■ ■ ■ IS It! lili i 1 1 U I 1 1 Pi II 'I I (QnrtttU Uttitrerattg ffithrarg 3tl;ara, £i»ui fork FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library BF1031 .P74 1897 Studies in psychical research / Frank Po olin 3 1924 028 951 478 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028951478 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH FRANK RODMORE, M.A. AUTHOR OF "APPARITIONS AND THOUGHT transference" LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., Limited PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1897 K5 All rights reserved PREFACE. I DESIRE, in the first place, to record my obli- gations to Professor Henry Sidgwick and Mrs. Sidgwick, who have read through nearly the whole of my book in typescript, and have given me the benefit of their advice throughout. But in rendering this acknowledgment I should explain that, whilst we are, I believe, in complete agree- ment as to the attitude of mind in which the ques- tions here discussed should be approached, and the general methods by which they should be inves- tigated, the responsibility for the conclusions ex- pressed rests on myself alone. The greater part of Chap. VI. appeared in Time for February, 1886, and Chaps. V. and X. are based upon articles contributed to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Of the il- lustrative narratives quoted, the greater number are taken from the same source, or from the monthly Journal and other unpublished records of the Society. I desire to acknowledge the courtesy which has placed these materials at my disposal. F. P. February, 1897. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. PAGES Attitude of the educated world in general — The need of an extended and systematic enquiry — Founding of the Society for Psychical Research — Its methods and aims — The author's individual responsibility for the views here expressed 1-8 CHAPTER II. SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. Its origin, history, and wide-spread influence — Scientific interest in the subject — The movement as a whole essentially unscientific — Its character illustrated by the history of various exposures of fraud — Williams and Rita — Mrs. Corner — Miss Wood — Saadi and Wamik — Theology and philosophy of the movement — Stainton Moses — Serjeant Cox — Professor Hare and others — Rise of Theosophy and kindred mysticisms 9-41 CHAPTER III. THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM. Experiments by MM. Thury and de Gasp'arin — Dr. Hare — The Committee of the London Dialectical Society — Evidence of the Master of Lindsay — Experiments by Mr. Crookes — The mediumship of Mr. Stainton Moses — Experiments by Professor Zollner and others 42-80 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. SPIRITUALISM AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. PAGES Investigations of the S. P R.— Eusapia Palladino— Mrs. H. Sidgwick's experiences — Reichenbach's phenom- ena — Spirit photography — Slate writing — Dr. Hodg- son's analysis of the evidence— Mr. Davey's imita- tion of the phenomena — Disinterested fraud — Some general propositions — Examination of the evidence quoted in Chapter III. — Insufficient to prove a new force — Indications of hallucination — Conclusion Appendix : Note on the alleged spirit-commun- ication of Mr. Stainton Moses .... 81-133 CHAPTER V. POLTERGEISTS. Outbreaks of bell-ringing and physical disturbances — The antiquity of the phenomena — The Worksop case — Durweston — Arundel — The Ham case — The Wem case and others — Various cases in which no trickery has been actually detected — Detailed ana- lysis of the evidence — Conclusion: That the alleged phenomena are due in the first instance to trick- ery, magnified by malobservation and errors of memory 134-162 CHAPTER VI. MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THEOSOPHY. Origin of the movement — Its cosmology, philosophy, and theology — The revelation attested by miracles — The S. P. R. sends a commissioner to India — Collapse of the case for the miracles — Koot Hoomi letters shown to be forgeries — Later evidence — The early history of Madame Blavatsky — Solovyoff's inter- course with Madame Rlavatsky . . . 163-194 CONTENTS. Vli CHAPTER VII. EXPERIMENTAL THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE. PAGES Various errors to be guarded against — Fraud, chance co- incidence, association of ideas, involuntary com- munication of information — Experiments at close quarters — In the normal state, by Dr. Blair Thaw, Mr. H. G. Rawson, Mrs. A. W. Verrall — In sleep, by Dr. Ermacora — In trance, with subject in another room, by Professor and Mrs. H. Sidgwick — Pro- duction of movements and other effects — Experi- ments at a distance — By Professor Janet and Dr. Gibert, by Rev. A. Glardon, by Miss Campbell and Miss Despard — Diaries of telepathic impressions 195-233 CHAPTER VIII. TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS. Errors to be guarded against — Fraud, chance coincid- ence, fallacies of memory — Transference of ideas and waking impressions : Mr. Keulemans, Professor Alexander — Telepathic Dreams : Mr. F. Wingfield — Telepathic hallucinations: — Auditory: Miss King — Visual-experimental hallucinations : Rev. C. God- frey — Spontaneous : Prince Victor Duleep Singh, Miss Hurley, Miss Hervey, Frances Reddell — Col- lective : Dr. W. O. S. and wife — Conclusion . 234-267 CHAPTER IX. GHOSTS. Influence of pre-conceived ideas on the testimony — Collective apparitions, a. Unrecognised : Mrs. E. F. and sister ; curious phantasmagoria : Mrs. Willett, Miss Du Cane ; b. Recognised: Miss Newbold, Mr. and Mrs. J. C, Miss C. N. and others, Mr. and Mrs. Davis — Solitary apparitions, a. Conveying news of Vlll CONTENTS. PAGES death: Rev. C. Wambey, Miss Kitcliing, Mrs. C. T. Haly, Miss , Mr. G. King ; Discussion ; b. Con- veying other information : Mrs. Green, Col. H c. Identified subsequently : Mr. Husbands, Mrs. , Mr. Tyre — Discussion — Evidence found in- conclusive 268-297 CHAPTER X. HAUNTED HOUSES. Popular idea of a ghost — Six main features — (1) Identity of the figure: Cases 1, 2, 3 — (2) Recognition of the figure : Case 4 — (3) Manifestation of purpose : Case 5 — (4) Connection with human remains — or (5) with a tragedy : Cases 6, 7, 8, 9 — (6) Recur- rence at fixed dates — The evidence found not to justify hypothesis of post-mortem agency, though pre- senting certain characteristics which seem to point to telepathic origin 298-335 CHAPTER XI. PREMONITIONS AND PREVISIONS. Large amount of testimony, and widespread belief in the subject — Narratives of two kinds — Symbolic and direct — Discussion of symbolic premonitions — Case 1 — Evidence found to be in many ways defective — Direct premonitions — Fetches — Auditory cases — Visions — Prediction at stances, Case 2 — Dreams : General discussion on dream-evidence — Pro- fessor Royce's pseudo-presentiments — Cases 3, 4 — Specimens of dream-evidence in general — Cases 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 — General characteristics of the evidence — Conclusion : That a belief in the pos- sibility of supernormal foreknowledge is not justified • _ • 336-374 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XII. SECONDARY CONSCIOUSNESS. PAGES Mr. Myers's view — Secondary consciousness in normal state — Automatic actions and dreams — Professor Hilprecht's experiences — Induced secondary con- sciousness — The hypnotic trance — Madame B. — Re- lation of tho hypnotic to the waking consciousness — Post-hypnotic premises — Mr. Gurney's experi- ments — Secondary consciousness in pathological cases — Cases of Mr. Joy, F61ida X., Ansel Bourne, Lucie, Views held by Myers, Carpenter, Heiden- hain, Ribot, Azam, Janet — Discussion . . 375-416 CHAPTER XIII. IMPERSONATION, OBSESSION, CLAIRVOYANCE. Natural growth of secondary personality in trance — "Adrienne "— " Clelia "— " Dr. Phinuit "—On clair- voyance — Observations by Rev. P. H. Newnham, Miss Busk, Professor C. Richet, Mr. Ankarkrona, Mr. Dobbie, Dr. Ferroul — Spontaneous possession : the case of Lurancy Vennum — Possession in trance — Mrs. Piper — Evidence of Professor W. James, Mr. J. T. Clarke, Prof. Oliver Lodge, Dr. R. Hodgson — Conclusion 4 I 7~454 Index 455 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. WHEN Boswell suggested that second-sight and other mysterious manifestations might be explained by chance-coincidence, Dr. Johnson replied : " Yes, sir ; but they have happened so often that mankind have agreed to think them not for- tuitous." This attitude of hospitality towards the marvellous is no doubt less general than in Dr. Johnson's day. Nevertheless there are still to be found a considerable number of per- sons, many of them qualified by education and experience to judge of the matter, who believe in the occurrence of second sight, clairvoyance, death-wraiths, and kindred phenomena at the present day. So recently as last Christmas a leading London newspaper, in dealing with one of those mysterious outbreaks which are discussed in Chapter V. of the present book, summed up its comments on the case as follows : " The knocks .2 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. •of Edithweston must be added to the already rather long list of noises probably not to be ex- plained until our knowledge of the physical world connects it more closely with the psychical." In- deed, if we exclude those whose training in the physical sciences has given them defined, perhaps too rigidly defined, ideas of the working and limita- tions of natural forces, the attitude of the educated world in general will be found to have undergone but little alteration since the last century. It is no longer indeed one of active recognition, but it is almost equally far removed, if we may rely on the testimony of newspapers, novels, and our non-scien- tific literature generally, from contemptuous rejec- tion. It may perhaps be described as a cross-bench mind. And there are many who have exchanged this tolerant scepticism for a definite belief founded, as they aver, on evidence hardly less cogent than that which supports many of the accepted general- isations of physical science. Twenty years ago the number of these believers was much greater and the things which they believed much more difficult of acceptance. The number of avowed Spiritual- ists in this country and the States at that time might be reckoned probably by tens of thousands : some spiritualistic writers claimed millions. The Theosophists, too, in their heyday formed a body of not inconsiderable proportions. And outside those who were adherents of one or other of these definite creeds, there was a large and growing body of persons who found in the reported marvels of the INTRODUCTORY. ' 3 stance room, in the tales of ghosts and haunted houses, of clairvoyance, of warning dreams and vis- ions, and not least in the then unfamiliar phenom- ena of hypnotism, something which they could not explain, or could explain only— ignotum per ignotius — by a reference to "occult" forces. Now all these beliefs, even in their most grotesque form, were avowedly founded on evidence, and on evidence which in many cases prima facie suggested and warranted the belief. The existence of . such rational belief (I use the word without prejudging the value of the reasoning by which the belief was supported), and above all the existence of so large a body of believers, furnished, in the view of those who founded the Society for Psychical Research, sufficient justification for the examination of the marvels reported. For the uncritical rejection of the whole matter, which was the only articulate alternative to an acceptance often equally uncritical, seemed as irrational as it was certainly inconclusive. If the things, alleged, or any of them, were true, it was highly important for them to be recognised and incorporated with the organised results of Science. If untrue, it was scarcely less important to inquire how they came to be accepted. The obiter dictum of the one party that the other party were all knaves or fools seemed hardly an adequate account of the matter, seeing that the other party included many persons of unquestioned probity and intelligence and some few men of eminence in various fields of -human activity, including even the physical sciences. 4 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. Neither category, if we turn to a later date, could seem finely appropriate for such names — of those whom death has removed from our muster roll — as- Balfour Stewart, Heinrich Hertz, Edmund Gurney, or Harvey Goodwin. It was in the early months of 1882 that the Society for Psychical Research was founded, under the Presidency of Professor H. Sidgwick, 1 with aims which are thus stated in its first manifesto : It has been widely felt that the present is an opportune time for making an organised and systematic attempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, pyschical, and spiritualistic. From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses,, past and present, including observations recently made by scientific men of eminence in various countries, there appears to be, amidst much delusion and deception, an important body of remarkable phenomena, which axe prima facie inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis, and which, if incon- testably established, would be of the highest possible value. The task of examining such residual phenomena has often been undertaken by individual effort, but never hitherto by a scientific society organised on a sufficiently broad basis. Six Committees were forthwith appointed to take over different parts of the wide field of inquiry,, viz. : 1. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from any generally recognised mode of perception. 1 The other Presidents of the Society since its foundation to the present time have been Prof. Balfour Stewart, F.R.S. ; the Right Hon. A. J. Bal- four, M.P., F.R.S. ; Prof. William James (of Harvard), and Mr. William. Crookes, F.R.S., and the President for 1896, and for the current year. INTRODUCTORY. 5 2. The study of hypnotism, and the forms of so-called mes- meric trance, with its alleged, insensibility to pain ; clairvoy- ance, and other allied phenomena. 3. A critical revision of Reichenbach's researches with cer- tain organisations called " sensitive," and an inquiry whether :such organisations possess any power of perception beyond a highly exalted sensibility of the recognised sensory organs. 4. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on strong testimony, regarding apparitions at the moment of death, or ■otherwise, or regarding disturbances in houses reputed to be haunted. 5. An inquiry into the various physical phenomena com- monly called Spiritualistic ; with an attempt to discover their causes and general laws. 6. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing on the history of these subjects. In the chapters which follow, an attempt will be made to estimate the value of the work done up to the present time by the Society through its Com- mittees, and by individual members, on the several lines of inquiry thus mapped out, and to sketch briefly the conclusions reached or indicated at the present stage. Before I pass to this detailed examination of the results attained, a few words may fitly be said on the spirit and method of these investigations. We did not, as already said, in undertaking the inquiry assume to express any opinion beforehand on the value of the evidence to be examined. Whatever the private bias of individual members towards be- lief or disbelief, it cannot fairly be said that any such bias has been allowed to pervert the methods of the inquiry. To ascertain the facts of the case, 6 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. at whatever cost to established opinions and pre- judices, has been the consistent aim of the Society and its workers. If some of our investigations have resulted in the detection of imposture, the discovery of unsuspected fallacies of sense and memory, and the general disintegration of some imposing structures built upon too narrow founda- tions; whilst others have revealed th~, occurrence of phenomena which neither chance nor fraud nor fallacy of sense can plausibly explain, and for which the present scientific synthesis can as yet find no place, it is pertinent to remember that the inves- tigators were in each case the same, the methods pursued were the same, and the object in all cases was simply the discovery of the truth. There is another not unnatural misconception of the nature of our work. Though fraud, and fraud of a particularly gross kind, is the most active force in producing some of the spurious marvels which have been the' subject of our inquiries, yet fraud is on the whole neither the most prolific nor the most dangerous source of error. In our experimental work in thought-transference and the like, we have had mainly to guard against an innocent deception — and the more insidious because innocent, — the sub- conscious communication of information by indica- tions too subtle to be apprehended by the normal self, but readily seized upon and interpreted by the automatic or somnambulic consciousness. And in that part of our work where experiment is pre- cluded by the nature of the facts, and which has IN TROD UCTOR Y. J consisted, therefore, mainly in obtaining and record- ing the testimony of others to such spontaneous, phenomena as visions and apparitions, the real source of error is again the sub-conscious sophistica- tion of the record owing to the instinctive tendency of the imagination to dramatic unity and complete- ness. This tendency is examined and illustrated in various parts of the book. 1 It is enough to say here that our researches have led us gradually to attach more and more importance to the effect of time on the value of testimony. Consider, for in- stance, the narratives of prophetic dreams dealt with in Chapter XI. The alleged coincidences — many of them of the most conclusive kind — are not. wholly due to chance and probably not in any ap- preciable degree due to culpable negligence or ex- aggeration, and still less to conscious bad faith, on the part of those who have supplied us with inform- ation, often with considerable expenditure of time and trouble and at the cost of unwelcome publicity. But a careful comparison of the most recent cases, with those more remote reveals an ever ascending scale of marvel, and points to a general and hither- to imperfectly appreciated mental tendency, operat- ing with almost the inevitableness of a natural law. There is but one more word to say here. Neither the Society nor any of my colleagues are in any way committed to the views expressed in this book. The reader should on this account pardon a certain apparent egotism in the treatment : the first person. 