“There happened to live at this time in Chicago a person named Abraham James, a simple-minded man, of Quaker…
- Date of account
- Published 1893
- Source
- How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism
- Reference
- How to thought-read: A manual of instruction in the strange and mystic in daily life, psychic phenomena, including hypnotic, mesmeric, and psychic states, mind and muscle reading, thought transference, psychometry, clairvoyance, and phenomenal spiritualism · selected passage 39
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
“There happened to live at this time in Chicago a person named Abraham James, a simple-minded man, of Quaker descent, uneducated, and in fact, quite an ignorant person
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention only“There happened to live at this time in Chicago a person named Abraham James, a simple-minded man, of Quaker descent, uneducated, and in fact, quite an ignorant person. It was discovered by a Mrs. Caroline Jordon that James was a natural clairvoyant, in fact a medium, and that he had declared when put into the trance condition that both water and petroleum, in large quantities, would be found in a certain tract of land in the neighbourhood of the city. For a long time no attention was paid to his statements. At length two gentlemen from Maine, called Whitehead and Scott, coming to Chicago on business, and hearing what had been said by Abraham James, had him taken to the land where he said water could be had in immense quantities by boring for. Being entranced, James at once pointed out the very spot. He told them that he not only saw the water, but could trace its source from the Rocky Mountains, 2000 miles away, to the spot on which they stood, and could sketch out on maps the strata and caverns through which it ran. Negotiations were at once entered into for the purchase of the land, and the work of boring was commenced.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.
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