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OF THE

STERIOUS COMMUNION WITH SPIRITS,

COMPREHENDING

THE RISE AND PROGRESS

OF

THE MYSTERIOUS NOISES

IN WESTERN NEW-YORK,

GENERALLY RECEIVED AS SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATIONS.

SECOND EDITION,

REVISED AND ENLARGED, WITH ADDITIONAL PROOF.

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Entered according to act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred

and fiifty, by

ELIAB W. CAPRON & HENRY D. BARRON,

In the Clerk's Office of the

District Court of the United States for the Northern
District of New York.

CAYUGA CHIEF PRESS

PREFACE.

ONCE again, reader, we appear before you, having passed through the opposition of Priestcraft and Ignorance unawed and unharmed, with friends around us, whose influence and sympathy have seemed doubly dear to us, while such epithets as Infidels, Impostors and Money-graspers have been hurled at us by those who will listen to nothing that their fathers did not listen to, and whose zeal for their own peculiar creeds and the multiplying of their own numbers, often overleap their professions of goodness and forgiveness.

When, three months ago we entered upon the discharge of what we knew to be our duty, we were not ignorant of the result. Our duty in the matter was plain. From the time we had decided upon publishing what we knew to be facts, to the time our last page of manuscript was finished, the authors had received stronger and stronger evidence that they were but discharging their duty in publishing to the world, not what was entirely new, but something which had often been muzzled and concealed by those who dare not tell what they had seen, felt and heard, in consequence of their fears of the hisses and laughter of skeptics. A distinguished professor of a popular and imparadising science, has remarked to a citizen of the city of Auburn: These demonstrations are not new to me. I have heard them and believed they were produced by the spirits of my departed friends for several years, but I dare not tell others of it. If I do so, I shall be branded as a lunatic, become unpopular and lose my present influence." This individual was invited to go and investigate the demonstrations in Auburn, but declined. A prejudiced and skeptical community stood ready to ask his opinion after the investigation, and if he expressed in its favor, to throw the same epithets upon him which others have received. Other men equally as learned and distinguished, have investigated and become convinced, but dare not express their convictions in public. We have in our minds editors of newspapers, who have said in the presence of a number of persons that they believed these sounds and communications were from spirits, but when they came before the public in their editorial capacities, dare not say

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