{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_51743/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_51743","id":"gutenberg_51743","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51743","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Doyle, Arthur Conan, 1859-1930","Mediums -- Practice","Spiritualism"],"text":"IS SPIRITUALISM BASED ON FRAUD?\n\n\nTHE EVIDENCE GIVEN BY SIR A. C. DOYLE\nAND OTHERS DRASTICALLY EXAMINED\n\n\nBY\n\nJOSEPH McCABE\n\n\nLONDON:\nWATTS & CO.,\n17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nOn March 11 of this year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did me the honour of\ndebating the claims of Spiritualism with me before a vast and\ndistinguished audience at the Queen's Hall, London. My opponent had\ninsisted that I should open the debate; and, when it was pointed out\nthat the critic usually follows the exponent, he had indicated that I\nhad ample material to criticize in the statement of the case for\nSpiritualism in his two published works.\n\nHow conscientiously I addressed myself to that task, and with what\nresult, must be left to the reader of the published debate. Suffice it\nto say that my distinguished opponent showed a remarkable disinclination\nto linger over his own books, and wished to \"broaden the issue.\" Since\nthe bulk of the time allotted to me in the debate was then already\nspent, it was not possible to discuss satisfactorily the new evidences\nadduced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and not recorded in his books. I\nhasten to repair the defect in this critical examination of every\nvariety of Spiritualistic phenomena.\n\nMy book has a serious aim. The pen of even the dullest author--and I\ntrust I do not fall into that low category of delinquents--must grow\nlively or sarcastic at times in the course of such a study as this. When\none finds Spiritualists gravely believing that a corpulent lady is\ntransferred by spirit hands, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, over\nthe chimney-pots of London, and through several solid walls, one cannot\nbe expected to refrain from smiling. When one contemplates a group of\nscientific or professional men plumbing the secrets of the universe\nthrough the mediumship of an astute peasant or a carpenter, or a lady of\nless than doubtful virtue, one may be excused a little irony. When our\ncreators of super-detectives enthusiastically applaud things which were\nfully exposed a generation ago, and affirm that, because they could not,\nin pitch darkness, see any fraud, there _was_ no fraud, we cannot\nmaintain the gravity of philosophers. When we find this \"new revelation\"\nheralded by a prodigious outbreak of fraud, and claiming as its most\nsolid foundations to-day a mass of demonstrable trickery and deceit, our\nsense of humour is pardonably irritated. Nor are these a few exceptional\nweeds in an otherwise fair garden. In its living literature to-day, in\nits actual hold upon a large number of people in Europe and America,\nSpiritualism rests to a very great extent on fraudulent representations.\n\nHere is my serious purpose. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made two points\nagainst me which pleased his anxious followers. One--which evoked a\nthunder of applause--was that I was insensible of the consolation which\nthis new religion has brought to thousands of bereaved humans. I am as\nconscious of that as he or any other Spiritualist is. It has, however,\nnothing to do with the question whether Spiritualism is true or no,\nwhich we were debating; or with the question to what extent Spiritualism\nis based on fraud, which I now discuss. Far be it from me to slight the\nfiner or more tender emotions of the human heart. On the contrary, it is\nin large part to the more general cultivation of this refinement and\ndelicacy of feeling that I look for the uplifting of our race. But let\nus take things in order. Does any man think it is a matter of\nindifference whether this ministry of consolation is based on fraud and\ninspired by greed? It is inconceivable.\n\nAnd, indeed, the second point made by my opponent shows that I do not\nmisconceive him and his followers. It is that I exaggerate the quantity\nof fraud in the movement. If they are right--if they have purified the\nmovement of the grosser frauds which so long disfigured it--they have\nsome ground to ask the critic to address himself to the substantial\ntruth rather than the occasional imposture. But this is a question of\nfact; and to that question of fact the following pages are devoted. I\nsurvey the various classes of Spiritualistic phenomena. I tell the\nreader how materializations, levitations, raps, direct voices, apports,\nspirit-photographs, lights and music in the dark, messages from the\ndead, and so on, have actually and historically been engineered during\nthe last fifty years. This is, surely, useful. Spiritualism is in one of\nits periodical phases of advance. Our generation knows nothing of the\nexperience of these things of an earlier generation. To teach one's\nfellows the weird ingenuity, the sordid impostures, the grasping\ntrickery, which have accompanied Spiritualism since its birth in America\nin 1848 can hurt only one class of men--impostors.\n\nJ. M.\n\n_Easter, 1920._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\nCHAP.                                         PAGE\n   I. MEDIUMS: BLACK, WHITE, AND GREY            1\n\n  II. HOW GHOSTS ARE MADE                       17\n\n III. THE MYSTERY OF RAPS AND LEVITATIONS       42\n\n  IV. SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS AND SPIRIT PICTURES    63\n\n   V. A CHAPTER OF GHOSTLY ACCOMPLISHMENTS      77\n\n  VI. THE SUBTLE ART OF CLAIRVOYANCE            93\n\n VII. MESSAGES FROM THE SPIRIT-WORLD           109\n\nVIII. AUTOMATIC WRITING                        129\n\n  IX. GHOST-LAND AND ITS CITIZENS              147\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nMEDIUMS: BLACK, WHITE, AND GREY\n\n\nMediums are the priests of the Spiritualist religion. They are the\nindispensable channels of communication with the other world. They have,\nnot by anointing, but by birthright, the magical character which fits\nthem alone to perform the miracles of the new revelation. From them\nalone, and through them alone, can one learn the conditions under which\nmanifestations may be expected. Were they to form a union or go on\nstrike, the life of the new religion would be more completely suspended\nthan the life of any other religion. They control the entire output of\nevidence. They guard the gates of the beyond. They are the priests of\nthe new religion.\n\nNow it will not be seriously disputed that during the last three\nquarters of the century these mediums or priests have perpetrated more\nfraud than was ever attributed to any priesthood before. A few weeks ago\nSpiritualists held a meeting in commemoration of the \"seventy-second\nanniversary\" of the birth of their religion. That takes us back to 1848,\nthe year in which Mrs. Fish, as I will tell later, astutely turned into\na profitable concern the power of her younger sisters to rap out\n\"spirit\" communications with the joints of their toes. There have been\nsome quaint beginnings of religions, but the formation of that\nfraudulent little American family-syndicate in 1848 is surely the\nstrangest that ever got \"commemoration\" in the annals of religion. And\nfrom that day until ours there is hardly a single prominent medium who\nhas not been convicted of fraud. Any person who cares to run over Mr.\nPodmore's history of the movement will see this. There is hardly a\nmedium named in the nineteenth century who does not eventually disappear\nin an odour of sulphur.\n\nPodmore was one of the best-informed and most conscientious\nnon-Spiritualists who ever wrote on Spiritualism. If one prefers the\nverdict of the French astronomer Flammarion, who believes that mediums\ndo possess abnormal powers and has studied them for nearly sixty years,\nthis is what he says:--\n\n\n     It is the same with all mediums, male and female. I believe I have\n     had nearly all of them, from various parts of the world, at my\n     house during the last forty years. One may lay it down as a\n     principle that all professional mediums cheat, but they do not\n     cheat always.[1]\n\n\nIf you are inclined to think that this applies only to professional\nmediums, whose need of money drives them into trickery, listen to this\nfurther verdict, which M. Flammarion says he could support by \"hundreds\nof instances\":--\n\n\n     I have seen unpaid mediums, men and women of the world, cheat\n     without the least scruple, out of sheer vanity, or from a still\n     less creditable motive--the love of deceiving. Spiritualist s\u00e9ances\n     have led to very useful and pleasant acquaintanceships, and to more\n     than one marriage. You must distrust both classes [paid and\n     unpaid].[2]\n\n\nListen to the verdict of another man who believes in the powers of\nmediums, and who has studied them enthusiastically for thirty years, a\nmedical man with means and leisure--Baron von Schrenck-Notzing[3]:--\n\n\n     It is indisputable that nearly every professional medium (and many\n     private mediums) does part of his performances by fraud....\n     Conscious and unconscious fraud plays an immense part in this\n     field.... The entire method of the Spiritualist education of\n     mediums, with its ballast of unnecessary ideas, leads directly to\n     the facilitation of fraud.\n\n\nIf this is not enough, take another gentleman, Mr. Hereward Carrington,\nwho has studied mediums for two decades in various parts of the world,\nand who also believes that they have genuine abnormal powers:--\n\n\n     Ninety-eight per cent. of the [physical] phenomena are\n     fraudulent.[4]\n\n\nThese are not men who have dismissed the phenomena as \"all rot.\" They\nbelieve in the reality of materializations or levitations. They are not\nmen who have been recently converted, in an emotional mood. They have\nspent whole decades in the patient study of mediums. I could quote a\ndozen more witnesses of that type; but the reader will be able to judge\nfor himself presently.\n\nSome Spiritualists try to tone down this very grave blot on their\nreligion by distinguishing between the professional medium and the\nunpaid. The men I have quoted warn us against this distinction. It is\nquite absurd to think that money is the only incentive to cheat. The\nhistory of the movement swarms with exposures of unpaid as well as paid\nmediums. An unpaid medium who can display \"wonderful powers\" becomes at\nonce a centre of most flattering interest; and we shall see dozens of\ncases of this vanity leading men and women of every social position into\nfraud and misrepresentation, even in quite recent times. All that one\ncan say is that there is far less fraud among unpaid mediums. But there\nare far less striking phenomena among unpaid mediums, as a rule, and so\nthis helps us very little. The \"evidence\" afforded by mediums like Mr.\nVale Owen, and the myriads of quite recent automatic writers and\nartists, is absolutely worthless. What they do is too obviously human.\n\nWe must remember, also, that the distinction between \"paid\" and \"unpaid\"\nis not quite so plain as some think. Daniel Dunglas Home is always\ndescribed by Spiritualists as an unpaid medium, but I will show\npresently that he lived in great comfort all his life on the strength of\nhis Spiritualist powers. Florence Cook, Sir William Crookes's famous\nmedium, is described as \"unpaid,\" because she did not (at that time)\ncharge sitters; but she had a large annual allowance from a wealthy\nSpiritualist precisely in order that she should not charge at the door.\nTo take a living medium, and one very strongly recommended to us by Sir\nArthur Conan Doyle under the name of \"Eva C.\" (though it has been openly\nacknowledged by her patrons on the continent for six years that her name\nis Marthe Beraud): she has lived a luxurious life with people far above\nher own station in life for fifteen years, in virtue of her supposed\nabnormal powers.\n\nThe distinction is, in any case, useless. When Spiritualists try to\nconciliate us to their wonderful stories by telling us that the medium\nwas \"unpaid,\" they do not know the history of their own movement. The\nmost extraordinary frauds have been perpetrated, even in recent years,\nby unpaid mediums, or ladies of good social position. Flammarion,\nMaxwell, Ochorowicz, Carrington, and all other experienced investigators\ngive hundreds of cases. Not many years ago Professor Reichel, tired of\nexamining and exposing professional mediums, heard that the daughter of\na high official in Costa Rica was producing wonderful materializations.\nHe actually went to Costa Rica to study her, and he found that she was\ntricking (dressing a servant girl as a ghost) in the crudest fashion, as\nI will tell later. The daughter of an Italian chemist, Linda Gazerra\ncheated scientific and professional men for three years (1908-11), but\nwas at last found to conceal her \"ghosts\" and \"apports\" in her false\nhair and her underclothing. There is no such thing as a guarantee\nagainst fraud in the character of the medium. Every case has to be\nexamined with unsparing rigour.\n\nSir Arthur Conan Doyle meets the difficulty by cheerfully distinguishing\nbetween white, black, and grey mediums: the entirely honest, the\nentirely fraudulent, and those who have genuine powers, but cheat at\ntimes when their powers flag and the sitters are impatient for\n\"manifestations.\" It is a familiar distinction. To some extent it is a\nsound distinction. We all admit black mediums. The chronicle of\nSpiritualism, short as it is, contains as sorry a collection of rogues,\nmale and female, as any human movement _could_ show in seventy years.\nPolitics is spotless by comparison. Even business can hold up its head.\nFor a \"religion\" the situation is remarkable.\n\nNext, we all admit white mediums. We all know those myriads of innocent\nfolk, tender maidens and nervous spinsters, neuropathic clergymen and\neven quite sober-looking professional men, who bring us reams and rivers\nof inspiration through the planchette and the _ouija_ board and the\ncrystal and automatic writing. Bless them, they are as guileless,\ngenerally, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. I have seen them--seen men\nand women of such social standing that one dare not breathe a\nsuspicion--stoop to trickery more than once in order to get\ncommunications of \"evidential value.\" But there are tens of thousands of\namateur mediums of this kind who are as honest as any of us. We all\nadmit it. It is sheer Spiritualistic nonsense to say that we dismiss the\nwhole movement as fraud. We do not question for a moment the honesty of\nthese myriads of amateur mediums. What we say is that the evidential\nvalue of _their_ work would not convert a Kaffir to Spiritualism. Dr. J.\nMaxwell, a distinguished French lawyer and doctor, who has been a close\ninvestigator of these things for decades and believes in mediumistic\npowers, says:--\n\n\n     I share M. Janet's opinion concerning the majority of Spiritualist\n     mediums. I have only found two interesting ones among them; the\n     hundred others whom I have observed have only given me automatic\n     phenomena, more or less conscious; nearly all were the puppets of\n     their imagination.[5]\n\n\nNo, Spiritualism does not rely at all on these innocent and useless\nproductions. Invariably, your Spiritualist opponent turns sooner or\nlater to the big, striking things, the \"physical phenomena,\" the work of\nthe \"powerful\" mediums.\n\nNow, which of these were ever \"white\"? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when he\ncame to this important point, named four \"snow-white\" mediums. He\n_could_, he added, name \"ten or twelve living mediums\"; but since he did\nnot, we still hunger for the names. The four spotless ones were Home,\nStainton Moses, Mrs. Piper, and Mrs. Everett--not a great record for\nseventy years (since Home began in 1852). Mrs. Piper we will discuss\nlater, but I may say at once that a man for whom Sir Arthur has a great\nrespect as a psychic expert, Dr. Maxwell, speaks of Mrs. Piper's\n\"inaccuracies and falsehoods\" with great disdain. Who Mrs. Ever_e_tt may\nbe I do not know. If Sir Arthur means the Mrs. Ever_i_tt of forty years\nago, I insist on transferring her to the flock of the _black_ sheep. In\nlater chapters we will examine the performances of Stainton Moses and\nHome, and probably the reader will agree with me that these snow-white\nlambs were two of the arch-impostors of the Spiritualist movement. But a\nword of general interest may be inserted here.\n\nThe snow-white Daniel, whom Sir W. Barrett and Sir A. C. Doyle and all\nother Spiritualists quote as one of the pillars of the movement, as a\nspotless worker of the most prodigious miracles, was quite the most\nsuccessful and cynical adventurer in the history of Spiritualism. He was\nno \"paid adventurer,\" says Sir A. C. Doyle in his _New Revelation_ (p.\n28), but \"the nephew of the Earl of Home.\" To the general public that\nstatement suggests a cultivated and refined member of the British\naristocracy, above all suspicion of fraud. It is the precise opposite of\nthe truth. Even Daniel himself never pretended that he was more than a\nson of a bastard son of the Earl of Home. He appears first as a\npenniless adventurer in America at the age of fifteen, and he lived on\nhis Spiritualistic wits until he died. He married a wealthy Russian lady\nin virtue of his pretensions, and his second marriage was based on the\nsame pretensions. It is true that he did not charge so much a sitter. He\nhad a more profitable way. He lived--apart from his wives and a few\nlectures (supported by his followers)--on the generosity of his dupes\nall his life.\n\nIn the Debate Sir A. C. Doyle tried to defend him against one grave\ncharge I brought against the white lamb. In 1866 a wealthy London widow,\nMrs. Lyon, asked Daniel to get her into touch with her dead husband. The\ngifted medium did so at once, of course. For this he received a fee of\nthirty pounds, nominally as a subscription to the Spiritual Athen\u00e6um, of\nwhich he was paid secretary. Daniel stuck to the lady, and got immense\nsums of money from her; and a London court of justice compelled him to\nreturn the lot.\n\nNow, Sir A. C. Doyle, who said several times in the Debate that _I_ did\nnot know what I was talking about, while _he_ had read \"the literature\nof my opponents as well as my own,\" asserts: \"I have read the case very\ncarefully, and I believe that Home behaved in a perfectly natural and\nhonourable manner.\" He quotes Mr. Clodd (who has, apparently, been\nmisled by Podmore's too lenient account of the case), but I prefer to\ndeal with Sir Arthur's own assurance that he has \"read the case very\ncarefully.\"\n\nIt was on in London, under Vice-Chancellor Gifford, from April 21 to May\n1, 1868. Sir A. C. Doyle seems to regard Mrs. Lyon's affidavit as\nwaste-paper. She swears that Home brought a fictitious message from her\ndead husband, ordering her to adopt Daniel and endow him, and she gave\nhim at once \u00a326,000. She swears that, when Home's birthday came round,\nanother fictitious message ordered her to give Daniel a further fat\ncheque, and she gave him \u00a36,798. Sir A. C. Doyle may set aside all this\nas \"lies,\" because he is determined to have at least one snow-white\nmedium in the nineteenth century, and his cause cannot afford to lose\nHome's miracles. But when he and other writers say that Home was\nacquitted of dishonourable conduct, they are, if they have read\nGifford's decree, saying the exact opposite of the truth. It is enough\nto mention that Vice-Chancellor Gifford decided that \"the gifts and\ndeeds are _fraudulent_ and void,\" and he added:--\n\n\n     The system [Spiritualism], as presented by the evidence, is\n     mischievous nonsense--well calculated on the one hand to delude the\n     vain, the weak, the foolish, and the superstitious; and on the\n     other to assist the projects of _the needy and the adventurer_.\n     Beyond all doubt there is plain law enough and plain sense enough\n     to forbid and prevent the retention of _acquisitions such as these_\n     by any medium, whether with or without a strange gift.\n\n\nThat is the official judgment which Spiritualists constantly represent\nas acquitting Home of fraud! This man, scornfully lashed as a greedy\nimpostor from the British Bench, is the snow-white medium recommended to\nthe public by Sir A. C. Doyle, Sir W. Barrett, Sir W. Crookes, and Sir\nO. Lodge. Sir Arthur adds in his _Vital Message_ (p. 55) that \"the\ngenuineness of his psychic powers has never been seriously questioned.\"\nThat statement is hardly less astounding. Home's performances, which we\nwill examine in the third chapter, were regarded by the overwhelming\nmajority of the cultivated people of his time as trickery of the most\nsordid description from beginning to end. Has Sir A. C. Doyle never\nheard of Browning's \"Sludge\"? It expressed the opinion of nearly all\nLondon.\n\nAs to Stainton Moses, the other lamb, an ex-minister who ran Home close\nin sleight-of-hand and foot (in the dark), it is enough to say, with\nCarrington, that \"no test conditions were ever allowed to be imposed\nupon this medium.\" Spiritualists ought to quote that whenever they quote\nthe miracles of Stainton Moses. His tricks were always performed--in\nvery bad light (if any)--before a few chosen friends, who had not the\nleast inclination to look for fraud. Home was never exposed, though he\nwas once caught, because he chose his sitters. But Stainton Moses chose\na far more exclusive circle of sitters, and never once had a critical\neye on him. We shall see that the tricks themselves brand him as a\nfraud. He was not exposed; but it was the sitters who were lambs, not\nStainton Moses.\n\nSir Arthur Conan Doyle, in effect, recommends two further mediums as\nsnow-white. One is Kathleen Goligher, of Belfast, whose performances\nshall speak for her in our third chapter. The other is \"Eva C.,\" whose\nmiracles will be examined in the second chapter. We shall see that she\nwas detected cheating over and over again. At the present juncture,\nhowever, I would make only a few general remarks about this living\n\"lamb.\"\n\nIn a work which was published in 1914--in German by Baron von\nSchrenck-Notzing, and in French by Mme. Bisson (they are not two\ndistinct books, as Sir A. C. Doyle says)--there are 150 photographs of\n\"materializations\" with this medium. We shall see that they tell their\nown story of crude imposture. In the introductory part of his book Baron\nSchrenck describes the character of the lady (pp. 51-4). He says,\npolitely, that she has \"moral sentiments only in the ego-centric sense\"\n(that is to say, none); that she \"behaves improperly to herself\"; that\nshe \"lost her virginity before she was twenty\"; and that she has \"a\nlively, erotic imagination\" and an \"exaggerated idea of her charms and\nher influence on the male sex.\" That is bad enough for a snow-white\nVestal Virgin, a sacred portal of the new revelation. But worse was to\nfollow; and it was evident to me during the Debate that, while Sir A. C.\nDoyle twitted me with knowing nothing about these matters, he was\nhimself quite ignorant of the developments of this case six years\nbefore. The young woman's real name, Marthe Beraud, had been concealed\nby Baron Schrenck, and her age mis-stated by six years, for a very good\nreason--she is the \"Marthe B.\" who was recommended to us in 1905 as a\nwonderful medium by Sir Oliver Lodge, and who was detected and exposed\n(in Algiers) in 1907! Baron Schrenck was forced to acknowledge her real\nage and name in 1914.\n\nWhere, then, are the snow-whites? Does Sir A. C. Doyle want us to go\nback to the pure early days of the movement? Take the Foxes, who began\nthe movement. In 1888 Margaretta Fox, who had married Captain Kane, the\nArctic explorer, and had been brought to some sense of her misconduct by\nhim, confessed (in the _New York Herald_, September 24) that the\nmovement was from the start a gross fraud, engineered for profit by her\nelder sister, and that the whole Spiritualist movement of America was\nsteeped in fraud and immorality.\n\nPerhaps Sir A. C. Doyle would plead that this appalling outburst of\nfraud, which poured over America from 1848 to 1888, was only the\noccasion of the appearance of genuine mediums. Well, who are they? Take\nthe mediums who founded Spiritualism in England from 1852 onward. Was\nFoster white? As early as 1863 the Spiritualist Judge, Edmonds, learned\n\"sickening details of his criminality.\" Was Colchester, who was detected\nand exposed, white? What was the colour of the Holmes family, whose\ndarling spirit-control, \"Katie King,\" got so much jewellery from poor\nold R. D. Owen before she was found out? Are we to see no spots on the\negregious \"Dr.\" Monck, who pretended that he was taken from his bed in\nBristol and put to bed in Swindon by spirit hands? Or in corpulent Mrs.\nGuppy (an amateur who duped A. Russel Wallace for years), who swore that\nshe had been snatched from her table in her home at Ball's Pond, taken\nacross London (and through several solid walls) for three miles at sixty\nmiles an hour, and deposited on the table in a locked room? Was Charles\nWilliams white? He was, with Rita, detected by Spiritualists at\nAmsterdam in 1878 with a whole ghost-making apparatus in his possession.\nWere Bastian and Taylor white? They were similarly exposed at Arnheim in\n1874. Was Florence Cook, the pupil of Herne (the transporter of Mrs.\nGuppy at sixty miles an hour) and bewitcher of Sir W. Crookes, white? We\nshall soon see. Was her friend and contemporary ghost-producer, Miss\nShowers, never exposed? Or does Sir A. C. Doyle want us to believe in\nMorse, or Eglinton, or Slade, or the Davenport brothers, or Mrs. Fay,\nor Miss Davenport, or Duguid, or Fowler, or Hudson, or Miss Wood, or\nMme. Blavatsky?\n\nThese are not a few black sheep picked out of a troop of snowy fleeces.\nThey are the great mediums of the first forty years of the movement.\nThey are the men and women who converted Russel Wallace, and Crookes,\nand Robert Owen, and Judge Edmunds, and Vice-Admiral Moore, and all the\nother celebrities. They are the mediums whose exploits filled the\ncolumns of the _Spiritualist_, the _Medium and Daybreak_, and the\n_Banner of Light_. Cut these and Home and Moses out of the chronicle,\nand you have precious little left on which to found a religion.\n\nSpiritualists think that they lessen the reproach to some extent by the\n\"grey\" theory. Some mediums have genuine powers, but a time comes when\nthe powers fail and, as the audience presses for a return on its money,\nthey resort to trickery. That is only another way of saying that a\nmedium is white until he is found out, which usually takes some years,\nas the conditions (dictated by the mediums) are the best possible for\nfraud and the worse possible for exposure.\n\nBut Sir A. C. Doyle is not fortunate in his example. Indeed, nearly\nevery statement he made in his debate with me was inaccurate. Eusapia\nPalladino was a typical \"grey,\" he says. \"One cannot read her record,\"\nhe assures us, \"without feeling that for the first fifteen years of her\nmediumship she was quite honest.\" An amazing statement! Her whole career\nas a public medium lasted little more than fifteen years, and she\ntricked from the very beginning of it. In his _New Revelation_ Sir\nArthur assures the public that she \"was at least twice convicted of very\nclumsy and foolish fraud\" (p. 46).\n\nSuch statements are quite reckless. Eusapia Palladino tricked\nhabitually, on the confession of Morselli and Flammarion and her\ngreatest admirers, from the beginning of her public career. Eusapia\nbegan her public career in 1888, but was little known until 1892. She\nwas exposed at Cambridge by the leading English Spiritualists in 1895,\nonly _three_ years after she had begun her performances on the great\nEuropean stage. Myers and Lodge reported that not one of her\nperformances (in 1895) was clearly genuine, and that her fraud was so\nclever (Myers said) that it \"must have needed long practice to bring it\nto its present level of skill.\" Mr. Myers was quite right. She had\ncheated from the start. Schiaparelli, the great Italian astronomer,\ninvestigated her in 1892, and said that, as she refused all tests, he\nremained agnostic. Antoniadi, the French astronomer, studied her at\nFlammarion's house in 1898, and he found her performance \"fraud from\nbeginning to end.\" Flammarion himself reports that she tried constantly\nto get her hands free from control, and that she was caught lowering a\nletter-scale by means of a hair. Thus her common tricks had begun as\nearly as 1898, 1895, and even 1892.\n\n\"_Our_ hands are clean,\" Sir A. C. Doyle retorted to my charge of fraud.\nThat is precisely what they are not. Spiritualists have from the\nbeginning covered up fraud with the mantle of ingenious theories, like\nthis \"grey\" theory. Fifty years ago (1873) a Mr. Volckmann, a\nSpiritualist, grasped \"Katie King,\" the pretty ghost who had duped\nProfessor Crookes for months. He at once found that he had hold of the\nmedium, Florence Cook; but the other Spiritualists present tore him off,\nand put out the feeble light; so Florence Cook continued for seven\nyears longer to dupe Spiritualists, until she was caught again in just\nthe same way in 1880. From the earliest days of materializations there\nwere such exposures, and the Spiritualists condoned everything. The\nmedium, they said, when the identity of ghost and medium was too solidly\nproved, had acted the part of ghost unconsciously, in a state of trance.\nThe ghosts had economized, using the medium's body instead of making\none. Some even said that the ghost and medium coalesced again (to save\nthe medium's life!) when a wicked sceptic seized the phantom. Some said,\nwhen gauzy stuff, such as any draper sells, or a curl of false hair, was\nfound in the cabinet, that the spirits had forgotten to \"dematerialize\"\nit. Some laid the blame on \"wicked spirits\" who got snow-white mediums\ninto trouble. Some learnedly proved that thoughts of fraud in the mind\nof sceptics present had telepathically influenced the entranced medium!\n\nThese things are past, Sir A. C. Doyle may say. Not in the least. In the\ndecade before the War exposures were as frequent as in the palmy days of\nthe middle of the nineteenth century, and Spiritualist excuses were just\nas bad. Craddock, the most famous materializing medium in England, who\nhad duped the most cultivated Spiritualists of London for years, was\ncaught and fined \u00a310 and costs at London in 1906. Marthe Beraud, the\nnext sensation of the Spiritualist world, was caught in 1907, and had to\nbe transformed into \"Eva C.\" Miller, the wonderful San Francisco maker\nof ghosts, was exposed in France in 1908. Frau Abend, the marvel of\nBerlin and the pet of the German Spiritualist aristocracy, was exposed\nand arrested in 1909. Bailey, the pride of the Australian\nSpiritualists, was unmasked in France in 1910. Ofelia Corral\u00e8s, the next\nnine days' wonder, passed among the black sheep in 1911; and Lucia\nSordi, the chief medium of Italy, was exposed in the same year. In 1912\nLinda Gazerra, the refined Italian lady who had duped scientific men and\nthe Spiritualist world for three years, came to the same inevitable end;\nand Mrs. Ebba Wriedt, the famous American direct-voice medium, met her\ndisaster in Norway. In 1913 it was the turn of Carancini; in 1914 of\nMarthe Beraud in her new incarnation, \"Eva C.\"\n\nWe will consider the trickery of these people in detail later. This mere\nlist of names, of more than national repute, gathered from one single\nperiodical (the German _Psychische Studien_), shows how the mischievous\nreadiness of Spiritualists to find excuses, and their equally\nmischievous readiness to admit \"phenomena\" where real control is\nimpossible, make the movement as rich in impostors to-day as it was half\na century ago. It must be understood that behind each of these leading\nmediums--men and women of international interest--are thousands of\nobscurer men and women who cheat less cultivated and less critical folk,\nand are never detected. It is therefore useless to divide mediums into\nprofessional and amateur, or into black, white, and grey. You take a\nvery grave risk with every one of them. You need a close familiarity\nwith all the varieties of fraud, and these we will now carefully\nexamine. We will then consider more patiently and courteously what\nphenomena remain in the Spiritualist world which are reasonably free\nfrom the suspicion of fraud.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] _Les forces naturelles inconnues_ (1907), p. 18.\n\n[2] Same work, p. 213.\n\n[3] _Materialisations-ph\u00e4nomene_ (1914), pp. 22, 28, and 29.\n\n[4] _Personal Experiences in Spiritualism_ (1913), p. ix.\n\n[5] _Metapsychical Phenomena_ (1905), p. 46.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nHOW GHOSTS ARE MADE\n\n\nThe most thrilling expectation of every Spiritualist is to witness a\nmaterialization. The wild ghost, the ghost in a state of nature, the\nghost which beckoned our grandmothers from their beds and waylaid our\ngrandfathers when they passed the graveyard on dark nights, has become a\nmere legend. Hardly fifty years ago authentic ghost stories were as\ncommon as blackberries. But the growth of education and the\nestablishment of exact inquiry into such matters have relegated all\nthese stories to the realm of imagination. According to the\nSpiritualist, however, we have merely replaced the wild ghost by the\ntame ghost, the domesticated ghost of the s\u00e9ance room. The clever\nspirits of the other world, who could not when they were alive on earth\ndetach a single particle from a living body (except with a knife), are\nnow able to take a vast amount of material out of the medium's body and\nbuild it up in the space of quarter or half an hour into a hand, a face,\nor even a complete human body. This is the great feat of\nmaterialization.\n\nLet me truthfully record that many of the better educated Spiritualists\nfight shy of belief in this class of phenomena. They know that in the\nhistory of the movement every single \"materializing medium\" has sooner\nor later been convicted of fraud. They have, on reflection, seen that\nthe formation, in the course of half an hour, of even a human\nhand--which is a marvellously compacted structure of millions of\ncells--would be a feat of stupendous power and intelligence. They feel\nthat, if all the scientific men in the world cannot make a single living\ncell, it is rather absurd to think that these spirit workers, whose\nmessages do not reflect a very high degree of intelligence, can make a\nhuman face out of the slime or raw material of the medium's body in half\nan hour, and put all the atoms back in their places in the medium's body\nin another half hour.