Katie Cook,
Medium Katie
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There is NO Death by Florence Marryat
CHAPTER XVII - THE MEDIUMSHIP OF KATIE COOK
In the matter of producing
physical phenomena the Cooks are a most remarkable family, all three
daughters being powerful media, and that without any solicitation on their
part. The second one, Katie, is by no means the least powerful of the three,
although she has sat more privately than her sister Florence, and not had
the same scientific tests (I believe) applied to her. The first time I had
an opportunity of testing Katie's mediumship was at the private rooms of
Signor Rondi, in a circle of nine or ten friends. The apartment was small
and sparsely furnished, being an artist's studio. The gas was kept burning
and before the sitting commenced the door was locked and strips of paper
pasted over the opening inside. The cabinet was formed of a window curtain
nailed across one corner of the room, behind which a chair was placed for
the medium, who is a remarkably small and slight girl---much slighter than
her sister Florence---with a thin face and delicate features, She was
dressed, on this occasion, in a tight-fitting black gown and Hessian boots
that buttoned half-way to her knee, and which, she informed me, she always
wore when sitting (just as Miss Showers did), because they had each eighteen
buttons, which took a long time to fasten and unfasten. The party sat in a
semicircle, close outside the curtain, and the light was lowered, but not
extinguished. There was no darkness,
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and no holding of hands. I mention these facts to show how very simple
the preparations were. In a few minutes the curtain was lifted, and a
form, clothed in white, who called herself Lily, was presented to our
view. She answered several questions relative to herself and the medium;
and perceiving some doubt on the part of some of the sitters, she seated
herself on my knee, I being nearest the curtain, and asked me to feel
her body, and tell the others how differently she was made from the
Medium. I had already realized that she was much heavier than Katie
Cook, as she felt like a heavy girl of nine or ten stone. I then passed
my hand up and down her figure. She had full breasts and plump arms and
legs, and could not have been mistaken by the most casual observers for
Miss Cook. Whilst she sat on my knee, however, she desired my husband
and Signor Rondi to go inside the curtain and feel that the medium was
seated in her chair. When they did so, they found Katie was only half
entranced. She thrust her feet out to view, and said, I am not Lily;
feel my boots. My husband had, at the same moment, one hand on Miss
Cook's knee, and the other stretched out to feel the figure seated on my
lap. There remained no doubt in his mind of there being two bodies there
at the same time. Presently Lily passed her hand over my dress, and
remarked how nice and warm it was, and how she wished she had one on
too. I asked her, Are you cold? and she said, Wouldn't you be cold if
you had nothing but this white thing on? Half jestingly, I took my fur
cloak, which was on a sofa dose by, and put it round her shoulders, and
told her to wear it. Lily seemed delighted. She exclaimed, Oh, how warm
it is! May I take it away with me? I said, Yes, if you will bring it
back before I go home. I have nothing else to wear, remember. She
promised she would, and left my side. In another moment she called out,
Turn up the gas! We did so. Lily was gone, and so was my large fur
cloak! We searched the little room round for it. It had entirely
disappeared.
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There was a locked cupboard in which Signor Rondi kept drawing
materials. I insisted on its being opened, although he declared it had
not been unlocked for weeks, and we found it full of dust and drawing
blocks, but nothing else, so the light was again lowered, and the seance
resumed. In a short time the heavy cloak was flung, apparently from the
ceiling, evidently from somewhere higher than my head, and fell right
over it.
I laid it again on the
sofa, and thought no more about it until I returned home. I then found, to
my astonishment, and considerably to my annoyance, that the fur of my cloak
(which was a new one) was all coming out. My dress was covered with it, and
from that day I was never able to wear the cloak again. Lily said she had
de-materialized it, to take it away. Of the truth of that assertion I had no
proof, but I am quite sure that she did not put it together again when she
brought it back. An army of moths encamped in it could not have damaged it
more, and I can vouch that until that evening the fur had been as perfect as
when I purchased it.
I think my next sitting with Katie Cook was at a
seance held in Museum Street, and on the invitation of Mr. Chas. Blackbum,
who is one of the most earnest friends of Spiritualism, and has expended a
large amount of money in its research. The only other guests were my
husband, and General and Mrs. Maclean. We sat round a small uncovered table
with the gas burning and without a cabinet. Miss Katie Cook had a seat
between General Maclean and myself, and we made sure of her proximity to us
during the whole seance. In fact, I never let go of her hand, and even when
she wished to use her pocket handkerchief, she had to do it with my hand
clinging to her own. Neither did she go into a trance. We spoke to her
occasionally during the sitting, and she answered us, though in a very
subdued voice, as she complained of being sick and faint. In about twenty
minutes, during which the usual manifestations occurred, the materialized
form of Lily
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appeared in the middle of the table, and spoke to us and kissed us all
in turn. Her face was very small, and she was only formed to the waist,
but her flesh was quite firm and warm. Whilst Lily occupied the table in
the full sight of all the sitters, and I had my hand upon Miss Cook's
figure (for I kept passing my hand up and down from her face to her
knees, to make sure it was not only a hand I held), some one grasped my
chair from behind and shook it, and when I turned my head and spoke, in
a moment one arm was round my neck and one round the neck of my husband,
who sat next to me, whilst the voice of my daughter Florence spoke to us
both and her long hair and her soft white dress swept over our faces and
hands. Her hair was so abundant and long, that she shook it out over my
lap, that I might feel its length and texture. I asked Florence for a
piece of her hair and dress, and scissors not being forthcoming, Lily
materialized more fully, and walked round from the other side of the
table and cut off a piece of Florence's dress herself with my husband's
penknife, but said they could not give me the hair that time. The two
spirits remained with us for, perhaps, half an hour or more, whilst
General Maclean and I continued to hold Miss Cook a prisoner. The power
then failing, they disappeared, but every one present was ready to take
his oath that two presences had been with us that never entered at the
door. The room was small and unfurnished, the gas was burning, the
medium sat for a whole time in our sight. Mrs. Maclean and I were the
only other women present, yet two girls bent over and kissed us, spoke
to us, and placed their bare arms on our necks at one and the same time.
