Michael Prescott's Blog

Puppet show, part two

In the comments thread on the last post, Amos Oliver Doyle includes a link to an issue of Psypioneer Journal that offers an exhaustive look at the puppet-photos controversy. The article, titled "Helen Duncan, Esson Maule and Harry Price," was written by Paul J. Gaunt.

I can't add anything to this comprehensive overview, so I'll just quote part of the conclusion. Gaunt decides that "the simplest solution" is as follows:

At some point later than 1928, after [Harvey] Metcalfe had sat with Duncan in August 1930, he took the said images as he states: “I screened about fifty glass positives for Mrs Duncan ...” There was no issue of any copyright or payment as Metcalfe was a “amateur photographer”. Metcalfe had stated in his séance report: “I consider that photographs and evidence of equal value might possibly be obtained.”

The images were in Duncan’s possession, when Duncan met Esson Maule ... By some means Maule obtained four images from Duncan, maybe by payment, and later after January 5th 1933 when she seized Peggy she used a Press Agent W. M. Scott who gained the copyright of at least two of the images ...

The other so-called papier-mâché image ... was used by Harry Price’s Literary Agent Frank C. Betts Ltd, and published.

As the Metcalfe photographs were not professional the Agents may not have been aware who the actual photographer was; the press gave no photographers name to the images. It was not until [Alan] Crossley published his book [The Story of Helen Duncan] in 1975 that the photographer’s name was revealed.

"When she seized Peggy" refers to the well-known incident, recounted at length in the article, when Maule interrupted a seance to grab the "materialized spirit guide," which turned out to be Duncan's undervest. The episode led to Duncan's arrest, trial, and conviction for fraud; she was fined ten pounds.

Since the photos were never properly dated or labeled, it is probably impossible to conclusively determine their origin.

One thing I can say of my own knowledge is that two of the photos appear in Harry Price's 1933 book Leaves from a Psychist's Case-Book, a copy of which I received recently. Below are some photos I took of the book and its contents. The full chapter on Helen Duncan from Price's book is reproduced on the Harry Price website. 

 

 

 

The puppet photos are listed as plate XV, bottom of this page.

 

The undervest photo is Plate XVI, top of this page.

 

Price discusses taking photos of Duncan and her "spirit guide," Peggy. These should not be confused with the puppet photos. They are different photos taken at Price's lab, viewable on the official Harry Price website. Plates 19 and 20 on the site show "Peggy" as she appeared at the lab ("a picture of a girl's head cut from a magazine cover and stuck on the cheese-cloth"). 

 

Price's reproduction of two of the puppet photos, published unfortunately without attribution or explanation. He may have wanted his readers to assume that these photos were the ones he'd earlier referenced as his own pictures of "Peggy," or he may have just been careless about attribution.

Price's reproduction of the photo of Duncan's undervest, which became an item of incriminating evidence at her trial.

Nothing in the book's text sheds any further light on l'affaire des marionnettes. 

Puppet show

A minor but ongoing mystery surrounds a couple of photos apparently taken of the British materialization medium Helen Duncan. The photos show a blindfolded and loosely secured Duncan in a chair during a séance, attended by two different "phantoms" – which, all too obviously, are crude, cartoonish puppets. The implication is that Duncan used these puppets in the dimly lit séance room to fool her clientele, but when they were captured on film in the glare of a photographer's flashbulb, their laughable artificiality was revealed.

Now and then, these photos show up on skeptical websites with some snarky comment to the effect that believers in mediumship actually accept these dolls as spirits. One website claimed that 60% of people on a pro-paranormal forum took the photos as genuine. It appears that the 60% figure was just made up.

I doubt that anyone other than the most hard-core true-believer would be fooled by the puppets, which appear to consist of papier-mâché heads, coat-hanger shoulders, and muslin or cheesecloth "bodies."

The controversy mainly concerns the photos' provenance and whether or not they actually depict Helen Duncan. If you search online, you'll find many sources attributing the photos to photographer Harvey Metcalfe, who took photos of Duncan in her home in 1928. It is said that the photos were reproduced in Harry Price's 1933 book Leaves from a Psychist's Case-Book, though when I searched for the name "Metcalfe" in the Google Books preview edition, nothing came up. (The preview format does not allow me to look for the photos themselves.)

