1 Samuel 28:12

12. When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice As soon as he said whom he wished to consult, she proceeded, by her peculiar arts, to place herself in a clairvoyant state, and as soon as she came in sensational rapport with Saul’s soul, she saw imaged there the venerable form of the mantled Samuel. She saw him just as he appeared to Saul the last time, and just as his stern and threatening form had haunted that monarch’s soul for years. But Saul and his two men supposed and reported that she saw Samuel actually arise. She discerned, also, the many harrowing fears of defeat that took shape and form in Saul’s imagination, and thus became aware that her consulter was no less a person than the king of Israel. Excessively alarmed at her discovery, she came suddenly out of her clairvoyant state, and said to Saul, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul. Observe that her alarm is not at the sight of Samuel, but at finding that the very monarch of Israel who had put away all wizards out of the land (see 1 Samuel 28:3) had himself detected her in her sorceries. Those interpreters who affirm that Samuel really appeared, and frightened the witch by his unexpected coming, are at a loss to tell how she learned so soon that her guest was Saul. Some say she inferred it from the venerable appearance of Samuel; but how this should be when Saul had asked her to bring up Samuel, does not appear. Others say she learned it from something that Samuel said; but as yet Samuel had not spoken. Keil well says, though he teaches that Samuel actually appeared: “Her recognition of Saul may be easily explained if we assume that the woman had fallen into a clairvoyant state, in which she recognised persons who, like Saul in his disguise, were unknown to her by face.”