\n\nThe faith of the great majority of Spiritualists is, of course, heroic\nenough to overlook all these difficulties. Indeed, it is amazing to find\neven students of science among them indifferent to the enormous\nintrinsic improbability of a materialization. During the debate at the\nQueen's Hall Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had on the table before him a work\nwhich contained a hundred and fifty photographs of materializations.\nSeveral of these represented full-sized human busts (sometimes with the\nsuperfluous decoration of beards, spectacles, starched collars, ties,\nand tie-pins). One of them represented a full-sized human form, dressed\nin a bath robe. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a trained medical man,\nassured the audience that he believed that these were real forms,\nmoulded out of the \"ectoplasm\" of the medium's body, in the space of\nless than half an hour, by spiritual powers! Sir William Crookes\nbelieved in materializations of a still more wonderful nature, as we\nshall see. Dr. Russel Wallace believed implicitly in materializations.\nSir W. Barrett and Sir O. Lodge believe in materializations, since they\nbelieve in the honesty of D. D. Home, who professed to materialize\nhands.\n\nSo we must not blame the ordinary Spiritualist if he knows nothing about\nthe tremendous internal difficulties of this class of phenomena, and\nthe consistent and appalling career of fraud of mediums in this respect.\nMaterialization is the crowning triumph of the medium, the most\nconvincing evidence of the new religion. It goes on to-day in darkened\nrooms in London--done by men who have already been convicted in London\npolice-courts--and all parts of the world. Fraud follows fraud, yet the\nbeliever hopes (and pays) on. _Some_ of the phenomena are genuine, he\nsays; that is to say, some of the tricks were not proved to be\nfraudulent. Let us see how these things are done.\n\nThe incomparable Daniel was the first, apparently, to open up this great\nfield of Spiritualist evidence. In the early fifties he began to exhibit\nhands which the Spiritualists present were sure were not _his_ hands.\nBut we shall see how, even in our own day, Spiritualists easily take a\nstuffed glove, a foot, or even a bit of muslin to be a hand, in the\nweird light of the dark room; and we will not linger over this.\n\nThe real creator of this important department of the movement was Mrs.\nUnderhill, the eldest of the three Fox sisters who founded Spiritualism.\nI will tell the marvellous story of the three Foxes later, and will\nanticipate here only to the extent of saying that Leah, the eldest\nsister (Mrs. Fish, later Mrs. Underhill), was the organizing genius of\nthe movement. She was an expert in fraud and a woman of business. Until\nher own sisters gave her away, forty years after the beginning of the\nmovement, she was never exposed; and even an exposure by her sister in\nthe public Press and on the public stage in New York made no difference\nto her career. She was the Mme. Blavatsky, the Mrs. Eddy, of\nSpiritualism.\n\nLeah began in 1869, every other branch of Spiritualist conjuring having\nnow been fully explored, to produce a ghost at her sittings. In the dark\na veiled and luminous female figure walked solemnly about the room, and\nprofoundly impressed the sitters. The mere fact of _walking_--ghosts\nhave to _glide_ nowadays--would tell a modern audience that the ghost\nwas the very solid medium; and the luminosity would have an aroma of\nphosphorus to a modern nostril. But the Americans of 1869 were not very\ncritical. A few months later a wealthy New York banker, Livermore, lost\nhis wife, and the \"hyenas\"--as Sir A. C. Doyle calls mediums who prey on\nthe affections of the bereaved--hastened to relieve his grief and his\npurse. For four hundred sittings, spread over a space of six years,\nKatie Fox impersonated his dead wife. As Katie Fox confessed in 1888\nthat Spiritualism was \"all humbuggery--every bit of it,\" we need not\nenter into a learned analysis of these sittings.\n\nEnglish mediums were put on their mettle, and after a little practice in\nprivate they announced that they had the same powers of materialization,\nand it was unnecessary to bring over the Americans. Mrs. Guppy, the\npride of London Spiritualism, opened this new and rich vein. The story\nof Mrs. Guppy need not be told here. It is enough that, while she was\nstill Miss Nichol, she was the chief medium to convert Dr. Russel\nWallace to Spiritualism; and that, on the other hand, she was the lady\nwho professed that she was aerially transported by spirits from Highbury\nto Lamb's Conduit Street, and through several solid walls, in the space\nof three minutes. Mrs. Guppy was above suspicion: first because she was\nunpaid, and secondly because she exposed several fraudulent mediums. So\nMrs. Guppy set up her little peep-show in the first month of 1872, and\ndrew fashionable London. But the performance was rather tame. While Mrs.\nGuppy sat in the cabinet, a little white face appeared, in the dim\nmoonlight, at an opening near the top of the cabinet. It did not speak,\nas the New York ghosts did. Dolls do not speak.\n\nA few months later Herne and Williams, the professional friends of Mrs.\nGuppy whose spirit-controls had wafted that very voluminous lady as\nrapidly as a zeppelin across London, set up a more robust performance.\nAs they sat in the cabinet (unseen), spirit-forms emerged--dim,\nluminous, but unmistakably alive--and moved about the room. It was the\nfirst appearance in England of those famous spirits, John King, the\nconverted pirate, and Katie King, his daughter, who had been a great\nattraction in America for several years. John's beard looked rather\ntheatrical, and his lamp smelt of phosphorus. But what would you?\nSpirits have to use earthly chemicals; and they would find plenty of\nphosphorus in the brain of Charlie Williams, not to speak of his\npockets, which were never searched. Again we may save ourselves the\ntrouble of a learned analysis of the phenomena by recalling that\nWilliams presently dissolved partnership with Herne, and entered into an\nalliance with Rita; and that in 1878 the precious pair were seized\nduring a performance, and searched, at Amsterdam. Rita had a false\nbeard, six handkerchiefs, and a bottle of phosphorized oil. Williams had\nthe familiar false black beard and dirty drapery of \"John King,\" and\nbottles of phosphorized oil and scent.\n\nThe Spiritualist reader here impatiently observes that I am merely\npicking out a few little irregularities in the early days of the\nmovement. Far from it. I am scientifically studying the preparatory\nstages of one of the classic manifestations of the movement: the\nmaterializations of Florence Cook, which are vouched for by Sir W.\nCrookes, Sir A. C. Doyle, and, apparently, all the leaders of the\nmovement. If the Spiritualist wishes, like other people, honestly to\nunderstand \"Katie King,\" he or she must read this part of the story\nwhich I am giving, and which is generally omitted (though it may be read\nin any history of the movement).\n\nFlorence Cook was a pretty little Hackney girl of sixteen when Herne and\nWilliams began. She attended s\u00e9ances at their house in Lamb's Conduit\nStreet, and she was so impressed that she became a pupil of Herne. She\nand her father seem to have understood each other very well, and she\nvery shortly began to give, to paying guests, materialization-s\u00e9ances in\ntheir house at Hackney. Florence went one better than Mrs. Guppy and\nHerne. There was a lamp in the room--at the far side of the room--and\nyou saw faces plainly at the opening in the cabinet. As her \"power\"\ndeveloped, the ghost began to leave the cabinet and walk about the room\nand talk to the sitters. Florence remained bound with rope in the\ncabinet while \"Katie King\" stalked abroad. You did not see her, it is\ntrue, but you had her word for it. She was not bound by the\nspectators--nor by herself, of course. She was bound by the spirits. A\nrope was put on her lap, the curtains were drawn, and presently you\ndiscovered Florrie, \"securely\" bound and in a trance, in the cabinet.\nThe curtains were drawn again when the ghost, in flowing white drapery,\nwalked the room.\n\nMeantime, and at a very early date, a Manchester Spiritualist named\nBlackburn privately engaged to give Florrie an annual fee if she would\nnot take money at the door; so she became an \"unpaid\" and highly\nrespectable medium. Jewellery is, of course, not money, and Florrie\nexacted jewellery (as the Spiritualist Volckmann found and said in the\nLondon Press at the time, when he wanted to attend) from would-be\nsitters through her father. It is said that she looked, in features,\nremarkably like a Jewess.\n\nHer fame reached the ears of a brilliant young scientist, Professor W.\nCrookes, and he invited her to materialize at his house. She soon laid\naside all dread of the scientific man. In three niggardly little\nletters, which he never republished, Crookes described in 1874 the\nwonderful things done at his house. While Florrie lay in an improvised\ncabinet, or behind a curtain, the beautiful and romantic and quite\ndifferent maiden, Katie King, walked about his room. She played with\nCrookes's children, and told them stories about her earthly life in\nIndia long ago. She talked affably to his guests, and took his arm as\nshe walked. There was not the least doubt about her solidity. The wicked\nsceptic who suggests that Katie King was a muslin doll or a streak of\nlight has certainly not read Crookes's letters. He felt her pulse, he\nsounded her heart and lungs, he cut off a tress of her lovely auburn\nhair, he took her in his arms, and he--well, he breaks off here and\nsimply asks us what any man would do in the circumstances? We assume\nthat he found that she had lips and warm breath like any other maiden.\n\nFlorence Cook's opinion of scientific men would to-day be priceless. I\nwill say, on behalf of Sir W. Crookes, that he never obtruded this\nsacred experience on the public. He \"accidentally\" destroyed all the\nnegatives and photographs he had taken of Katie King. He forbade\nfriends, to whom he had given copies, ever to publish them. The three\nshort letters he wrote to the _Spiritualist_ (February 6, April 3, and\nJune 5, 1874--I have, of course, read them) are now rare. He wrote them\nout of chivalry, because a rival Spiritualist, Volckmann (who married\nMrs. Guppy), got admission to the Hackney sanctuary (by a present of\njewellery) and exposed Florence (December 9, 1873). He saw at once that\nshe was impersonating the spirit, and he seized it. Other Spiritualists\npresent, supporters of Florrie, tore him off, and turned out the lamp;\nand five minutes later Florence was found, bound and peacefully\nentranced, in her cabinet. In the hubbub that followed Professor Crookes\ngave his modest testimonial to Florrie's virtue. Spiritualists generally\naccepted her version, and she continued to make ghosts until 1880, when\nSir George Sitwell and Baron von Buch exposed her in precisely the same\nway.\n\nNo Spiritualist can quarrel with me for dwelling on this famous\nmaterialization. It is supposed to be the mostly firmly authenticated in\nthe whole movement. Sir W. Crookes said, quite late in life, that he had\n\"nothing to retract\"; and every Spiritualist who quotes his high\nauthority endorses the materialization of Katie King. The majority of\nthe public to-day will merely conclude that some scientific men are\nworse witnesses on such matters than dockers, and that the disgust of\nscientific men like Sir E. Ray Lankester and Sir Bryan Donkin has a\nvery solid foundation. Even at the time there were leading Spiritualists\nlike Sergeant Cox who regarded the affair with bewilderment and\nsuspected that all materializations were fraud.\n\nWhat can be said for Sir W. Crookes? He alleges that the medium and the\nghost were unmistakably different persons. Katie King was taller than\nFlorrie. But Florence Cook, like her contemporary, Miss Showers, was\nseen to walk on tip-toe, and alter her stature, when she was the ghost.\nSir W. Crookes nowhere says that he took the elementary precaution of\nmeasuring ghost and medium _with their dresses drawn up to their knees_.\nHe says that the lock of hair which Katie gave him as a memento was\nauburn, and Florrie's hair was very dark brown. But we do not doubt that\non the _last occasion_ the ghost was _not_ Florence Cook. Other\ndifferences he finds, in a dim light, are negligible. If the modern\nSpiritualist really believes Sir W. Crookes, as he professes to do, he\nmust come to this ultra-miraculous conclusion: The spiritual powers in\nthis case did not merely take _some_ matter out of Florence Cook's body,\nbut they took more than the whole substance of it, because Crookes says\nthat Katie was taller and broader than Florrie! And, to cap this supreme\nmiracle, he on one occasion saw ghost and medium together, and\napparently Florrie was as solid as ever! The spirits had in this case\nmultiplied nine stone into eighteen or nineteen.\n\nAfter twenty years of religious controversy I am a patient man, but I\ndecline to argue with any one who doubts that Florrie Cook (four times\ncaught in fraud, and a pupil of Herne) impersonated the ghost.\n\nMr. F. Podmore saw the photographs which Professor Crookes took. He\nsays that ghost and medium are the same person. Crookes himself was\nnervous, in spite of Florrie's charms, and he begged to be allowed to\nsee ghost and medium plainly together. The artful Florence could not\nmanage that in his house. Once she let him look at her, lying on the\nground, but he saw no face or hands; and a bundle of clothes and a pair\nof boots are not quite clearly a living person. He pressed again.\nFlorence--he tells us this very naively--borrowed his lamp (a bottle of\nphosphorized oil) and tested its penetrating power, and then told him he\nshould see both ghost and medium in _her_ house. He went, and we are not\nsurprised that he saw them.\n\nIf any Spiritualist of our time really doubts that on this occasion\nthere were _two_ girls, I invite him to read carefully Sir W. Crookes's\naccount of the famous farewell scene. Katie proclaimed that her mission\nwas over (she had converted a scientific man), and this was to be her\nlast appearance. Florrie (who was in a trance, of course) wept, vainly\nimplored her to visit this earth again, and sank, broken-hearted, to the\nfloor. Katie directed Crookes--who stood, mute, with his phosphorus lamp\nin the middle of this pretty comedy--to see to Florrie, and, when he\nturned round again, Katie King had vanished for ever. That is to say,\nshe had not been re-absorbed in the medium's body, as Spiritualist\ntheory demands, but had _gone in the opposite direction while his back\nwas turned_!\n\nNow there you have the most wonderful, classic, historic materialization\nin the whole Spiritualist history. It is attested by a distinguished man\nof science. It is endorsed by all the Spiritualist leaders of our time.\nAnd it is piffle from beginning to end. The evidence would not justify a\nman in drowning a mouse. The control was ridiculously inadequate. The\nimposture was palpable. If Sir W. Crookes had taken the scientific\nprecaution of spreading a few tacks on the carpet, or waxing a bent pin\nin the ghost's chair, he would have heard the Hackney dialect at its\nrichest. It was reserved for two Oxford undergraduates to show Sir W.\nCrookes how to investigate ghosts. They seized \"Marie,\" Florrie's next\nspirit, in 1880; and they found they had in their arms the charming\nFlorence, in her _lingerie_. Crookes had never searched the ample black\nvelvet dress she used to wear.\n\nIt is hardly worth while running over all the ghostly frauds since then,\nbut a word about Florrie's friend and contemporary, Miss Showers, will\nbe found instructive. Miss Showers was a really unpaid medium; though\nshe received a good deal in the way of jewellery and other presents from\nadmirers of her fair and aristocratic ghost, \"Lenore Fitzwarren.\" She\nwas a general's daughter, and above suspicion. No one dreamed of\nsearching her. On one occasion she allowed Florence Cook to peep into\nher cabinet; and Florence--hawks do not pick out hawks' eyes--assured\nthe public that she plainly saw Miss Showers and \"Lenore,\" and even a\nsecond ghost, simultaneously. But, alas for the fair Lenore! Sergeant\nCox, who was very sceptical, had Miss Showers at his country-house in\n1874; and Miss Cox, a born daughter of Eve, tried to draw the curtain\nand peep into the cabinet. Miss Showers fought for her curtain, and the\nghostly headdress fell off, and the game was up.\n\nThis was only four months after the exposure of Florence Cook. The two\nmost certainly genuine and respectable mediums in England were unmasked\nwithin four months. R. D. Owen's \"Katie King\" had been exposed in\nAmerica in the previous year, the last sad year of the old man's life.\n\nOne by one the others followed. In spite of darkness, in spite of solemn\npromises extracted from sitters not to break the circle or seize the\nghost, the materializers were all exposed. One man shot a ghost with\nink, and the ink was found on the medium. Stuart Cumberland squirted\ncochineal on a ghost, and the medium could not wash it away. One\nAmerican with a gun had a shot at a ghost. At another place tin-tacks\nwere strewn on the floor, and the spirit's language was painful to hear.\nIn 1876 Eglinton was exposed by Mr. Colley; he had in his trunk the\nbeard and draperies of his ghost \"Abdullah.\" In 1877 Miss Wood was\ncaught at Blackburn, and Dr. Monck was caught and sent to jail. In 1878\nRita and Williams were caught, with all their tawdry ghost-properties,\nat Amsterdam. Spiritualists were getting a little nervous, though as a\nrule they accepted every excuse. The medium had acted \"unconsciously,\"\nor under the influence of evil spirits. Sir A. C. Doyle boasts that it\nis Spiritualists who weed out frauds. On the contrary, they have shown a\nvery grave willingness to accept the flimsiest excuses and reinstate the\nmedium. Miss Wood was exposed, for instance, in 1877. They at once\nadmitted her defence, that she had been quite unconscious in\nimpersonating the ghost, and she went on. In 1882 a sceptical sitter\nseized the \"pretty little Indian girl\" who came out of the cabinet while\nMiss Wood was entranced in it; and the Indian girl-ghost was Miss Wood\nwalking on her knees, swathed in muslin.\n\nAh, but this is ancient history, your Spiritualist friend says. Listen!\nAbout fifteen years ago, when I was already making that inquiry into\nSpiritualism which Spiritualists say I have never made, I was told by a\ngroup of London Spiritualists, all cultivated men and women, that it was\nuseless to go the round of the mediums who advertised in _Light_, since\nthey were \"all frauds.\" I was told that the one genuine medium in London\nwas a certain F. G. F. Craddock, who performed in a studio at the back\nof Mr. Gambier Bolton's house. The minor phenomena I saw did not impress\nme, and I asked to be allowed to see these wonderful materializations of\nMr. Craddock. Three ghosts--a nun, a clown, and a Pathan--walked the\nroom (successively) while Craddock sat (unseen) in a trance. I saw\npictures of these materialized forms, and was told that they were\naccurate. But before I could get admission Craddock left, and he began\nto hold sittings for his own profit at Pinner. And on March 18, 1906,\nthe \"ghost\" was seized, in the usual way, and found to be Craddock. On\nJune 20 (see the _Times_ of June 21) Craddock was fined ten pounds, and\nfive guineas cost, at Edgware Police Court, on the charge \"that he,\nbeing a rogue and a vagabond, did unlawfully use certain subtle craft,\nmeans, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive the said Mark\nMayhew and others.\" He had been controlled as carelessly as F. Cook was\nin 1874. He had smuggled in masks and drapery, and impersonated his\nghosts.\n\nAfter all, Sir A. C. Doyle may say, in his blunt way, this was 1906. I\ndo not know if he knows it--he seems to have an exceedingly limited\nknowledge of his own movement--but _Craddock is giving\nmaterialization-s\u00e9ances in or near London to-day_; and prominent\nSpiritualists know it, and condone it, on the ground that _some_ of his\nphenomena are genuine.\n\nThe imposture has continued to flourish in all parts of the Spiritualist\nworld since 1906. In 1907 it was the turn of Marthe Beraud, of whom I\nwill say more presently. In 1908 exposure fell upon Miller, the most\nfamous of the American materializing mediums. Such was his repute that\nthe French Spiritualists invited him to Paris, and were delighted with\nhim. The figures which appeared while he sat _before_ the cabinet were\nsuspiciously like dolls, but there was no mistake about the \"beautiful\ngirl\" (in dull, red light) who came out, and offered her hand, when\nMiller was (presumably) inside the cabinet. But when the spirits\nannounced that it was improper to strip and search him, and when they\nsaid that, though he was an \"unpaid\" medium, they must make him a nice\nlittle present before he went back to San Francisco, there was a chill\nin the Spiritualist world. And when he produced the ghosts of Luther's\nwife and Melanchthon, when they found bits of tulle and a perfumed cloth\nin the cabinet after a s\u00e9ance, they sent Miller back to America without\nhis present.\n\nThis fiasco, which agitated the Spiritualist world in the beginning of\n1909, had not yet been forgotten when, in October of the same year, Frau\nAnna Abend and her husband were arrested by the police at Berlin. Frau\nAbend was the leading German medium. Strings of motor-cars stretched\nbefore her door of an afternoon. For several years she and her husband\nhad duped and fascinated Berlin by their accurate knowledge of the dead\nyou wished to see. You heard on every side, what you hear on every side\nin London to-day: \"I was _quite_ unknown to the medium,\" and \"She could\nnot _possibly_ know by natural means what the spirits told me.\" The\npolice thought otherwise. They found in her cabinet tulle enough to\ndrape six ghosts; and they found in her house quite a detective-bureau\nof information about dead folk and possible sitters, and a secret\naddress to which she had the flowers sent which her spirits would\nproduce as \"apports.\" The whole machinery of her information and\ntrickery was laid bare. Was she ruined? Not a bit of it. She and her\nhusband got off on technical grounds, and the Spiritualists showered\ncongratulations on them and set them up again.[6]\n\nIn 1910 our Spiritualist journal, _Light_, which is so zealous to root\nout fraud, announced that a really genuine materializing medium had\nappeared in Costa Rica. It seemed a safe distance away, but Professor\nReichel, of France, had actually been to Costa Rica and found it a\nflagrant imposture at the very time when _Light_ was confirming the\nfaith of English Spiritualists with the glorious news.\n\nOfelia Corral\u00e8s, the medium in question, was the daughter of a high\ncivic functionary of San Jos\u00e9; an _unpaid_ medium, you notice. As soon\nas Reichel arrived he found that the wonderful manifestation which the\nSpiritualist journals of the world had announced was well known locally\nto be a hoax. The ghost was a servant-girl, who was recognized by\neverybody, smuggled in at the back door. Ofelia, under pressure,\nadmitted this. Her \"spirit-control,\" she explained, could not\n\"materialize,\" so directed her to bring in this girl, who resembled her\n\"in the last incarnation but one.\" Sometimes her mother took the part,\nand she was one night embraced by an ardent Costa Rican sitter. Reichel\nassisted at some of her performances, but the girl declined to\nmaterialize a ghost. What she did get was a chorus of ghostly voices in\nthe dark. It says something for the robustness of Professor Reichel's\npsychic faith that, though the music was \"rotten,\" though the whole\nfamily was suspect and all the members of it were present, though he\ncaught the girl cheating and her \"ghost\" was an acknowledged imposture,\nhe believed that this music was a \"genuine\" phenomenon! He was not going\nto make a journey to Costa Rica for nothing.\n\nTo English Spiritualists this case ought to be particularly interesting,\nbecause among the gentle Ofelia's admirers in San Jos\u00e9 was an\nEnglishman, Mr. Lindo, and it was he who sent the outrageous account to\n_Light_. According to him--and he was present--they all saw Ofelia\nfloating in the air. Now, Reichel had taken with him some phosphorized\npaper, and by the light of this he saw that Ofelia was standing on a\nstool. In fact, she fell off the stool, and was ignominiously exposed.\nWhat is worse, Reichel says (_Psychische Studien_, April, 1911, p. 224)\nthat he had expressly warned Lindo, who used his name, that he \"would\nnot be mixed up with such a burlesque,\" and that the minutes of the\nsittings were grossly exaggerated by Ofelia's father. So much for\nfirst-hand Spiritualist testimony in _Light_. The French _Annales des\nSciences Psychiques_ gave an equally false account. The German\n_Psychische Studien_ alone called it \"a conglomerate of stupidity and\nlies.\" It certainly was; but when the whole truth was known _Light_\nmildly described it as \"a girlish prank.\" It was calculated and\nshameless fraud.\n\nA few months later it was the turn of Lucia Sordi, a famous Italian\nmedium, a young married woman of the peasant class, assisted by her two\ngirls. Her marvels put Eusapia Palladino in the shade. The guests were\nnot merely touched, but bitten! A man's hat was brought from the hall\nand put on his head. The cat was brought in through the solid walls. The\ntable was not merely lifted up, but carried into the hall. Professor\nTanfani and other scientific men were taken in. Four \"materialized\nspirits\" seemed to be in the room at once, while Lucia was bound to her\nchair. They fastened her in a crate, and it made little difference. In\n1911 Baron von Schrenck-Notzing went to Rome and exposed her. She could\nget out of any bandages. But when the War broke out she was still\noccupying the leisure hours of certain Italian professors.\n\nMeantime, Dr. Imoda, of Turin, university teacher of science, was\ninvestigating the marvels of Linda Gazerra. Linda was not exactly an\nunpaid medium, but she was the cultivated daughter of a professional\nman. Being a lady and a good Catholic, she could not, of course, be\nstripped and searched. So she did wonderful things, which Imoda gravely\nwatched and described and photographed for three years. Her \"control\"\nwas \"Vincenzo,\" a young officer who had been killed in a duel; and a\nterrible chap he was to choose so respectable and pious a medium. Things\nsimply flew about when he was at work. At other times she \"apported\"\nbirds and flowers, and the ghosts that materialized beside her--you\ncould plainly see both her and the ghost--were very pretty, though\nremarkably flat-faced, and fond of muslin. As Linda's hands were\ncontrolled by the sitters, it did not matter that she insisted on\nabsolute darkness until she pleased to say \"Foco\" (\"Light\") and let you\ntake a photograph. She had a three years' run. Then Schrenck-Notzing\nstudied her at Paris in the spring of 1911. She treated him to a\n\"witches' Sabbath,\" he says. But he soon found that her feet were not\nwhere a lady ought to keep her feet. He felt a spirit-touch, grasped the\ntouching limb, and found that he had the virtuous Linda's foot. Then he\nsewed her in a sack, and the spirits were powerless. Her\nmaterializations and tricks were simple. She brought her birds and\nflowers and muslin and masks (or pictures) in her hair (which was\nlargely false, and never examined) and her underclothing, and she, by a\ncommon trick, released her hands and feet from control to manipulate\nthem.\n\nThis Baron Schrenck, you think, was a terrible fellow at exposures.\nUnhappily, our last instance must be the exposure of his own medium, Eva\nC. This will fitly crown the chapter for two reasons. First, because Sir\nA. C. Doyle recommends her to us as a genuine materializing medium of\nour own times. He says in the Debate that, while Spiritualists have been\nmuch \"derided\" for claiming that spirits build up temporary forms out of\nthe medium's body, \"recent scientific investigation shows that their\nassertion was absolutely true. (Cheers.)\" I quote the printed Debate (p.\n32), and it will be recognized that here at least I am not shirking my\nopponent's strongest evidence, for Sir A. C. Doyle at once explains\nthat he means the case of Eva C. He gave his own (quite inaccurate)\nversion of the facts, and, to the delight of his supporters, he went\non:--\n\n\n     Don't you think it is simply the insanity of incredulity to waive\n     that aside? Imagine discussing what happened in 1866 ... when you\n     have scientific facts of this sort remaining unanswered.\n\n\nSo, you see, I was very heavily punished in that contest, and I have to\ntry to redeem my \"insanity\"; but perhaps the reader will remember what\nSir A. C. Doyle forgot, that he had stipulated that I should open the\ndebate and _deal with his books_. No doubt I was quite free to take\nother evidence also, but I had an idea that, since this evidence was\npublished in 1914 and Sir Arthur's books were published in 1918 and\n1919, he had not mentioned it because he disdained it.\n\nThe other reason why the case of Eva C. is important is because it shows\nus modern scientific men at work. In the earlier days of the movement\nfaking was easy. No one searched a medium, especially a lady medium. She\ncould have yards of butter-cloth or muslin and even dolls or masks under\nher skirts. Even now the ordinary medium is not searched, as a rule. A\nfriend of mine went recently to a materializing medium near London--it\nis all going on still--and was allowed to feel the medium over his\nclothes. He could easily tell that the man had yards of muslin wrapped\nround his body, but he said nothing, and he got his money's worth; a man\ndressed in muslin, in a bad light, being recognized by Spiritualists as\na deceased relative. Most materializations are still the medium in a\nmask or beard and muslin. In some cases, in very poor light, the ghost\nis merely a white rag, a picture, or even a faint patch of light from a\nlantern, or a phosphorized streak.\n\nNow we come to the \"scientific facts.\" Half the professors and other\nscientific men quoted as adherents by modern Spiritualist writers and\nspeakers are not Spiritualists at all. Flammarion, Ochorowicz, Foa,\nBottazzi, Richet, de Vesme, Schrenck-Notzing, Morselli, Flournoy,\nMaxwell, Ostwald, etc., are not, and never were, Spiritualists. Most of\nthem regard Spiritualism as childish and mischievous. But they believe\nthat mediums have remarkable psychic powers, and they admit levitations\nand (in many cases) materializations. They think that a mysterious force\nof the living medium, not spirits, does these things, and they talk of a\n\"new science.\" I agree with them that the idea of spirits strolling\nalong from the Elysian fields to play banjoes and lift tables and make\nghosts for us is rather peculiar, but I am not sure that _their_ idea is\nmuch less peculiar. However, they promise us research under scientific\nconditions, and they say that they have got materializations under such\nconditions. \"Eva C.\" is the grand example.\n\nWho is this mysterious lady? I have already let the reader into the\nsecret. Sir A. C. Doyle may justly plead that he does not read German;\nand the French version of her exploits is, he may be surprised to hear,\nvery different from Baron Schrenck's fuller version in German, and very\nwrong and misleading. But does Sir Arthur never read the _Proceedings of\nthe Society for Psychical Research_?\n\nAs long ago as July, 1914, it contained a very good article on Marthe\nBeraud, which tells most of the facts (except about her morals), and\nquite openly disdains these wonderful photographs which have made such\nan impression on Sir A. C. Doyle. From that article, which betrays, in\nthe official organ of the Society, almost the same \"insanity of\nincredulity\" as I did, he would have learned things that might have\nsaved him from the worst \"howler\" of the Debate. It tells that \"Eva C.,\"\nas was well known all over the continent in 1914, was Marthe Beraud, the\nmedium of the \"Villa Carmen materializations\" in Algiers in 1905. It\ngives a lengthy report on the case by an Algiers lawyer, M. Marsault,\nwho knew the family at the Villa Carmen intimately, and often saw the\nperformances; and this report contains an explicit confession by Marthe\nthat she had no abnormal powers whatever. To excuse herself she said\nthat there was a trap-door in the room, and \"ghosts\" were introduced by\nothers. That was a lie, for there was no trap-door; and those who\nobstinately wished to believe in the ghosts rejected the whole of\nMarsault's weighty evidence on the ground that _he_ said there was a\ntrap-door!\n\nI have before me photographs of the Algiers ghost and of Eva C.'s ghost.\nThey plainly show Marthe dressed up as a ghost, in the familiar old way,\nwhile Professor Richet gravely photographs her, and Sir Oliver Lodge\nrecommends these things to our serious notice. However, Marthe found\nAlgiers unhealthy after this, and she returned to France and set up in\nthe materializing trade. Mme. Bisson found her and adopted her, and\nchanged her name; and Baron von Schrenck-Notzing settled down to a three\nyears' study of her marvellous performances. It was on the strength of\nhis book and photographs that Miss Verrall in 1914 (in the _Proceedings\nS. P. R._) gave a verdict not much different from my own. She found\nsome evidence of abnormal power, and a great deal of fraud. I see no\nevidence whatever of abnormal _psychic_ power if--it is not clear--this\nis what Miss Verrall means. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle, who seems to know\nnothing about the matter beyond Mme. Bisson's worthless work, puts the\nfacts before a London audience in the year 1920 in the language I have\nquoted.