For your viewing pleasure (click any image to enlarge) :
1. Scottish materialization medium Helen Duncan extrudes her ectoplasmic spirit guide, "Peggy."
2. Close-up of the remarkably lifelike (?) Peggy.
3. Another materialization of Peggy. (Correction: I think this one is actually "Albert," a different spirit. In the words of one site, " 'Albert' is also seen to look like a third-rate carnival monster composed of muslin on a coat hanger and a very bad, grotesque papier maché face.")
4. As Survival After Death wryly puts it, "Wrapped in black from neck to toe, Helen Duncan materialised a spirit hand that bears a remarkable resemblance to a rubber glove."
Hat tips to Bad Psychics and Survival After Death.
let's not go into how fake 'peggy' looks, but the question that i really want to ask is:
with her hands bound or held by others, how the heck did she get this cloth-like mask thingie to come out of her mouth and to make it float like that?
lookin at these pictures, i can only think that whoever took these pictures were part of this 'fraud' as well.
or- perhaps the spirit somehow decided to use prop to show themselves..
i think you already know which explanation is more plausible.
Posted by: TomC | June 21, 2007 at 10:05 PM
In the case of the rubber glove, she could have concealed it in her mouth and then blown it up like a balloon. She would not have needed her hands free to do this.
I assume she did have her hands free when she produced Peggy and hung her from the cabinet curtain. (Incidentally a safety pin was found on the curtain by Harry Price when he tested Duncan.) The prop itself was presumably made of cheesecloth, chiffon, or muslin, any of which could be easily concealed in a body cavity or swallowed and regurgitated. These lightweight fabrics can be compressed to an astonishingly small size. I don't know how she got the puppet's face into the cabinet; maybe it was made of thin rubber and rolled or folded until it was small enough to conceal.
The photos were taken only after the prop had been set up and Duncan had resumed her "tied-up" pose. At least, that's my best guess. Remember, the light would be on for only a few seconds; then the room would be dark again and she could go back to work.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | June 21, 2007 at 10:24 PM
These pics were so weird when I first viewed them I did not spend much time looking at them. I much prefer to look at pics of Katie King.
Maybe the skeptics got it all wrong and Crookes was in love with Katie and not Florence. Of course the skeptics would just state they were one and same without doing their research.
Scary to think about but maybe some manifestations look like that. Can you imagine the money the spiritualists could have made scaring those folks that love horror movies. How would you like to have one of those manifestations sitting next to you in a dimly lit room?
Why do we automatically assume fraud?
On another note and I am sure off the subject but I found this critique of Richard Dawkins book "the god delusion" as a link off the Huffington post of all places. The best critique of Dawkins I have seen yet.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html
Posted by: william | June 22, 2007 at 05:02 AM
I always thought that Katie King looked exactly like Florence Cook. Notice that when they are photographed together, Katie's face is obscured. It seems like the possibility of fraud is high to say the least.
Posted by: Greg | June 22, 2007 at 08:59 AM
William,
that's why i put ' around fraud because i honestly dont know what to make of this. looking at the 'manifestations,' i would think that most people will look at it and see that it's not genuine but rather it's more of a cheap prop for a cheap show. after all, why would spirits manifest themselves into rubber-like poorly painted mask, or cheesecloth?
say you're watching a tv drama about a medium who can materializes things. and in the show, u see this medium materializes something like helen duncan's manifestation....what would you think? the first thing that would pop up in my head is 'gosh, the show must have a really low budget because they look so darn fake- why not use CG or live actors in front of blue screen...etc...etc..
with that being said, wouldn't that make most people think that helen duncan was merely putting up a very very low budget show?
but then, i have to think that, the picture only showed millisecond of that specific event....how did she manage to slip free from the grip of the sitters, get up and put up the mask, and go back to the seat, into the grip of the sitters, and made faces like you were in a hypnotic state (or in excruciating pain).
with pictures of katie king and minnie harrison, i think there is certainly more room for possibility that they were real. but still, the ectoplasm still looked mundanely similar to cheesecloth, and it was too convenient that you never see both faces of katie king and her medium at the same time.
maybe i'm too skeptical, but to me if something looks too man-made and fake, i would always assume it's fake....whether it's fraud or not, i can't say. but none of these pictures convince me of their ability and of afterlife AT ALL. in fact, those pictures and their exposures made me lean toward a material world instead.
if some people would go great length to set this elaborate show, then what's to show that others are not doing the same thing (i know that logic is flawed, but the emotional aspect of me can't help feeling that).
even with gary schwartz, even though his studies on medium were commendable and adequately controlled, why is that you (william) and michael were not impressed by the mediums backed by Gary Schwartz at all?
the world is such a weird place...there is always so many places for doubts- or maybe we're constantly shifting our paradigm of belief so we can keep convincing ourselves that the survival of consciousness is real.
what a awful excruciating gray area it is!
