re confidence in the truthfulness of the narrative and believes from
his knowledge of the witnesses that the account is unimpeachable in
every particular." As for Dr. Stevens, Colonel Bundy declared that he
had been personally acquainted with the physician for years, and had
"implicit confidence in his veracity." After all this, accusations of
perjury and deception were obviously futile, and, no adequate
non-spiritistic interpretation being forthcoming, there was an
increasing tendency to accept the view advanced by those who had
participated in the affair.

Such was the situation at the time of Richard Hodgson's advent.
Primarily, as will be remembered by all who have followed the work of
the Society for Psychical Research, Dr. Hodgson had come to this country
to investigate the trance mediumship of Mrs. Leonora Piper. But his
attention having been called to the Vennum mystery, he visited Watseka
in April, 1890, and instituted a rigorous cross-examination of the
surviving witnesses. Dr. Stevens was dead, and Lurancy herself had
married and moved with her husband to Kansas, but Dr. Hodgson was able
to interview Mr. and Mrs. Roff, Mrs. Alter, and half a dozen neighbors
who had personal knowledge of the "possession." All answered his
questions freely and fully, reiterating the facts as given in Dr.
Stevens's narrative, and adding some interesting information hitherto
not made public. In the main this bore on the question of identity and
tended to vindicate the reincarnation theory. It also developed that
while Lurancy had grown to be a strong, healthy woman, she had had
occasional returns of Mary's spirit in the years immediately following
the chief visitation; but that these had ceased with her marriage to a
man who, Roff regretfully observed, had never made himself acquainted
with spiritism and therefore "furnished poor conditions for further
development in that direction."

Appreciating the fact that Mr. Roff and his family would furnish the
best possible conditions for such development, and that he must be on
his guard against unconscious exaggeration and misstatement, Dr. Hodgson
nevertheless deemed the evidence presented to him too strong to be
explained away on naturalistic grounds. Contributing to _The
Religio-Philosophical Journal_ an account of his inquiry and of the
additional data it had brought to light, he described the case as
"unique among the records of supernormal occurrences," and frankly
admitted tha