CRYSTAL VISION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 17 April 1909, Page 3

CRYSTAL VISION.

What is the scientific explanation of the puzzling phenomena of crystal vision ? asks a writer in the Strand Magazine. May not a conversation I recall with Yoga, a well - known medium practising in the West End, suggest, in some cases, an answer that brings not only crystal gazing, but also many phases of clairvoyance, prophecy, and prevision, into perfect harmony with natural law ?

“ How,” I asked, “ do you account for visions seen, or stated to be seen, in the crystal ?” ‘ ‘ The results obtained by this means and others are due, I conconsider,” he answered readily, " to thought - transference, not necessarily from the person consulting the crystal-gazer, but through him by others. "It is possible, I maintain, for the crystal-gazer to get information you are not aware of, through you, about your friend Brown, and that it is all thought-transfer-ence, the gazer getting it, not from the spirit, as some persons may suppose, but from BrownIn other words, your subconsciousness self in the first place gets the impression that has to be conveyed to the conscious self, and the vision is hallucination. The use of the crystal is its aid to concentration and visualisation.”

Early in December of the year 1900, Mr Foxwell, a Loudon stockbroker, left his home at Thames Ditton to go to his business in the City, and never returned.

One afternoon late in the month of Mr Foxwell’s disappearance a lady called ou Mr Von Bourg, the well-known crystal-gazer. “ She was quite a stranger,” he told me, as I sat in his seance room discussing his experiences, "and she was anxious that I should look into the crystal for her. I remember that the first thing I saw was the body of a man floating iu the river. "Look!” he said, and his visitor looked and saw the vision too.

"That is my husband,” she exclaimed.

The lady, now disclosing her identity, was Mrs Foxwell, the missing stockbroker’s wife. Rapidly now other pictures formed in the crystal—the house in which the Foxwells lived ; a scene at Thames Ditton; the river and its grassy banks on each side; and the spot where the body was to be found.

" That spot,” said the medium, speaking then under the clairvoyant impression, "is a mile from your house. But not yet will the body be found. It will be recovered on January 31st, about 5 o’clock in the evening, and 1 see another picture, which looks as though the man was struck on the head.”

"And everything,” he adds, " came about as I saw in the crystal and said it would.

The story of the most vivid and astonishing experiment of all, the vision of the Merstham Tunnel murder, jwhich was seen and described by two relatives of the victim, Miss Mary Money, remains to be added.

On this occasion the writer accompanied the medium to the house of the relatives, and was present at the seauce, a record of when, written by him, appeared the same evening, September 30th, 1905, in the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette. The medium took with him the identical crystal in which he had seen, five years before, the body of Mr Foxwell, the. missing stockbroker. He held it, as he sat in a corner of the room in an armchair, in both hands, half bending over it, and looking into its milky depths.

After a moment or two I asked him if he could see anything. “ Yes I can,” he replied, “ but before I say what it is I want to see if the triends can see it too.” There were in the room a young man and a young woman, close relatives of Miss Money. Neither had ever looked into a crystal, nor had they any experience on the subject. To the man I said, “ Look over Mr Von Bourg’s shoulder, and tell me what, if anything, you can see.” He stepped up to the medium, and for a moment gazed over his shoulder into the crystal steadily. Of a sudden he exclaimed in tones of swift and certain conviction, "Yes, I do see something —I see a train moving through a tunnel, and in one of the carriages a man and a woman.” I beckoned to the lady, the other relative i« the room. The vision was as clear to her as to the other. And all the time the traiu, they told me, was moving. Like two persons looking at a picture book aud describing each picture as they turned its leaves, so these two relatives of the murdered girl gave me, without pause or hesitation, a vivid narrative of the vision they saw—the struggle in the train, the man’s hand on the woman’s shoulder, the carriage door flung open, and the woman thrust out.