Michael Prescott's Blog

Some problems with mediumship in the heyday of Spiritualism

Recently we've been discussing the possibility that the heyday of Spiritualism constituted a "mania," in which normally sober observers found their judgment impaired by what Alan Greenspan would call "irrational enthusiasm." While the very best research from that period was well-designed and difficult to refute, there are undeniably problems with other claims, reports, and observations. What follows is a grab-bag of items in no particular order - things I've noticed in my reading over the years. I also offer a brief counterpoint whenever it seems appropriate. 

Inconsistencies. 

Spirit communicators offered conflicting statements on important subjects, most notably reincarnation. In the early years, there was little mention of reincarnation. After Madame Blavatsky popularized the idea of reincarnation through her Theosophy movement, mediums started talking about it a lot more. It's hard to resist the conclusion that the content of the mediums' messages, at least in this case, was influenced by what the sitters expected to hear.

Counterpoint: The greater part of the commuications was largely consistent, and this general consistency is found in more modern communications and in other afterlife evidence, such as near-death experiences and deathbed visions. Robert Crookall documented these consistencies in several books in the 1960s. 

Failed predictions. 

Spirit communicators made failed predictions, which were generally overly optimistic in nature. For instance, they predicted an era of universal peace and harmony following the First World War. Even during the buildup to the WWII they insisted there would not be another global conflict. They also predicted that the truth of Spiritualism would be universally acknowledged within 100 years and would be part of mainstream science.

Some of the people who analyzed the so-called "cross correspondences" became obsessed with the strange notion that a one of their number was destined to bear a son who would become a new messiah. This child was being "designed" by spirit entities to be a superior being, one who would lead the human race to a new era of peace. Though a child was born, he did not fulfill these expectations, though he did grow up to be a notably spiritual man who eventually became a Benedictine monk. The story is told here. 

Spirit controls.  

The spirit "controls" (i.e., spirit guides) exhibited many oddities, could not convincingly confirm their earthly existence, and often exhibited cartoonish or stereotyped behavior. More discussion here. 

Dogmatism and credulity.  

Some investigators seemed to become overly enthusiastic about their findings and exhibited dogmatism and credulity. James Hyslop, an early convert to belief in spirit communication and life after death, insisted that the case was proved beyond any doubt–clearly an overstatement. Arthur Conan Doyle was taken in by a number of fake mediums, notably the Davenport Brothers; he was fooled by obviously fake photographs taken by children in the "Cottingley fairies" case; and in one notable instance he insisted that Harry Houdini, the escape artist and famed debunker, must be a medium himself because only by dematerializing could he perform his escapes!

Bad science.  

Some of the claims made by paranormal investigators of the time clash with our modern understanding of science. For instance, in his book Thirty Years Among the Dead (PDF), psychiatrist Carl Wickland tells how his wife's mediumship helped cure mentally ill patients by freeing them from obsessing spirits. But with everything we now know about the chemical basis for much of mental illness, how plausible is the spirit-obsession hypothesis?

It was not unusual for alleged spirit communicators themselves to provide incorrect scientific statements. Many of these involved "the ether"–the invisible substance then widely believed to pervade the universe and to serve as a transmission medium for electromagnetic waves. Today the ether has been generally discredited, although there are occasional attempts to bring it back in a modified form. Other inaccurate scientific statements are found in The Spirits' Book, a collection of spirit communications compiled by Allan Kardec. (Example, passage 46: "Do not the tissues of the human body and of animals contain the germs of a multitude of parasites, that only await for their development the occurrence of the putrid fermentation necessary to their life?" This appears to be an endorsement of spontaneous generation, a popular view of the time, but discredited today.) It's hard to trust "the spirits" if they don't know basic scientific facts.

Counterpoint: Science writer Norman Friedman believes that channeled information attributed to Seth, and found in the works of Jane Roberts, sheds valuable light on quantum mechanics.

Bad history.  

Other channeled information included what appears to be clearly incorrect historical data. Edgar Cayce, for instance, made claims about the origins of the Bible and the circumstances and time periods in which it was written that would not be endorsed by any accredited biblical scholars today. His statements seem to be in line with what would be expected from someone with a layman's knowledge of the subject.

Counterpoint: Stephan A. Schwartz's work with psychics at archaeological digs has resulted in some impressive finds. Schwartz's work is meticulously recounted in his books, notably The Alexandria Project. 

Spirit photography.  

Some investigators accepted spirit photographs whose fakery is embarrassingly obvious today. Others were not deterred by photos taken during séances that showed clear signs of fraud. A notable instance was the case of Eva C., who supposedly had the ability to manifest spirit faces out of ectoplasm. Photographs make it clear that the spirit faces were drawings clipped from the newspaper. In one photo it is even possible to see part of the newspaper's masthead showing through the paper. Nevertheless, the investigator researching Eva C. refused to believe the spirit faces had been faked, because he did not think there was any flaw in his security protocols. Even today, there are people who defend the mediumship of Helen Duncan, despite the embarrassingly phony “spirit guide” that shows up in photos taken while she was supposedly entranced.

Helen Duncan and her materialized "spirit guide." 

Fraud.  

A large number of physical and materialization mediums were exposed as frauds. A common tactic was to tackle the materialized “spirit” in the middle of the séance and hold on to it until the lights came up, at which point the struggling figure would be revealed as the medium in disguise. Even mediums who were caught in such deceptions retained some followers. Florence Cook was caught at least once, and arguably twice*, by such a method, yet her principal investigator, William Crookes, never admitted she was anything less than genuine.

(*In the one debatable instance, the “spirit” wriggled free before the lights could be turned on; accounts differ as to whether Florence, when found in her cabinet, was securely tied to her chair as she should have been, or was only loosely tied, the knots obviously having been undone.)

Counterpoint: Some physical mediums held up under scrutiny. Despite a known penchant for cheating when she could get away with it, Eusapia Palladino impressed highly experienced and skeptical investigators at the Naples sittings in 1908. D.D. Home was never caught in fraud, and performed in lighted rooms under close observation. 

Parochialism. 

Frequent messages from the spirit communicators indicated that Jesus Christ is effectively the leading light in the spirit world, a message that seems perhaps a bit too nicely calculated to appeal to the Judeo-Christian sensibilities of sitters and researchers.

Evolution.  

Messages about the nature of the afterlife and the ultimate purpose of existence seemed to borrow liberally from Emanuel Swedenborg's writings, with one significant alteration. In Swedenborg's system, there is no continuing evolution of the soul after death; the soul migrates to whatever sphere is most suitable and stays there for eternity. Most of the Spiritualist mediums, on the other hand, stated that souls inhabit a given sphere only temporarily and are constantly moving onward in accordance with a universal law of spiritual progress. This idea of spiritual evolution seems to have been inspired by the fashionableness of Darwinian evolution, giving a more modern and progressive spin to Swedenborg's ideas. But if the descriptions were influenced by cultural and social trends, do they reflect a higher reality or only the assumptions of the mediums and sitters?

Slate writing.  

Some researchers continued to accept the validity of so-called slate writing–messages written in chalk on slate tablets in the pitch dark séance room–even after slate writing had been exposed as fraudulent many times. Admittedly these researchers took elaborate pains to guard against fraud. Nevertheless, the long history of fakery in slate writing and the need to place the slate out of sight during part of the performance should be enough to cast doubt on these claims. 

