MEDIUMISTIC PHENOMENA
In my inquiry so far the reader will note that I have taken one thing
for granted--the fact of telepathy. In order to convince him to the
extent to which this great scientific truth has convinced me, it would
be necessary for me to lead him through a thousand pages of evidence for
telepathic phenomena, attested by some of the leading physicists of the
day. I am aware that there are still sceptics on the subject of
telepathy, but the testimony is overwhelming, and every year sees the
ranks of scepticism growing thinner.
Not many years ago a very learned man, the late Professor von Helmholtz,
although confronted with _prima-facie_ evidence of thought transference
or telepathy, declared: "I cannot believe it. Neither the testimony of
all the Fellows of the Royal Society, nor even the evidence of my own
senses, would lead me to believe in the transmission of them from one
person to another. It is clearly impossible." An opinion in these terms
is very rare to-day. We are apt to express our incredulity in language
far more guarded and less emphatic.
About hallucinations, however, there is no scepticism. We have remarked
sensory hallucinations of an occasional nature; we now come to regard
them as a cult, for I suppose there is no manifestation in the world, no
gift, no prodigy even, that is not prone to the fate of being exploited
for particular ends.
A poet, we will say, by some rare "subliminal uprush," produces a
beautiful poem. He is at once chained to his desk by publishers and
compelled to go on producing poetry for the rest of his life. It is
inevitable that many of his manifestations will be false; and for that
reason, in spite of an occasional jewel of truth, he runs serious risks
of being denounced in the end as no poet.
I have no doubt it is the same with the producers or the agents of
occult phenomena. Sensory hallucinations may be stimulated. They may be
stimulated by intoxication and disease, or they may be stimulated by the
morbid conditions of a spiritualistic _seance_. Everything in these
conditions--the prolonged darkness, the emotional expectancy--promotes
the peculiar frame of mind apparently requisite. Constant
exercise--perpetual aspiration develops the power of seeing visions.
After a time, in well-known cases, they appear to need no inducement to
come spontaneously.
One well-known medium, Mr Hill Tout, confesses that building and
peopling _chateaux en Espagne_ was a favourite occupation of his in his
earlier days. This long-practised faculty is doubtless a potent factor
in all his characterisations, and probably also in those of many another
full-fledged medium.
Hallucinations need not be visual only; they are frequently auditory.
Miss Freer gives an account of one induced by merely holding a shell to
the ear. There is another case of a young woman in whom auditory
hallucinations would be excited on hearing the sound of water running
through a tap. Given the basis of actual sound, the hallucinable person
quickly causes it to become articulate and intelligible. Thus, is it
unreasonable to suppose that the vague, nebulous lights seen at dark
_seances_ would furnish the raw material, so to speak, for sense
deception?
Thus, we have the basis and beginning, from one point of view, of modern
spiritualism. But before we examine the question of clairvoyance or
trance utterances of spiritualistic mediums we must first of all go into
the subject of physical phenomena.
* * * * *
So-called physical phenomena are a comparatively modern excrescence on
the main growth. It is only within the last half-century that they have
attained any considerable development. The faith in the communion and
intervention of spirits originated before their appearance and will
probably outlast their final discredit. At the best, whatever effect
they may have had in advertising the movement with the vulgar, they
seem to have exerted only a subsidiary influence in inducing belief with
more thoughtful men and women.
These physical phenomena consist chiefly of table rapping, table moving,
ringing of bells, and various other manifestations for which a normal
cause is not apparent. For a long time, in the early days of modern
spiritualism, the cult was chiefly confined to "miracles" of this sort.
One of its most notable props was the manifestations, long continued and
observed by many thousands, of the famous Daniel Dunglas Home. It is
fifty years ago now since Home came to England and began his _seances_,
which were attended by Lord Dunraven, Lord Brougham, Sir D. Brewster,
Robert Owen, Bulwer Lytton, T. A. Trollope, Garth Wilkinson, and others.
For thirty years Home was brought before the public as a medium, dying
in 1886. He seems to have been an amiable, highly emotional man, full of
generous impulses, and of considerable personal charm. His frankness and
sincerity impressed all those who came in touch with the man. Mr Andrew
Lang has called him "a Harold Skimpole, with the gift of divination."
