The Shadow World

# The Shadow World by Hamlin Garland

This 1908 account presents Garland's investigation into spiritualist phenomena as a director of the American Psychical Society. Framed as a dinner-table discussion, the narrative begins with debate between skeptics (notably chemist Dr. Miller) and believers (Brierly, Howard) regarding telepathy, hypnotism, and mediumship. Garland recounts his involvement beginning in 1891-92, when invited to serve on the society's Executive Board investigating "physical phenomena"—slate-writing, levitation, and automatic writing. The opening case involves a mill-hand woman in Lowell, Massachusetts whose daughter demonstrated mediumistic powers; during the sitting, tables rapped, chairs moved, and a rocking-chair swayed without apparent human agency. Garland reflects that mediums possess genuine abnormal powers, distinguishing them from pure fraudsters. He challenges the assembled company to demonstrate phenomena through a disciplined twenty-one-day séance protocol, claiming trance states and spirit impersonation would manifest among even skeptical participants.