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Exhibits in the Haunted
Museum are based on the work of Troy Taylor from his
book, Ghosts by Gaslight!
Click on the Cover for More About the Book!
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There is no doubt that the practice and faith of
Spiritualism literally created the need for paranormal investigation. It would
be because of the claims of the Spiritualists, about their contact with the
spirits of the dead, that the need for scientific investigation of such claims
would come about. Spiritualism not only created celebrities in the form of the
mediums who profited from it, but it also made legends of the men who came
along to question their claims. They were men like
Houdini and
Harry Price, who were hated by
the Spiritualists for their debunking of the fraudulent mediums. These men did
not investigate the Spiritualists because of their lack of belief in the
possibility of ghosts, but because of the need to question the evidence that
was being presented. Their scientific investigations would set the standard
for ghost hunters to come and would establish the need to question the
evidence of ghosts, ruling out all of the possible explanations for the
activity before accepting the idea that the phenomena could be real.
Spiritualism was unfortunately riddled with cases of
deliberate fraud. It was easy to fool the thousands of people who were looking
for a miracle and many of the mediums and practitioners began lining their
pockets with the money they had swindled from their victims. This is not to
say that all of the Spiritualists were dishonest. Many of them were good and
kind people who truly believed in the honesty of their faith --- and there do
remain a handful of mediums and cases today for which no explanation has ever
been found.
Regardless of the good intentions of some Spiritualists,
the movement was soon under the scrutiny of investigators. Many of them were
merely interested in exposing the cases of fraud, while others were intrigued
enough to take a closer look at the reported phenomena associated with the
séances. It would be from here that many of the early ghost hunters got their
start. If not for Spiritualism, it is likely that paranormal investigation
would not have advanced as far as it has today. But it was not an easy
start....
Psychic investigation began just shortly after the birth of
Spiritualism. By the 1850’s, science had managed to challenge the hold that
religion maintained on society, offering a new version of the truth for people
to examine. Mixed into this time period was Spiritualism, with its alleged
proof of life after death, and the public became fascinated by it. Not long
after though, many of the practitioners of this new faith were exposed as
frauds and a division formed between those who believed in Spiritualism and
those who did not. The scientific establishment, resentful over the fact that
they had managed to break the hold that religion had on society only to lose
their footing to Spiritualism, encouraged the debunking of mediums and had a
blatant disregard for anything that even hinted at the supernatural. In spite
of this, there was a small number of scientists who had taken the time to
attend séances and who believed that there could be something to the strange
phenomena that was being reported. They decided to try and apply the laws of
science in investigating these reports.
By the late 1800’s, there were a number of scientists who investigated the
claims of mediums. Perhaps the best known was Sir William Crookes, a eminent
chemist. From 1869 to 1875, he investigated a number of mediums, including the
famous Daniel Douglas Home. After witnessing a number
of Home’s séances, he became convinced that the phenomena he saw was genuine
and proved the existence of a “psychic” force within the human body. Crookes
wrote a paper on Home and tried to have it published in the Proceedings of
the Royal Society of London but it was refused. He then used his
considerable influence to have it appear in the Quarterly Journal of
Science instead. Needless to say, it caused an uproar in the scientific
community and both Crookes and his work were discredited.
Two scientists who watched Crookes’ plight with sympathy
were Professor Henry Sidgwick and Frederick Myers. They firmly believed in the
possibility of supernatural phenomena. Myers had attended an 1873 séance
conducted by Charles Williams, where he had felt the hand of Williams’ spirit
guide, John King, melt away to nothing while he was still holding it. It was
experiences like this one, combined with the attacks on Crookes, that
persuaded Myers, Sidgwick and a friend named Edmund Gurney, to form an
association of people who were interested in investigating the paranormal.
Among the group’s first members were future British prime minister Arthur
Balfour, his sister Eleanor, Lord Rayleigh and Stanton Moses.