Oddball claims. 

Spiritualism was characterized, in part, by fantastic stories that seem to have been taken seriously by at least some of its adherents. For instance, there was the often-told story of the sudden “apport" of Mrs. Guppy, a 300-pound medium who allegedly appeared out of nowhere during another medium's séance. The claim was that Mrs. Guppy had been dematerialized from her home many miles away and rematerialized on the séance table. Stories like this did not help the credibility of the Spiritualist movement with the general public, and led many to see Spiritualists as gullible and silly. The acceptance of such unlikely claims by some of Spiritualism's enthusiasts may give credence to the idea that a mania was at work - though, again, there is a core of serious research that resists easy debunking. 

 

 

Seance and sensibility

For a preliminary look at the possibility that reports of psychic phenomena can be influenced by emotional and psychological factors, I tracked down a paper co-authored by Richard Wiseman, Emma Greening, and Matthew Smith titled "Belief in the Paranormal and Suggestion in the Seance Room," published originally in the British Journal of Psychology, 94(3), 285-297. It is available online here (PDF). 

Before going on, I should say that I have certain reservations about using this paper, because one of the authors, Richard Wiseman, has a dubious reputation in the field of parapsychology. Consider how he is characterized on the website Skeptical Investigations (which, despite its name, is actually an anti-skeptical site): 

He has been at the centre of many controversies with researchers in parapsychology, and has often been accused of deliberately misrepresenting data.

In 1995, he replicated Rupert Sheldrake’s results with a dog that knows when its owner was coming home, and then claimed to have debunked the 'psychic pet' phenomenon....

He has been described by the President of the Parapsychology Association as motivated by "obvious self-interest", and by a desire "to support an a priori commitment to the notion that all positive psi results are spurious and all methods which seem to show the presence of psi are flawed".... In December 2000 he carried out what he described as the 'world’s biggest ESP experiment' which, like many of his activities, was widely publicised in the media. A skeptical observer of the experiment claimed that he had designed the experiment to fail and interfered with the procedure in such a way as to gain the non-significant result he expected. 

In September 2004 he took part in a classic CSICOP debunking excercise, claiming that a young Russian girl who had seemingly psychic powers of diagnosis had failed a test he and his fellow skeptics designed. In fact the girl scored at a level well above chance. Prof Brian Josephson, FRS, a Nobel Laureate in physics, investigated Wiseman's claims about this test and found them to be seriously misleading....

By the autumn of 2004, after a series of other very questionable claims, widely publicized in the media, many of his peers in the parapsychology research community concluded that his behaviour was not consistent with commonly-accepted standards of scientific integrity, and he was voted off the main research forum in parapsychology by a large majority. In addition, for similar reasons, some members of the Society for Psychical Resaerch called for him to be expelled for the Society. He resigned. Despite his strong skeptical beliefs, in 2004 he applied for the newly-established chair of Parapsychology in Lund, Sweden, which was endowed to promote research in this field. 

Obviously there are major controversies swirling around Wiseman. Nevertheless, I don't know of any other recent research that looks at the issue of suggestibility in the séance room. So with the caveat that Wiseman's conclusions may not be reliable, here's what he and his colleagues found.

The researchers put on a series of fake séances using an actor or, in a later series, Wiseman himself as the medium. The sessions were held in darkness, with various objects arranged on a table and glowing with luminous paint. During the course of the session, the medium would make suggestions to the sitters about the movement or lack of movement of these items. A hidden assistant would move some of the objects, using a long stick. The first series of experiments was videotaped using infrared photography.

The outcome of this initial series of tests was consistent with the idea that people in a dark séance room have a tendency to see things that didn't happen when these things are suggested to them by the medium. The most striking case involves the purported movement of a small table. Though the medium strongly suggested that the table was moving under the psychic influence of the group, the table actually remained stationary throughout the test. Nevertheless, 31% of participants later said that the table moved.

A second data point involves a small handbell, which also remained stationary throughout the test. In this case the medium told the group to focus their psychic powers on the handbell and make it move, but he did not suggest that their efforts had succeeded. In this case only 10% reported seeing the handbell move. This indicates that the medium's suggestion is an important factor in the way the session is remembered.

Moreover, people who expressed a prior belief in paranormal phenomena were significantly more likely to accept the medium's suggestions than those who expressed a prior disbelief.

The second series of tests yielded results that seem less conclusive. Still, there was a significant amount of misreporting. 11% said the stationary handbell moved. 10% said a stationary tambourine moved. 86% said that an actually moving slate remained stationary (the medium, Wiseman in this case, had strongly suggested that the slate wasn't responding to their psychic efforts, even though his assistant was in fact moving it). 9% said that a moving candlestick was actually stationary.

In addition to the above, many of the participants described feelings and sensations consistent with some kind of paranormal experience–the same kinds of feelings and sensations often reported by people who attended “genuine” séances. 

In Experiment One, 20% of participants indicated that they had experienced these phenomena, with a significantly greater percentage of Believers (30%) than Disbelievers (8%) reporting such experiences (Chi square=6.36, df=4, p=.04). In Experiment Two, 21% of participants reported such experiences. In addition, the relationship between participants’ prior belief in the paranormal and the reporting of such experiences was in the same direction as Experiment One, and approached significance (Chi square=8.78, df=4, p=.07). The Questionnaire also asked participants to describe their experiences. Many people reported the type of quite dramatic phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including being in an unusual psychological state (e.g., ‘Feeling of depersonification and elation when the objects moved’); changes in temperature (e.g., ‘Cold shivers running through my body when I concentrated hard on moving the objects’); an energetic presence (e.g., ‘A strong sense of energy flowing through the circle which increased’), and unusual smells (e.g., ‘A smell of hot plastic, combination of sweet and acrid smell’). Thus, the fake seances caused participants to report many of the experiences described by those attending ‘genuine’ seances, suggesting that such effects are the result of psychological processes (e.g., psychosomatic experiences brought about by participants’ heightened expectations or strong beliefs), rather than being caused by paranormal, psychic or mediumistic mechanisms.

Wiseman et al. sum up: 

For over a century people have attended physical seances and reported witnessing seemingly inexplicable phenomena. Experiments conducted around the turn of the last century revealed that many of these accounts were unreliable. The experiments reported here have shown that modern day witnesses also produce inaccurate testimony of séance phenomena. In addition, these experiments represent the first attempt to systematically examine verbal suggestion within the context of the seance. They have demonstrated that such suggestions have the potential to cause sitters to incorrectly report that stationary objects were moving, and that moving objects were stationary. The studies have also produced strong evidence that within the context of a seance, Believers are significantly more susceptible to verbal suggestion than Disbelievers, but only when the suggestion is consistent with the existence of paranormal phenomena. Both experiments also revealed that during the fake seances many participants reported experiencing the type of unusual phenomena often associated with ‘genuine’ seances, including, for example, sudden changes in temperature, a sense of unusual energy and odd smells. Finally, results also showed that about a fifth of participants believed that the fake seance contained genuine paranormal phenomena, and that a significantly greater percentage of Believers than Disbelievers believed this to be the case. 

