The Spirit Communication

A QUESTION is written by one of the audience, placed in the smallest of a nest of four folded papers and given to the writer to hold. When the papers are unfolded, the slip bearing the question
will have vanished, being replaced by a duplicate slip on which an answer is written.

For this, take two sheets of stiff paper of exactly the same size, say nine inches square, and fold them separately in three-inch folds each way, which will give you two packages three inches
square and, if the folds have been carefully made, exactly alike. Then paste the backs of the middle portions of these together, making sure that the edges register exactly. Let them dry under a heavy weight, and you will then have a double package that looks like a single fold, either side of which can be opened. Inside
each of these place a smaller fold and inside these still a smaller fold.

Enclose the whole in a ten-inch sheet folded in the same way.

On a sheet torn from a scratch pad write the following: "Looking at your question in one way the answer would unquestionably be 'Yes,' but from another point: of view it is equally sure to be 'No.' This leaves your spirit control in a quandary, so she has taken your leaflet along to submit it to a higher authority, hoping to have the true answer at the next sitting." Fold this, place it in one of the smallest folds and make up the nest with the answer in the bottom part of the fake fold. You are now ready for the
performance.

Begin by passing the scratch pad from which the answer has been torn to one of the company and ask that a question, the answer to which must be yes or no, be written upon it, the sheet torn off and so folded that it cannot be read.

Now open the nest on your table, leaving the sheets one on another in their proper order, and ask the writer to place the folded question in the smallest one. Then fold this as follows:

First the right hand side, then the left, then the fold nearest to you and, finally, the farthest. The next larger sheet is now folded in the, same way, but the next is the fake and must be handled differently. In this case you fold the right, left, and nearest folds as before, but instead of finishing by folding the farthest toward you, you make the last fold from you, which turns the fake over and brings the answer uppermost.
The last sheet is folded fairly, like the unprepared ones, and the package passed to the writer to hold while the "spirit influence" is Brought to you by LearnMagicTricks.org invoked. Finally, the package is placed on the table and all the folds are opened fairly and rapidly one upon the other. Then the answer, which will apply to any yes or no question, will be discovered.