ABSTRACT
When a trance-medium is about to give a sitting to a client, she generally begins by shutting her eyes while resting quietly in her chair. Soon after this she begins to breathe deeply, to groan slightly and to struggle, and in general to behave like a person who is profoundly but restlessly asleep and is suffering from a rather distressing dream. In a few minutes, as a rule, she becomes calmer, and one often hears a kind of whispering going on, as if she were talking to herself. Shortly after this she will begin to talk audibly, often in a very different voice and manner and sometimes with a very different vocabulary, from those which are characteristic of her normal waking conversation. Ostensibly the medium’s normal waking personality has ceased to control her vocal organs, and a new personality has gained control of them.