Again, I don't want to put too much emphasis on this report because I do have doubts about Wiseman's credibility. It is worth mentioning, though, that the paper lists some prior research efforts that purportedly came to the same conclusions regarding inaccurate reporting of séance phenomena and (separately) the heightened suggestibility of believers in the paranormal. One of these papers dates back to 1887 and was co-authored by famed psychic researcher Richard Hodgson, best known for his work with Leonora Piper. 

Hodgson and Davey (1887) held fake seances for unsuspecting sitters and asked them to write a description of the seance. They reported that many sitters omitted important events, recalled others in an incorrect order and often believed that they had witnessed genuine paranormal phenomena. In 1898, Lehmann (cited in Jahoda, 1969) conducted a similar experiment and again described how participants’ accounts of a fake séance were often wildly inaccurate. Besterman (1932) had sitters attend a mock seance and then answer questions relating to various phenomena that had occurred. Besterman reported that sitters had a tendency to underestimate the number of persons present in the seance room, failed to report major disturbances that took place (e.g., the experimenter leaving the seance room) and experienced the illusory movement of objects....

Haraldsson (1985) found a significant positive correlation between paranormal belief and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale. Likewise, Dafinoiu (1995) reported a significant relationship between participants’ levels of paranormal belief and their scores on a suggestibility questionnaire, with people who believed in the paranormal exhibiting higher suggestibility scores than disbelievers....

Jones & Russell (1980) asked both Believers and Disbelievers to observe a staged demonstration of extra-sensory perception (ESP). In one condition the demonstration was successful (i.e., ESP appeared to occur) whilst in the other it was not. All participants were then asked to recall the demonstration. Believers who saw the unsuccessful demonstration distorted their memories of it and often stated that ESP had occurred. Disbelievers tended to correctly recall the demonstration, even if it appeared to support the existence of ESP.

If we can trust the Wiseman paper's summary of these various reports, it would seem likely that a fair amount of eyewitness testimony from séances in dark rooms is unreliable; that belief in the paranormal renders eyewitnesses more inclined to perceive these phenomena in response to the medium's suggestions; and that emotion and psychology play a large role in how séances are experienced and remembered.

In the Victorian era, when Spiritualism was all the rage, and may even have qualified as a kind of “mania,” these psychological and emotional factors could have been far more pronounced then they are in most people today. Perhaps this social atmosphere helps to explain the extraordinary prevalence of physical mediumistic phenomena in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared with their relative absence now.

Having said all this, I need to supply an important addendum. Some of the most convincing investigations of séances were not conducted in total darkness. For example, when Everard Feilding and his colleagues investigated Eusapia Palladino in Naples in 1908, they did so in conditions of dim but (reportedly) adequate light. They also took the precaution of examining the phenomena in detail whenever possible–for instance, crawling under a levitating table to ensure that all four legs were off the floor and that no part of Palladino's body was in contact with the table. These investigators were seasoned professionals who, among them, had exposed and debunked more than 100 physical mediums before encountering Palladino, whom they fully expected to debunk also. They hardly seem to have been carried away by irrational enthusiasm about mediumship, and given the lighting conditions and strenuous efforts to verify the phenomena, I don't think their results can be explained as hallucinations prompted by the power of suggestion (a possibility that the investigators themselves considered).

In short, the research done by Wiseman and his colleagues does seem relevant to a great deal of Victorian table-tipping and related physical mediumship when carried out in pitch darkness by excited amateurs or, in some cases, by overly credulous professionals. But I don't think it can disqualify the best and strongest cases from that era. It may, however, help to whittle down the number of good cases and to explain the extraordinary popularity of séances at that time. It may also explain why physical mediumship is so much rarer nowadays; perhaps people are simply not primed to accept it at face value as they once were.  

When the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing

Recently, Michael Tymn sent me a copy of an interesting article of the May, 1911, issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. The article is titled "The Burton Case of Hysteria and Other Phenomena," by James H. Hyslop, and it concerns a medium identified only as Mrs. Burton, who practiced both physical and mental mediumship. Her abilities, though they seem impressive enough by modern standards, were apparently not considered exceptional in Hyslop's day, and his main interest in the case was determining what role Mrs. Burton's subconscious mind played in the phenomena. (As far as I know, the piece is not online.)

In the course of the article, which is written in Hyslop's typically prolix and sometimes confusing style, the author makes a fascinating point about some behavior of Mrs. Burton when in trance that would seem, on the surface, to be clearly indicative of fraud. As Hyslop notes, a skeptical magician who might (hypothetically) sit in on the sessions would surely interpret it that way. And yet, Hyslop's close observations over a very large number of sittings cast doubt on the idea of intentional fraud, and suggested instead that the seemingly suspicious behavior was essentially innocent.

Hyslop writes, "The left hand was usually free and could do all that was necessary to ensure Mrs. Burton's part in the phenomena." By this he means that the right hand had to be free to effect physical phenomena such as mysterious lights and raps, even when these phenomena took place well outside Mrs. Burton's reach. But, he adds,  "We were allowed to hold the right hand. "

This is where things got interesting. Hyslop continues:

I soon noticed, however, certain jerks in the right hand, and sometimes they were violent enough to free it from my grasp, which I purposely made lax enough usually to make freeing it easy. My purpose was to watch its action and to study the mental states which its action indicated. The jerking and freeing of the hand suggested that the medium's desire was to gain freedom in order to perform some apparent miracle [i.e., to fake some effect]. I soon observed, however, that the jerking of the left hand [that is, the free hand] occurred at the same time when there was no excuse in the performance for doing it.... The act which our [hypothetical] vigilant conjurer supposes to indicate a desire to commit fraud was automatic and not attended by any criminal intention. I then set about watching these actions for sitting after sitting and found overwhelming evidence that they were not connected with any desire or attempt to do anything whatever. In most instances when it [the right hand] gained freedom I found it passive in the left hand on the table, in her lap or on her face. Finally I found that it [the behavior] was the accompaniment of a change of personality and was not premonitory of a phenomenon, tho it often had this real or apparent significance at the same time, but was primarily a signal of the change of mind. It took some twenty sittings to settle this point alone while I kept watch on other phenomena as well....

... the main point was the inconsistency between the actions of the hands and the absence of the phenomena which the conjurer's theory should have found present. In not a single instance were the hands used to deceive us, when this freedom was granted. The left hand was used constantly enough to do things that were not what they seemed or purported to be. But the freedom of the right hand gained in the way described was usually followed by a period of rest and inactivity on the part of both hands. On the fraud theory, whether conscious or unconscious, this was absurd.

So if we can perhaps simplify Hyslop's rather cluttered language, Mrs. Burton would free her right hand when possible, a seemingly suspicious action. But having freed it, she would not do anything with it. Freeing the hand may have been prompted by some inner conflict, but it served no practical purpose.

Indeed, Hyslop found evidence that the entranced medium could not even feel her own hand. He writes:

Once Dr. Hamilton, in a dim light, saw her put her right hand against her face and become frightened, exclaiming that some one had touched her with a hand. Later she took her right hand from under mine and put it to her face, returning it to its place under mine, and asked if I had touched her. I told her that she had put her own hand on her face and she was quite astonished....

Previous to this we had discovered how such a phenomenon could occur. She had complained that her hands felt heavy and that she could not move them. I suspected anesthesia or insensibility. I tested her and found that she could not feel my pressure. We then set about a careful examination of her body and found her anesthesic on both sides of the body, legs, arms and chest and neck to the larynx. From the larynx up she was perfectly sensitive. We often found her in this same condition which meant that she was normally sensitive and conscious about the larynx and could herself be an observer of any phenomena that occurred visibly or tactually about the sensible surface, and yet not know that she was an agent in the result.

