“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This account will also draw from the chapter on seances in Jane’s projected book on ESP. She made detailed notes on our amateur seance the day after it took place, when her memory was fresh. And she will check over this account before it goes into the record.

(We began by sitting at a small table in our living room. We had covered the table with a dark material. Our kitchen opens off the living room, so we closed the blinds in both rooms, and pulled the curtains over them. Not knowing just how to go about a seance, we had a small red electric Christmas candle on. Our rooms have white walls also, so we could still see fairly well once our eyes became adjusted.

(Then Jane suddenly announced in a firm, clear voice: “Watch the hand.” It was a command, and I knew Seth was with us. Jane felt her left hand immediately grow cold. I asked no more questions, except rarely. Seth-Jane talked constantly from then on. Jane, Bill and I hunched over the table, over the left hand. The ring had slipped out of it by now.

(“And now the wrist—see how it thickens and turns white?” Jane’s wrist did thicken. She sat with the wrist of her left hand pressed to the table top. She wore a black sweater with the sleeves pushed halfway up her forearms. The cold white light spread up over the thickening wrist, up the forearm to the sweater. Seth was smug and sardonic at the same time. “You didn’t think I could do it, did you my lovelies? But you have no idea of what you’re asking, of how difficult it is…”

(Jane’s hand began to change its general proportions. Slowly, with Seth’s monologue in our ears, the hand came to resemble a pawlike shape. I had the eerie feeling of an animal’s forepaw. Jane’s fingers, normally long and graceful, had shrunken to stubby appendages, or so it appeared. The glow suffused the palm, eliminating the shadows normally to be seen there, so that it did not seem the fingers were merely folded over.

(Jane’s hand slowly regained its normal shape. She still sat with it turned palm up. Now Seth extended himself. The fingers began to elongate noticeably, and to whiten. Then, a second set of fingers began to rise up, over Jane’s own fingers. Now, it would have been easy enough for Jane to bend her own fingers up into this position. But here the three of us saw now a second set of five fingers rising up, long and white. And moreover, this set of fingers had the fingernails on top. The nails were to be easily seen. Had they been Jane’s own fingers, the nails would have been on the undersides, and invisible.)

(We had turned no lights on during break. Now Seth rather imperiously commanded us to move our little table over a few feet so that it faced the doorway to our bathroom. Looking back, Jane, Bill, and I recall with some humor that we docilely followed Seth’s every order. The three of us sat shoulder to shoulder, staring into the bath, which is large and tiled with white. We were hoping to see a materialization of some kind in the open doorway, since we had discussed this at break.

(We could see our reflections clearly enough, even though dimly. As Jane continued to talk, her image did slowly begin to change in the mirror. Her head began to drop lower between Bill and I. At the same time, the shape of the skull changed, the hair grew shorter and fit around it much more closely. The shoulders of the image in the mirror hunched over, and grew narrower. And then the head tilted and looked down, while Jane stared straight ahead into the mirror.