A STRANGE STORY FROM LONDON.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 34, 15 November 1871, Page 3

A STRANGE STORY FROM LONDON.

The London Daily Telegraph thinks that if the new feats of the metropolitan spirits become common, the difliculties of London locomotion will be quickly' solved, We need have no disputes about bad cabs, narrow omnibuses, underground rails, overground tramways, or even travelling balloons, if it be true' that Mrs Guppy, described by her friends, as “ one of the biggest women in London,” can be carried through the air from Highbury to Lamb’s, Conduit-street, in the course of a f?w minutes. This remarkable event took place on the 3rd of June, 1871; eight witnesses, not counting the transported lady and the two mediums, testify to it: and those eight include Mr Henry Morris, described as a “ Manchester merchant of high standing,” Mr Edwards, 8.A., of Cambridge, and other ladies and gentlemen who sign their names and addresses -to the statement.

The story is simple. A dark sccancc took place at the lodgings of the two mediums. A spirit voice exclaimed that Mrs Guppy would be brought; a heavy body was “heard” to descend on the table ; a light was struck, and there was Mrs Guppy, large as life, but without her shoes, and apparently in a trance 1 On “ coming too she trembled all over”—naturally enough, as, though a medium, she is probably unaccustomed to travelling through the air ; and standing on a table, with ten gentlemen sitting around her, some of them strangers, is a trying position. This occurred at ten minutes past eight precisely. She was escorted home in a cab, and her friend, a Miss Neyland, declared that she had been sitting with Mrs Guppy, arranging household accounts, when the lady suddenly disappeared. In corroboration of this little fact, it must be mentioned that when Mrs Guppy descended on tho table in Lamb’s, Conduit street, she had an account-book in her hand, and the ink was still wet on tho word “onion,” the very last word addressed to her by her friend. It should also bo stated that when Miss Neyland missed her friend, slip searched for her “ up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady’s chamber,” and then, as in duty bound, went and told Mr Guppy. He was playing billiards, and gaily replied. “ No doubt the spirits have carried her off, but they will take care of her.” Even when supper came, and there was no Kirs Guppy, this bold man was not cast down, He asked the spirits, was she safe ?l {(They rapped out, “Yes,” and so he went to bed a model husband, even under circumstances calculated to test martial confidence to the extreme. But he was

partly used to it. Some time beffiFe'he had an experience as astounding. Mr Heame, a medium, “ dropped in” one evening, not in the common-place way, but through the the Jwalls and ceilings, in spite of fastened windows and locked doors. That, too, happened at twenty minutes past fen—the visitor appearing to the lady as “a black bundle descending from the ceiling,” while the husband, less favoured, simply finds him on the floor of his little breakfast room.