In the forum linked above, a commenter named Open Mind offers this explanation:

The most authoritative book on the Duncan case is Maurice Cassier's Medium On Trial who comments on these photographs' history …

'... Price is silent about their origin in his published works, or about the circumstances under which they were taken—supposedly at Helen’s home ... It is even possible that the photographs are reconstructions of what was supposed to have been seen, in line with others to be presently considered ...'

Manfred Cassier, 1996, Medium on Trial

(Other books imply the photograph was taken by a Harvey Metcalfe due to his claim emerging after Duncan's death, however this claim is doubtful as Metcalfe didn't have the original photographs, only the same 4 photographs as in Harry Price's collection and it is a different name on the back of these)

I've ordered Price's book (used copies are still floating around), and when I get it, I'll let you know if the pictures are really in there and if any attribution is provided. At this point, having read a dozen different versions of the story, I trust no one! 

Another photo that seems to be more solidly attributed to Metcalfe shows Duncan in apparently the same surroundings – at least, the wallpaper looks the same – spewing "ectoplasm" out of her nose to produce a materialized infant.In the puppet photos, the "ectoplasmic cord" extending from the puppet to the medium looks very much like a thick strip of cloth secured under the blindfold.)

Photo taken from the website Survival After Death

In his book Hellish Nell, Malcolm Gaskill similarly attributes the puppet photos to Metcalfe. This seems to be the conventional custom, and they may have originated in just that way.

But a question arises. Duncan was put on trial twice in her life, first in 1933 and later in 1944. In both cases, she was accused of fraud. The puppet photos would have been strong evidence against her, but they were not introduced in either trial. Moreover, Harry Price, who apparently published the photos in his 1933 book, was closely involved in the first trial, so he certainly would have known about the photos, if they existed at that time and if they were photos of Duncan herself.

What I've read in other sources is that the photos were discovered after Price's death, unlabeled and undated, mixed in with miscellaneous items in a desk drawer. People who make this claim say that the photos may have been taken later than Metcalfe's 1928 photo sessions, possibly by Price himself, using a stand-in for Helen Duncan and puppets that Price made in an effort to "re-create" the behind-the-scenes reality of a Duncan séance.

The same Open Mind cited above introduced a new bit of information in a comments thread on Michael Tymn's blog. He quoted from the book Helen Duncan: The Mystery Show Trial, by Robert Hartley:

6th November 1931, Empire News. Harry Price confirms he produced photographs using a model similar to Mrs Duncan and Butter Muslin [a gossamer-thin cloth] and that her husband Mr Duncan could not discern the forgery [p. 296]

The Empire News was a weekly newspaper published on Sundays in the UK.

The point of the quote is not that the puppet photos are the ones mentioned in the article, but simply that Price did sometimes photograph re-creations of séances using a stand-in. If he did it once, he could have done it again. If a stand-in was used, this would explain why the photos never came up in any trial. They could not be submitted as evidence, since they did not depict Duncan herself.

There seem to be three possibilities.

1. The photos are of Helen Duncan and were taken by Harvey Metcalfe in 1928. Perhaps they were not introduced at trial because Metcalfe wasn't available to testify about them, or for some other reason.
2. The photos were taken prior to 1933 and depict Duncan, but were not taken by Metcalfe.
3. The photos were taken prior to 1933, were not taken by Metcalfe, and do not depict Duncan, only a stand-in.
4. The photos were taken sometime after 1933, using a stand-in.

In the latter three cases, it is possible that Harry Price himself took the photos as part of his practice of re-creating seances. The post-1933 option is the least credible, because multiple sources attest that the photos are reproduced in Price's book, though at this point, as I said, I want to see for myself.

The controversy is not terribly important. Undisputed photos that Price took of Duncan (reproduced on the official Harry Price website) clearly show that the "ectoplasm" she exuded was cheesecloth or muslin. The tight weaving on the edges, known as selvage, is quite visible.

There was also an embarrassing incident when a sitter at one of Duncan's séances grabbed hold of the "materialized spirit guide" Peggy and tried to wrest "her" away from the medium. An undervest worn by Duncan, torn in the encounter, was later produced as evidence in Duncan's 1933 trial. It appears that Duncan had simply pinned a picture of a baby's face to the vest, something she had done more than once; the vest is littered with telltale pinpricks.

Photo taken from the website Survival After Death

Overall, I think Helen Duncan was a fake, though sending her to prison for nine months, as happened after her 1944 conviction, seems a tad harsh. But was she dim enough to think that her subpar "Punch & Judy" puppetry would stand up to flash photography? Or was she — in this case, at least — a victim of circumstances? 

