Observations placeholder
Blackmon Sanders, Reverend Constantine - Seeing in the dark
Identifier
004429
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The illness causing his possession was typhoid.
He had an uncanny ability to see in the dark, with his eyes closed and also when blindfolded..........
A description of the experience
X plus Y equals Z, or the Sleeping Preacher of North Alabama – 1876 G W Mitchell
On one occasion, while in the somnolent condition, I knew him to tell the precise time by his watch with his eyes closed. In order to test farther his clairvoyant power, I asked the time by the clock in the adjoining room. He raised his head as if looking in the proper direction, but eyes shut, and answered quickly. I stepped to the door four or five feet distant, and found that he was correct in his statement. A plastered wall intervened. Other facts of like kind have occurred in my presence.
Very respectfully
D Shelby Mooresville Ala June 12th 1876
Another example..........
I certify that I lived with Reverend C B Sanders, in this place, in the year 1866, and performed the duties of house servant. I witnessed, almost daily, his peculiar spells of what was called going asleep; when he would tell where things were in the dark, when nobody else could see them; and would sing and pray and preach and such like
Once, when I had washed and ironed the clothes and had taken them upstairs, and laid them on a big trunk, and had come down again, Mr Sanders was asleep then and he said
'Run, Sue, Run!! a rat has got one of our handkerchiefs and is running off with it'.
I and a white woman ran up the stairs and found, sure enough, a rat had pulled the handkerchief off the trunk and nearly clear into a hole through the ceiling just at the tip of the wash board. This took place in the night just after supper
Mrs Susan Friend
Attest
Sarah E Bentley
Emma A Ware