EXPOSURE OF A 'MEDIUM.'

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 342, 4 March 1911, Page 7

EXPOSURE OF A 'MEDIUM.'

The Berlin police have put an end to the career of Frau Abend, who, as it "medium," has humbugged ths spiritualists of the German capital for the past ten years. The "Good Frau Abend," as her admirers called her, held seances at her humble apartments in a poor part of the city ; but she had also a lucrative salon practice in tli3 fashionable west end. The scene of the arrest was a dramatic one. An intimate circle of the credulous, including many foreigners, mostly Russians, had assembled at the medium's rooms, which were darkened. All eyes were directed to a baize curtain, in the opening of which the shadowy form of a spirit was looming up, when the police commissary, who, of course, in disguise, had been given a back seat, came forward and seized the medium, and called "Halt ! the police arc here ! Turn on the light." The other sitters made an angry protest, while Frau Abend, who began to weep, tried to divest herself of her clothing as testimony of her innocence. While doing so she tried to pass a large veil to a female friend ; but the friend turned out to be an agent of the commissary. A whole bundle of veils of various shades, similiar to those in which the spirits appeared, were found upon the "medium," who, with her husband, was removed to th2 police-station. Among the mechanical devices brought to light by the police were some small tables on glass stands, especially easy to move "at the order of the spirits."