After it is stated that Lord Crawford, not long before, had fancied he
beheld an apparition of a man seated in a chair, it is easy to imagine
the attitude of credulous expectancy with which he, at all events, would
"wait for Home's return" via the open window. And the others were
doubtless in the same expectant frame of mind. "Expectancy" and
"suggestibility" will, indeed, work marvels. I shall never forget how
the truth of this was borne home to me some years ago. A friend of
mine--now a physician in Maryland, but at that time a medical student in
Toronto--occasionally amused himself by giving table-tipping seances, in
which he enacted the role of medium. There was no suspicion on his
sitters' part that he was a "fraud." One evening he invoked the "spirit"
of a little child, who had been dead a couple of years, and proceeded
to "spell out" some highly edifying messages. Suddenly the seance was
interrupted by a shriek and a lady present, not a relative of the dead
child, fell to the floor in a faint. When revived, she declared that
while the messages were being delivered she had seen the head of a child
appear through the top of the table.