Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Spiritualism, Charlatanry

    Discusses an article by Sarah Welton in a recent number of the Spiritual Magazine in which she describes the alleged dialogue between a medium 'J.D.' and a spirit form, who was shabbily dressed and communicated 'telegraphically' via a finger on the medium's left hand. Punch considers the implications of the spirit's claim to be 'clothed by his own thoughts' and its apparent 'unsocial' behaviour. Concludes by noting that while the questions raised by the story are 'unanswerable', 'most people would like to be perfectly sure that J.D., when he heard through his left hand, did not see behind his closed eyelids, if not with his eye and his elbow over the left'.