Emma
The servant girl of Joseph Haddock, a well-known English
exponent of animal magnetism before the advent of Spiritualism.
Emma was the first English somnambule or trance subject
whose powers of clairvoyance and trance visions were carefully
recorded. These were published in Haddocks book Somnolism
Emerald Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology 5th Ed.
500
and Psychism (1851) and in such journals of the time as The Zoist
and the Boston Chronicle.
Haddock narrated that one day, trying to put a patient into
magnetic (mesomeric) sleep, he thought of suspending a magnet
from the ceiling and directing the patient to look steadfastly
at it. Emma was in the kitchen under the room where he was
practicing and knew nothing of his movements. In a few minutes
Haddock smelled burning and called out to his daughter
to look for the cause. She found Emma on fire. Haddock quickly
ran down and found her mesmerized, on her knees before
the kitchen fire, engaged in sweeping the hearth and with her
apron burning from contact with a glowing coal. She was unconscious
of the fire and her attention was wholly directed to
a point in the kitchen ceiling. When asked what she was doing,
she replied, I want that magnet. When Haddock pretended
not to understand, she replied, that magnet hanging up
there and accurately described its position.
Subsequent experiments disclosed that Emma had remarkable
powers both in medical and in traveling clairvoyance.
Haddock freely employed her for making diagnoses. She could
describe the diseased structures in the patients body without
medical terms. Looking at the heart she called the auricles the
ears and the ventricles the meaty part. She distinguished
between arterial and venous blood in the heart by calling one
the light side and the other the dark side. She could see
events at a distance and described the whereabouts of lost or
stolen property.
One case attracted considerable attention at the time. A Mr.
Arrowsmith of Bolton, England, was considerably worried over
a sum of £650 that one Mr. Lomax the cashier remembered to
have paid into the bank but which the bank denied receiving.
Emma was consulted. On being given the envelope that had
contained the money, she correctly described the contents and
how they were handed in at the bank counter and finally described
the missing banknotes and the bill of exchange in an
envelope with other papers in an inner room of the bank. Arrowsmith
went to the bank and demanded another search, and
on the directions given by Emma, the money was found among
some old circulars in the managers private room.
Like her contemporary Adèle Maginot, Emma had visions
of the future life and spiritual matters, which Haddock also recorded
in his book.
Sources
Haddock, Joseph. Somnolism and Psychism. 1851. Reprint,
New York Arno Press, 1975.