\n\nIn the beginning Marthe plainly impersonated the ghost, as Baron\nSchrenck admits. He believes that she did it unconsciously. The sooner\nthat excuse for fraudulent mediums is abandoned the better. She was\nquite obviously _not_ in a trance, though she pretended to be,\nthroughout the whole three years. For smaller \"ghosts\" (white patches,\nstreaks, arms, etc.) she used muslin, gloves, rubber--all sorts of\nthings. As a rule, she knew when they were going to let off the\nmagnesium-flare and photograph her. She had had ample time behind the\ncurtain to arrange her effects. In one photograph, taken too suddenly,\nshe has a white rag on her knee, which would look like a hand in the red\nlight, and her real hand is holding the \"ghost\" over her head! After\nthat Baron Schrenck sadly admitted that she used her hands. Mme. Bisson\ndoes not; so Sir Arthur does not know this. In another photograph she is\nsupposed to accept a cigarette in a materialized third hand. It is\nobviously her bare foot, and, if you look closely, you see that her\n\"face\" is a piece of white stuff pinned to the curtain. She is really\nleaning back and stretching up her foot. The book reeks with cheating.\n\nAfter a time she began to stick or paste on the cabinet or the curtain\npictures cut out of the current illustrated papers, and daubed with\npaint, provided with false noses, or adorned with beards and moustaches.\nPresident Wilson has a heavy cavalry moustache and a black eye; but the\nglasses, collar, tie, and tie-pin, and even the marks of the scissors,\nare unmistakable. Baron Schrenck was forced to admit that dozens of\npinholes were found (not by him) on the cabinet-wall, and that the pins\nmust have been smuggled in, deceptively, in spite of a control which he\nclaimed to be perfect. In fact, poor Baron Schrenck was driven from\nconcession to concession until his case was very limp. Of all these\nthings Sir A. C. Doyle knew nothing; and, although he had the portrait\nof President Wilson in his hands at the Queen's Hall, only disguised by\na moustache and a few daubs of paint, he assured the audience he\nbelieved that it was the ectoplasm of the medium's body moulded by\nspirit forces into a human form!\n\nThe point of interest to us is to find how the medium concealed her\ntrappings. No medium was ever more rigorously controlled, yet the fraud\nis obvious. The answer shows that you can almost never be sure of your\nmedium. She was stripped naked before every sitting and _sewn_ into\nblack tights. Her mouth and hair were always examined. Occasionally her\nsex-cavity was examined. South African detectives have told me how this\nreceptacle is used for smuggling diamonds, and, as Marthe was rarely\nexamined there by a competent and reliable witness, she probably often\nused it. Dr. Schrenck admits that the outlet of her intestinal tube was\nscarcely ever examined until very late in the inquiry, and an\nindependent doctor gave positive reason to suspect that she used this.\nThere is only one photograph in the book that shows a ghost which,\ntightly wrapped up (and nearly all show plain marks of folding, as Baron\nSchrenck admits), might be too large for such concealment; and the\ncareful reader will find that on these occasions there was no control at\nall! They were impromptu sittings, suddenly decided upon by Marthe\nherself.\n\nThere is strong reason to believe that usually she swallowed her\nmaterial and brought it up at will from her gullet or stomach. More than\na hundred cases of this power are known, and there is much positive\nevidence that Marthe was a \"ruminant.\" She sometimes bled copiously from\nthe mouth and gullet, and she used the mouth much to manipulate the\ngauzy stuff. When I mentioned this well-known theory of Marthe Beraud\nSir Arthur laughed. He said that he doubted if I had read the book I\nprofessed to have read, because Marthe had a net sewn round her head,\nwhich \"disproved\" my theory. He summoned me to retract. He said I had\n\"slipped up pretty badly.\"\n\nWell, the theory was not mine, but that of a doctor who had studied\nMarthe, and who has little difficulty in dealing with the net. Had it\nnot been the end of the debate, however, our audience would have heard a\nsurprising reply. They would have learned that the net was used only in\n_seven_ sittings out of hundreds, and that the medium then compelled\nthem to abandon it. They would have learned that the net, instead of\n\"not making the slightest difference to the experiments,\" as Sir A. C.\nDoyle says, made _four_ out of these _seven_ sittings completely barren\nof results! And they would have further learned that when the net was\non, and Marthe could not use her mouth, she stipulated that the back of\nher clothing should be left open.\n\nJust one further detail of this sordid imposture. I said that on one\noccasion Marthe allowed the very title of the paper out of which she cut\nher portraits, _Le Miroir_, to appear in the photograph, and gave it a\nspiritual meaning. Now, that is Mme. Bisson's version. But Baron\nSchrenck's version is in flagrant contradiction, and an examination of\nthe photographs proves that he is right. The words were caught,\n_accidentally_, by a camera placed in the cabinet, and the excuse was\nconcocted the next day!\n\nEnough of these miserable \"materializations.\" They are always dishonest.\nEvery materializing medium has been found out. Almost since the birth of\nthe movement there have been, and are to-day, hundreds of these men and\nwomen, paid and unpaid, who have masqueraded as ghosts, or duped their\nsitters in a dull red light with muslin and butter-cloth and\nphosphorized paper, with dolls and masks and stuffed gloves and\nstockings and rubber arms. If Spiritualists would persuade us that they\nare scrupulously honest, they must drive the last of these people out of\ntheir fold, and they must expunge every reference to these\nmaterializations from their literature. When we get such phenomena with\na medium who has been searched by competent and independent witnesses,\nwhose body-openings have been sealed and clothing changed, in a cabinet\nset up by independent inquirers, with _each_ hand and foot controlled by\na separate man, or in a good light, we may begin to talk. Never yet has\nthe faintest suggestion of a phenomenon been secured under such\ncircumstances.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[6] I take this from the German psychic journal, _Psychische Studien_\nNov., 1909.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF RAPS AND LEVITATIONS\n\n\nI now pass at once to a class of Spiritualistic manifestations which\nwould be put forward by any well-educated occultist as the most\nauthentic of all. Reference was made a few pages back to a large group\nof scientific and professional men who believe in what they call\n\"mediumistic phenomena.\" They are not Spiritualists, and it is one of\nthe questionable features of recent Spiritualist literature that they\nare often described as such. Thus the astronomers Flammarion and\nSchiaparelli are quoted. But Flammarion says repeatedly in his latest\nand most important book (_Les forces naturelles inconnues_, 1907) that\nhe is not and never was a Spiritualist (see p. 581), and he includes a\nlong letter from Schiaparelli, who disavows all belief even in the\nphenomena (p. 93). Professor Richet, who believes in materializations,\nis not a Spiritualist. Professor Morselli, who also accepts the facts,\nspeaks of the Spiritualist interpretation of them as \"childish, absurd,\nand immoral.\" The long lists of scientific supporters which the\nSpiritualists publish are in part careless or even dishonest.\n\nBut such professors as Richet, Ochorowicz, de Vesme, Flournoy, etc., and\nmen like Flammarion, Carrington, Maxwell, etc., do believe that raps and\nother physical phenomena are produced by abnormal powers of the medium.\nThey believe that when the medium sits in or before the cabinet, in\nproper conditions, the floor and table are rapped, the furniture is\nlifted or moved about, musical instruments are played, and impressions\nare made in plaster, although the medium has not done it with his or her\nhands or feet. As I said, these scientific men scorn the idea that\n\"spirits\" from another world play these pranks. They look for unknown\nnatural forces in the medium. They _think_ that they have excluded\nfraud. We shall see. Meantime, the assent of so many scientific men to\nthe phenomena themselves gives this class of experiences more\nplausibility than others.\n\nMost of these men base their opinion upon the remarkable doings of the\nItalian medium, Eusapia Palladino, and we shall therefore pay particular\nattention to her. But Spiritualists rely for these things on a very\nlarge number of mediums. In fact, some of our leading English\nSpiritualists do not believe in Palladino at all, having detected her in\nfraud. We must therefore first examine the evidence put before us by\nSpiritualists.\n\nWe begin with the story of the Fox family in America in 1848, which\nadmittedly inaugurated modern Spiritualism. Since Spiritualists\ncommemorate, in 1920, the \"seventy-second\" anniversary of the foundation\nof their religion, I will surely not be accused of wasting time over\ntrivial or irrelevant matters in going back to 1848. As, however, this\nis not a history, I must deal with this matter very briefly.\n\nIn March, 1848, a Mr. and Mrs. Fox, of Hydesville, a very small town of\nthe State of New York, had their domestic peace disturbed by mysterious\nand repeated rappings, apparently on their walls and floors.\nSwedenborgians and Shakers had by that time familiarized people with the\nidea of spirit, and the neighbours were presently informed that the raps\ntook an intelligent form, and replied \"Yes\" or \"No\" (by a given number\nof raps) to questions. The Foxes stated that the raps came from the\nspirit of a murdered man, and later they said that they had dug and\nfound human bones. These raps were clearly associated with the two\ngirls, Margaretta (aged fifteen) and Katie or Cathie (aged twelve). A\nthird, a married elder sister, named Leah--at that time Mrs. Fish, and\nlater Mrs. Underhill--came to Hydesville, and, at her return to\nRochester, took Margaretta with her. Leah herself was presently a\n\"medium.\" The excitement in rural America was intense. Mediums sprang up\non every side, and the Foxes were in such demand that they could soon\ncharge a dollar a sitter. The \"spirits,\" having at last discovered a way\nof communicating with the living, rapped out all sorts of messages to\nthe sitters. In a few years table-turning, table-tilting, levitation,\netc., were developed, but the \"foundation of the religion\" was as I have\ndescribed in 1848.\n\nTowards the close of 1850 three professors of Buffalo University formed\nthe theory that the Fox girls were simple frauds, causing the supposed\nraps by cracking their knee joints. At a trial sitting they so placed\nthe legs and feet of the girls that no raps could be produced. A few\nmonths later a relative, Mrs. Culver, made a public statement, which was\npublished in the _New York Herald_ (April 17, 1851), that Margaretta Fox\nhad admitted the fraud to her, and had shown her how it was done.\nNeither of these checks had any appreciable effect upon the movement.\nFrom year to year it found new developments, and it is said within three\nyears of its origin to have won more than a million adherents in the\nUnited States, or more than five times as many as it has to-day.\n\nOur Spiritualists may find it possible, in their solemn commemoration of\n1848, to smile at the Buffalo professors and Mrs. Culver, but I have yet\nto meet a representative of theirs who can plausibly explain away what\nhappened in 1888. Margaretta Fox married Captain Kane, the Arctic\nexplorer, who often urged her to expose the fraud, as he believed it to\nbe. In 1888 she found courage to do so (_New York Herald_, September 24,\n1888). She and Katie, she said, had discovered a power of making raps\nwith their toe-joints (not knee-joints), and had hoaxed Hydesville.\nTheir enterprising elder sister had learned their secret, and had\norganized the very profitable business of spirit-rapping. The raps and\nall other phenomena of the Spiritualist movement were, Mrs. Kane said,\nfraud from beginning to end. She gave public demonstrations in New York\nof the way it was done; and in October of the same year her younger\nsister Cathie confirmed the statement, and said that Spiritualism was\n\"all humbuggery, every bit of it\" (_Herald_, October 10 and 11, 1888).\nThey agreed that their sister Leah (Mrs. Underhill), the founder of the\nSpiritualist movement and the most prosperous medium of its palmiest\ndays, was a monumental liar and a shameless organizer of every variety\nof fraud. That a wealthy Spiritualist afterwards induced Cathie to go\nback on this confession need not surprise us.\n\nSo much for \"St. Leah\"--if she is yet canonized--and the foundation of\nthe Spiritualist religion in 1848. We need say little further about\nraps. Dr. Maxwell, the French lawyer and medical student who belongs to\nthe scientific psychic school which I have noticed, gives six different\nfraudulent ways of producing \"spirit-raps.\" He has studied every variety\nof medium, including girls about the age of the Fox girls, and found\nfraud everywhere. In one case he discovered that the raps were\nfraudulently produced by two young men among the sitters; and the normal\ncharacter of these men was so high that their conduct is beyond his\npower of explanation. He has verified by many experiments that loud raps\nmay be produced by the knee- and toe-joints, and that even slowly\ngliding the finger or boot along the leg of the table (or the cuff,\netc.) will, in a strained and darkened room, produce the noises. In the\ndark, of course--Dr. Maxwell roundly says that any sitting in total\ndarkness is waste of time--cheating is easy. The released foot or hand,\nor a concealed stick, will give striking manifestations. Some mediums\nhave electrical apparatus for the purpose.\n\nIf any Spiritualist is still disposed to attach importance to raps, we\nmay at least ask for these manifestations under proper conditions. Since\nspirits can rap on floors, or on the medium's chair, let the table be\nabolished. It usually affords a very suspicious shade, especially in red\nlight, in the region of the medium. Let the medium be plainly isolated,\nand bound in limb and joint, and let us then have these mysterious raps.\nIt has not yet been done.\n\nThe same general objection may be premised when we approach the subject\nof levitation and the moving of furniture generally. Levitation is a\nmore impressive word than \"lifting,\" but the inexpert reader may take\nit that the meaning is the same. The \"spirits\" manifest their presence\nto the faithful, not by making the table or the medium \"light,\" but by\nlifting up it or him. It is unfortunate that here again the spirits seem\ncompelled by their very limited intelligence to choose a phenomenon\nwhich not only looks rather like the pastime of a slightly deranged\nHottentot, but happens to coincide with just the kind of thing a\nfraudulent medium would be disposed to do in a dim light. However, since\nquite a number of learned men believe in these things, let us consider\nthem seriously.\n\nAnd, with the courage of honest inquirers, let us attack the strongest\nmanifestations of this power first. Such are the instances in which the\nmedium himself--spirits respect the proprieties and do not treat\nlady-mediums in this way--is lifted from the ground and raised even as\nhigh as the ceiling. When I say that ladies are not treated in this\nfrivolous way, the informed reader will gather at once that I decline to\ntake serious notice of the once famous levitation of Mrs. Guppy. Dr.\nRussel Wallace was quite convinced that this lady was \"levitated\" on to\nthe table, in the dark, and she was no light weight. But we shall be\nexcused from examining his statement if we recall what the lady claimed\nin 1871. Herne and Williams, both impostors, were giving a s\u00e9ance in\nLamb's Conduit Street, and their \"spirit-controls\" said they would\n\"apport\" the weighty Mrs. Guppy. Three minutes later, although the doors\nwere locked, and her home was three miles away, she was standing on the\ntable. She had a wet pen in her hand, and she explained tearfully to the\ninnocent sitters that she had been snatched by invisible powers from her\nbooks and taken through the solid walls. People like Russel Wallace\nstill believed in Mrs. Guppy, but I assume that there is no one to-day\nwho does not see in this case a blatant collusion of three rogues to\ncheat the public. I assume that the same contempt will be meted out to\nthe claim of the Rev. Dr. Monck, who, not to be outdone, stated shortly\nafterwards that _he_ had been similarly transported from Bristol to\nSwindon.\n\nProbably the modern reader will be disposed to dismiss with equal\ncontempt the claim that Daniel Dunglas Home was, in the year 1869,\nwafted by spirit-hands from one window to another, seventy feet above\nthe ground, at a house in Victoria Street. But here I must ask him to\npause. This is one of the classical manifestations, one of the\nfoundations of Spiritualism. Sir A. C. Doyle says that the evidence here\nis excellent. Sir William Barrett maintains that the story is\nindisputably true. Sir William Crookes says that \"to reject the recorded\nevidence on this subject is to reject all human testimony whatever.\" It\nis a Spiritualist dogma.\n\nI have shown in the debate with Sir A. C. Doyle that this dogma is based\non evidence that will not stand five minutes' examination. Not one of\nthese leading Spiritualists can possibly have examined the evidence. No\nwitness even _claims_ to have seen Home wafted from window to window.\nLord Adare is the only survivor of the three supposed witnesses, and,\nwhen he saw some Press report of my destructive criticism in the Debate,\nhe sent to the _Weekly Dispatch_ a letter that he had written at the\ntime. He seemed to think that this letter afforded new evidence. The\ninterested reader will be amused to find that this letter is precisely\nthe evidence I had quoted in the Debate, for it was published forty\nyears ago.\n\nNo one professes to have seen Home carried from window to window. Home\ntold the three men who were present that he was going to be wafted, and\nhe thus set up a state of very nervous expectation. Sir W. Barrett, who\ntells us that \"nothing was said beforehand of what they might expect to\nsee,\" says precisely the opposite of the truth. Both Lord Crawford and\nLord Adare say that they were warned. Then Lord Crawford says that he\nsaw the shadow on the wall of Home entering the room horizontally; and\nas the moon, by whose light he professes to have seen the shadow, was at\nthe most only three days old, his testimony is absolutely worthless.\nLord Adare claims only that he saw Home, in the dark, \"standing upright\noutside our window.\"[7] In the dark--it was an almost moonless December\nnight--one could not, as a matter of fact, say very positively whether\nHome was outside or inside; but, in any case, he acknowledges that there\nwas a nineteen-inch window-sill outside the window, and Home could stand\non that.\n\nSo there is not only not a shred of evidence that Home went from one\nwindow to another, but the whole story suggests trickery. Home told them\nwhat to expect, and he pretended, in the dark, that he was a \"spirit\"\nwhispering this to them. He noisily opened the window in the next room.\nHe came into their room, from the window-sill, laughing and saying (in\nspite of the historic solemnity of the occasion!) that it would be funny\nif a policeman had seen him in the air. When Lord Adare went into the\nnext room, and politely doubted if Home could have gone out by so small\nan aperture, Home told him to stand some distance back, and then swung\nhimself out in a jaunty fashion, as a gymnast would. In fine, it is well\nto remember that this was the same D. D. Home who had defrauded a widow\nof \u00a333,000, and had been, in the previous year (1868), branded in a\nLondon court as a fraud and an adventurer.\n\nAfter this we need not linger long over the other \"levitations\" of Home,\nor allow ourselves to be intimidated by the bluster of Sir A. C. Doyle\nand Sir W. Barrett. Sir Arthur tells us that \"there are altogether on\nrecord some fifty or sixty cases of levitation on the part of Home\";\nthat \"Professor Crookes saw Home levitated twice\"; and that \"as he\nfloated round the room he wrote his name above the pictures.\" It is a\npity that Sir A. C. Doyle does not tell people that Home did all these\nwonderful things in the dark, and that in most cases the people present\nmerely had Home's word for it that he was \"floating round the room.\" The\nwhole evidence for these things has been demolished so effectually by\nMr. Podmore in his _Newer Spiritualism_ (chs. i and ii) that I need say\nlittle here.\n\nNo reliable witness, giving us a precise account of the circumstances,\nhas ever claimed that he saw Home off the ground and clear of all\nfurniture. Sir W. Crookes says that he saw Home, in poor light, rise six\ninches for a space of ten seconds. It is a poor instalment of miracle;\nbut I am obliged to add that Crookes was at the other side of the room,\nand he confesses that he did not see Home's feet leave the ground!\nCrookes says that on one occasion he was allowed to pass his hands\nunder Home's feet; but he tells this wonderful exploit twenty-three\nyears after the event (in 1894), and he does not give precise\nindications where the hands were when he examined the feet. Mr. John\nJones saw Home rise in 1861; but he does not say that he saw Home's\nhands, and he admits that his muscles were so taut that he calls them\n\"cataleptic.\" It is equally true that Home wrote his name above the\npictures; but no one had examined the spots before the s\u00e9ance, and no\none could see if he stood on anything to reach them during the s\u00e9ance,\nas it was pitch dark. The only apparently good case is an occasion when\na sitter says that, in the dark, he saw Home's figure _completely_ cross\nthe rather lighter space of the window, feet first, and then cross it\nagain head first. But it happens that on this occasion there are two\nwitnesses, and the less rhetorical of the two expressly says that the\nshadow on the blind was at first only \"the feet and part of the legs,\"\nand then (after Home had _announced_ that the spirits were turning him\nround) only \"the head and face.\" Any gymnast could do that. The whole of\nthese recorded miracles reek with evidence of charlatanry. The lights\nwere always put out, and Home in nearly all cases _said_ that he was\nrising, and then _told_ them that he was floating about various parts of\nthe room.\n\nStill worse is the evidence for Home's occasional \"elongation.\" The\npicture of Sir W. Crookes gravely measuring the height of this brazen\nimpostor, as he alternately draws himself in and stretches out, is as\npathetic as the picture of him standing with a bottle of phosphorus in a\nbedroom at Hackney while two girls make a fool of him. It is just as\npathetic that men like Sir A. C. Doyle and Sir W. Barrett assure the\npublic that they believe these things, when they have, apparently, not\nexamined the evidence. To believe that in the course of a few seconds\ncertain spiritual powers, who cannot unravel for us the smallest\nscientific problem, can so alter that marvellous world of cells and\ntissues which make up a man's body as to make him even six inches\ntaller, is to believe in a miracle beside which the dividing of the\nwaters of the Red Sea is child's play. Yet distinguished men of science\nand medical men assure the public that they believe this, and believe it\non evidence that has been riddled over and over again.\n\nIt was a still earlier fraud, Gordon, who began this trick of mounting\nfurniture in the dark and saying that the spirits bore him up; but the\n\"evidence\" is not worth glancing at. One might as well ask us to examine\nseriously the evidence for the \"elongation\" of Herne, Peters, Morse, and\nall the other impostors of the time, or for the spiritual transit of\nMrs. Guppy and Dr. Monck. Let us rather see what sort of evidence is\nfurnished in recent times.\n\nIt appears that the spirits no longer levitate the mediums themselves.\nAlthough the power is said to be developing as time goes on, the age of\nthese impressive floatings round pitch-dark rooms is over. The only\ninstance I have read in the last twenty years is that of Ofelia\nCorral\u00e8s, of Costa Rica, who unfortunately fell off the stool she was\nstanding on. We have now to be content with the levitation of tables and\nthe dragging of furniture towards the medium.\n\nAgain let us, in order not to waste time, address ourselves at once to\nthe classical case of Eusapia Palladino. Your common or garden medium,\nwith his uncritical audience, has a dozen ways of tilting and lifting\ntables and pulling furniture about the room. To press on with the hands\nor thumbs (with four fingers \"above the table\" to edify the audience)\nand lift with the knees is easy. The same thing can be done by pressure\nagainst the inside of the legs of the table. The foot is still more\nuseful, for the table is generally light. A confederate is even more\nuseful. The more artistic medium wears a ring with a slot in it, and has\na strong pin in the table. While his hands seem to be spread out above\nthe table, he catches the head of the pin in the slot of his ring,\nand--the miracle occurs. Other mediums have leather cuffs inside their\nsleeves, with a dark piece of iron or a hook projecting to catch the\nedge of the table.\n\nBut we will take Palladino, who was examined by scores of scientific\nmen, many of whom to this day believe that at least a large part of her\n\"phenomena\" were genuine. The average man hesitates immediately when he\nhears that _everybody_ admits that part of her performances were\nfraudulent. She was a \"grey\" medium, Sir A. C. Doyle says. But he, and\nso many others, assure you at once that this is quite natural. She had\nreal mediumistic powers; but these decay after a time, while the public\nstill clamours for miracles, and the poor medium is strongly tempted to\ncheat. I have already said that Sir Arthur is here even more inaccurate\nthan he usually is. He says that she was \"quite honest\" for the first\nfifteen years, as any person who studies her record will admit. Let us\nbriefly study it.\n\nEusapia Palladino was an Italian working girl, an orphan, who married a\nsmall shopkeeper of Naples. She remained throughout life almost entirely\nilliterate, but she came in time to earn \"exorbitant fees\" (Lombroso's\ndaughter says) by her s\u00e9ances. She had begun to dabble in Spiritualism,\nand lift tables, at the age of thirteen, but she did little and was\nquite obscure until 1888, when Professor Chiaia, of Naples, took her up.\nHe challenged Lombroso to study her, and in 1892 a group of Italian\nprofessors investigated her powers at Naples. That is the beginning of\nher public career, and her performances varied little. She sat with her\nback to the cabinet--unlike other mediums, she sat outside it--and her\nchief trick was to lift off the ground the light table in front of her\nwhile the professors controlled her hands and feet. It was the ghost of\n\"John King\" who did these things, she said; and we remember \"John King\"\nas a classic ghost of the early fraudulent mediums. He rapped on the\ntable and raised it off the floor; he dragged furniture towards the\nmedium, especially out of the cabinet behind her; he flung musical\ninstruments on the table, and prodded and pulled the hair of the\nsitters; he made impressions of hands and faces in plaster; and he even\nbrought very faint ghosts into the room at times.\n\nLombroso and other professors regarded these things as genuine or due to\nan abnormal power of the medium (not to ghosts). In the end of his life,\nin fact, Lombroso announced that he had come to believe in the\nimmortality of the mind, though he still regarded this as material. His\ndaughter, Gina Ferrero, tells us that at this time he was a physical\nwreck, and his mental vitality was very low.[8] However, the professors\nof 1892 said that they did not detect fraud. The reader of their report\nmay think otherwise. They put Eusapia, for instance, on a scale, and\n\"John King\" took seventeen pounds off her weight. Any person can perform\nthat miracle by getting his toe to the floor while he is on the weighing\nmachine; and the professors gravely note that, whenever they prevented\nEusapia's dress from touching the floor, she could not reduce her\nweight! They note also that she cannot raise the table unless her dress\nis allowed to touch it.\n\nIn the same year, 1892, Flammarion invited her to Paris. He says frankly\nthat he caught her cheating more than once. One of her miracles was to\ndepress the scale of a letter-balance by placing her hands on either\nside of it, at some distance from it. Flammarion found that she used a\nhair, stretched from hand to hand. His colleague, the astronomer\nAntoniadi, who was called in, said that it was \"fraud from beginning to\nend.\"\n\nIn 1894 Professor Richet, assisted by Mr. Myers and Sir O. Lodge,\nexamined her at Richet's house, and found no fraud. But Dr. Hodgson\ninsisted that she released her hands and feet from control and used\nthem, and Myers invited her to Cambridge in 1895. The result is well\nknown. In great disgust they reported that she cheated throughout, and\nthat not a single phenomenon could be regarded as genuine. This was, on\nthe most generous estimate, seven years after the beginning of her\npublic career; and Myers, the most conscientious and respected of\nEnglish Spiritualists, reported that she must have had \"long practice\"\nin fraud. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle tells the public that she was \"quite\nhonest\" for the first fifteen years.\n\nHer admirers were angry, and they continued to guarantee her\ngenuineness. She became the most famous and most prosperous medium in\nthe world. In 1897 and 1898 she was again in France, and Flammarion\ndetected her in fraud after fraud. She released her hands and feet\nconstantly from control. From 1905 to 1907 she was rigorously examined\nby the General Psychological Institute of Paris. They reported constant\ntrickery and evasion of tests. Sitters were not allowed to put a foot\n_on_ her right foot because she had a painful corn on it. One of her\nhands must not be _clasped_ by the control because she was acutely\nsensitive to pain in that hand. She will not allow a man to stand near\nand do nothing but watch her. She wriggles and squirms all the time, and\nreleases her hands and feet. She learns that, in a photograph they have\ntaken of one high \"levitation\" of a stool, it is plainly seen to be\nresting on her head, so she allows no more photographs of this. And so\non. Professor G. le Bon got her at his house for a private sitting in\n1906. He was able to instal an illumination behind her of which she knew\nnothing, and he plainly caught her releasing and using her hand.\n\nIn 1910 the Americans tried her. At one sitting Professor M\u00fcnsterberg\nwas carefully controlling her left foot, as he thought, when the table\nin the cabinet behind her began to move. But one man had stealthily\ncrept into the cabinet under cover of the dark, and he seized something.\nEusapia shrieked--it was her left foot![9] Then the professors of\nColumbia University took Eusapia in hand, and finished her. They had\nspecial apparatus ready for use, but they never used it. In a few\nsittings they discovered that she was an habitual cheat, and they\nabandoned the inquiry in disgust.\n\nThese are the main points in Eusapia's official record. They suffice to\ndamn her. She cheated from the start to the finish. Her moans and groans\nand wriggles habitually enabled her to release her hands and feet from\nthe men who were supposed to control them. Nothing is more notorious in\nher career than that. She pretended that \"John King\" did everything, yet\nshe used constantly to announce that \"some very fine phenomena would be\nseen to-night.\" She pretended to be in a trance, yet she habitually\ncalled out \"E fatto\" (\"It's done\") when something had been accomplished,\nin the dark, two feet away from her. She was alive to every suspicious\nmovement of the sitters, and controlled the light and the photographers.\nThe impressions of faces which she got in wax or putty were always _her_\nface. I have seen many of them. The strong bones of her face impress\ndeep. Her nose is relatively flattened by the pressure. The hair on the\ntemples is plain. It is outrageous for scientific men to think that\neither \"John King\" or an abnormal power of the medium _made_ a human\nface (in a few minutes) with bones and muscles and hair, and precisely\nthe same bones and muscles and hair as those of Eusapia. I have seen\ndozens of photographs of her levitating a table. On not a single one are\nher person and dress entirely clear of the table. In fine, at every\nsingle sitting, from beginning to end, the observers were distracted by\nthe \"ghost.\" They were prodded and pinched and pushed, and their hair\nand whiskers were pulled. It seems a pity that they did not refuse to\ncontinue unless \"John King\" desisted from this frivolity. It was Eusapia\nspoiling their vigilance.\n\nBelievers in Eusapia would point to some dozens of things in her record\nthat these professors, and even conjurers like Carrington, could not\nexplain. I am quite content to leave them unexplained. We are under no\nobligation to explain them or else accept Spiritualism. There is, as\nSchiaparelli said, a third alternative: agnosticism. If the majority of\nEusapia's tricks were at one time or other seen to be done by fraud, the\npresumption is that the rest were fraud. There are scientific men who\nseem to lose their common sense in these inquiries. You might put a\nconjurer before them in broad daylight, and they will not see how he\ndoes a single one of his tricks. But when, in a bad light, a lady\nconjurer or medium does something which they cannot explain they appeal\nto abnormal powers or ghosts. It is neither science nor common sense.\n\nTowards the close of Eusapia's career another powerful Italian\npeasant-woman, Lucia Sordi, began to interest the professors. She outdid\nEusapia in some matters. While she sat bound with cords in the cabinet,\na decanter of wine was lifted from the table, and a glass put to the\nlips of each sitter. She was eventually exposed, and I will not linger\non her. She could get out of any bonds; and she had two confederates\nalways, in the shape of her young daughters.