Read the whole thing

Though it's been mentioned in the comments, I'd like to call additional attention to Stephen E. Braude's reply to Tom Butler's criticism of his work with Kai Mügge. His detailed response can be read here. (It has been posted via Dropbox, but you do not need to have a Dropbox account to read it or download it.)

In contemporary parapsychology, Braude is one of the very few serious researchers into physical and materialization mediumship, areas that have historically been plagued with fraud and ambiguity. For several decades the Society for Psychical Research largely refused to conduct any investigations into such claims, having found that virtually all cases they did examine proved fraudulent. The credibility of mediumship in general was severely undermined by public exposures of fake mediums of the physical/materialization type, carried out both by enterprising newspapermen and by Harry Houdini. The decline of widespread public interest in Spiritualism dates to this period.

Accordingly, it's only common sense to approach the subject with a degree of skepticism (healthy skepticism, not dogmatic Skepticism). And it's essential to be honest and open about any findings, even if they might be harmful to the medium or to some larger agenda. At the same time, owing to the tricksterish nature of these phenomena, it's necessary to avoid jumping to conclusions or painting with too broad a brush.

This is a difficult balancing act, but Dr. Braude has managed it throughout his career. His ongoing investigation of Kai, whatever its controversies, is one more important contribution to this perplexing field.

Dancing in the dark

A new website has been set up to display infrared videos, presumably taken surreptitiously, that show what goes on behind the scenes at one physical/materialization medium's seances. His name is Gary Mannion. (No, I'd never heard of him, but apparently he has a following in the UK.) 

It's interesting stuff, and a reminder that books like The Psychic Mafia tell an important part of the story. 

More disturbing than the videos themselves is the likelihood that a not-insignificant portion of Mannion's clientele will accept whatever explanation he comes up with — probably that a malevolent spirit possessed him and made him cheat, just this one time. 