1 See especially Chapters V., IX., X., and XI. 8 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL HE SEARCH. singular has often been chosen deliberately, where custom would have prescribed a less direct form of statement, in order to emphasise this individual responsibility. The book then represents my in- dividual impressions of the results of our fifteen years' work. More than one view is possible of the general effect of the evidence. To some of my colleagues, it seems to indicate that thought can influence thought, untrammelled by the machinery of sense organs and ethereal undulations ; that the human soul can, while still attached to the body, transcend the limits of space and time and the laws of the physical world ; and can after the death of the body prevail to make its presence known to us here. To my thinking, the evidence is too slender and too ambiguous to bear the weight of such tremendous issues ; and though I hold that there are grounds sufficient to justify telepathy as a working hypothe- sis, the proof of its transcendental nature is still wanting. CHAPTER II. SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. CONCURRENTLY with the immense expan- sion and development, during the last half century, of our knowledge of the material world, there has come a striking recrudescence in civilised countries, of the old-time belief in agencies working outside and beyond physical nature. The modern revival, to go no farther back, may be said to date from the " Rochester knockings," curious raps oc- curring in the presence of two or three members of the Fox family living in Rochester, New York, in the year 1848. From this small beginning, the occurrence of mysterious raps betraying an intelli- gent source, and referred by some to the agency of spirits, by others to supernormal powers exercised unconsciously by the " Mediums," and by a few scientific men, who investigated the occurrences at the time, to voluntary "cracking" (2. e. partial dis- location) of the knee-joints on the part of the girls concerned, arose the whole movement of Modern Spiritualism. The phenomena did not stop here. Within the course of the next few years, the press of the world recorded other marvels too numerous to detail. IO STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. These may be roughly classified under two main heads, (a) There were first the physical phenom- ena, such as the raps already mentioned (which shortly became the recognised mode of communi- cation with the " spirits " ) ; movements of furniture and small objects ; playing of musical instruments without apparent contact ; the appearance of so- called " materialised " spirit-forms ; the levitation of the human body ; " apports " of flowers and other trifles into closed rooms ( regarded as proofs- of the passage of matter through matter) ; and the handling of live coals and other burning substances- with impunity. (6) The mental phenomena, which occurred chiefly through the agency of the medium when in a condition resembling in many respects the trance of the hypnotised subject. When thus- entranced the medium would write or speak words purporting to emanate from an intelligence other than his own. Proofs would thus be given of spirit identity : descriptions of the spirit world ; infor- mation on spiritual things ; the inner thoughts of the inquirer would be revealed, or the medium would give particulars of remote events or distant scenes ; and there were occasional excursions into- the regions of prophecy, psychometry, and retro- cognition, or vision of the past. So rapidly did the belief in these marvels spread in the United States, that as early as 1854 a petition was presented to Congress, signed by some thirteen thousand persons, praying for the appointment of a scientific commission to investigate the phenomena. SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. IT " now engrossing so large a share of the public attention " and ' ' likely to produce important and last- ing results permanently affecting the physical con- dition, mental development, and moral character of a large number of the American people." The petition was ordered to be laid upon the table, and no action was taken. The movement soon spread to Europe. Early in the 'fifties Mrs. Hayden, Daniel Dunglas Home, and other mediums came to this country from America. Shortly after, centres of propagandism grew up here, native-born me- diums appeared on the scene, and journals de- voted to the subject came into existence. Some twenty-five years later, in 1887, there were about one hundred newspapers dealing with the philosophy and phenomena of Spiritualism ; of these about thirty were published in English (the majority of them circulating in the United States), and nearly forty in Spanish. Shortly before the time that Spiritualism as thus described was spreading over the civilised world, two or three English medical men — Braid in Man- chester, Esdaile in Calcutta, Elliotson and others- in London — had been investigating the phenom- ena of hypnotism, or, as it was then more commonly styled, mesmerism. The important discovery, how- ever, of chloroform as an anaesthetic in 1847, an ^ its rapidly increasing usefulness, drew away the attention of the medical world from the remarkable results achieved, by Esdaile especially, in the per- formance of surgical operations under "mesmeric" 12 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. anaesthesia ; whilst the extravagances of the more ignorant practitioners of the art brought the whole subject into disrepute ; until some fifteen or twenty years later the work of Liebeault and Bernheim at Nancy, of Charcot at the Salpetriere, and sporadic inquiries like those of Heidenhain at Breslau, again •called the attention of the scientific world to the matter. The Spiritualists for their part gladly adopted as their own a subject which was thus contemptuously rejected by medical men. They found, not unrea- sonably, in the phenomena of the hypnotic trance much to support and illustrate their own views of the spontaneous mediumistic trance ; and, less rea- sonably, in the process of hypnotic healing proof of spirit intervention. Again, the numerous stories of the Double, or Doppelganger ; of apparitions at the time of death, and of strange things seen and heard in " haunted houses," which had for many •centuries received an intermittent and Nicodemus- like belief not amongst the unlearned alone, were all pressed into the service of the new faith. The Spiritualist even found support and corroboration of his belief in the records of mediaeval witchcraft and the traditions of ancient magic. Meanwhile the alleged physical phenomena of Spiritualism naturally attracted from time to time the notice of men of science. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Mr. Cromwell Varley, Dr. Huggins, and other competent persons published accounts of re- markable manifestations witnessed by themselves. SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. 1 5 A Committee, which included many well-known doctors and barristers, was appointed by the Lon- don Dialectical Society in 1869, for the purpose of investigating the subject. The Committee reported in 1870 to the effect that, in addition to taking a great deal of oral and written evidence on the sub- ject, they had formed themselves into sub-com- mittees for the purpose of practical investigation, and that a large majority of the members had them- selves witnessed "several phases of the phenomena without the aid or presence of any professional medium." The Committee concluded that, " taking into consideration the high character and great in- telligence of many of the witnesses to the more extraordinary facts, the extent to which their testi- mony is supported by the reports of the sub-com- mittees, and the absence of any proof of imposture or delusion as regards a large portion of the phe- nomena ; and further, having regard to the excep- tional character of the phenomena, the large num- ber of persons in every grade of society and over the whole civilised world who are more or less in- fluenced by a belief in their supernatural origin, and to the fact that no philosophical explanation of them has yet been arrived at, they deem it incumbent upon them to state their conviction that the subject is worthy of more serious attention and careful investigation than it has hitherto received." 1 Mr. Crookes during the years 1870-74 conducted various investigations with Miss Cook, D. D. Home, , > Report on Spiritualism, London, 1871, Longmans, pp. 5, 6. 14 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. and others, some of the results of which were pub- lished at the time in the Quarterly Journal of Science and elsewhere, and subsequently in a collected form under the title Researches in Spiritualism. l Mr. Crookes testifies to having witnessed, amongst other phenomena, the occur- rence of inexplicable sounds ; the alteration of the weight of bodies ; the movement of chairs, tables and other heavy objects, and the playing of musical instruments without contact or connection of any kind ; the levitation of human beings ; the appearance of strange luminous substances ; the appearance of hands apparently not attached to any body ; writing not produced by human agency ; the appearance of a materialised spirit-form, of which he succeeded in obtaining photographs. Professor W. F. Barrett, at the meeting of the British Association, at Glasgow, in 1876, read a ipaper on " Some Phenomena Associated with Ab- normal Conditions of Mind." In this paper he de- scribed, amongst other phenomena which he had himself witnessed, the occurrence in broad day- light of raps and other sounds exhibiting intelli- gence, in the presence of a young child, and under -circumstances which seemed to put trickery out of the question. The paper provoked a good deal of discussion at the time, and the popular interest in it was heightened by the fact that a few days later there appeared in the Times a letter signed by Professor Ray Lankester and Dr. H. B. Donkin, 'London, J. Burns', 1875. SPIRITUALISM AS A POPULAR MOVEMENT. 15 giving an account of two visits which they had paid to the medium Slade, whose performances had been referred to at the British Association meeting. They claimed to have detected Slade in writing on the slate, at a time when he supposed himself se- cure from observation, a message which purported to come from the spirit world. Again, in 1877-78, J. C. F. Zollner, Professor of Astronomy at Leipsic, held several sittings with this same medium, Slade, for the purpose of inves- tigating the phenomena. At-some of these sittings, Zollner was assisted by his colleagues of the same university, Professors Scheibrier and Fechner, and by the veteran Professor Wilhelm P. Weber. Amongst the chief phenomena which Professor Zollner claims to have witnessed, were the follow- ing : Writing was produced on slates without the agency of anyone present. Coins, unknown to any- one present and enclosed in a securely fastened box, were correctly described ; the same coins -were subsequently extracted from the box and bits of slate-pencil substituted, the fastenings of the box remaining intact. Knots were tied in an endless cord, i. e. knots, such as would in normal circum- stances have required the end of the cord to be passed through the loop of the knot, were tied when the free ends were sealed together and under observation throughout the experiment. A small table disappeared and as suddenly re-appeared in broad daylight. Abnormal lights and abnormal shadows were observed. In these phenomena, or l6 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. some of them, Zollner found experimental confirm- ation of his hypothesis of a fourth dimension of space, — a dimension which should stand to the known dimensions of cubic space, height, length, and breadth, in the same relation which height now bears to the two dimensions of plane space. Given the fourth dimension, the existence of which is mathematically foreshadowed, Zollner pointed out that, to a man or a spirit endowed with the capacity of dealing with it, the abstraction of objects from a closed box, the knotting of an endless cord, or the removal into invisibility of a solid object would be tasks of no special difficulty. 1 Of investigators without special training, but possessed of education, literary faculty, and general ability, two deserve special mention, — Mr. Stainton Moses and Serjeant Cox. Writing under the pseudonym of M. A. Oxon, Mr. Moses, himself a medium of very remarkable powers, has published accounts of numerous manifestations occurring in his presence, attested sometimes by himself, more frequently, when he himself was entranced and un- conscious, by a circle of intimate friends. These phenomena ranged from the occurrence of raps, musical sounds, and curious lights, to the movement of objects of furniture and "levitation" of the medium himself, the "materialisation" of liquid scent and of jewels, and the introduction of solid objects 1 See Transcendental Physics, an abridged translation by C. C. Massey,- London, 1880. selves witnessed phenomena with Eglinton at which no such opportunities for fraud had occurred. There remained, therefore, one further step in the demonstration : and this fortunately was supplied. Mr. S. J. Davey — already referred to as an enthu- siastic witness in 1884 to Eglinton's honesty and supernormal powers — saw reason in 1885 to sus- pect trickery. Following up the clue obtained, he succeeded with practice in imitating by mere sleight of hand, with the aid of some simple ap- paratus, most of the phenomena which he had witnessed with Eglinton. He then resolved to co-operate with the Society in unmasking the im- posture. The plan adopted was as follows. Mr. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 101 Davey assumed, for convenience, a professional name — David Clifford ; and various persons, intro- duced to him as to one who possessed remarkable powers of a mysterious kind, were allowed to wit- ness his feats, on condition that they would subse- sequently write out a full account of what they believed themselves to have observed. Mr. Davey, of course, worked under less favourable conditions than Eglinton. Most persons who had sittings with the latter probably half believed in the myste- rious powers which he claimed, and even a slight measure of belief was sufficient to intoxicate the senses and bewilder the judgment. It was difficult to maintain the same occult atmosphere about Mr. Davey and his surroundings ; and many of his sit- ters guessed or knew that he was merely a conjurer. Nevertheless the effect produced was such that a well-known professional conjurer expressed his complete inability to explain the results by trick- ery ; that no one of his sitters ever detected his modus operandi ; that most were completely baffled, or took refuge in the supposition of a new form of electricity, or " a powerful magnetic force used in double manner; ist, a force of attraction, and 2d, that of repulsion " ; and that more than one Spiritualist ascribed the phenomena to occult agency, and regarded — perhaps still regard — Mr. Davey as a renegade medium. 1 In the early summer of 1886, Mr. Davey called 1 See letter from Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, Journal, S. P, R. , March, 1891. 102 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. on me one evening and volunteered to give a seance to my brother, Mr. A. Podmore. The fol- lowing is his account of what happened — written unfortunately a few weeks after the occurrence. It is important to remember that Mr. A. Podmore was per- sonally acquainted with Mr. Davey, and knew that he was going to witness a conjuring performance. Statement of Mr. Austin Podmore. " July, 1886. " A few weeks ago Mr. D. gave me a seance, and to the best of my recollection the following was the result. Mr. D. gave mean ordinary school slate, which I held at one end, he at the other, with our left hands : he then produced a double slate, hinged and locked. Without removing my left hand I un- locked the slate, and at Mr. D.'s direction, placed three small pieces of chalk — red, green, and grey^inside : I then relocked the slate, placed the key in my pocket, and the slate on the table in such a position that I could easily watch both the slate in my left hand, and the other on the table. After some few minutes, during which, to the best of my belief, I was atten- tively regarding both slates, Mr. D. whisked the first away, and showed me on the reverse a message written to myself. Almost immediately afterwards he asked me to unlock the second slate, and on doing so I found, to my intense astonishment, another message written on both the insides of the slate — the lilies in alternate colours, and the chalks apparently much worn by usage. " My brother tells me that there was an interval of some two or three minutes during which my attention was called away, but I can only believe it on his word." ' Mr. Davey allowed me to be present during the stance,, and to see how it was done. What hap- pened was this. After the production of the writ- 1 S. P. R., iv., p. 416. