A Table Vanishes and Reappears

I had, as usual, taken my place with Slade at the card-table. Opposite to me stood, as was often the case in other experiments, a small round table near the card-table, exactly in the position shown in the photograph (taken from nature) upon Plate III. [see page 108], illustrating the further experiments to be described below. The height of the round table is 77 centimetres, diameter of the surface 46 centimetres, the material birchen—wood, and the weight of the whole table 4.5 kilogrammes. About a minute might have passed after Slade and I had sat down and laid our hands joined together on the table when the round table was set in slow oscillations, which we could both clearly perceive in the top of the round table rising above the card-table, while its lower part was concealed from view by the top of the card-table.

The motions very soon became greater, and the whole table approaching the card-table laid itself under the latter, with its three feet turned towards me. Neither I, nor as it seemed, Mr. Slade, knew how the phenomenon would further develop , since during the space of a minute which, now elapsed nothing whatever occurred. Slade was about to take slate and pencil to ask his "spirits" whether we had anything still to expect, when I wished to take a nearer view of the position of the round table lying, as I supposed, under the card-table. To my and Slade's great astonishment we found the space beneath the card-table completely empty, nor were we able to find in all the rest of the room that table which only a minute before was present to our senses. In the expectation of its reappearance we sat again at the card-table, Slade close to me, at the same angle of the table opposite that near which the round table had stood before. We might have sat about five or six minutes, in intense expectation of what should come, when suddenly Slade again asserted that he saw lights in the air. Although I, as usual, could perceive nothing whatever of the kind, I yet followed involuntarily with my gaze the directions to which Slade turned his head, during all which time our hands remained constantly on the table, linked together under the table, my left leg was almost continually touching Slade's right in its whole extent, which was quite without design, and owing to our proximity at the same corner of the table. Looking up in the air eagerly and astonished, in different directions, Slade asked me if I did not perceive the great lights. I answered decidedly in the negative; but as I turned my head, following Slade's gaze up to the ceiling of the room behind my back, I suddenly observed, at a height of about five feet, the hitherto invisible table with its legs turned upwards very quickly floating down in the air upon the top of the card-table. Although we involuntarily drew back our heads sideways, Slade to the left and I to the right, to avoid injury from the falling table, yet we were both, before the round table had laid itself down on the top of the card table, so violently struck on the side of the head, that I felt the pain on the left of mine fully four hours after this occurrence, which took place at about half-past eleven.