Chapter V A CHAPTER OF GHOSTLY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Spiritualism began in 1848 with the humble and entirely fraudulent phenomena of raps. Within three years there were hundreds of mediums in the United States, and a dollar per sitter was the customary fee for assisting at one of the services of the new religion. It soon became widely known that raps could be produced by very earthly means, and in any case the rivalry of mediums was bound to develop new "phenomena." As in all other professions, originality paid; and as the wonderful discovery was quickly made that darkness favoured the intensity and variety of the phenomena, the spirit power began to break upon humanity in a bewildering variety of forms. In this chapter we will examine a number of these accomplishments which our departed fellows have learned on the Elysian fields.

D. D. Home is still the classical exponent of some of these accomplishments. Indeed, there is one of his phenomena which no medium of our time has the courage to reproduce, and, since this phenomenon is expressly endorsed by Sir William Barrett in his recent work, On the Threshold of the Unseen (1917), we shall be accused of timidity and unfairness if we omit to consider it. It is said that on several well-authenticated occasions—so Sir W. Barrett assures the public—Home took burning coals in his hands, thrust his hands into the blazing fire, or even put his face among the live coals. What is the evidence which Sir W. Barrett, knowing that the general public has no leisure to investigate these things, endorses as satisfactory?

The reader who has patience enough to consider these extraordinary claims in detail will find the evidence collected and examined in Mr. Podmore's Newer Spiritualism (chapters i and ii). It is just as weak and unsatisfactory as the evidence for Home's levitations, which we have already examined. The first witness is a lady, Mrs. Hall, who had the advantage of a profound belief that Home could do anything whatever, and that the idea of fraud was worse than preposterous in connection with so holy a man. Home's demure expression and constant utterances of piety and virtue, which seem to Mr. Podmore "inconceivably nauseous," made a deep impression on Mrs. Hall and the other ladies whom Home used generally to have next to him when he was performing his wonders. Now, this lady tells us that on July 5, 1869, he took a large live coal from the fire, put it on her husband's head, and drew his white hair over it. He left it there for four or five minutes, and then gave it to Mrs. Hall to hold. She says that it was "still red in parts," but she was not burned.

It would follow that Home was so charged with supernatural power that he could communicate a large measure of it to Mr. Hall's head or Mrs. Hall's hands—a feat unique in the history of Spiritualism. We need not go so far. There is nothing in Mrs. Hall's narrative to prevent us from supposing that Home put some non-conducting substance on her husband's head before he put the coal on it. Any person can pick a live coal out of the fire if a part of it (as is common) is not alive. Some can go further. I can stick my finger-tips in my live pipe without being burned. Some smokers can pick up a small live coal and light their pipes with it. Probably all the coals which Daniel picked from the fire were "dead" in parts. It is clear that this particular coal was not glowing, as Mrs. Hall states that her husband's white hair showed "silvery" against it. If the coal had glowed, the hair would show black against it. Probably Home lifted up the hair round, and not on, it; and after five minutes part of it would be cool enough to lay on Mrs. Hall's hand.

Sir William Crookes is the next witness: a great scientist, but—we cannot forget it—the man who was easily duped by a girl of seventeen. He says that he accompanied Home to the fire, and saw him put his hands in it. That is anything but the scientific way to give evidence. We want an exact description of the state of the fire, the light, etc. But notice this next sentence: "He very deliberately pulled the lumps of hot coal off, one at a time, with his right hand, and touched one which was bright red." So the "lumps" among which he had put his hands were not bright red; and we are left free to suppose that the one which he touched was not bright red all over. Home then took out a handkerchief, waved it about in the air, and folded it on his hand. He next took out a coal which was "red in one part" and laid it on the handkerchief without burning it. The story smacks of charlatanry from beginning to end. Crookes ought at least to have known better than to suppose that a handkerchief "gathered power" by being waved about. It more probably gathered a piece of asbestos from Home's pocket.

The other pretty stories of Home's fire-tricks may be read in Podmore. Juggling with fire is an ancient practice. It is very common among savages. Daniel Home, with his select and private audience, had excellent conditions for doing it. In bad light he did even more wonderful things than those I have quoted; that is to say, if we take the record literally, which we may decline to do. Crookes, like some other investigating professors, was short-sighted. No wonder that Daniel loved him.

Let us pass on to the musical accomplishments of the spirits; and here again the gifted Daniel was one of the pioneer mediums. He induced the spirits to play an accordion while he held it with one hand; and his hand held it by the end farthest removed from the keys. Unfortunately, the spirits laid down the condition that he must hold it out of sight, underneath the table, and our interest is damped. We know something from other mediums of the ways of doing this. While you are putting the accordion under the table you change your hand from the back end to the key end of the accordion. Then you can get the bellows to play by pushing it against something or using a hook at the end of a strong thread or catgut. It is well to remember that Home was a good musician. Possibly he played a mouth-organ while the professor was looking intently at the accordion.

But Home was put to a severe test, we are told. Sir W. Crookes made a cage (like a waste-paper basket) to go under the table, and Home was told to let the accordion hang in this. He could certainly not now use his second hand or his feet, yet it "played." But, as Mr. Podmore, most ingenious of critics, points out, no one saw the keys move. The music may have come from a musical box in Home's pocket, or placed by him on the floor. The degree of light or darkness is not stated. The opening and shutting of the accordion could be done by hooks, or loops of black silk. So with the crowning miracle, when Home withdrew his hand, and the accordion was seen suspended in the air, moving about in the cage (under the dark table). It was probably hooked on to the table.

