“All
professional mediums cheat.”
That
was a statement that expressed the thoughts of Camille
Flammarion, the famous French psychical researcher. However,
like so many other investigators of the day, he was also
convinced after nearly 60 years of study of paranormal
phenomena, that mediums could be genuine. As mentioned, he
was not the only one to think so. Hereward Carrington wrote:
“Many genuine mediums will frequently resort to fraud when
their powers fail them, or when phenomena are not readily
forthcoming.” He said that medium Eusapia Palladino, whom he
considered to possess authentic powers of the highest order,
“would constantly trick whenever the occasion for her to do
so was presented.”
|
Spiritualists learned to live with a certain
amount of fraud as, one after another, even the
most respected mediums were caught impersonating
spirits or attempting to trick the sitters at
their performances. Like some of the scientists,
they believed that a single case of fraud was
not enough to completely dismiss the work of an
otherwise truly gifted medium. This permissive
attitude toward occasional fraud explains why,
even after an exposure, most mediums were able
to continue filling their séance rooms. Combined
with the need for the public to believe in
something extraordinary, the Spiritualist moved
thrived for decades.
Although many researchers could easily detect
even clever fraud, and could take it into
account in their final conclusions, it was a
matter of debate as to whether or not the
careful investigator could never be fooled.
|
 |
Lively
arguments on this subject came up during the discussion of
Sir William Crookes’ paper on mesmerism and Spiritualism,
presented to the British Association for the Advancement of
Science in 1876. Crookes was confident that the controls
that he applied when testing mediums would make fraud
impossible. Sir William Barrett of the SPR disagreed,
arguing that a skilled conjurer or magician could be
equipped with devices and, under whatever conditions were
imposed, re-create whatever effect the mediums could
produce.
In
spite of the fact that controls in the early days of
psychical research were rather slack by modern standards, a
great number of mediums were exposed as frauds. In 1876 ----
the same year that Crookes and Barrett debated the subject
---- three mediums who had large followings were caught
red-handed as frauds.
|
The type of slate
used by spirit mediums that allowed ghosts to
allegedly leave messages for the living. |
Francis Ward Monck, a minister turned medium,
was challenged by a magician who insisted on
searching the medium during a séance in
Huddersfield, England. Monck ran into a room,
locked himself in, and managed to escape through
a window. Later, a pair of stuffed gloves (which
had posed as mysterious “spirit hands”) was
found among his belongings. Monck was arrested
and he was later placed on trial for fraud. Dr.
Alfred Russell Wallace, who had investigated a
number of mediums, appeared as one of the
defense witnesses. He claimed that he had seen
Monck manifest a “spirit woman” without trickery
but his testimony had little effect after Sir
William Barrett took the stand. Barrett claimed
that he had once caught Monck simulating a
partially materialized spirit with a piece of
white muslin cloth on a wire frame. Monck was
found guilty of fraud and sentenced to three
months in prison. |
|
Dr. Henry Slade, an American medium known for
spirit writing on slate blackboards, visited
Britain that same year. Professor Ray Lankester
was determined to expose Slade as a fraud.
Together with another investigator, he visited
Slade and observed his techniques. During a
second séance, Lankester suddenly seized the
small blackboard before the “spirit writing” was
to take place. He found that a message had
already been written on it, exposing the medium
as a fraud. Lankester than wrote a scathing
letter about Slade in the Times on
September 16 and then sued him for obtaining
money under false pretenses. The case was heard
on October 1. Once again, Dr. Alfred Russell
Wallace appeared for the defense. Despite his
support, Slade was found guilty and sentenced to
three months in prison at hard labor. The
sentence was later thrown out under appeal and
Slade quickly left England before Lankester
could come after him again. When he returned to
the country two years later, he used the false
name of “Dr. Wilson”. |
American medium
Henry Slade |
William
Eglinton was the third popular medium to be exposed in 1876.
The accounts of his séances are some of the most dramatic
that have been recorded and include a number of
materializations that took place outdoors and in broad
daylight. Thomas Colley, the Archdeacon of Natal in Southern
Africa and the Rector of Stockton in England, finally
exposed Eglinton. Archdeacon Colley was an eager psychical
researcher and he cut off pieces of the white robe and beard
of a spirit that Eglinton allegedly manifested. Later
investigation showed that the items that he snipped off
exactly matched some muslin and a false beard that was found
in the medium’s suitcase. His exposure of Eglinton did not
make Colley discredit all mediums. He was a firm believer in
the genuineness of other mediums, including Francis Ward
Monck, and had once offered a large sum of money to a
magician to try and duplicate Monck’s materializations with
trickery. The magician attempted to manifest a spirit but
failed.
