Footfalls on the boundary of another world 1872 by Robert Dale Owen

Author:Robert Dale Owen [Owen, Robert Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: http://www.archive.org/details/foot00fallsonboundowenrich
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

III. SUMMING UP.

I have few words to add, in summing up the foregoing evidence that the disturbances which give rise to rumors of haunted houses are, in certain cases, actual and unexplained phenomena.

Little comment is needed, or is likely to be useful. There are men so hard-set in their preconceptions on certain points that no evidence can move them. Time and the resistless current of public sentiment alone avail to urge them on. They must wait. And as to those whose ears are still open, whose convictions can still be reached, few, I venture to predict, will put aside, unmoved and incredulous, the mass of proof here brought together. Yet a few considerations, briefly stated, may not be out of place.

The testimony, in most of the examples, is direct and at first hand, given by eye and ear witnesses and placed on record at the time.

It is derived from reputable sources. Can we take exception to the character and standing of such witnesses as Joseph Glanvil, John Wesley, Justinus Kerner? Can we object to the authority of Mackay, a skeptic and a derider? Hoes not the narrative of Hahn evince in the observer both coolness and candor? As to the Ahrensburg story, it is the daughter of the chief magistrate concerned in its investigation who testifies. And where shall we find, among a multitude of witnesses, better proof of honesty than in the agreement in the depositions at Cideville and at Hydesville?

The phenomena were such as could be readily observed. Many of them were of a character so palpable and notorious that for the observers to imagine them was a sheer impossibility. The thundering blows at Mr. Mompesson’s shook the house and awoke the neighbors in an adjoining village. The poundings at Madame Hauffe’s displaced the rafters and arrested the attention of passers-by in the street. At Epworth, let them make what noises they might, the “dead, hollow note would be clearly heard above them all.” At Hydesville, the house was abandoned by its occupants, and hundreds of the curious assembled, night after night, to test the reality of the knockings which sounded from every part of it.

There was ample opportunity to observe. The occurrences were not single appearances, suddenly presenting themselves, quickly passing away: they were repeated day after day, month after month, sometimes year after year. They could be tested and re-tested. Nor did they produce in the witnesses an evanescent belief, fading away after sober reflection. Mr. Mompesson, Councilor Hahn, Emily Wesley, when half a lifetime had passed by, retained, and expressed, the same unwavering conviction as at first.

The narratives fail neither in minute detail of circumstance, nor in specifications of person, of time, and of place.

The observers were not influenced by expectancy, nor biased by recital of previous examples. The phenomena, indeed, have been of frequent occurrence; exhibiting an unmistakable family likeness, constituting' a class. Yet not in a single instance does this fact appear to have been known to the observers. That which each witnessed he believed to be unexampled.

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