Elmer and Charles Letters

The eighteen letters of brother Elmer and Charles (last name unknown) to their sister Mrs. Roy Hanson in Lynchburg, Ohio are dated 1910-1911. Among the topics covered are Charles' interest in spiritualism.

Transcriptions provided by the seller:

"As to hypnotism doctors certainly have to understand the art to be successful for so many patients have so many fancies and the great idea is to control their shots make them think they are better…

"Now as to disembodied souls that is the soul or intelligence can be removed from the body and the soulless body can still breathe on. The person perhaps will be said to be in a trance. For instance over in Nevada was a prize fight a certain party was slightly interested so he goes in a trance and he sees at the time the white fighter Jeffries knocked out by Johnson. He did not believe it but still did not believe it about 2 or 3 hours later when the first telegrams came but finally when it was printed in the papers he certainly reflected some.

"We will certainly see and hear some strange things if we lived here in a hundred years for I believe this intelligence will finally be so developed that we would then consider the world now to have been little more developed than the animal stage…how about intelligence as a higher form of energy why should that be wasted, it can not be so…

"Remember the story in the book Impressions in discussing the hypnotism or belief. It is not right and the power is not correctly used when making a person believe to commit acts to their own undoing…As for me I am selfish but the motherly saintly remembrance of the mothers love has prevented me from going to the bad…

"Now in explanation the trance state often affects the physical being leaving the patients tired and perhaps slightly nervous same as in the case of the one who put himself into a trance….the mind is centered on thoughts and it is only when the patient is not using the control of his own mind that he can be controlled…

"The strong will can transmit thoughts to another without even tough if the other party's mind is in the receptive condition, I have often made people scratch or bend their head without really hypnotizing them beyond that I believe anybody can by hypnotized…

"the Will is a a wonderful as anything on earth and man or the human race comes more to being the unnatural or supernatural the miracle or to perform the miracles than any other body in existence. There is something called hypnotism that is real, another mind governing another, there is also a disembodied soul there are influences that have influences, there are some unnatural forces that most of us are not aware of…

"Say that was not the Kessler boy that was killed, the one we met at Old Aher's that night was it? I might have found out in a certain unnatural way at the time if I had cared but confound it I did not care to subject my nerves that strain. The mortal coil is but a state of being. Is the unnatural state a development of life and being or just given to some? Whatever it is the majority could not understand and would think one demented…"