"My Experiences at the MacDonald Homestead"
by H. B. Whidden

...page 5

Friday afternoon, March 10, Mrs. Macdonald and her adopted daughter, Mary Ellen, drove to the house at the request of Dr. Prince, as part of his programme of carrying out the investigation. Before we had finished supper, Dan MacGillivary, who lived half a mile distant and who had the nearest telephone to the house, called to tell me that Halifax wanted me on the phone. I talked the matter over and decided to go in a few minutes. It was not seven o’clock then, Dr. Prince went into the little bedroom off the dining room, and sat down to read.

I had told Dan MacGillivray that I would go with him right away. I was lying on the bed in the dining-room having a smoke, when suddenly I got up, and walked into the bedroom. If my recollection is correct, I touched the doctor slightly on the shoulder and asked him if he would mind giving me a test then—or if it was convenient for him to do so. He turned round and replied hat he would be glad to.

He cleared the small crude wooden table and I placed a few sheets of ordinary copy-paper on it. There was a lighted candle on the window-sill in front of the table. I sat down, took my Eversharp pencil from my vest-pocket, and placing my right arm and hand on the table, held the point of the pencil on the upper left hand corner of the paper. My hand and arm relaxed. I sat with my head turned sideways towards the wall on my left. Dr. Prince sat on the bed, on my right-hand side. My eyes were looking in the opposite direction.

Suddenly I felt a prickly sensation in the end of some of the fingers of my right hand, which increased. The hand then became numb. Before I realized what was happening, the pencil began to move slowly, without any effort or intention on my part. This lasted less than a minute, probably, when it commenced to form circles. The motion became more rapid, and my hand simply worked like a toy top over the paper. The movement became so fast and the pressure so hard that three sheets of paper were torn. Six sheets of paper had been covered in this manner, when the slanting lines on the seventh sheet. It next formed various movements over the paper and stopped for a fraction of a minute. Then it began to write in large, peculiarly shaped letters. This whole experience lasted over two hours A message seemed to be transmitted to me in this weird manner. I had no idea what was going to happen next; in fact, most of the time I did not know what letter was coming next. At other times, I conjectured after the first letter was written what the word was going to be. But most of the time I had absolutely no idea what was coming next. I had no control-over my hand, which was numb; I had a feeling of numbness about my heart as well; and although I could appreciate what was transpiring, my mind seemed to be control- led by some unseen power. Every movement appeared to be dictated or automatic. The writing was not of my own violation.

I felt sometimes as if drawn down over the table, with my eyes only four or five inches from the paper. This was almost invariably when something of outstanding importance or significance was to be written. Dr. Prince was an eye-witness, and there were times when he was sharpening pencils or getting more paper that my elbow shot out, my hand tugged him, and after attracting his attention, the hand proceeded again with the “message.” At times the movement was slow and decidely painstaking; at others it was incredibly rapid, inpetuous and eager. At times it tried to write words of the greatest significance, but went through odd contortions instead, and in some cases the questions were not answered. In others, the sentences were never completed. The unseen power seemed to increase its influence all the time, and less than thirty words of the message were written when my speech was even controlled by it. When statements of the greatest significance or importance were being written, it repeated every letter and sometimes the writing stopped for a few seconds, while Dr. Prince through my mouth, was requested to ask the “communicator” certain questions. Sometimes it looked as if the unseen power was so eager that it even wrote the questions down itself and answered them.