One of their first investigations was of a medium named
Henry Slade in 1876. By that autumn, Slade and another medium were charged and
found guilty of deception but this did not deter the group in their search for
genuine phenomena. Over the course of the next six years, the group continued
their inquiries and soon found themselves mixed in with a small number of
Spiritualists and interested individuals who were also attempting to conduct
investigations of the paranormal. Finally, in 1882, a committee was formed
with Sidgwick as the president, which became the Society for Psychical
Research. The initial membership was mostly made up of Spiritualists and
friends of the Sidgwick group like Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and William
Gladstone. They formed six research committees to investigate hypnotism and
clairvoyance; telepathy; sensitives; mediums; ghosts and hauntings; and
records and archives. The members of the SPR could then devote their spare
time to investigating whatever subjects interested them.
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The
idea behind using scientific research to document the paranormal was to
make it as detailed and as painstaking as possible. This is evidenced by a
1886 produced by Frederick Myers, Edmund Gurney, and a postal worker named
Frank Podmore. It was called Phantasms of the Living. The book was
over 2,000 pages long and detailed the first-hand evidence of “ghosts” of
living persons. |
Three of the founders
of the SPR (Left to Right): Edmund Gurney, Henry Sedgwick & Frederick
Myers
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While such a meticulous approach did not appeal to many of
the Spiritualist members, the SPR continued to grow, gaining new members from
both the skeptical and supernatural camps, including Sir Oliver Lodge, Sigmund
Freud, Carl Jung, Sir William Crookes and
Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle. In 1885, a sister society was founded in America, which like
the SPR, is still in existence today.
Over the course of the next couple of decades, the society
managed to weather both scandal and embarrassment, as mediums they endorsed
were found to be fraudulent; Frederick Myers got involved in a sex scandal
with a female psychic investigator who turned out to be a fraud; Edmund Gurney
was found dead under strange circumstances; and in 1888, the founders of the
Spiritualist movement, the
Fox Sisters
themselves, publicly confessed to being fakes. Even though the credibility of
this confession was in question, it was still used by other scientists to make
the SPR members look like fools. By the early 1900’s, the reputation of the
society was rather tarnished, but nevertheless, still intact.
In the years that followed, the SPR concentrated on the
debunking of mediums, until interest in Spiritualism began to die down, and
then turned more toward laboratory work, rather than field investigations, as
the American branch of the group had already done.
The SPR is known today as the first large organization
dedicated to the study of the paranormal, using scientific techniques to
gather evidence. The early society was plagued with problems caused by the
controversy of Spiritualism and by smear campaigns launched by scientists who
were angry the group was started in the first place. The mainstream scientists
considered the academic members of the SPR to be merely crack-pots, while the
other members were simply pseudo-scientists who had no business using
scientific techniques in any sort of investigation. Needless to say, this kind
of close-minded thinking, along with paranormal investigations by academics
and amateurs alike, continues today! To get into the good graces of the
scientists (which didn’t really work), the SPR spent a lot of their time
debunking mediums, which in turn got the Spiritualists angry at them too.
In the end, this was all for the best. A group dedicated to
the research of the paranormal cannot be aligned with only the skeptics nor
with the “true believers”, but must remain grounded in the middle, gathering
evidence which is based on facts and not pre-conceived notions. In this, the
SPR (and many groups who have appeared after them) have succeeded and are able
to continue their work today.
But who were the men who began this quest for answers? And
what forces drove them to search for reasons behind the strange phenomena
which was being reported? Let’s take a closer look at a couple of the
personalities who have created what we think of as “ghost hunting” today.
Sir
William Crookes
As noted earlier, Sir
William Crookes was really the first of the modern-age scientists to step up
and admit that there were things present in this world that science could not
easily explain.
