I will first give an account of my own visit to Crewe which was in the summer of 1919. I bought my plates in Manchester and then travelled over to keep the appointment which had been made a week before. Arriving at Crewe, I went down to the little house in Market Street, which is so modest and humble that it furnishes an argument in itself against any undue cupidity on the part of its tenant. Two spiritualistic friends, Mr. Oaten, editor of the Two Worlds, and Mr. Walker, were my companions. Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton were waiting for us, and, after a short religious service, Mr. Hope and I went into the dark room. There I opened the packet of plates, put two into the carrier and marked them then and there. The carrier was then taken into the room and Mr. Hope inserted it into the camera. We three spiritualists sat in front with a rug, or blanket, as a background. The exposure having been made, the carrier was taken back into the dark room where, with my own hands, I took out the plates, developed them and fixed them. So far as I could judge, there was at no stage any possibility of changing the plates. But this question does not really arise. No changing of plates would account for the effect actually produced. This effect I have shown in Figure 1. There I have already explained that Archdeacon Colley was the founder of the Crewe Circle, and if, as we believe, we continue our interest after death it would seem not unnatural that he should send a kindly word to a visitor who was working for the cause. How can we determine that the message was really from Archdeacon Colley? The obvious way would be to get a sample of his writing in life and to compare it with that upon the plate. This I have done, as shown in Figure 2. Can anyone deny that the handwriting is the same in both instances, or can anyone suppose that the rough script of Hope could possibly be modified into the scholarly handwriting of the Archdeacon? Whence, then, did this message come? Does anyone imagine that a private forger is retained by Hope and lurks somewhere in that humble abode? It is a problem which calls for an answer, and no talk about conjuring tricks or transposition of plates has the least bearing upon it. It may be remarked incidentally that my own strong desire was to obtain some sign from my son who had passed away the year before. The result seemed to show that our personal wishes do not effect the outcome. Having failed to get what I desired, I remained at Crewe for the night, and next morning went down to Market Street again. On this occasion I used Hope’s The third result was the most remarkable of any. I had read that Hope can get images without the use of the camera, but the statement sounded incredible. He now asked me to mark a plate and put it in a carrier, which I did. We then placed our hands on either side of the carrier, Mrs. Buxton and her sister joining in. At the end of about a minute Hope gave a sort of shudder, and intimated that he thought a result had been obtained. On putting the plate into the solution a disc the size of a shilling, perfectly black, sprang up in the centre of it. On development this resolved itself into a luminous circle with the face of a female delicately Such were my three results at Crewe, and I should, I hold, have been devoid of reason had I not been deeply impressed by them. Here was a message in Archdeacon Colley’s own handwriting. Here was a test from my own dead sister which seemed to be beyond all possible coincidence, apart from the extraordinary way in which the picture was obtained. Neither sleight-of-hand nor transference of plates could have any bearing upon such results as those. Their full significance was not realised until I had made enquiries, but after that time I felt it impossible to doubt the supernormal nature of the powers which had produced such effects. It might perhaps be argued that as Archdeacon Colley’s writing was familiar to Hope, he had, in spite of his disabilities, made some special effort to master and reproduce it. As a matter of fact, however, this case does not stand alone, and many evidential writings have been obtained at Crewe, notably those of W. T. Stead and of the late Dr. Crawford. The latter is a recent incident, and I would take it as my next example, Upon June 30 of this year (1922) three delegates from Belfast, Mr. Skelton, Mr. Gillmour and Mr. Donaldson, were coming over to the London Spiritualists’ Conference. They broke their journey at Crewe in order to have a sitting with Mr. Hope, who was in deep distress at the time on account of the attack made upon him in Mr. Price’s report. It is worth noting that Mrs. Crawford, the widow of Dr. Crawford, had come over with them on the boat, and that Dr. Crawford’s affairs had been under discussion, though Hope had no means of knowing it. Under good fraud-proof conditions, on their own specially-marked plate, the visitors obtained a message in Dr. Crawford’s handwriting, which runs thus, I supplying the punctuation: “Dear Mr. Hope, “Needless to say I am with you where psychic work is concerned, and you can be sure of my sympathy and help. I know all the difficulties and uncertainties connected with the subject. I am keenly interested in your circle and will co-operate with you. Regarding your enemies who would by hook or by crook dispose of the phenomena, leave them alone. I, W. J. Crawford, of Belfast, am here in Crewe on Friday, June 30th. “W. J. Crawford.” Each word is on its own little patch of ectoplasm, or upon its own pad of cotton-wool, if the critics prefer it, though it would puzzle them, I think, to reproduce the effect which is given in Figure 3. The plate Apart from these cases of the reproduction of handwriting, copies of documents have appeared upon the plates at Crewe which could by no means have got there in a normal fashion. A case in point is given in detail by the Reverend and venerable Professor Henslow on p. 217 of his Proofs of Spiritualism. In this case, the truth of which is vouched for by the Professor, although it did not actually occur to him, the plates were held between the hands of the sitters in the manner already described, but the packet had not been opened and was as it had come from the chemist. When the packet was opened and the plates developed there was found impressed upon the fifth plate a number of Greek characters, which proved to be a copy of four lines of the Codex Alexandrinus, a rare Greek text kept in a glass case in the British Museum. The interesting point appears that the two documents are not facsimiles, and that there is some slight difference in the formation of the letters, thus meeting the objection that the text photographed might have been got from some facsimile of the original Codex. The photographs of the original Greek and of the Crewe reproduction are given in Professor Henslow’s work. Here, again, we may well ask the critic to face the facts and |