Theos-Talk Archives (March 2002 Message tt00491)

A remarkable ectoplasmic materialization was witnessed
in full daylight by the famous scientist Alfred
Russell Wallace. The account is given below:

"A Mr. Monk, a non-conformist clergyman, was a
remarkable medium, and in order to be able to examine
the phenomena carefully, and to preserve the medium
from the injury often caused by repeated miscellaneous
seances, four gentlemen secured his exclusive services
for a year, hiring apartments for him on a first floor
in Bloomsbury, and paying him a moderate salary. Mr.
Hensleigh Wedgwood and Mr. Stainton Moses were two of
these, and they invited me to see the phenomena that
occurred. It was a bright summer afternoon, and
everything happened in the full light of day. After a
little conversation, Monk, who was dressed in the
usual clerical black, appeared to go into a trance;
then stood up a few feet in front of us, and after a
little while pointed to his side, saying, 'Look.' We
saw there a faint white patch on his coat on the left
side. This grew brighter, then seemed to flicker, and
extended both upwards and downwards, till very
gradually it formed a cloudy pillar extending from his
shoulder to his feet and close to his body. Then he
shifted himself a little sideways, the cloudy figure
standing still, but appearing joined to him by a
cloudy band at the height at which it had first begun
to form. Then, after a few minutes more, Monk again
said 'Look,' and passed his hand through the
connecting band, severing it. He and the figure then
moved away from each other till they were about five
or six feet apart. The figure had now assumed the
appearance of a thickly draped female form, with arms
and hands just visible. Monk looked towards it and
again said to us 'Look,' and then clapped his hands. 
On which the figure put out her hands, clapped them as
he had done, and we all distinctly heard her clap
following his, but fainter. The figure then moved
slowly back to him, grew fainter and shorter, and was
apparently absorbed into his body as it had grown out
of it.

"Of course, such a narration as this, to those who
know nothing of the phenomena that gradually lead up
to it, seems like midsummer madness. But to those who
have for years obtained positive knowledge of a great
variety of facts equally strange, this is only the
culminating point of a long series of phenomena, all
antecedently incredible to the people who talk so
confidently of the laws of nature."

Quoted from Alfred Russell Wallace's MY LIFE, pp. 346-347.

Daniel H. Caldwell
BLAVATSKY ARCHIVES
http://blavatskyarchives.com/introduction.htm
"...Contrast alone can enable us to appreciate things at
their right value; and unless a judge compares notes and
hears both sides he can hardly come to a correct decision."
H.P. Blavatsky. The Theosophist, July, 1881, p. 218.