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R, 1 03 ing on the single slate, held by Mr. A. Podmore's left hand, his one business in life was to watch the locked slate on the table. It will be seen from his account that he believed himself faithfully to have performed his task. What he actually did was to fix his eyes on Mr. Davey 's face, and listen absorbed to the conjurer's patter. Mr. Davey the while put a duster over the locked slate, removed it to the far end of the room, brought back another locked slate, previously prepared, and placed it under cover of the duster on the table in front of Mr. A. Pod- more. Then, and not till then, the stream of talk ceased, and my brother's attention became again concentrated on the slate, from which the sound of the spirit-writing was now heard to proceed. Another account runs as follows : Statement of Miss Stidolph. " I have much pleasure in recording my recollections of a seance with Mr, S.J. Davey. His powers are certainly mar- vellous, and while I have not the very smallest belief in ' Spiritualism ' or ' mediums ' of any kind, believing the things so called to be gross deceptions, I was amazed at my friend's scientific skill. Apparently he has no appliances. I was seated with him at a small table when he gave me the fol- lowing astounding evidence of his powers. He gave into my hands a slat.e which, when locked, looks like an ordinary box. This box I opened, washed the slate, locked it, and took the key ; for some minutes we sat, he with one hand on mine, his other hand on the table. Presently a faint scratching was heard, and continued some little time ; when it ceased Mr. Davey unlocked the slate, and lo ! it was covered with clear, distinct writing — a: letter addressed to myself, and stating if I would wait a little while the writer would go to the Cape and J04 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. ■bring me news of my brother. Then I again washed the slate ; again- it was locked, and again I kept the key. Mr. Davey then' asked me to fake any volume I liked from the library, to look at a page and remember the number of it. This I did, and again we sat as before. In a few moments the slate was unlocked, when on it was written-, not only the number of the page I had thought of, but some of the words which were on the self-same page, and these not ordinary words, but abstruse words, as the book I selected was a learned one. This I con- sidered a most marvellous feat, and utterly incomprehensible. That the scientific researches of my friend will lead to most •important results I have no doubt. His aim is to expose de- ception, and if this object be attained he will benefit society and throw light on a subject which has hitherto been consid- ered to belong exclusively to the powers of darkness. " E. Stidolph. " I would mention that the shelves from which I took the book contained hundreds of volumes, and Mr. Davey had no idea which I had selected as he closed his eyes and went to the extreme end of the room. E. S. "November 25, 1886." 1 But time would fail to tell of all the marvels per- formed by Mr. Davey's agency and attested by educated and intelligent eye-witnesses. He pro- duced a long message in Japanese for a Japanese marquis ; he made — or seemed to make — pieces of chalk under a glass describe geometrical figures at the unexpressedwish of the sitter ; he made a tum- bler walk across the table in full light ; he wrote messages in double slates securely sealed and screwed together ; he materialised in strong light a woman's head, which floated in the air and then dematerialised ; and the half-length figure of a 1 Hid., p. 418. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R, 105 bearded man, in a turban, reading a book, who bowed to the circle " and finally disappeared through the ceiling with a scraping noise." Disinterested Fraud. In the case of phenomena produced through the agency of professional mediums the moral presump- tion against fraud, whatever weight may have origin- ally attached to it, is clearly altogether invalidated on a historical retrospect. For any one conversant with the damning record of Spiritualist exposures to suggest, where fraud was physically possible, any other explanation for a phenomenon observed in the presence of such persons as Eglinton or Slade would manifestly be preposterous. But this moral presumption still had considerable weight in cases where the more obvious motives to fraud cannot be supposed to have operated. It was this considera- tion mainly which induced the committee on theo- sophical phenomena to take a favourable view of the evidence laid before them in England. 1 Colonel Olcott and some of the Hindoos concerned, who must have been implicated in the trick — if trick there were — were educated men, without any ob- vious advantage to gain from fraud. We now know that some of these persons had lent themselves to carrying on the systematic deception initiated by Madame Blavatsky. But it is not easy to frame an 'intelligible conception of their conduct on ordinary 1 See below Chapter VI. 106 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. motives. Madame Blavatsky herself remains, not- withstanding recent revelations, very much of an enigma. She began life, it is true, as an adventur- ess ; and must have obtained at least bread and cheese by her theosophical ventures. But talents- such as hers would almost unquestionably have commanded a higher market value in some less precarious profession. It is impossible to doubt that for her, at any rate, there was an intellectual satisfaction to be derived from fooling the world,, or that not inconsiderable part of the world which came under her influence. She was an artist in chicanery ; a trickster not for gain only, but for glory. And researches in the squalid annals of spiritualism have brought to light other cases where fraud was practised without the attraction of pe- cuniary or any obvious social advantage. Thus the Seybert Commission mentions a case in which "an unprofessional medium, a young gentleman of re- puted honour and veracity," was in the habit of giving seances of the ordinary type, regularly week after week, to members of his family and a few privileged friends. The medium would sit in semi- darkness behind a curtain with his hands bound. He would then be controlled by Indian spirits and utter guttural whoops and Indian cries. Various musical instruments would be played ; and two drumsticks would make their appearance above the curtain brilliantly illuminated. At the seance re- corded by the Commission, some printer's ink, which had been secretly placed on one of the drum- SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 107 sticks, was found at the end of the seance dissemi- nated over the "medium's" hands. 1 Professor Sidgwick has put on record another case of disinterested deception carried on system- .atically for a considerable period. Mr. Z., the "medium" in this case, was a professional man of good social position, and an author of various books and articles dealing with a department of learned research to which he devoted much of his leisure. In this gentleman's presence, whilst his hand touched the top only, a table would be lifted from the floor, suspended, or carried, through the air. Mr. Z. succeeded in persuading a circle of friends that the phenomena were not due to me- chanical agency : and allowed Professor and Mrs, Sidgwick to observe them on that understanding, whilst repeatedly evading the application of tests which would have made trickery out of the ques- tion. On one occasion, indeed, by an ingenious misrepresentation, he induced a lady to take his place and carry on the trick. It was not until she learnt that Mr. Z. had signed a declaration that the phenomena had " not been produced by normal means," that this lady felt herself bound to com- municate what she knew. It then appeared that the movements had been produced by means of two laths covered with black cloth, which Mr. Z. concealed up his sleeves. Motive adequate for so deliberate a deception it is hard to discover. Most amateur conjurers, no doubt, would refuse 'to reveal 1 Report of the Seybert Commission, pp. 122, 123. 108 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. an ingenious trick ; many would be willing to go some length in baffling a pertinacious inquirer, even perhaps to the extent of leading him, tacitly, or by verbal misrepresentation, to believe that the trick was no trick, but the result of abnormal powers. But there are probably few educated men, with a character to lose, who would be will- ing to risk an express, above all a written, declara- tion to that effect. 1 With children and with many imperfectly edu- cated persons, no doubt, such deception is not un- common. We have come across more than one example of systematic fraud of this kind. In a case investigated by one of our members some years since, two children carried on a series of seances for some weeks in the family circle. A prominent feature of their seances was the produc- tion of writing, through the hand of one of the children, imitating the chirography of various de- ceased relatives ; imitating also their style, and discussing various family events. The information necessary for producing these writings was derived by the children from letters and other documents obtained, sometimes, from locked drawers and desks. Other ingenious and even startling manifestations occurred, for which the complete absence of sus- picion on the part of parents and friends afforded abundant opportunity. The whole was ultimately shown to be due to trickery. In the next chapter we shall* see reason to believe that the so-called 1 Journal, S. P. R., July, 1894. SPIRITUALISM AA'D THE S. P. R. IOQ Poltergeist cases — pinging of bells and mysterious movements of furniture — are due to trickery on the part of the persons concerned, generally girls or young children. Moreover, the fuller knowledge gained in recent years of subconscious mental activities affords ground for thinking that deception of this kind may, in the beginning at any rate, be only semi- conscious. The line between what is conscious and what is not-so-conscious is at all times hard to draw ; since no one but the patient, and not always the patient himself, is in a position to speak with authority. It is not unlikely that seemingly motive- less deception of the kind met with in these inves- tigations may occasionally be the accompaniment of some morbid dissociation of consciousness, such as seems to occur in certain hysterical patients. The automatic subject frequently exhibits in his utterances and actions signs of a disingenuousness foreign to his normal self. In considering the question, therefore, whether the phenomena occur- ring in the presence of a certain person are due to trickery or to " psychic force," we should not be justified in pressing too far the argument drawn from the improbability of wilful deception. We are bound to assume abnormality somewhere, and of the two, it may be easier to suppose the medium abnormally dishonest, than to credit him with ab- normal " psychic " powers. 110 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. Some General Propositions. At this point, before an attempt is made to esti- mate critically the value of the testimony for super- normal physical phenomena set forth in the pre- ceding chapter, it will be convenient to formulate some propositions suggested by a general survey of the evidence, and by the investigations of the Society for Psychical Research in particular. (i) The conditions under which the phenomena generally occur — conditions for the most part sug- gested, and continually enforced by the medium — are such as to facilitate fraud, and to render its detection difficult. Amongst these conditions may be mentioned the darkness or subdued light in which the seance is generally held ; the holding of hands by the circle — a condition calculated to act as an effective check on independent investigation ; the singing and other devices to distract the sitter's attention ; the twitchings and convulsive movements of the me- dium's person ; and the constantly repeated injunc- tion not to concentrate attention on the phenomena desired. Many other suspicious circumstances will Occur to those familiar with the subject. (2) Almost all the phenomena are known to, have been produced under similar conditions by mechanical means. Some of the manifestations witnessed in the presence of Home — levitation, elongation, and the handling of hot substances — must apparently be excepted from this generalisation. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. in (3) Almost every professional medium has been detected in producing results by trickery. This proposition applies to Miss Cook, Mrs. Fay, and other mediums with whom Mr. Crookes experi- mented. But Home, again, forms an apparent exception. I am not aware that clear proof of imposture was ever brought forward against him. (4) There are several cases on record in which private persons, with no obvious pecuniary or social advantage to secure, have bten detected in trickery. (5) The condition of emotional excitement in which investigators have for the most part ap- proached the subject, and the antecedent bias pro- duced by reports of the marvellous, are calculated seriously to interfere with calm and dispassionate observation. It is evident from a perusal of their works that the observations of Hare and Zollner, to take two of the most prominent instances, are vitiated from this cause. But there can be little doubt that it has operated in many other cases where its effects are less obvious. 1 (6) It has been shown that very few persons are capable of exercising the continuous attention neces- sary to detect a conjuring trick. This is a faculty not demanded, and therefore not exercised, in the affairs of ordinary life, or even in the investigations of the laboratory. It follows that, as Mrs. Sidgwick and Dr. Hodgson have 1 See Dr. Hodgson's remarks on this point, S. P. R., vol. iv., pp. 3891 and 397. 112 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. shown, most persons are not merely deficient in this power of continuous observation, but are quite unconscious of their own deficiency, and are prone to fill up the gaps in their knowledge by conjectu- ral additions. Now it is on this proneness to un- conscious omissions and interpolations that the conjurer relies for his effects. (7) The phenomena upon which Spiritualists rely are such as to require the exercise of continuous ob- servation ; and experiments designed to dispense with the necessity for such observation have invari- ably failed. Some proofs of this statement have been already given. Thus the test of interlacing two solid rings cut out of different woods ; of tying a knot in a ring of bladder ; and of converting tartaric into racemic acid, were all evaded by Slade. Knots were indeed tied in a sealed cord, and coins ab- stracted from a closed box, but only after oppor- tunity for substitution had been afforded. Securely fastened slates, and hermetically sealed glass tubes with tablets and pencil enclosed, have been repeat- edly left for experiment with Eglinton, but without results, except of an equivocal kind. Mr. Crookes does, indeed, refer to the movement of "a pendu- lum enclosed in a glass case firmly cemented to the wall," ' but he gives no details of the incident ; and the experiments which he describes in detail, how- 1 Researches, p. 90. Mr. Crookes has explained to me verbally that this experiment, undertaken at Home's suggestion, took place when Mr. Crookes was the sole observer, arid that the movements of the pendulum were not automatically recorded. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 1 13 ever well planned in other respects, were scarcely such as to dispense with the necessity for continu- ous observation. (8) Abnormal substances of various kinds are , alleged to have been seen by numerous observers, but investigation has never revealed anything abnormal. Pieces of drapery have frequently been clipped from spirit robes, but the fragment has always proved to be of a texture such as the looms of Manchester could produce, and has occasionally been found to match pieces of muslin found in the medium's portmanteau. We hear, indeed, of a curious substance which was observed to exude from the ends of a medium's fingers, in the pres- ence of a small committee, containing two doctors. This substance, when analysed, was found to con- sist mainly of albuminous matter, with phosphates of lime and ammonia, and an amorphous pigment. But the observation appears never to have been repeated, and we have no means of testing the ac- curacy of the report, quoted from an American newspaper. 1 It is extraordinary to note how ex- perimenters in this field have persistently neglected their chances. Dr. Speer, though he was careful to note the height of the barometer and other at- mospheric conditions at Mr. Moses' stances, omits to mention whether he analysed the scent so liber- ally showered down, some of which he preserved in a wine-glass. Mr. Crookes states that he has experienced at a seance intense cold, comparable 1 See Spiritualist, May, 1879, p. 246. 1 1-4 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. to that felt by the hand in approaching frozen mer- cury, but he gives no thermometric readings. 