Home dealt with both clairvoyance and physical manifestations.
Ostensibly through him came an enormous number of messages purporting to
proceed from the dead friends of certain of those attending the
_seances_. In the records of these _seances_ will be found the signed
statements of Dr Garth Wilkinson, Dr Gully, Mr and Mrs S. C. Hall, the
present Earl of Dunraven, Earl of Crawford, Dr Hawksley, Mrs Nassau
Senior, Mr P. P. Alexander, Mr Perdicaris, and others, that they had
received messages giving details of a private nature that it seemed in
the last degree probable could be known to the medium. Home's
manifestations were for the most part those which any attendant at a
spiritualistic _seance_ can witness for himself to-day. The room he used
was, compared with those used by other mediums who insisted on complete
darkness, well lighted, as he had a shaded lamp, a gas-burner, or one or
two candles lighted. The manifestations generally began with raps; then
followed a quivering movement of the table, which one present described
as like "the vibration on a small steamer when the engines begin to
work"; by another as "a ship in distress, with its timbers straining in
a heavy sea." Then, suspended in the air, the table would float, and in
its shelter musical instruments performing could be heard; the sitters
could feel their knees being clasped and their dresses pulled; many
things would be handed about the circle, such as handkerchiefs, flowers,
and even heavy bells. During the performance messages were rapped out by
the spirits, or delivered through the mouth of the medium. In this
respect, where intelligence is shown, they would partake of the nature
of trance utterance, a thing to be analysed later.
* * * * *
Robert Bell, a dramatist and critic, having been present at one of these
_seances_, acknowledged that he had seen things which he was satisfied
were "beyond the pale of material experiences." After describing various
manifestations, hands felt under the table, touching the knees, and
pulling the clothes, bells rung by invisible agency, and various
articles thrown about the room, he proceeds to describe "levitation":
"Mr Home was seated next the window. Through the semi-darkness
his head was dimly visible against the curtains, and his hands
might be seen in a faint white heap before him. Presently he
said, in a quiet voice, 'My chair is moving--I am off the
ground--don't notice me--talk of something else,' or words to
that effect. It was very difficult to restrain the curiosity,
not unmixed with a more serious feeling, which these few words
awakened; but we talked, incoherently enough, upon some
different topic. I was sitting nearly opposite Mr Home, and I
saw his hands disappear from the table, and his head vanish
into the deep shadow beyond. In a moment or two more he spoke
again. This time his voice was in the air above our heads. He
had risen from his chair to a height of four or five feet from
the ground. As he ascended higher he described his position,
which at first was perpendicular, and afterwards became
horizontal. He said he felt as if he had been turned in the
gentlest manner, as a child is turned in the arms of a nurse.
In a moment or two more he told us that he was going to pass
across the window, against the grey, silvery light of which he
would be visible. We watched in profound stillness, and saw his
figure pass from one side of the window to the other, feet
foremost, lying horizontally in the air. He spoke to us as he
passed, and told us that he would turn the reverse way and
recross the window, which he did. His own tranquil confidence
in the safety of what seemed from below a situation of the most
novel peril gave confidence to everybody else; but with the
strongest nerves it was impossible not to be conscious of a
certain sensation of fear or awe. He hovered round the circle
for several minutes, and passed, this time perpendicularly,
over our heads. I heard his voice behind me in the air, and
felt something lightly brush my chair. It was his foot, which
he gave me leave to touch. Turning to the spot where it was on
the top of the chair, I placed my hand gently upon it, when he
uttered a cry of pain, and the foot was withdrawn quickly, with
a palpable shudder. It was evidently not resting on the chair,
but floating; and it sprang from the touch as a bird would. He
now passed over to the farthest extremity of the room, and we
could judge by his voice of the altitude and distance he had
attained. He had reached the ceiling, upon which he made a
slight mark, and soon afterwards descended and resumed his
place at the table. An incident which occurred during this
aerial passage, and imparted a strange solemnity to it, was
that the accordion, which we supposed to be on the ground under
the window close to us, played a strain of wild pathos in the
air from the distant corner of the room."
A well-known physician, Dr Gully, who was present at this _seance_,
wrote confirming the account in _The Cornhill Magazine_ given by the
above writer.