Posted by: TomC | June 22, 2007 at 09:00 AM
The mediums tested by Dr. Schwartz and the physical mediumship of the period in question have little to do with one another. On one hand you have sensationalist parlor tricks, on the other, triple-blinded (in the most recent experiments) psychics providing extremely detailed information to proxy sitters at odds of tens of thousands to one against chance. I don't see the correlation.
Informational mediumship has, to my mind, proved itself a real phenomenon, though it also has more than its share of frauds. Between experiments and the vast body of narratives provided by reliable, skeptical investigators (why aren't people doing that kind of work today?), it seems pretty solid.
Physical mediumship, on the other hand, never does. I'm sorry but in this case I have to side with the honest skeptics (I don't put Randi, et al into this category): if you're going to claim it's ectoplasm, not cheesecloth, the burden of proof is on you to prove it's some otherwordly substance. I can buy cheesecloth or muslin down the street at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Ectoplasm, let's see, I don't think it's available in my area, damn.
Pictures don't obviously tell the whole story, but when they are this hokey, it's reasonable to assume that in a gullible time when there was fame and fortune to be had by levitating tables and barfing snot from the Great Beyond, people would do it. Some critical thinking skills are required. At the same time, this does NOT invalidate the extraordinary performances of mediums like Leonora Piper, Gladys Leonard and dozens more like them.
Posted by: Tim | June 22, 2007 at 09:12 AM
http://www.helenduncan.org.uk/Duncan.htm
Posted by: jkht329gywvs2q | June 22, 2007 at 10:04 AM
Regarding the comments doubting the existence of ectoplasm...
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/books/doyle/vitalmessage/appendixa.htm
Posted by: hfdru753u5gw0v82 | June 22, 2007 at 10:16 AM
>For that night her seance was disrupted (etc.) ...
That's how helenduncan.org tells the story. There are other versions. See Is There an Afterlife? by David Fontana for a sympathetic but balanced report.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | June 22, 2007 at 11:23 AM
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/duncan.htm
The above url links to a discussion of Helen Duncan which seems to be even handed. It describes Harry Price's detection of fraud that seem hard to refute (He doesn't seem to have been hostile to the phenomena in general, "[his] contribution to the evidence of genuine psychical phenomena is significant" http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/researchers/priceharry.htm). It also contains testamonials of genuine phenomena occuring as well: ("Will Goldston, the famous magician, confessed to have witnessed astounding results which no system of trickery can achieve.")
Posted by: 9803ytgwvs9yh2 | June 22, 2007 at 11:33 AM
Michael Prescott commented
I realize you may not have time to summarize the authors findings on that episode, but can you at least tell us if he concludes throughout her career if she was a complete fraud, sometimes fraudulent / sometimes genuine, or completely genuine?
Thanks
Posted by: jkht329gywvs2q | June 22, 2007 at 12:04 PM
You may want to read this http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/goldston/duncan.htm
As far as peggy goes yeah it does look fake i will admit but if it's fake how was she able to get that cheesecloth to fully form in a straight order a human being i mean if there are people watching. One thing that certainly does not make sense is she died once this cheesecloth got back in her body.
Posted by: Leo | June 22, 2007 at 12:28 PM
Sorry about that just read your response Michael there's still a lot of people who seem to support her after all these years like www.helenduncan.org. I heard though in that article up above that she did confound magicians?
Posted by: Leo | June 22, 2007 at 12:52 PM
she choked to death as the cheesecloth went into her lung by mistake?
maybe she had a heart attack at just the right time and died? or aneurysm?
did they perform autopsy?
again, i dont like playing the devil advocate, and i really dont like those dogmatic skeptics, but there are infinite possibilities of how she could have died at the time of arrest- as this ectoplasm got back into her body, but since we know nothing about ectoplasm and no definite evidence of such thing is ever produced, then we cannot use it as a cause of her death while there are many possible ways that she could have died from instead.
i know i'm rather harsh about this, but it feels like people who are defending helen duncan are using the same reasoning as people in the past thinking that flood and natural disasters are wrath of God(s) reining upon them, or that the lunar eclipse was the work of the devil...etc. etc...