\n\nMost recent of all are the phenomena of the \"Goligher circle\" of\nBelfast. A teacher of mechanics, Mr. Crawford, has greatly strengthened\nthe faith by recording their wonderful exploits in his _Reality of\nPsychic Phenomena_ (1916) and _Experiments in Psychical Science_ (1919).\nSir A. C. Doyle is enthusiastic about them, as is his wont. Even Sir W.\nBarrett tells us that \"it is difficult to believe how the cleverest\nconjurer, with elaborate apparatus, could have performed\" what he\nwitnessed. Decidedly, here is something serious. Yet I intend to dismiss\nit very briefly. The \"circle\" consists of seven members of the Goligher\nfamily, and they are all mediums. In other words, there were fourteen\nhands and fourteen feet to be watched, in a red light (the worst in the\nworld for the eye), and this young teacher of science flatters himself\nthat he controlled them all, and meantime attended to a lot of scales\nand other apparatus. We are asked to believe this after four or five\nprofessors repeatedly failed to control the hands and feet of one woman\n(Eusapia). Moreover, they were permitted to _hold_ Eusapia's hands and\nfeet, but Crawford was not permitted to touch the feet of his medium. He\ngives no photographs, except of his superfluous scales and tables. The\nGoligher family, he says, were most anxious to have photographs taken,\nbut the \"spirits\" said it would injure the medium.\n\nWhen Sir W. Barrett tells the public that \"the cleverest conjurer, with\nelaborate apparatus,\" could not do these things, he talks nonsense of\nwhich he ought to be ashamed. There is nothing in the two books that\nrequires any apparatus at all, or anything more than practice. Raps were\ncommon. They have been since 1848. Mr. Crawford talks of \"sledgehammer\nblows\" and \"thunderous noises.\" As the mediums were never searched, the\nraps may have been exceptionally loud, but Mr. Crawford na\u00efvely gives\none detail which puts us on our guard. He one night brought a\nparticularly sensitive phonograph. The noises that night were\n\"terrific,\" he says. He took the record to the offices of _Light_, and\nthe editor of that journal can do no more than say that the noises were\n\"clearly audible\" (p. 32). So, when Mr. Crawford tells us of strong men\nbeing unable to press down the levitated table, we will take a pinch of\nsalt.\n\nThe \"table\" (really a light stool) usually lifted weighed two pounds.\nSir A. C. Doyle assured his audience that this was lifted as high as the\nceiling. On the contrary, Mr. Crawford expressly says that it never rose\nmore than four feet; which is, I find by \"scientific\" experiment, the\nheight to which a young lady, sitting on a chair, could raise such a\nstool on her foot. A most remarkable coincidence. It is a further\nremarkable coincidence that the young lady's weight increased, when an\nobject was levitated, by just the weight of that object, less about two\nounces which some other person took over (a steadying finger, for\ninstance). It is an even more remarkable coincidence that, when Mr.\nCrawford asked for an impression of the ghostly machinery which made the\nraps, the mark he got on paper was \"something of an oval shape, about\ntwo square inches in area\" (p. 192); which is singularly like a young\nlady's heel. Similarly, when he asked for an impression in a saucer of\nputty, the mark he describes--and carefully omits to photograph for\nus--is precisely the mark of a young lady's big toe with a threaded\nmaterial on it. It is further curious that this remarkable psychic\npower, which can lift a ten-pound table, could not lift a _white_\nhandkerchief a fraction of an inch; which prompts the painful reflection\nthat a dark foot might be visible if it touched a white handkerchief.\n\nMr. Crawford's books are really too naive. He asked Kathleen, by way of\ncontrol experiment, to show him if she _could_ raise the stool on her\nfoot; and he asks us to believe that her very obvious wriggles and\nstraining prove that this was not the usual lifting force. He puts her\non a scale, and asks the \"ghosts\" to take a large amount of matter out\nof her body. He is profoundly impressed when her weight decreases by 54\u00bd\npounds; and he asks us to believe that ghosts have taken 54\u00bd pounds of\nflesh and fat out of the fair Kathleen and \"laid it on the floor.\" A\nsimpler hypothesis is that she got her toe to the floor, as Eusapia did.\nMr. Crawford ought to leave ghosts for a while, and take a course of\nhuman anatomy and physiology. His mechanical knowledge enables him to\nsketch a diagram of a \"cantilever,\" constructed out of the medium's\nbody, and reaching from it to the centre of the table, a distance of\neighteen inches, or the length of Kathleen's leg from knee to foot. But\nhow in the name of all that is reasonable this cantilever is worked from\nthe body end, without wrenching the young lady's \"innards\" out of joint,\npasses the subtlest imagination. The \"spirits\" were consulted as to the\nway they did it. By a final peculiar coincidence it transpired that they\nknew just as much about science as Kathleen Goligher; and that was\nnothing.\n\nThis is a very long chapter, but the phenomena it had to discuss are the\nmost serious in Spiritualist literature, and I was eager to omit\nnothing which is deemed important. Let me close it with a short account\nof an historical occurrence, which is at the same time a parable. We are\noften told that the medium was \"physically incapable\" of doing this or\nthe other. Here is an interesting illustration of human possibilities.\n\nIn 1846 all Paris was busy discussing \"the electric girl.\" Little\nAng\u00e9lique Cottin, a village child of thirteen summers, a very quiet and\nguileless-looking maid, exuded the \"electric fluid\" (ghosts were not yet\nin fashion) in such abundance that the furniture almost danced about the\nroom. When she rose from her chair it flew back, even if a man held it,\nand was often smashed. A heavy dining-table went over at a touch from\nher dress. A chair held by \"several strong men\" was pushed back when she\nsat on it. The Paris Academy of Sciences examined her, and could make\nnothing of her. The chairs she rose from were sent crashing against the\nwall, and broken. But one night, when the crowd gathered about her to\nsee the marvels, a wicked old sceptic watched her closely from a\ndistance. Only that afternoon a heavy dining-table, with its load of\ndishes, had gone over. The child saw the sceptic's eye, yet wanted to\nentertain the crowd. There was a struggle of patience between sceptic\nand child for _two hours_, and at last age won. He saw her move, and\ndemanded an examination; and they found the bruise on her leg caused by\nknocking over the heavy table. It was all over. She had developed a\nmarvellous way of using the muscles of her legs and buttocks\ninstantaneously and imperceptibly. This was, says Flammarion, \"the end\nof this sad story in which so many people had been duped by a poor\nidiot.\" He is wrong on two points. The child was by no means an idiot;\nand this was only the beginning, not the end. We do well to remember\nwhat this child of thirteen could do.[10]\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[7] The account which he gives in the _Dispatch_ (March 21, 1920) is\nprecisely the same as his account (which I quoted verbatim in the\nDebate) in his _Experience of Spiritualism with D. D. Home_, pp. 82-3.\n\n[8] _Cesare Lombroso_ (1915), p. 416. Much is suppressed in the English\ntranslation of his book.\n\n[9] Mr. Hereward Carrington, who believes in the genuineness of\nEusapia's powers, makes light of this. He misses the main point. In the\nminutes of the sitting, which he gives, it is expressly stated by the\ncontrollers at this point that they have both Eusapia's hands and feet\nsecure. So we cannot trust such minutes when they say that the control\nwas perfect.\n\n[10] Flammarion, _Les forces naturelles inconnues_, pp. 299-310.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nSPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS AND SPIRIT PICTURES\n\n\nBefore me, as I write, are two spirit photographs which have gone at\nleast part of the round of the Press, and confirmed the consoling belief\nin thousands of hearts. One is a photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,\nand behind him, peeping over his shoulder, is a strange form which has,\nhe says, \"a general but not very exact resemblance to my son.\" The other\nphotograph is supplied by the Rev. W. Wynne. It bears the ghostly faces\nof Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with whom Mr. Wynne had been acquainted; and\nthe text says that the plate was exposed for Mr. and Mrs. Wynne and\nreceived these ghostly imprints. Both these photographs came from \"the\nCrewe Spiritual Circle,\" which has done so much in recent years to\nstrengthen the faith.\n\nLet me first make a few general remarks on spirit photography. Everybody\nto-day has an elementary idea what taking a photograph means. A chemical\nmixture, rich in certain compounds of silver, is spread as a film over\nthe glass plate which you buy at the stores. The rays of light--chiefly\nthe ultra-violet or \"actinic\" rays--which come from the sun (or the\nelectric lamp) are reflected by a body upon this plate, through the\nlenses of the camera, and form a picture of that body by fixing the\nchemicals on the plate. The lens is essential in order to concentrate\nthe rays and give an image, instead of a mere flood of light. The object\nwhich reflects the light--whether it be the ordinary light or the\nactinic rays--must be material. Ether does not reflect light, for light\nis a movement of ether.\n\nSpiritualists have such vague ideas as to what can and cannot happen\nthat they overlook these elementary details altogether. Sometimes they\nask us to believe that a medium can get the head of a ghost on a plate,\nwithout a camera, by merely placing his or her hand on the packet\ncontaining the plate. Even if there were a materialized spirit present,\nit could make no _image_ on the plate unless the rays were properly\nconcentrated through lenses. But the whole idea of spirits hovering\nabout and making images on photographic plates because a man called a\nmedium puts his hand on the camera is preposterous. That would be magic\nwith a vengeance! Even if we suppose that the spirits have material\nbodies--ether bodies would not do--which reflect only the actinic rays,\nand so are not visible to the eye, the idea remains as absurd as ever.\nTo say that the invisible material body of Mr. Gladstone (if anybody is\ninclined to believe in such a thing) only reflects the rays into the\ncamera at Crewe when Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, the mediums, put their\nhands on the camera, and do not reflect light at all unless these\nmediums touch the camera, is to utter an obvious absurdity. The ghosts\nare either material or they are not.\n\nWe must look for a simpler explanation. Now, when we examine Sir A. C.\nDoyle's spirit photograph, we find at once that the candour of that\nearnest and conscientious Spiritualist gives us a clue. He tells us how\nhe bought the plate, examined the camera, and exposed and developed the\nplate with his own hands. \"No hands but mine ever touched the plate,\" he\nsays impressively. We shall see presently that that need not impress us\nin the least. What is important is that Sir Arthur adds: \"On examining\nwith a powerful lens the face of the 'extra' I have found such a marking\nas is produced in newspaper process work.\" Very few of the general\npublic would understand the significance of this, but I advise the\nreader to take an illustrated book or journal and examine a photograph\nin it with a lens (which need not be powerful). He will see at once that\nthe figure consists of a multitude of dots, and wherever you find an\nillustration showing these dots it has been at some time printed in a\nbook or paper. During a lantern lecture, for instance, you can tell, by\nthe presence or absence of these dots, whether a slide has been\nreproduced from an illustration or made direct from the photographic\nnegative.\n\nSir A. C. Doyle is candid, but his Spiritualist zeal outruns his reason.\nHe goes on to say:--\n\n\n     It is _very possible_ that the picture ... was conveyed on to the\n     plate from some existing picture. However that may be, it was most\n     certainly supernormal, and not due to any manipulation or fraud.\n\n\nThis is an amazing conclusion. It is not merely \"possible,\" but certain,\nthat the photo, which he says resembles his son, had been _printed_\nsomewhere before it got on to his plate. The marks are infallible. It is\nfurther practically certain that, when the son of so distinguished a\nnovelist died on active service, his photograph would appear in the\nPress. It is equally certain that mediums, knowing well that Sir Arthur\nand Lady Doyle would presently seek to get into touch with their dead\nson, would treasure that photograph. When I add that, as I will explain\npresently, there is no need at all for the spirit photographer to touch\nthe plate, the reader may judge for himself how much \"supernormal\" there\nis about the matter.\n\nLet us glance next at the Gladstone ghost. We are not told if it showed\nprocess marks, but, of course, they need not always be looked for. It\nmight be taken direct from a photograph in the case of so well known a\ncouple as the Gladstones. But here again there is a significant\nweakness. When you turn the photograph upside down, you discover that\nthe photographs of Mr. and Mrs. Wynne are on the lower half of the\nplate, and inverted! You have to come to this remarkable conclusion, if\nyou follow the Spiritualist theory, that either the highly respectable\nMr. and Mrs. Wynne or the perfectly puritanical Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone\nwere _standing on their heads_! For my part, I decline to believe that\nMr. and Mrs. Gladstone have taken to such frivolity in the spirit land.\nI prefer to think that the spirit photographer has bungled.\n\nBut how could it be done if the plate was never in the hands of the\nphotographer? In the early days of Spiritualism faking was easy. You put\non an air of piety, and your sitter implicitly trusted you. It was then\nquite easy to make a ghost, as every photographer knows. Expose a plate\nfor half the required time to a young lady dressed as a ghost, then put\nthe plate away in the dark until a sitter comes and give it a _full_\nexposure with him. He is delighted, when the plate is developed, to find\na charming lady spirit, of ghostly consistency, beaming upon him. Double\ndevelopment, or skilful manipulation of the plate in the dark room, will\ngive the same result.\n\nThis is how the trick was done in the sixties and seventies. A London\nphotographer, Hudson, made large sums by this kind of trickery. It was\neasily exposed--any person who has dabbled in photography knows it--and\noften the furniture or carpet behind the ghost could be seen through it.\n\nAt last there was a very bad exposure which for a time almost suspended\nthe trade. At Paris there was a particularly gifted photographer medium\nnamed Buguet. Not only were his ghosts very artistic, but Spiritualists\nwere able to identify their dead relatives on the photographs. Buguet\ncame to London and did a roaring trade. But early in 1875 the police of\nParis carried Buguet off to prison and searched his premises. They found\na headless doll or lay figure, and a large variety of heads to fit it.\nAt first Buguet had had confederates who used to creep quietly behind\nthe sitter and impersonate the ghost. Then he used to take a\nhalf-exposure photograph of his doll, and so dispense with confederates.\nHe had a very smart clerk at the door who used, in collecting your\ntwenty francs, to get from you a little information about the dead\nrelative you wanted to see. Then Buguet rigged up and dressed a more or\nless appropriate doll, gave it a half-exposure, and brought the same\nplate to use for his sitter.\n\nOne feature of the trial of Buguet should be carefully borne in mind.\nSpiritualists are very fond of assuring us that the spirit voice or\nmessage or photograph they obtained from a medium was \"perfectly\nrecognizable.\" They scout any suggestion that they could be mistaken. Do\nthey not know the features of their dead son or daughter or wife? During\nthe trial of Buguet scores of these Spiritualists entered the\nwitness-box and swore that they had received exact likenesses of their\ndead relatives. But Buguet, hoping to get a lighter sentence, confessed\nthat the same group of heads had served every purpose, and the witnesses\nin his favour were all wrong![11]\n\nBuguet got a year in prison, and for a time trade was poor. But new\nmethods were invented, and spirit photographers are again at work all\nover the world, and have been for decades. In country places the old\nmethod may still be followed. Generally, however, the sitter brings his\nor her own plate, and is then supposed to be secured against fraud. The\nnext development was easy enough. A prepared plate was substituted for\nthe plate you brought. This trick in turn was discovered, and sitters\nbegan to make secret marks on the plates they brought, in order to\nidentify them afterwards. Then the machinery of the ghost was rigged up\nin the camera itself, and you might bring your own plate and mark it\nunmistakably with a diamond, if you liked. The ghost appeared on it when\nit was developed.\n\nThere were several ways of doing this. The first was to cut out the\nfigure of the ghost in celluloid or some other almost transparent\nmaterial and attach it to the lens. When this trick leaked out, a very\ntiny figure of the ghost, hidden in the camera, was projected through a\nmagnifying glass (a kind of small magic-lantern) on to the plate when it\nwas exposed in the camera. As time went on, sitters began to insist on\nexamining the camera, and these tricks were apt to be discovered. I\nremember an honest and critical Spiritualist telling me, about ten years\nago, that he offered a certain spirit-photographer (who is still at\nwork) five pounds for a spirit-photograph, if the sitter were permitted\nto see every step of the process. The photographer agreed; but when my\nfriend wanted to examine the camera he at first bluffed, and then\nreturned the money, saying that that was carrying scepticism too far! He\nhad the ghost in his camera.\n\nYour modern Spiritualist friend smiles when you tell him of these\ntricks. They are prehistoric. To-day you are allowed to examine the\ncamera, bring your own plate, expose it and develop it yourself. The\nlogic of the Spiritualist is here just as defective as ever. Because he\nhas not on this occasion discovered certain forms of trickery which are\nnow well known, he concludes that there was _no_ trickery. As if\ntrickery did not evolve like anything else! Spiritualists were just as\ncertain twenty years ago that there was no possibility of fraud because\nthey brought their own marked plates; but they were cheated every time.\n\nThere are still several ways of making the ghost. Where the sitter is\ncareless, or an enthusiastic Spiritualist, the old tricks (substitution\nof plates, etc.) are used; but there are new tricks to meet the\ncritical. The ghost may be painted in sulphate of quinine or other\nchemicals on the ground-glass screen. Such a figure is invisible when it\nis dry. There may be a trick dark-slide, with a plate which will appear\nin front of yours. If the photographer develops it for you, he can\nskilfully get a ghost on it by holding another plate against yours\n(pretending to see how it is developing) in the yellow light. If you\ndevelop it yourself, you use _his_ dish, which is often an ingenious\nmechanism. It has glass sides or a glass bottom, and, while the whole\nthing is covered up during development, secret lights impress the ghost\non it. An actual case of this sort was exposed in _Pearson's Weekly_ on\nJanuary 31, 1920.\n\nWhen the Spiritualist airily assures us that he has guarded against all\nthese things (some of which could not be seen at all) we have to\nremember that Spiritualist literature teems with cases in which, we are\ntold, \"all precautions against fraud were taken,\" yet sooner or later\nthe fraud is discovered. But the possibilities are not yet exhausted. I\nonce saw a remarkable photograph which Sir Robert Ball had taken of the\nfamous old ship, the _Great Eastern_. Along the side of it, in enormous\nletters, was the name \"Lewis\"; yet this name was totally invisible to\nthe naked eye when one looked at the ship. A coat of paint had been put\nover the name--the ship had been used by Lewis's as an\nadvertisement--and concealed it from the eye, yet the sensitive plate\nregistered it. No scrutiny of the camera or the studio or the dark room\nwould reveal conjuring of that sort. In fine, there is the possibility\nof some compound of radium, or radio-paint, being used at one or other\nstage in the process.\n\nNo sensible man will pay serious attention to spirit photographs until\none is taken in these conditions; neither plates nor any single part of\nthe apparatus shall belong to or be touched by the medium. The spirit\nphotographer shall be brought to an unknown studio, and shall not be\nallowed to do more than, under the eye of an expert observer, lay his\nhand, at a sufficient distance from the lens, on the outside of a camera\nwhich does not belong to him. That has not been done yet. Until it is\ndone fraud is certainly not excluded; and any man who uses the medium's\nown premises and apparatus is courting deception.\n\nThat the ghost on a photograph often resembles a dead relative of the\nsitter will surprise no sensible person. It is well known that mediums\ncollect such photographs, as well as information about the dead. Mr.\nCarrington describes in his _Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism_ the\nelaborate system they have. They have considerable knowledge of likely\nsitters in their own town. In fact, I have clearly enough traced in some\ncases that they _first_ gathered information about a man, and _then_ got\nan intermediary to persuade him to visit them. He, of course, tells\neverybody afterwards that the medium \"could not possibly\" know anything\nabout him. Sometimes a Spiritualist takes the precaution of going to a\nspirit photographer in a distant town. If he is quite able to conceal\nhis identity, he will get nothing, or only a common or garden ghost. But\nhe makes an appointment for a sitting in a few days to try again, and\ngives his name and address; and the next mail takes a letter to a medium\nin his town asking for information and photographs. As I have previously\nsaid, when the Berlin police arrested Frau Abend and her husband they\nfound an encyclop\u00e6dic mass of information about possible sitters.\n\nA case, with which I may conclude this section, is given by Dr. Tuckett\nin his _Evidence for the Supernatural_ (pp. 52-3). Mr. Stead was once\ndelighted to find the ghost of a \"brother Boer\" on a photograph, and the\nclairvoyant photographer mystically informed him that he \"got\" the name\n\"Piet Botha,\" and gathered that he had been shot in the Boer War. Mr.\nStead was jubilant, and the Materialist was nowhere, when he learned\nthat Piet Botha _had_ been shot in the war. Who in England knew anything\nabout Piet Botha and his death? But the wicked sceptic got to work, and\nhe presently discovered that on November 9, 1899, the _Graphic_ had\nreproduced a photograph of Piet Botha, who had been shot in the war! A\nmagnificent case fell completely to pieces.\n\nSpirit-drawings and paintings have drawn out just the same ingenuity on\nthe part of the mediums. A favourite and impressive form is to let the\nsitter choose a blank card and see that it _is_ blank. Then the medium\ntears off the corner and hands it to the sitter, so that he will\nrecognize his own card at the close. The lights are completely\nextinguished, the card is laid on the table, and when the gas is re-lit\na very fair picture (still wet) in oil is found to have been painted on\nthe card. David Duguid persuaded thousands of people of this marvel in\nthe later decades of the nineteenth century. It was represented that he\nwas merely a cabinet-maker who, in 1866, came under the control of the\nspirits of certain Dutch painters, and was used by them. I learned long\nago in Scotland that the statement that he had never practised drawing\nor painting was untrue. It is, in any case, probable that he had torn\nthe corners off the little paintings he had prepared in advance, and\nthat it was _these_ corners which he palmed off on the sitter. In the\ndark he substituted his painting for the blank card, and the corner\nnaturally fitted. The fact that the paint was \"still wet\" need impress\nnobody. A touch of varnish easily gives that impression.\n\nInnumerable tricks have been invented by American mediums for fooling\nthe Spiritualist public in this respect, and in many cases it taxes the\ningenuity of an expert conjurer to find out where the fraud lay. Mr.\nCarrington gives a long series of frauds which he has at one time or\nother studied. One medium offers you an apparently blank sheet of paper,\nand, although nothing more suspicious than laying it under an\ninnocent-looking blotting-pad can be seen, and there is certainly no\nsubstitution, a photograph appears on it while you wait. If you happen\nto be one of those people whom the medium had had in mind as a possible\nsitter, or whom he (through an intermediary) induced to come to him, it\nmay be a photograph of your dead son. The photograph was there,\ninvisible, all the time. It had been taken on a special paper (solio\npaper), and bleached out with bi-chloride of mercury. The blotting-pad\nwas wet with a solution of hypo, and this suffices to restore the\nphotograph.\n\nIn other cases the medium, with solemn air, enters his cabinet and draws\nthe curtain. There is a fantastic theory in the Spiritualist world that\nthis cabinet, or cloth-covered frame (like a Punch and Judy show),\nprevents the \"fluid\" or force which the medium generates from spreading\nabout the room and being wasted. Nearly all these convenient theories\nand regulations come from the spirits through the mediums; that is to\nsay, are imposed by the mediums themselves. The closed cabinet, like\ncharity, covers a multitude of sins. In the case of the spirit-painting\nit may have a trap-door or other outlet, through which the medium hands\nthe blank canvas to a confederate and receives the previously painted\npicture.\n\nAnother medium shows you a blank canvas, and, _almost_ without taking it\nout of your sight, produces an elegant, and still wet, oil painting on\nit. The painting was there from the start, of course, but a blank canvas\nwas lightly gummed over it, and all the conjuring the medium had to do\nwas to strip off this blank canvas while your attention was diverted.\nMediums know that their sitters are profoundly impressed if the paint is\n\"still wet.\" I have heard Spiritualists stubbornly maintain that this\nproves that the painting had only just been done, and done by\nspirit-power, since no man could do it in so short a time. It is a good\nillustration of the ease with which they are duped. The picture may have\nbeen painted a week or a month before. Rub it with a little poppy oil\nand you have \"wet paint.\"\n\nMr. Carrington's _Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism_, one of the\nrichest manuals of mediumistic trickery, has a number of these\npicture-frauds. A painting is, when thoroughly dry, covered with a\nsolution of water and zinc-white. It is then invisible, and you have \"a\nblank canvas.\" The picture comes out again by merely washing it with a\nsponge. In other cases a painting is done in certain chemicals which\nwill remain invisible until a weak solution of tincture of iron is\napplied; and it may be applied to the back of the canvas. The medium,\nCarrington suggests, begs the sitters to sing \"Nearer, my God, to Thee,\"\nto drown the noise, while his confederate creeps behind the canvas and\nsprays it with the solution. The picture dawns before their astonished\neyes.\n\nPerhaps the best illustration is one that Carrington gives in his\n_Personal Experiences_, to which I must send the reader for the full\nstory. Two spinster-mediums of Chicago had a great and profitable\nreputation for spirit-painted photographs. I take it that their general\nair of ancient virtue and piety disarmed sitters, who are apt to think\nthat a _fraudulent_ medium will betray himself or herself by criminal\nfeatures. You took a photograph of your dead friend, and asked that the\nspirits might reproduce it in oils. The medium studied it, and made an\nappointment with you at a later date. Perhaps the medium then studied it\nagain, and made a further appointment. On the solemn day the medium held\na blank canvas up to the window before your eyes, and gradually, first\nas a dim dawn of colours, then as a precise figure, the picture appeared\non the canvas. Carrington suggests that she held up to the window two\ncanvases--a thin blank canvas a few inches in front of the prepared\npicture. By deftly and slowly bringing these together with her fingers\nshe brought about the illusion; and only a little ordinary sleight of\nhand was required to get rid of the blank canvas.\n\nThese illustrations will suffice to show the reader what subtle and\nartful trickery is used in this department of Spiritualism. He will know\nwhat to think when a Spiritualist friend, who could not detect the\nsimplest conjuring trick, shows him a spirit-photograph and says that he\ntook care there was no fraud. The ordinary members of the Spiritualist\nmovement are as honest as any, but their eagerness--natural as it\nis--puts them in a frame of mind which is quite unreasonable. The\ntrickery of this class of mediums has been developing for nearly sixty\nyears, and it has to find new forms every few years as the older forms\nare exposed. The mediums have become expert conjurers and even, in some\ncases, expert chemists--or they have expert chemists in collusion with\nthem--and it is simply foolish for an ordinary person to think that he\ncan judge if there has been fraud. We must have at least one elementary\nsafeguard. No part of the apparatus employed must belong to the medium\nor be manipulated by him; and the photograph must not be taken on his\npremises. Every Spiritualist who approves a photograph taken under other\nconditions is courting deception and encouraging fraud.\n\nAnd instead of finding even the leading Spiritualists setting an example\nof caution in face of the recognized mass of fraud in their movement, we\nfind them exhibiting a bewildering hastiness and lack of critical\nfaculty. Most readers will remember how Sir A. C. Doyle sent to the\n_Daily Mail_ on December 16, 1919, a photograph of a picture of Christ\nwhich had, he said, been \"done in a few hours by a lady who has no power\nof artistic expression when in her normal condition.\" The picture was,\nhe said, \"a masterpiece\"; so wonderful, in fact, that \"a great painter\nin Paris\" (not named, of course) \"fell instantly upon his knees\" before\nsuch a painting. It was \"a supreme example\" of a Spiritualist miracle.\nThe sequel is pretty well known. On December 31 the artist's husband\nwrote a letter to the _Daily Mail_, of which I need quote only one\nsentence:--\n\n\n     Mrs. Spencer wishes definitely to state once and for all that her\n     pictures are painted in a perfectly normal manner, that she is\n     disgusted at having \"psychic power\" attributed to her, and that she\n     does not cherish any ludicrous and mawkish sentiments about helping\n     humanity by her paintings.\n\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[11] I might add that Mrs. Gladstone is not at all recognized by her own\nson in Mr. Wynne's photograph. The other figure seems to me certainly a\nreproduction of a photograph or bad picture of Gladstone.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nA CHAPTER OF GHOSTLY ACCOMPLISHMENTS\n\n\nSpiritualism began in 1848 with the humble and entirely fraudulent\nphenomena of raps. Within three years there were hundreds of mediums in\nthe United States, and a dollar per sitter was the customary fee for\nassisting at one of the services of the new religion. It soon became\nwidely known that raps could be produced by very earthly means, and in\nany case the rivalry of mediums was bound to develop new \"phenomena.\" As\nin all other professions, originality paid; and as the wonderful\ndiscovery was quickly made that darkness favoured the intensity and\nvariety of the phenomena, the spirit power began to break upon humanity\nin a bewildering variety of forms. In this chapter we will examine a\nnumber of these accomplishments which our departed fellows have learned\non the Elysian fields.\n\nD. D. Home is still the classical exponent of some of these\naccomplishments. Indeed, there is one of his phenomena which no medium\nof our time has the courage to reproduce, and, since this phenomenon is\nexpressly endorsed by Sir William Barrett in his recent work, _On the\nThreshold of the Unseen_ (1917), we shall be accused of timidity and\nunfairness if we omit to consider it. It is said that on several\nwell-authenticated occasions--so Sir W. Barrett assures the public--Home\ntook burning coals in his hands, thrust his hands into the blazing fire,\nor even put his face among the live coals. What is the evidence which\nSir W. Barrett, knowing that the general public has no leisure to\ninvestigate these things, endorses as satisfactory?\n\nThe reader who has patience enough to consider these extraordinary\nclaims in detail will find the evidence collected and examined in Mr.\nPodmore's _Newer Spiritualism_ (chapters i and ii). It is just as weak\nand unsatisfactory as the evidence for Home's levitations, which we have\nalready examined. The first witness is a lady, Mrs. Hall, who had the\nadvantage of a profound belief that Home could do anything whatever, and\nthat the idea of fraud was worse than preposterous in connection with so\nholy a man. Home's demure expression and constant utterances of piety\nand virtue, which seem to Mr. Podmore \"inconceivably nauseous,\" made a\ndeep impression on Mrs. Hall and the other ladies whom Home used\ngenerally to have next to him when he was performing his wonders. Now,\nthis lady tells us that on July 5, 1869, he took a large live coal from\nthe fire, put it on her husband's head, and drew his white hair over it.\nHe left it there for four or five minutes, and then gave it to Mrs. Hall\nto hold. She says that it was \"still red in parts,\" but she was not\nburned.