Franek Kluski is on the left of  the picture.

There are instances on record in which the visitants, who appear to be born into temporary existence through the agency of  a materializing medium, were not human beings.  They were the  "beasts that perish";  animals whose presence inspired fear. To Franek Kluski, a Pole, whom the late Dr. Gustave Geley, Director of  the Institute Metapsychique International of  Paris, called the King of  Mediums, we owe the most incredible experiences of  this kind which scientists ever had the good fortune to share.

For the consideration of  those who would accuse them of  temporary insanity there are flashlight photographs, which demand an explanation.  The best of  these pictures  (which is reproduced in Dr. Geley's classical Clairvoyance and Materialization was taken in 1919 in Warsaw.  A bird, described by Prof. Pawlowski, of  the Massachusetts Institute of  Technology, as a hawk or buzzard, was heard to stretch its wings with a whirring sound, accompanied by blasts of wind.  It  "flew round, beating its wings against the walls and the ceiling;  when it finally settled on the shoulder of  the medium it was photographed with a magnesium flash, as the camera was accidentally focussed on the medium before, and was ready".

 

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Phantom bird photographed by Flashlight on Kluski's shoulder.

There was no possibility, we are assured, of  introducing that bird surreptitiously into the room or hiding it after the manifestation.  It appeared and vanished in the way of human phantoms.

There was another, more dangerous customer in charge of  a completely luminous old man.  Prof. Pawlowski describes the man  (an Afghan native who called himself Hirkill)  as a column of  light.  He illuminated all the sitters and even the more distant objects of  the room.  The light appeared to be focussed in his hands and in the region of  his heart.

"Accompanying him always was a rapacious beast, the size of  a very big dog, of  a tawny colour, with slender neck, mouth full of  large teeth, eyes which glowed in the darkness like a cat's, and which reminded the company of  a maneless lion.  It was occasionally wild in its behaviour, especially if  persons were afraid of  it, and neither the human nor the animal apparition was much welcomed by the sitters.  The lion, as we may call him, liked to lick the sitters with a moist and prickly tongue, and gave forth the odour of  a great feline, and even after the séance the sitters, and especially the medium, were impregnated with this acrid scent as if  they had made a long stay in a menagerie among wild beasts."

The acrid scent was very pronounced with the weirdest of  all these apparitions - the Pithecanthropus, which showed itself  several times.  "One of  us,"  writes Dr. Geley,  "at the séance of  November 20th, 1920, felt its large shaggy head press hard on his right shoulder and against his cheek.  The head was covered with thick, coarse hair;  a smell came from it like that of  a deer or a wet dog.  When one of  the sitters put out his hand the Pithecanthropus seized it and licked it slowly three times.  Its tongue was large and soft.  At other times we all felt our legs touched by what seemed to be frolicsome dogs."

According to Col. Norbert Ocholowicz,  "this ape was of  such great strength that it could easily move a heavy book-case, filled with books, through the room, carry a sofa over the heads of  the sitters, or lift the heaviest persons with their chairs into the air to the height of  a tall person.  Though the ape's behaviour sometimes caused fear, and indicated a low level of  intelligence. it was never malignant.  Indeed, it often expressed goodwill, gentleness and readiness to obey...  It was seen for the last time at the séance of  December 26th, 1922, in the same form as in 1919, and making the same sounds of  smacking and scratching."

Of  another small animal, reminding the sitters of  a weasel, the following description was quoted by Mrs. Hewat McKenzie, widow of  the founder of  the British College of  Psychic Science:

"It used to run quickly over the table on to the sitters' shoulders, stopping every moment and smelling their hands and faces with a small, cold nose;  sometimes, as if frightened, it jumped from the table and rambled through the whole room, turning over small objects, and shuffling papers lying on the table and writing-desk.  It appeared at six or seven seances, and was last seen in June, 1923."

Kluski's animals are unique in species but not as phenomena.

Kluski, is a distinguished professional man, a poet and writer.  His real name has not been made known.  In him powers of  "physical"  mediumship co-exist with remarkable intellectual psychic gifts;  which is a rare combination.  Strange presentiments, visions of  distant events, and the facility of  seeing phantoms, were his endowment from early childhood, but his  "physical"  powers were only accidentally discovered in a sitting with Guzyk in 1919.  Their manifestation annoyed him, but his curiosity was aroused and he consented to experiments.  Like Mme. d'Esperance, he preserved consciousness during the phenomena of  materialization, and could give invaluable subjective accounts of  his own sensations to men of science, whom he was always very willing to oblige.  There was no facet in his strange gifts which did not lend itself  to the fullest and most rigorous scientific examination.  An instance of  his luminous phenomena, as recorded by Dr. Geley, is the following:

"A large luminous trail like a nebulous comet, and about half a metre long, formed behind Kluski about a metre above his head and seemingly about the same distance behind him.  This nebula was constituted of  tiny bright grains broadcast, among which there were some specially brilliant points.  This nebula oscillated quickly from right to left and left to right, and rose and fell. It lasted about a minute, disappeared and reappeared several times.  After the sitting I found that the medium, who had been naked for an hour, was very warm.  He was perspiring on the back and at the armpits;  he was much exhausted."

At the Institute Metapsychique of  Paris there are eloquent proofs of  Kluski's supernormal powers on view.  They include plaster casts of  human hands with fingers bent and joined.  The mould is fine and delicate, and the texture of  the skin perfect.  But whose skin?  That question cannot be answered.  For the hands which alternately dipped into buckets filled with hot paraffin and cold water ended at the wrist.  They had no visible owner.  When the paraffin shell thickened the hand faded away, vanished, dematerialized and left a perfect glove behind.  The operation only took three minutes.  Normally, it would take twenty minutes to produce a paraffin glove.  But the hand, withdrawing from it, would burst the shell at the joints if  the fingers were bent, and at the wrist.  The Kluski gloves defied normal human production.  They showed blue spots, traces of  cholesterin which Dr. Geley, unknown to all, mixed with the paraffin to have further evidence that the gloves were made on the spot.

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The excellence of  Kluski's phenomena is due to his economy in the use of  his mysterious power.  Not being a professional medium, he only sits for those he cares for, and at comparatively long intervals.  Thus he easily recuperates from the drain on his vital forces.  When, after an interval of  rest, he agrees to sit again, he knows that his pent-up psychic energies will produce startling manifestations.