we have no basis to say 'ectoplasm' was real and that somehow that was the cause of her death. despite what we like to believe. honestly, if ectoplasm is real, then her death would be a pretty convincing evidence that it's a form of life force that is not yet understood, and is immaterial. but since that's not the case, we cannot use this to prove the validity of ectoplasm.
heck, if i have a cheesecloth shovel down my throat, i would very likely to choke and drown in my own blood.
i do apologize if i sound vehement about this.
and to Tim, i didnt mean to compare gary schwartz's medium research to physical mediumship, and you're right that they're not correlated or having anything to do with one another. i was merely using that as an example as to how individual experience with mediums can be so different....michael said he wasn't not impressed with laurie's reading (if i misquote you, michael, i apologize), and william was not impressed with the medium he met. I dont believe that their experiences invalidate Schwartz's research in anyway or lessen his credibility, but i just feel so darn frustrating by the fact that even with informational mediumship, there are still rooms open for debate and doubt.
Posted by: TomC | June 22, 2007 at 01:04 PM
I'm reading Fontana's book now. Very interesting. But with the physical mediums of the old days, I find it hard to come to any conclusions since we can't test them. They might make for a good screenplay but those stories will never prove anything to the hardened skeptics or mainstream scientists.
It's too bad because I would love to have been around in Crooke's house when he was hanging with Katie & Florence.
So, if physical mediumship is legit in some cases, we should have some doing it today. David Thompson is one of a handful claiming to be one. But he doesn't seem too open to testing. Anybody know otherwise? What about the others? Who are they?
The only other option is to start a group like the Scole group to see if the phenomena that they claimed can be reproduced. Anybody have opinions on Scole? I am also reading their book (not the SPR report) right now.
Fascinating stuff.
Posted by: JoeMB | June 22, 2007 at 01:29 PM
Tom, I don't think it's frustrating as much as realistic. If we assume mediumship is a talent like anything else, then we must look at it in the same way we look at musicians, doctors, baseball players and just about every other endeavor. There are people who are truly gifted, people who have honed their skills to the maximum, people who delude themselves into thinking they're better than they are at what they do, and people who work their butts off to be mediocre with little talent. I assume mediums are the same way.
I mean, I sing in a blues band and while I'm a great singer, it's safe to say my harmonica playing leaves something to be desired, even though I've been at it for 10 years. I just don't have the natural gift for it and no amount of work is going to turn me into the fat guy from Blues Traveler.
It's very likely the same way with mediums: some are Barry Bonds, some are Mario Mendoza. But given the law of averages, it's more likely that most mediums are average to below-average and bolster their meager gifts with cold reading, tricks, and so on. Those tactics work with many credulous clients, but a critical client like Michael would no doubt find the reading to be insufficient. I think we can safely assume the Leonora Pipers to be as rare as guys who can hit 73 homers.
I also wonder if a medium who gives a great evidentiary reading to one person might give a poor one to another because of some inherent difference in mind, consciousness, intuitive abilities, etc.?
Posted by: Tim | June 22, 2007 at 01:44 PM
>if it's fake how was she able to get that cheesecloth to fully form in a straight order a human being i mean if there are people watching.
There weren't people watching. The "spirit" formed in the dark, or in very dim light. The photo was snapped only after the puppet had been put together. See The Psychic Mafia by M. Lamar Keene (Ch. 5, "Secrets of the Seance") for details on how mediums arrange these things.
>she choked to death as the cheesecloth went into her lung by mistake?
maybe she had a heart attack at just the right time and died? or aneurysm?
She didn't die during the seance. She died more than 5 weeks later, apparently of natural causes. She was old and sick (diabetes, heart disease). Probably the shock of having her home invaded by cops hastened her death, but I see no need for any paranormal explanation.
>can you at least tell us if he concludes throughout her career if she was a complete fraud, sometimes fraudulent / sometimes genuine, or completely genuine?
David Fontana seems to conclude that she was sometimes genuine/sometimes fraudulent. I think he may be too charitable in this case (and in some other cases). Nevertheless, I recommend his book as a good overview of the subject.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | June 22, 2007 at 01:55 PM
>I think we can safely assume the Leonora >Pipers to be as rare as guys who can hit 73 >homers.
Maybe Piper was taking Andro or The Cream?