Before we pass on to other ghostly musicians, let us notice another feat of Home's which Sir William Crookes records here. He placed a board with one end on the table and the other on a spring balance. It was so shaped (with feet at each end) that an enormous pressure would have to be exerted on it at the table-end if the balance were to be appreciably altered. Yet a light touch of Home's fingers caused the scale to register six pounds. Podmore points out that this experiment had been gradually reached. Home knew the conditions, and had made his preparations. The light was poor, and a loop of strong silk thread at the far end of the board, pulled from some part of his person, would not be noticed. We shall see far more remarkable feats than this.

A pretty variation of musical mediumship was next introduced by Mrs. Annie Eva Fay, another American fraud with whom Sir W. Crookes made solemn scientific experiments. Florrie Cook was a chicken in comparison with Annie Fay, and she triumphantly passed all the professor's tests. She came to London in 1874, and everybody soon went to see and hear the "fascinating American blonde" at the Hanover Square Rooms.

Mrs. Fay's most characteristic séance was when she sat in the middle of a circle of sitters, a bell and a guitar beside her. Her husband, "Colonel" Fay, was in the circle, but, as they held each other's hands, it was presumed that he could do nothing to help her if he wished. Mrs. Fay then began to clap her hands. The lights were extinguished, and, although Mrs. Fay continued to clap her hands loudly, so that you could be sure she was not using them, the bell was rung, the tambourine played, the sitters' beards were pulled, and so on. This was easy. When the gas was put out, Mrs. Fay no longer slapped her left hand against her right, but against her forehead or cheek—perhaps slapped the Colonel's face for a variation—and had the right hand free for business. No doubt the Colonel also released a hand, as we have seen Eusapia Palladino do, and joined the band.

When this trick was realized, Mrs. Fay used to allow herself to be bound with tapes to a stake erected on the stage. A few minutes after the lights were put out the band began its ghostly, but not very impressive, music. Sometimes a pail was put beside her, and it was raised by invisible hands (in the dark) on to her head. When the light was restored Mrs. Fay was discovered still bound to the stake, the knots and seals intact. By an accident at one of her performances Mr. Podmore was enabled to see how she did it, and the secret has long been known. The tapes supplied had to be fastened in such a way that she could with great speed slip them up her slender arms and get into a working position. Maskelyne also exposed her, and trade fell off so badly that she made him an offer, by letter, to go on his stage and, for payment, show how all the tricks were done. She had by that time converted hundreds to Spiritualism.

There were various other forms of the musical performance. One medium used to sit in sight of the audience with a sitter holding his hands. A cloth was then put over them both, from the neck downward, the lights extinguished, and the usual band began. He had released one hand, by the familiar trick, and reached behind him for the instruments.

The medium, Bastian, also played instruments in the dark. At Arnheim, where he was edifying the Dutch Spiritualists, he was suspected, and it was arranged to ignite some inflammable cotton by an electric current from the next room. The next time a ghostly hand played the guitar above the heads of the sitters, the signal was given, and the flash lit the room. The guitar fell hastily to the table, and Bastian's hand retreated rapidly to its right place. His English Spiritualist admirers accepted his explanation that it was a "materialized" hand that was seen shrinking back into his body. One medium strummed his guitar with a long pencil which he took with his teeth out of his inner coat-pocket and held with his teeth. Others had telescopic rods or "lazy tongs" hidden about them, and used these in the dark.

The binding of mediums with cords or tapes is a "precaution against fraud" which was thoroughly exposed fifty years ago. Many of Sir A. C. Doyle's own admirers were pained when he announced to the world his belief in the genuineness of the performance of two Welsh colliers, the Thomas brothers. Their "manifestations" were prehistoric. More than fifty years ago spectators were invited to tie up the mediums, and as long ago as 1883 Mr. Maskelyne was exhibiting the trick. The Davenport brothers, the latest American marvels, had toured England. Most people will remember how they were held up at Liverpool by some one tying the rope in knots with which they were not familiar. The spirits failed entirely to play the tambourine when the tying-up was properly done, and the instrument was put out of reach of the medium's mouth. As usual, it had been said for months that fraud was "absolutely excluded."

Later mediums found the solution of this difficulty. The medium kept a sharp knife-blade within reach of his teeth, and, when knots proved too stubborn, he cut the rope and freed himself. He had a spare rope in his clothes and fastened himself—or was bound by a confederate—before the lights went up. People thought that they could prevent this by sealing the knots. It was useless. The medium had chewing gum of the same colour as sealing-wax, and the seals were imitated with this. These desperate shifts are, however, rarely necessary. While he is being tied the medium catches a loop of the rope with his thumb, and this gives him plenty of slack to use. I have seen a medium laced tight into a leather arm-case, and get out behind the curtain in three minutes. He had caught a loop of the lace with his thumb, and the rest was tooth work.