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

As a palette cleanser after our political kerfuffle, here's a book review that I originally posted on June 21, 2008. Happily it is Trump-free, though trumpets do make an appearance. 

~~~~

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 non-survival explanations can be ruled out. In the A2 cases the evidence is not quite as clear cut 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.

 

Those gnarly Gnostics

Gnosticism is a very old and complicated spiritual tradition, and I don't claim to be well-versed in it. But as I understand it, the essence of the Gnostic position is that our universe was not created by the one true God, but by a lower-level deity, the demiurge, who messed things up. This explains the imperfections of earthly life. It also casts doubt on the beliefs of most mainstream religious persons, who, according to Gnosticism, worship a mere imposter.

Now, I don’t buy the idea that some inept, delusional godling created the space-time cosmos. But even if the idea lacks metaphysical validity, it may hold some psychological and even historical truth.

At least as far as the Christian tradition is concerned, the Gnostic position seems to be, in part, in response to the willful and capricious God of the Hebrew Bible, who is always smiting his enemies, prescribing arbitrary rules, and blustering belligerently. Yes, there’s a more positive side to job, especially in the writings of prophets like Amos and Isaiah, but the negatives are all too clear. And some of those negatives carried over to the New Testament, as well.

If we see the God of the Old Testament as the supreme ruler of the universe, we may find him baffling and inexplicable. But suppose we view him in another way - as a projection or expression of the human ego. Suddenly he becomes a lot more understandable - even "relatable," in the parlance of scriptwriters today.

In this respect, the Gnostic viewpoint may actually make sense. It's not God who is childish, dishonest, destructive, and delusional; it's the ego. The Biblical God displays these qualities only because he is drawn in the image of the ego.

This notion raises a further possibility, at least to those who are open to the idea of channeling and even materialization or direct-voice mediumship. It has sometimes been observed that descriptions of early “face-to-face” encounters with God (notably, Moses’ experiences in the Tabernacle) match standard accounts of séance phenomena – a dark, enclosed space; a mysterious disembodied voice; a particular individual with inborn intuitive talent, who is indispensable to the phenomena.

It is at least possible that such experiences were part of an unbroken line of shamanistic traditions extending back into prehistory, and that such communions with the spirit world were originally understood as encounters with spirit guides (one’s ancestors, a departed chieftain or teacher, or some legendary figure), not with an all-powerful God. After all, it seems likely that the earliest religions recognized a multiplicity of spiritual authorities and were not monotheistic. Some residue of this tradition is found in the Bible itself – for instance, in the word Elohim, translated today as God, but literally meaning gods or spirits. It is also found in the plethora of Catholic saints with their various functions and intercessory formulas. The idea of a single transcendent God may have been a relatively late development, while the original tradition (still preserved to some extent in folk beliefs, spiritualism, and New Age ideas) may have grown out of séances in which discarnate spirits were channeled or manifested.

In this scenario, the utterances of “God” would actually have been the words of discarnate entities who were not necessarily any more intellectually, morally, or spiritually advanced than the flesh-and-blood audience they addressed. It is also possible, of course, that the medium’s own ego got mixed up in the communications, and that the messages were adjusted to suit the propagandistic needs of the ruling authorities.

So when the Gnostics dismissed Yahweh as a childish, delusional sub-deity, they may have been on to something – not because the actual Mind behind the cosmos fits that unflattering description, but because the all-too-human mentalities of lower-level spirits may have been misinterpreted as the word of God. The Gnostics, with their sophisticated Platonic understanding, may have seen through this historic error – and ticked off a lot of orthodox believers in the process.

Finally, there’s another way of looking at the Gnostic position – a way that’s even more speculative than the foregoing.

Suppose we accept the Kantian idea that the human mind is, in a sense, a co-creator of space-time reality – that “true” reality exists in a nonphysical realm (of pure information?) and the consciousness imposes the properties of space and time on this spaceless, timeless source. From this perspective, consciousness could be seen as the demiurge – the being that participates in creating the universe, and imagines itself (in its egotism) to be uniquely powerful and productive.

In other words, the childish, delusional pseudo-God of the gnostics is … us.

If there’s any truth to this, then the imperfections of earthly life can perhaps be traced to errors (or suboptimal choices) that we ourselves make in “rendering” the source code into the physical environment we navigate. Conceivably a better understanding of our rendering capabilities would lead to better results – as is perhaps the case with spiritual masters who are said to be able to cure illness, manipulate matter and energy, and transcend ordinary physical limits. Perhaps if we really understood and mastered our deepest capabilities, we would finally have eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree and “become as gods, knowing good and evil.”

And knowing (gnosis) is what Gnosticism is all about.

Of tulip bulbs and mediums

In the comments thread of my last post, the subject of speculative bubbles came up. Of course we are all too familiar with such bubbles nowadays–the dot-com bubble, the real-estate bubble, the derivatives bubble. But the phenomenon has been well known since at least 1841, when Charles Mackay published his famous book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

