A Canadian Indian Levitation (from the Malcolm's Musings blog)

[Laird]

A Canadian Indian Levitation

By Malcolm Smith for the Malcolm's Musings: Anomalies blog on 29 May, 2025.

Aaron told him the white man did not know everything. When Joe objected, Aaron proposed a contest. He told him he could bring his (Joe's) body into a state of being perfectly submissive to his (Aaron's) will. Joe bet a bottle of whisky he couldn't.
      He got Joe to lie down, whereupon Aaron knelt and began flapping his hands up and down. Joe swore, but his voice rapidly became more feeble and jerky. The medicine man started dancing around him, and his companions joined in. The author now describes, in intricate detail, how the men, the women, and the children all followed separate routines, dancing, jumping, singing, drumming, and yelling in a ritual with which they must have been intimately familiar. The three white onlookers were deeply impressed. The fourth, the centre of the ritual, lay unconscious. In the midst of all this, the medicine man pulled the bottle of whisky from Joe's coat. The author commented that, up to this point, everything they had witnessed could have been explained by mesmerism i.e. hypnosis. But not what came next.