It was therefore little wonder that when the Thomas brothers were brought from the valleys of South Wales to London their ancient miracles would not work. A recent convert to Spiritualism, Mr. S. A. Moseley, describes their work on their native heath (or hearth) with the same awe and simplicity as Sir A. C. Doyle had done. Many of us knew the history of Spiritualism, and smiled. They were brought to London by the Daily Express in 1919, and here, where sceptics abounded and the need of convincing evidence was at its most acute, "White Eagle" (the Red Indian spirit who controls Will Thomas) and all his band of merry men were powerless. Will Thomas was properly bound, the tambourine and castanets were put out of reach, and his brother was isolated. All that happened—the throwing of a badge-button and a pair of braces to the audience—is within the range of possibilities of the human mouth.

Let us now turn to another bright and classical page in the history of Spiritualism: the experiments of Professor Zöllner with the medium Slade. Sir A. C. Doyle granted in the Debate, with an air of generosity, that Slade "cheated occasionally," but he insisted that Slade's phenomena in the house of Professor Zöllner were genuine. Now, as long as Sir A. C. Doyle does this kind of thing, as long as he assures his readers that he will not build on any medium who has been convicted of fraud and then builds on such a medium, as long as he tells his readers (who will not check the facts) that a medium who was exposed over and over again merely "cheated occasionally," it is no use for him to assert that he is trying to purge Spiritualism of fraud. Slade was a cynical impostor from beginning to end of his career.

I will show in the next chapter but one how Slade confessed his habitual fraud as early as 1872, how he was exposed and arrested in London in 1876, and how he was exposed again in Canada in 1882 and in the United States in 1884. A word about the last occasion will suffice for my purpose here. Henry Seybert, a Spiritualist, left a large sum of money to the University of Pennsylvania on the condition that the University authorities would appoint a commission to examine into (among other things) the claims of Spiritualism. They did; and it was the most unlucky inspiration the ghosts of the dead ever conveyed. Very few mediums would face the professors, and those who did were shown to be all frauds. Slade was one of these, and the Pennsylvania professors, wondering how any trained man could be taken in by so palpable a fraud, sent a representative to Leipsic to investigate the experiences of Professor Zöllner and the three other German professors who had endorsed Slade. The gist of his report was that of the four professors one (Zöllner) was in an early stage of insanity (he died shortly afterwards), one (Fechner) was nearly blind, the third (Weber) was seventy-four years old, and the fourth (Scheibner) was very short-sighted, yet did not (as Sir A. C. Doyle says) entirely endorse the phenomena!

I have not been able to discover evidence that Zöllner's mind was really deranged, but he certainly approached the inquiry with a theory of a fourth dimension of space, and was most eager to get his theory confirmed by the experiments. The key to the whole situation is, therefore, lack of sharp control. Slade had been conjuring for years, and was an expert in substitution. He had a purblind audience, and he astutely guided the professor until the conditions of the experiment suited him. He knew beforehand, as a rule, what apparatus Zöllner would use, and he duplicated his wooden rings, thongs, etc. An excellent study of his tricks in detail will be found in Carrington's Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. Sir A. C. Doyle speaks of the shattering of a screen in Slade's presence as an indisputably superhuman feat. But before the séance no one had thought of looking to see if the screen had been taken to pieces and lightly tied together by a black thread which Slade could pull asunder at will!

Slade was a very bad selection by Sir A. C. Doyle. No prominent medium was ever so frequently exposed as he. In addition to the exposures I have mentioned, Dr. Hyslop, Mrs. Sidgwick, and other leading Spiritualists riddled his pretensions to supernormal power. In the end he took to drink and died in an asylum. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle assures his followers, in his Vital Message, that he never builds on a discredited medium.

Let us turn now to Stainton Moses, the snow-white medium. Moses was a neuropathic clergyman who in 1872 left the Church and became a teacher. About the same time he discovered mediumistic powers. He died ultimately of Bright's disease, brought on by drink. His audience, as I said before, consisted only of a few intimate friends who never doubted his saintliness or thought for a moment of fraud. He worked always in the dark, or in a very bad light; and his doings are mainly described by his trustful friend and host, Mrs. Speer. This would dispense any serious student from troubling about his phenomena; but let us see if they throw any light on his character. Mr. Carrington says that the things reported are unbelievable, yet that we cannot think of fraud in connection with Moses. Podmore also tries hard not to accuse him of conscious fraud, and hints that he was irresponsible. The reader may choose to think otherwise.

The spirits performed every variety of phenomena through Stainton Moses. Like Home, and only a few of the quite holiest mediums, he was occasionally lifted off the ground; or, which is, of course, the same thing, he said that he was. Raps were common when he was about. Automatic writing of the most elevating (and most inaccurate) description flowed from his pencil. Lights floated about the room; and once or twice he dropped and broke a bottle of phosphorus in the dark. Musical sounds were repeatedly heard, as in the case of the Rev. Dr. Monck, who had a little musical box in his trousers. The sitters were sprayed with scent. The objects on the dressing-table in his room were arranged by invisible hands in the form of a cross. Wonderful messages about recently deceased persons were sent through him; and the details could later be found in the papers. In fine, he was a remarkably good medium for "apports"—that is to say, the bringing into the circle by the spirits of flowers and other objects. Statuettes, jewels, books, and all kinds of things (provided they were in the house and could be secreted about the person) were "apported."

The evidence for these things is particularly poor, but I am a liberal man. I do not doubt them. Each one of them, separately, was done by other mediums. It is the rich variety that characterizes Moses. Let him sleep in peace. The credulity and admiration of his friends seem to have made him lose the last particle of sense of honour in these matters. These things are common elementary conjuring from beginning to end.