In his book, Mackay deals with “manias” of all kinds. The book is best known for its discussion of economic manias, such as the famous tulip mania in 17th-century Holland, in which the prices of tulip bulbs were bid up to extraordinary levels before crashing. But Mackay focuses most of his attention on social and intellectual crazes. He devotes a great deal of space to alchemy, and he is fascinated by the dueling epidemic–a bizarre historical episode in which people were inexplicably quick to challenge each other to duels and consequently died by the hundreds.

Another famous social mania (not discussed by Mackay as far as I recall) was the revivalist craze that swept through the United States in the early 19th century. Revivalist preachers would travel around the country, hosting public events in which people were exhorted to confess their sins and be born again. Entire towns would convert to the old-time religion in a veritable orgy of righteousness, banning liquor and gambling and vowing to stay on the strait and narrow ever after. Within a few weeks, they naturally had backslid to their old ways, the preacher having long since moved on to a new community. But while the preacher was there, and for a little while afterward, almost everyone in the town was caught up in a fervid atmosphere of religious extremism.

A more famous historical example, and one that is treated by Mackay, is the notorious witch burnings. Gripped by mass hysteria, whole communities would become fanatically convinced that witches were working mischief among them. The number of so-called witches who died at the hands of these mobs is unknown, but the phenomenon continued for decades, springing up first here, then there, unpredictably, and almost always with fatal results.

In thinking about all this, I couldn't help but recall the history of Spiritualism in America and England. Spiritualism originated just a few years after Mackay's book was published (its origin is usually dated to 1848, the year when the "rappings" of the Fox sisters were heard) and spread like wildfire. Before long, ordinary middle-class people were spending their evenings table-tipping or playing with planchettes. People made assiduous efforts to develop their talents at automatic writing or to become trance mediums. Spiritualist churches sprang up in abundance, and in at least one case, a vocal critic of the movement converted to it after falling into a trance and producing channeled information himself! There were celebrity spiritualists like Arthur Conan Doyle, and there were distinguished scientists who backed at least some of the claims of the movement–people like William Crookes, Oliver Lodge, and Alfred Russel Wallace. Spiritualism even found its way to the White House during the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln's wife, a devotee of the movement, invited mediums to perform séances, some of which her husband attended, though his attitude about the whole thing is unclear. The movement had its ups and downs, but remained vigorous and influential at least until the 1920s, when repeated debunkings by Harry Houdini and enterprising journalists soured the public on the alleged phenomena.

Much of this fits the descriptions of public manias in Mackie's book. You have a social innovation that catches on with extraordinary rapidity and draws in people who, under ordinary circumstances, would have nothing to do with it. Just as nonviolent types somehow got caught up in the mania for dueling, and prudent investors somehow were drawn into the world of tulip bulbs, just as heavy drinkers became teetotalers and loving husbands joined a mob to burn their wives at the stake, so it seems that many otherwise cautious and sensible folks became committed to Spiritualism. Was this due to the high quality of the evidence they were receiving, or was it due to the social atmosphere of the times?

The question is important, I think, because a tremendous amount of the evidence for life after death was gathered during this very period. Even today, anyone with a serious interest in the subject of mediumship has to make reference to famous mediums of roughly a hundred years ago–people like Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard. The study of these mediums was more sustained and methodical than any such study before or since, and the results obtained are among the most impressive and often-cited in the field.

The usual skeptical objection to these studies is that they happened so long ago, they can't be taken seriously. My usual reply is that there's no reason to discard evidence simply because it happened to be collected sometime in the past, as long as it was collected by competent researchers following adequate protocols. And I still think that's true, as far as it goes. But what if the researchers' competence and protocols were compromised by a general atmosphere of mania–an atmosphere of irrational excitement and wild enthusiasm, which prompted people to overlook obvious flaws and jump to unjustified conclusions?

Remember that a society (or a segment of society) in the grip of a mania cannot function rationally. The businessman who ordinarily would not think of investing in any venture unless he thoroughly understood its methods, objectives, and prospects may throw all of his prudence out the window when gripped by a mania, and start tossing money at any dot-com stock or condo development in sight. He will invent reasons to excuse his own behavior and justify his own irrationality. No matter how many warning signs flash in front of him, he will ignore them and keep his gaze fixed firmly on the imaginary but irresistible prize on the horizon. He will not come to his senses until the whole investment scheme comes crashing down, and he and all of his like-minded colleagues have suffered huge losses. Then, perhaps, he will look back in bewilderment, shaking his head and wondering how he could have allowed himself to be so woefully deluded.