It's important to note that Mrs. Burton clearly did commit what could be called fraud at certain times. Hyslop's extensive investigations, however, led him to conclude that her trance was genuine and that the fraud was unconscious, and furthermore that it was associated exclusively with the left hand, and never with the right. Furthermore, even some apparently fraudulent actions were difficult to explain in normal terms. For instance, she was able to tie a rope "about her ankles and to the top of the chair in front and then at the back, and about her body and the right side of the chair. Then she tied her right foot to the left, to the right front foot of the chair and around the back of the chair and her body as before, bringing the rope around my left holding her right and then tying her left to the cross-piece in the table. All this had to be effected naturally with only the free left hand and I did not detect the slightest motion in her right hand and arm or any part of her body. How it was effected I cannot conjecture in any way to appear reasonable." [Emphasis added.]

All of this suggests that trance mediumship, especially of the physical kind, is a more complicated and ambiguous subject than casual study might suggest. Fraud may be unconscious; apparently fraudulent behavior may be innocent; and even clearly fraudulent behavior may not be fully explainable by sleight of hand or other tricks. 

Haunted

Recently I read a 1977 book by D. Scott Rogo called The Haunted Universe. Rogo, a longtime paranormal writer and researcher, is normally pretty cautious in his assessment of paranormal claims. But in The Haunted Universe he eschews his usual wariness to explore a range of purported phenomena that fall outside the purview of parapsychology. The book covers religious miracles (healings, bleeding statues, Marian apparitions), UFOs, and Forteana - unexplained and bizarre news items, like rains of frogs and monster sightings.

His purpose is to advance a theory, or at least a conjecture, that might tie this ragtag collection of subjects together. Rogo's idea is that many of these phenomena can be explained as psychic projections of the subconscious mind.

Rogo goes to considerable lengths to show that some notable UFO sightings have a "psychic" component. He notes that certain individuals seem prone to seeing UFOs, and that their repeated sightings (in the presence of witnesses) happen far more frequently than chance would allow. Many UFO observers have a premonition immediately before the event; they sometimes go outdoors or turn their eyes to the sky, without knowing why, just before a UFO appears. One celebrated UFO observer had a history of problems with electrical equipment; the man was unable to wear a wristwatch because every watch he ever put on would soon fail. Interference with electrical equipment can be associated with psi.

The Haunted Universe shows many parallels between apparitions of the Virgin Mary and other religious figures on the one hand, and appearances of UFOs on the other. The implication is that, in both cases, witnesses are observing a psychic projection, one that matches their cultural and psychological expectations. A highly religious community is prone to seeing religious imagery, while today's more secular and technologically minded public is more likely to see a spacecraft.

Rogo himself admits that his conjecture cannot cover all the data and that other explanations are possible. But clearly he thinks the hypothesis of psychic projection can potentially explain a great many of these mysteries in a more-or-less scientific fashion.

He may be right. But what struck me while reading the book was an assumption that Rogo makes almost automatically, but which, as far as I know, has never been substantiated. The assumption is that psychic projection from the subconscious mind is the actual mechanism behind phenomena traditionally ascribed to "spirits."

On this view, the impressive feats credited to physical mediums - such as the levitation of a table or of the medium himself, or the playing of musical instruments by invisible hands, or the materialization of spirit forms - are best understood in terms of psychokinesis. The medium is actually producing all these effects himself, by means of psychic power that he himself generates, perhaps with the unwitting assistance of those around him, whose own latent powers can be tapped to provide additional energy.

On this basis Rogo argues that a person or a crowd may generate enough psychic energy to unconsciously project an image into the sky - an image real enough to be photographed. This psychic projection may seem to have a lofty spiritual meaning, as in the case of the Virgin Mary, but it is actually only a figment of the unconscious mind temporarily assuming physical or quasi-physical form thanks to some little-understood psychic mechanism.

I have a couple of problems with this idea. First, it seems unlikely that an individual with the kind of psychic power required to project, say, a UFO into the sky could be entirely unaware of his own abilities. Most physical mediums (the genuine ones, not the numerous frauds) have built up their powers over a long period of training, often sitting in spiritualist circles on an almost daily basis for years. Phenomena associated with physical mediums usually start out on a small scale and become more dramatic only with practice. And to the extent that macro-PK effects manifest spontaneously, they seem to occur under conditions of unusual emotional stress. Most of the UFO observers cited by Rogo do not seem to have been under any particular stress at the time.

Moreover, people who produce macroscopic PK effects usually do so over and over again; it's not just a one-time event or even an event limited to two or three instances over the course of a lifetime. And someone using PK is ordinarily aware of it, although contrary evidence - such as poltergeist phenomena - could be cited.

The issue of poltergeists brings me to my second objection to Rogo's idea. He assumes, in line with his general approach, that poltergeists are manifestations of the subconscious mind - psychic projections. They are not, in his view, real spirits. And as we have seen, he does not credit real spirits with the physical phenomena of the séance room, either. To his way of thinking, spirits - if they exist at all - have nothing to do with physical mediumship or with poltergeists, and presumably are not involved in ghostly apparitions and similar things.

No doubt this approach sounds at least slightly more "scientific" than belief in a spirit world. It is probably the viewpoint adopted by the majority of parapsychologists in recent decades. But is there any actual evidence to support it?

Parapsychologists argue that poltergeists are projections of the unconscious mind because the phenomena often center on an emotionally overwrought teenager, and because the poltergeist activity frequently follows this person from one location to another. But how does this prove that the teenager is generating the phenomena? Couldn't we argue with equal plausibility that a malicious spirit is obsessing this teenager, a spirit that has latched on to this victim and is following him or her around? Could the turmoil of the teenager's emotions serve as a magnet to draw in an unwanted spiritual entity, somewhat in the same way that the Ouija board is said to attract low-level spirits?

As for physical mediums, virtually all of them insist that spirits are working through them to produce the effects. Perhaps they are all mistaken, but one would think that the testimony of the people who actually exhibit these powers might be worth at least as much as the speculation of "experts" who have no such abilities. Ever since the decline of belief in spirits and the rise of the macro-PK explanation, there has been a significant drop-off in physical mediumship around the world. Possibly this is because the spiritualist explanation is a necessary psychological defense mechanism to protect the medium from being intimidated by his own "wild talents." But another possibility is that the spiritualist explanation is actually correct, and that when people lose contact with the spirit world, they are less likely to manifest these phenomena.

Circling back to Rogo's thesis, I think there is undoubtedly a link between the psychic world and many of the bizarre phenomena he discusses. But I'm not so sure that these phenomena are generated entirely or even primarily by the subconscious minds of observers. Perhaps in some cases they are. But in other cases - possibly the large majority of cases - the observer may be no more than a doorway through which the psychic energy of a spiritual entity is projected into our universe. In fact, in his next-to-last chapter, "The Cosmic Invaders," Rogo himself seems to pull back from his own hypothesis and to speculate that unknown spiritual entities may be involved, after all.