Apports are a familiar ghostly accomplishment, and the way they are done is familiar. Mme. Blavatsky was wonderful at apports. Who would ever dream of proposing to search Mme. Blavatsky? And who would now be so simple as to think of spirits when the medium was not searched? The person of Mme. Blavatsky was as sacred from such search as the person of the Rev. Stainton Moses or of the charming and guileless Florrie Cook. Indeed, it is only in recent times that a real search of the medium has been demanded, and the accounts of weird and wonderful objects "apported" under other conditions merit only a smile. Mrs. Guppy, secured from search by her virtue and the esteem of Dr. Russel Wallace, went so far as to apport live eels. Eusapia Palladino one day "apported" a branch of azaleas in Flammarion's house; and he afterwards found an azalea plant, which it exactly fitted, in her bedroom. Another day her spirits showered marguerites on the table; and the marguerites were missed from a pot in the corridor. Anna Rothe, the Princess Karadja's pet medium, was secretly watched, and was caught bringing bouquets from her petticoats and oranges out of her ample bosom; and the spirits did not save her from a year in gaol. She had a whole flower-shop under her skirts when she was seized.

But we will not run over the whole silly chronicle of "apports." Two recent instances will suffice. One is the Turin lady, Linda Gazerra, of whom I have spoken on an earlier page. She was too virtuous to strip, and let down her hair, even in the presence of a lady. So Dr. Imoda, a scientific man who consented to accept her on these terms, was fooled for three years (1908-11). She had live birds caged in the large mass of her hair (natural and artificial), and all sorts of things in her lingerie.

About the same time, an Australian medium, Bailey, made a sensational name throughout the Spiritualist world by his "apports." The spirits brought silks from the Indies (until the brutal customs official claimed the tariff), live birds, and all sorts of things. He was taken so seriously in the Spiritualist world that Professor Reichel, a rich French inquirer, brought him to France for investigation. Sure enough, although he was searched, the spirits brought into the room two little birds "from India." But his long hesitations and evasions had aroused suspicion, and on inquiry it was proved that he had bought the birds, which were quite French, at a local shop in Grenoble. How had he smuggled them into the room? I give the answer (as it is given by Count Rochas, his host) with reluctance, but it is absolutely necessary to know these things if you want to understand some of the more difficult mediumistic performances. The birds were concealed in the unpleasant end of his alimentary canal. Professor Reichel gave him his return fare and urged him to go quickly; and the Australian Spiritualists received him with open arms, and listened sympathetically to his stories of French brutality.

Of "apports," therefore, we say the same as of "materializations." The medium shall be stripped naked, have all his or her body-openings muzzled, be sewn in prepared garments, and placed in a prepared and carefully searched room. When Spiritualists announce the appearance of an eel or a pigeon or a bouquet, or even a copy of Light, under those conditions, we will begin to consider the question of apports.

Luminous phenomena "are easily simulated," says Dr. Maxwell. Most people will agree to this candid verdict of so experienced and so sympathetic an investigator. Tons of phosphorus have been used in the service of religion since 1848. It has taken the place of incense. The saintly Moses twice had a nasty mess with his bottle of phosphorus. Herne was one night tracing a pious message in luminous characters (with a damp match) when there was a crackle and flash; the match had "struck." The movement abounds in incidents which are, in a double sense, "luminous."

Certain sulphides may be used instead of phosphorus, and in modern times electricity is an excellent means of producing lights at a distance. Chemicals of the pyrotechnic sort are also useful. One must remember that behind the thousands of mediums, whose fertile brains are constantly elaborating new methods of evading control, are manufacturers and scientific experts who supply them with chemicals and apparatus. One often hears Spiritualists laugh at this suggestion as a wild theory of their opponents. Any impartial person will acknowledge that it is more probable than improbable. But positive proof has been given over and over again.

Quite recently Mr. Sidney Hamilton described in Pearson's Weekly (February 28, 1920) an "illustrated printed catalogue of forty pages" which he had with great difficulty secured. It was the secret catalogue of a firm which supplies apparatus to mediums. The outfit includes "a self-playing guitar," a telescopic aluminium trumpet (for direct voice), magic tables, luminous objects, and even "a fully materialized female form (with face that convinces) ... floats about the room and disappears ... Price £10." For eight shillings this firm supplies the secret how to turn one's vest inside out, without changing coat, while one is bound, and the knots sealed, in the cabinet. For two pounds ten you get an apparatus which will levitate a table so effectively that "two or three persons cannot hold the table down." In short, there is, and has been for decades, a trade supply of apparatus and instructions for producing the whole range of "physical phenomena," and any person who pays serious attention to such things is not very particular whether he is deceived or not.

I may close the chapter with a case of spirit sculpture, which is recorded by Truesdell in his Bottom Facts of Spiritualism. By this trick, he says, Mrs. Mary Hardy converted one of those professors whose names adorn the Spiritualist list. A pail of warm water, with several inches of paraffin floating on its surface, was weighed and put under the table. After a time a hand moulded most accurately in wax was found on the floor beside the pail, and it was found that the weight of the contents of the pail had decreased by precisely the weight of the hand. A convincing test, surely! But the professor had forgotten to allow for the evaporation of the warm water. The hand had been made in advance, by moulding the soft paraffin on the medium's hand, and hidden under Mrs. Hardy's skirt. It was transferred by her toes to the floor under the table.