When we consider the effect that manias can have on even the most intelligent and worldly-wise individuals, we have to ask ourselves if the credentials, competence, and general honesty of the early Spiritualist investigators are as clear-cut as we might like to believe. I have no doubt that most of these people were intelligent, educated, knowledgeable, and well-meaning. But probably so was our deluded businessman. His intelligence and other qualities did not prevent him from being taken to the cleaners, because those qualities were short-circuited by mania. Could a similar short-circuit have been at work in the minds of the investigators whose research forms the bedrock of the scientific exploration of Spiritualism?

At least in some instances, there is reason to answer yes. William Crookes' controversial experiments with the medium Florence Cook are a case in point. When not performing for Crookes, Florence was caught cheating on more than one occasion. For a while, she partnered with another medium, quaintly named Rosina Showers, who turned out to be a complete fraud. It seems unlikely that Florence could have been genuine when she was working hand in glove with a con artist. The materialized entity that supposedly emanated from Florence Cook while she was in a trance sometimes bore a remarkable resemblance to Florence herself, although at other times it did not. The conditions of absolute darkness and the seclusion of the medium in a curtained-off cabinet made fraud a very real possibility. And yet Crookes, a distinguished physicist who was eventually knighted for his work in that field, seems to have been completely convinced of Florence Cook's authenticity. He wrote passionately on the subject, producing a rather feverish essay about his final moments with the dematerializing spirit guide, with whom he shared a secret kiss.

The whole episode is strange on many levels, but it seems less strange if we think of it in the context of the extraordinary popular delusions–the manias–that Charles Mackay writes about. Absent mania, under what circumstances would a normally sober physicist surrender his objectivity so completely? Notice that Crookes did not give up on Florence even after he learned that Rosina was a fraud, though surely he should have grasped that if the one girl was faking, then the other girl–performing at her side–could hardly have been the real deal. But he found some way to rationalize that problem out of existence, just as he rationalized the occasional physical similarity between Florence and the materialized spirit guide as reflecting the mysterious properties of Florence's own ectoplasm.

I'm not saying that all the investigative work done by scientific researchers during the heyday of Spiritualism was of this same low quality. But perhaps a great deal more of it falls into this category than we would like to believe. Perhaps it is a mistake to rely too much on the professional reputations of the investigators involved, or even on their personal reputations for probity and good sense. All these things can vanish like smoke in the grip of mania.

At the very least, it might be worthwhile to revisit the major investigative work undertaken during the Spiritualist years in an attempt to see how the researchers' unconscious biases, assumptions, and hopes, fueled by an atmosphere of credulity and enthusiasm, may have sabotaged their results. Was even a researcher as well respected as Richard Hodgson immune to the siren call of the Spiritualist mania? Perhaps he was. Perhaps not. It is often pointed out that Oliver Lodge, another distinguished physicist and afterlife investigator, developed an interest in the subject even before his son Raymond died in the First World War and allegedly began communicating through mediums. The implication is that Lodge could not have been swayed by emotion in his initial investigations because he had no close personal loss to cope with. But suppose he was swayed by something more general than personal grief. Suppose he was swayed by the turbulent atmosphere of an ongoing social craze that swept up both the educated and uneducated alike.

It's worth thinking about, especially when we consider that much of our data not only about mediumship but also about crisis apparitions, deathbed visions, and hauntings stems from this era. If a great deal of this material is merely the result of an "extraordinary popular delusion," the case for life after death will look very much weaker. 

Two-fer

Two items of possible interest.

Recently I had a telephone reading with medium Georgia O'Connor. This was only the third time I've sat with a medium. While I prefer to keep the details private, I found the reading strongly evidential and emotionally meaningful. I personally feel much more convinced of life after death than I did before. Some of the material that came through was not only accurate and specific, but seemed so eerily on-target that I found myself thinking, "I can't believe she's actually telling me this." I don't think any amount of advance research could explain the results, and "lucky guesses" - while impossible to rule out - seem like an inadequate explanation also.

Of course, I can't guarantee what other people's results might be. For those who may be interested, Georgia O'Connor's Web site is here.

Michael Tymn's blog is one of the few paranormal blogs I read regularly. Currently he's doing a fascinating series on materialization mediumship. Never having witnessed these phenomena first-hand, and knowing there has been much fraud in this area (not to mention some very fake-looking photos, like this one), I remain somewhat skeptical. But the eyewitness reports cited by Michael are certainly impressive; if I'd seen what they saw, I would be a believer too!

Michael's series of posts begins here.

Rethinking David Thompson

As long-time readers of this blog know, I've been very skeptical of the English medium David Thompson, who has participated in a series of séances with a group called the Circle of the Silver Cord in Sydney, Australia. It is claimed that Thompson, while securely bound and gagged in a dark room, can materialize the ectoplasmic forms of departed persons who then speak to the sitters, sometimes sing or play musical instruments, and occasionally shake hands or offer physical tokens (a handwritten note in one case, a commemorative coin in another).

Many such claims have been made in the history of mediumship, and outlandish as they sound, some of them appear to have validity. But the specific circumstances of Thompson's séances made me extremely skeptical. My working hypothesis was that Thompson was able to free himself from his restraints, take off his gag, and put on a performance in the dark; while the lights were still out, he would slip back into his restraints after reapplying the gag. Certainly this method of deception has been used by other alleged physical mediums and materialization mediums in the past.