The bottom line is that there does seem to be a connection between psychic phenomena and the apparitions, UFOs, and other cases Rogo describes. But the exact nature of this relationship remains mysterious. Maybe the agency responsible for these phenomena does lie within the individual human being, or maybe it lies outside any living person - indeed, outside the space-time universe itself.

I really don't know. Anybody care to offer an opinion?

Taps

One of the points Arthur Findlay makes in his book On the Edge of the Etheric is that, in John Sloan's séances, the "trumpet" (a conical device used as a megaphone) would tap sitters on command, responding precisely to their instructions, even though the room was pitch dark. In other words, if a sitter asked to be tapped on the left knee, the tap would promptly follow. According to Findlay there was never any fumbling and there were never any mistakes.

Jan Vandersande, in his book Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence, reported similar phenomena in séances he personally attended.

Reading these accounts, I wasn't particularly impressed, because I vaguely remembered reading descriptions in M. Lamar Keene's book The Psychic Mafia of how trumpet movements could be faked. But something Findlay said intrigued me. He reported that he had tried to duplicate the trumpet taps in the dark, and was consistently unable to do so. It was just too hard to know precisely where to tap the trumpet in an absolutely dark environment.

This seemed like an easy enough claim to test, so I tried my own experiment. Not owning a trumpet, either of the musical or megaphone variety, I used a cardboard tube that had once held a roll of paper towels. With the lights off, I tried tapping various targets in my living room. I found that Findlay was right. It is difficult, and often impossible, to tap a target in the dark. For instance, if I was aiming for the arm of an armchair, I might get the table next to it or the ottoman in front of the chair. Sometimes I would get the arm itself, but not consistently. Quite often I would tap nothing at all; my "trumpet" would pass through empty space.

After a while, my eyes adjusted somewhat to the dark - the room was not pitch black - and then my accuracy increased. But of course, had any sitters been present, their eyesight would have improved along with mine. If I could see them, they could see me. If the room was just bright enough to allow me to see my targets, anyone with me could have seen me holding the makeshift trumpet.

Then I went back and reread the relevant part of The Psychic Mafia. It turns out that Keene does not discuss trumpet taps at all. He does talk about creating the illusion of a levitating trumpet and making the trumpet whiz about in the air; the first is accomplished simply by lifting the trumpet in the dark, and the second is done by extending a collapsible trumpet to its full length and then waving it about, or by using a rod to extend the trumpet toward the ceiling. But there is no mention of tapping the sitters on command.

I also looked at a similar tell-all book, Revelations of a Spirit Medium. My search for the word trumpet in the online text brought up several references, but nothing relevant to the tapping effect.

Of course, one might argue that the medium is using night vision gear to see what the sitters cannot. This explanation could conceivably pertain to present-day séances, though there would be the problem of smuggling the night vision equipment into the séance room or concealing it beforehand. At any rate, it could hardly apply to Sloan's séances, which were conducted in the 1920s or even earlier.

It might also be argued that some mediums just happen to have unusually good night vision. Maybe so, but in hundreds of séances involving thousands of sitters, the odds are that some of the sitters would have exceptional night vision also. And it would only take one such sitter to blow the whistle on the enterprise. 

It would seem, then, that taps delivered on command to specified targets in the dark are good evidence for paranormal activity. I was wrong to dismiss this category of evidence so cavalierly.

Book review: On the Edge of the Etheric, by Arthur Findlay

Arthur Findlay's On the Edge of the Etheric was first published in 1931. The used edition I purchased came out in 1970; it was the 66th printing in the United Kingdom. The book has been translated into at least 19 languages as well as Braille. According to Amazon.com, the book remains in print to this day.

Clearly, On the Edge of the Etheric has found an audience. And it's easy enough to see why. Arthur Findlay provides a convincing portrait of an otherwise little-known British medium, John C. Sloan.

Sloan appears to have been a man of high moral scruples. He accepted no remuneration of any kind for the many séances he conducted, preferring to maintain a regular 9-to-5 job to pay his bills. He practiced trance mediumship as well as direct voice and produced various physical effects such as levitating trumpets. He supplied a great deal of accurate and detailed information without prompting, often addressing sitters who were strangers to him and whose names he had never been given. He cooperated with sensible tests carried out to preclude fraud. Findlay reports putting his ear against the medium's lips while direct voice communication was in progress. Though the voice continued, there was no sound emanating from Sloan's mouth. On another occasion, Findlay heard a slight hissing sound from Sloan while the voice emanated from the center of the room some distance away. Sometimes two or three voices would talk at once. Sitters were able to identify deceased loved ones by their distinctive voices and by the specific, personal information that was conveyed.

There seems to be no possibility that Sloan used an accomplice, since his lodgings were typically searched before each session. Moreover, it would be hard to imagine any motive for an elaborate deception lasting for many years, even decades, when there was no money or fame involved. Sloan sought no publicity and would probably not be remembered at all if not for Findlay's book, which was published some years after the séances took place.

Findlay gives examples of Sloan's readings, classifying them as A1 and A2 cases. The A1 cases are those in which Findlay feels that fraud, telepathy, cryptaesthesia, and other nonsurvival explanations can be ruled out. In the A2 cases the evidence is not quite as clearcut but still highly suggestive.

In one instance, Findlay seems to misclassify a case. This is the second case listed in chapter 8. Here, Findlay reports knowing some details about a painting owned by a friend. At a later séance, a different friend was addressed by the direct voice, which said, "Tell your friend Dr. Lamond, 18 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh, that I am much obliged to him for keeping his promise and placing my picture on his mantelpiece." The name and address given were correct, but the friend knew nothing about the painting. Findlay writes, "This is another fool-proof case ... it being quite free from any other explanation than that the personality of [the painter] was present, and spoke. Otherwise how could such a message have come?" Of course, there is another possible explanation -- telepathy. Since Findlay himself knew all the details of the painting, it is at least conceivable that the medium read his mind. It seems odd that Findlay overlooked this obvious objection, and it does cast some doubt on how accurately he categorized the cases in general.

Nevertheless, the evidence he gives is quite persuasive overall. There seems little doubt that John C. Sloan was an exceptionally talented trance and direct voice medium who was immune to the blandishments of fame and fortune.

A large part of the book is taken up with an explanation of how séances are conducted "on the other side." How exactly is the direct voice manifested? According to Findlay, who asked this question many times during the séances and received detailed answers, some vital force known as ectoplasm is elicited from the medium and the sitters, and is then collected in a kind of bowl. Using this ectoplasm, the communicator is able to materialize his hands, which he then uses to create a masklike form. He presses his face into this mask until it coats his mouth, tongue, and throat. With this coating in place, the communicator's etheric body takes on the "heaviness" necessary to produce sound vibrations in the physical world.

Of course the concept of ectoplasm is difficult for many of us to accept; it is too reminiscent of cheesy Hollywood movies and the pronouncements of fraudulent mediums. But if materializations are possible, then presumably some kind of quasi-physical substance is involved, and ectoplasm is probably as good a word for it as any.

Another large portion of the book concerns the allegedly scientific basis for materialization and direct voice mediumship. Unfortunately, Findlay's argument is based on the now-outdated notion of the ether, a substance once thought to pervade the cosmos and serve as the medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Findlay believed that the key to mediumship was understanding differences in the frequency of vibration of the ether. Indeed, many sources affirm that "vibrations" of some sort are critical in mediumistic communication. If there is no such thing as ether, then what is vibrating? As far as I know, there is no answer to this question (though The Unobstructed Universe, by Stewart Edward White, attempts to supply one -- as I recall, the book posits "vibrations of consciousness").