Chapter VI THE SUBTLE ART OF CLAIRVOYANCE

Spiritualists distinguish between physical phenomena and psychic phenomena. The use of this distinction is obvious. When a man reads some such history of the movement as Podmore's, and then the works of Truesdell, Robinson, Maskelyne, Carrington, and others who have time after time exposed the ways of mediums, he is very ill-disposed to listen to stories of materialization, levitation, spirit photographs, spirit messages, spirit music, spirit voices, or anything of the kind. He knows that each single trick has been exposed over and over again. So the liberal Spiritualist urges him to leave out "physical" phenomena and concentrate on the "psychic." It is a word with an aroma of refinement, spirituality, even intellect. It indicates the sort of thing that respectable spirits ought to do. So we will turn to the psychic phenomenon of clairvoyance.

Here at once the reader's resolution to approach the subject gravely is disturbed by the recollection of a recent event. Many a reader would, quite apart from the question of consolation, like to find something true in Spiritualism. He may feel, as Professor William James did, that the mass of fraud is so appalling that, for the credit of humanity, we should like to think that it is the citizens of another world, not of ours, who are responsible. He may feel that, if it is all fraud, a number of quite distinguished people occupy a very painful position in modern times. He would like to find at least something serious; something that is reasonably capable of a Spiritualist interpretation. But as soon as he approaches any class of phenomena some startling instance of fraud rises in his memory and tries to prejudice him. In this case it is the "Masked Medium."

A recent case in the law courts has brought this to mind. In 1919, when the Sunday Express was making its grave search for ghosts, in order to rebuke the materialism of our age, it offered £500 for a materialization. A gentleman, who (with an eye on the police) genially waived the money offer aside, offered to bring an unknown lady and present a materialization, and some startling feats of clairvoyance in addition. A sitting was arranged, and the lady, who wore a mask, gave a clairvoyant demonstration that could not be surpassed in all the annals of Spiritualism. Her ghost was rather a failure; though Lady Glenconnor, who has the true Spiritualist temperament, recognized in it an "initial stage of materialization." But the clairvoyance was great. The sitters, while the lady was still out of the room, put various objects connected with the dead (a ring, a stud, a sealed letter, etc.) in a bag. The bag was closed, and was put inside a box; and the lady, who was then introduced, described every object with marvellous accuracy. Sir A. C. Doyle said that the medium gave "a clear proof of clairvoyance." Mr. Gow said that he saw "no normal explanation."

And it was fraud from beginning to end, as everybody now knows. Clairvoyance must be distinguished from prophecy, which Spiritualists sometimes claim. Prediction means the art of seeing things which do not exist, and it is therefore not even mentioned in this book. Clairvoyance means the art of seeing things through a brick wall (or any other opaque covering). Now this was an admirable piece of clairvoyance. Even Spiritualists present were suspicious, because the lady was quite unknown. Yet they could not see any suggestion of fraud or any "normal explanation." Did they turn back upon their earlier experiences of clairvoyance, when the fraud was confessed, and ask if those also may not have been due to trickery? Not in the least. Everything is genuine until it is found out—and, sometimes, even afterwards.

Mr. Selbit, the conjurer who really conducted the performance, is naturally unwilling to give away his secret. He acknowledged immediately after the performance, as Mr. Moseley describes in his Amazing Séance, that he had fooled the audience. The masked lady was an actress with no more abnormal power than Sir Oliver Lodge has. Mr. Stuart Cumberland suggested at the time that, when the assistant went to the door to call the medium, he handed the box to a confederate and received a dummy box. He thought that the medium would then have time to study and memorize the contents of the real box (including a sealed letter in dog-German) before she entered the room. From the account, which is not precise enough, I can hardly see how she would have time for this. But Mr. Selbit acknowledged that a dummy box was substituted. He says that a person entered the room in the dark, took the box from the table and substituted a dummy, and afterwards impersonated the ghost. This is most important for us. The room had been searched, and such acute observers as Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Superintendent Thomas, of Scotland Yard, were on the watch; yet a confederate got into the room. After this an ordinary Spiritualist séance is child's play. A long and minute description of the objects in the bag, which must have been spelled letter by letter in parts, on account of the difficult wording of the sealed letter, was in some way telegraphed or communicated to the girl under the eyes of this watchful group. It would be scarcely more marvellous to suppose that Mr. Selbit, after studying the contents of the box, took her place before their faces and they never knew it!

The reader will not fail to see why I have minutely pointed out the features of this recent case. It is, in the first place, an example of "psychic," not "physical," phenomena; and it was conjuring pure and simple. It was, further, "most successful and convincing," as Sir A. C. Doyle pronounced; yet there was not a particle of abnormal power about it. Finally, it was done in the presence of three keen critics, as well as of leading Spiritualists; yet the fraud was not discovered. To invoke the "supernormal," after this, the moment some ordinary individual fails to detect fraud, is surely ludicrous.

