Free The Pen Friend by Ciaran Carson Page B

then a hymn is sung. Within a few minutes, sounds – tap, tap, tap – are heard on the floor close to the medium. They soon become louder and stronger, and occur right out in the circle space, on the table, and on the chairs of the sitters. Their magnitude varies in intensity from barely audible ticks to blows which might well be produced by a sledgehammer, the latter being really awe-inspiring and easily heard two storeys below, and even outside the house. The loud blows perceptibly shake the floor and chairs. Sometimes the raps keep time to hymns sung by the members of the circle; sometimes they tap out of themselves complicated tunes and popular dances on the top of the table or on the floor.
    Other extraordinary effects include imitations of a bouncing ball – one would really think there was a ball in the room – the sawing of the table leg, the striking of a match, the walking of a man, and the trotting of a horse. Sometimes the raps sound perfect fusillades, for all the world like gunshots. After a quarter of an hour or so the rapping stops, and another type of phenomenon takes place. Remember, said Crawford, that the members of the Circle are simply sitting in their chairs holding each other’s hands in chain order. The little table is standing on the floor within the circle, and is not in contact with any of them, or any portion of their clothing. Suddenly the table gives a lurch, or it moves along the floor. It lifts two of its legs into the air. Then all four. The table rises completely into the air of itself, where it remains suspended for several minutes without support, said Crawford.
    According to Crawford, the phenomena were produced by ‘psychic rods’, which emerged from the orifices of Kathleen Goligher’s body, and, anxious to verify their physical existence, he made several attempts to photograph them. On 23rd October 1915, as described by him in The Reality of Psychic Phenomena , he succeeded in obtaining an image which seemed to corroborate his theory. On the developed plate, plainly visible within the Goligher Circle, was a vertical column of whitish translucent material, about four inches in diameter and rising to a height of about five feet. The pattern of the wallpaper was quite easily seen through it, said Crawford. At its summit, however, it appeared quite opaque, as if the psychic stuff, issuing from its source, had exhausted its velocity at the top, and had doubled over on itself. The column, moreover, had several arms or branches, one of which appeared to terminate in or emanate from the chest of the medium. Others were joined to Miss Anna Goligher and Master S. Goligher. The whole photograph suggested to Crawford that the medium was in reality a psychic pump, with a complete pressure system. Perhaps, during levitation, the vertical column was under the table, in which case the pressure range would appear much greater. As it was, the psychic fluid appeared to be losing its energy much in the same way as a vertical jet of water, projected upwards against its own weight only, inevitably loses impetus and falls back.
    Interestingly, Crawford failed to reproduce the photograph to support his verbal account, though it appeared in his posthumous book, The Psychic Structures at the Goligher Circle . In like manner, wanting to show that the sounds produced by the Circle were not the result of a collective hallucination, he hired a phonograph – an Edison Standard model – from a local dealer and, on 14th April 1916, ten days before the Easter Rising in Dublin, he successfully recorded the phenomena, which according to Crawford were produced by spiritual ‘operators’ who manipulated the psychic rods that emanated from Kathleen Goligher’s body.
    I was struck not so much by this alleged proof as by the fact that the recording session took place on the same day that my father was born, and I was struck by a powerful nostalgia for a time I had never known. The Golighers were textile workers,