A minor impediment to accepting the phenomena Findlay describes is the nature of Sloan's spirit control, an American Indian named Whitefeather. As was all too common in séances of this period, Whitefeather spoke in broken English, using the cliché expressions of a B-movie Indian. It is hard to take this personality at face value, although Findlay does mention that, in life, Whitefeather knew no English and learned his English by participating in the séances. If true, this might suggest that the expectations of the sitters influenced the idioms used by the spirit control. In other words, perhaps Whitefeather spoke like an Indian in a penny-dreadful novel because that was how his audience expected him to speak.

Interestingly, another Indian communicator spoke flawless English. The explanation he provided was that he learned English in his earthly life.

Whatever the deficiencies of the spirit controls, the information that came through the séances is quite impressive. Findlay gives only a few cases out of the scores he witnessed, but these are highly convincing. Here is an abbreviated version of one of the best:

I took my brother with me to a séance shortly after he was demobilised from the Army in 1919. He knew no one present, and was not introduced. No one present, except myself, knew that he had been in the Army. No one present knew where he had been during his time in the Army. His health had not permitted him to go abroad, and he was stationed part of the time near Lowestoft at a small village called Kessingland, and part of the time at Lowestoft, training gunners ...

During the course of the sitting the trumpet was distinctly heard moving about the room, and various voices spoke through it. Suddenly it tapped my brother on the right knee, and a voice directly in front of him said, "Eric Saunders". My brother asked if the voice were addressing him, and it replied "Yes", whereupon he said that there must be some mistake, as he had never known anybody of that name....

[My brother] asked where he had met him. The answer was: "In the Army." My brother mentioned a number of places, such as Aldershot, Bisley, France, Palestine, etc., but carefully omitted Lowestoft, where he had been stationed for the greater part of his army life. The voice replied "No, none of those places. I knew you when you were near Lowestoft." My brother asked why he said "Near Lowestoft," and he replied: "You were not in Lowestoft then, but at Kessingland." ...

My brother then asked what company [Saunders] had been attached to, and, as he could not make out whether he said "B" or "C", my brother asked if he could remember the name of the Company Commander. The reply was "Macnamara." This was the name of the officer commanding "B" Company at that time. By way of a test, my brother pretended that he remembered the man, and said: "Oh yes, you were one of my Lewis gunners, were you not?" The reply was: "No, you had not the Lewis guns then, it was the Hotchkiss." This was quite correct, as the Lewis guns were taken from them in April 1917, and were replaced by Hotchkiss ....

[Saunders] told my brother he had been killed in France, and my brother asked him when he had gone out. He replied that he had gone with the "Big Draft in August 1917". My brother asked him why he called it the Big Draft, and he said: "Don't you remember the Big Draft, when the Colonel came on the parade ground and made a speech." This reference was to a particularly large draft sent out to France that month, and was the only occasion on which my brother remembered the Colonel ever personally saying good-bye to the men ....

About six months after the above incident my brother was in London, and met, by appointment, the Corporal who had been his assistant with the light guns in his battalion at the time. My brother told him the above story, and asked if he remembered any man named "Eric Saunders"....

The corporal had brought with him an old pocket diary, in which he had been in the habit of keeping a full list of men under training, and other information. He pulled it out of his pocket, and together they looked back until they came to the records of "B" Company during 1917. Sure enough the name appear there, "Eric Saunders, f.q., August '17", with a red-ink line drawn through it; f.q. stood for fully qualified, and, though my brother knew the meaning of the red-ink line, he asked the corporal when it meant. He replied: "Don't you remember, Mr. Findlay, I always drew a line through the man's names when they went away. This shows that Saunders went out in August 1917."...

It is a remarkable case, as it is fraud proof, telepathy proof, and cryptaesthesia proof. Not only did no one present know my brother, but my brother did not know the speaker, and cannot even to-day recollect him, as he was passing hundreds of men through their training ... This case contains fourteen separate facts; each one was correct.

A spirited debate

I haven't posted anything about the David Thompson controversy in quite some time, and I really don't want to get drawn into the endless (and largely pointless) debate all over again. But ...

Despite my reservations about reopening  a can of ectoplasmic worms, I do think this editorial by Simon Forsyth on The Psychic Times Web site is worth linking to. In it, Forsyth compares an audio recording of an allegedly materialized Alan Crossley with a video of the actual Crossley, showing clearly that there is no similarity between the two voices. He also proffers an interesting challenge to Victor Zammit and David Thompson, backed up by a promise to pay a thousand pounds to charity if the challenge can be met.

As I say, I am weary of this argument, but this article - especially the thousand-pound challenge - seemed newsworthy enough to justify a link. It will be even more newsworthy if Mr. Thompson and his investigators take up the challenge. I hope they will.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

A moldy tale, continued

In the comments thread of my last post, Renaud Evrard pointed me to an excellent article by Mario Varvoglis on the Kluski materializations. This piece goes into more detail about the experiments and clearly shows the weaknesses of the attempted skeptical explanation.

The two skeptical researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, performed some tests supposedly showing how Kluski produced his spirit molds fraudulently. Their main intent was to prove that a person could remove his hand from the wax mold without cracking the mold. But in presenting this explanation, they left unmentioned a number of crucial points.

Polidoro and Garlaschelli write,

Strictly following Geley's instructions, we prepared two basins (each had a diameter of 10 inches): one with hot water (approximately 5 litres at 55ºC), in which we poured a layer of molten paraffin (approx. 1 kg, previously melted in a pan with boiling water on a kitchen stove), and the other with cold water (5 litres), which we later used to immerse our hands and allow the paraffin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our hands first in the basin filled with paraffin and then in the one containing water.

But this is quite misleading, as Varvoglis' article makes clear. In the Kluski tests, there was no basin of cold water. Varvoglis:

Rather than using a second bowl for cooling, the IMI [Institut Metapsychique International]researchers preferred to allow the wax moulds to rigidify on their own, this being, as we shall see, a precaution against fraud.

The unnaturally rapid rate of cooling of Kluski's paraffin molds was itself a sign that something unusual was going on. Without any cold water available, the molds still cooled and set within one or two minutes - much faster than should have been possible. Kluski's hands (controlled throughout) were observed to get quite cold at times, as if he could produce a change in temperature at will.

The two skeptics, Polidoro and Garlaschelli, continue:

In all of these cases, we were able rather easily to make some fairly thin moulds (a few millimeters thick) just by immersing the hands a couple of times in the basin with the paraffin. But our most significant result was that in every instance we managed to remove our hands from the solidified paraffin glove without breaking it.

This sounds persuasive until we realize that molds "a few millimeters thick" are still significantly thicker than those produced in the Kluski tests, as Varvoglis observes:

Finally, it should be mentioned that the wax moulds were less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a sheet of paper).

And again:

the wax moulds were exceptionally delicate : at most a millimeter thick.

The thinness and fragility of the Kluski molds would have greatly complicated efforts to extricate the hand from the mold without having the mold fall to pieces - something the skeptics fail to mention.

