me, and, being an open-minded man, I found it impossible to dismiss them
as of trivial importance; so I began an investigation that led me--well,
it led me very far, it is still leading me, for I am scarcely over the
threshold of that mysterious region where spirit phenomena occur. I
resolved to know _for myself_ whether these things are true."

"And you think they are true?"

"I know they are true," was the grave reply.

Dr. Owen listened attentively while Leroy described his first groping
efforts to determine whether or not he personally possessed psychic
powers. He began with regular periods of mental concentration, an
opening of the soul, as it were, to spirit impressions; he would sit
alone, in a state of meditative receptiveness for ten or fifteen minutes
every day, and later several times a day, waiting for something to
happen--he did not know what.

Day after day the psychologist persisted in this singular experiment
and, soon, he began to see small blue figures, irregularly shaped, that
moved rapidly about the room and cast no shadows. Some of these blue
figures were luminous, and among them were occasional luminous white
figures. As weeks passed and his efforts continued, there came a
noticeable increase in the number of these moving shapes until, when the
doctor desired it, he could make them swarm everywhere, over the walls,
the pictures, the bookcases.

"Wait!" interrupted Owen. "Do you see these blue shapes or luminous
figures at all times? Do you see them now?"

"No. I only see them when I desire to see them--when I prepare myself to
use them--for a case."

Leroy told how the phenomena continued to increase in frequency and in
intensity, how gradually he felt an unmistakable sense of power growing
in himself, as if he had somehow tapped a vast source of energy, a kind
of spiritual trolley-line, and he was now impelled to use this power. He
made his first trial on a poor man who had suffered for years from
headaches that seemed incurable.

"Stretch out on that reclining chair, close your eyes, don't think of
anything," ordered the experimenter. Then he laid his hands on the man's
forehead and concentrated his mind in the psychic way he had adopted.
Almost immediately the blue shapes appeared in great numbers, and began
to pour themselves in fine, pulsing streams, like a purplish mist, over
the patient's brow and head and shoulders, over his whole body until he
was completely enveloped in them, lav