Crookes was born in London in 1832 and was largely
self-taught, with no regular schooling, until he enrolled in the Royal College
of Chemistry at age 16. He graduated in 1854 and took a position as the
Superintendent of the Meteorological Department at Radcliffe Observatory,
Oxford. A year later, he took a teaching position as a professor of Chemistry
at Chester Training College, but resigned after one year because he was not
given a laboratory in which he could do research. Although he tried to find
another teaching position, he was never successful and most of his later work
was done in a laboratory at his home. In 1856, Crookes married Ellen Humphrey,
with whom he had eight children, and from his home he began writing and
editing for scientific journals like the Chemical News. He also helped
to found the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1864. In 1861, Crookes
achieved the first of his scientific discoveries. He discovered the element
thallium and the correct measurement of its atomic weight. This got him
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at age 31.
Then, in 1867, came a turning point in Crookes’ life with
the death of his youngest brother, Phillip. The two men had been very close
and Crookes was very disturbed by his death and, like others of the time who
suffered a great loss, Crookes turned to Spiritualism for answers. At the
urging of his friend and fellow scientist, Cromwell Varney, Crookes and his
wife attended some séances to try and make contact with Phillip. Although the
details of these sessions are unknown, Crookes believed they were successful.
One of his first séances was with the famous medium,
D.D.
Home, where Crookes was amazed to see phenomena that he never dreamed
possible before. The scientist was not content to simply observe Home’s
manifestations, he also attempted to re-create them in the laboratory, and
this was also successful. He believed that Home possessed a “psychic force”
which emanated from his body and he wrote a paper on the subject, believing it
to be of scientific importance.
Not surprisingly, the paper was rejected and then met with
scorn and derision when it was finally published. His critics, mainly other
scientists, lashed out and stated that the phenomena Crookes reported could
not have occurred, that it was simply impossible. “I never said that it was
possible,” Crookes replied, “I only said that it was true.”
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Sir William Crookes
(Far Left) with the alleged materialized spirit form of Katie King at one
of Florence Cook's séances.
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Although he
was frequently criticized by the scientific community, Crookes continued
his investigations into the spirit world, beginning his next set of
experiments with medium
Florence Cook. He
began a four-month series of séances in his home laboratory in which he
was determined to try and prove that Cook, and her spirit guide Katie
King, were not the same person. He claimed to have done this and even
photographed them twice together. Crookes also photographed Katie many
times and was able to hold and speak with her, claiming that she was both
taller and prettier than Florence Cook. He also stated that Cook always
wore earrings and that Katie’s ears were not pierced. At a later date,
Cook was caught in fraud and to this day, there is a question as to
whether or not the phenomena Crookes reported was genuine, or if Florence
somehow deceived him.
Crookes last
series of sittings were experiments conducted with a medium of rather
dubious reputation named Anna Eva Fay. After this, he turned away from
psychic research for awhile and returned to his scientific pursuits.
Although he supported the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research
in 1882, and even served as its president in 1886, he did not take an
active part in the group’s investigations. |
In 1875, Crookes earned the Royal Medal for his work and
one year later invented the radiometer, a device which demonstrated the
effects of radiation on objects in a vacuum, and a special tube called the
“Crookes Tube” that went along with it. This invention would lead to the
discovery of cathode rays, x-rays and the electron.
Crookes went on to serve on scientific committees, earned
prestigious awards for his discoveries and invented an instrument which would
be used to study subatomic particles, and yet he never wavered in his belief
in Spiritualism. In 1916, after the death of his wife, Crookes attempted to
communicate with her and was unsuccessful, but after a visit to a spirit
photographer, he was able to obtain what he believed to be photographic proof
that her presence was still with him. Sadly, this plate, under modern study,
appears to have been double-exposed.
Crookes died in April 1919, never questioning that fact
that the spirit world was genuine and that there were things his beloved
science would never truly be able to explain.
Sir Oliver Lodge
Perhaps one
of the most influential of the early researchers and SPR members was Sir
Oliver Lodge, a British physicist and educator. Along with his contributions
to psychic research, Lodge was also responsible for advances in physics; early
research into electricity; worked on a radio before Marconi; and even invented
the spark plug. He was also credited by Albert Einstein, who used some of
Lodge’s research when he created his theory of relativity.