Another fact creating difficulty for the skeptics is that Kluski's molds were much smaller than his own hands. The molded hands were child-sized; no one in the séance room had hands so small. In addition, the fingerprints of the molded hands were not those of Kluski. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the researchers that they actually checked this detail with the help of the police.)

Polidoro and Garlaschelli try to address this point:

It would not be difficult to conclude ... that particularly complex moulds could have been shaped with extreme care, before a séance took place, by the medium himself or his accomplices and, during the séance, jumbled up with other moulds forged at the moment of performing the spiritualist occurrence.

This won't do. The séance room was locked; only the investigators and Kluski were present. Who, then, was the accomplice? More important, there could have been no substitutions in at least three of the cases, when the investigators secretly treated the paraffin wax with telltale chemicals.

Here is one such case, per Varvoglis:   

Just prior to beginning, Richet and Geley had secretly added a bluish coloring agent to the paraffin. Control of the medium was considered excellent, with controllers regularly checking and verbally reporting ‘I am holding the right hand’, ‘I am holding the left hand’. Splashing sounds were heard about twenty minutes into the session, and one to two minutes later two warm paraffin gloves were deposited next to the controllers. Both wax moulds had precisely the same bluish tint as that of the tank, strongly suggesting that these were indeed created during the séance, and not smuggled in by the medium. An additional control was the weighing of all substance. Prior to the experiment, the paraffin was 3.920 grams, while at the end of the session it weighed 3.800 grams. The two moulds weighed 50 grams, and there was considerable wax scattered near the medium (around 15 grams), on his clothing, and on the floor 3.5 meters away from him (about 25 grams). Insofar as the sum of these weights correspond very closely to the initial weight, this further establishes that the wax gloves were produced during the session.

Moreover, Kluski's hands were held at all times throughout the sessions by investigators who were well aware of the old "substitution of hands" ploy used by fake mediums. The red light in the room, though dim, was sufficient to allow the sitters to see the outlines of the people at the table. Any gross movements occurring right in front of their faces would have been seen.

Why, then, did the researchers not see the spirit hands entering the paraffin bath? On at least one occasion, they apparently did. Varvoglis writes:

Finally, in one session the researchers actually saw the production of the wax moulds. In other words, they witnessed a continuity between the visual apparitions of luminous hands and the creation of the moulds. As Geley describes it :

We had the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipping into the paraffin. They were luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us.

Varvoglis' complete article is well worth reading. In total, it makes a compelling case for the reality of the Kluski phenomena, and points up the extreme deficiencies of the skeptics' counterargument.

A moldy tale

Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, in two volumes (complete text available online: Vol. I and Vol. II), makes rewarding reading for anyone interested in the early years of parapsychology. That's not to say there aren't problems with the book. Doyle's dogged commitment to the reality of psi phenomena, especially as pertaining to life after death, led him to endorse some questionable characters. In Volume I, he goes to some lengths to establish the Davenport Brothers as legitimate, even though most observers then and later have made then out to be clever frauds. He endorses such dubious activities as slate-writing and spirit photography, and seems genuinely peeved at the efforts of the Society for Psychical Research to tighten up the experimental controls on mediums.

Despite these caveats, the two volumes of his book are well worth a look. There are many fascinating anecdotes, and a good deal of seemingly solid evidence is presented. Doyle's smooth, lucid prose style makes the pages turn quickly.

One section I found particularly interesting is found in Vol. II, in a chapter titled "Voice Mediumship and  Moulds." Here Doyle discusses the practice of producing paraffin molds of spirit forms - faces and hands, usually - in the séance room.

Skeptics understandably dismiss such claims, saying that the medium or an accomplice made the impressions surreptitiously, or that pre-made molds were smuggled into the room and substituted in the dark. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, as in the infamous case of "Margery" (Mina Crandon), who produced a spirit thumbprint that turned out to belong to her all-too-living dentist.

But consider the following series of tests first reported in the magazine Revue Metapsychique in June, 1921. It seems that every reasonable precaution against fraud was taken, yet positive results were obtained. Doyle tells us: 

Dr. [Gustave] Geley carried out with [Franek] Kluski a number of remarkable experiments in the formation of wax moulds of materialized hands. He has recorded the results of a series of eleven successful sittings for this purpose. In a dim light the medium's right hand was held by Professor Richet and his left hand by Count Potocki. A trough containing wax, kept at melting-point by warm water, was placed two feet in front of Kluski, and for the purpose of a test the wax was impregnated (unknown to the medium) with the chemical cholesterin, this to prevent the possibility of substitution. Dr. Geley writes:

The feeble light did not admit of the phenomena being actually seen; we were aware of the moment of dipping, by the sound of splashing in the liquid. The operation involved two or three immersions. The hand that was acting was plunged in the trough, was withdrawn, and, covered with warm paraffin, touched the hands of the controllers of the experiments, and then was plunged again into the wax. After the operation the glove of paraffin, still warm but solidified, was placed against the hand of one of the controllers.

In this way nine moulds were taken: seven of hands, one of a foot, and one of a chin and lips. The wax of which they were composed on being tested gave the characteristic reaction of cholesterin. Dr. Geley shows twenty-three photographs of the moulds and of plaster casts made from them. It may be mentioned that the moulds exhibit the folds of the skin, the nails and the veins, and these markings in nowise resemble those of the medium. Efforts to make similar moulds from the hands of human beings were only partially successful, and the difference from those obtained at the sittings was obvious. Sculptors and moulders of repute have declared that they know of no method of producing wax moulds such as those obtained at the séances with Kluski.

Geley sums up the result thus:

"We will now enumerate the proofs which we have given of the authenticity of the moulds of materialized limbs in our experiments in Paris and Warsaw.

"We have shown that quite apart from the control of the medium, whose two hands were held by us, all fraud was impossible.

"1. The theory of fraud by a rubber glove is inadmissible, for such an attempt gives crude and absurd results which can be seen at a glance to be imitations.

"2. It is not possible to produce such gloves of wax by using a rigid mould already prepared. A trial of this shows at once how impossible it is.

"3. The use of a prepared mould in some fusible and soluble substance, covered with a film of paraffin during the séance and then dissolved out in a pail of water, will not fit in with the actual procedure. We had no pail of water.

"4. The theory that a living hand was used (that of the medium or of an assistant) is inadmissible. This could not have been done, for several reasons, one being that gloves thus obtained are thick and solid, while ours are fine and delicate, also that the position of the fingers in our moulds makes it impossible that they could be withdrawn without breaking the glove. Also that the gloves have been compared with the hands of the medium and of the assistants, and that they are not alike. This is shown also by anthropological measurements.

"Finally, there is the hypothesis that the gloves were brought by the medium. This is disproved by the fact that we secretly introduced chemicals into the melted wax, and that these were found in the gloves.

"The report of the expert modellers on the point is categorical and final."

Nothing is evidence to those who are so filled with prejudice that they have no room for reason, but it is inconceivable that any normally endowed man could read all the above, and doubt the possibility of taking moulds from ectoplasmic figures.

A rebuttal of Geley's work was presented by two Italian researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, who cast doubt on some of his claims. In particular, they showed that thin molds could be obtained rather easily, and that it was possible for a person to twist his hand free of the paraffin without breaking the mold. Their work is important and interesting, but it does not address the most significant claims made by Geley - namely, that the medium's hands were controlled throughout the séance, and that the paraffin had been pretreated with a certain chemical (without the medium's knowledge) to expose any attempted substitution.

