Amos Kilbright | Page 3

sore thing to inflict upon
any man, and there are few to whom I would have broached it, but I
will make it brief. Three weeks ago these spiritualists held privately in
this town what they call a séance, and at that time I was impelled, by a
power I understood not, to appear among them. After I had come it was
supposed that a mistake had been made, and that I was not the spirit
wanted. In the temporary confusion occasioned by this supposition, and
while the attention of the exhibitors was otherwise occupied, I was left
exposed to the influence of the materializing agencies for a much
longer time than had been intended; so long, indeed, that instead of
remaining in the misty, indistinct form in which spirits are presented by
these men to their patrons, I became as thoroughly embodied, as full of
physical life and energy, and as complete a mortal man as I was when I
disappeared from this earth, one hundred and two years ago."
"One hundred and two years!" I mechanically ejaculated. There was
upon me the impulse to get up and go where I could breathe the outer
air; to find my wife and talk to her about marketing or some household
affair, to get away from this being--human or whatever he was--but this
was impossible. That interest which dawned upon me when I first
perceived my visitor now held me as if it had been a spell.
"Yes," he said, "I deceased in 1785, being then in my thirtieth year. I

was a citizen of Bixbury, on the Massachusetts coast, but I am not
unconnected with this place. Old Mr. Scott, of your town, is my
grandson."
I am obliged to chronicle the fact that my present part in this
conversation consisted entirely of ejaculations. "Old Mr. Scott your
grandson!" I said.
"Yes," he replied; "my daughter, who was but two years old when I left
her, married Lemuel Scott, of Bixbury, who moved to this town soon
after old Mr. Scott was born. It was, indeed, on account of this good old
man that I became materialized. He was present at the private séance of
which I have spoken, and being asked if he would like to see a person
from the other world, he replied that he should be pleased to behold his
grandfather. When the necessary influences were set to work I appeared.
The spiritualists, who, without much thought, had conceived the idea
that the grandfather of old Mr. Scott ought, in the ordinary nature of
things, to be a very venerable personage, were disappointed when they
saw me, and concluded I was one who, by some mistake, had been
wrongfully summoned. They, therefore, set me aside, as it were, and
occupied themselves with other matters. Old Mr. Scott went away
unsatisfied, and strengthened in his disbelief in the powers of the
spiritualists, while I, as I have before said, was left unnoticed under the
power of the materializing force, until I was made corporeal as I am
now. When the spiritualists discovered what had happened they were
much disturbed, and immediately set about to dematerialize me, for it is
not their purpose or desire to cause departed spirits to again become
inhabitants of this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I
remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in
full health and vigor, for I had never had a day's sickness in my life,
having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too
far from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea,
was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit's end, they determined
to keep the matter privy, and to make the best of it, and the first
necessity was to provide me with clothing, for on my second entrance
into this world I was as totally without apparel as when I first came into
it. They gave me these garments of the ordinary fashion of the day, but
to which I find myself much unaccustomed, and enjoined upon me to
keep silent in regard to what had happened; fearing, as I was made

aware by some unguarded words, that their efforts to dematerialize me
might bring them into trouble."
My professional instincts now came to the front. "That would be
murder," I said, "and nothing less."
"So I myself told them," he continued, "for I had come to the
determination that I would choose to finish out the life I had broken off
so suddenly. But they paid little heed to my words and continued their
experiments. But, as I have told you, their efforts were without avail,
and they have ceased to make further trial of dematerialization. As, of