Now let me put another warning before the reader. It is notorious that Spiritualists are particularly, even if innocently, apt to mislead in their accounts of their experiences. Unless the experience is recorded on paper at once, it is almost worthless; and even then it is often quite wrong. There is such a thing as "selection" in the human mind. When two people, a Spiritualist and a sceptic, see or read the same thing, their minds may get quite a different impression of it. The mind of the Spiritualist leaps to the features of it which seem to be supernormal, and slurs or ignores or soon forgets the others. The mind of the sceptic does the opposite. You thus get quite inaccurate accounts from Spiritualists, though they are often quite innocent. One once asked me to explain how a medium, two hundred miles from his home, in a place where no one knew him, could tell his name and a good deal about him. By two minutes' cross-examination I got him to admit that he had been working for some weeks in this district and was known to a few fellow-workers. No doubt one of these had given a medium information about him, and then induced him to visit her. These indirect methods are very effective.

A very good example is Sir A. C. Doyle himself. In the debate with me he made statement after statement of the most inaccurate description. He said that Eusapia Palladino was quite honest in the first fifteen years of her mediumship; that he had given me the names of forty Spiritualist professors; that the Fox sisters were at first honest; that I did not give the evidence from his books correctly; that Mr. Lethem got certain detailed information the first time he consulted a medium; that in Mme. Bisson's book you can see ectoplasm pouring from the medium's "nose, eyes, ears, and skin"; that Florrie Cook "never took one penny of money"; that in the Belfast experiment the table rose to the ceiling; and so on. His frame of mind was extraordinary. But I will give a far more extraordinary case which will make the reader very cautious about Spiritualist testimony.

About forty years ago, when the old type of ghost story was not yet quite dead, Myers and Gurney, who were collecting anecdotes of this sort, received a particularly authentic specimen. It was a personal experience of Sir Edmund Hornby, a retired Judge from Shanghai. A few years earlier, he said, he had one night written out his judgment for the following day, but the reporter failed to call for a copy. He went to bed, and some time after one o'clock he was awakened by the reporter, who very solemnly asked him for the copy. With much grumbling Sir Edmund got up and gave him the copy. He remembered that in returning to bed he had awakened Lady Hornby. And the next morning, on going to court, he learned that the reporter had died just at that hour, of heart disease (as the inquest afterwards found), and had never left the house. He had been visited by the reporter's spirit.

Here was an experience of most exceptional weight. Who could doubt either the word or the competence of the Chief Judge of the Supreme Consular Court of China and Japan? The story was promptly written up in the Nineteenth Century ("Visible Apparitions," July, 1884), and sceptics were confounded. But a copy of the Nineteenth Century reached Shanghai, where the incident was said to have taken place, and in the same monthly for November there appeared a letter from Mr. Balfour, editor of the North China Herald and the Supreme Court and Consular Gazette. It proved, and Sir E. Hornby was compelled to admit, that the story was entirely untrue. It was a jumble of inaccuracies. The reporter had died between eight and nine in the morning, not at one, and had slept peacefully all night. There had been no inquest. There was no judgment whatever delivered by Sir E. Hornby that morning. There was not even a Lady Hornby in existence at the time! Sir Edmund Hornby sullenly acknowledged the truth of all this, and could mutter only that he could not understand his own mistake.

After this awful example we think twice before we take the testimony of Spiritualists at its face value. Sir A. C. Doyle, in particular, is especially guilty of such confusions, to the great advantage of his stories. During the Debate, as I said, he told of a wonderful Glasgow clairvoyante, who was consulted by a Mr. Lethem (a Glasgow J.P.), who had lost a son in the War. She at once told Mr. Lethem, Sir Arthur says, his son's name, the name of the London station at which he had said farewell, and the name of the London hotel at which they had stayed. This sounded very impressive indeed. But I happened to have read Mr. Lethem's articles (Weekly Record, February 21 and 28, 1920), and I have them before me. Mr. Lethem was a well-known man in Glasgow, and was known to be "inquiring." Now it was eight months after his son's death that he met this clairvoyante, yet all she could tell him was his son's name and appearance. It was, he confesses, "not much" and "not strictly evidential." It was at a later sitting that she gave the other details. Sir A. C. Doyle has fused the two sittings together and made the experience more impressive. The medium had time to make inquiries. There is a further detail which Sir A. C. Doyle does not tell. The brother of the dead officer asked, as a test question, the name of the town where they had last dined together. It took "more than a year" to get an answer to this!

Thus a quite commonplace and easily explained feat of a medium is dressed up by Sir A. C. Doyle as supernormal. He does this repeatedly in his books. In the New Revelation he says, quoting Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond, that a medium described to Sir Oliver a photograph of his son, "no copy of which had reached England, and which proved to be exactly as he described it." Here he has done the same as in the case of Mr. Lethem—fused together several successive sittings. The first medium consulted by Sir Oliver Lodge made only a very brief statement. It was wrong in three out of four particulars; and the fourth was a very safe guess (that Raymond had once been photographed in a group). The particulars which so much impressed Sir O. Lodge were given much later, and by a lady medium; and by that time there were plenty of copies of the photograph in England! Sir O. Lodge gives the various dates.

Sir William Barrett and Sir O. Lodge are just as slipshod. I have amply shown this in the case of Lodge in my Religion of Sir O. Lodge (and Raymond is even worse than the books I analysed), and Sir W. F. Barrett's On the Threshold of the Unseen is just as bad. I have previously said how he tells his readers that it would take "the cleverest conjurer with elaborate apparatus" to do what the Golighers do at Belfast; and I showed that one limb of one member of the circle of seven mediums would, with the help of a finger or two perhaps, explain everything. Sir William also says (p. 53) that the London Dialectical Society "published the report of a special committee" strongly in favour of Spiritualism. On the contrary, the London Dialectical Society expressly refused to publish that egregious document. He says (p. 72), in describing the Home levitation case, that "nothing was said beforehand of what they might expect to see," and "the accounts given by each [witness] are alike." These statements are the reverse of the truth. The book contains many such instances.