This
reinforces the strangeness of mediumship --- that although
three well-known mediums like Monck, Slade and Eglinton were
exposed in fraud, many reputable scientists and psychical
investigators had no doubts that all three men were also
capable of extraordinary paranormal feats that did not
require trickery.
From
the earliest days of Spiritualism, there had been a running
battle between mediums and magicians. In 1853, just five
years after the Fox Sisters gained fame in Hydesville, a
magician named J.H. Anderson of New York issued the first
challenge. He offered a monetary award to “any poverty
stricken medium” who could produce raps in the public hall
where he gave his regular performances. The Fox Sisters were
among those who accepted Anderson’s challenge, but Anderson
backed out and, amid catcalls and hisses from the audience,
refused to allow the mediums on the stage.
One of
the greatest of the early rivalries between mediums and
magicians involved the Davenport
brothers. As described earlier in the book, Ira and
William Davenport were professional mediums who were the
first to popularize the spirit cabinet in their
performances. This special cabinet had three doors at the
front and a bench running lengthwise inside. The center door
had a small diamond-shaped opening covered by a curtain,
through which various phenomena would manifest. Before each
performance, members of the audience were free to inspect
the cabinet, and also to check that the Davenports, who sat
astride the bench, facing one another, were securely tied
and unable to move about. Within seconds after the doors
were closed, the brothers were able to produce raps, musical
sounds and a variety of other happenings. During part of the
séance, an audience member was even allowed to sit on the
bench between the brothers.
|
The finale of the
Davenport Brothers' performance featured an
audience member tied up in the spirit cabinet
with them |
Although the phenomena they produced was typical
of the Spiritualist séances of the day, the
Davenports were ambiguous about their powers.
They never presented themselves as Spiritualists
but on the other hand, insisted the
manifestations they created were genuine. While
in England, they became the subject of
controversy. They held séances every night for
more than two months in a hall in London.
Various committees studied these demonstrations
without finding any evidence of fraud but,
regardless, there was widespread public
opposition and even hostility.
Early in 1865, the Davenports toured the English
provinces and for the most part, the shows did
well, but there were a number of problems
encountered in some of the towns. At Liverpool,
in February, two members of an inspection
committee selected by the audience used a
complicated knot to secure the brothers.
|
The
Davenports protested that the knots were too tight and cut
off their circulation, but a doctor who examined them
disagreed. They refused to sit and asked one of their
assistants to cut the ropes. A riot broke out and the
Davenports quickly left Liverpool.
Finally, in March 1865, the Davenports played at the
Cheltenham Town Hall and encountered John Nevil Maskelyne,
one of England’s original conjurers, and the only
investigator ever believed to have uncovered their
manifestations as fraud.
Maskelyne was one of the most popular of the early British
stage magicians. The son of a saddlemaker, he was born in
Cheltenham in December 1839. Intrigued as a boy by an
entertainer’s “dancing dinner plates”, he practiced until he
was about to keep several dishes whirling about at the same
time on a table top. At 19, he began working as a
clockmaker’s apprentice and constructed his first piece of
conjuring equipment: a small chest with a secret panel. He
could lock a borrowed ring inside, bind the chest with tape,
and then secretly extract the ring as he gave the box to a
spectator. The box was so well-constructed that it managed
to withstand even the most rigorous examinations.
On
March 7, 1865, Maskelyne attended the séance by the
Davenport brothers at the Cheltenham Town Hall. Although it
was the middle of the afternoon, heavy curtains were
fastened over the windows to darken the hall. Lamps were
used to illuminate the stage where trestles had been erected
to support a three-doored wooden cabinet that was similar in
size and shape to a large clothing wardrobe. The doors were
standing open when Maskelyne entered the hall. Planks seats
were nailed down the middle and a guitar, violin and bow,
two hand bells, tambourine and a trumpet had been placed
inside.
A
lecturer introduced the Davenport brothers and then called
for volunteers. Maskelyne and several other men rushed to
the front of the theater to inspect the paraphernalia. The
committee members lashed the medium’s wrists behind their
backs and tied their ankles as they sat facing each other in
the cabinet. Then, the lecturer closed the doors and
signaled for the lamps to be put out.
