Thus in Mr. Austin Podmore’s account of Mr. Davey’s seance, his attention was called away for two or three minutes without his noting it.  We may take it for granted that the kickings up of the bedclothes during which Sanders became weak and faint, lasted ten minutes or more.  “Being fanned as though some bird were flying round my head,” arose from his own breath after his efforts; he felt it the more as he had got warm.[29] The sound of breathing may have been of his own, but is not unlikely to have been the transferred sound of the breathing of one of two people hypnotising him.  The feeling of the bed being carried round (or moved) towards the window is a feeling of reaction:  a man sticks his back against the bed to resist the material and mental pressure, and the relief felt as the effort ceases gives him the impression that the bed has been swung towards the window, towards which he naturally looks, since the slight draught refreshes him and diverts the attack.  That he actually felt some one making passes over him is not an error; he had two antagonists; one of whom, like the young engineer Cleave,[30] was hypnotised by the other, both willing the hypnotism of Sanders.

[Footnote 29:  “Alleged Haunting,” p. 46.]

[Footnote 30:  “Osgood Mason,” p. 234.]

He felt the passes the stronger antagonist was making over the other.  If one of the two people can obtain return messages like Mr. Godfrey, intimate knowledge of his victim’s doings might soon be obtained.  A ghost appeared to young H. in the shape of a veiled lady; perhaps the mist round her was taken for a veil.  But to return to the action of two hypnotists on one person, it may be noted that the sound like the giving of a tin box heard by Miss Moore, Miss Freer, and Miss Langton,[31] and afterwards like the lid of a coalscuttle caught by a dress by Mrs. M.,[32] was the sound of a gong doubtless used to stimulate the hypnotised partner in the blackguard couple.  Such a sound done with a little spring gong, or with a larger one, has been heard by a victim.

[Footnote 31:  “Haunting of B——­ House,” p. 155.]

[Footnote 32:  “Haunting of B——­ House,” p. 173.]

By such experience, too, the monotonous reading can be explained; it was the commencement by less powerful hypnotists of a supporting attack:  the words would become audible, distinguishable, and noticeable later.  This might ensue after the victim was more deeply hypnotised.

Probably the very words which were to be used later were used then, a sort of sub-conscious memory being created.

Apparitions of a misty nature are described by Podmore in his chapter on “Haunted Houses."[33] Miss Langton saw a misty phantom, and Lizzie the housemaid saw a cloud and afterwards got a cramp, less persistent than the butler’s, as she began to scream.[34] The upper housemaid saw a woman whose legs she did not notice,[35] as was the case with Mr. Godfrey’s friend to whom he appeared hypnotically.