\n\nIt would follow that Home was so charged with supernatural power that he\ncould communicate a large measure of it to Mr. Hall's head or Mrs.\nHall's hands--a feat unique in the history of Spiritualism. We need not\ngo so far. There is nothing in Mrs. Hall's narrative to prevent us from\nsupposing that Home put some non-conducting substance on her husband's\nhead _before_ he put the coal on it. Any person can pick a live coal out\nof the fire if a part of it (as is common) is _not_ alive. Some can go\nfurther. I can stick my finger-tips in my live pipe without being\nburned. Some smokers can pick up a small live coal and light their pipes\nwith it. Probably all the coals which Daniel picked from the fire were\n\"dead\" in parts. It is clear that this particular coal was not glowing,\nas Mrs. Hall states that her husband's white hair showed \"silvery\"\nagainst it. If the coal had glowed, the hair would show _black_ against\nit. Probably Home lifted up the hair round, and not on, it; and after\nfive minutes part of it would be cool enough to lay on Mrs. Hall's hand.\n\nSir William Crookes is the next witness: a great scientist, but--we\ncannot forget it--the man who was easily duped by a girl of seventeen.\nHe says that he accompanied Home to the fire, and saw him put his hands\nin it. That is anything but the scientific way to give evidence. We want\nan exact description of the state of the fire, the light, etc. But\nnotice this next sentence: \"He very deliberately pulled the lumps of hot\ncoal off, one at a time, with his right hand, and touched _one_ which\nwas bright red.\" So the \"lumps\" among which he had put his hands were\n_not_ bright red; and we are left free to suppose that the _one_ which\nhe touched was not bright red all over. Home then took out a\nhandkerchief, waved it about in the air, and folded it on his hand. He\nnext took out a coal which was \"red in one part\" and laid it on the\nhandkerchief without burning it. The story smacks of charlatanry from\nbeginning to end. Crookes ought at least to have known better than to\nsuppose that a handkerchief \"gathered power\" by being waved about. It\nmore probably gathered a piece of asbestos from Home's pocket.\n\nThe other pretty stories of Home's fire-tricks may be read in Podmore.\nJuggling with fire is an ancient practice. It is very common among\nsavages. Daniel Home, with his select and private audience, had\nexcellent conditions for doing it. In bad light he did even more\nwonderful things than those I have quoted; that is to say, if we take\nthe record literally, which we may decline to do. Crookes, like some\nother investigating professors, was short-sighted. No wonder that Daniel\nloved him.\n\nLet us pass on to the musical accomplishments of the spirits; and here\nagain the gifted Daniel was one of the pioneer mediums. He induced the\nspirits to play an accordion while he held it with one hand; and his\nhand held it by the end farthest removed from the keys. Unfortunately,\nthe spirits laid down the condition that he must hold it out of sight,\nunderneath the table, and our interest is damped. We know something from\nother mediums of the ways of doing this. While you are putting the\naccordion under the table you change your hand from the back end to the\nkey end of the accordion. Then you can get the bellows to play by\npushing it against something or using a hook at the end of a strong\nthread or catgut. It is well to remember that Home was a good musician.\nPossibly he played a mouth-organ while the professor was looking\nintently at the accordion.\n\nBut Home was put to a severe test, we are told. Sir W. Crookes made a\ncage (like a waste-paper basket) to go under the table, and Home was\ntold to let the accordion hang in this. He could certainly not now use\nhis second hand or his feet, yet it \"played.\" But, as Mr. Podmore, most\ningenious of critics, points out, no one saw the _keys_ move. The music\nmay have come from a musical box in Home's pocket, or placed by him on\nthe floor. The degree of light or darkness is not stated. The opening\nand shutting of the accordion could be done by hooks, or loops of black\nsilk. So with the crowning miracle, when Home withdrew his hand, and the\naccordion was seen suspended in the air, moving about in the cage (under\nthe dark table). It was probably hooked on to the table.\n\nBefore we pass on to other ghostly musicians, let us notice another feat\nof Home's which Sir William Crookes records here. He placed a board with\none end on the table and the other on a spring balance. It was so shaped\n(with feet at each end) that an enormous pressure would have to be\nexerted on it at the table-end if the balance were to be appreciably\naltered. Yet a light touch of Home's fingers caused the scale to\nregister six pounds. Podmore points out that this experiment had been\ngradually reached. Home knew the conditions, and had made his\npreparations. The light was poor, and a loop of strong silk thread at\nthe far end of the board, pulled from some part of his person, would not\nbe noticed. We shall see far more remarkable feats than this.\n\nA pretty variation of musical mediumship was next introduced by Mrs.\nAnnie Eva Fay, another American fraud with whom Sir W. Crookes made\nsolemn scientific experiments. Florrie Cook was a chicken in comparison\nwith Annie Fay, and she triumphantly passed all the professor's tests.\nShe came to London in 1874, and everybody soon went to see and hear the\n\"fascinating American blonde\" at the Hanover Square Rooms.\n\nMrs. Fay's most characteristic s\u00e9ance was when she sat in the middle of\na circle of sitters, a bell and a guitar beside her. Her husband,\n\"Colonel\" Fay, was in the circle, but, as they held each other's hands,\nit was presumed that he could do nothing to help her if he wished. Mrs.\nFay then began to clap her hands. The lights were extinguished, and,\nalthough Mrs. Fay continued to clap her hands loudly, so that you could\nbe sure she was not using them, the bell was rung, the tambourine\nplayed, the sitters' beards were pulled, and so on. This was easy. When\nthe gas was put out, Mrs. Fay no longer slapped her left hand against\nher right, but against her forehead or cheek--perhaps slapped the\nColonel's face for a variation--and had the right hand free for\nbusiness. No doubt the Colonel also released a hand, as we have seen\nEusapia Palladino do, and joined the band.\n\nWhen this trick was realized, Mrs. Fay used to allow herself to be bound\nwith tapes to a stake erected on the stage. A few minutes after the\nlights were put out the band began its ghostly, but not very impressive,\nmusic. Sometimes a pail was put beside her, and it was raised by\ninvisible hands (in the dark) on to her head. When the light was\nrestored Mrs. Fay was discovered still bound to the stake, the knots and\nseals intact. By an accident at one of her performances Mr. Podmore was\nenabled to see how she did it, and the secret has long been known. The\ntapes supplied had to be fastened in such a way that she could with\ngreat speed slip them up her slender arms and get into a working\nposition. Maskelyne also exposed her, and trade fell off so badly that\nshe made him an offer, by letter, to go on his stage and, for payment,\nshow how all the tricks were done. She had by that time converted\nhundreds to Spiritualism.\n\nThere were various other forms of the musical performance. One medium\nused to sit in sight of the audience with a sitter holding his hands. A\ncloth was then put over them both, from the neck downward, the lights\nextinguished, and the usual band began. He had released one hand, by the\nfamiliar trick, and reached behind him for the instruments.\n\nThe medium, Bastian, also played instruments in the dark. At Arnheim,\nwhere he was edifying the Dutch Spiritualists, he was suspected, and it\nwas arranged to ignite some inflammable cotton by an electric current\nfrom the next room. The next time a ghostly hand played the guitar above\nthe heads of the sitters, the signal was given, and the flash lit the\nroom. The guitar fell hastily to the table, and Bastian's hand retreated\nrapidly to its right place. His English Spiritualist admirers accepted\nhis explanation that it was a \"materialized\" hand that was seen\nshrinking back into his body. One medium strummed his guitar with a long\npencil which he took with his teeth out of his inner coat-pocket and\nheld with his teeth. Others had telescopic rods or \"lazy tongs\" hidden\nabout them, and used these in the dark.\n\nThe binding of mediums with cords or tapes is a \"precaution against\nfraud\" which was thoroughly exposed fifty years ago. Many of Sir A. C.\nDoyle's own admirers were pained when he announced to the world his\nbelief in the genuineness of the performance of two Welsh colliers, the\nThomas brothers. Their \"manifestations\" were prehistoric. More than\nfifty years ago spectators were invited to tie up the mediums, and as\nlong ago as 1883 Mr. Maskelyne was exhibiting the trick. The Davenport\nbrothers, the latest American marvels, had toured England. Most people\nwill remember how they were held up at Liverpool by some one tying the\nrope in knots with which they were not familiar. The spirits failed\nentirely to play the tambourine when the tying-up was properly done, and\nthe instrument was put out of reach of the medium's mouth. As usual, it\nhad been said for months that fraud was \"absolutely excluded.\"\n\nLater mediums found the solution of this difficulty. The medium kept a\nsharp knife-blade within reach of his teeth, and, when knots proved too\nstubborn, he cut the rope and freed himself. He had a spare rope in his\nclothes and fastened himself--or was bound by a confederate--before the\nlights went up. People thought that they could prevent this by sealing\nthe knots. It was useless. The medium had chewing gum of the same colour\nas sealing-wax, and the seals were imitated with this. These desperate\nshifts are, however, rarely necessary. While he is being tied the medium\ncatches a loop of the rope with his thumb, and this gives him plenty of\nslack to use. I have seen a medium laced tight into a leather arm-case,\nand get out behind the curtain in three minutes. He had caught a loop of\nthe lace with his thumb, and the rest was tooth work.\n\nIt was therefore little wonder that when the Thomas brothers were\nbrought from the valleys of South Wales to London their ancient miracles\nwould not work. A recent convert to Spiritualism, Mr. S. A. Moseley,\ndescribes their work on their native heath (or hearth) with the same awe\nand simplicity as Sir A. C. Doyle had done. Many of us knew the history\nof Spiritualism, and smiled. They were brought to London by the _Daily\nExpress_ in 1919, and here, where sceptics abounded and the need of\nconvincing evidence was at its most acute, \"White Eagle\" (the Red Indian\nspirit who controls Will Thomas) and all his band of merry men were\npowerless. Will Thomas was properly bound, the tambourine and castanets\nwere put out of reach, and his brother was isolated. All that\nhappened--the throwing of a badge-button and a pair of braces to the\naudience--is within the range of possibilities of the human mouth.\n\nLet us now turn to another bright and classical page in the history of\nSpiritualism: the experiments of Professor Z\u00f6llner with the medium\nSlade. Sir A. C. Doyle granted in the Debate, with an air of generosity,\nthat Slade \"cheated occasionally,\" but he insisted that Slade's\nphenomena in the house of Professor Z\u00f6llner were genuine. Now, as long\nas Sir A. C. Doyle does this kind of thing, as long as he assures his\nreaders that he will not build on any medium who has been convicted of\nfraud and then builds on such a medium, as long as he tells his readers\n(who will not check the facts) that a medium who was exposed over and\nover again merely \"cheated occasionally,\" it is no use for him to assert\nthat he is trying to purge Spiritualism of fraud. Slade was a cynical\nimpostor from beginning to end of his career.\n\nI will show in the next chapter but one how Slade confessed his\nhabitual fraud as early as 1872, how he was exposed and arrested in\nLondon in 1876, and how he was exposed again in Canada in 1882 and in\nthe United States in 1884. A word about the last occasion will suffice\nfor my purpose here. Henry Seybert, a Spiritualist, left a large sum of\nmoney to the University of Pennsylvania on the condition that the\nUniversity authorities would appoint a commission to examine into (among\nother things) the claims of Spiritualism. They did; and it was the most\nunlucky inspiration the ghosts of the dead ever conveyed. Very few\nmediums would face the professors, and those who did were shown to be\nall frauds. Slade was one of these, and the Pennsylvania professors,\nwondering how any trained man could be taken in by so palpable a fraud,\nsent a representative to Leipsic to investigate the experiences of\nProfessor Z\u00f6llner and the three other German professors who had endorsed\nSlade. The gist of his report was that of the four professors one\n(Z\u00f6llner) was in an early stage of insanity (he died shortly\nafterwards), one (Fechner) was nearly blind, the third (Weber) was\nseventy-four years old, and the fourth (Scheibner) was very\nshort-sighted, yet did _not_ (as Sir A. C. Doyle says) entirely endorse\nthe phenomena!\n\nI have not been able to discover evidence that Z\u00f6llner's mind was really\nderanged, but he certainly approached the inquiry with a theory of a\nfourth dimension of space, and was most eager to get his theory\nconfirmed by the experiments. The key to the whole situation is,\ntherefore, lack of sharp control. Slade had been conjuring for years,\nand was an expert in substitution. He had a purblind audience, and he\nastutely guided the professor until the conditions of the experiment\nsuited him. He knew beforehand, as a rule, what apparatus Z\u00f6llner would\nuse, and he duplicated his wooden rings, thongs, etc. An excellent study\nof his tricks in detail will be found in Carrington's _Physical\nPhenomena of Spiritualism_. Sir A. C. Doyle speaks of the shattering of\na screen in Slade's presence as an indisputably superhuman feat. But\nbefore the s\u00e9ance no one had thought of looking to see if the screen had\nbeen taken to pieces and lightly tied together by a black thread which\nSlade could pull asunder at will!\n\nSlade was a very bad selection by Sir A. C. Doyle. No prominent medium\nwas ever so frequently exposed as he. In addition to the exposures I\nhave mentioned, Dr. Hyslop, Mrs. Sidgwick, and other leading\nSpiritualists riddled his pretensions to supernormal power. In the end\nhe took to drink and died in an asylum. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle assures his\nfollowers, in his _Vital Message_, that he never builds on a discredited\nmedium.\n\nLet us turn now to Stainton Moses, the snow-white medium. Moses was a\nneuropathic clergyman who in 1872 left the Church and became a teacher.\nAbout the same time he discovered mediumistic powers. He died ultimately\nof Bright's disease, brought on by drink. His audience, as I said\nbefore, consisted only of a few intimate friends who never doubted his\nsaintliness or thought for a moment of fraud. He worked always in the\ndark, or in a very bad light; and his doings are mainly described by his\ntrustful friend and host, Mrs. Speer. This would dispense any serious\nstudent from troubling about his phenomena; but let us see if they throw\nany light on his character. Mr. Carrington says that the things\nreported are unbelievable, yet that we cannot think of fraud in\nconnection with Moses. Podmore also tries hard not to accuse him of\n_conscious_ fraud, and hints that he was irresponsible. The reader may\nchoose to think otherwise.\n\nThe spirits performed every variety of phenomena through Stainton Moses.\nLike Home, and only a few of the quite holiest mediums, he was\noccasionally lifted off the ground; or, which is, of course, the same\nthing, he said that he was. Raps were common when he was about.\nAutomatic writing of the most elevating (and most inaccurate)\ndescription flowed from his pencil. Lights floated about the room; and\nonce or twice he dropped and broke a bottle of phosphorus in the dark.\nMusical sounds were repeatedly heard, as in the case of the Rev. Dr.\nMonck, who had a little musical box in his trousers. The sitters were\nsprayed with scent. The objects on the dressing-table in his room were\narranged by invisible hands in the form of a cross. Wonderful messages\nabout recently deceased persons were sent through him; and the details\ncould later be found in the papers. In fine, he was a remarkably good\nmedium for \"apports\"--that is to say, the bringing into the circle by\nthe spirits of flowers and other objects. Statuettes, jewels, books, and\nall kinds of things (provided they were in the house and could be\nsecreted about the person) were \"apported.\"\n\nThe evidence for these things is particularly poor, but I am a liberal\nman. I do not doubt them. Each one of them, separately, was done by\nother mediums. It is the rich variety that characterizes Moses. Let him\nsleep in peace. The credulity and admiration of his friends seem to have\nmade him lose the last particle of sense of honour in these matters.\nThese things are common elementary conjuring from beginning to end.\n\nApports are a familiar ghostly accomplishment, and the way they are done\nis familiar. Mme. Blavatsky was wonderful at apports. Who would ever\ndream of proposing to search Mme. Blavatsky? And who would now be so\nsimple as to think of spirits when the medium was not searched? The\nperson of Mme. Blavatsky was as sacred from such search as the person of\nthe Rev. Stainton Moses or of the charming and guileless Florrie Cook.\nIndeed, it is only in recent times that a real search of the medium has\nbeen demanded, and the accounts of weird and wonderful objects\n\"apported\" under other conditions merit only a smile. Mrs. Guppy,\nsecured from search by her virtue and the esteem of Dr. Russel Wallace,\nwent so far as to apport live eels. Eusapia Palladino one day \"apported\"\na branch of azaleas in Flammarion's house; and he afterwards found an\nazalea plant, which it exactly fitted, in her bedroom. Another day her\nspirits showered marguerites on the table; and the marguerites were\nmissed from a pot in the corridor. Anna Rothe, the Princess Karadja's\npet medium, was secretly watched, and was caught bringing bouquets from\nher petticoats and oranges out of her ample bosom; and the spirits did\nnot save her from a year in gaol. She had a whole flower-shop under her\nskirts when she was seized.\n\nBut we will not run over the whole silly chronicle of \"apports.\" Two\nrecent instances will suffice. One is the Turin lady, Linda Gazerra, of\nwhom I have spoken on an earlier page. She was too virtuous to strip,\nand let down her hair, even in the presence of a lady. So Dr. Imoda, a\nscientific man who consented to accept her on these terms, was fooled\nfor three years (1908-11). She had live birds caged in the large mass of\nher hair (natural and artificial), and all sorts of things in her\n_lingerie_.\n\nAbout the same time, an Australian medium, Bailey, made a sensational\nname throughout the Spiritualist world by his \"apports.\" The spirits\nbrought silks from the Indies (until the brutal customs official claimed\nthe tariff), live birds, and all sorts of things. He was taken so\nseriously in the Spiritualist world that Professor Reichel, a rich\nFrench inquirer, brought him to France for investigation. Sure enough,\nalthough he was searched, the spirits brought into the room two little\nbirds \"from India.\" But his long hesitations and evasions had aroused\nsuspicion, and on inquiry it was proved that he had bought the birds,\nwhich were quite French, at a local shop in Grenoble. How had he\nsmuggled them into the room? I give the answer (as it is given by Count\nRochas, his host) with reluctance, but it is absolutely necessary to\nknow these things if you want to understand some of the more difficult\nmediumistic performances. The birds were concealed in the unpleasant end\nof his alimentary canal. Professor Reichel gave him his return fare and\nurged him to go quickly; and the Australian Spiritualists received him\nwith open arms, and listened sympathetically to his stories of French\nbrutality.\n\nOf \"apports,\" therefore, we say the same as of \"materializations.\" The\nmedium shall be stripped naked, have all his or her body-openings\nmuzzled, be sewn in prepared garments, and placed in a prepared and\ncarefully searched room. When Spiritualists announce the appearance of\nan eel or a pigeon or a bouquet, or even a copy of _Light_, under those\nconditions, we will begin to consider the question of apports.\n\nLuminous phenomena \"are easily simulated,\" says Dr. Maxwell. Most people\nwill agree to this candid verdict of so experienced and so sympathetic\nan investigator. Tons of phosphorus have been used in the service of\nreligion since 1848. It has taken the place of incense. The saintly\nMoses twice had a nasty mess with his bottle of phosphorus. Herne was\none night tracing a pious message in luminous characters (with a damp\nmatch) when there was a crackle and flash; the match had \"struck.\" The\nmovement abounds in incidents which are, in a double sense, \"luminous.\"\n\nCertain sulphides may be used instead of phosphorus, and in modern times\nelectricity is an excellent means of producing lights at a distance.\nChemicals of the pyrotechnic sort are also useful. One must remember\nthat behind the thousands of mediums, whose fertile brains are\nconstantly elaborating new methods of evading control, are manufacturers\nand scientific experts who supply them with chemicals and apparatus. One\noften hears Spiritualists laugh at this suggestion as a wild theory of\ntheir opponents. Any impartial person will acknowledge that it is more\nprobable than improbable. But positive proof has been given over and\nover again.\n\nQuite recently Mr. Sidney Hamilton described in _Pearson's Weekly_\n(February 28, 1920) an \"illustrated printed catalogue of forty pages\"\nwhich he had with great difficulty secured. It was the secret catalogue\nof a firm which supplies apparatus to mediums. The outfit includes \"a\nself-playing guitar,\" a telescopic aluminium trumpet (for direct voice),\nmagic tables, luminous objects, and even \"a fully materialized female\nform (with face that convinces) ... floats about the room and disappears\n... Price \u00a310.\" For eight shillings this firm supplies the secret how to\nturn one's vest inside out, without changing coat, while one is bound,\nand the knots sealed, in the cabinet. For two pounds ten you get an\napparatus which will levitate a table so effectively that \"two or three\npersons cannot hold the table down.\" In short, there is, and has been\nfor decades, a trade supply of apparatus and instructions for producing\nthe whole range of \"physical phenomena,\" and any person who pays serious\nattention to such things is not very particular whether he is deceived\nor not.\n\nI may close the chapter with a case of spirit sculpture, which is\nrecorded by Truesdell in his _Bottom Facts of Spiritualism_. By this\ntrick, he says, Mrs. Mary Hardy converted one of those professors whose\nnames adorn the Spiritualist list. A pail of warm water, with several\ninches of paraffin floating on its surface, was weighed and put under\nthe table. After a time a hand moulded most accurately in wax was found\non the floor beside the pail, and it was found that the weight of the\ncontents of the pail had decreased by precisely the weight of the hand.\nA convincing test, surely! But the professor had forgotten to allow for\nthe evaporation of the warm water. The hand had been made in advance, by\nmoulding the soft paraffin on the medium's hand, and hidden under Mrs.\nHardy's skirt. It was transferred by her toes to the floor under the\ntable.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE SUBTLE ART OF CLAIRVOYANCE\n\n\nSpiritualists distinguish between physical phenomena and psychic\nphenomena. The use of this distinction is obvious. When a man reads some\nsuch history of the movement as Podmore's, and then the works of\nTruesdell, Robinson, Maskelyne, Carrington, and others who have time\nafter time exposed the ways of mediums, he is very ill-disposed to\nlisten to stories of materialization, levitation, spirit photographs,\nspirit messages, spirit music, spirit voices, or anything of the kind.\nHe knows that each single trick has been exposed over and over again. So\nthe liberal Spiritualist urges him to leave out \"physical\" phenomena and\nconcentrate on the \"psychic.\" It is a word with an aroma of refinement,\nspirituality, even intellect. It indicates the sort of thing that\nrespectable spirits _ought_ to do. So we will turn to the psychic\nphenomenon of clairvoyance.\n\nHere at once the reader's resolution to approach the subject gravely is\ndisturbed by the recollection of a recent event. Many a reader would,\nquite apart from the question of consolation, like to find something\ntrue in Spiritualism. He may feel, as Professor William James did, that\nthe mass of fraud is so appalling that, for the credit of humanity, we\nshould like to think that it is the citizens of another world, not of\nours, who are responsible. He may feel that, if it is all fraud, a\nnumber of quite distinguished people occupy a very painful position in\nmodern times. He would like to find at least something serious;\nsomething that is reasonably capable of a Spiritualist interpretation.\nBut as soon as he approaches any class of phenomena some startling\ninstance of fraud rises in his memory and tries to prejudice him. In\nthis case it is the \"Masked Medium.\"\n\nA recent case in the law courts has brought this to mind. In 1919, when\nthe _Sunday Express_ was making its grave search for ghosts, in order to\nrebuke the materialism of our age, it offered \u00a3500 for a\nmaterialization. A gentleman, who (with an eye on the police) genially\nwaived the money offer aside, offered to bring an unknown lady and\npresent a materialization, and some startling feats of clairvoyance in\naddition. A sitting was arranged, and the lady, who wore a mask, gave a\nclairvoyant demonstration that could not be surpassed in all the annals\nof Spiritualism. Her ghost was rather a failure; though Lady Glenconnor,\nwho has the true Spiritualist temperament, recognized in it an \"initial\nstage of materialization.\" But the clairvoyance was great. The sitters,\nwhile the lady was still out of the room, put various objects connected\nwith the dead (a ring, a stud, a sealed letter, etc.) in a bag. The bag\nwas closed, and was put inside a box; and the lady, who was then\nintroduced, described every object with marvellous accuracy. Sir A. C.\nDoyle said that the medium gave \"a clear proof of clairvoyance.\" Mr. Gow\nsaid that he saw \"no normal explanation.\"\n\nAnd it was fraud from beginning to end, as everybody now knows.\nClairvoyance must be distinguished from prophecy, which Spiritualists\nsometimes claim. Prediction means the art of seeing things which do not\nexist, and it is therefore not even mentioned in this book. Clairvoyance\nmeans the art of seeing things through a brick wall (or any other opaque\ncovering). Now this was an admirable piece of clairvoyance. Even\nSpiritualists present were suspicious, because the lady was quite\nunknown. Yet they could not see any suggestion of fraud or any \"normal\nexplanation.\" Did they turn back upon their earlier experiences of\nclairvoyance, when the fraud was confessed, and ask if those also may\nnot have been due to trickery? Not in the least. Everything is genuine\nuntil it is found out--and, sometimes, even afterwards.\n\nMr. Selbit, the conjurer who really conducted the performance, is\nnaturally unwilling to give away his secret. He acknowledged immediately\nafter the performance, as Mr. Moseley describes in his _Amazing S\u00e9ance_,\nthat he had fooled the audience. The masked lady was an actress with no\nmore abnormal power than Sir Oliver Lodge has. Mr. Stuart Cumberland\nsuggested at the time that, when the assistant went to the door to call\nthe medium, he handed the box to a confederate and received a dummy box.\nHe thought that the medium would then have time to study and memorize\nthe contents of the real box (including a sealed letter in dog-German)\nbefore she entered the room. From the account, which is not precise\nenough, I can hardly see how she would have time for this. But Mr.\nSelbit acknowledged that a dummy box _was_ substituted. He says that a\nperson entered the room in the dark, took the box from the table and\nsubstituted a dummy, and afterwards impersonated the ghost. This is\nmost important for us. The room had been searched, and such acute\nobservers as Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Superintendent Thomas, of\nScotland Yard, were on the watch; yet a confederate got into the room.\nAfter this an ordinary Spiritualist s\u00e9ance is child's play. A long and\nminute description of the objects in the bag, which must have been\nspelled letter by letter in parts, on account of the difficult wording\nof the sealed letter, was in some way telegraphed or communicated to the\ngirl under the eyes of this watchful group. It would be scarcely more\nmarvellous to suppose that Mr. Selbit, after studying the contents of\nthe box, took her place before their faces and they never knew it!\n\nThe reader will not fail to see why I have minutely pointed out the\nfeatures of this recent case. It is, in the first place, an example of\n\"psychic,\" not \"physical,\" phenomena; and it was conjuring pure and\nsimple. It was, further, \"most successful and convincing,\" as Sir A. C.\nDoyle pronounced; yet there was not a particle of abnormal power about\nit. Finally, it was done in the presence of three keen critics, as well\nas of leading Spiritualists; yet the fraud was not discovered. To invoke\nthe \"supernormal,\" after this, the moment some ordinary individual fails\nto detect fraud, is surely ludicrous.\n\nNow let me put another warning before the reader. It is notorious that\nSpiritualists are particularly, even if innocently, apt to mislead in\ntheir accounts of their experiences. Unless the experience is recorded\non paper at once, it is almost worthless; and even then it is often\nquite wrong. There is such a thing as \"selection\" in the human mind.\nWhen two people, a Spiritualist and a sceptic, see or read the same\nthing, their minds may get quite a different impression of it. The mind\nof the Spiritualist leaps to the features of it which seem to be\nsupernormal, and slurs or ignores or soon forgets the others. The mind\nof the sceptic does the opposite. You thus get quite inaccurate accounts\nfrom Spiritualists, though they are often quite innocent. One once asked\nme to explain how a medium, two hundred miles from his home, in a place\nwhere no one knew him, could tell his name and a good deal about him. By\ntwo minutes' cross-examination I got him to admit that he had been\nworking for some weeks in this district and was known to a few\nfellow-workers. No doubt one of these had given a medium information\nabout him, and then induced him to visit her. These indirect methods are\nvery effective.\n\nA very good example is Sir A. C. Doyle himself. In the debate with me he\nmade statement after statement of the most inaccurate description. He\nsaid that Eusapia Palladino was quite honest in the first fifteen years\nof her mediumship; that he had given me the names of forty Spiritualist\nprofessors; that the Fox sisters were at first honest; that I did not\ngive the evidence from his books correctly; that Mr. Lethem got certain\ndetailed information the first time he consulted a medium; that in Mme.\nBisson's book you can see ectoplasm pouring from the medium's \"nose,\neyes, ears, and skin\"; that Florrie Cook \"never took one penny of\nmoney\"; that in the Belfast experiment the table rose to the ceiling;\nand so on. His frame of mind was extraordinary. But I will give a far\nmore extraordinary case which will make the reader very cautious about\nSpiritualist testimony.\n\nAbout forty years ago, when the old type of ghost story was not yet\nquite dead, Myers and Gurney, who were collecting anecdotes of this\nsort, received a particularly authentic specimen. It was a personal\nexperience of Sir Edmund Hornby, a retired Judge from Shanghai. A few\nyears earlier, he said, he had one night written out his judgment for\nthe following day, but the reporter failed to call for a copy. He went\nto bed, and some time after one o'clock he was awakened by the reporter,\nwho very solemnly asked him for the copy. With much grumbling Sir Edmund\ngot up and gave him the copy. He remembered that in returning to bed he\nhad awakened Lady Hornby. And the next morning, on going to court, he\nlearned that the reporter had died just at that hour, of heart disease\n(as the inquest afterwards found), and had never left the house. He had\nbeen visited by the reporter's spirit.\n\nHere was an experience of most exceptional weight. Who could doubt\neither the word or the competence of the Chief Judge of the Supreme\nConsular Court of China and Japan? The story was promptly written up in\nthe _Nineteenth Century_ (\"Visible Apparitions,\" July, 1884), and\nsceptics were confounded. But a copy of the _Nineteenth Century_ reached\nShanghai, where the incident was said to have taken place, and in the\nsame monthly for November there appeared a letter from Mr. Balfour,\neditor of the _North China Herald_ and the _Supreme Court and Consular\nGazette_. It proved, and Sir E. Hornby was compelled to admit, that the\nstory was entirely untrue. It was a jumble of inaccuracies. The reporter\nhad died between eight and nine in the morning, not at one, and had\nslept peacefully all night. There had been no inquest. There was no\njudgment whatever delivered by Sir E. Hornby that morning. There was\nnot even a Lady Hornby in existence at the time! Sir Edmund Hornby\nsullenly acknowledged the truth of all this, and could mutter only that\nhe could not understand his own mistake.\n\nAfter this awful example we think twice before we take the testimony of\nSpiritualists at its face value. Sir A. C. Doyle, in particular, is\nespecially guilty of such confusions, to the great advantage of his\nstories. During the Debate, as I said, he told of a wonderful Glasgow\nclairvoyante, who was consulted by a Mr. Lethem (a Glasgow J.P.), who\nhad lost a son in the War. She at once told Mr. Lethem, Sir Arthur says,\nhis son's name, the name of the London station at which he had said\nfarewell, and the name of the London hotel at which they had stayed.