859 A. The following account of Miss A.'s experiences is quoted from Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ix. (1893) pp. 73-92.

Statement Of Miss A. As To Her Automatic Writing

1. Origin Of The Writing

About eight years ago we first heard that people could sometimes write without knowing what they wrote; and that it was supposed that departed friends could communicate in this way. We determined to try whether any of us could write thus. We tried first with a planchette, and when my mother's hand and my hand were upon it we got writing easily. We did not at first get any message professing to come from any spirit known to us.

2. Mode Of Writing

We soon ceased to use the planchette, and I was able to write alone. I can now generally, but not always, write when I sit quiet with a pencil in my hand. The writing often conies extremely fast; at a much faster rate than I could keep up by voluntary effort for so long a time. I have to turn over the pages of the large paper which I generally use, and to guard the lines of writing from running into each other, but except for this there is no need for me to look at the paper, as I can talk on other subjects while the writing is going on. I can always stop the writing by a distinct effort of will. One curious thing is that my hand is never in the least tired by automatic writing.

3. Character Of The Script

I get various handwritings; I may have had a dozen altogether. I may divide these simply into two classes.

A. Large and scrawly hands, which seem to aim at ease of writing, rather than at indivuality, and do not divide their words, but run on without a break. Such are the hands of the so-called "guides" and of other "spirits" who write frequently. (Whatever the sources of this writing may be, I must use the terms which the writing uses in order to avoid constant roundabout phrases.) These large running handwritings do differ somewhat both from my own handwriting and from each other; but they most of them have a general resemblance to a large, rapid scrawl of my own, with an alteration in the shape of some letters so as to avoid breaks in the continuous scrawl. I can almost always tell who is writing; but there are differences in energy, in little details of management of the paper, etc, which help me to distinguish, even before the end of the message comes, when the signature shows me who has been writing. When the pronoun "we" is used there is no signature, as that represents "the guides".

B. There are also several handwritings which keep a strongly individual character, sometimes plainly of an assumed kind; I mean writing in a way in which no one would have written in life. Thus John Longland wrote in an odd, twisted, serpentine way and very small. We unluckily burnt all his writings except one scrap, as we did not believe that he was a real person. A spirit calling himself Detorno makes all the letters square.

Then, again, when the guides are writing in reply to a private question put by some friend of mine they write wrong side up, so that the friend sitting opposite to me can read the writing and I cannot. They seem to write this way just as easily as the other. Sometimes there is mirror-writing. Sometimes each word in a sentence is written backwards, and sometimes the whole sentence is written backwards, beginning with the last letter of the last word. In a few cases only have we thought that the handwriting resembled what the supposed spirit wrote in life. This was especially so in the case of a communication claiming to come from my grandfather, whose handwriting I had never seen. My mother produced an old signature of his, and certainly it was like; but there was not enough of the automatic writing to make us quite sure. When the "spirit" or "control," or whatever it is, leaves me I cannot make it come again, and writing from spirits known to us on earth is rare in comparison with writing from the guides, or from quite unknown spirits giving fantastic names.

Sometimes they give what they say were their real earth-names; and then we can sometimes identify them; although there is, of course, this difficulty, that if they are obscure we cannot find them, or if they are well known, people who give me credit for more knowledge of history than I possess may think that I knew all about them, and that the messages come from my own mind.

[The Countess of Radnor adds:-

I think Miss A. has considerably understated the number of distinctly and remarkably different types of handwriting that have come through her hand. I enclose a list of thirteen names of "guides," each one of whom has a characteristic handwriting, invariably the same, however great the length of time that elapses between the communications. In addition to these there have been many instances where personalities - the so-called dead, or occasionally the living - have written in distinct handwrittings. H. M. Radnor].