- 39 - occasionally two at a time, flying like balloons from one participant to another and, when they were asked: ‘Please come over to me’, taking the shortest route to the person making the request, often directly across the table and as swiftly as shooting stars. • Phantoms, which were invisible, whose footsteps, however, were heard on the creaking floorboards, came and touched my face and hands and my whole body with their soft, living hands and fingers. The sensation of the touch of a living human hand was unmistakable. These invisible phantoms will, if requested to, fetch objects from all over the room in which the séance is being held, and, in spite of the darkness, never grasp the wrong object, never collide with anything and never touch a participant, not even when moving a heavy object, like a bronze bust weighing 30 pounds, or when setting down an iron kettle filled with melted paraffin weighing 12 kilograms. • Apparitions visible by red light. These phantoms generally picked up a luminous plate and turned the dark side to the participants, illuminating themselves and going from one person to another, to give each one the opportunity of observing them close by. The light radiated by the plate was so strong that the pores and roughness of the skin of the phantom faces and hands could be distinguished. On the nose of one old man, I could even see the sinuous tracing of the tiny veins. I could also distinguish the texture of the cloth in which the phantom was clothed. These apparitions came so close to me that I could hear them breathe and feel their breath against my face. “But the most impressive and convincing feature of these apparitions when they came toward us were the eyes and faces, and their lively expressions. When questions were addressed to the apparitions, their facial expressions were always perfectly suited to the answer, and their lips formed an amiable smile. • The phantoms of animals we saw were chiefly squirrels, dogs and cats. On one occasion a lion appeared and on another, a large bird, either a falcon or a buzzard. I myself saw the first two mentioned species, which behaved quite naturally, the squirrel hopping about the table, the dog running around it, wagging its tail, jumping into the laps of the participants and licking their faces. In short, he acted in every respect as any trained dog would. The lion’s behaviour, I was told, was more threatening; it lashed its tail, striking the furniture. The startled séance participants were unable to control this animal and put an end to the séance by awakening the medium. The buzzard flew about, beating against the walls and ceiling with its wings, and when it finally perched on the medium’s shoulder, a flash photograph was taken of it by a camera that had been placed in front of the medium. • Among this class of phantoms is also the strange spectre of a creature called “pithecanthropus” by the members of the group. This apparition is frequently in evidence at Kluski’s séances. Since it appears only in complete darkness, a closer examination of it is difficult. It has the appearance of a hairy man or of a large ape, its face being covered with hair, its forehead fairly high, and its arms long and powerful; its behaviour toward the séance participants is rough and boisterous. It tries to stroke their Image 2: Materialised (Or apported?) raptor with spread wings on the shoulder of the medium Franek Kluski in a trance. Photo, August 1919 in Warsaw. From: G. Geley: “L’Ectoplasmie et la Clairvoyance”, Libraire Felix Alcan, Paris 1924.
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