The Beating Spirit of Bergzabern II - Study Group The Legacy of Allan Kardec

Spiritist Magazine — Journal of Psychological Studies — 1858 > June > The Beating Spirit of Bergzabern II

The second article about the scout

In this second article on the subject, Allan Kardec takes it up again after the Filipina Sanger girl spent a season at Dr. Bentner, your doctor.

The passages that follow come from a new German paperback, published in 1853.

It is now known that phenomena of this kind do not result from a pathological state; rather, they denote an excessive sensitivity.

In the first brochure entitled The Beating Spirits saw that Filipina Sänger's manifestations have an enigmatic and extraordinary character. We relate these wonderful facts from its beginning until the moment when the girl was taken to the doctor. When the girl left Dr. Bentner and returned home, the knocking and scratching began again at the Sänger house. Until that moment, and even after his complete healing, the manifestations were more marked and changed in nature.

The phenomena also become musical

a small spindle is thrown from the bedroom.
a piece of cloth that had previously been dipped in a basin of water. without being shaken and not a single drop had landed on the table.
the bed pillows were tossed over a closet and the bedspread thrown against the door.
an iron weighing about six pounds had been placed at the girl's feet, under the covers. Soon he was thrown into the first room; the cable had been removed and was found on an armchair in the bedroom.
chairs placed three feet from the bed to be overturned;
windows being opened, when before they were tightly closed;
Another time, two chairs were carried over to the bed, without disturbing the covers.
One night, as he left his daughter's room, Sänger threw a chair cushion in his back. At other times it was a pair of old slippers, shoes that were under the bed, or clogs that found him.
They often blew out the lighted candle on the work table.
keys, coins, cigarette cases, watches, gold and silver rings. All, without exception, were suspended in his hand.
They had once left a harmonica on a chair. Sounds were heard. Rushing into the room, they found, as usual, the girl calm in her bed. The instrument was on the chair, but it no longer played.

Other Facts about Bergzabern's Beater Spirit

Usually, when the little sleepwalker was about to begin the session, she would call everyone present to her room. Often he only calmed down when everyone, without exception, was at his bedside.

After a time, the tapping and scratching was joined by a hum comparable to the sound produced by a thick bass string; a kind of whistling mingled with this hum.

Through the scratches, he called by name the people of the house or the strangers present. Everyone easily understood to whom the appeal was addressed. To this call, the designated person responded yea, to make her understand that she knew how to treat herself. Then, in his honor, a piece of music was played that sometimes provoked comic scenes.

The phenomenon's birthday

The anniversary of the day on which the scouting Spirit had first manifested has arrived: many changes had taken place in the state of Filipina Sänger. The beatings, scratches and buzzing continued, but to all these manifestations was added a special cry, which sometimes sounded like a goose, sometimes a parrot or any other large bird.

Some time before Christmas, the demonstrations were renewed with more energy: the blows and scratches became more violent and lasted longer. More agitated than usual, Filipina often asked not to sleep in her bed, but in her parents'.

Filipina gets sick

In a short time Filipina Sänger's condition changed to the point of causing apprehension about her health, because, being awake, she rambled and dreamed aloud. He didn't recognize his parents or his sister or anyone else. To this state was added a complete deafness, which persisted for fifteen days.

Filipina's deafness was manifesting itself, and she herself declared that she would be deaf for some time and that she would be sick. What is singular is that sometimes he recovered his hearing for about half an hour, with which he was happy. She herself predicted the moment when she would become deaf and when she would regain her hearing. Once, among others, he announced that at eight-thirty in the evening he would hear clearly for half an hour. In fact, at the predicted time, he heard again, which lasted until nine o'clock.

During the young Sänger's deafness, the fuss of furniture, the inexplicable opening of windows, the turning off of the lights on the work table were renewed a few times.

This was how things went on at Sänger's house, whether during the day or at night, during the girl's sleep or when she was awake, until March 4, 1853, when the demonstrations entered another phase. That day was marked by an event even more extraordinary than the preceding ones.

Comments

As it turns out, Filipina Sänger was a very complex natural medium. In addition to her influence on the well-known phenomena of noise and movement, she was an ecstatic sleepwalker. She talked with the incorporeal beings she saw; at the same time he saw the assistants and spoke to them.

It is likely that, in these moments of ecstasy, the girl's spirit would see herself transported to some distant place, where she would attend, perhaps in memory, a religious ceremony. We can be amazed at the memory he brought back when he woke up, but the fact is not unusual. In fact, we can see that the memory was confused and that it was necessary to insist a lot to provoke it.

If we carefully observe what happened during deafness, we will easily recognize a cataleptic state. As the deafness was only temporary, it is evident that it did not cause changes in Organs respective organs. The same happened with the obliteration of the mental faculties, which was not pathological, since, at a given moment, everything returned to the normal state. This kind of apparent stupidity was due to a more complete detachment of the soul, whose excursions were made with greater freedom and left the senses no more than organic life.