If substitution is eliminated as a possibility, and if the medium's hands were properly controlled, then the only remaining non-paranormal explanation is the action of an accomplice, who would make a mold of his own hand. Could Geley have been careless enough to allow a potential accomplice into the séance room, and would this person's actions pass unnoticed in the dim red light? It seems doubtful.

Skeptics will probably say Kluski fooled the experimenters into believing they had control of both his hands, when actually they were controlling only one. But remember that one of the molds was of a foot, and another was of a partial face ("chin and lips"). Maybe, just maybe, Kluski could have lowered his face into the paraffin, though it seems likely that this action would have been observed, and that some traces of the paraffin would cling to his face afterward.

More important, how would he get his bare foot onto the table and into the trough of paraffin?

Getting a rise out of ectoplasm

In his book After Death -- What? Researches in Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena (1909; Aquarian Press edition 1988), turn-of-the-century scientist Cesare Lombroso recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. One of the most striking chapters is Lombroso's account of "seventeen séances held in Milan in 1892 ... séances in which the most marked precautions were taken, such as searching the medium, changing her garments, binding her and holding her hands and feet, and adjusting the electric light on the table so as to be able to turn it off and on at will." (pp. 40-41)

The subject of these experiments was the controversial Sicilian medium Eusapia Palladino, who was said to be able to levitate tables, make musical instruments play themselves, produce cold winds in a sealed room, and materialize hands and faces. Eusapia was an eccentric character known for her propensity to cheat when she thought she could get away with it, a tendency that discredited her in the eyes of many researchers. (The fact that she was a coarse, uneducated, and flirtatious peasant woman also factored into the disrepute in which she was held in genteel circles.) Nevertheless, when properly controlled and observed, she produced some remarkable phenomena, which are difficult if not impossible to explain by any normal means. Indeed, the premier magician of the day, Howard Thurston, witnessed one of Eusapia's séances and stated publicly that her phenomena could not be duplicated by any trickery known to him.

What follows are a few excerpts from Lombroso's treatment of the Eusapia sittings. It should be noted that the table used in the experiments was not Eusapia's; it was "made expressly for the purpose" by the researchers. (p. 41)

After recounting some partial levitations of the table Lombroso writes:

It was natural to conclude that if the table, in apparent contradiction with the law of gravitation, was able to rise on one side, it would be able to rise completely. In fact, that is what happened, and these levitations are among those of most frequent occurrence in experiments with Eusapia. They were usually produced under the following conditions: The persons seated around a table place their hands on it and form the chain there. Each hand of the medium is held by the adjacent hand of the neighbor on each side; each of her feet is under the foot of her neighbor; these furthermore press against her knees with theirs. As usual, she is seated at one of the short sides (end) of the table, -- the position least favorable for mechanical levitation. After a few minutes the table makes a lateral movement, rises now to the right and now to the left, and finally is lifted wholly off its four feet into the air, horizontally, as if afloat in a liquid, and ordinarily to a height of from 10 to 20 centimetres (sometimes, exceptionally, as high as 60 or 70), then falls back on all four feet at once. Sometimes it stays in the air for several seconds, and even makes fluctuating motions there, during which the position of the feet under it can be thoroughly inspected. During the levitation the right hand of the medium frequently leaves the table with that of her neighbor and remains suspended above it. Throughout the experiment the face of the medium is convulsed, her hands contract, she groans and seems to be suffering.

In order better to observe the matter in hand we gradually retired the experimenters from the table, having noticed that the chain of several persons was not at all necessary, either in this or in other phenomena. In the end we left only a single person besides the medium, and placed on her left. This person rested her feet on the two feet of Eusapia, and one of her hands on the latter's knees. With her other hand she held the left hand of the medium, whose right lay on the table in full view of all, or was even lifted into the air during the levitation.

Inasmuch as the table remained in the air for several seconds, it was possible to secure several photographs of performance. [Two of these are included in the book.]

A little before the levitation it was observed that the folds of the skirt of Eusapia were blown out on the left side so far as to touch the neighboring leg of the table. When one of us endeavored to hinder this contact, the table was unable to rise as before, and was only enabled so to do when the observer purposely allowed to contact to occur. It will be noticed that the hand of the medium was at the same time placed on the upper surface of the table on the same side, so that the leg of the table there was under her influence, as much in the lower portion by means of the skirt as in the superior portion through the avenue of the hand. No verification was made as to the degree of pressure exerted upon the table at that moment by the hand of the medium, nor were we able to find out, owing to the brevity of the levitation, what particular part was in contact with the garment, which seemed to move wholly in a lateral direction and to support the weight of the table.

In order to avoid this contact it was proposed to have the levitation take place while the medium and her coadjutors stood on their feet, but it did not succeed. It was also proposed to place the medium at one of the longer sides of the table. But she opposed this, saying that it was impossible. So we are obliged to declare that we did not succeed in obtaining a complete levitation of the table of all four of its legs absolutely free from any contact whatever, and there is reason to fear that a similar difficulty would have been met in the levitation of the two legs that stood on the side next the medium. [pp. 43-46]

While performing some experiments with a balance, the same "blowing out" of the medium's garment was observed.

In this experiment of the balance, also, it was noticed by some of us that success seemed to depend on contact of the garments of the medium with the floor upon which the balance was directly placed. The truth of this was established by a special experiment on the 9th of October. The medium having been seated on the balance, that one of our number who had taken upon himself to watch her feet soon saw the lower folds of her dress swelling out and projecting in such a way as to hang down from the platform of the balance. As long as the attempt was made to hinder this movement of the dress (which was certainly not produced by the feet of the medium), the levitation did not take place. But as soon as the lower extremity of the dress was allowed to touch the floor, repeated and very evident levitations took place, which were designated in very fine curves on the disk that registered the variations of weight. [pp. 47-48]

The movement of the dress naturally gives rise to suspicion that some sort of fancy footwork was at play. But the researchers swore that Eusapia's feet were not responsible for the movement. If there is any reality to ectoplasm, then it may be the case that some sort of invisible ectoplasmic protuberance was causing the dress to move, and that contact between this ectoplasmic rod and the floor or table was necessary in order to achieve results.

In any case, the preceding observations pale in comparison to a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."

Among the most important and significant of the occurrences we put this levitation. It took place twice, -- that is to say, on the 28th of September and the 3rd of October. The medium, who was seated near one end of the table, was lifted up in her chair bodily, amid groans and lamentations on her part, and placed (still seated) on the table, then returned to the same position as before, with her hands continually held, her movements being accompanied by the persons next her.

On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were held by MM. Richet and Lombroso, she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said, "Now I lift my medium up on the table." After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and M. Richet and I are sure that we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and (M. Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision, while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the positions of the hands.

Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head.

On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances, MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia. [pp. 49-50]

The researchers' impression of being touched by "a hand" during this levitation is particularly interesting, and perhaps adds weight to the hypothesis of ectoplasmic extensions at at work.

Now, I'm well aware that there are ways of tilting a table and making it appear to levitate, though it would seem that the researchers' precautions were sufficient to prevent fraud in these particular tests. But even if Eusapia managed to fool them with regard to the table, how in the world could she simulate the levitation of herself and the chair she was sitting on -- transporting it from the floor to the table itself, and then back again, while closely observed?