1 He describes a solid, self-luminous body, as large as a turkey's egg, which floated about the room and knocked on the table, 2 and materialised hands which seemed to resolve themselves into vapour in his grasp, 8 and he spent many evenings in the com- pany of " Katie's" spirit form. But no opportuni- ties, it would seem, were afforded for examining even a fragment of " Katie's " garments, 4 or for dissecting an imperfectly materialised hand, fading into a cloud at the wrist; or for subjecting to chemical and spectroscopic analysis that solid, self- luminous body. (9) The marvels recorded imply not one new force but many. This is a point which has not, I think, been sufficiently considered by the advocates of a psychic force. But it is obvious, if the analo- gies with the known physical forces are preserved at all, that it could hardly be one and the same force which should carry Mr. Home through the air, cause his body to be elongated, enable him with impunity to carry hot coals in his hand, extemporise material luminous bodies and human hands, remove coins from a closed box, and tie knots in an endless cord. Not even space of n dimensions will plausi- bly account for all .these manifestations. But 1 Researches, p. 86. *Ib., p. 91. »/#., p. 92. * Mr. Crookes informs me that pieces were occasionally cut from " Katie's " dress and proved to be of quite commonplace material. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 1 15 clearly, if we have to admit several new modes of energy, the antecedent improbabilities are enor- mously increased. Examination of the evidence given in Chapter IIL If, now, we take the evidence set forth in the preceding chapter, and review it in the light of recent researches, we must, I think, admit that the value of such experiments as those of de Gas- parin, Hare, and the Committee of the Dialectical Society is seriously weakened, if not altogether destroyed. There are too many unknown elements in each case for us to be satisfied that fraud — even aimless and disinterested fraud — was not a probable explanation. De Gasparin's circle included serv- ants and children ; we are told little or nothing about Dr. Hare's assistants ; whilst the " social position " of the anonymous members of the Dia- lectical Society's Committee can hardly be accepted as a guarantee of their honesty. And if the desire and the opportunity to cheat were present, we can feel no reasonable assurance, in view of the investi- gations of Mrs. Sidgwick and Dr. Hodgson, and the surprising results obtained by Mr. Davey, that cheating would have been detected. The same considerations apply with even greater force to the mediumship of Mr. Stainton Moses. The evidence for the phenomena observed by Dr. Speer and others rests almost solely on the pre- sumption of Mr. Moses' honesty. If his abnormal gifts merely took the shape of an abnormal propen- 116 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. sity for mystifying and cheating his friends, it is clear that the physical obstacles in his path were by no means insuperable. To deceive a heterogeneous assemblage of be- lievers and sceptics who had employed the best pre- cautions they knew against deception is, as we have seen, a task well within the competence of the ordin^ ary professional medium. Mr. Moses, whilst enjoy- ing in common with these professionals the darkness which is their first line of defence, played his part unhampered by " test conditions," in the presence of a few intimate friends, whose confidence in his. integrity was absolute. Dr. Speer had no suspicions and appears to have taken no precautions. He re- cords as an interesting fact in the spiritual economy that the lights required spirit hands, and occasionally part of a forearm to support them ; he mentions that Mr. Moses floated about the room apparently on no other evidence than Mr. Moses' word, and the direction of his voice. The regular attendant at Spiritualist circles a generation ago was not prone to think evil of his fellow-men ; but even such a one might perhaps have held it a suspicious circumstance if, stretching out his hand in the dark to the centre of the table, he had encountered another hand not that of a sitter. Dr. Speer writes down the cir- cumstance without comment, as a " phenomenon." l Yet it is noteworthy that this chance encounter in the dark was apparently the only occasion recorded on which he or any sitter at these stances was per- X S. P. R.,ix..,p. 314. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. WJ mitted to touch ( instead of being touched by ) a materialised hand. Again, it seems clear that most of the phenomena could have been accomplished by normal agencies. There is, as said, no evidence for the levitation beyond Mr. Moses' own statement. The building up of the cross in Mr. Moses' bedroom, the introduction of various objects from other rooms into the seance room, the spirit writing, and the production of scents and jewels, are all feats clearly within the compass of a little fraudulent ingenuity, operating in a uniquely favourable environment. The musical sounds and spirit-lights so minutely described by Dr. and Mrs. Speer present more diffi- culty. We can hardly suppose a Jew's harp and a bottle of phosphorised oil adequate to such opulent and varied effects. If they were indeed produced fraudulently, we must admit either a more elaborate apparatus than, in the circumstances, seems at all probable, or a very free interpretation and embel- lishment by the witnesses' imagination of phenom- ena in themselves comparatively simple. But the hypothesis of fraud in this case presents, it maybe admitted, special difficulties. Against the supposition of conscious fraud we have to oppose Mr. Moses' education, his social position, and the apparent sanity of his whole external life passed in a certain publicity, as at once a Master in a large school, and the leader of an important social move- ment. But if we suppose a condition of double memory, like that of the somnambulist, arising spontaneously, we are met by difficulties of another Il8 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. kind. It is not enough to suggest that Mr. Moses may have been in a state of morbid semi-conscious- ness at the seance, when the phenomena "came off," for many of them implied a certain amount of prep- aration ; and the hypothesis becomes almost un- manageably cumbrous if we extend this morbid state beyond the actual stance, and suppose that Mr. Moses' right hand escaped his notice in con- veying scent-bottles, Parian statuettes, brass candle- sticks, and jewelry into his pockets in preparation for the evening's performance, And there remains to be explained the difficult fact that Mr. Moses be- lieved, or affected to believe, in his own manifesta- tions to such an extent that he propounded a whole religious system based upon his own automatic "writings," and dedicated his whole after life to the movement of which he himself in his double capacity of physical medium and inspired Teacher was the mainstay. If all these things were really the result of semi-conscious fraud, it must be frankly admitted that psychology offers us at present no parallel case. Of the three possible explanations ( for sheer exaggeration and misrepresentation on, the part of the witnesses may be put out of the question), viz : (i) that the things were the manifestations of a new force ; (2) that Mr. Moses did them consciously yid deliberately ; (3) that he did them in some state m which he was not wholly responsible for his actions — none are easy. But for my own part, whilst wavering to some extent between the 2d and the 3d, I incline on the whole to accept the SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. ng latter as involving the least violation of proba- bility. 1 It would be impossible within reasonable limits of space to criticise Mr. Crookes's experiments with Home in detail. Nor do I feel myself competent for the task. It would be an impertinence on my part to suggest that in conducting these experi- ments, in which his reputation is pledged no less than in his researches with the radiometer and the spectroscope, and of whose genuineness he professes himself equally assured, Mr. Crookes divested himself of the critical faculty, the power of analysis, the habit of accurate observation — in a word, of the whole results of his life's training. Through Mr. Crookes's courtesy I have had the opportunity of discussing the matter with him personally; and I confess that I am not prepared with any cheap and ready-made solution of the problems. It may be pointed out, however, that in the sittings with Home the light in the room was lessened on several occasions shortly before some of the most striking manifestations, e.g., the levitations, and the hand- ling of red-hot coals ; also that the movements of articles of furniture and other objects bear a gener- ic resemblance to phenomena known to have been produced fraudulently by other mediums ; and, gen- erally, that the absolute conviction which Mr. Crookes and the circle appear to have entertained of Home's honesty, may have led at times to the 1 Some account of the alleged spirit communications received through Mr. Moses' physical organism is printed as an appendix to this chapter. 120 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. relaxation of precautions, when such relaxation would certainly have vitiated the observations. But I cannot pretend to find in the solution thus indicated much intellectual satisfaction. The results obtained with Miss Cook stand on a different footing. These seances were, as I under- stand, of an informal character; full notes were not taken, nor was it originally intended that the results should be published in any form. The inner room, which served as a cabinet, was left in absolute darkness ; the laboratory, where the circle sat, was illuminated by a light so faint that reading or note-taking was practically impossible. I can- not feel that the conditions, and especially the mental attitude of the circle, were such as to render detection probable, if Miss Cook had chosen to masquerade as a spirit form ; whilst her position as a guest in the house would have facilitated the introduction of an accomplice from the outside, or the subornation of a servant to play the part, on the rare occasions when there is evidence that medium and " spirit " were separate entities. But it is difficult to suppose that the most imbecile laxness of observation, or the most fatuous disregard of elementary precautions, would account for the handling of red-hot coals and other substances described by so many witnesses ; or for the elonga- tion and levitation of Mr. Home, as witnessed in a lighted room at close quarters by the Master of Lindsay and Lord Adare. I find myself unable to conceive that simple trickery could, under the cir-; SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 121 ■cumstances described, be adequate to the effects reported. Short of admitting the phenomena as genuine, I can suggest but one plausible explana- tion — that the witnesses were to some extent hal- lucinated. It is not necessary to suppose in such a case a pure hallucination, containing no elements derived from actual sensation, if, indeed, a " pure" hallucination in this sense ever occurs. It may be conjectured that Home probably supplied certain material data, and guided the imagination of the percipients to complete the picture which he sug- gested to them. That, for instance, he really took live coals out of the fire, and possibly on some occasions held them in his hand, protected by some non-conducting substance ; that he really stretched himself to his full height, and thus produced that breach of continuity between waistcoat and trousers referred to by one of the witnesses to the phenom- enon of elongation ' ; that when levitated as de- scribed in Chapter III., p. 52, he at least thrust his head and shoulders out of the window. There are not wanting illustrations of the kind of hallucinatory illusions here supposed, even in normal life. The records of the Society contain numerous cases of collective, so-called telepathic, hallucinations, where if the telepathic origin of the percept is not always clear, its hallucinatory nature is undoubted ; and there are two well-known classes of hallucinations ■of this kind — the visions seen at the time of re- ligious epidemics, and the hallucinations of the 1 Dialectical Report, p. 209. 122 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. hypnotised subject. No one who has seen a group of boys studying a kitchen chair, in the belief that they are.deciphering the inscription on a moss-grown tombstone, or flying in terror from a ghost extem- porised out of a white pocket handkerchief, will doubt the existence of collective hallucinations. 1 And it must be remembered that the peculiar con- ditions upon which this liability to hallucination is assumed to depend are, to a certain extent, repro- duced at the Spiritualist seance. We find there the strong emotional excitement and the strained expectation which are characteristic of the religious epidemic, as well as the concentration and freedom from external stimuli which are commonly regarded as predisposing causes to hypnotic suggestibility. There can be little doubt that the prolonged sitting in darkness or subdued light, and the anticipation of the marvellous, which it is part of the medium's art to inspire, do tend to excite the imagination of the sitters. And it is to be noted that these con- ditions are practically unique. That the same wit- nesses are not liable to hallucination in ordinary life raises but a faint presumption against the oc- currence of hallucinations at a Spiritualistic seance. The British schoolboy does not at ordinary times mistake a lapdog for a baby. But many, perhaps most, schoolboys can, as we know, have this " sug- gested " to them under appropriate conditions. And in this connection it is to be noted that the 1 See the discussion on the subject in Pliantasms of the Living, vol. ii., pp. 183-188. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 123 conditions under which suggestions of this kind will operate are by no means identical in different subjects. With many persons suggestion — e. g., not to feel pain under an operation — will take effect without loss of consciousness. And apart from these general considerations there is definite evidence that the Master of Lind- say, at any rate, was a likely subject for hallu- cinatory suggestion. He tells us 1 that at one period of his life, when suffering from overwork, he was subject to the hallucination of a black dog. Moreover, one night, when he slept on a sofa in Home's room, he describes seeing a flame of fire on his knee, a column of vapour, and a woman's figure, all apparently hallucinatory. On another occasion the Master of Lindsay and several others saw a crystal ball placed on Home's head emit flashes of coloured light ; and afterwards they all saw in the same crystal a view of the sea lighted up by the setting sun, with stars gradually appear- ing in the sky. This vision lasted for about ten minutes. 2 It may further be remarked that at Mr. Crookes's seances with Home, one or two of the observers would see luminous appearances, hands, or a shadowy form, when the rest of the circle could see nothing. 3 We have also received ac- counts of faces and lights seen at private circles which strongly suggest hallucination ; and it is a 1 Dialectical Report, pp. 215, 216. 9 Pp. 206, 207. 3 See S. P. R., vi., pp. 114, 116, 120, etc. 124 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. common experience at seances with professional mediums that lights and spirit forms are seen by some only of the sitters. It may be suggested that the lights (not always visible to all the sitters) and the musical sounds at Mr. Moses' stances may perhaps have been hallucinations, or at least hal- lucinatory distortions of genuine lights and sounds. In support of the suggestion that some of the phenomena witnessed at Spiritualist seances may be attributed to hallucination, it may be mentioned here (as will be shown farther on, in Chapter X.), that the hallucinations observed in haunted houses may in many cases be traced with some plausibility to the condition of excitement and expectation in- duced by the prior occurrence of mysterious noises and other disturbances. It may be concluded, then, that in face of ex- posures of fraud repeated ad nauseam ; in face of the observed propensity in this field to disinter- ested fraud ; in face of the demonstrated incom- petence even of trained observers to cope with fraud, we should not be justified in assuming any other cause for the physical phenomena of Spiritual- ism than fraud, eked out possibly on rare occasions by fraudulently suggested hallucinations. Unless and until some feat is performed which fraud can- not explain, the presumption that fraud is the all- sufficient cause remains unshaken. In Mr. Crookes's words : " The Spiritualist tells of flowers with the fresh dew on them, of fruit and living objects being carried through closed SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. I2J windows and even solid brick walls. The scientific investi- gator naturally asks that an additional weight (if it be only the ioooth part of a grain) be deposited on one pan of his balance when the case is locked, and the chemist asks for that ioooth of a grain of arsenic to be carried through the sides of a glass tube in which pure water is hermetically sealed." When this demand is complied with, or when any other result is produced which does not depend for proof of its genuineness on the exercise of con- tinuous observation by fallible human senses, then it will be time to revise our provisional conclusion, and to search for some other explanation. Note on the Alleged Spirit Messages Received by Mr. Stainton Moses. In connection with the discussion (above, Chapter IV.) on the credibility of the physical phenomena alleged to have occurred through the mediumship of Mr. Stainton Moses, the following summary of the evidence for spirit communications received through his agency is offered for the reader's consideration. These communications were accepted, in Mr. Moses' lifetime, by the general consent of English Spiritualists, at any rate, as affording a solid basis for their belief. And since his death Mr. Myers, who has edited some of his posthumous papers and his MSS. notes of seances, has been able to bring forward fresh proofs of the authenticity of these communications from disembodied spirits. Some of the evidence for those com- munications was published in Mr. Moses' lifetime in a small volume, Spirit Identity, now for some time out of print. 