I even went to the trouble of contacting some professional escape artists through an online forum and asking if it would be possible to slip out of, and then back into, the kind of restraints used to secure Thompson to his chair. Several of the escape artists assured me that it was possible and even easy, and one of them promised to make a video that would demonstrate how it was done.

Recently, however, I've started to think I was wrong about David Thompson. That is not to say there are no problems with his mediumship. I do think there are problems. There are many unanswered questions and many doubtful phenomena. But I am no longer committed to my theory that Thompson is escaping from his bonds to put on a fraudulent performance.

There are two main reasons for my change of mind. First, it has been many months since the escape artist in question promised to produce his video, and so far no video has appeared. Another participant in the same forum brought up this fact a couple of months ago, and was met with a storm of abuse from the assembled escape artists, who were eager to protect one of their own. Their defensiveness did not inspire confidence. There may be perfectly valid reasons why the video was never produced -- reportedly the escape artist in question has gone off to a Third World country to do charity work -- but the fact remains that there is no video and hence no proof that slipping in and out of these bonds is as easy as I'd been told.

I'm not saying it's impossible to slip free of the flexible handcuffs that secure Thompson; probably no method of restraint is completely escape-proof; but I'm no longer inclined to take the escape artists' word for it when they assert, without any supporting evidence, that it can be easily done. After all, there is a long history of magicians, mentalists, and escape artists making extravagant claims to be able to duplicate spiritualistic phenomena -- claims they frequently have been unable to back up.

Second, I've been in touch with someone who attended a David Thompson séance in the United States not long ago. This person would prefer not to be named because he doesn't want to be drawn into the sometimes rough-and-tumble online controversy. But his report of what happened is quite credible, presented in a no-nonsense tone with a lot of detail. Here are some of the facts that stood out when I read his description.

The room in which the séance took place was one that Thompson had never entered before. Since Thompson hails from the UK and has recently been living in Australia, it's not surprising that he would be unfamiliar with a building in the USA. The room was small and, when all the sitters were assembled, quite crowded. Between 22 and 24 people sat for the séance in closely arranged chairs that left little or no room for maneuvering. The sitters arranged large plywood boards over the carpeted floor so that any footsteps would be audible. Thompson was secured to a chair he had not supplied -- which, again, is not surprising, since he would hardly have transported a chair from overseas to the United States. The circle members were seated so closely together, in such cramped quarters, that had any of them left the circle, the person's defection would surely have been detected. The only door to the room was locked, and the windows were boarded shut. Thompson himself was placed in a makeshift "cabinet" -- essentially he was behind a curtain. Everyone was searched with the use of a metal detector when entering the room. Their pockets and shoes were examined, and many of their belongings (jewelry etc.) were removed.

Thompson asked for £40 from each sitter to cover his expenses (about $75). This is not a trivial amount; considering there were between 22 and 24 sitters, total earnings from the event would have been at least $1650. Still, the amount is less than the $280 per sitter that other sources have reported as Thompson's fee. And given the travel costs, it seems unlikely that Thompson made any net profit.

Much of what proceeded to happen was similar to reports already given, but there were a few interesting details supplied by my correspondent. For one thing, there were the trumpet phenomena. The 'trumpet" is of course a conical, megaphone-like device used to amplify spirit voices. In this case the trumpet, which had been treated with luminous paint or tape so as to be seen in the dark, whizzed around the room at high speed -- not an unusual event at a séance, and an effect that can be faked by placing the trumpet at the end of a pole.

What is more significant is that the trumpet would speed up to a sitter's face and stop instantly when just touching the tip of the person's nose -- then repeat this action as many as four times in succession. My correspondent did not think that any human agent, working in pitch darkness, could manipulate the trumpet so precisely. It's one thing to move the trumpet helter-skelter, but another to guide it with such rapidity and precision to a particular target in the dark and do so over and over again without error. My correspondent did not hear any footsteps on the plywood planks that would have suggested a human operator.

An even more dramatic effect occurred at the very end of the séance, when a loud crash was heard in the center of the room, between the two sets of folding chairs. When the lights came on, Thompson was found, secured and gagged, in his chair at that very spot. It appeared as if the chair, with Thompson in it, had been moved out from behind the curtain (which was undisturbed) and dropped heavily onto the floor. Again, no footsteps were heard on the plywood planks. If Thompson, free of his restraints, had lugged the chair into the center of the room, it seems almost certain his footsteps would have been audible, and he very likely would have brushed against some of the sitters in the confined space. The same is true if we imagine that an accomplice or accomplices had carried the chair and dropped it.