Posted by: JoeMB | June 22, 2007 at 02:03 PM
We are told that groups of scientists work in the afterlife work with physical mediums to create communication between the dimensions. They extract a mysterious substance from the body of the medium and from the sitters and the furniture and use it to make a mysterious substance called “ectoplasm”.
Ectoplasm can be manipulated into hardened rods and spirit can direct these rods to move large object like tables and chairs and levitate a person. It can also be moulded into an artificial voice box or stretched out into flat like a sheet of material with which spirits cover themselves in order to lower their vibrations and become solid.
The word ectoplasm from the Greek meaning literally “exteriorized substance” was coined by Professor Charles Richet, Professor of Physiology at the Sorbonne in Paris, a winner of the Nobel Prize and member of the prestigious Institute de France who investigated it for thirty years.
Richet's conclusion was:
There is ample proof that experimental materialization (ectoplasmic) should take definite rank as a scientific fact. Assuredly we do not understand it. It is very absurd, if a truth can be absurd (Richet 1927: 112).
In its primary stage he found that it is invisible and intangible but even then it can be photographed by infrared rays and weighed. In its secondary stage it becomes either vaporous or liquid or solid, with a smell somewhat akin to ozone. In its final stages, when it can be seen and felt, it has the appearance of muslin and feels like a mass of cobwebs. At other times it is moist and cold and, on rare occasions, dry and hard. Its temperature is usually about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (Butler 1947: 75) which accounts for the observation of drop of temperature around physical phenomena
Baron Von Schrenck-Notzing, a Munich physician, showed that ectoplasm is composed of leucocytes—white or colorless blood cells—and epithelial cells—those from the various protective tissues of the body. During materialization it is taken from the bodies of the medium and the sitters (Stemman, 1975:57).
Baron Schrenck Notzing in Phenomena of Materialization sums up hundreds of experiments conducted for a period of five years with Eva C.:
We have very often been able to establish that by an unknown process there comes from the body of the medium a material, at first semi-fluid, which possesses some of the properties of a living substance, notably that of the power of change, of movement and of the assumption of definite forms.
In Munich, with the Polish medium Stanislawa P., the Baron succeeded in making a cinematographic record of ectoplasm as it flowed out of the medium's mouth.
Skeptics claim that ectoplasm does not exist and photographs of it are all faked, usually by the medium rolling up cheesecloth in the mouth or anus prior to the séance and pulling it out and making it walk and talk and assume the shape of one’s dead relatives—a feat which I for one would love to see one single skeptic actually demonstrate, especially while tied hand and foot to their chair the way most materialization mediums are!!!
Posted by: Leo | June 22, 2007 at 02:15 PM
I admit I an a bit of a skeptic when it comes to mediums. It appears to me that we ( I ) expect too much of our mediums. Solid hits every time, etc. Medium abilities I think are at all levels and there are a lot of lower level mediums out there making a living at it and I suspect some are complete frauds. After all as Swartz writes Michael Jordan only got it right 45% of the time.
I watched every crossing over TV show with John Edwards for two years and knew people that appeared on his show. In my mind there is something to his abilities. I calculated John Edwards hits during those two years at a much lower level than Swartz did in his lab but those hits I calculated were hits that defy explanation and were beyond chance or cold reading hits.
Please know I spent 20 years teaching understanding variation as a consultant so I know about chance, special cause, and systemic causes of variation.
Here is one set of responses from Swartz’s certified medium at a local bookstore.
The medium asked: You are having knee problems? The sitter said no.
Then he asked, "You are having lower back problems." The sitter said no.
Then he asked, "You are having shoulder problems? The sitter said yes.
This looks like fishing or cold reading to me as most people at her age (55) have or have had knee problems, lower back problems, or shoulder problems.
Greg do more research as to Katie King looking like Florence and you will find a lot of evidence that they were two different people. I.e. Dr Gully reading pulses. Personally I would like to know where Florence’s sister was during these séances.
Physical manifestations greatly challenge our scientific and materialist paradigms.
Posted by: william | June 22, 2007 at 02:20 PM
These are very insightful comments. Uh, what I mean is that I agree :). The % accuracy needed to disprove the chance hypothesis in a double blind experiemnt is much lower than the % accuracy needed to be useful.
If a medium is 80% accurate you can easily figure out which of your dead relatives is coming through. However if a medium is 99% accurate and gets one word wrong (the word "not") the meaning of a message may be completely wrong.
Posted by: lkjht349gywvh | June 22, 2007 at 03:25 PM
Yes. This is stated in many many places in the literature. See (http://www.spritiwritings.com/library.html and http://survivalebooks.org/).
