same day also I saw three persons sitting on a small table in the Presbytery and it moved along the floor in spite of the efforts of two people to hold it back. Several people were there, amongst others my femme de chambre, but I cannot precisely say who the others were. Another day I saw the child sitting on a chair with his feet off the ground and his back not leaning on the chairback, yet the chair rocked with a movement which the child could not have given it, ending with the chair falling in one direction and the boy in another. The child was much frightened at this. A week ago when I was alone with the children I saw the two desks at which they were working fall over and the table on the top of them. The same day I took the children some St. Benoist medals in which I bad faith, and every time the medals were placed on the desks not the least sound was produced there, the noise then being heard behind me in the wall cupboard; but as soon as the medals were withdrawn from the desks the