I've received other information from the same correspondent, not relating specifically to this séance, but still of considerable interest. For one thing, the respected paranormal writer Guy Playfair sat in a Thompson séance in which he allegedly encountered the materialized form of psychical researcher Montague Keen. Asking for proof of Keen's identity, Playfair was given an address. This address, which related to an investigation in which Playfair had participated some years earlier, was not publicly known, but would have been known to Keen.

When questions arose about the reality of Thompson's purported spirit control, a certain William C. Cadwell, Playfair did some research in Mormon family history records and apparently found there was a William C. Cadwell who died within one year of the date of death given by Thompson's "William." There seems to be some question as to whether the person Playfair uncovered was named Cadwell or Caldwell. (As I am told Guy Playfair sometimes reads this blog, perhaps he can be prevailed upon to clear this up.)* Moreover, some people say it couldn't be Thompson's "William" because the spirit control claimed to have come from London and the person listed in the Mormon records lived in a different part of England. According to my correspondent, however, the Mormon records did not list Cadwell/Caldwell's place of origin. In any event, there does appear to be at least some support for the existence of a William C. Cadwell/Caldwell in the appropriate timeframe.

[*Update, September 15: In the comments thread (below), Guy Lyon Playfair confirms that the name he found in the Mormon records was W. C. Cadwell. This person was born in 1843 in London. Guy did not note the year of death but says he will check it when he can. Another commenter, Lis, says that according to other records, this individual was actually born on August 4,  1842, but not christened until August 2, 1843. She writes, "Sadly, this William Charles Cadwell died at the age of 23 in the December Quarter of 1865.... It is obvious that this William Charles Cadwell is not the 'etherean' who claims to be William Charles Cadwell born 1830 died 1897."]

I'm also told that, when he lived in England, Thompson participated in a home circle which met once a month for more than five years, without publicity or any monetary compensation. Although the vagaries of human motivation can be hard to fathom, it does seem unlikely that someone who is out to make money as a fraud would spend more than five years in regular séances for no pay and no PR. As my correspondent points out, there are quite a few home circles in the UK, and few of them get any publicity, since the members prefer to keep a low profile.

So what to make of David Thompson? I continue to think there are serious problems raised by his mediumship. Various dead celebrities have allegedly appeared in the séance room, often sounding nothing like their earthly selves. Dubious medical diagnoses and advice have been offered. Audio files of the séances have been put online and then removed without explanation. Some of Thompson's defenders can be belligerent and unreasonable. (A thorough rundown of objections to Thompson's mediumship is found here.)

That said, it does appear that something paranormal is going on. I no longer think the hypothesis of outright fraud is plausible. It may be that Thompson is channeling low-level spirit entities who pretend to be something they're not. Or possibly he is somehow manifesting his own unconscious thought forms. Or perhaps there is some other explanation.

I don't know.

Something just doesn't Sitwell ...

I've been reading the online text of Florence Marryat's book There Is No Death. Some parts are interesting, and her sendup of dogmatic skepticism is funny and smart; but I was disturbed by the way she handles a well-known incident in the career of medium Florence Cook.

The crisis of Cook's career was her exposure by George Sitwell. Here's how one source describes this event:

As reported in the Daily Telegraph, 13 January 1880, Sitwell, one of the sitters at a séance at the BNAS, seized the materialization and found Florence to be missing from the cabinet, and declared her to be a fraud. It was admitted by one of the sitters who had the responsibility of securing Florence that it had been deliberately arranged that the medium could free herself. Supporters of Florence argued this was a case of unconscious fraud, as claimed with Eusapia Palladino in following years, while in a trance-state; there was also of course a state of confusion after Sitwell's action. ["The Mediumship of Florence Cook"]

And here's another source:

At a séance in 1880, Sir George Sitwell noticed that Marie’s spirit robes covered corset stays, so he reached out and grabbed hold of her. He held on tightly to her and when he pulled aside Florrie's curtain, he found that the medium's chair was empty. He was not surprised to discover that he was holding onto Florence, clad only in her underwear. ["Florence Cook & the Enigmatic Katie King," Troy Taylor]

It seems clear enough that Cook was revealed to be cheating in this episode. But the way Marryat reports the event, it's far less incriminating. Marryat knew Cook well and was obviously intent on dispelling the doubts that had been raised about her mediumship. She does so, in part, by downplaying the significance of Sitwell's exposure.

Marryat writes:

On one occasion Miss Cook (then Mrs. Comer) was giving a public séance at the rooms of the National British Association of Spiritualists, at which a certain Sir George Sitwell, a very young man, was present, and at which he declared that the medium cheated, and that the spirit Marie was herself, dressed up to deceive the audience. Letters appeared in the newspapers about it, and the whole press came down upon Spiritualists, and declared them all to be either knaves or fools. [There Is No Death, Ch. 16]

That's it. Nothing about Cook being grabbed by Sitwell and held until the lights came on, revealing that the "materialized" spirit was actually Cook in her undies. Nothing about the cabinet being empty. Nothing about prior arrangements with one of the sitters to ensure that Cook could free herself.

In short, there was a lot more to Sitwell's exposure than a mere declaration. The fact that Marryat described the event so misleadingly does not engender confidence in her overall reliability - or in the mediumship of Florence Cook.