SPIRITUALISM EXPOSED.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 69, 20 February 1884, Page 2

SPIRITUALISM EXPOSED.

A correspondent of the Daily News gives an account of the result of an inquiry which he undertook for th.ai newspaper iuto an alleged " Shropshire Mystery," concerning which remark' able accounts have been published during the past fortnight. According to these stories the most remarkable occurrences had follow ed upon the presence m different houses of a girl named Emma Davies, the daughter of a labourer. It was alleged that the girl was posfie^sed of some kind of supernatural power, and that when she was present coal leapt from the fire,, articles of furniture moved about,, clocks -were thrown down and smashed, knives and brushes flew about, and that generally everything behaved m a most mysterious and unnatural manner. The whole district was thrown into, a state of wonder and astonishment, and it is even reported that a clergyman visited a house at which the :girl was staying, and went through some kind of religious exorcism, but without effect, the manifestations going on as vigorously as e .er. The correspondent found Emma Davies iv charge of Dr Mackey, of Aston Lodge, near Wem, and was informed by him that the girl, had confessed that the manifestations were the result of her own tricks. She showed how sho made a bucket jump and a chair retreat at the double. It was all effected by a slight jerk of the baud. Her statement is that she was put up to the game by fellow servants ; and (here can be no doubb that the credulity , of thp people m the district made them easy victims, if npt assistants, of the delusion. 1 a i