\nThis sounded very impressive indeed. But I happened to have read Mr.\nLethem's articles (_Weekly Record_, February 21 and 28, 1920), and I\nhave them before me. Mr. Lethem was a well-known man in Glasgow, and was\nknown to be \"inquiring.\" Now it was _eight months_ after his son's death\nthat he met this clairvoyante, yet all she could tell him was his son's\nname and appearance. It was, he confesses, \"not much\" and \"not strictly\nevidential.\" It was at a _later_ sitting that she gave the other\ndetails. Sir A. C. Doyle has fused the two sittings together and made\nthe experience more impressive. The medium had time to make inquiries.\nThere is a further detail which Sir A. C. Doyle does not tell. The\nbrother of the dead officer asked, as a test question, the name of the\ntown where they had last dined together. It took \"more than a year\" to\nget an answer to this!\n\nThus a quite commonplace and easily explained feat of a medium is\ndressed up by Sir A. C. Doyle as supernormal. He does this repeatedly in\nhis books. In the _New Revelation_ he says, quoting Sir Oliver Lodge's\nRaymond, that a medium described to Sir Oliver a photograph of his son,\n\"no copy of which had reached England, and which proved to be exactly as\n_he_ described it.\" Here he has done the same as in the case of Mr.\nLethem--fused together several successive sittings. The first medium\nconsulted by Sir Oliver Lodge made only a very brief statement. It was\nwrong in three out of four particulars; and the fourth was a very safe\nguess (that Raymond had once been photographed in a group). The\nparticulars which so much impressed Sir O. Lodge were given much later,\nand by a lady medium; and by that time there were plenty of copies of\nthe photograph in England! Sir O. Lodge gives the various dates.\n\nSir William Barrett and Sir O. Lodge are just as slipshod. I have amply\nshown this in the case of Lodge in my _Religion of Sir O. Lodge_ (and\n_Raymond_ is even worse than the books I analysed), and Sir W. F.\nBarrett's _On the Threshold of the Unseen_ is just as bad. I have\npreviously said how he tells his readers that it would take \"the\ncleverest conjurer with elaborate apparatus\" to do what the Golighers do\nat Belfast; and I showed that one limb of one member of the circle of\nseven mediums would, with the help of a finger or two perhaps, explain\neverything. Sir William also says (p. 53) that the London Dialectical\nSociety \"published the report of a special committee\" strongly in favour\nof Spiritualism. On the contrary, the London Dialectical Society\nexpressly refused to publish that egregious document. He says (p. 72),\nin describing the Home levitation case, that \"nothing was said\nbeforehand of what they might expect to see,\" and \"the accounts given by\neach [witness] are alike.\" These statements are the reverse of the\ntruth. The book contains many such instances.\n\nHere is another, which is expressly concerned with the greatest of all\n\"clairvoyantes,\" Mrs. Piper, and the most critical Spiritualist of\nmodern times, Dr. Hodgson. In the Debate Sir A. C. Doyle introduces him\n(p. 21) as \"Professor Hodgson, the greatest detective who ever put his\nmind to this subject.\" He is fond of turning the people he quotes into\n\"professors.\" It makes them more weighty. Hodgson was never a professor,\nbut he was an able man, and he exposed more than one fraud like Eusapia\nPalladino. But I have been permitted to see a letter which puts Dr.\nHodgson himself in the category of over-zealous and unreliable\nwitnesses; and as this letter is to be published in the form of a\npreface to the second edition of Dr. C. Mercier's book on Spiritualism,\nI am not quoting an anonymous document.\n\nMrs. Piper, the great American clairvoyante, the medium whose\nperformances are endorsed as genuine even by men who regard Spiritualism\nas ninety-eight per cent. fraud, began her career as a \"psychic\" in\n1874. At first she was controlled, in the common Spiritualist way, by\n\"an Indian girl.\" Then the great spirits of Bach and Longfellow and\nother illustrious dead began to control her. Next a deceased French\ndoctor, \"Phinuit,\" took her in hand, and she did wonderful things. But\nwhen people who were really critical began to test Phinuit's knowledge\nof medicine, and inquire (for the purpose of verification) about\nPhinuit's former address on earth, he hedged and shuffled, and then\nretired into obscurity, like the Indian girl and Longfellow. Her next\nspirit was \"Pelham,\" a young man who modestly desired to remain\nanonymous. For four years \"George Pelham,\" a highly cultivated spirit,\ngave \"marvellously accurate\" messages through Mrs. Piper, and the world\nwas assured that there was not the slightest doubt about his identity.\nHe was a very cultivated young American who had \"passed over\" in 1892.\n\nMr. Podmore, who, in spite of his high critical faculty, was taken in by\nthis episode, thinks that telepathy alone can explain the wonderful\nthings done. He does not believe in ghosts. Mrs. Piper's \"subconscious\nself,\" he thinks, creates and impersonates these spirit beings, and\ndraws the information telepathically from the sitters. But he says that\nthe impersonation was so \"dramatically true to life,\" so \"consistently\nand dramatically sustained,\" that \"some of G. P.'s most intimate friends\nwere convinced that they were actually in communication with the\ndeceased G. P.\"[12] It is true that when the dead G. P. was asked about\na society he had helped to form in his youth he could give neither its\naim nor its name, and Podmore admits that Mrs. Piper hedged very badly\nin trying to cover up her failure. But on other occasions the hits were\nso good that we have, if we do not admit the ghost theory, to take\nrefuge in telepathy and the subconscious self.\n\nThere is no need even for this thin shade of mysticism. Podmore was\nmisled by Hodgson's account. \"G. P.\" meant, as everybody knew, George\nPellew. Now a cousin of Pellew's wrote to Mr. Clodd to tell him that, if\nhe cared to ask the family, he would learn that all the relatives of the\ndead man regarded Mrs. Piper's impersonation of him as \"beneath\ncontempt.\" Mr. Clodd wrote to Professor Pellew, George's brother, and\nfound that this was the case. The family had been pestered for fifteen\nyears with reports of the proceedings and requests to authenticate them\nand join the S. P. R. They said that they knew George, and they could\nnot believe that, when freed from the burden of the flesh, he would talk\nsuch \"utter drivel and inanity.\" As to \"intimate friends,\" one of these\nwas Professor Fiske, who had been described by Dr. Hodgson as\n\"absolutely convinced\" of the identity of \"G. P.\" When Professor Pellew\ntold Professor Fiske of this, he replied, roundly, that it was \"a lie.\"\nMrs. Piper had, he said, been \"silent or entirely wrong\" on all his test\nquestions.[13]\n\nI am, you see, not choosing \"weak spots,\" as Sir A. C. Doyle said, and\nam not quite so ignorant of psychic matters, in comparison with himself,\nas he represented (_Debate_, p. 51). I am taking the greatest\n\"clairvoyante\" in the history of the movement, and in precisely those\nrespects in which she was endorsed by Dr. Hodgson and the American S. P.\nR. and Sir O. Lodge and all the leading English Spiritualists. She\nfailed at every crucial test. Phinuit, who knew so much, could not give\na plausible account of his own life on earth, or how he came to forget\nmedicine. When Sir O. Lodge presented to Mrs. Piper a sealed envelope\ncontaining a number of letters of the alphabet, she could not read one\nof them, and declined to try again. She could not answer simple tests\nabout Pellew. She gave Professor James messages from Gurney after his\ndeath (1888), and James pronounced them \"tiresome twaddle.\" When Myers\ndied in 1901 and left a sealed envelope containing a message, she could\nnot get a word of it. When Hodgson died in 1905 and left a large amount\nof manuscript in cipher, she could not get the least clue to it. When\nfriends put test questions to the spirit of Hodgson about his early life\nin Australia, the answers were all wrong.\n\nMrs. Piper fished habitually and obviously for information from her\nsitters. She got at names by childishly repeating them with different\nletters (a very common trick of mediums), and often changed them. She\nmade the ghost of Sir Walter Scott talk the most arrant nonsense about\nthe sun and planets. She was completely baffled when a message was given\nto her in Latin, though she was supposed to be speaking in the name of\nthe spirit of the learned Myers, and it took her three months to get the\nmeaning (out of a dictionary?) of one or two easy words of it. She gave\na man a long account of an uncle whom he had never had; and it turned\nout that this information was in the _Encyclop\u00e6dia_, and related to\nanother man of the same name. In no instance did she ever give details\nthat it was _impossible_ for her to learn in a normal way, and it is for\nher admirers to prove that she did _not_ learn them in a normal way,\nand, on the other hand, to give a more plausible explanation of what\nDr. Maxwell, their great authority, calls her \"inaccuracies and\nfalsehoods.\"\n\nThe truth is that the phenomenon known as \"clairvoyance\" rests just as\nplainly on trickery as the physical phenomena we have studied.\nMargaretta Fox explained decades ago how they used to watch minutely the\nfaces of sitters and find their way by changes of expression. \"I see a\nyoung man,\" says the medium dreamily, with half-closed but _very_\nwatchful eyes. There is no response on the face of the sitter. \"I see\nthe form of a young woman--a child,\" the medium goes on. At the right\nshot the sitter's face lights up with joy and eagerness, and the fishing\ngoes on. Probably in the end, or after a time, the sitter will tell\npeople how the clairvoyant saw the form of her darling child \"at once.\"\n\nIn some cases the medium is prepared in advance. Carrington tells us\nthat he was one day strongly urged to give a man, who thought that he\nhad abnormal powers, a sitting. He decided at least to give him a\nlesson, and made an appointment. The man came with friends at the\nappointed hour, and they were astonished and awed when Carrington, as a\nclairvoyant, told them their names and other details. He had simply sent\na man to track his visitor to his hotel and learn all about him and his\nfriends. Other cases are just as easy. When Sir O. Lodge and Sir A. C.\nDoyle lost their sons, the whole mediumistic world knew it and was\nready. But mediums gather information about far less important sitters,\nbecause it is precisely these cases that are most impressive. It is\nquite easy to get information quietly about a certain man's dead\nrelatives, and then find an intermediary who will casually recommend him\nto see Mrs. ----. I do not suggest that the intermediary knows the\nplot, though that may often be the case.\n\nIn other cases the medium tells very little at the first visit. The\n\"spirit\" is dazed in its new surroundings. It takes time to get adjusted\nand learn how to talk through a medium. And so on. You go again, and the\ndetails increase. You have, of course, left your name and address in\nmaking a fresh appointment. Some clever people go anonymously. Lady\nLodge went thus and heard remarkable things; but Sir O. Lodge admits\nthat her companion greatly helped the medium by forgetting herself and\naddressing her as \"Lady Lodge.\" You may leave your coat in the hall, and\nit is searched. When Truesdell consulted Slade in New York, he wickedly\nleft in his overcoat pocket a letter which gave the impression that his\nname was \"Samuel Johnson.\" The first ghost that turned up was, of\ncourse, \"Mary Johnson.\"\n\nStill more ingenious was the \"clairvoyance\" of the famous American\nmedium Foster, one of the impostors who duped Robert Dale Owen and for\nyears held a high position in the movement. While he was out of the room\nyou wrote on bits of paper the names of your dead relatives or friends,\nand you then screwed up the bits of paper into pellets. Foster then came\nin, and sat near you. He dreamily took the pellets in his hand, pressed\nthem against his forehead, and then let them fall again upon the table.\nSlowly and gradually, as he puffed at his everlasting cigar, the spirits\ncommunicated all the names to him.\n\nSuch tricks can be fathomed only by an expert, and they ought to warn\nSpiritualists of the folly of thinking that \"fraud was excluded.\"\nTruesdell, the great medium hunter, the terror of the American\nSpiritualist world in the seventies, had a sitting with Foster and paid\nthe usual five dollars. He was puzzled, and consented to come again. On\nthe second occasion Foster could tell him, clairvoyantly, the name of\nhis hotel and other details. He had had Truesdell watched in the usual\nway. At last the detective got his clue. Foster's cigar was continually\ngoing out, and in constantly re-lighting it he sheltered the match in\nthe hollow of his hands. Truesdell concluded that he was then reading\nthe slips of paper, and the rest was easy. In pressing the pellets to\nhis forehead Foster substituted blank pellets for them and kept the\nwritten papers in his hand. So the next time Truesdell went, and Foster\nhad touched one of the six pellets and read it, Truesdell snatched up\nthe other five pellets and found them blank. Foster genially\nacknowledged that it was conjuring, but he continued as a priest of the\nSpiritualist movement for a long time afterwards.\n\nAnother clairvoyant feat is to read the contents of a sealed envelope,\nprovided the contents are not a folded letter. We shall see in the next\nchapter how the contents of a folded and sealed letter are learned. I\nspeak here of the simple clairvoyant practice of taking a sealed\nenvelope which contains only a strip of written paper, pressing it to\nthe forehead and reading the contents. You need not pay half-a-guinea to\na Bond Street clairvoyante for this. Sponge your envelope with alcohol\n(which will soon evaporate and leave no trace) and you can \"see through\nit.\"\n\nSome readers may expect me to say a word here about \"clairaudience.\" The\nonly word I feel disposed to say is that it is one of the worst pieces\nof nonsense in the movement. Clairvoyance means to read the contents of\na sealed letter, or to see spirits which ordinary mortals cannot see. It\nis half the stock-in-trade of the ordinary medium. You pay your guinea\nor half-guinea, and the gifted lady sees your invisible dead friends and\ndescribes them. Sometimes she is quite accurate, \"on information\nreceived.\" Generally the performance is a tedious medley of guesses and\ngrotesque inaccuracies. As is known, Mr. Labouchere quite safely\npromised a thousand-pound note to any clairvoyante who would see the\nnumber of it through a sealed envelope. The French Academy of Science\nhad invited clairvoyants, and thoroughly discredited the claim, years\nbefore.\n\nYet the imposture goes on daily, all over England and America, and some\nnow offer the novelty of \"clairaudience,\" or hearing spirit voices which\nwe ordinary mortals cannot hear. It is the same fraud under another\nname. When some clairaudient comes along who can hear the spirits of\nMyers, and so many other deceased Spiritualists answer the crucial\nquestions they have never yet answered, we may become interested. Until\nthen a new addition to this world of cranks, frauds, decadents, and\nnervous invalids is not a matter of much importance.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[12] _The Newer Spiritualism_, p. 180.\n\n[13] Mr. Clodd, as will be read in the preface to the second edition of\nDr. Mercier's book, sent a copy of this letter to _Light_. The editor\ndeclined to publish it. So Sir A. C. Doyle may justly plead that he knew\nnothing about it. Will he ask why?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nMESSAGES FROM THE SPIRIT-WORLD\n\n\nClairvoyance, strictly speaking, is supposed to be an abnormal power of\nthe medium: a range of vision, a fineness of sense, that we less gifted\nbeings do not possess. But the performance is very apt to resolve itself\ninto a claim that the medium sees invisible spirits and is communicating\nwith them. Of real clairvoyance--of a power to read a closed book or a\nfolded paper or see a distant spot--no instance has ever yet been\nrecorded that will pass scrutiny. Many scientific men, as I said, who do\nnot believe in spirits do believe in the abnormal powers of mediums.\nThey would like to get a proof of clairvoyance, but they are unable to\noffer us one. The wonderful stories told of the gift in Spiritualist\ncircles vanish, like the stories about Home and Moses, the moment the\ncritical lamp is turned upon them.\n\nWe are therefore reduced to the Spiritualist claim that a medium really\nreceives information from spirits, and we have to see on what sort of\nevidence this is based. Now there is an aspect of this question which\neven the leading Spiritualists do not face very candidly. More than\ntwenty years ago it was felt, and rightly felt, by Spiritualists that at\nleast a long step forward would be made if they left sealed or\ncipher-messages at death, and communicated the contents or the key of\nthese from \"beyond.\" It is well known how Myers left with Sir Oliver\nLodge a sealed message of this description. A month after his death he\n\"got into touch\" with Lodge through the medium Mrs. Thompson. Unhappily\nhe had forgotten all about the message, and even about the Society for\nPsychical Research! Next the supremely gifted Mrs. Verrall got into\ntouch with Myers. By this time--it was the end of 1904--Myers had had\ntime to get adjusted, and was talking more or less rationally through\nMrs. Verrall. If there had not been a very material test in reserve, Sir\nO. Lodge and his friends would have sworn that the messages were from\nthe spirit of Myers. As it was, they were so confident that on December\n13, 1904, they solemnly opened the precious envelope. They were struck\ndumb when there was not the least correspondence between Mrs. Verrall's\nmessage from Myers and the message he had left in the envelope.\n\nMiss Dallas tries, in her _Mors Janua Vit\u00e6_, to soften the blow, but her\npleas are useless. The final failure utterly stultifies all the days and\nmonths of supposed messages. And this is not the only case. Hodgson had\nadopted a similar test, and it was a ghastly failure. Other\nSpiritualists left sealed messages when they died, and not a syllable of\none of them has been read. Our Spiritualists _do not_ get into\ncommunication with the dead. This is negative evidence, but it is far\nmore impressive than any of the rhetorical and inaccurate accounts of\nexperiences which they give us. It is precise and unmistakable. Every\nSpiritualist who dies now knows that this is the supremely desired test,\nyet we have twenty years of complete, unmitigated failure. Men like Sir\nO. Lodge tell us that they recognize the personality of Hodgson beyond\nmistake in the messages they get through mediums; but the one sure\ntest, the getting of the key to the cipher-messages which Hodgson left\nbehind, is an absolute failure. It would become our Spiritualists to\nstrike a more modest note, and not assure the ignorant public, as Sir A.\nC. Doyle does, that the time for proof has gone by and it is for their\nopponents now to justify themselves. The experience of the last twenty\nyears has been deadly to Spiritualist pretensions.\n\nThe truth is that here again Spiritualists had been led into their\nbelief, that messages from the spirit-world were easy and common, by a\nvast amount of mediumistic trickery. The earliest method was by raps,\nand we have seen that since 1848 this performance has been a matter of\ntrickery. The next way was to rap out messages with a leg of the table,\nwhich was merely a variation of the table-lifting we have studied. These\nforms are so often used by amateur mediums that it is necessary to\nrecall our warning that the distinction between paid and unpaid mediums\nis not of the least use. Carrington, Maxwell, Podmore, and Flammarion\ngive numbers of instances of cheating by men and women of good social\nposition. Carrington tells of an American lawyer who deliberately--not\nas a joke--made his friends believe that he could make a poker stand\nupright and do similar abnormal phenomena. He did his tricks by means of\nblack threads. Podmore gives a similar case in England. Flammarion tells\nus of a Parisian doctor's wife who cheated flagrantly in order to get\ncredit for abnormal powers. This sort of prestige has as much\nfascination for some people as money has for others.\n\nThe professional mediums, however, early developed in America the trick\nof receiving messages from spirits on slates, and this is fraud from\nbeginning to end. The supreme artist in this field was Henry Slade, whom\nSir A. C. Doyle regards as a genuine intermediary between the lofty\nspirits of the other world and ourselves. As Truesdell's account of the\nway in which he unmasked Slade as early as 1872 contains one of the\nrichest stories in the whole collection of Spiritualist anecdotes, one\nwould have thought that a story-teller like Sir A. C. Doyle could not\npossibly have forgotten it. From it we learn that Slade was from the\noutset of his career an adroit and brazen and confessed impostor.\n\nTruesdell paid the customary five dollars, and received pretty and\nedifying, but inconclusive, messages from the spirits. Incidentally he\ndetected that the spirit-touches on his arms were done by Slade's foot,\nto distract his attention; but he could not see the method of the\nslate-trick. However, as the main theme of the messages was an\nexhortation to persevere in his inquiries (at five dollars a sitting to\nthe medium), he made another appointment. It was on this occasion that\nhe left a misleading letter in his overcoat in Slade's hall, and found\nthe spirits assuming that he was \"Samuel Johnson, Rome, N.Y.\" But before\nSlade entered the room, or while Slade was going through his\novercoat-pockets, _he_ rapidly overhauled Slade's room. He found a slate\nwith a pious message from the spirits already written on it, signed (as\nwas usual) by the spirit of Slade's dead wife, Alcinda. Beneath the\nmessage Truesdell wrote \"Henry, look out for this fellow--he is up to\nsnuff! Alcinda,\" and replaced the slate. Slade came in, and gave a most\ndramatic performance. In his contortions, under the spirit-influence,\nhe drew the table near to the hidden slate, and \"accidentally\" knocked\nthe clean slate off the table. Of course, he picked up the _prepared_\nslate. His emotions can be imagined when he read the words which\nTruesdell had written on it. After a little bluster, however, he\nlaughingly acknowledged that he was a mere conjurer, and he told\nTruesdell many tricks of his profession.[14]\n\nThis was in 1872. Four years later Slade came to London, where Sir E.\nRay Lankester and Sir Bryan Donkin again exposed him. Sir E. Ray\nLankester snatched the slate before the message was supposed to be\nwritten on it, and the message was already there. He prosecuted Slade,\nwho was sentenced to three months' hard labour. He had charged a guinea\na sitter. But a few words had been omitted from the antiquated form of\nthe charge (which I have previously given in the case of Craddock), and\nbefore Slade could be again prosecuted he fled to the continent. There,\nwe saw, he duped a group of purblind professors, and he returned to\nAmerica in higher repute than ever. In 1882 an inspector of police at\nBelleville, in Canada, snatched the slate just as Sir E. Ray Lankester\nhad done, and exposed him again. He escaped arrest only by a maudlin\nappeal for mercy; and on his return to the States he succeeded in\npersuading the Spiritualists--who solemnly stated this in their organ,\nthe _Banner of Light_--that the man exposed at Belleville was an\nimpostor making use of his name! In 1884 he faced the Seybert Committee,\nand its sharp-eyed members saw and exposed every step in his trickery.\nEventually, as I have said, he lived in drink and misery, developed\nBright's disease, and died in the common asylum. Such was the man whom\nSir A. C. Doyle seriously regards as the chosen instrument of his\nspiritual powers.\n\nThe Seybert Committee found two different kinds of writing on Slade's\nslates. Some messages were short and badly written, and they concluded\nthat these were written by him with one finger while he held the slate\nunder the table (as the custom was) to receive a spirit-message. Other\nmessages were relatively long, well written, and dignified; and they\nregarded these as prepared in advance. Both points were fully verified.\nAt one sitting they noticed two slates resting suspiciously against the\nleg of the table. These doubtless had messages written on them, and were\nto be substituted for the blank slate when this was supposed to be put\nunder the table. Slade would then produce the sound of the spirits\nwriting by scraping with his nail on the edge of the slate. On this\noccasion, however, Slade saw that they had their eyes on the slates and\nhe dare not use them. But one of the members of the committee,\ndetermined to do his work thoroughly, carelessly knocked the two slates\nover with his foot, and the messages were exposed.\n\nThe reception of messages from the spirits on slates may linger in rural\nor suburban districts, but it has lent itself to such trickery, and been\nexposed so thoroughly, that mediums have generally abandoned it. For\nwhole decades it was the chief way of communicating with the spirits,\nand weird and wonderful were the artifices by which the medium defeated\nthe growing sense of caution of the sitters. In spite of the exposures\nof Slade, the English medium Eglinton adopted and improved his methods,\nand he was one of the bright stars of the Spiritualist world for twenty\nyears. He was detected in fraud as early as 1876. At that time he gave\nmaterialization-s\u00e9ances, at which the ghostly form of \"Abdullah\"\nappeared. Archdeacon Colley found the beard and draperies of Abdullah in\nhis trunk. But exposure never ruins a medium in the Spiritualist world,\nand ten years later Eglinton was the most successful and respected\nmedium in England, especially for slate-messages.\n\nHodgson more than suspected him, and he at last found a man, Mr. S. J.\nDavey, who was able to reproduce all his tricks. He wrote messages while\nhe held the slates under the table, and he substituted prepared slates\nfor clean slates under the noses of his sitters. Perhaps the most\nvaluable part of his experience was this substitution, which is one of\nthe fundamental elements of mediumistic trickery. Spiritualists--indeed,\ninquirers generally--honestly flatter themselves that they have taken\ncare that there was no deception of this kind. Such confidence is\nfoolish, as the professional conjurer does this kind of substitution\nunder our eyes habitually, and we never see him do it. In order to make\npeople more cautious Davey, with Dr. Hodgson's connivance, set up as a\nmedium and gave sittings to Spiritualists. They afterwards sent accounts\nof their experiences to the Society for Psychical Research. They were,\nas usual, certain that there was no trickery, and that the messages were\ngenuine. Davey then wrote correct accounts of what he had done, and it\nwas seen that the accounts of the sitters were inaccurate and their\nobservation faulty. Some of them indignantly retorted that Davey was a\ngenuine medium, but found it more profitable to pose as a conjurer and\nexposer of mediums!\n\nIn a work specially devoted to this subject (_Spirit Slate Writing and\nKindred Phenomena_, 1899) Mr. W. E. Robinson gives about thirty\ndifferent fraudulent ways of getting spirit-messages. Indeed, many of\nthese may be sub-divided, and you get scores of methods. One method, for\ninstance, is to write a message with invisible fluid on paper, seal the\napparently blank paper in an envelope, and then let the message appear\nand pretend that the spirits wrote it. Mr. Robinson gives thirty-seven\ndifferent recipes for the \"invisible ink,\" and sixteen of these require\nonly heat, which is easily applied, to develop them. In other cases the\ninside of the envelope has been moistened with a chemical solution which\ndevelops the hidden writing. One medium used to put an apparently blank\nsheet of paper in a clear bottle and seal it. Here trickery seemed\nimpossible, and the sitter was greatly impressed at receiving a pious\nmessage on the paper. But the message had been written in advance with a\nweak solution of copper sulphate, and the bottle had been washed out\nwith ammonia, which develops it.\n\nIn slate-messages much use is made of a false flap, or a loose sheet of\nslate which fits imperceptibly on one side of the framed slate. It\nconceals the message written on the slate, and is removed under the\ntable or under cover of a newspaper. A sheet of slate-coloured silk or\ncloth is sometimes fitted on the slate, and it is drawn up the medium's\nsleeve or rolled into the frame of the slate. Invisible messages may be\nwritten on the slate with onion or lemon juice, and developed by lightly\npassing over them a cloth containing powdered chalk. Double-frame slates\nlend themselves to infinite trickery. Slates are provided by \"the trade\"\nwith false hinges and all kinds of mechanism. But even when the sitter\nbrings his own slates, as Z\u00f6llner did, and ties them up and seals them,\nthe medium is not baffled. They are laid aside, for the spirits to write\non at their leisure. At the first convenient opportunity the medium\nremoves the wax, without spoiling the seal, by passing a heated\nknife-blade or fine wire beneath it, and, after untying the strings,\nheats the under-surface of the wax and sticks it on again.\n\nMediums found that sitters were greatly impressed if they heard the\nsound of the spirits writing on the slate. This was easily done by\nscraping with the finger nail, and cautious people wanted to have a\nsecurity against fraud. One medium gave them adequate security. He held\nboth hands above the table, yet writing was distinctly heard underneath\nit. The man had attached to the table a clamp holding a bit of\nslate-pencil, and against this he rubbed a pencil which was fastened to\nhis trousers by loops of black silk. Others can use a pencil with their\ntoes--I have seen an armless Bulgar girl use a pen with her toes as\nneatly as a good writer uses his fingers--and hold both hands above the\ntable.\n\nThis trick is often used when a message is wanted in answer to a\nquestion and cannot be written in advance. The usual method is, however,\nto hold the slate under the table-top and write on it while it is held\nthere. At first this was done by means of a tiny bit of slate-pencil\nslipped under the nail of the big finger. Slade soon found that this\nwas suspected, and he made a point of keeping his nails short. The trade\nwhich is at the back of mediums then supplied thimbles with bits of\npencil attached, which the medium could slip on to his finger as he put\nthe slate under the table. Even thimbles with three differently coloured\nchalks were made, and the innocent sitter would be invited to select his\nown colour for the spirits to write in. The most amazing tricks were\ndeveloped. Robinson tells of a man who would let you bring your own\nslate and hold it against your own breast, and the message then appeared\non it. He \"tried\" your slate when you brought it by writing on it with\nhis pencil. But, of course, he sponged out all his writing before he\nhanded the slate back to you, as you could see. He had a double\npencil--slate at one end and silver nitrate at the other--and what he\nwrote with the latter was invisible until it was damped with salt-water.\nWell, the sponging (or damping) had been done with salt-water, and so\nthe message (in silver nitrate) appeared as the slate dried against your\nbreast.\n\nWhen you thus allow the medium to use his own apparatus in his own room\nyou need not be surprised at any result whatever. The sensible man will\nremember that behind the mediums is the same ingenious industry which\nsupplies conjuring outfits. Mr. Selbit showed Mr. Moseley a typewriter,\non an ordinary-looking table, which spelt out, by invisible fingers, a\nmessage in reply to your question. There was an electrical mechanism in\nthe table, and an electrician in the next room controlling it by a wire\nthrough the hollow table-leg. But even without such elaborate mechanism\nmediums can baffle quite vigilant sitters. There was one who would\nallow you to examine his nails, yet he got slate-messages without\nputting the slate under the table. He had ground slate-pencil to dust,\nmixed it with gum, and then cut the mixture into little cubes or\npellets. He simply stuck these on his trousers, and, _after_ you had\nexamined his nails, helped himself to one.\n\nWhen the answers are given on paper a hundred other tricks are employed.\nFirst the medium must learn the question you are putting to the spirits.\nIf you put it mentally, you will never get more than a lucky or unlucky\nguess, unless you happen to be one of those sitters for whom the medium\nwas prepared. You need not fear telepathy. It must be admitted to-day\nthat the evidence for telepathy or thought-transference is in as parlous\na condition as the evidence for Spiritualism. After all the challenges\nand discussions not a single serious claim lies before us. Sir A. C.\nDoyle, it is true, tells (_Debate_, p. 28) quite confidently of Mr.\nLethem getting an answer to his unspoken questions. But Sir Arthur, as\nusual, does not tell all the facts. The unspoken questions to which Mrs.\nLethem, as a medium, gave \"correct answers\" were precisely the two test\nquestions which Mr. Lethem had put to a medium some time before! We may\nsurely presume that he had confided that wonderful experience to the\nwife of his bosom.\n\nNo, there is no clear case of telepathy, or answers to unspoken\nquestions, on record. The medium gets you to write your questions.\nSpirits are supposed to be more at home in reading such spiritual things\nas thoughts than in reading material scribbles; but your medium is not a\nspirit, and you will get no answer unless he knows the question. If you\nwrite your question on the pad which he kindly offers, it is easy.\nThere is a carbon paper underneath, which gives him a duplicate. In one\nvery elaborate case the carbon and duplicate were under the cloth, and\nwere drawn off, when you had finished writing, through a hollow leg of\nthe table into the next room. One medium developed the art of reading\nwhat you wrote from the movements of the top of your pencil. Others,\nlike Foster, artfully stole your bit of paper and substituted dummies.