1 Fuller information on the cases referred to in this book and on some others is contained in Mr. Myers's article on The Experiences of IV. Stainton Moses, Part II. a From these two sources we have records of communications, purporting to be of an evidential character, from thirty-eight deceased persons. These com- 1 London, W. H. Harrison, 1879. 2 S. P. R., xi., pp. 24-113. 126 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. munications are indeed recorded by Mr. Moses himself ; and, with a few exceptions, there is no express corroboration from any other person of the accuracy of the records. In two or three cases, however, we have a detailed account from some other member of the circle fully according with Mr. Moses* own ; and in at least one case (Abraham Florentine) the record of the stance was published before its correspondence with the facts was generally known. And as regards the re- maining records it may fairly be urged that as the surviving members of the circle, who have had the opportunity of read- ing the published accounts, have not challenged their accuracy, they have thus received indirect but valuable corroboration. For our present purpose, at any rate, we may assume that these records, at least so far as they relate to incidents which occurred at stances when other members of the circle were present, may be taken as accurate. To give some idea of the character of the evidence, I will begin by quoting two or three cases which Mr. Moses himself selected during his lifetime as amongst the best proofs of spirit identity. 1 The Case of Charlotte Buckworth. " A spirit communicated by means of raps, giving particulars as to her life which were precise, and entirely unknown to any member of the circle. On the day following I inquired respecting her (of the ordinary controlling spirit) . . . " ' It was said that Charlotte Buckworth, the spirit in ques- tion, had been suddenly deprived of bodily existence in 1773, at a party of pleasure, at a friend's house in Jermyn-street. Further inquiry elicited the information that she had suffered from a weak heart, and had dropped down dead while dancing. My friend, who was writing, could not say whose house, but subsequently returned to give me the information, — Dr. Baker's, on December 5th. We were not able to verify this information, and had given no further thought to the matter. ' Spirit Identity, pp. 105-112. S. P. R„ xi., pp. 7S and 82. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. \2J Some considerable time after, however, Dr. Speer had a friend at his house, who was very fond of rummaging among old books. We three were talking one evening in a room in which there were a number of books rarely used, arranged in shelves from floor to ceiling. t " ' Mr. A. (as I will call him) mounted a chair to get at the topmost shelf, which was filled with volumes of the Annual 'Register. He took one down amid a cloud of dust, and com- mented on the publication as a valuable record of events. Almost anything, he said, could be found in it. As he said this, the idea flashed into my mind at once most vividly that there was the place to look for a record of Charlotte Buck- worth's death. The event would probably create interest, and so would be found in the obituary which each volume con- tains. The impression was so strong— it seemed as though a voice spoke to my inner sense — that I hunted out the volume for 1773, and there I found, among the notable deaths, a record of this occurrence, which had made a sensation as occurring at an entertainment at a fashionable house, and with awful suddenness. The facts were exactly given. The book was thickly covered with dust, and had evidently not been disturbed since it had been consigned to the shelf. I remembered that the books had been arranged five years be- fore ; there they had lain ever since, and but for Mr. A.'s antiquarian tastes no one would have meddled with them. The verification was, I believe, as distinctly spiritual in its suggestion as was the communication.' " Of the case next to be quoted Mr. Moses writes that " It has been considered, on the authority of persons who think they are best able to judge, as the best evidence ever pro- duced for spirit-identity." The Case of Abraham Florentine. The letter, of which the following is an extract, appeared in the Spiritualist newspaper of Dec. .11, 1874, over the signa- ture M. A. Oxo7i (the well-known pseudonym employed by Mr. Moses). 128 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. " In the month of August last I was staying with Dr. Speer at Shanklin, Isle of Wight. We had a number of sittings, and at one of them a spirit communicated, who gave his name as Abraham Florentine. He said that he had been concerned in the war of 1812, and that he had lately entered spirit-life at Brooklyn, U. S. A., on August 5 th, at the age of eighty-three years, one month, and seventeen days. We had some diffi- culty at first in making out whether the months and days referred to the age or to the length of his illness ; but he re- turned on the following evening, and cleared up the difficulty. The manner in which the communication was made was most singular. We were seated, three in number, round a heavy loo table, which two persons could move with difficulty. In- stead of the raps to which we are accustomed, the table commenced to tilt. So eager was the communicating spirit that the table rose some seconds before the required letter was arrived at. In order to mark T it would rise, quivering with excitement, in a manner perfectly indescribable, about K, and then descend at T with a thump that shook the floor. This, was repeated until the whole message was complete ; but so eager was the spirit, and so impetuous in his replies, that he be- wildered Dr. and Mrs. Speer completely (I was in deep trance) and caused the process to be prolonged over the whole sitting. If I may venture a guess> I should say that Abraham Floren- tine was a good soldier, a fighting man not nice to meet, and that he retains enough of his old impetuosity to rejoice at his liberation from the body, which (if I may guess again) had become a burden to him through a painful illness. " Will the American papers copy, and enable me to verify my facts and guesses ? " M. A. (Oxon)." It appears that all the particulars given by the spirit, with one trifling exception, were subsequently verified, partly by in- formation received from the office of the Adjutant General for the State of New York, partly from conversation with his widow, still (in 1875) living in Brooklyn. The one exception was that Mrs. Florentine believed the age of the deceased to be eighty-three years, one month, and twenty-seven days. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 129 Both these communications, it will be seen, purported to come from comparatively obscure persons, whose lives had no obvious point of contact with Mr. Moses or any member of his circle. There are eleven more cases which come under this head, of whom four were very young children. In the remaining twenty-five records, the spirit in some six or eight cases represented a personage of some historical importance — Bishop Wilson, Beethoven, Swedenborg, Louis Napoleon, Presi- dent Garfield, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, — whilst the remain- der (including the last named) had been acquaintances either of Mr. Moses himself, or of some other member of the circle, generally the Speer family. Now the evidence that these spirit communications were what they professed to be is roughly of three, kinds. (a) The record of facts in the life of the communicating intelligence presumably unknown to the medium or any person present. {b) The communication of the fact of the death before it could be known by normal means. (c) The reproduction of characteristic handwriting. (a) As regards the first point, the spirits of friends and ac- quaintances hardly ever communicated a fact of the nature of a test. It is obvious that Mr. Moses' own statement that his grandmother, or an old friend of his family, or Bishop Wilber- force, reminded him of incidents in his past life which he had forgotten, scarcely merits that description. There are vague statements that spirit friends of Mr. and Mrs. Speer mentioned names, dates, and facts unknown to Mr. Moses. One or two instances are given, such as that a sister of Dr. Speer, deceased in her childhood, gave her three Christian names— Catherine Stanhope Pauline — one of which Dr. Speer had never heard or had forgotten. But it is obvious that an incident of this kind has little evidential value. If we assume Mr. Moses' good faith, it cannot be held very improbable that he may have at some time heard particulars of the past history of his friend's family, which had since lapsed from his conscious memory. But the communications received from various un- known persons present us with a problem of another kind. 130 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. In marked contrast to the vague, fishing, and non-committal communications received from most " test-mediums," Mr. Moses' spirits are prodigal of names, dates, and other obitu- ary facts. Thus, to quote a case : " On February 28, 1874, a spirit came by raps and gave the name ' Rosamira.' She said she died at Torquay on January 10, 1874, and that she had lived at Kilburn. She stated that her husband's name was Lancaster," and added that his Christian name was Ben. Mr. Moses himself was moved to admiration by the business-like brevity of this spirit. " It is important to say," he remarks, " that not only were the facts literally true, but that nothing was said that was not true ; nor was there any surplusage of detail — only plain, definite, positive fact." All the particulars given at the Seance were, in fact, contained in the notice Of the death published in the Daily Telegraph some weeks pre- viously. This case may be taken as typical. Mr. Moses' spirits came, gave obituary notices of themselves, setting forth with accuracy and despatch the names and dates, and occasionally the disease of which they died, and then disappeared. Thomas Wilson indeed, sometime Bishop of Sodor and Man, gave a pretty full biography of himself, which took, we are told, two hours to deliver. The facts thus communicated have been verified by Mr. Myers in Stowell's Life of Bishop Wilson} It is interesting to recall in this connection that Mr. Moses passed part of his early life in the Isle of Man. But reproductions of obituary notices from the daily papers, or of the biographies of eminent personages, are clearly not evidential, unless we have not merely full confi- dence in the good faith of the medium, but are satisfied that he could not have read and forgotten these biographies or obituary notices. One opportunity did, indeed, offer for a test. Among the thirty-eight spirits there is one who came to testify to his identity under very striking circumstances. On the morning of Saturday, Feb. 21, 1874, a man had thrown himself under a steam-roller in Baker Street, London, and had been crushed to death. In the evening of the same day 1 S. P. R., xi., p. 88. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 131 the spirit of this man, we are told, visited Mr. Moses and his circle, drew through the medium's hand an indistinct picture of a horse and vehicle, and gave an account of the accident. This information is not of much value from a sceptical stand- point, since Mr. Moses might have heard of the accident when he passed through Baker Street earlier in the day, or might have read of it in the Pall Mall Gazette before he came to the stance. But the Pall Mall Gazette did not mention the name of the suicide. It is to be regretted then — and the more so because the incidents of this seance are attested by an inde- pendent account contributed to the Spiritualist by Mr. F. W. Percival — that among the thirty-eight communicating intelli- gences this particular spirit alone chose to remain anonymous. 1 (b) If we turn now to the second head, we shall find that there is no independent evidence that the communications •were ever received until after such an interval as would allow of the facts of the death and attendant circumstances being ascertained from the daily papers. In the case of deaths occurring in England the interval was usually several days. In the case of Abraham Florentine, who died in America on the 5th August, 1874, the seance at which the communication was made is described, in the only account we possess — an ac- count written in December of that year — as having taken place " last August." In the only other case of a death at a distance where we can apply this test, we are fortunately able to fix the date precisely. On the last day of 1873 and at the beginning of 1874 there died in India three young children. The obitu- ary column of the Times (London) of Feb. 4, 1874, contained 1 The paragraph in Hie Pall Mall Gazette, Feb. 21, 1874, runs as follows : " A cab-driver, out of employment, this morning threw himself under a steam-roller which was being used in repairing the road in York Place [part of Baker Street is so-named], Marylebone, and was killed immediately." Incidentally the paragraph furnishes an explanation of the drawing with which, in place of the usual names and dates, the spirit prefaced his com- munication. Mr. Percival described this as " a horse fastened to a kind of cart or truck,'' and suggested that it had reference to a brass figure of a horse on the front of the steam-roller. If I may venture to interpret the •communication, I would suggest that the intelligence which guided Mr, Moses' hand intended to draw a horse attached to a London cab. I32 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. the following notice : " At Umballa, India, the three children of W. C. Nigel Jones, Esq., and Constance his wife, namely : on the 31st Dec. 1873, Bertie Henry D'Oyly, aged 1 year and 7 months ; on the 3rd Jan. 1874, Edward George Nigel, aged 2 years and 9 months, and on the 5th Jan. 1874, Archie Will- iam ' Gholmeley, an infant." On Feb. 10, 1874, the whole of these particulars — full names, ages, and dates, with a slight variation in the spelling — were reproduced at the seance. In three cases only does the announcement of the death purport to have been made within twenty-four hours of the occurrence. One of these, the suicide under the steam-roller, has been discussed. The evidence for the other two was ob- tained posthumously by Mr. Myers from Mr. Moses' note- books. A lady — " Blanche Abercromby " — known to Mr. Myers, whom Mr. Moses had met at least once at a Spirit- . ualistic seance, died in the country on a certain Sunday after- noon in 1874. Notice of her death appeared in the Times on the Monday morning. In one of Mr. Moses' note-books there was found a communication claiming to be from this lady and written in a handwriting resembling hers, which announced the fact of her death. This communication purported to have been made on the Sunday evening — before, that is, the death would be known in London to any but her intimate friends, amongst whom Mr. Moses was not numbered. So, on the death of President Garfield, Mr. Moses' note-book records that the fact was communicated to him some hours before the news reached Bedford, where he was then residing. Of both these communications it is enough to say that they were ex hypothcsi made at a time when Mr. Moses was alone, and that we have no corroborative evidence of any kind that they were made at the time alleged. {c) As regards the evidence from handwriting : Messages, in writing characteristic of the deceased person were frequently produced at the stances, and in Mr. Moses' note- books when he was alone. In some instances the hand- writing was that of a historical personage— Bishop Wilson, Beethoven, Swedenborg ; in others, that of some person known in life to the medium ; in one or two cases the writing. SPIRITUALISM AND THE S. P. R. 133 reproduced was that of some deceased friend of the Speers, of whose existence Mr. Moses professed himself ignorant ; and in one other case — " Blanche Abercromby " — there is no evi- dence that Mr. Moses had ever had the opportunity of seeing the writing of the deceased. On the other side, excluding infants, there were nine communications received from total strangers both to Mr. Moses and the circle. Messages in characteristic handwriting from any one of these persons would have possessed some evidential value. But in only one of these cases is such evidence vouchsafed — the facsimile of the signature of a lady professedly unknown to Mr. Moses, which was produced, not in the circle, but when the medium was alone. It is scarcely necessary to comment upon this bald summary of the evidence upon which the claims of Mr. Moses to Spirit- intercourse are based. That it has been thought necessary to say so much is due less to the importance of the subject in itself, than to the prominence which has been given to these alleged communications, both during the " Medium's" life- time, and since his death. It will suffice to point out that, judged by the standard which we apply, and necessarily apply, to other records of the kind, they afford hardly evidence to justify even a suggestion that the messages — I will not say proceeded from the source from which they purported to pro- ceed, — but that they involved any supernormal element what- ever. In other words, apart from the moral difficulties involved, there is little or nothing to forbid the supposition that the whole of these messages were deliberately concocted by Mr. Moses himself, and palmed off upon his unsuspecting friends. He would not have had to go beyond the obituary columns of the daily papers, or the topmost shelf of Dr. Speer's library. Of those moral difficulties I have already spoken in Chapter IV. The reader, with the evidence before him, may choose between the moral and the material miracle. At any rate, whatever the solution of the mystery of Mr. Moses' life, his works can scarcely be held to afford proof of Spirit-inter- course. CHAPTER V. POLTERGEISTS. OF the manifestations described in the preced- ing chapters, some few find a parallel in earlier times, or amongst uncivilised peoples at the present day. Thus, moving tables formed a feat- ure in some ancient Egyptian mysteries ; levitation was an occasional diversion of mediaeval saints ; and the fire-ordeal is found not only in European witchcraft stories, but amongst some modern sav- ages. But speaking generally the physical phe- nomena of the seance room belong to the last fifty years. There is no continuous chain of practice, or even of tradition, to connect the modern with the ancient miracles. Not so the Poltergeist, the fera naturce of Spiritualism ; visitations of raps and loud noises, accompanied by the throwing. of stones, ringing of bells, smashing of crockery, and other disturbances of an inexplicable kind, have been reported from very early times, and have per- sisted down to the present day. Since the middle of the last century — to go no farther back — there have been many outbreaks of the kind, nor have the manifestations been confined to any one coun- try. We hear of a case, in 1750, in Saxony, of 134 POLTERGEISTS. 