The New Revelation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This form of mediumship gives the very highest results, and yet in its / very nature is liable to self-deception. Are we using our own hand or / is an outside power directing it? It is only by the information / received that we can tell, and even then we have to make broad / allowance for the action of our own subconscious knowledge. It is / worth while perhaps to quote what appears to me to be a thoroughly / critic-proof case, so that the inquirer may see how strong the evidence / is that these messages are not self-evolved. This case is quoted in Mr. / Arthur Hill's recent book Man Is a Spirit (Cassell & Co.) and is / contributed by a gentleman who takes the name of Captain James Burton. / He is, I understand, the same medium (amateur) through whose / communications the position of the buried ruins at Glastonbury have / recently been located. "A week after my father's funeral I was writing / a business letter, when something seemed to intervene between my hand / and the motor centres of my brain, and the hand wrote at an amazing / rate a letter, signed with my father's signature and purporting to come / from him. I was upset, and my right side and arm became cold and numb. / For a year after this letters came frequently, and always at unexpected / times.

I never knew what they contained until I examined them with a / magnifying-glass: they were microscopic. And they contained a vast / amount of matter with which it was impossible for me to be acquainted. " / . "Unknown to me, my mother, who was staying some sixty miles / away, lost her pet dog, which my father had given her. The same night / I had a letter from him condoling with her, and stating that the dog / was now with him. 'All things which love us and are necessary to our / happiness in the world are with us here. ' A most sacred secret, known / to no one but my father and mother, concerning a matter which occurred / years before I was born, was afterwards told me in the script, with the / comment: 'Tell your mother this, and she will know that it is I, your / father, who am writing. ' My mother had been unable to accept the / possibility up to now, but when I told her this she collapsed and / fainted. From that moment the letters became her greatest comfort, for / they were lovers during the forty years of their married life, and his / death almost broke her heart.