\nBut I will quote from Mr. Carrington a last trick which will give the\nreader a sufficiently large idea of the wonderful ingenuity which\nmediums use in these spirit messages.\n\nHe tells in his _Personal Experiences of Spiritualism_ of a pair of\nChicago mediums--the same Misses Bangs who painted spirit pictures\nbefore your eyes, as I have previously described--whose method was\nextraordinarily difficult to detect. You wrote a letter to a deceased\nperson. You folded a blank sheet with this letter, and sealed them\nyourself in an envelope. This letter you handed to Miss Bangs as she sat\nat the table opposite you. After a long delay, but without her leaving\nthe room, she restored the envelope (which had lain on the table under a\nblotter) to you intact, and you found a letter to you from your spirit\nfriend written on the blank sheet you had enclosed.\n\nMr. Carrington admits that he can only guess the way in which this\nstriking performance was done, but the reader who cares to read his full\nand interesting account will feel that his conjecture is right. The\nletter did not remain on the table. Under cover of the blotting pad and\nvarious nervous movements it was conveyed to the medium's lap, and from\nthere to a shallow tray on the floor under the table. The medium, he\nnoticed, sat close to a door which led into an adjoining room, and he\nbelieves that the tray was pulled by a string from under the table into\nthe next room. An expert whom he afterwards sent to examine the house,\nunder cover of a sitting, verified his conjecture that there was space\nenough at the bottom of the door to pull a shallow tray through. In the\nnext room it was easy for Miss Bangs No. 2 to open the letter, write the\nreply, and seal the envelope again. Even wax seals offer no difficulty\nto mediums. The letter was re-conducted to the table in the same furtive\nway. A desperate Spiritualist may say that his hypothesis is simpler\nthan this. But there is one little difficulty. No such person had ever\nexisted as the supposed dead relative to whom Mr. Carrington addressed\nhis letter! He had hoaxed the hoaxer.\n\nHere were two quiet and inoffensive-looking spinsters earning a good\nliving by deceptive practices (this and the spirit-painting trick) which\nthey had themselves, apparently, originated, and which taxed the\ningenuity of an expert conjurer to discover. What chance has the\nordinary inquirer, much less the eager Spiritualist, against guile of\nthis description? A boy of sixteen can buy a box of conjuring apparatus\nfor a guinea. It contains only tricks which have been scattered over the\ncountry for years. Yet in your own drawing-room he can, after a little\npractice, cheat your eyes every time, although you know that there is\ntrickery, and are keenly on the look-out for it. What chance have you,\nthen, against a man or woman who has been conjuring for twenty years?\nWhat chance have you in a poor light? What earthly chance have you in\nthe dark? It is amazing how inquirers and Spiritualists forget this\nelementary truism. They tell you repeatedly, with the air of supreme\nexperts in conjuring, that \"there was no possibility of fraud.\" That is\nsheer self-deception. Even expert conjurers have been completely\ndeceived by mediums, as Bellachini was with Slade (a confessed impostor)\nand Carrington was with Eusapia Palladino. The man who tells you that\nthere was no fraud because he saw none is as foolish as the man who\nexpects _you_ either to explain where the fraud was or else embrace\nSpiritualism.\n\nThere is one other method of receiving messages which we must briefly\nnotice. It is, to Spiritualists, the most impressive of all. The ghost\nof the dead _talks directly to you_. A \"direct voice\" medium is, of\ncourse, required, and some kind of trumpet is provided by the medium\nthrough which the spirit speaks to you. If you are known to the medium,\nor if you have a good imagination and are very eager, you can recognize\nthe very accents of your dead wife or mother-in-law. But there is one\ndisadvantage of this impressive phenomenon. It must take place in\ncomplete darkness; and we remember the warning of that high and\nexperienced psychic authority, Dr. Maxwell, that the man who seeks any\nkind of phenomena in complete darkness is wasting his time.\n\nSpiritualist writers are amusing when they try to reconcile us to the\nconditions which their mediums have imposed on them. Are there not\ncertain conditions for the appearance of all scientific phenomena, they\nask us? Most assuredly. You cannot grow carrots without soil, and so on.\nIs not darkness a condition of certain scientific processes? Again,\nmost certainly. The photographic plate must be prepared in the dark, or\nin a dull red light. Therefore.... That is just where the Spiritualist\nfails. If the darkness under cover of which the photographic chemist\nprepares his plates lent itself equally to cover fraud or to protect his\noperations, there would be a parallel. As it is, there is no parallel.\n\nThe red light of the photographer can serve only one purpose. When the\nmedium uses it, there are two purposes conceivable. One is, on the\nSpiritualist theory, that white light may interfere with the\n\"magnetism,\" or the \"psychic force,\" or whatever the latest jargon is.\nThe other conceivable purpose is that it may cover fraud. Everybody\nadmits that the darkening of the planet since 1848 has covered \"a vast\namount of fraud,\" to use the words of Baron Schrenck. Few people admit\nthat it has favoured real phenomena. It is therefore quite absurd to\nattempt to reconcile us to the darkness by the analogy of photographic\noperations. There is no analogy at all. In the one case the poor light\ncertainly favours fraud, and does not certainly do anything else. In the\nother case the red light never covers fraud, but has a single clear\npurpose.\n\nRed light, as I have said, is the most tiring for the eye of all kinds\nof light. The man who thinks that he can control the hands and feet of\nseven mediums in such a light cannot expect to be taken seriously. He\ncan expect only to be taken in. But the man who pays any attention to\nphenomena for which the medium requires pitch darkness is even worse.\nWhy not simply _imagine_ that the dead still live, and save the guinea?\nYou have not the slightest guarantee of the genuineness of the\nphenomena. Imagining that you can recognize the voice or the features\nis one of the oldest of illusions.\n\nIn the summer of 1912 our Spiritualists were elated by the discovery of\na new medium of the most powerful type. Mrs. Ebba Wriedt came from that\nperennial breeding-ground of great mediums, the United States, where she\nhad long been known. In 1912 she illumined London. Through her W. T.\nStead was able once more to address Spiritualists _viva voce_. One\nrecognized the familiar voice unmistakably. Scepticism was ludicrous.\nDid not a Serbian diplomatist talk to the spirit in Serb, which Mrs.\nWriedt did not know, and answer for the genuineness of the phenomena?\n_Light_ had wonderful columns on Mrs. Wriedt's marvels. She was, the\neditor of a psychic journal said, \"the pride and the most convincing\nargument of the whole Spiritualist and Theosophical world.\" In admiring\nher powers, even the mutual hostility of Spiritualist and Theosophist\nwas laid aside, it seems.\n\nNorwegian Spiritualists were eager to avail themselves of this rare\ngift, and they asked if Norwegian spirits could speak through the great\nmedium. After consulting the spirits--a cynic would say, after\npractising a word or two of Norwegian--Mrs. Wriedt replied in the\naffirmative, and boldly crossed the sea.\n\nThere is, of course, no intrinsic reason, on the Spiritualist theory,\nwhy spirits should be confined to the language of the medium. In \"direct\nvoice\" they do not even have to use her vocal organs. A trumpet lies on\nthe ground or the table, and the spirits lift it up and megaphone (very\nsoftly) through it. It is quite inexplicable to those of us who are mere\ninquirers why the spirits must always talk English in England, American\nin America, and so on. Even when they try, as in the case of the Thomas\nbrothers, to talk their native American to us in England, the result is\nhalf bad American and half Welsh-English. It would be much more\nimpressive to our hesitating generation if a half-dozen foreigners were\nbrought to the sitting, and each had a real conversation--not a word or\ntwo--with a ghost of his own nationality. Somehow the spirits insist on\nspeaking the language, and even the dialect, of the medium. We shall\nconsider in the next chapter a few supposed variations from this\nunfortunate rule of spirit-intercourse.\n\nWell, Mrs. Wriedt went to Norway, and confronted her new inquirers with\nall the solidity and confidence of the well-built American matron.\nSomehow, the vocabulary of the Norwegian dead, who came along, was very\nlimited. They could say only \"Yes\" or \"No\" in Norwegian. Otherwise the\nfirst s\u00e9ance was very good. To make up for their culpable ignorance of\ntheir native tongue the Norwegian ghosts scattered flowers about the\ndark room, gave ghostly music, and did other marvellous things. But\nthere were two ladies and a professor--Frau Nielsen and Frau Anker and\nProfessor Birkeland--who did not like this \"Yes\" and \"No\" business. It\nwas scriptural, but not ladylike. So the professor held Mrs. Wriedt's\nhands very firmly at the second s\u00e9ance, and for twenty minutes the\nspirits were dumb. They always resent such things, as every Spiritualist\nknows. The trumpets lay on the floor, neglected and silent.\n\nAt length Professor Birkeland heard some very faint explosive sounds\nwhich his ears located in the trumpets or horns (in shape something like\nthe old coach-horn). He looked steadily and saw them move slightly, a\nphosphorescent light in them making the movements clear. A good\nSpiritualist would have seen that this was the beginning of\nmanifestations, and he would have paid close attention to the trumpets\nand relaxed his hard control of Mrs. Wriedt. The professor was, however,\nof the type which mediums call \"brutal.\" He jumped up, switched on the\nelectric light, and, before the Spiritualists could interfere, had\nsnatched the two trumpets from the floor and bolted to the nearest\nanalytic chemist. So the curtain fell on one more glorious act in the\nSpiritualist drama. Mrs. Wriedt had put in the trumpet particles of\nmetallic potassium which, meeting the moisture she had also thoughtfully\nprovided, explained the \"psychic movements.\" Close examination disclosed\nthat on other occasions she had used Lycopodium seeds to produce the\nsame effect.\n\nProfessor Birkeland did not discover how the voices were produced, but\nthey offer no difficulty. The trumpets were, he found, telescopic. Each\nconsisted of three parts, and could stretch to nearly three feet. When\nsome guileless lady, who is controlling the medium, allows a hand to\nstray in the usual way, the trumpet is seized, and it will give a\n\"direct voice\" over the heads of the sitters or close to any one of\nthem. When the trumpet remains on the ground during the ghostly message,\nthe medium has a rubber speaking-tube fitted to it. When no trumpet is\nprovided at all, it makes no difference. The medium has thoughtfully\nbrought one of these telescopic aluminium tubes in his trousers. It\nfolds up to less than a foot. In some of the earlier cases, possibly\nstill in some cases, the medium's little daughter, who sits demure and\nmildly interested on the couch before the light is switched off, mounts\nthe furniture in the dark, and obligingly impersonates the ghost.\n\nNo one would accuse Mr. Crawford, of Belfast, of being ultra-critical,\nyet his experience confirms my conclusions. His marvellous experiences\nwith the pious Kathleen drew the attention of the Spiritualist world,\nand all sorts of mediums came to help. First he tried the clairvoyants.\nBut they saw such weird and contradictory things that he was worried.\nNone of them saw the wonderful \"psychic cantilever\" which he thought the\nspirits made to lift the table, but they all saw ghostly hands where he\ndid not want them; and the worst of it was that the same spirits which\nhad confirmed his theory of a cantilever, and even allowed him to take a\nphotograph (which he has meanly refused to publish) of it, now joyously\nconfirmed the quite different theory of the Spiritualist clairvoyants.\n\nSo he gave it up, and next tried a \"direct voice\" medium. He is fairly\npolite about the result. He got plenty of voices from all quarters--in\ntotal darkness. Not only did a voice come from the ceiling, but a mark\nwas made on it. The medium's silk coat was frivolously taken off her by\nthe ghosts, and flung on the lap of one of the sitters. Strangely, these\nthings do not impress him as much as the raising of a two-pound stool to\na height of four feet does. He drops dark hints that things were said\nabout this \"direct voice\" medium. She was a big woman, and she was not\nsearched; and telescopic aluminium tubes take up little room. Mr.\nCrawford put his little electrical register near her feet, and she was\n\"annoyed and nervous.\" In short, Mr. Crawford seems to have formed the\nsame opinion as any sensible person would in the circumstances.[15]\n\nWe have still to examine the claims of the automatic writers; but, after\nall this, the reader will not expect much. Never yet was a message\nreceived which could not have been learned by the medium in a normal\nway. The overwhelming mass of the messages which are delivered daily in\nevery country are fraudulent. In an amusing recent work (_The Road to\nEn-Dor_) two officers have shown us how easy it was to dupe even\neducated men by these professions of marvellous powers. The advantage is\non the side of the conjurer every time, and the sitter has little\nchance. Let the mediums come before a competent tribunal. All sorts of\ninducements have been offered to them to do so, but they are very shy of\ncompetent investigators. In 1911 an advertisement in the _Times_ offered\n\u00a31,000 to any medium who would merely give proof of possessing\ntelepathic power, and there was not a single offer. This year Mr. Joseph\nRinn, a former member of the American Society for Psychical Research and\na life-long inquirer, has deposited with that Society a sum of \u00a31,000\nfor any evidence of communication with the dead under proper conditions.\nThere will again be no application. Mediums prefer a simpler and more\nreverent audience, even if the fees be smaller. But those who consult\nthem under their own conditions, knowing that fraud has been practised\nunder those conditions from San Francisco to Petrograd ever since 1848,\nmust not talk to us about \"evidence.\"\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[14] The chapter should be read in Truesdell's racy book, which is now\nunfortunately rare, _Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of\nSpiritualism_ (1883), pp. 276-307.\n\n[15] These experiments are recorded in his _Experiments in Psychical\nScience_ (1919), pp. 134-35 and 170-89.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nAUTOMATIC WRITING\n\n\nThe Spiritualist--if any Spiritualist reader has persevered thus\nfar--will be surprised to hear that many Rationalists censure me because\nI decline to admit that his movement is \"all fraud.\" For heaven's sake,\nhe will exclaim, let us hear something about our honesty for a change!\nEven the impartial outsider will possibly welcome such a change. How is\nit possible, he will ask, that so many distinguished men have given\ntheir names to the movement if it is all fraudulent?\n\nNow let us have a word first on these supposed distinguished\nSpiritualists. During the debate with me Sir A. C. Doyle produced a tiny\nred book and told the audience that it contained \"the names of 160\npeople of high distinction, many of them of great eminence, including\nover forty professors\" (p. 19). He said expressly that \"these 160 people\n... have announced themselves as Spiritualists\" (p. 20). The book was\nhanded to me, and it will be understood that I could not very well read\nit and attend to my opponent's speech, to which I had to reply. But I\nsaw at a glance several utterly destructive weaknesses. Several men were\ndescribed as \"professor\" who had no right to the title. Several men were\nincluded who were certainly _not_ Spiritualists (Richet, Ochorowicz,\nSchiaparelli, Flammarion, Maxwell, etc.). And in not one single case is\na precise reference given for the words which are attributed to these\nmen. My opponent regretted that chapter and verse were not \"always\"\n(this word is omitted from the printed Debate) quoted in his little\nbook. As a matter of fact, \"chapter and verse\" (book and page) are\n_never_ given, in any instance; and in the vast majority of the 160\ncases not even words are quoted to justify the inclusion. He further\nsaid that he quite admitted that some of the \"forty professors\" in the\nbook did not go so far as Spiritualists. But I have already quoted his\nwords to the effect that they had \"announced themselves as\nSpiritualists,\" and the same impression is undoubtedly conveyed by the\nbook itself, the title of which is _Who Are These Spiritualists?_\n\nI have the book before me, and any reader who cares to glance at the\nprinted Debate and see what Sir A. C. Doyle said about it will be\nastonished when I describe it. The printed text gives 126 names, and 32\nfurther names (many illegible) are written on the margins in Sir A. C.\nDoyle's hand. Only in 53 cases out of the 158 is any quotation given\nfrom the person named, and in not _one_ of these cases are we told where\nthe quotation may be verified. There are 27 (not 49, as Sir Arthur said)\nmen described as \"professors\"; and of these several never were\nprofessors, and very few ever were Spiritualists. Sir A. C. Doyle has\nhimself included Professor Morselli, who calls Spiritualism \"childish\nand immoral.\" There are men included who died before Spiritualism was\nborn, and there are twenty or thirty Agnostics included. Men like \"Lord\nDunraven, Lord Adare, and Alexander Wilder\" are described, with the most\namazing effrontery, as \"some of the world's greatest authors.\" Padre\nSecchi, the pious Roman Catholic, is included. Thackeray, Sir E. Arnold,\nProfessor de Morgan, Thiers, Lord Brougham, Forbes Winslow, Longfellow,\nRuskin, Abraham Lincoln, and other distinguished sceptics are dragged\nin. For sloppy, slovenly, loose, and worthless work--and I have in\ntwenty years of controversy had to handle a good deal--this little book\nwould be hard to beat.\n\nA list of distinguished Spiritualists could be accommodated on a single\npage of this book. A list of distinguished Rationalists in the same\nperiod (1848-1920) would take twenty pages. The truth is that in the\nearlier days of Spiritualism, when less was known than we now know about\nmediumistic fraud, a number of distinguished men were \"converted.\" They\nwere in every case converted by the impostors I have exposed in the\ncourse of this work--by Home, Florrie Cook, Mrs. Guppy, Eglinton, Slade,\nMorse, Holmes, etc. What is the value of such conversions? Who are the\n\"distinguished\" Spiritualists _to-day_? Sir A. C. Doyle, Sir O. Lodge,\nSir W. Barrett, Mr. Gerald Balfour.... The reader will be astonished to\nknow that those are the only names of living men of any distinction that\nSir A. C. Doyle dares to give, either in the text or on the margins of\nhis book. What their opinion is worth the reader may judge for himself.\n\nLet us pass on. I wrote recently in the _Literary Guide_ that \"there are\nhundreds of honest mediums.\" Some of my readers resented this as\nover-generous. Possibly they have only a vague idea of Spiritualism, and\nit is advisable for us to reflect clearly on the point. In the eyes of\nSpiritualists every man or woman, paid or unpaid, who is supposed to be\nin any way in communication with spirits is a \"medium.\" The word does\nnot simply apply to men and women who, for payment, sit in cabinets or\nin a circle, and lift tables, play guitars, write on slates, produce\nghosts, pull furniture about, tug the beards of sitters, and so on. I\nshould agree with the reader that these people, paid or unpaid, and all\nmediums who operate in the dark or in red light, are probably frauds.\nThat is a fair conclusion from the preceding chapters, in which I have\nexposed every variety of their manifestations, and from the history of\nSpiritualism.\n\nThis rules out all professional mediums and a large proportion of the\namateurs. Perhaps the reader does not know, and would like to know, what\na s\u00e9ance is like. As far as the \"more powerful\" (and more certainly\nfraudulent) mediums are concerned, I have already given a sufficient\ndescription. A cloth-covered frame or \"cabinet\" is raised at one end of\nthe room, or a curtain is drawn across an alcove or corner. In this the\nmedium generally (not always) sits, and the curtains are closed until\nthe medium thinks fit to have them opened. The medium is sometimes\nhypnotized, and sometimes falls into a natural trance; it matters\nlittle, for the trance is invariably a sham, and the medium is wide\nawake all the time, though he simulates the appearance of a trance. The\nlights are lowered or extinguished. Generally a red-glass lantern or\nbulb (sometimes several) is lit. Then, after a time, which is occupied\nby singing or music (to drown the noise of the medium's movements), the\nghost appears, or the tambourine is played, or the table is lifted, and\nso on.\n\nThese are the heavier and more expensive performances, and are\nconstantly being exposed. The medium has apparatus in the false seat of\nhis chair or concealed about his person. But the common, daily s\u00e9ance is\nquite different. You sit round a table or in a circle, or (if you will\nrise to the price) sit alone with the lady. The light may be good. The\nmedium \"sees\" and describes spirit forms hovering about you. If you are\none of the people whom the medium has, through an intermediary,\nattracted to the circle, you get some accurate details. If not, the\nmedium begins with generalities and, studying your expression, feels her\nway to details. It is generally a waste of time. Friends of mine have\ngone from one to another medium in London, and they tell me that it is\nsimply a tedious and most irritating way of convincing oneself that\nthese people are all frauds.\n\nBut beyond these are hundreds, or thousands, of private individuals who\ndiscover that they are mediums. They take a pencil in their hands, fall\ninto a passive, dreamy state, and presently the pencil \"automatically\"\nwrites messages from the spirit world. Others use the planchette (a\npencil fixed in a heart-shaped board which, when the medium's fingers\nare on it, writes on a sheet of paper) or the ouija board (in which the\napex of the heart spells out messages by pointing rapidly to the letters\nof the alphabet painted on a larger board over which it travels). I have\nstudied all three forms, and may take them together as \"automatic\nwriting.\"\n\nThe first question is whether this _can_ be done unconsciously. If such\nmessages are consciously spelt or written by the medium, it is, of\ncourse, fraud, because the messages purport to come from the dead. My\nown experience convinces me that even here there is a vast amount of\nfraud. The social status and general character of the medium do not\nseem to matter at all, as we have repeatedly seen. People get into the\nattitude of the child. \"I can do what you can't do,\" you constantly hear\nthe child say to its fellows. There is a good deal of the child in all\nof us. Prestige, distinction, credit for a rare or original power, is as\nmuch sought as money; and this motive grows stronger when the medium\nalready has money. Everybody knows, or ought to know, the perfectly\nauthentic story of Mozart's _Requiem_. A wealthy amateur, Count Walsegg,\nsecretly paid Mozart to compose that famous Mass, and it was to be\npassed off by Walsegg as his own.\n\nBut while there is much fraud even in automatic writing, there are\ncertainly hundreds of mediums of this description who quite honestly\nbelieve that they are spirit-controlled. Mr. G. B. Shaw's mother was an\nautomatic artist of that class. I have seen some of her spirit drawings.\nA high-minded medical man of my acquaintance was a medium of the same\ntype. The class is very numerous. Psychologically, it is not very\ndifficult to understand. A pianist can play quite complicated pieces\nunconsciously or subconsciously. A writer, who cannot normally write\ndecent fiction, may have wonderful flights of imagination in a dream. An\nexpert worker can do quite complicated things without attention.\nSomething of the same faculty seems to come in time to the automatic\nwriter or artist. Consciousness is more or less--never entirely,\nperhaps--switched off from its usual connection with the hand, and the\npart of the brain-machine which is not lit by consciousness takes over\nthe connection.\n\nThat this can be done in perfect honesty will be clear to every reader\nof Flammarion's book, _Les forces naturelles inconnues_. Flammarion\nnever became a Spiritualist, but he was quite a fluent automatic writer\nin his youth. Victorien Sardou, the great dramatist, belonged to the\nsame circle, and was an automatic draughtsman. Flammarion gives\nspecimens of the work of both. Quite without a deliberate intention, he\nsigned his automatic writing (on science) \"Galileo.\"\n\nI have no doubt that at the time both these distinguished men were\nstrongly tempted to embrace the Spiritualist theory. These experiences,\nand the experiences of the s\u00e9ance, can be exceedingly impressive and\ndramatic. The man who has never been there is too apt to think that all\nSpiritualists are fools. I have been to s\u00e9ances, and I do not admit\nthat. I am quarrelling with Spiritualists because they will not realize\nthe possibilities and the actual abundance of fraud. But the s\u00e9ance is\nundoubtedly very impressive at times. I have held a serious\nconversation, in German and Latin, through an amateur medium of my own\nacquaintance, with the supposed spirit of a certain German theologian of\nthe last century whose name (as given) was well known to me. I do not at\nall wonder that many succumb in sittings of this sort. But I found\ninvariably that, if one resolutely kept one's head and devised crucial\ntests, the claim broke down. So it is with Flammarion and Sardou. What\n\"Galileo\" wrote in 1870 was just the astronomy of that time; and much of\nit is totally wrong to-day. Sardou, on the other hand, drew remarkable\nsketches of life on Jupiter; and we know to-day that Jupiter is red-hot!\n\nThis is a broad characteristic of automatic writing since it began in\nthe fifties of the nineteenth century. At its best it merely reflected\nthe culture of the time, which was often wrong. Stainton Moses, for\ninstance, wrote reams of edifying revelation. But I find among his\nwonderful utterances about ancient history certain statements concerning\nthe early Hindus and Persians which recent discoveries have completely\nfalsified. He had been reading certain books which were just passable\n(though already a little out of date) fifty years ago. Among other\nthings the spirits told him that Manu lived 3,000 B.C., and that there\nwas a high \"Brahminical lore\" long before that date! So with Andrew\nJackson Davis, the first of these marvellous bringers of wisdom from the\nspirit world. He had probably read R. Chambers's _Vestiges of Creation_,\nand he gave out weird and wonderful revelations about evolution. In the\nbeginning was a clam, which begot a tadpole, which begot a quadruped,\nand so on. Davis certainly lied hard when he used to deny that he had\nread the books to which his \"revelations\" were traced, but no one can\ndeny his originality.\n\nThen there was Fowler, an American medical student and pious amateur\nmedium, who was regarded with reverence by the American Spiritualists. I\ninvite the reader's particular attention to this man, as he is one of\nthose unpaid individuals who are supposed (by Spiritualists) to have no\nconceivable motive for cheating. Yet he lied and cheated in the most\noriginal fashion. He told his friends that ghostly men entered his\nbedroom at nights, produced ghostly pens and ink, and left messages in\nHebrew on his table. An expert in Hebrew found that the message was a\nvery bad copy of a passage from the Hebrew text of _Daniel_. This did\nnot affect the faith of Spiritualists, who put a piece of parchment in\nFowler's room for a further message. They had a rich reward. They found\nnext day a spiritual manifesto signed by no less than fifty-six spirits,\nincluding some of the statesmen who had signed the Declaration of\nIndependence.\n\nThe frauds were very gross in those early decades. Franklin, Washington,\neven Thomas Paine, sent hundreds of messages from the \"Summerland.\" As\ntime went on, Socrates, Plato, Sir I. Newton, Milton, Galileo,\nAristotle, and nearly everybody whose name was in an encyclop\u00e6dia,\nguided the automatic writers. When one reads the inane twaddle signed\nwith their names, one wonders that even simple people could be deceived.\nDante dictated a poem of three thousand lines in the richest provincial\nAmerican. One automatic writer wrote, under inspiration, a book of a\nhundred thousand words. It is estimated that there were two thousand\nwriting mediums in the United States alone four years after the\nfoundation of the movement.\n\nMrs. Piper was chiefly an automatic writer in the latter part of her\nfamous career as a medium, but we need scarcely discuss further her\naccomplishments. In her later years she said that she did not claim to\nbe controlled by spirits, and this is sometimes wrongly described as a\nconfession of fraud. What she directly meant was that she did not\nprofess any opinion as to the source of the knowledge she gave to\nsitters. She seemed to favour the theory of telepathy. When, however, we\nremember that she spoke constantly in the name of spirits (Longfellow,\nPhinuit, Pelham, Myers, etc.), the plea seems curious. Those who believe\nthat she was really in a sort of trance-state, and knew not what she\nwas doing, may be disposed to accept Podmore's theory, that her\nsubconscious personality dramatized these various spirits or supposed\nspirits. Some of us do not like this idea of trance. In the hundreds of\nexact records of proceedings with mediums that I have read, I have not\nseen a page that suggested a genuine \"trance,\" but I have noted scores\nand scores of passages which showed that the medium feigned to be in a\ntrance, but was very wide awake.\n\nMrs. Thompson is another clairvoyant and automatic writer who has been\nmuch appreciated by modern Spiritualists. It is well to recall that\nbefore 1898 she was a medium for \"physical phenomena.\" She even brought\nabout materializations. Then she met Mr. Myers, and her powers assumed a\nmore refined form. Dr. Hodgson, that quaint mixture of blunt criticism\nand occasional credulity, had six sittings with her, and roundly stated\nthat she was a fraud. The correct information which she gave him was, he\nsaid, taken from letters to which she had access, or from works of\nreference like _Who's Who_. In one case, which made a great impression,\nshe gave some remarkably abstruse and correct information. It was\nafterwards found that the facts were stated in an old diary which had\nbelonged to her husband. She herself produced the diary, and said that\nshe had never read it; so, of course, everybody believed her. When\nProfessor Sidgwick died, in 1900, his \"spirit\" used to communicate\nthrough her. She reproduced his manner, and even his writing (which she\nsaid she had never seen), very fairly; but she could give no\ncommunication from him of \"evidential\" value.\n\nThe impersonation of dead people by the \"entranced\" medium makes a\ngreat impression on Spiritualists. It is difficult to understand why.\nOne medium quite convinced a friend of mine by such a performance. She\nsat, in the circle, in a trance one day, when she suddenly rose from her\nchair, stroked an imaginary moustache, and began to speak in a gruff\nvoice. \"He\"--the young lady had become a cavalry man--explained in a\ndazed way that he had died at Knightsbridge Barracks on the previous\nday, and gave his name. Great was the joy of the elect on finding\nafterwards that a soldier of the name had died at Knightsbridge on the\nprevious day.\n\nIt was quite childish. It is just by learning such out-of-the-way facts,\nas they easily can, and making use of them, that the mediums keep up\ntheir reputations. There was no reason whatever why the medium should\nnot have learned of the death and made so profitable a use of it.\nStainton Moses often did such things. One day he was possessed by the\nspirit of a cabman who said that he had been killed on the streets of\nLondon that very afternoon. By an unusual oversight the spirit did not\ngive his name. It was afterwards found that the accident was reported in\nan evening paper which Stainton Moses _might_ have seen just before the\ns\u00e9ance; and, by a curious coincidence, the reporter had not given the\ncabman's name. In other cases, where mediums had been invited to\ndistricts with which they were not familiar, yet they gave quite\naccurate details about local dead, it was found on inquiry that the\ninformation _might_ have been gathered from the stones in the local\ncemetery.\n\nA common retort of the Spiritualist, when you point out the possibility\nof the medium impersonating the dead, is that, \"if she did so, she must\nbe one of the cleverest actresses in England.\" You are asked,\ntriumphantly, why the lady should be content with a few pounds a week as\na despised medium, when she might be making five thousand a year on a\nstage. Any person who has seen these \"trances\" will know the value of\ntheir \"dramatic\" art. Almost anybody could do it. The medium makes from\nthree to five pounds a week by such things, but if she tried the stage\nshe would have, at the most, a minor part with fifty or sixty pounds a\nyear. Spiritualists get their judgments weirdly distorted by their bias.\nI need only quote the extravagant language in which Sir A. C. Doyle\nrefers to Mr. Vale Owen's trash or Mrs. Spencer's picture of Christ. He\nmakes the miracle in which he wishes to believe.