During the ensuing forty years mediumistic performances became of common
and almost daily occurrence in this country. Two or three forms of
so-called spirit manifestation--such as materialisation, spirit
photography, and slate-writing--afterwards became connected with many of
the _seances_. But first the manifestations in daylight consisted of
raps and tiltings of a table; afterwards, when the lights were turned
out or turned very low, spirit voices, touches of spirit hands, spirit
lights, spirit-born flowers, floating musical instruments, and moving
about or levitation of the furniture.
Until Sir William Crookes began to investigate the alleged
spiritualistic phenomena, all investigation had been undertaken by
persons without scientific training. After a year of experiments he
issued a detailed description of those conducted in his own laboratory
in the presence of four other persons, two of whom, Sir William Huggins
and Sergeant Fox, confirmed the accuracy of his report. The result was
that he was able to demonstrate, he said, the existence of a hitherto
unknown force, and had measured the effect produced. At all events,
these inquirers were convinced of the genuineness of Home's powers.
Suppose we glance at the possible alternative--viz. that Home was a
conjurer of consummate skill and ingenuity. For one of the physical
phenomena, that of tilting a table at a precarious angle without
displacing various small objects resting on its polished surface, Mr
Podmore suggests an explanation. He thinks that the articles were
probably held in position on the table when it was tilted by means of
hairs and fine threads attached to Home's dress. He has various
explanations for other of the phenomena, but he confesses that there
remain a few manifestations which the hypothesis of simple trickery does
not seem to fit. In going over a mass of evidence relating to Home, the
hypothesis of conjuring seems to be rather incredible; when one bears in
mind Home's long career as a medium, how his private life was watched by
the lynx-eyed sceptics, eager to pounce upon the evidence of trickery,
and that he was never detected, it certainly seems to me, at all events,
that Home's immunity from exposure is strong evidence against the
assumption of fraud. Home was merely the type of a large class of
mediums purporting to be controlled by spirit power, whose _seances_ are
a feature of modern life.
Certain experiments of Sir William Crookes with Home came very near to
satisfying the most stringent scientific conditions, especially those in
the alteration in the weight of a board. In these experiments one end of
the board was on a spring balance and the other rested on a table. The
board became heavier or lighter as Home placed his fingers on the end
resting on the table and "willed" it, and the different weights were
recorded by an automatic register. This effect might have been produced,
says Mr Podmore, by using a dark thread with a loop attached to some
part of the apparatus--possibly the hook of the spring balance--and the
ends fastened to Home's trousers. But this particular trick does not
seem to have occurred to those experimenting, and the description of the
_seances_ does not exclude it.
Suggesting an explanation of an event does not prove that it so
occurred, and Mr Podmore adds: "It is not easy to see how the
investigators ... could have been deceived, and repeatedly deceived, by
any device of the kind suggested."
One of the most remarkable of Daniel Dunglas Home's manifestations
occurred on 16th December 1868, at 5 Buckingham Gate, London. There were
present the Master of Lindsay (now the Earl of Crawford), Viscount Adare
(the present Earl of Dunraven), and Captain Wynne. The Master of Lindsay
has recorded the circumstances, as follows:--
"I was sitting with Mr Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his.
During the sitting Mr Home went into a trance, and in that
state was carried out of the window in the room next to where
we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between
the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not
the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a
twelve-inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge
to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted
up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in air
outside our window. The moon was shining full into the room; my
back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the
window-sill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He
remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the
window and glided into the room feet foremost and sat down."
Here is Lord Adare's account of the central incident:
"We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown
up, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our
window; he opened the window and walked in quite coolly."
Captain Wynne, writing to Home in 1877, refers to this occasion in the
following words:
"The fact of your having gone out of the one window and in at
the other I can swear to."