1 35 mysterious stone-throwing, which lasted for some weeks, much to the annoyance of a clergyman and his two sisters, who were the victims of the out- break 1 ; there was a tumult of bell ringing in the Russian monastery of Tsareconstantinof in 1 753 a ; and there was the celebrated Cock Lane ghost, oc- curring in London in 1762. A mysterious out- break took place at Stockwell in 1 772, by which one Mrs. Golding lost the greater part of her glass and crockery, and such other items as a jar of pickles, a pot of raspberry jam, and a bottle of rum. 3 Coming down to more recent times, we find in a small and now rare book called Beatings Bells, published in 1841 by Major Moor, F.R.S., for sale at a church bazaar, some twenty accounts, mostly at first-hand, of similar incidents. The disturb- ances described in Bealings Bells consisted gener- ally of bell ringing, but they included occasional noises of other kinds, movements of furniture, throwing of crockery and other small objects. And even now the newspapers every month re- count some story of mysterious stone-throwing, which has set a country village agape, and bewil- dered a rustic policeman ; perhaps even has formed a nine days' wonder in a London suburb. There are two points to be noticed in these ac- counts — the general similarity of the disturbances 1 Annali dello Spiritismo, quoted in Light, February 22, 1896. 2 The Russian Archives, 1878, pp. 278-9. 3 From a contemporary tract, quoted by Mr. Andrew Lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 118-121. 136 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. in many countries and in many different centuries, and their apparently inexplicable nature. The re- sults described are such as could not have been produced fraudulently, or only by the help of in- genious and complicated machinery ; and it is but here and there that we have even a confession of trickery, frequently extorted by threats, or perhaps an actual exposure of fraudulent devices, which seem for the most part, as in the Cock Lane case, ludi- crously inadequate to the effects. It seems equally incredible that the manifestations described should have been produced by any known physical means ; or that, if so produced, detection of the imposture should not have been the rule, instead of the insig- nificant exception. In short, we are driven either to assume a conjunction of extraordinary cunning on the part of one of the actors in the drama, with imbecile stupidity on the part of the rest, or to sur- mise that the things vouched for may actually have been due to the operation of some supernormal agency. The latter alternative is naturally that preferred by most of those who have reported these occurrences. To the writers of two or three generations ago, as to the Neo-Platonists and the early Fathers, these performances were the clumsy practical jokes of an ill-disposed demon. To the modern believer they appear as extra-corporeal manifestations of the psychic force of the medium. If we leave on one side the physical phenomena of the Spiritualistic seance, it is probable that there is no marvel of modern times which has won more POLTERGEISTS. 1 37 general attention and acceptance, or for which so much evidence, of a sort, is forthcoming. For this reason the Society for Psychical Research has wel- comed reports of these phenomena from independ- ent observers, 1 whilst from time to time members of the Society have investigated such cases either during the actual occurrence of the disturbances, or — if that were not practicable — by visiting the locality and interrogating the witnesses as soon as possible after the events. Case I. Worksop. The first case investigated by us occurred in the early part of 1883, at Worksop, in the house of a small horse-dealer, named White. I went to Work- sop on April 7th, interviewed all the principal wit- nesses of the disturbances, took full notes of their evidence, and obtained signed accounts from three persons — White himself, Higgs (a policeman), and Currass (a neighbour). Briefly the account which I received was as fol- lows : On the 20th or 21st of February, Mrs. White, being alone in the kitchen with two of her young children, was washing up the tea things, when the table, apparently without the contact of any person, tilted up at a considerable angle. The whole incident impressed her as very extraordinary. On Monday, 26th February, a girl of about sixteen, named Eliza R , the daughter of an imbecile mother, came as a servant. On the morning of Thursday, 1st of March, White went away until Friday afternoon. On Thursday night at about n p.m. Tom 1 Two such are printed in Proceedings, vol. vii., pp. 160-173, ar »d 383— 394- 138 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. White, Joe White's brother, aged about twenty, went up-stairs to bed. The children, who also slept upstairs, had been in bed some hours previously. Mrs. White and R were then left alone in the kitchen. At about 1 1.30, a corkscrew, clothes- pegs, a salt-cellar, and many other things, which had been seen in the kitchen a few minutes before, came tumbling down the kitchen stairs. Some hot coals were also thrown down. Tom, who had been upstairs twenty minutes or half an hour, denied having thrown the things down. On the following night at about the same hour, White, Mrs. White, and R being alone in the kitchen, a surcingle, pieces of carpet, knives, forks, and other things were thrown down-stairs. The girl picked them up ; but they followed still faster. White then left the room to go up to Tom. During his absence one of the ornaments flew off the mantel- piece into the corner of the room near the door. Nothing was seen by the two women ; but they heard it fall, and found it there. Their screams summoned White down ; as he entered the room his candle went out, and something struck him on the forehead. The girl picked up the candle — which appears to have left the candlestick — and two new ones, which had not been in the house previously, from the ground ; and as soon as a candle was lit, a little china woman left the mantelpiece and fell into the corner, where it was seen by White. As soon as it w^as replaced it flew across the room again and was broken. Other things followed, and the women being very frightened, and White thinking that the disturb- ances presaged the death of his child, who was very ill with an abscess in the back, sent Tom (who was afraid to go alone) with Ford (a neighbour) to fetch the doctor. Mrs. White meanwhile took one of the children next door. R ap- proached the inner room to fetch another, when things imme- diately began to fly about and smash themselves in that room. After this all appear to have been absent from the house for a short time. White then returned, with Higgs, the policeman, and, whilst they were alone in the kitchen, standing near the door, a glass jar flew out of the cupboard into the yard ; a tumbler also fell from the chest of drawers in the kitchen. POLTERGEISTS. 1 39 when only Higgs was near it. Both then went into the inner room, and found the chest of drawers there turned up on end and smashed. On their return they found R , Wass (a neighbour), and Tom White in the kitchen, and all saw a cream-jug, which R had just placed on the bin, fly four feet up in the air and. smash on the floor. Dr. Lloyd and Mrs. White then entered, and in the presence of all these wit- nesses, a basin was seen to move slowly from the bin, wob- bling as it rose in the air — no person being near it except Dr. Lloyd and Higgs. It touched the ceiling, and then fell sud- denly to the floor and was smashed. This was at midnight. All then left except Tom White and his brother. The disturb- ances continued until about 2 a.m., when all grew quiet, and the Whites slept. At about 8 a.m. on Saturday, the 3d, the- disturbances began again. White left the kitchen to attend to some pigs ; and in his absence Mrs. White and R were left alone in the kitchen. A nearly empty port-wine bottle leaped up from the table about four feet into the air, and fell into a bucket of milk, standing on the table, from which Mrs. White was filling some jugs. Then Currass appears to have been attracted to the scene. He entered with White, young Wass, and others, and viewed the inner room. They had but just returned to the kitchen,, leaving the inner room empty, and the door of communication open, when the American clock, which hung over the bed in the inner room, was heard to strike. (It had not done so for eighteen months previously.) A crash was then heard, and Currass, who was nearest the door, looked in, and found that the clock had fallen over the bed — about four feet broad — and was lying on the floor. Shortly afterward, no one being near it, a china dog flew off the mantelpiece, and smashed itself in the corner near the door. Currass and some others then left. Some plates, a cream -jug, and other things, then flew up in the air, and smashed themselves in view of all who were in the kitchen — R , Mrs. White, and Mrs. Wass. A few more things followed at intervals, and then White 140 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. could stand it no longer, and told the girl R that she must go. With her departure the phenomena ceased alto- gether. It will be seen that the phenomena described are quite inexplicable by ordinary mechanical means. The actual witnesses of the disturbances, including Dr. Lloyd, were satisfied that no trickery could have produced what they saw. Nor does any serious suggestion of trickery seem to have been made by any of the neighbours who were ac- quainted with the circumstances. Some persons seem to have suspected White himself ; but, apart from the entire absence of motive (White was a considerable loser by the articles broken), no one was prepared with'a suggestion of the mechanical means employed, beyond a vague allusion to the omnipotence of electricity. Moreover, White, it is admitted, was absent when the disturbances first broke out, and must, therefore, have had an accom- plice. But no one saw any suspicious movement, or could point to any circumstance tending to throw suspicion on White or anyone else, though the phenomena occurred at intervals during a period of about forty hours, and frequently in broad day- light in the presence of several witnesses. At the time I was much impressed with the strength of the evidence in this case for supernormal agency, and concluded my report as follows : "To suppose that the various objects were all moved by mechanical means argues incredible stupidity, amounting almost to imbecility, on the part of all the persons present who POL TERGEISTS. 1 4 1 were not in the plot. That the movements of the arms neces- sary to set the machinery in motion should have passed unob- served on each and every occasion by all the witnesses is almost impossible. Not only so, but Currass, Higgs and Dr. Lloyd, all independent observers, assured me that they exam- ined some of the objects which had been moved immediately after the occurrence . . . that they could discover no possible explanation of the disturbances, and were fairly be- wildered by the whole matter." Two other cases may be referred to in this con- nection. Case II Durweston. This case is of interest because, again, we have the contemporary evidence of an educated witness, who remains convinced of the genuineness of the manifestations. The disturbances began in December, 1894, at the village of Durweston, near Blandford, in a cot- tage tenanted by a respectable widow named Best, her daughter Julia, aged about sixteen, and two orphan children, who were boarded out from a London workhouse ; the elder, Annie, being about thirteen years of age. Mr. Westlake went to Durweston at the end of January, 1895, and took notes of his conversations with the various eye-witnesses. The disturbances consisted of loud noises, rappings on the walls, stone-throwing, etc. One witness, Newman, a gamekeeper, had seen shells, beads, thimbles, bits of slate-pencil, a boot and other objects thrown about the room in broad daylight. The pheno- 142 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. mena which he claimed to have seen were quite in- ■explicable. His account was given to Mr. West- lake some five weeks after the events. The disturbances were also investigated by a local clergyman, the Rev. W. M. Anderson, who -describes the following experiment. A slate and pencil were placed on the ledge of the window in the room in which Mrs. Best and the two children were in bed. The room was left in darkness, and Mr. Anderson with others remained at the bottom of the stairs. Then, to quote his ac- count : " Some fifteen seconds elapsed, and amid perfect silence we all heard the pencil scratch on the slate. Mrs. Best gave a suppressed groan, which I could distinctly hear. Four sharp raps were given almost simultaneously with the dropping of the pencil on the slate, and Mrs. Best gave a loud scream- ing call, ' Come.' I was in the room instantly. The light showed some unmeaning scratches on the slate." At a later performance the words " Mony " and " Garden " were found on the slate. Mr. Anderson is convinced of the supernormal character of this manifestation. It remains to add that the child Annie is of a decidedly consumptive tendency and apparently hysterical, and that both children are alleged to have seen a curious (halluci- natory) animal in the house. Case III. Arundel. This case was of the same general character. The disturbances, which took place in a cottage at Arundel, Sussex, in Feb., 1884, consisted of scratch- ings all about the bed in which a little girl of thirteen was lying ; loud unaccountable noises in the house ; the throwing down of a clock, chimney-piece orna- POLTERGEISTS. 1 43 merits, a tray of potatoes, an iron pot, etc., in the presence of this girl. The chief witnesses were the girl's father and two grandmothers, and, according to their statements, the things moved were at such a distance from the girl that the movements could not have been effected by normal means. I n this case, again, the girl claimed to have seen a ghostly figure in a white dress. The occurrences appear to have caused some sensation in the neighbourhood. So far no actual trickery has been detected, though in the last case the local doctor satisfied himself that trickery had been employed by the little girl ; and the gentlemen — Major King and Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor — who investigated the case on behalf of the Society, expressed themselves of the same opinion. Colonel Taylor, however, appears since 1884 to have changed his opinion. 1 Now the value of the reports in these three cases as testifying to the operation of some supernormal agency depends upon two assumptions : first, that the various witnesses— for the most part imperfectly educated persons, not skilled in accurate observa- tion of any kind — correctly described what they saw ; and second, that after an interval varying from a fortnight in the last case to more than five weeks in the other two, during which their experi- ences had been discussed and compared and gaped at by every village fireside, and embellished in the public press, they correctly remembered what they described. The concordant testimony of so many 1 See his letter in the Journal of the S. P. R., October, 1896. 144 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: honest and fairly intelligent persons to the marvel- lous occurrences in White's house at Worksop cer- tainly produced a strong impression on my mind at the time. Nor do I see reason now to question my original estimate of their intelligence and good faith. If my verdict in 1897 differs from that which I gave, according to the best of my ability, in 1883, it is because many things have happened since, which have taught us to discount testimony in matters of this kind. In the course of the four- teen years which have elapsed we have received some striking object-lessons demonstrating the in- capacity of the ordinary unskilled observer to de- tect trickery or sleight-of-hand ; and we have learnt to distrust the accuracy of the unaided memory in recording feats of this kind, especially when wit- nessed under circumstances of considerable excite- ment. And, indeed, if we scrutinise the accounts of the various witnesses as they stand, we shall find omis- sions, discrepancies, and contradictions in the evi- dence. (1) Thus, according to White, Higgs and he went into the front room first, to see the damage done there, and on their return to the kitchen a glass jar flew out of the cupboard. But according to Higgs's version, it was after seeing the glass jar fly through the air that White and he went into the inner room. (2) White's account is that two or three witnesses were present when the glass jar flew out ; Higgs says " that no one else was in the room at the time." (3) There seems to be a doubt as to POLTERGEISTS. 