Page:The Naturalisation of the Supernatural.pdf/187

Rh other room) on the floor behind the door, the space being lit up by means of a lamp in his room. The construction of the house was such that it was impossible to throw the stones through the open space from outside.

I wrote before that it seemed to me that the boy had been dozing all the time after I awoke him. 1 got that impression because his movements seemed to me abnormally slow; his rising up, his walking around, and everything seemed extraordinarily slow. These movements gave me the same strange impression as the slowly falling stones.

When I think over this last fact (for I remember very well the strange impression the slowly moving boy made on me) I feel now inclined to suggest the hypothesis that there might have been something abnormal in my own condition at the time. For having read in the Proceedings about hallucinations, I dare not state any more that the stones in reality moved slowly; it might have been on account of some condition of my own sensory organs that it seemed to me that they did, though at that time I was not in the least interested in the question of hallucinations or of spiritism. I am afraid that the whole thing will ever remain a puzzle to me.

Now, there is one serious discrepancy in this account. According to his original version Mr. Grottendieck's first step, after being awakened by the falling stones, was to go into the next room, and wake up the boy. The boy then searched the jungle, and on his return was told to search the kitchen. Mr. Grottendieck climbed the partition whilst the boy was searching the kitchen. But in his later letter he describes seeing the boy asleep whilst he is himself on the partition, trying to catch the stones as they fall. One of these two accounts then—we cannot tell which—must be inaccurate in regard to the important detail of the boy's position