Lodge was born in 1851 in Penkhull, Staffordshire, England,
the son of a successful businessman. As a boy, Lodge was sent away to boarding
school, but unhappy there, he was brought home at 14 to help with his father’s
business. For the next seven years, he traveled as an agent for his father.
When he was 16, Lodge visited an aunt in London, where he attended some
university classes in physics. This sparked his interest in the subject and in
1872, he entered a full course at the Royal College of Sciences. In 1874, he
enrolled in University College, London, where he received his degree in 1875
and a doctorate in 1877. After that, he was appointed assistant professor of
physics at University College. He married Mary Marshall that same year and
together they had 12 children, six sons and six daughters.
A short time later, he had his first brush with psychic
research, although claimed to have no interest in it. He later became
acquainted with Edmund Gurney and Frederick Myers, but dismissed their massive
tome, Phantasms of the Living as merely a “meaningless collection of
ghost stories”.
In 1881, Lodge was named as first professor of physics at
the new University College in Liverpool. Coincidentally, Lodge was contacted
by Malcolm Guthrie, who lived in Liverpool, about two of his drapery
establishment employees, who he believed would make successful ESP test
subjects. Lodge was intrigued by the idea of conducting the experiments and to
his surprise, obtained good results. He soon joined the SPR and became
involved in their meetings and investigations.
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In 1889, Lodge
became involved in sittings with an American medium named
Leonora Piper, who had been invited to England to
perform. He was impressed with messages the medium delivered from his
aunt, who had recently died, and Lodge invited her to Liverpool, where he
could study her further. During these séances, Piper told Lodge of
long-dead relatives about whom he knew nothing -- information which was
later verified.
After his sessions with Piper, Lodge already considered telepathy between
living persons to be possible but now he was considering that idea that it
might also take place between the living and the dead as well. He was now
aware of the possibility that some mediums possessed the ability to read
the minds of the supposedly deceased communicators, along with the minds
of the séance participants. Because of this, he felt that messages given
through mediums must be verified for them to be able to have any
authenticity at all. This was a key problem in Lodge’s research. Because
of the possibility of telepathy, messages given by different mediums to
the same person meant nothing if the mediums were reading the sitter’s
mind. |
Sir Oliver Lodge and
his wife in later years
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To combat this problem, Lodge enacted a major development
in psychic research. Several mediums on different continents were used to
gather fragments of messages (attributed to the same spirit communicators)
which only made sense when the fragments were all put together. These
communications, which became known as
“cross
correspondences”, could be then be verified as not having come from
independent living sources, but from a single spiritual one instead.
Lodge was by now convinced of life after death, but was not
a practitioner of the Spiritualistic faith. This, however, was about to
change. In August 1915, medium Leonora Piper delivered a message to Lodge
which was said to have come from his friend Frederick Myers, who had died in
1901. In the message, which was mysterious at the time, Myers told Lodge that
he would be near his friend “to ease the blow which was coming”. A few days
later, the message became clear, as Lodge learned that his son, Raymond, had
been killed in a battle in France.
Lodge and his wife began to regularly attend séances and at
one of them Lady Mary was told (allegedly by her dead son) that he appeared in
a photograph with his walking stick. Through another medium came a more
detailed description of the photo, including that someone was leaning on
Raymond’s shoulder in the picture. The Lodge’s had no such photograph and
dismissed the messages as meaningless. Shortly after, a friend (who knew
nothing of the séances) mailed them a photograph -- which matched the photo
from Raymond’s communications exactly. Lodge would go on to describe these
events and the séances which followed in his book Raymond: A Life,
which was published in 1916. The book created a sensation, earning praise from
the Spiritualist community and predictably, scorn from the scientific
establishment. He would follow this with a number of other books on
Spiritualism and psychic research.
Lodge died in August 1940, leaving behind a sealed
envelope, the contents of which he was to try and communicate to SPR members
after his death. To this date, no satisfactory messages regarding its contents
have ever been received.
© Copyright 2003
- 2008 by Troy
Taylor. All Rights Reserved.
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