Almost
immediately, bells rang and flew out onto the floor of the
stage. Pale, ghostly hands waved through the apertures in
the center of the cabinet. A tambourine jangled, a guitar
strummed and a violin played eerie music. Yet, when the
lamps were lighted and the doors opened, the brothers sat
tightly bound, exactly as they had been when the séance had
started.
As
mentioned, England was sharply divided over whether the
Davenports were genuine mediums or clever tricksters. Purely
by chance, Maskelyne discovered that they were frauds. A ray
of sunlight from a poorly draped window had flashed briefly
on the stage during the performance and from his vantage
point on the side of the stage, Maskelyne had been able to
see into the cabinet through a crack in the door. He saw Ira
Davenport vigorously ringing the bell! He knew that if one
brother was able to free himself, then the other one could
too.
Maskelyne told several people what he had seen but a
clergyman who had been watching from the other side of the
stage scoffed at this explanation. Determined to prove his
point, Maskelyne persuaded a friend to help him build a
cabinet so that they could work together and duplicate what
the Davenports were doing.
Once
they learned the technique of slipping their hands out of,
and back into, tightly knotted ropes, producing “spirit
music” was easy for the two men. After three months of
practice, Maskelyne appeared at Jessop’s Gardens on June 19.
Trick by trick --- and they stressed they were tricks --- he
and his friend duplicated the entire Davenport séance. Five
days later, the Birmingham Gazette offered a long
account of the performance and showed that Maskelyne had
proven that spirits were not necessary for a “spirited”
séance. Of course, by then, the Davenports had moved on to
the Continent and were being wined and dined by royalty.
Most of their audiences had no idea that their clever act
has been exposed as just that --- an act.
Maskelyne went on to become one of England’s most famous
magicians. In later years, he would continue to offer
“spirit shows” and duplicate the methods of mediums in his
performances. He passed away in May of 1917.
Probably the first two books ever published debunking the
methods of fraudulent mediums appeared in 1907. They must
have been essential reading for psychical investigators of
the day. The first, from Hereward Carrington, was called
The Psychical Phenomena of Spiritualism and the second,
by David P. Abbott, was Behind the Scenes with the
Mediums. Both books did a thorough job of revealing the
conjuring techniques that could be used to produce a variety
of different “ghostly” effects. Of course, it should be
remembered that just because these effects could be
duplicated, did not mean that some of them could not have
occurred by supernatural means. On the other hand, they sure
had a lot of people wondering…
|
David P. Abbott, a magician and a member of the
ASPR, (more about Abbott later in the chapter)
based his book on personal observations of
scores of phony mediums. In one chapter, he
describes the seemingly astonishing performance
of a woman who gave séances in a theater. She
asked her audience to write down questions for
her, sign their names on the paper and then keep
the papers in her possession. Them, from the
stage, she would answer the questions. The
effect was startling but Abbott revealed how
easy it was to do with the aid of accomplices.
Because many of the members of the audience did
not have paper with them, assistants handed out
pads of paper for their use. These pads were
scored into sections so that each person could
tear off the square on which he had written his
question, keep the paper and then pass the pad
on to someone else who needed it. The tablets,
however, was especially prepared with a
developing wax so that the writing would leave
an impression behind that could be read later. |
David P. Abbott |
Assistants collected the pads and then seemed to place them
in front of the medium on the stage. What they actually did,
though, was switch the pads, giving her blank ones and
smuggling the used ones under the stage. These were quickly
developed and then handed to a confederate with a radio
transmitter. The medium had a small receiver tucked behind
her ear, and hidden by her hair, which was connected to a
carefully concealed wire that ran down to copper plates in
her shoes. When she stepped on two nails hammered into the
stage floor, she was able to complete the radio circuit and
hear her accomplice read the questions. In addition, other
assistants in the theater picked out people who wrote
questions on their own paper, and read their questions while
collecting the pads throughout the audience. As soon as they
could, they wrote down the questions they had spotted and
sent them below stage to be read along with the others. Most
people came away from this performance believing they had
witnessed something paranormal.
A
similar trick was used to astound some theater audience
members. The attendees were invited to write questions on
pieces of paper, addressing their questions to dead friends,
relatives and loved ones. They were also asked to sign their
names. Each question was then sealed in an envelope and
given to a medium. The medium would then hold up the
envelope, read the message without ever opening it and pass
along an answer from the spirit world. This was one of the
simplest frauds to carry out. All that it required was an
assistant to pretend that the first envelope belonged to
him. The medium would hold up the envelope, make up a fake
message that was inside and the assistant would claim the
message was his. The medium would then open the envelope to
“prove” that he was correct about what message was inside.
