In a pamphlet entitled Wonderful Phenomena by Curtis Eli, is the report of an occurrence, or of an alleged occurrence, that was investigated by Mr. Addison A. Sawin, a spiritualist. He interpreted in the only way that I know of, and that is the psychochemic process of combining new data with preconceptions with which they seem to have affinity. It is said that, at Warwick, Canada West (Ontario), Oct. 3, 1843, somebody named Charles Cooper heard a rumbling sound in the sky, and saw a cloud, under which were three human forms, “perfectly white,” sailing through the air above him, little higher than the tree-tops. It is said that the beings were angels. They were male angels. That is orthodox. The angels wafted through the air, but without motions of their own, and an interesting observation is that they seemed to have belts around their bodies — as if they had been let down from a vessel above, though this poor notion is not suggested in the pamphlet. They “moaned.” Cooper called to some men who were laboring in another field, and they saw the cloud, but did not see the forms of living beings under it. It is said that a boy had seen the beings in the air, “side by side, making a loud and mournful noise.” Another person, who lived six miles away, is quoted: “He saw the clouds and the persons, and heard the sounds.” Mr. Sawin quotes others, who had seen “a very remarkable cloud,” and had heard the sounds, but had not seen the angels. He ends up: “Yours, in the glorious hope of the resurrection of the soul.” The gloriousness of it is an inverse function of the dolefulness of it: Sunday Schools will not take kindly to the doctrine — be good and you will moan forever. One supposes that the glorious hope colored the whole investigation.
(Aus “New Lands“, 1923)