Here is another, which is expressly concerned with the greatest of all "clairvoyantes," Mrs. Piper, and the most critical Spiritualist of modern times, Dr. Hodgson. In the Debate Sir A. C. Doyle introduces him (p. 21) as "Professor Hodgson, the greatest detective who ever put his mind to this subject." He is fond of turning the people he quotes into "professors." It makes them more weighty. Hodgson was never a professor, but he was an able man, and he exposed more than one fraud like Eusapia Palladino. But I have been permitted to see a letter which puts Dr. Hodgson himself in the category of over-zealous and unreliable witnesses; and as this letter is to be published in the form of a preface to the second edition of Dr. C. Mercier's book on Spiritualism, I am not quoting an anonymous document.

Mrs. Piper, the great American clairvoyante, the medium whose performances are endorsed as genuine even by men who regard Spiritualism as ninety-eight per cent. fraud, began her career as a "psychic" in 1874. At first she was controlled, in the common Spiritualist way, by "an Indian girl." Then the great spirits of Bach and Longfellow and other illustrious dead began to control her. Next a deceased French doctor, "Phinuit," took her in hand, and she did wonderful things. But when people who were really critical began to test Phinuit's knowledge of medicine, and inquire (for the purpose of verification) about Phinuit's former address on earth, he hedged and shuffled, and then retired into obscurity, like the Indian girl and Longfellow. Her next spirit was "Pelham," a young man who modestly desired to remain anonymous. For four years "George Pelham," a highly cultivated spirit, gave "marvellously accurate" messages through Mrs. Piper, and the world was assured that there was not the slightest doubt about his identity. He was a very cultivated young American who had "passed over" in 1892.

Mr. Podmore, who, in spite of his high critical faculty, was taken in by this episode, thinks that telepathy alone can explain the wonderful things done. He does not believe in ghosts. Mrs. Piper's "subconscious self," he thinks, creates and impersonates these spirit beings, and draws the information telepathically from the sitters. But he says that the impersonation was so "dramatically true to life," so "consistently and dramatically sustained," that "some of G. P.'s most intimate friends were convinced that they were actually in communication with the deceased G. P."[12] It is true that when the dead G. P. was asked about a society he had helped to form in his youth he could give neither its aim nor its name, and Podmore admits that Mrs. Piper hedged very badly in trying to cover up her failure. But on other occasions the hits were so good that we have, if we do not admit the ghost theory, to take refuge in telepathy and the subconscious self.

There is no need even for this thin shade of mysticism. Podmore was misled by Hodgson's account. "G. P." meant, as everybody knew, George Pellew. Now a cousin of Pellew's wrote to Mr. Clodd to tell him that, if he cared to ask the family, he would learn that all the relatives of the dead man regarded Mrs. Piper's impersonation of him as "beneath contempt." Mr. Clodd wrote to Professor Pellew, George's brother, and found that this was the case. The family had been pestered for fifteen years with reports of the proceedings and requests to authenticate them and join the S. P. R. They said that they knew George, and they could not believe that, when freed from the burden of the flesh, he would talk such "utter drivel and inanity." As to "intimate friends," one of these was Professor Fiske, who had been described by Dr. Hodgson as "absolutely convinced" of the identity of "G. P." When Professor Pellew told Professor Fiske of this, he replied, roundly, that it was "a lie." Mrs. Piper had, he said, been "silent or entirely wrong" on all his test questions.[13]

I am, you see, not choosing "weak spots," as Sir A. C. Doyle said, and am not quite so ignorant of psychic matters, in comparison with himself, as he represented (Debate, p. 51). I am taking the greatest "clairvoyante" in the history of the movement, and in precisely those respects in which she was endorsed by Dr. Hodgson and the American S. P. R. and Sir O. Lodge and all the leading English Spiritualists. She failed at every crucial test. Phinuit, who knew so much, could not give a plausible account of his own life on earth, or how he came to forget medicine. When Sir O. Lodge presented to Mrs. Piper a sealed envelope containing a number of letters of the alphabet, she could not read one of them, and declined to try again. She could not answer simple tests about Pellew. She gave Professor James messages from Gurney after his death (1888), and James pronounced them "tiresome twaddle." When Myers died in 1901 and left a sealed envelope containing a message, she could not get a word of it. When Hodgson died in 1905 and left a large amount of manuscript in cipher, she could not get the least clue to it. When friends put test questions to the spirit of Hodgson about his early life in Australia, the answers were all wrong.

Mrs. Piper fished habitually and obviously for information from her sitters. She got at names by childishly repeating them with different letters (a very common trick of mediums), and often changed them. She made the ghost of Sir Walter Scott talk the most arrant nonsense about the sun and planets. She was completely baffled when a message was given to her in Latin, though she was supposed to be speaking in the name of the spirit of the learned Myers, and it took her three months to get the meaning (out of a dictionary?) of one or two easy words of it. She gave a man a long account of an uncle whom he had never had; and it turned out that this information was in the Encyclopædia, and related to another man of the same name. In no instance did she ever give details that it was impossible for her to learn in a normal way, and it is for her admirers to prove that she did not learn them in a normal way, and, on the other hand, to give a more plausible explanation of what Dr. Maxwell, their great authority, calls her "inaccuracies and falsehoods."

