… At page 105 of Mr Owen’s volume, we have a most interesting account of disturbances occurring at the parsonage of Cideville, in the department of Sein Inferieure, France, in the winter of 1850-51. The circumstances gave rise to a trial, and the whole of the facts were brought out by the examination of a number of witnesses. The Marquis de Mirville collected from the legal record all the documents connected with the trial, including the proces verbal of the testimony. It is from these official documents Mr Owen gives his details of the occurrences.
The disturbances commenced from the time when two boys, aged 12 and 14, came to be educated by M. Tinel, the parish priest of Cideville, and continued two months and a half until the children were removed from the parsonage. They consisted of knockings, as if with a hammer on the wainscot; scratchings, shakings of the house so that all the furniture rattled; a din as if everyone in th ehouse were beating the floor with mallets, the beatings forming tunes when asked, and answering questions by numbers agreed on.
Besides these noises there were strange and unaccountable exhibitions of force. The tables and desks moved about without visible cause; the fire-irons flew repeatedly into the middle of the room, windows were broken; a hammer was thrown into the middle of the room, and yet fell without noise, as if put down by an invisible hand; persons standing quite alone had their dresses pulled.
On the Mayor of Cideville coming to examine into the matter, a table at which he sat with another person, moved away in spite of their endeavours to hold it back, while the children were standing in the middle of the room; and many other facts of a similar nature were observed repeatedly by numerous persons of respectability and position, every one of whom, going with the intention of finding out a trick, were, after deliberate examination, convinced that the phenomena were not produced by any person present. The Marquis de Mirville was himself one of the witnesses.
The interest of this case consists first, in the evidence having been brought out before a legal tribunal, and secondly, in the remarkable resemblance of the phenomena to those which had occurred a short time previously in America, but had not yet become much known in Europe. There is also the closest resemblance to what occurred at Epworth Parsonage in the family of Wesley’s father, and which is almost equally well authenticated. Now when in three different countries, phenomena occur of an exactly similar nature, and which are all open to the fullest examination at the time, and when no trick or delusion is in either case found out, but every individual of many hundreds who go to see them become convinced of their reality, the fact of the similarity of the occurrences even in many details, is of great weight as indicating a similar natural origin. In such cases we cannot fairly accept the general explanation of “imposture,” given by those who have not witnessed the phenomena, when none of those who did witness them, could ever detect imposture. …
Spiritualist, 15th March 1871.