We often assume the factors that effect a reading involve the medium. Actually this is not correct. The medium is the same person at every reading. The variability is mostly due to factors that effect the ability of the spirit to interact with the physical world and/or influence the medium.
A spirit will have a hard time coming through if the person getting the reading is hostle or if there is no desire to connect with any spirits. For a good reading the person can be skeptical but they should have a sincere desire to connect a spirit if it is possible.
The same factors that affect human performance affect spirits. If a spirit doesn't want to do something, or has mixed feelings they will not be very successful. If they have fears, doubts, or think they might fail it will be harder for them.
Some people have difficulty communicating with each other. It is the same with people and spirits. One spirit might easily communicate through a certain medium and another spirit might have difficulty with that medium but not with some other medium.
Posted by: lk3t0gwuv293 | June 22, 2007 at 03:46 PM
A commenter said:
Schwartz did triple blind experiments.
The Truth about Medium by Gary Schwartz chapter 6
The medium's gave a reading without feedback, then the subjects identified the reading that seemed most likely to be for them from a group of control readings. So cold reading is probably not a factor in his results from those experiemnts.
Posted by: lkj3t9gwyvg2oibv89 | June 22, 2007 at 04:13 PM
>Skeptics claim that ectoplasm does not exist and photographs of it are all faked, usually by the medium rolling up cheesecloth in the mouth or anus prior to the séance and pulling it out and making it walk and talk
No, the claim is not that the medium makes the cheesecloth walk and talk. The claim is that the medium dons the cheesecloth as a costume, and then walks and talks while wearing it.
>and assume the shape of one’s dead relatives
See The Psychic Mafia for discussions of how easy it was for Lamar Keene to fool his sitters into thinking they were reunited with their loved ones. All it took was some advance research, some acting skill, and the power of suggestion - aided, of course, by the near-total darkness of the seance room.
>a feat which I for one would love to see one single skeptic actually demonstrate, especially while tied hand and foot to their chair the way most materialization mediums are!!!
Ah, but there's the rub - are they actually tied up while these ghostly happenings are afoot, or have they freed themselves in the dark?
Btw, Leo's entire comment is taken from Ch. 10 of Victor Zammit's online book - specifically, the subsection titled "Ectoplasm." Please give credit when posting someone else's words, okay?
Posted by: Michael Prescott | June 22, 2007 at 04:45 PM
Wow, lots of posts.
This worth reading. With pics!
Posted by: Darryn | June 22, 2007 at 05:10 PM
Really sorry about that I sure will next time give credit to the actual person who wrote it thanks for the head up.
>Skeptics claim that ectoplasm does not exist and photographs of it are all faked, usually by the medium rolling up cheesecloth in the mouth or anus prior to the séance and pulling it out and making it walk and talk
No, the claim is not that the medium makes the cheesecloth walk and talk. The claim is that the medium dons the cheesecloth as a costume, and then walks and talks while wearing it.
Yes this is very well possible and probably has happen many times however it's a claim and in some seances there are spirits materializing by large numbers at a time. Also not everyone i think is going to go through all that I think there are some serious physical mediums who have genuinely materialized real spirits. Such as the ones you mention many times before as well as Helen Duncan at times like Michael E Tymn.
Well Lamar keene certainly has fooled people that does not mean at that all physical mediums have. Also let's remember to be careful here I know it's cool you link to badpsychics.com but obviously they don't have a good track either for telling the truth.
Just takes a look at Louie Savy a person that was interested in parapsychology to say after that he found not evidence that convinced him of it's reality. He did say there were some hits in some of the experiments he was doing but nothing that can't be explained physically he joins the group obviously of the likes of Susan Blackmore and Richard Wiseman.
Posted by: Leo | June 22, 2007 at 06:14 PM
Regarding william's comment,
...
It appears to me that we ( I ) expect too much of our mediums. Solid hits every time, etc.
...
This looks like fishing or cold reading to me as most people at her age (55) have or have had knee problems, lower back problems, or shoulder problems.
...
I would assume in Schwartz's research he correctly includes all the data collected, but in his books I don't know if we can assume all the anecdotes are representitive or if there were errors made by the mediums that he does not mention. That could explain why, when you see the medium at work, your expectations are too high. Maybe they are set too high by selective reporting in the book.
Another factor might be that the environment at the book store was unfavorable.
Posted by: lkj3t9gwyvg2oibv89 | June 23, 2007 at 11:52 AM