The truth is that the phenomenon known as "clairvoyance" rests just as plainly on trickery as the physical phenomena we have studied. Margaretta Fox explained decades ago how they used to watch minutely the faces of sitters and find their way by changes of expression. "I see a young man," says the medium dreamily, with half-closed but very watchful eyes. There is no response on the face of the sitter. "I see the form of a young woman—a child," the medium goes on. At the right shot the sitter's face lights up with joy and eagerness, and the fishing goes on. Probably in the end, or after a time, the sitter will tell people how the clairvoyant saw the form of her darling child "at once."

In some cases the medium is prepared in advance. Carrington tells us that he was one day strongly urged to give a man, who thought that he had abnormal powers, a sitting. He decided at least to give him a lesson, and made an appointment. The man came with friends at the appointed hour, and they were astonished and awed when Carrington, as a clairvoyant, told them their names and other details. He had simply sent a man to track his visitor to his hotel and learn all about him and his friends. Other cases are just as easy. When Sir O. Lodge and Sir A. C. Doyle lost their sons, the whole mediumistic world knew it and was ready. But mediums gather information about far less important sitters, because it is precisely these cases that are most impressive. It is quite easy to get information quietly about a certain man's dead relatives, and then find an intermediary who will casually recommend him to see Mrs. ——. I do not suggest that the intermediary knows the plot, though that may often be the case.

In other cases the medium tells very little at the first visit. The "spirit" is dazed in its new surroundings. It takes time to get adjusted and learn how to talk through a medium. And so on. You go again, and the details increase. You have, of course, left your name and address in making a fresh appointment. Some clever people go anonymously. Lady Lodge went thus and heard remarkable things; but Sir O. Lodge admits that her companion greatly helped the medium by forgetting herself and addressing her as "Lady Lodge." You may leave your coat in the hall, and it is searched. When Truesdell consulted Slade in New York, he wickedly left in his overcoat pocket a letter which gave the impression that his name was "Samuel Johnson." The first ghost that turned up was, of course, "Mary Johnson."

Still more ingenious was the "clairvoyance" of the famous American medium Foster, one of the impostors who duped Robert Dale Owen and for years held a high position in the movement. While he was out of the room you wrote on bits of paper the names of your dead relatives or friends, and you then screwed up the bits of paper into pellets. Foster then came in, and sat near you. He dreamily took the pellets in his hand, pressed them against his forehead, and then let them fall again upon the table. Slowly and gradually, as he puffed at his everlasting cigar, the spirits communicated all the names to him.

Such tricks can be fathomed only by an expert, and they ought to warn Spiritualists of the folly of thinking that "fraud was excluded." Truesdell, the great medium hunter, the terror of the American Spiritualist world in the seventies, had a sitting with Foster and paid the usual five dollars. He was puzzled, and consented to come again. On the second occasion Foster could tell him, clairvoyantly, the name of his hotel and other details. He had had Truesdell watched in the usual way. At last the detective got his clue. Foster's cigar was continually going out, and in constantly re-lighting it he sheltered the match in the hollow of his hands. Truesdell concluded that he was then reading the slips of paper, and the rest was easy. In pressing the pellets to his forehead Foster substituted blank pellets for them and kept the written papers in his hand. So the next time Truesdell went, and Foster had touched one of the six pellets and read it, Truesdell snatched up the other five pellets and found them blank. Foster genially acknowledged that it was conjuring, but he continued as a priest of the Spiritualist movement for a long time afterwards.

Another clairvoyant feat is to read the contents of a sealed envelope, provided the contents are not a folded letter. We shall see in the next chapter how the contents of a folded and sealed letter are learned. I speak here of the simple clairvoyant practice of taking a sealed envelope which contains only a strip of written paper, pressing it to the forehead and reading the contents. You need not pay half-a-guinea to a Bond Street clairvoyante for this. Sponge your envelope with alcohol (which will soon evaporate and leave no trace) and you can "see through it."

Some readers may expect me to say a word here about "clairaudience." The only word I feel disposed to say is that it is one of the worst pieces of nonsense in the movement. Clairvoyance means to read the contents of a sealed letter, or to see spirits which ordinary mortals cannot see. It is half the stock-in-trade of the ordinary medium. You pay your guinea or half-guinea, and the gifted lady sees your invisible dead friends and describes them. Sometimes she is quite accurate, "on information received." Generally the performance is a tedious medley of guesses and grotesque inaccuracies. As is known, Mr. Labouchere quite safely promised a thousand-pound note to any clairvoyante who would see the number of it through a sealed envelope. The French Academy of Science had invited clairvoyants, and thoroughly discredited the claim, years before.

Yet the imposture goes on daily, all over England and America, and some now offer the novelty of "clairaudience," or hearing spirit voices which we ordinary mortals cannot hear. It is the same fraud under another name. When some clairaudient comes along who can hear the spirits of Myers, and so many other deceased Spiritualists answer the crucial questions they have never yet answered, we may become interested. Until then a new addition to this world of cranks, frauds, decadents, and nervous invalids is not a matter of much importance.