cal mediumship itself,
as a freak of nature, were definitely closed.... So long as the stories
multiply in various lands, and so few are positively explained away, it is
bad method to ignore them.'[13] Here they are not ignored, because,
whatever the cause or causes of the phenomena, they would buttress, if
they did not originate, the savage belief in spirits tenanting inanimate
matter, whence came Fetishism. As to facts, we cannot, of course, 'explain
away' events of this kind, which we know only through report. A conjurer
cannot explain a trick merely from a description, especially a description
by a non-conjurer. But, as a rule, nothing so much leads to doubt on this
theme as the 'explanation' given--except, of course, in the case of 'dark
seances' got up and prepared by paid mediums. We know, sometimes, how the
'explanation' arose.

Thus, the house of a certain M. Zoller, a lawyer and member of the Swiss
Federal Council, a house at Stans, in Unterwalden, was made simply
uninhabitable in 1860-1862. The disturbances, including movements of
objects, were of a truly odious description, and occurred in full
daylight. M. Zoller, deeply attached to his home, which had many
interesting associations with the part his family played in the struggle
against revolutionary France, was obliged to abandon the place. He had
made every conceivable sort of research, and had called in the local
police and _savants_, to no purpose.

But the affair was explained away thus: While the phenomena could still be
concealed from public curiosity, a client called to see M. Zoller, who was
out. The client, therefore, remained in the drawing-room. Loud and heavy
blows resounded through the room. The client, as it chanced, had once felt
the effects of an electric battery, for some medical reason, apparently.
M. Zoller writes: 'My eldest son was present at the time, and, when my
client asked whether there was such a thing as an electrical machine in
the house (the family having been enjoined to keep the disturbances as
secret as possible), he allowed S. to think that there was.' Consequently,
the phenomena were set down to M. Zoller's singular idea of making
his house untenantable with an 'electric machine'--which he did not
possess.[14] A number of the most respected citizens, including the
Superintendent of Police, and the chief magistrate for law, published a
statement that neither Zoller, nor any of his family, nor any of
themselves, produced o