145 whether R. entered the kitchen during Higgs's visit. White does not mention her entrance at all. Higgs says they found her in the kitchen on their return from the inner room. (4) Currass says he was in the inner room on the morning of the 3d when the clock fell. White says that Currass was in the kitchen. (5) Again, White cannot remember where R. was at the time of the incident ; whilst Currass says that she was near the inner door. (6) White and Currass agree that Coulter was not present when the American clock fell and was smashed. Now Coulter, whom I saw, and who impressed me favourably as an honest man, stated that he was present when the clock fell, and also during the immediately succeeding disturbances in the kitchen. Such are some of the defects which appear in the evidence even as prepared and taken down from the lips of the witnesses by a too sympathetic re- porter. It is probable that more and more serious discrepancies and contradictions would have been found if there had been no speculation and con- sultation and comparison in the interval of five weeks ; and if each witness at the end of that time had written an independent account of the incidents. In four other cases which we have investigated, trickery was actually detected by one or more eye- witnesses. Case IV. Ham. Early in February, 1895, we received intelligence of a Poltergeist at Ham, a little village near Hun- gerford, in Berkshire. The following extract from 146 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. a letter written by a local clergyman will give some idea of how the matter was regarded in the neigh- bourhood : " F. VicarXge, Hungerford, Berks, "January 31, 1895. " There is a veritable ghost at Ham ; it has overturned boots- and shoes from the slab of an oven on to the hob — overturned a stool, and pitched the cat on it into- the fire— upset tables and all sorts of things. The tenant's name is T , and he works for Mr. W . W has put the man into an adja- cent, but not adjoining, house, and has had the floor of the house taken up, but has not discovered the cause, and now the same pranks are going on in the house into which the people have removed. It is no delusion — it takes place in broad day- light before people's eyes, and E. W. saw a table overturned on Tuesday. No one can explain it — it is quite a mystery,, and is causing great excitement through the country-side ; people from Marlborough, Hungerford, and Froxfield visit the- scene of these operations. They say that the people have a daughter who is eccentric and deformed." From several witnesses, including a police con- stable, we have received accounts of the disturb- ances. The lid of an oven was frequently seen to- fall ; chairs, stools, and other articles of furniture were upset, in the presence of numerous witnesses, and frequently in broad daylight. Polly T., the little girl, was always present during these perform- ances, but the witnesses seem as a rule to have been, completely satisfied that the movements were be- yond her power to execute, and many sent a plan of the room and the position of the people in it to demonstrate the impossibility of the movements, being due to ordinary human agency. POLTERGEISTS. 147 Early in February Mr. Westlake went to Ham. On the morning following his arrival he wrote as follows : Letter I. Post Office, Ham, Hungerford, Berks, February 9, 1895. Nothing is alleged in this case but the frequent movements of objects (except that Mrs. T. says that once she saw a woman's face in the oven). It is one of those baffling cases where the thing won't work, or only inconclusively, in the presence of strangers. At least that was my experience last evening ; some local observers have had better success, I hear. Nevertheless I think it to be' genuine from the hundred and one indications which one gathers when talking with the folks around their hearth— the primitive stance. Polly, a little dwarfed, black-haired girl, turning twelve, sits in the chimney corner and nurses the cats Topsy and Titit — she is the centre of force — then (in the absence of strangers) the coals fly about and all movable objects are thrown down ad libitum, and ad nauseam according to their account. It has been a nine days' wonder, and local interest (all unin- telligent) is dying. The T — s, however, say that things are as active as ever (last evening, e. g.). The report that they have made money out of it seems to be untrue. On the same day, a few hours later, Mr. West- lake writes as follows : Letter II. The " Ham Ghost " is a humbug now, whatever it may have been. I made friends with the cats, and their mistress, poor child, gave me a private sitting of some two or three hours, in the course of which she moved between forty and fifty objects when she thought I was n't looking (her plan being to watch me fill I looked away). However, I saw her in contact with the objects with every degree of distinctness, and on seven (at T48 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. least) occasions by si'mple devices I had a clear view of her hands in contact with the objects and saw them quickly moved. I entered into the spirit of the thing, and said nothing to any- one, beyond suggesting to the lady (Miss W.) at the Manor House that the affair would probably cease if no further atten- tion were paid to it, and that some one would do well to watch the child. She is a dwarf, aged twelve, who has only lately learned to -walk, pale, with long, black hair, and eyes very sharp, and ■watches one like a cat a mouse. Her mother is said never to leave the house or to allow the child to do so. But it is curious that a little child should succeed in deceiv- ing a whole country-side, and especially in deceiving her par- ents (for I do not think they are implicated ; — if they have suspicions, they smother them ; they appear genuinely wor- ried). The mother would sometimes ask the child, after a particularly barefaced "upset," whether she did it, and she always denied. Mr. Westlake has kindly furnished the following additional particulars of what he observed : " After posting my first letter, I went to the T — s' and sat on a bench in front of the fire. No one else was present be- sides the child. She sat on a low stool in the chimney on the right of the fire. On the other side of the hearth there was a brick oven in which, much to Polly's interest, I placed a dish of flour, arguing that a power capable of discharging the con- tents of the oven (one of the first disturbances) might be able to impress the flour. After a time I went to the oven to see how the flour was getting on, stooping slightly to look in, but kept my eyes on the child's hands, looking at them under my right arm. I saw her hand stealing down towards a stick that was projecting from the fire ; I moved slightly and the hand was withdrawn. Next time I was careful to make no move- ment and saw her hand jerk the brand out on to the floor.. She cried out. I expressed interest and astonishment ; and her mother came in and cleared up the debris. This was repeated POL TERGEISTS. 149 several times, and one or two large sticks ready for burning which stood near the child were thrown down. Then a kettle which was hanging on a hook and chain was jerked off the hook on to the fire. This was repeated. As the kettle refused to stay on its hook, the mother placed it on the hearth, but it was soon overturned on to the floor and upset. After this I *was sitting on the bench which stood facing the fire in front of the table. I had placed my hat on the table behind me. The little girl was standing near me on my right hand. Pres- ently the hat was thrown down on the ground. I did not on the first occasion see the girl's movements, but later, by seem- ing to look in another direction, I saw her hand sweep the hat off on to the floor. This I saw at least twice. A Windsor chair near the girl was then upset more than once, falling away from her. On one occasion I saw her push the chair over with both hands. As she was looking away from me, I got a nearly complete view. After one of these performances the mother came in and asked the girl if she had done it, but she denied it." It may be of interest to add that Mr. E. N. Ben- nett, of Hertford College, Oxford, spent nearly five hours in the cottage, and witnessed several move- ments of furniture. But though he strongly sus- pected the child of trickery, and watched her very closely, he was not able actually to detect any fraudulent movement on her part. Case V. Wem. In November, 1883, a series of disturbances broke out at Wood's Farm, near Wem, in Shrop- shire, in the presence of a small nursemaid, Emma D., a girl about thirteen years of age. The phe- nomena, as testified to by the farmer and his wife — intelligent persons — the local schoolmis- 150 STUDIES I.V PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. tress, and various neighbours, included violent movements of small objects and much smashing of crockery. Emma D. was seen by several witnesses to be levitated, chair and all ; and the baby's clothes were on several occasions found alight, with a spent match lying near. No trickery was detected on the part of the girl ; and many of the manifesta- tions, as described to us, were certainly inexplicable by trickery. The disturbances began on the ist of November. On Friday the 9th, Emma D., who had got into a very nervous state, was placed in a doctor's house at Wem, and put under charge of his housekeeper, Miss Turner. From this lady and Dr. Mackey, the late Mr. Hughes, who investigated the case, learnt that after the child's arrival " certain manifestations took place, similar in character to those that preceded them, and for two or three days they were quite unable to detect any fraud, though no manifestation ever took place when the girl was not in such a position that she might have produced them by ordinary trickery. " Thus, in the presence of Dr. Mackey and Miss Turner a piece of bread jumped across the room, the girl not being actu- ally seen to throw it. On another occasion when Miss Turner had left the room, the girl suddenly screamed, and when Miss T. returned, a pair of slippers were on the sofa which had just before been seen on the hearth-rug. Again, when Miss T. had just turned her back to the girl, the usual scream was heard, and turning round Miss T. saw a bucket in the air descending to the ground. A knife on another occasion was thrown across the room, being in the air when Dr,. Corke's servant was entering the room. " On Tuesday morning, however, Miss Turner was in an upper room at the back of the house, and the servant of the establishment and Emma D. were outside, Emma having her POLTERGEISTS-. 151 "back to the house, and unaware "that she was observed. Miss Turner noticed that Emma D. had a piece of brick in her hand held behind her back.' This she threw to a distance by .a turn of the wrist, and while doing so, screamed to attract the •attention of the servant, who, of course, turning round, saw the brick in the air, and was very much frightened. Emma D., looking round, saw that she had been seen by Miss Tur- ner, and apparently imagining that she had been found out, was very anxious to return home that night. " Miss Turner took no notice of the occurrence at the time, but the next morning (Wednesday) she asked the girl if she had been playing tricks, and the girl confessed that she had, and went through some of the performances very skilfully, according to Miss Turner's account." Notwithstanding this exposure the girl persist- ently denied that she had produced the previous disturbances. ' It may be added that, though Dr. Mackey con- sidered the child to be quite normal, Mr. Hughes found some evidence of unusual precocity on her part ; and she had, according to her mother's state- ment, been subject to fits since the outbreak of the disturbances. Moreover, the schoolmistress stated that during some of the disturbances Emma D. cried out that an old woman was at her and would not let her breathe. In two other cases of the kind, VI., Bramford, and VII., Waterford, trickery was detected, by two witnesses in each case, on the part of a young child. So far the agent or "medium" has been a child in humble circumstances, and we have had to rely for our accounts of the manifestations mainly upon the evidence of persons possessing little education. -152 STUDIES IN FSYCHICAL RESEARCH. But in four other cases which we have inquired into the outbreak occurred in houses of more pre- tension, and both agent and witnesses were persons of fair education. In one instance, Case VIII., I received a partial confession from the agent (or one of the agents), a nervous and delicate boy of fifteen. In the three other cases no confession has been made, and no trickery has been detected ; but if we make such slight allowances for mal-observation and unintentional misrepresentation on the part of the witnesses as we are, I think, entitled to make, there is no difficulty, moral considerations apart, in attributing all the phenomena described to trickery. A single case will suffice. Case IX. The house in which the phenomena to be described took place is a small terrace-house in a town in the south of Eng- land, occupied by Mr. and Mrs. B. and their family. The younger daughter, Alice, is barely twelve. She is very tall and pale, and has apparently outgrown her strength ; and is compelled, under medical advice, to lie down on her bed for an hour or two every afternoon. She impressed me, on my visit to the house, as being very intelligent, energetic, and clever beyond her years. In the summer of 18 — the servant complained of hearing strange noises in the house, and seeing shadows behind her, and occasionally of being touched. In the course of the same year Mrs. B. on one occasion heard a tremendous blow on the door of a room in .which she was sitting ; and on another oc- casion saw part of a figure clothed in a print dress through the half-open door of the dining-room.. In the autumn of the following year, however, the phenom- ena were very frequent and striking. The manifestations POLTERGEISTS. 1 53 were of two kinds: (1) physical disturbances, (2) auditory and visual phenomena, which may have been hallucinations. It will be convenient first to consider the physical phenomena. If we omit such matters as blows on doors, the violent slam- ming of half-opened doors, and the fall of a picture from its nail, the most striking physical phenomena were the fol- lowing : I cite these in the order in which they are given in the nar- rative furnished by Mr. B. and other members of the family. (1) Alice, when alone in her room, found some newly shed blood on the floor. (2) Alice, entering her bedroom, closely followed by Miss K., an inmate of the house, found that her water-jug had been quite recently upset on the floor. (3) A water-jug was again found upset in the same bedroom, Alice being in the room alone at the time. (4) Mrs. B., in stooping down to kiss her daughter Alice good-night, felt distinctly a hand laid on her back. (5) A charwoman complained that a saucepan was dragged from her hand and dashed down on the stove. (6) A chair was moved in Mrs. B's room, Alice being the only other person present. (7) A picture was seen to move from its position on the wall of the dining-room to the extent of about four inches. It» then, when commanded by Mrs. B., in the name of the Trinity, returned slowly to its . original position. The witnesses to this phenomenon were Mrs. B., Alice, and Miss K. (8) A card-table, at which Mrs. B., Miss K., Miss B., and Alice were seated, moved sharply and struck Miss K. on the arm. (9) Two little boys were having tea with Alice in the dining-room. One of the little boys had first his leg and then his throat sharply pinched. It is, perhaps, not uncharitable to suggest that the fall of the saucepan may have been due to the clumsiness of the charwoman, and that the other disturbances were caused by Alice, by ordinary physical means. The only incident which, on this interpretation, offers any difficulty, is the movement 154 STUDIES W PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. of the picture on the wall of the dining-room. This may have been effected by a string ; though I could find no trace either on the picture itself or on the adjacent wall of any such means having been used. Mrs. B. could not remember in what part of the room Alice was standing during the phenomenon ; and Miss K. and Mrs. B. assigned different posi- tions to Mrs. B. herself, I think it not impossible that the whole movement was imaginary. . The visual and auditory phenomena were very curious and interesting. Mrs. B. and Miss K. at various times — sometimes together — heard voices speaking, moans, cries, rappings, footsteps, and loud noises. Some of these noises — the sounds of articulate sentences, for instance, — were apparently hallucinatory. There were also many visual hallu- cinations. Miss K., on two occasions, saw a hand —in one case, on the glass of a bookcase. Mrs. B., besides; the hallucination of a woman's dress already referred to, saw, when in bed, a brilliant disc of white light and a dazzling white garment ; she also saw a shadowy black form on suddenly entering a dark room. She saw, in the middle of the. afternoon, a lovely white bird, larger than a dove, gliding across the upper hall. Going up the stairs shortly after this vision, Mrs. B. saw a shower of gold and silver flakes. Alice, who accompanied her, saw them too, , and went to fetch the char- woman. The charwoman " thought it rather pretty, and supposed it was motes." Perhaps it was. POLTERGEISTS. 