There was again also a marked difference between the medium and the
materializations. I have already described her appearance. Both of these
Spirits had plump faces and figures, my daughter Florence's hands
especially being large and firm, and her loose hair nearly down to her
knees.
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I had the pleasure of holding another seance with Katie Cook in the same
rooms., when a new manifestation occurred. She is (as I have said) a
very small woman, with very short arms. I am, on the contrary, a very
large woman, with very long arms, yet the arm of the hand I held was
elongated to such an extent that it reached the sitters on the other
side of the table, where it would have been impossible for mine to
follow it. I should think the limb must have been stretched to thrice
its natural length, and that in the sight of everybody. I sat again with
Katie Cook in her own house, where, if trickery is employed, she had
every opportunity of tricking us, but the manifestations were much the
same, and certainly not more marvellous than those she had exhibited in
the houses of strangers. Lily and Florence both appeared at the same
time, under circumstances that admitted of no possibility of fraud. My
husband and I were accompanied on that occasion by our friends, Captain
and Mrs. Kendal, and the order of sitting round the table was as
follows: Myself, Katie, Captain K., Florence Cook, my husband, Mrs.
Cook, Mrs. Kendal. Each member of the family, it will be observed, was
held between two detectives, and their hands were not once set free. I
must say also that the seance was a free one, courteously accorded us on
the invitation of Mrs. Cook; and if deception had been intended, we and
our friends might just as well have been left to sit with Katie alone,
whilst the other members of the family superintended the manifestation
of the ghosts outside. Miss Florence Cook, indeed (Mrs. Comer) objected
at first to sitting with us, on the score that her mediumship usually
neutralized that of her sister, but her mother insisted on her joining
the Circle, lest any suspicion should be excited by her absence. The
Cooks, indeed, are, all of them, rather averse to sitting than not, and
cordially agree in disliking the powers that have been thrust upon them
against their own will.
These influences take
possession of them, unfitting them for more practical work, and they must
live. This is, I
153
believe, the sole reason that they have never tried to make money by the
exercise of their mediumship. But I, for one, fully believe them when
they tell me that they consider the fact of their being media as the
greatest misfortune that has ever happened to them. On the occasion of
this last seance, cherries and rosebuds were showered in profusion on
the table during the evening. These may easily be believed to have been
secreted in the room before the commencement of the sitting, and
produced at the proper opportunity, although the hands of everybody
interested in their production were fast held by strangers. But it is
less easy to believe that a lady of limited income, like Mrs. Cook,
should go to such an expense for an unpaid seance, for the purpose of
making converts of people who were strangers to her. Mediumship pays
very badly as it is. I am afraid it would pay still worse if the poor
media had to purchase the means for producing, the phenomena, especially
when, in a town like London, they run (as in this instance) to hothouse
fruit and flowers.
One more example of Katie
Cook's powers and I have done. We were assembled one evening by the
invitation of Mr. Charles Blackburn at his house, Elgin Crescent. We sat in
a small breakfast room on the basement floor, so small indeed, for the size
of the party, that as we encircled a large round table, the sitters' backs
touched the wall on either side, thus entirely preventing any one crossing
the room whilst we were established there. The only piece of furniture of
any consequence in the room, beside the chairs and table, was a trichord
cabinet piano, belonging to Mrs. Cook (who was keeping house at the time for
Mr. Blackburn), and which she much valued.
Katie Cook sat amongst us as usual. In the middle of
the seance her control Lily, who was materialized, called out, Keep hands
fast. Don't let go, whatever you do! And at the same time, without seeing
anything (for we were sitting in complete darkness), we became conscious
that something
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large and heavy was passing or being carried over our heads. One of the
ladies of the party became nervous, and dropped her neighbour's hand
with a cry of alarm, and, at the same moment, a weighty body fell with a
fearful crash on the other side of the room. Lily exclaimed, Some one
has let go hands, and Mrs. Cook called out, Oh! it's my piano. Lights
were struck, when we found the cabinet piano had actually been carried
from its original position right over our heads to the opposite side of
the room, where it had fallen on the floor and been seriously damaged.
The two carved legs were broken off, and the sounding board smashed in.
Any one who had heard poor Mrs. Cook's lamentations over the ruin of her
favourite instrument, and the expense it would entail to get it
restored, would have felt little doubt as to whether she had been a
willing victim to this unwelcome proof of her daughter's physical
mediumship.