\n\nTwo particular cases of spirit messages by automatic writing have lately\nbeen pressed upon us, and we must briefly examine them. One is given in\na book by Mr. F. Bligh Bond, called _The Gate of Remembrance_, which is\nrecommended to us by Sir A. C. Doyle as one of the five particularly\nconvincing works which he would have us read. He again fails to tell his\nreaders that Mr. Bligh Bond draws a very different conclusion than his\nown from the facts. He has a mystical theory of a universal memory or\nconsciousness, a sort of ocean into which the memories of the dead have\nflowed. He does not believe that the individual spirits of the dead\nmonks of pre-Reformation days came along and dictated their views\nthrough his automatic-writing friend.\n\nAny person, however, who reads the book impartially will see no need for\neither the Spiritualist view or Mr. Bond's. The main point is that,\nthrough Mr. Bond's friend, Mr. John Alleyne, what purported to be the\nghosts of the old monks of Glastonbury Abbey wrote quite vivid sketches\nof their medieval life in the Abbey and, particularly, suggested the\nposition and general features of a chapel that was at the time unknown.\nAs to the character or impersonation of the monks, which seems to\nSpiritualists so impressive, we are told by experts on medieval language\nthat it will not sustain criticism. The language is quaint and pleasant\nto read, but it is not consistent either in old English or Latin. It is\nthe language of a man who is familiar with medieval English and Latin,\nbut does not speak it as his _own_ language, and so often trips. It is,\nin other words, Mr. John Alleyne writing old English and medieval Latin,\nand stumbling occasionally.\n\nAs to the indication of a buried chapel, both this and the general\nimpersonation of the old monks are intelligible to any man who has read\nthe book itself, not Spiritualist accounts of it. Mr. Bond, an architect\nand arch\u00e6ologist, expected to be appointed to the charge of the ruins,\nand he and his friend Mr. Alleyne steeped themselves, all through the\nyear 1907, in the literature of the subject. They read all that was\nknown about Glastonbury, and lived for months in the medieval\natmosphere. Then Mr. Alleyne took his pencil and began to write\nautomatically. The general result is not strange; nor is it at all\nsupernatural that he should have formed a theory about the lost chapel\nand conveyed this to paper in the guise of a message from one of the old\nmonks.\n\nThe next work recommended to us is a short paper by Mr. Gerald Balfour\ncalled \"The Ear of Dionysius\" (published in the _Proceedings of the\nSociety for Psychical Research_, vol. xxix, March, 1917). The writing\nmedium, Mrs. Verrall, a Cambridge lady of a highly cultivated and\nrefined type and an excellent classical scholar, found in her automatic\n\"script\" on August 26, 1910, a reference to \"the Ear of Dionysius.\"\nThree years and a-half later another writing medium, Mrs. Willett, got\none of those rambling and incoherent messages, which are customary, in\nreference to \"the Ear of Dionysius.\" This seemed to be more than a\ncoincidence, as Mrs. Willett is no classical scholar. But Mr. Balfour\ncandidly warns us that Mrs. Willett said that she had heard nothing\nabout the earlier reference to the Ear of Dionysius in Mrs. Verrall's\ncase. It would be remarkable if the fact had been kept entirely secret\nfor three and a-half years, as some importance was attached to it in\npsychic circles, and we may prefer to trust Mr. Balfour's memory rather\nthan Mrs. Willett's. He says that he feels sure that one day, in the\nlong interval, Mrs. Willett asked him what the Ear of Dionysius was.\n\nMr. Balfour, however, believes that in the sequel we have fair evidence\nof spirit communication. The reader who is not familiar with these\nmatters should know that a new test had been devised for controlling the\norigin of these messages. It was felt that if the \"spirit\" of one of the\ndead psychical researchers (who could no longer read or remember the\nsealed messages they had left) were to give an unintelligible message to\none medium, a second unintelligible message to a second medium, and then\nthe key to both to either or to a third medium, and if the contents of\nthese messages were strictly withheld from the mediums (each knowing\nonly her own part), a very definite proof of spirit origin would be\nafforded. Thus the ghost of Mr. Verrall or Mr. Myers might take a line\nof an obscure Greek poet, give one word of it to Mrs. Thompson, another\nto Mrs. Willett, and then point out the connection through Mrs. Verrall.\nMr. Balfour claims that this was done in connection with the Ear of\nDionysius. Mrs. Willett, who does not know Latin or Greek, got messages\ncontaining a number of classical allusions. Among them was one which no\none could understand, and the key to this was some time afterwards given\nin the automatic writing of Mrs. Verrall.\n\nThe reader will now begin to understand the serious and respectable part\nof modern Spiritualism. I presume that these cultivated Spiritualists\nregard the \"physical phenomena\" of the movement and the ordinary mediums\nwith the same contempt that I do. They know that fraud is being\nperpetrated daily, and that the history of the movement, since its\nbeginning in 1848, has reeked with fraud. It is on these refined\nmessages and cross-references that they would stake their faith.\n\nBut, while we readily grant that these things offer an arguable case and\nmust not be dismissed with the disdain which we have shown in the\nprevious chapters, we feel that the new basis is altogether insecure and\ninadequate. Two mediums get a reference to so remote and unlikely a\nthing as \"the Ear of Dionysius.\" When you put it in this simple form it\nsounds impressive; but we saw that there was an interval of three and\na-half years, and we do not feel at all sure that people so profoundly\ninterested, so religiously eager, in these matters would succeed in\nkeeping the first communication entirely from the ears of medium No. 2.\nIn point of fact, Mr. Balfour tells us that he has a distinct\nrecollection of being asked by Mrs. Willett, during the interval, what\nthe Ear of Dionysius was. Mrs. Willett denies it. We shall probably\nprefer the disinterested memory of Mr. Balfour. Now, the very same\nweakness is found even in the second part of the story. For any\nevidential value it rests on two very large suppositions:--\n\n1. That one medium knew absolutely nothing about the most interesting\nand promising development which was for months agitating the minds of\nher own friends.\n\n2. That another medium heroically refrained from reading up any\nclassical dictionaries or works on the subject, and reserved her mind\nstrictly for whatever information the spirits might give her.\n\nOne can scarcely be called hypercritical if one has doubts about these\nsuppositions. There does not seem to be any room for the theory either\nof telepathy or of spirit communication.\n\nThe two experiences I have just analysed are selected by Sir A. C. Doyle\nas the most convincing in the whole of the work of the more modern and\nmore refined Spiritualists. I need not linger over other experiences of\nthese automatic writers. For the most part, automatic writing provides\nonly vapid or inaccurate stuff which is its own refutation. In the early\nyears, when Franklin, Shakespeare, Plato, and all the most illustrious\ndead wrote nonsense of the most vapoury description, the situation was\nquite grotesque. Nor is this kind of thing yet extinct. There are\nmediums practising in London to-day who put the sitter in communication\nwith the sages and poets of ancient times. In the very best of these\ncases there is a certain silliness about the communications which makes\nthem difficult to read. Even the spirits of Myers and Verrall seem to be\nin a perpetual Bank-Holiday mood, making naive little puns and jokes,\nand talking in the rambling, incoherent way that scholars do only in\nhours of domestic dissipation. There is a world thirsting (it is said)\nfor proof that the dead still live. Here are (it is said) men like W. T.\nStead, Myers, Hodgson, Verrall, Sidgwick, Vice-Admiral Moore, Robert\nOwen, etc., at the \"other end of the wire,\" as William James used to\nsay. Yet, apparently, nothing can be said or done that quite clearly\ngoes beyond the power of the mediums. The arrogance of the Spiritualists\nin the circumstances is amazing.\n\nThere are a dozen ways in which the theory could be rigorously tested.\nOne has been tried and completely failed: the communication of messages\nwhich were left in proper custody before death. We shall, of course,\npresently have an announcement that such a message has been read. Some\nzealous Spiritualist will leave a sealed message, and will take care\nthat some medium or other is able to read it. We may be prepared for\nsuch things. The fact is that half-a-dozen serious and reliable\nSpiritualists have tried this test, and it has hopelessly miscarried.\nAnother test was that devised by Dr. Hodgson--to leave messages in\ncipher, though not sealed. This also has completely failed. A third test\nwould be for one of these ghosts of learned Cambridge men, who are so\nfluent on things that do not matter, to dictate a passage from an\nobscure Greek poet through a medium who does not know Greek _at the\nrequest of a sitter_. It is a familiar and ancient trick for a medium\nto recite or write a passage in a foreign language. It has been learned\nbeforehand. But let a scholar ask the spirit of a dead scholar to spell\nout through the ignorant medium _there and then_ a specified line or\npassage within his knowledge. I have tried the experiment. It never\nsucceeds. Another test would be for one of these ghostly scholars to\ndictate a word of a line of some obscure Greek poet (chosen by the\nsitter) to one medium (ignorant of Greek), and another word of the same\nline to another medium immediately afterwards, before there was the\nremotest possibility of communication.\n\nA score of such tests could be devised. Three of the best writing\nmediums the Society for Psychical Research cares to indicate could be\naccommodated, under proper observation, in different rooms of the same\nbuilding, and these tests carried out. We could invite the spirit to\npass from medium to medium and repeat the message to all three, or give\na part to each. Until some such rigorous inquiry is carried out, we may\ndecline to be interested. I have before me several volumes of the\n_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_. Candidly, they are\nfull of trash and padding. There is very little that merits serious\nconsideration, and nothing that is not weakened by uncertainties,\nsuppressions, and over-zealous eagerness.\n\nIn fine, what impresses any man who reads much of all the volumes of\n\"revelation\" which have been vouchsafed to us is the entirely _earthly_\ncharacter of it all. The Spiritualist theory is that men grow rapidly\nwiser after death. Plato is two thousand years wiser than he was when he\nlived. Ptah-hotep is six thousand years older and wiser. Neither these,\nnor Buddha nor Christ nor any other moralist, has a word of wisdom for\nus. In fact, a theory has had to be invented which supposes that they\nmove away from the earth to distant regions of the spirit-world as they\ngrow older, and so cannot communicate. It is a pity they are not\n\"permitted\" to do so for propaganda purposes. But even those who remain\nin communication have learned nothing since they left the earth. No\ndiscovery has ever yet been communicated to us. In Spiritualist\nliterature, it is true, there is a claim that certain unknown facts\nabout the satellites of Uranus were revealed; but Flammarion makes short\nwork of the claim. The communications _never_ rise above the level of\nthe thought and knowledge of living humanity: never even above the level\nof the knowledge available to the mediums. It is scarcely an \"insanity\nof incredulity\" to suppose that they originated there.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nGHOST-LAND AND ITS CITIZENS\n\n\nAbout twenty years ago a writing medium, a sober professional man whose\ncharacter would not be questioned, showed me a pile of his automatic\n\"script.\" He sincerely believed that he had for several years been in\ncommunication with the dead. I glanced over many sheets of platitude and\nfamiliar moralizing, and then asked him to tell me how they described\nthe new world in which the dead lived. He hesitated, and tried to\nconvince me that this point, which seemed to me the most interesting of\nall, was unimportant. When I pressed, he said that it was a world so\ndifferent from ours that the spirits could hardly convey a coherent\ndescription of it in our language. They had to be content with such\nvague phrases as that they \"lived in houses of flowers.\"\n\nThat was the state of the \"new revelation\" twenty years ago. Long before\nthat whole volumes of quite precise description of ghost-land had been\nwritten, but it was discredited. Andrew Jackson Davis had invented the\nname \"Summerland,\" which Sir A. C. Doyle adopts to-day; but Davis's\nwonderful gospel had turned out to be a farrago of wild speculation,\nfounded on an imperfect grasp of a crude, early stage of science. Then\nStainton Moses and hundreds of other automatic writers had given us\nknowledge about the next world. A common feature of these early\ndescriptions was that the dead lived in a quasi-material universe round\nabout the earth and could visit the various planets and the sun at any\ntime. In that case, of course, they could give most valuable assistance\nto our astronomers, and they were quite willing. Some said that there\nwere living beings on the sun. As a matter of fact, one of our early\nastronomers had conjectured that there might be a cool, dark surface\nbelow the shining clouds which give out the light of the sun, and this\n\"spirit\" was following his lead. We know to-day that no part of the sun\nfalls below a temperature of 7,000\u00b0 C. Others described life on Jupiter\nand Saturn, and we now know that they are red-hot. Another medium, Helen\nSmith, attracted to herself a most romantic interest for years because\nshe was controlled by the spirit of a late inhabitant of the planet\nMars, and we learned a marvellous amount of weird detail about life on\nMars.\n\nThe thing was so obviously overdone, and Spiritualism was so generally\ndiscredited in the eighties on account of the very numerous exposures of\nmediums, that for a time revelations were less frequent. People fell\nback very largely on the older belief, that the dead are \"pure spirits,\"\nliving in an environment that cannot be described in our language, which\nis material. This, in point of fact, is a hollow and insincere pretext.\nPhilosophers have been accustomed for two thousand years to describe the\nlife of the spirit, and have provided a vocabulary for any who are\ninterested in it. The truth is that ideas were changing, and mediums\nwere not at all sure what it was safe to say.\n\nTowards the close of the century there was some revival of Spiritualism,\nand there were fresh attempts to describe the beautiful world beyond the\ngrave. Mediums were then in the \"houses of flowers\" stage. It sounded\nvery pretty, but you must not take it literally. With the advance of the\nnew century, mediums recovered all their confidence. It was at the\nbeginning of the present century that physicists began to discover that\nmatter was composed of electrons, and \"ether\" was the most discussed\nsubject in the whole scientific press. Here was a grand opportunity. A\nworld of ether would not be so crudely Materialistic as the earlier\npost-mortem world of the mediums. Yet it might be moulded by the\nimagination into a more or less material shape. It must be frankly\nadmitted that the \"pure spirit\" idea is not attractive. Those who yearn\nto meet again the people they had known and loved are a little chilled\nat the prospect of finding only what seems to be an abstraction, a mere\nmathematical point, a thing paler and less tangible than a streak of\nmist. Ether was therefore gladly seized as a good compromise. Ghost-land\nwas in the ether of space.\n\nThere had been, it is true, earlier references in Spiritualist\nrevelations to \"ether bodies,\" but it is chiefly since the series of\ndiscoveries in science to which radium led that the modern Spiritualist\nidea has been evolved. As usual, the spiritual revelations follow in the\nrear of advancing science. But in this case the automatic writers had a\ngreat advantage. They need only follow the lead of Sir Oliver Lodge,\nwho, however curious his ideas of physiology may be, is certainly an\nauthority on ether. He began by hinting mysteriously that he saw \"a\nspiritual significance\" in ether. Following up that clue, the automatic\nwriters have worked so industriously that we now know the \"Summerland\"\nmore thoroughly than we know Central Africa or Thibet.\n\nBuoyed up by the growing sentiment of agreement, as proved by the very\nprofitable sales of his works, Sir Oliver Lodge, in _Raymond_, gave the\nworld a vast amount of detail about the land beyond the grave. He did\nnot guarantee it, it is true. That is not his way. But he assured the\npublic that his mediums were undoubtedly \"in touch\" with his dead son,\nand the Spiritualist public must be pardoned if they understood that all\nthe marvellous matter put out in the name of Raymond was to be taken\nseriously. The message was really ingenious. Raymond was, unhappily, not\nmerely unable to give \"direct voice\" communications, as Sir A. C.\nDoyle's son is believed to have done, but he could not even directly\ncommunicate through Mrs. Leonard, the medium. He used as an\nintermediary the spirit of a child named \"Feda\"; and, of course, when\none has to use a child--and such an irresponsible, lisping, foolish\nlittle child as \"Feda\"--as intermediary, you must not press the message\nliterally in every part. The method had the advantage of pleasing\nSpiritualists, who found a complete confirmation of all their\nspeculations about ghost-land, and at the same time disarming critics,\nbecause Raymond was not really responsible.\n\nMany people did not fully realize this when they bore down heavily and\ncontemptuously on the description of the next world which is given in\n_Raymond_. The deceased young officer had a \"nice doggie,\" which he\nbrought along with him when he strolled to the medium's shop to send a\nmessage to his distinguished father. Presently the medium added a \"cat,\"\nthough she said nothing about a cats'-meat man. Raymond had also what I\nbelieve young officers call \"a bird\"--a young lady acquaintance on\nspiritual terms. There were cows in the spirit meadows and flowers in\nthe gardens. Our \"damaged flowers,\" we are told, pass over to the other\nside and raise their heads once more gloriously. Why they flower if\nthere are no bees, whether they have chlorophyll circulating in their\nleaves, whether the soil is sandy or clayey, etc., we are not told. The\ninformation comes in chance clots, as if Raymond were too busy with\nethereal billiards to study the natural history of ghostland very\nclosely. We are told to picture Raymond in a real suit of clothes. He\nwas offered the orthodox white sheet, which every right-minded spirit\nwears; but he had a British young man's repugnance to that sort of\nthing. So in the laboratories on the other side they made Raymond an\nordinary suit, out of \"damaged worsted\" which we earthly wastrels had no\nuse for. For other young officers, with less refined tastes, they\nmanufactured whisky-and-soda and cigars. \"Don't think I'm stretching\nit,\" Raymond observed to his father, through \"Feda\" and Mrs. Leonard.\nThe father does not say what he thought.\n\nNow, it is, as I said, quite wrong for Spiritualists to plant all this\nupon the authority of Sir Oliver Lodge. Does he not warn us in a\nfootnote that he has \"not yet traced the source of all this supposed\ninformation\"? It would not take most of us long to do so, but the remark\nat least leaves open a way of retreat for Sir Oliver Lodge. On the other\nhand, we must not blame Spiritualists too severely. He assures them that\nthis lady, Mrs. Leonard, is in undoubted communication with his dead\nson, and one may question whether he is entitled to take one part of the\nlady's message as genuine and leave other parts open. At all events,\nthis puerile and bewildering nonsense was put before the world in an\nexpensive book by Sir Oliver Lodge, with his personal assurance that\nMrs. Leonard was a genuine medium.\n\nSir Arthur Conan Doyle next gathered details from scores of revelations\nof this kind--they fell upon us like leaves in Vallombrosa after Sir\nOliver Lodge's bold lead--and built them into a consistent picture of\n\"Summerland.\" It is an ether world. Each of us has a duplicate of his\nbody in ether. This is quite in harmony with science, he says, because\nsome one has discovered that \"bound\" ether--that is to say, ether\nenclosed in a material body--is different from the free ether of space.\nFrom this slight difference Sir A. C. Doyle concludes that there is a\nportion of ether shaped exactly like my body; then, by a still more\nheroic leap of the imagination, he gathers that this special ether has\nnot merely the contour of my body, but duplicates all its internal\norgans and minute parts; and lastly--this is a really prodigious\nleap--he supposes that this ether duplicate will remain when the body\ndissolves. On that theory, naturally, every flower and tree and rock\nthat ever existed, every house or ship that was ever built, every oyster\nor chicken that was ever swallowed, has left an ether duplicate\nsomewhere.\n\nWell, when you die, your ethereal body remains, and is animated by your\nsoul just as the body of flesh was. A death-bed is, on the new view, a\nmost remarkable scene. Men and women weep round the ghastly expiring\nframe, but all round them are invisible (ether) beings smiling and\njoyful. When the last breath leaves the prostrate body, you stand erect\nin your ethereal frame, and your ethereal friends gather round and wring\nyour ethereal hand. Congratulations over, one radiant spirit takes you\nby the hand and leads you through the solid wall and out into the\nbeyond. Presumably he is in a hurry to fit you with one of the \"damaged\nworsted\" suits. Sir Arthur stresses the fact that they have the same\nsense of modesty as we.\n\nThe next step is rather vague. One gathers that the reborn man is dazed,\nand he goes to sleep for weeks or months. Sleep is generally understood\nto be a natural process by which nerve and muscle, which have become\nloaded with chemical refuse, are relieved of this by the blood. What it\nmeans in ghostland we have not the least idea. But why puzzle over\ndetails where all is a challenge to common human reason? You awaken\npresently in Summerland and get your bearings. This is so much like the\nparadise described by Mr. Vale Owen that we will put ourselves under the\nguidance of that gentleman. I would merely note here a little\ninconsistency in the gospel according to St. Conan.\n\nOne of the now discovered charms of Summerland is that the young rapidly\nreach maturity, and the old go back to maturity. The ether-duplicate of\nthe stillborn child continues to grow--we would give much for a treatise\nfrom Professor Huxley (in his new incarnation) on this process of growth\nwithout mitosis and metabolism--and the ether-duplicate of the shrunken\nold lady of eighty smoothes out its wrinkles, straightens its back, and\nrecovers its fine contour of adipose tissue. But here a difficulty\noccurred to Sir A. C. Doyle. In his lectures all over the kingdom he has\nhad to outbid the preacher. _I_ promise you, he told bereaved mothers,\nthat you shall see again just the blue-eyed, golden-haired child that\nyou lost. He even says this in his book. With all goodwill, we cannot\nlet him have it both ways. If children rapidly mature, mothers will not\nsee the golden-haired child again.\n\nAt the risk of seeming meticulous, I would point out another aspect of\nthe revelation on which more information is desirable. Golden hair\nimplies a certain chemical combination which is well known to the\nphysiologist. Blue eyes mean a certain degree of thinness of pigment on\nthe front curtains of the eye. Now, ether has no chemical elements. It\nis precisely the subtle substance of the universe which is not yet\nmoulded into chemical elements. Are we to take it that Summerland is\nreally a material universe, not an ether world?\n\nAs Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has glowingly praised the revelations which\nhave come through the Rev. Mr. Vale Owen, I turn to these for closer\nguidance, and I find that my suspicion is correct. The next world is a\nmaterial world. Whether it has a different sun from ours is not stated,\nbut it is a world of wonderful colour. Flowers of the most gorgeous\ndescription live in it perpetually. Whether they ever grew up or will\never decay, whether they have roots in soil and need water, the prophet\nhas not yet told us. But the world is lovely with masses of flowers.\nPeople also dress like the flowers. They have beautifully coloured robes\nand gems (none of your \"damaged worsted\" for Mr. Vale Owen). In other\nwords, light, never-fading light, is the grand feature of the next\nworld. Since ether does not reflect light, it is obviously a material\nuniverse.\n\nMusic is the second grand element. Perhaps Mr. Owen would dispute this,\nand say that preaching is the outstanding feature. Certainly, everybody\nhe describes preaches so constantly and so dully that many people will\nnot like the prospect. Let us take it, rather, that music is the second\ngreat feature. They have great factories for musical instruments which\nmake a mockery of Brinsmeads. The bands go up high towers and produce\neffects which no earthly musician ever dreamed of producing. It follows,\nof course, that the ghosts not only tread a solid soil, in which flowers\ngrow, on which they build towers and mansions, but a very considerable\natmosphere floats above the soil. Mr. Vale Owen, in fact, introduces\nstreams and sheets of water; lovely lakes and rivers for the good ghosts\nand \"stagnant pools\" in the slums of ghostland. We will not press this.\nMr. Owen forgot for a moment that it _never rains_ in Summerland. But\nthe atmosphere is an essential part of the revelation, as without it\nthere will certainly be no music or flying birds. And an atmosphere\nmeans a very solid material world. Our moon, which weighs millions of\nbillions of tons, is too light to possess an atmosphere and water.\nConsequently, there must be thousands of miles of solid rock and metal\nunderfoot in ghostland.\n\nIt follows further that, since ghostland is very spacious, and since at\nleast a billion humans (to say nothing of animals) have quitted this\nearth since the ape men first wandered over it, this other material\nuniverse must be very extensive. If all the inhabited planets in the\nuniverse have their Summerlands, or all pour their dead into one vast\nSummerland, one begins to see that modern science is a ridiculous\nillusion. We should not see the sun, to say nothing of stars a thousand\nbillion miles away, or even remoter nebul\u00e6. As to astronomical\ncalculations of mass and gravitation....\n\nI can sustain the comedy no longer. These \"revelations\" are the most\nchildish twaddle that has been put before our race since the Middle\nAges. They are the meanderings of imaginations on a level with that of a\nfifteen-year-old school-girl. One really begins to wonder if our\ngeneration is _not_ in a state of senile decay, when tens of thousands\nof us acclaim this sort of thing as an outcome of superhuman\nintelligence. It is on a level with the \"happy hunting grounds\" of the\nAmerind. It is a dreamy parson's idea of the kind of world he would\nlike to retire to, and continue to \"do good\" without getting tired. It\nis a flimsy, irresponsible, juvenile thing of paint and tinsel and\ngold-foil: the kind of transformation-scene in which we revelled, at the\nChristmas pantomime, when we were young. Our generation needs guidance\nif ever any generation of men did. Another great war would wreck the\nplanet. The social soil heaves with underground movements. The stars are\nhidden from view. And people come before us with this kind of insipid\npuerility, and tell us it is \"the greatest message ever offered to man.\"\n\nSeriously, what it is can be told in few words. It is partly a fresh\nattempt to bring our generation back to religion. It is partly an\nattempt to divert working people from the politics and economics of\n_this_ world. And it is partly a fresh outbreak of the unlimited\ncredulity which every epidemic of Spiritualism has developed since 1848.\nThere was such a phase in the fifties of the nineteenth century, when\nSpiritualism swept over the world. There was a second such phase in the\nseventies, when materializations began. This was checked by exposures\neverywhere in the early eighties, and not until our time has\nSpiritualism partly recovered. Now the vast and lamentable emotional\ndisturbance of the War has given it a fresh opportunity, and for a time\nthe flame of credulity has soared up again.\n\nTo come back to the question which forms the title of this book, the\nreader may supply the answer, but I will venture to offer him a few\nsummary reflections. We do well to distinguish two classes of phenomena.\nBroadly, but by no means exactly, this is the distinction between\npsychical and physical phenomena. Messages on slates or paper from the\nspirit-world I would class with the physical phenomena. We have seen\nthat they reek with fraud, and there is no serious claim that any of\nthem are genuine.\n\nThe nearest we can get to a useful division is to set on one side a\nsmall class of mediums of high character who claim that, in trance and\nscript, they are spirit-controlled.\n\nSpiritualism is not based on these things. The thousands of enthusiastic\nSpiritualists of Great Britain and America know nothing about the \"Ear\nof Dionysius\" and the \"cross-correspondences\" of the Psychical\nResearchers. Their faith is solidly based on physical phenomena. They\nare taught by their leaders to base it on physical phenomena. Sir A. C.\nDoyle and Sir W. Barrett urge the levitations and other miracles of D.\nD. Home and Stainton Moses and Kathleen Goligher. Sir Oliver Lodge--who\nseems also to admit the preceding--asks us to consider seriously the\nperformances of Marthe Beraud. Sir W. Crookes lets it be understood that\nto the day of his death he believed in \"Katie King\" and the\nspirit-played accordion. Professor Richet, and all those other\nprofessors and scholars whose names are fondly quoted by Spiritualists,\nrely entirely on physical phenomena. If you cut out all the\nphysical-phenomena mediums of the nineteenth century, and all the\nghost-photographs and \"direct voices\" of to-day, you have very little\nleft. That is to say that Spiritualism is generally based on fraud.\n\nDoes it matter? Yes, it matters exceedingly. It matters more than it\never did before. The world is at a pass where it needs the\nclearest-headed attention and warmest interest of every man and woman\nin every civilization. Fine sentiments, too, we want; but not a\nsentimentality that palsies the judgment. Men never faced graver\nproblems or had a greater opportunity. Instead of distraction we want\nconcentration on earth. Instead of dreaminess we want a close\nappreciation of realities. There lies before our generation a period\neither of greater general prosperity than was ever known before, or a\nperiod of prolonged and devastating struggle. Which it shall be depends\non our wisdom.\n\nIs there any need to settle whether we shall live after death? The\nSpiritualist says that if we could convince men that their lot in that\nother world will be decided by their characters they will be more eager\nfor justice, honour, and sobriety. But a man's position in _this_ world\nis settled by his character. Justice, honour, and sobriety are laws of\n_this_ world. Men would have perceived it long ago, and acted\naccordingly, but for the unfortunate belief that these qualities were\narbitrarily commanded by supernatural powers. We need no other-worldly\nmotives whatever for the cultivation of character. Indeed, so far as I\ncan see, the man who gambles and drinks is more likely to say to the\nSpiritualist: \"You tell me there is no vindictive hell for what I do\nhere. You tell me there are no horses or fiery drinks in that other\nworld. Then I will drink and bet while the opportunity remains, and be\nsober and prudent afterwards.\"\n\nBut the dead, the loved ones we have lost! Must we forfeit this new hope\nthat we may see them again? Let us make no mistake. Half the civilized\nworld has already forfeited it. Six million people in London never\napproach a church, and the vast majority of these believe no longer in\nheaven. So it is in the large towns of nearly every civilization. Yet\nthe number of Spiritualists in the entire world is not one-tenth the\nnumber of \"pagans\" in London alone. And there is no weeping and gnashing\nof teeth. At the time of the wrench one suffers. Slowly nature embalms\nthe wound, as she already draws her green mantle over the hideous wounds\nof France and Belgium. We learn serenity. Life is a gift. Every friend\nand dear one is a gift. It is not wise to complain that gifts do not\nlast for ever.\n\nThe finest sentiment you can bestow on the memory of the dead is to make\nthe world better for the living. Has your child been torn from you? In\nits memory try to make the world safer and happier for the myriads of\nchildren who remain. This earth is but a poor drab thing compared with\nwhat it could be made in a single generation. Hotbeds of disease abound\nin our cities, and children fall in scandalous numbers in the heat of\nsummer or perish in the blasts of winter. Let the pain of loss drive us\nsurvivors into securing that losses shall be less frequent and less\npainful. Do not listen to those who say that critics crush the voice of\nthe heart in the name of reason. We want all the heart we can get in\nlife, all the strength of emotion and devotion we can engender. But let\nit be expended on the plain, and plainly profitable, task of making this\nearth a Summerland. Do that, as your leisure and your powers permit,\nand, when the day is over, you will lie down with a smile, whether you\nare ever to awaken or are to sleep for ever.\n\n\nPRINTED BY WATTS AND CO., JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET ST., LONDON, E.C.4.","title":"Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":47408}