It is surely not a little remarkable that an occurrence of so
extraordinary a nature should be testified to by three such clear-headed
men as Captain Wynne and Lords Lindsay and Adare. To cross from one
window to another by ordinary means was clearly impossible, and it would
be a brave conjurer indeed who would essay such a feat at a distance of
eighty-five feet from the ground. What then is the explanation? Mr
Podmore suggests that the three witnesses were the victims of a
collective hallucination; but this theory is not easy to accept, and Mr
Andrew Lang has heaped it with ridicule. "There are," he writes, "two
other points to be urged against Mr Podmore's theory that observers of
Home were hallucinated. The Society's records contain plenty of
'collective, so-called telepathic hallucinations.' But surely these
hallucinations offered visionary figures of persons and things not
present in fact. Has Mr Podmore one case, except Home's, of a
collective hallucination in which a person actually present is the
hallucination; floats in the air, holds red-hot coals and so
forth--appears outside of the window, for instance, when he is inside
the room? Of course, where conjuring is barred. Again, Home's marvels
are attested by witnesses violently prejudiced against him, and (far
from being attentively expectant) most anxious to detect and expose
him."
If the case of Home presents difficulties to the rational sceptic, that
of William Stainton Moses, who died in 1892, presents an even harder
problem. I will refer to Moses later when we come to discuss
clairvoyance, but at first his mediumistic powers were manifested in
physical phenomena. He was a clergyman and a scholar, an M.A. of Oxford,
and for nearly eighteen years English master in University College
School. He was held in esteem and even affection by all who were most
intimately associated with him. Yet Moses was responsible for table
rapping, levitation of furniture, playing of musical instruments and
"apports"--the latter term expressing the movement or introduction of
various articles either by the request of the sitters or spontaneously,
such as books, stones, shells, opera-glasses, candle-sticks, and so
forth. All this began in 1872, and the phenomena observed at the various
_seances_ were carefully recorded by the medium's friends, Dr and Mrs
Speer, C. T. Speer, and F. W. Percival. It must be borne in mind that
Moses was in his thirty-third year before he suspected mediumistic
powers. There have been any number of hypotheses to account for the
physical phenomena furnished at these _seances_. Jewels, cameos, seed
pearls, and other precious things were brought and given to the sitters.
Scent was introduced; familiar perfumes--such as sandalwood, jasmine,
heliotrope, not always recognised--were a frequent occurrence at these
_seances_. Occasionally it would be sprayed in the air, sometimes poured
into the hands of the sitters, and often it was found oozing from the
medium's head and even running down.
In Mrs Speer's diary for 30th August there is the following record:--
"Many things were brought from different parts of the house
through the locked door this evening. Mr S. M. was levitated,
and when he felt for his feet they were hanging in mid-air,
while his head must have almost touched the ceiling."
Dr Speer also records a "levitation" on 3rd December:
"Mr M. was floated about, and a large dining-room chair was
placed on the table."
Mrs Speer tells us that they sat in the fire-light, and that the
_seances_ were held in more or less complete darkness. Moses' own
account of the levitation is much fuller. He says that he was fully
conscious that he was floating about the room, and that he marked a
place on the wall with a pencil, which was afterwards found to be more
than six feet from the floor. Subsequently musical sounds became a
feature of the manifestations. In September 1874 Mrs Speer gives a list
of them, mentioning ten or more different kinds, including the
tambourine, harp, fairy-bells, and many stringed instruments, and
ascribes their production to eight different spirits.
In the early materialisations of Stainton Moses we find that hands, and
occasionally the fore arm, were seen holding lights. These spirit lights
are described as hard, round, and cold to the touch. In his description
of one incident at a _seance_ Moses himself pens a significant passage,
which seems to confirm the suspicion that the spirit lights were really
bottles of phosphorised oil:
"Suddenly there arose from below me, apparently under the
table, or near the floor, right under my nose, a cloud of
luminous smoke, just like phosphorus. It fumed up in great
clouds, until I seemed to be on fire, and rushed from the room
in a panic. I was fairly frightened, and could not tell what
was happening. I rushed to the door and opened it, and so to
the front door. My hands seemed to be ablaze, and left their
impress on the door and handles. It blazed for a while after I
had touched it, but soon went out, and no smell or trace
remained.... There seemed to be no end of smoke. It smelt
distinctly phosphoric, but the smell evaporated as soon as I
got out of the room into the air."
Such candour disarms us: can there be any ground for the theory that
here was a case of self-deception on a large scale? Or is there yet an
alternative explanation? Perhaps we shall discover one.