CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE RAPPING SPIRIT OF BERGZABERN
It is easy to provide the explanation requested by the reporter who we have just mentioned: There is
only one, the one given by the Spiritist Doctrine. These phenomena have nothing of extraordinary
to people familiarized with those to whom the spirits have acquainted us. The role given to the
imagination of some people is also known. Had the girl only had visions, no doubt the partisans of
hallucination would have celebrated the fact. But in this case there were material effects of
unequivocal nature with a large number of witnesses. It would be necessary to admit that everyone
was hallucinated to the point of having heard what they actually did not and seen motions of things
that were stationary. Well, this would be an even more extraordinary phenomenon. To the skeptical
there is only one resource: denial. It is easier and exempts reason.
From the spiritist point of view it becomes evident that the manifesting spirit was inferior to that of
the girl, as he obeyed her; he subordinated even to the audience who gave him orders. If we did not
know, from the Spiritist Doctrine, that the rapping spirits are at the bottom of the spirits’ scale, the
event itself would be a proof to us. In fact one could not conceive an elevated spirit who, as our
wise men and philosophers, would have fun on rapping marches and waltzes and, in one word, act
like a jester or submit themselves to human caprices. He shows himself with the looks of a scary
man, circumstance which only reinforces that opinion. In general, the moral state reflects on the
covering. It is then demonstrated to us that the rapper of Bergzabern is an inferior spirit, from the
spirits of levity class, who has manifested much like others have done so and still do in our days.
But what was the purpose of the manifestations? The news does not mention evocation. Today, that
we are more experienced on those things, one would not allow such a strange visitor in, had he not
informed about his objectives. We can only make conjectures. It is true that he did nothing revealing
evilness or ill intention, as the girl had not suffered any physical or moral damage. Only men could
have shocked her moral, harming her imagination with ridicule tales. Luckily they did not.
Then, this spirit, however inferior he might be, was neither evil nor malevolent. It was only one of
those many spirits who, many times and despite our will, surround us. He could have acted on his
own or been instigated by elevated spirits, with the objective of awakening men’s attention and
convince them about the reality of a superior power, outside the corporeal world.
As for the child, it is certain that she was one of those mediums of physical influence, gifted by such
a faculty, despite her will, and who are related to the other mediums as the natural somnambulists
are to the magnetic somnambulists. Prudently guided by an experienced person in this new Science,
that faculty could have produced even more extraordinary things, capable of shedding new light
onto these phenomena, which are only considered extraordinary because they are not understood.
