Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/177

Rh M. Bouffay had heard raps and noises "in those rooms only where the children were." He adds:

I also saw, both upstairs and downstairs, the perfectly isolated table move without any force that I could see to cause the movement. On the second visit I scarcely saw anything. On the third visit I saw pretty much the same things as on the first. I noticed that the children were perfectly motionless when the sound was produced, so could not have made it themselves. I heard it when the Curé was absent from the Presbytery as well as in his presence. It was impossible that either he or the children should have had anything to do with the noise, because it was too loud.

Further, the witness said that when he returned with M. Tinel and the children from the house of one of the inhabitants of the commune, where they had slept on account of the noises at the Presbytery, just as the children were going up to their room to ascertain if all was at an end, he saw a phantom-like vapour go with great rapidity through the kitchen door towards the room where the children were.

M. Bréard, when at breakfast with MM. Bouffay and Tinel, had heard an alarming knock on the floor beneath the table, and was certain that neither the children nor the Curé could have caused it.

Dufour, a postman, saw a table move without any one touching it. Lecontre, a carpenter, testified to a stone being mysteriously thrown. Leseigneur, eighteen years of age, a farmer, "saw a hammer impelled by some occult force start from the top of the table and fly at the window,