Experiences in spiritualism with Mr. D.D. Home - Viscount Adare

In the preface he tells us: ‘‘We have not, on a single occasion, during the whole series of seances, seen any indication of contrivance on the part of the medium for producing or facilitating the manifestations which have taken place. "Being personally acquainted with Mr. Home, and having resided for some little time with him in London during the autumns of 1867 and 1868, and having travelled in his company in Germany in the summer of 1868, I have had considerable opportunity of witnessing the phenomena of Spiritualism, not only at regular seances, but also at times when we were quite alone, and without any premeditation on our part. My father [4th Earl of Dunraven], being interested in the subject, requested me to write him a short account of anything remarkable that occurred. "There are four things I wish to mention:— "1st.—It has been my object throughout to divest my accounts of all the sensational element; and partly for the sake of brevity, partly from a fear of exaggerating in any particular deepest attention. "2nd.—To put down on paper accurately, even the substance of what Mr. Home says when speaking in a trance, is extremely difficult. Unless a writer be acquainted with some method of short-hand writing, it is impossible to keep pace with a speaker delivering a long discourse with ordinary rapidity of utterance. "3rd.—Even in the original letters to my father, I was obliged to omit a few circumstances of great interest; in some cases on account of their having reference to persons who did not wish those circumstances mentioned [with respect to matters of a private nature] "4th.—It may perhaps appear strange to some that I did not, at the commencement of my investigations, take greater pains to determine that the manifestations were not the result of trickery, collusion or mechanical contrivance....My father had early opportunities of testing for himself, and soon arrived at the same conclusion [of veracity]. Previous to the preface he presents long compiled lists of the unusual phenomena, which embrace almost every spiritualistic manifestation, that were witnessed and the sitters that witnessed them in the roughly eighty seances detailed. Lord Adare is the author of this remarkable work of his experiences with D. D. Home, printed privately in 1869 at the request of his father, Earl of Dunraven. To make this book accessible to a large public and in memory of his father to whose title he succeeded, the author agreed in 1924 to a second edition by the Society for Psychical Research, omitting the attestation of some of the prominent witnesses of the phenomena. The probable reason for the privacy of the first publication was that the Earl of Dunraven, being a Roman Catholic, wished to avoid the censure of the Church."