"There is another circumstance to be noted in this connection. When the requisite preparation is made, there is no need of consulting the spirits at all, in order to secure answers. You may consult with the chairs or the table just as well. This experiment was tried, not long since, at Wilmington, Vermont. A Mr. Kellogg was the medium, and he had succeeded in consulting the spirits to the satisfaction of all concerned. At length he remarked that he was about to let the company into an important secret. 'We will interrogate the _table_,' said he, 'and have nothing more to do with spirits.' He did so; and the _table talked and answered, just as the spirits had done before_. At the same time the table was made to stand on one leg, and to move about, as is usual in such cases. This experiment demonstrated, to the satisfaction of all present, that the strange appearances could be produced just as well without the spirits as with them. 'The calling for spirits,' to use the language of my informant, 'is mere garnish and fog, by which the real agency in the case is concealed.'
"On the point now under consideration, viz., the possibly _electric_ character of these manifestations, I am happy to introduce the testimony of Dr. Samuel Taylor, a respectable physician of Petersham, Massachusetts, whose article on the subject may be found in a late number of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Dr. Taylor discovered accidentally that he was a medium, and he proceeded to make experiments upon himself. The manifestation, in his case, was not by rapping, but by writing--a much more convenient mode of communicating with the spirit world. On taking his pen, and holding himself in a peculiar attitude, and proposing mentally some question to the spirits, his pen would begin to oscillate in his fingers, and very soon would write out an answer; and this without any voluntary effort of his own. And what is particularly to be noticed is, the pen would always write an answer which accorded with his own opinion or wishes, that is, if he had any wish on the subject. For example: Dr. Taylor inquired of one of the spirits about the different forms of religion. 'I asked which was the best religion, at the same time fixing my mind sternly on the word _Protestant_. My hand immediately wrote _Protestant_. In the same manner, and _by direction of the same spirit_, my hand wrote successively, _Methodist_, _Unitarian_, and I believe one or two others. While in this state,' Dr. Taylor says, '_I felt a sensation like that of a light galvanic current passing through me_. Sometimes it appeared to be a steady thrill, and sometimes it was intermittent, resembling light shocks of electricity.'