What he was actually doing was opening the next
envelope, which belonged to an audience member, and
memorizing the message. He would then ask the question and
answer it ---- supposedly never looking inside. Then, he
would open the next audience member’s envelope and pretend
it contained the message he had just read. And so on, and so
on, staying one step ahead of the audience as he psychically
“peered” into the envelopes and “heard” messages from the
other side.
Almost
50 years after Abbott wrote about this “question and answer”
trick, a British medium made a small fortune by very similar
methods but using equipment that was more sophisticated.
William Roy has been described as one of the most audacious
fake mediums of the modern times. Before his exposure in
1955, he was one of the most popular mediums in England ---
only to be denounced by the Spiritualist publication, Two
Worlds.
|
Debunked medium
William Roy |
According to accounts, much of Roy’s success
came from duping sitters using a
microphone-relaying technique that demonstrated
“direct voice” communications from the spirits
in full light, an achievement that was beyond
the abilities of his rivals. To do this, he ran
a wire under the carpet from the microphone and
amplifier to two brass tacks, the heads of which
protruded above the carpet. He adapted a hearing
aid as a miniature loudspeaker and attached it
to the cuff of his sleeve, running wires to it
up his sleeve, inside of his jacket and down his
trouser leg to his shoes. Here, they connected
to the soles with two metal plates, one on each
shoe, so that when he stood on the tacks, the
circuit was completed and an assistant could
produce voices through the miniature
loudspeaker. The voices would then come from
Roy’s wrist, far enough away from his mouth to
avert suspicion.
Roy, whose real name was William George Holroyd
Plowright, was paid quite well by a British
tabloid, the Sunday Pictorial, for a
five-installment confession in 1958. He
shamelessly posed for photographs with his
“spirit voice” apparatus, which eventually found
its way to the Metropolitan Police Detective
Training School. |
He
also boasted of the way that he had gained his wealth by
taking advantage of grief-stricken people, researching their
histories and lives. He examined voter’s lists, visited the
National Registry office to look over birth, marriage and
death records and used newspapers to scan obituaries and the
details of wills. He kept all of this information in a card
file index and one swap information back and forth with
other fake mediums. “We phony mediums traded information ---
like swapping stamps,” he admitted.
When
sitters arrived for one of Roy’s séances, they were asked to
leave their coats and handbags in a waiting room. Roy
listened to their conversation by way of a concealed
microphone before they entered the séance room. Meanwhile,
an assistant searched their bags and coat pockets for
further clues in letters, tickets and receipts --- any
information that Roy could use to confirm his “psychic”
powers. His séances were “high-tech” for the time, using the
latest special effects to create spirit voices, music and
mysterious lights. Masks and cheesecloth were also used by
Roy to create “materializations”.
Spiritualists knew that Roy was a fraud as early as 1951 but
agreed not to reveal it in return for his promise to stop
conducting séances and leave the country. Roy did so for a
time, but then came back to England and started back to his
old tricks. After Two Worlds exposed him as a fraud
in 1955, he sued them for libel and with the case in the
court system, the newspaper was prevented from saying
anything else. When Roy abandoned the lawsuit in 1958, he
agreed to pay court costs to the magazine editor and
immediately after, Two Worlds released all of its
evidence concerning his fraud. At first, Roy continued to
deny the charges and then when the Sunday Pictorial
offered him a large sum of money, he cheerfully confessed.
By the time the story was published, Roy had left the
country once again.
In the
tabloid article, he ended the story with this statement:
“Even after this confession, I know I could fill séance
rooms again with people who find it a comfort to believe I
am genuine.”
In
1968, he was given the chance to see if this was true --- it
was. A medium using the name Bill Silver was discovered to
be William Roy. Once again, it was a Spiritualist newspaper,
Psychic News, which exposed him. The story revealed
that some of the sitters even know the medium’s real
identity as William Roy, but were still convinced by his
phenomena, which included voiced communications from beings
who lived on Venus. The sitters included a Catholic Bishop
and some of the members of the Beatles! When challenged by
the newspaper, Roy had the nerve to claim that his earlier
confession had been a “pack of lies” and that he had always
been genuine.
© Copyright 2008 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.
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