een Goligher, who is, it may be
remarked, an unpaid medium. My friend touched the column of force, and
found it could be felt by the hand though invisible to the eye. It is
clear that we are in touch with some entirely new form both of matter
and of energy. We know little of the properties of this extraordinary
substance save that in its materialising form it seems extremely
sensitive to the action of light. A figure built up in it and detached
from the medium dissolves in light quicker than a snow image under a
tropical sun, so that two successive flash-light photographs would show
the one a perfect figure, and the next an amorphous mass. When still
attached to the medium the ectoplasm flies back with great force on
exposure to light, and, in spite of the laughter of the scoffers, there
is none the less good evidence that several mediums have been badly
injured by the recoil after a light has suddenly been struck by some
amateur detective. Professor Geley has, in his recent experiments,
described the ectoplasm as appearing outside the black dress of his
medium as if a hoar frost had descended upon her, then coalescing into
a continuous sheet of white substance, and oozing down until it formed
a sort of apron in front of her.[5] This process he has illustrated by
a very complete series of photographs.

These are a few of the properties of mediumship. There are also the
beautiful phenomena of the production of lights, and the rarer, but for
evidential purposes even more valuable, manifestations of spirit
photography. The fact that the photograph does not correspond in many
cases with any which existed in life, must surely silence the scoffer,
though there is a class of bigoted sceptic who would still be sneering
if an Archangel alighted in Trafalgar Square. Mr. Hope and Mrs.
Buxton, of Crewe, have brought this phase of mediumship to great
perfection, though others have powers in that direction. Indeed, in
some cases it is difficult to say who the medium may have been, for in
one collective family group which was taken in the ordinary way, and
was sent me by a master in a well known public school, the young son
who died has appeared in the plate seated between his two little
brothers.

As to the personality of mediums, they have seemed to me to be very
average specimens of the community, neither markedly better nor
markedly worse. I know many, and I have never met anything in the
least like "Sludge," a poem w