1 55 Alice also recited several experiences of her own, •which may, perhaps, be classed as hallucinations : she was thumped on the back; she felt something push against her in going up-stairs ; she heard moans, voices, and other noises ; and once, when lying down on her bed in the afternoon, she heard the sound of paper scraping on the wall, and, look- ing up, saw a coloured ball of paper fall from the ceiling and disappear in the basin. No such ball ■could be found. It should be added that the B. family regard the phenomena as inexplicable. In the two other cases under this head, X. and XL, the phenomena attested are about on a par with those above detailed. But the narratives possess one or two special features of interest. Space will not permit of their being quoted here, but some reference is made to them in the Sum- mary ; and a more detailed account of all the cases here dealt with, and of several others which have been reported to us, will be found in Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. xii., pp. 45~ II 5- It will be seen that these eleven cases bear a general resemblance throughout, and belong pretty obviously to the same class. It is therefore primd facie probable that an explanation which fits one case will fit all. An exception should perhaps be made in Case VIII., since it seems doubtful whether ' anyone was deceived by the manifestations in this case except the lady of the house. But in the other cases most of those who witnessed the disturbances, 156 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. whether inmates of the house or neighbours, appear to have regarded them as inexplicable. Now the only explanation for which we have valid evidence at all is trickery. Trickery was act- ually detected by one or more witnesses in four cases. In two of these cases (V. and VI.) and in Case VIII., there was a confession of trickery. There is, therefore, strong ground for assuming trickery as the true and sufficient explanation in all eleven cases. In the first place, we may note that the phenomena described in the Wem and Ham cases, for instance, were/>rz'md facie as inexplicable as those testified to in other instances. But in these two cases we know that trickery Was employed. It is to be noted also that in the Wem case the child was so skilful that, though she was under the close obser- vation of several pairs of eyes in the doctor's house, and though she brought off many "phenomena," it was not until the fifth day that she was actually de- tected in her performances, and then only through a surreptitious entry on the theatre. In the Ham case Mr. Westlake was able to detect the actual movements of the child only when the repetition of the performance taught him what to look for, and Mr. Bennett, despite his strong suspicions, failed altogether to obtain conclusive proof of fraud. And if we remember how many and how great were the errors in observation demonstrated by Dr. Hodg- son in the records given by educated persons of seances with Mr. Davey, we shall find it not un- reasonable to infer, even when direct evidence is POL TERGEISTS. I 57 wanting, like errors in the testimony, mostly of un- educated persons, now under consideration. We have some indirect proof of the justice of this in- ference. It is to be noted that in the last four cases, where the witnesses were for the most part educated persons, and the record was in some instances almost contemporaneous with the events, it is not difficult to explain all that took place — with a few exceptions — as due to trickery. The proof of abnormal agency in these cases rests almost entirely on moral considerations. But in cases like those first cited, where the chief witnesses were persons of limited education, the phenomena attested are of a much more surprising kind ; and at Worksop and Dur- weston especially, where the witnesses were not only imperfectly educated, but did not give their testimony until some weeks after the events, the things described seem wholly inexplicable by nor- mal agencies. One feature in these records should be noticed in this connection. Many of the witnesses described the articles as moving slowly through the air, or exhibiting some peculiarity of flight. (See e. g. the Worksop case.) Similar peculiarities are noted by Mr. Bristow. 1 In describing the movement of pieces of wood in a carpenter's shop, he writes of them as now moving in a straight line and striking a door "noiselessly as a feather," and again "as though borne along on gently heaving waves." In a case which was investigated by one of our correspond- 1 Proceedings, S. P. R., vol. vii., pp. 383-394. 158 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. ing members, Herr Hans Natge, an account of which was published in Berlin in 1889, under the title Der Spuk von Resau, a similar phenomenon is described by the witnesses. Thus, a frying pan in the air is described as having the appearance not of a thing thrown, but of a thing flying ; and the wit- nesses are said to have noticed the absence of any curve of projection in the articles. In default of any experimental evidence that disturbances of the kind are ever due to abnormal agency, I am dis- posed to explain the appearance of moving slowly or flying as a sensory illusion, conditioned by the excited state of the percipients. Again, we have proofs in many of these records, of serious errors of memory. In several instances we find that the various witnesses to a phenomenon differed amongst themselves as to the position, or even the presence or absence, of particular persons ; or failed to mention at all the whereabouts of the presumed agent ; or imagined that they had been present at manifestations of which — according to other witnesses — they knew only by hearsay. Of the errors of narration perpetrated by jour- nalists in search of sensational copy, it is hardly necessary to speak, except to point out that the dramatic and exaggerated accounts of the disturb- ances given in the newspapers inevitably react up- on the memories of tho^e who read them, and so tend still further to vitiate testimony. But it is much easier to infer that trickery has been practised in these cases than to find a plausi- POL TERGEISTS. 1 59, ble motive for trickery. In most cases it is difficult to conceive that any adequate or even rational end was aimed at by the authors of the disturbance. A considerable amount of labour, extending in some cases over months or years, has been voluntarily undertaken by the agent ; much annoyance, ex- pense, and occasionally severe distress has been inflicted on other persons ; and a lively sensation has been caused in the neighbourhood. But there has been apparently no revenge to satisfy ; and such fame as lies in the mouths of rustics, and in occasional paragraphs in provincial newspapers,, would hardly constitute for normal persons — even for children — a sufficient recompense for the labour incurred. And yet it is, in fact, in the desire to cause a sensation that the working motive is prob- ably to be found. The agent — or central figure — in the great majority of the cases is a young girl, roughly between the ages of twelve and sixteen, though one or two may have been a little older. In these eleven records, a young girl appears in eight cases and a young boy in two ; further, in one of the eight cases a young boy is apparently associated with his sister. But a further peculiar- ity is to be noted beside the youth of the agents, to wit, their mental and physical abnormality. In the Worksop case, the presumed agent was a half- witted girl, child of an imbecile mother. In the Wem case, Emma D. was stated by her mother to be subject to fits. In Case VI. the girl appears to have suffered from attacks of hysterical blindness. 160 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. In Cases IV. and X. the girl was deformed, in Case II. hysterical and consumptive. In Case VIII. the boy was delicate and liable to attacks of spontane- ous somnambulism ; and in Case IX. the girl is delicate and has outgrown her strength. Thus in eight out of the eleven cases we have evidence of ill-health or abnormality more or less pronounced. This evidence is strengthened if we accept the agent's own testimony for the occurrence of hal- lucinations. Thus, in Cases II., III., V., VI., IX., and X., the child agent was the subject of halluci- nations, which in Case X. were frequent and pro- longed. It may be suggested then that, in the majority of these cases, the real motive which impelled these children to a long series of apparently meaningless acts of mischief, was the excessive love of notoriety which is occasionally associated with other morbid conditions, especially in young girls. Case XL, on this view, remains unaccounted for, since the agents in this instance were educated adults, apparently free from morbid influences. To sum up: (i) In the eleven cases which we have investigated in detail, direct proofs of trickery have been obtained in several instances. (2) Where the phenomena have been recorded shortly after their occurrence by educated persons, trick- ery is found — moral considerations apart — to be an adequate explanation. (3) Where the phe- nomena have been described by illiterate persons, or recorded some time after the event, this ex- POLTERGEISTS. l6l planation becomes difficult ; and the difficulty is found to increase directly with, the length of the interval and inversely with the education of the witness. (4) But these eleven cases are fairly re- presentative of their class. A certain number of such cases are brought to our notice each year. These eleven cases were selected for investigation, mainly because, from the accounts in the press, or from reports received from trustworthy private sources, they seemed to present a primd facie case for abnormal agency. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that if the opportunity had been given to us, with the experience which we have now ob- tained, to undertake an equally full and searching inquiry into the cases of this kind which figure so largely in the literature of the subject, the evidence for abnormal agency would have been found as little calculated to convince. Before the subject is dismissed, attention may be directed to two points. The first is, that the moral presumption, upon which the evidence for abnor- mal physical phenomena occurring in the presence of private persons mainly depends, is seriously weakened by this demonstration of frequent, elab- orate, and long-continued trickery, practised occa- sionally even by educated persons, without apparent recompense or adequate motive. The second point is, that genuine hallucinations may apparently be associated with fraudulent physical phenomena. Leaving on one side the hallucinations alleged to have been experienced by the agents in many of 1 62 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. these cases— though these are not without interest — we find hallucinations reported by the witnesses in several instances. Thus at Ham (Case IV.) one witness is recorded to have seen a woman's face in the oven ; and in Cases IX. and X. several credible witnesses give accounts of hallucinatory experi- ences. 1 Many of the auditory experiences, and at least two of the visual hallucinations, appear to have been " collective." These facts are of special interest in their bear- ing on the phenomena of collective hallucination, and on the genesis of hallucinatory disturbances — auditory and visual — in so-called " haunted houses." 1 Luminous apparitions are said to have been seen by some of the wit- nesses in the Cock Lane case. CHAPTER VI. MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THEOSOPHY. THE history of the Theosophical movement, so far as it can be disentangled, appears to be somewhat as follows : In 1875, Madame Blavatsky, in concert with Colonel Olcott, an American gentle- man of honourable repute, and with a record of good service done during the War of Secession, founded in New York the Theosophical Society. Of Madame Blavatsky herself little was at that time known ; her life-history up to this point was for some time involved in an obscurity not wholly for- tuitous. For information regarding her past we had to rely mainly on her own account of herself ; and research tended to show that this guarantee was insufficient. But these few facts that follow appear to rest on a basis of somewhat superior certainty : — that she was a Russian lady of good family ; that she left Russia when young, and spent a nomad existence in Europe and elsewhere ; and that for two or three years previous to 1875 sne passed in Egypt and in the United States as a spirit medium. In or about that year, however, she appears to have discovered in herself powers quite superior to those of the ordinary medium, and to 163 164 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. have claimed intercourse with beings of a more ex- alted order than "John King" and other familiar spirits, from whom it is said that she had hitherto derived her inspiration. The Theosophical Society was founded for the reception and study of these new revelations, and for the practice of the rites enjoined as a necessary prelude to the initiation into theosophic mysteries. Strange rumours reached Europe in those years of the sudden appearance of mysterious Asiatics in that first-floor room in New York ; there were those who claimed to have spoken with these phantom visitants ; the president-founder himself held an interview with one of the "Brothers," who had come in ghostly form from far Thibet, and left behind him, for the confusion of the scoffer, the materialised turban which he wore. Strange tales, too, were told of the Russian princess who, with rare self-abnegation, had refused to take the highest place in the sect which she had founded. She had imprinted on handkerchiefs and papers, by the mere imposition of her hand on the white surface, a por- trait of some statesman or eminent personage, and all the experts in New York had failed to discover by what occult art the pictures so produced had been engrained into the very substance of the paper or linen. She had called into existence things which had no existence before. Even in one of her visits to England she had caused the miraculous transportation of documents from place to place. Her very age was not the least of the mysteries which surrounded her. There were MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THEOSOPITY. 165 whispers that, though seemingly in the prime of life, she had already numbered more than four- score years and ten, and that she had discovered, or was near to discovering, the secret of eternal youth. And when she published her great work, — I sis Unveiled, — in which she claimed to rebuild the flimsy fabric of Western science, and to lay the broad foundations of a new philosophy and a new religion, there were not wanting disciples to ac- knowledge her claims. It is true that competent persons who had read the book reported that it contained only a chaotic apocalypse of ignorance ; that the new science was so far without facts, that the new philosophy was innocent of metaphysic, and that the religion owned no God. But the de- ficiencies which the ingenuity of her disciples could not supply their credulity was willing to ignore. And the authoress, with proud humility, disclaimed all honour for herself. She was but the mouthpiece of a wisdom higher than her own ; the chosen me- dium of saints who dwelt in the far Himalayas, re- mote from the errors and strife of the world. And when, a few years later, it was found that the busy life of New York vexed that serene atmosphere which was essential to the due absorption of theo- sophic truth, she found in India a ready welcome and a more congenial environment for herself and the Society. There the Society made rapid progress, and soon numbered its adherents by thousands. The great bulk of its members were, ho doubt, natives. But gradually a few Europeans of educa- 1 66 STUDIES IN PSYCHICAL RESEARCH. tion and repute were attracted by the new doctrines ; amongst others Mr. A. P. Sinnett, at that time editor of the Pioneer. It is to him that we owe the most orderly and complete exposition of these doc- trines. In the Occult World, published in 1881, and in Esoteric Buddhism, published in 1883, Mr. Sinnett set forth the scientific and philosophic, or rather, cosmologic teachings of the new cult. Like Madame Blavatsky, he disclaimed for himself all credit, except what might be his due for skilful ex- position and compilation. He testified only to that which he had received from the " Brothers." The " Brothers," he explained to us, are men of exalted spirituality, and more than mortal wisdom, who reside in the mountain fastnesses, as yet undefiled by the magnetism of European travellers, of the Thibetan Himalayas, and there hand down to the new generation the traditional knowledge, enriched by additions of their own, which they have received from those who preceded them. By the practice of a life of austere simplicity, and by the diligent cultivation of their spiritual faculties, they have at- tained a mastery over the elemental world, an in- sight into the processes of nature and the secrets of the cosmic order, which the devotees of occi- dental science, who proceed by logic and experi- ment, and who trust to the gropings of a purblind intellect, may never hope to rival. Our European thinkers are like blind men who are painfully learn- ing to read with their fingers from a child's primer, whilst these have eyes to see the universe, past, MADAME BLA VA TSKY AND THEOSOPHY. l6? present, and to come. To Mr. Sinnett it had been given to learn the alphabet of that transcendent language. And first, as to the doctrines, which, as Mr. Sin- nett is careful t