 In defending against the claims by many Christians that Spiritualism (and especially the communication with the spirits of the dead) was an act of devil worship, Austin related a short anecdote.When visiting a prison in Winnipeg, Austin explained, he had once met a prisoner who was incarcerated for shooting a man on a bicycle.The man, "an Indian of low intellect" had never seen a bicycle before and had interpreted the strange and unknown form of a bicycler as a diabolical combination of man and beast, shooting it immediately.