Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1533 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Particulars of the Commission will be found in LIGHT.* In recent years the history of spirit photography has largely centred round what is known as the Crewe Circle, which is now composed of Mr. William Hope and Mrs. Buxton, both living at Crewe. The Circle was formed about 1905, but did not attract attention until it was discovered by Archdeacon Colley in 1908. Mr. Hope, describing his first experiences, says that while working in a factory near Manchester, he took a photograph one Saturday afternoon of a fellow-workman whom he posed in front of a brick wall. When the plate was developed there was to be seen, in addition to the photograph of his friend, the form of a woman standing by his side, with the brick wall showing through her. The man asked Hope how he had put the other figure there, saying that he recognised it as that of his sister who had been dead some years. Mr. Hope says:
* LIGHT, 1908, p. 526, and 1909, pp. 290, 307, 329.
I knew nothing at all about Spiritualism then. We took the photograph to the works on Monday, and a Spiritualist there said it was what was called a Spirit photograph. He suggested that we should try again on the following Saturday at the same place with the same camera, which we did, and not only the same lady came on the plate again, but a little child with her. I thought this very strange, and it made me more interested, and I went on with my experiments. For a long time Hope destroyed all the negatives on which he obtained spirit pictures, until Archdeacon Colley became acquainted with him and told him he must preserve them.
Archdeacon Colley had his first sitting with the Crewe Circle on March 16, 1908. He brought his own camera (a Lancaster quarter-plate which Mr. Hope still uses), his own diamond-marked plates and dark slides, and developed plates with his own chemicals. All that Mr. Hope did was to press the bulb for the exposure. On one of the plates were two spirit pictures.
Since that early day, Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton have taken thousands of spirit photographs under every imaginable test, and they are proud to be able to say that they have never charged a penny as professional fees, only charging for the actual photographic materials used and for their time.
Mr. M. J. Vearncombe, a professional photographer in Bridgwater, Somerset, had the same disturbing experience as Wyllie, Boursnell, and others in finding unaccountable patches of light appear on his plates, and, like them, he came to take spirit photographs.
In 1920 Mr. Fred Barlow, of Birmingham, a well-known investigator, obtained with this medium extras of faces and written messages, under test conditions, on plates that were not exposed in the camera.* Since that date Mr. Vearncombe has secured many evidential results.
* See LIGHT 1920, p. 190.
March 1922, pp. 132-47.
Mrs. Deane’s mediumship is of recent date (her first spirit photograph was in June, 1920). She has obtained many recognised “extras” under test conditions, and her work is sometimes equal to the best of her predecessors in this branch. Recently she has achieved two very fine results. Dr. Allerton Cushman, a well-known American scientist and Director of the National Laboratories at Washington, paid an unexpected visit to the British College of Psychic Science at Holland Park in July, 1921, and obtained through Mrs. Deane a beautiful and well-recognised “extra” of his deceased daughter. Full details of this sitting will be found recorded, with photographs, in the JOURNAL of the American Society for Psychical Research.
The other result was on November 11, 1922, on the occasion of the Great Silence, on Armistice Day, in Whitehall, when in a photograph of the immense concourse of people gathered in the vicinity of the Cenotaph many spirit faces are discernible, and a number of them were recognised. This was repeated on three successive years.
Modern researches have proved that these psychic results are not obtained, in some instances at least, through the lens of the camera. On many occasions, under test conditions, these supernormal pictures have been secured from an unopened box of plates, held between the hands of the sitter or sitters. Also, when the experiment has been tried of using two cameras, if any “extra” appears, it is found in one camera, not in both. A theory held is that the image is precipitated on the photographic plate, or that a psychic screen is applied to the plate.
The author may perhaps say a few words upon his own personal experience, which has been chiefly with the Crewe Circle and with Mrs. Deane. In the case of the latter there have always been results, but in no case were the “extras” recognised. The author is well aware of Mrs. Deane’s psychic power, which has been conspicuously shown during the long series of experiments held by Mr. Warrick under every possible test condition, and fully reported in PSYCHIC SCIENCE.* His own experiences have, however, never been evidential, and if he relied only upon them he could not speak with any certainty. He used Mrs. Deane’s own plates, and he has a strong feeling that the faces may be precipitated upon them during the days of preparation when she carries the packet upon her person. She is under the impression that she can facilitate her results in this way, but she is probably quite mistaken, for the Cushman case was extempore. It is also on record that a trick was once played upon her at the Psychic College, her own packet being taken away and another substituted. In spite of this “extras” were obtained. She would be well advised, therefore, if she abandoned methods which make her results, however genuine, so vulnerable to attack.
* July, 1925.
It is otherwise with Mr. Hope. On the various occasions when the author has sat with him he has always brought his own plates, has marked them in the dark room, and has handled and developed them himself.
Since writing the above, the author has tested the medium with his own plates, marked and developed by himself. He obtained six psychic results in eight experiments. In nearly every case an “extra” has been obtained, that “extra”-though there has never yet been a clear recognition-has certainly been abnormal in its production. Mr. Hope has endured the usual attacks from ignorance or malice to which every medium is exposed, but he has emerged from them with his honour unblemished.
Some mention should be made of the remarkable results of Mr. Staveley Bulford, a talented psychic student, who has produced most excellent genuine psychic photographs. No one can look over his scrapbook and note the gradual development of his gift from mere blotches of light to very perfect faces without being convinced of the reality of the process.
The subject is still obscure, and all the author’s personal experience goes to support the view that in a certain number of cases nothing external is ever built up, but the effect is produced by a sort of ray carrying a picture upon it which can penetrate solids, such as the wall of the dark slide, and imprint its effect upon the plate. The experiment, already cited, where two cameras have been trained simultaneously, with the medium midway between them, appears to be conclusive, since it showed a result on one plate and not on the other. The author has obtained results on plates which never left the dark slide, quite as vivid as any which have been exposed to light. It is probable that if Hope never took the cap off the lens his results would often be the same.
Whatever the eventual explanation, the only hypothesis which at present covers the facts is that of a wise invisible Intelligence, presiding over the operation and working in his own fashion, which shows different results with different circles. So standardized are the methods of each that the author would undertake to tell at a glance which photographer had taken any print submitted to him. Supposing such an Intelligence to have the powers claimed, we can then at once see why every normal photographic law is violated, why shadows and lights no longer agree, and why, in short, a whole series of traps are laid for the ordinary conventional critic. We can understand also, since the picture is simply built up by the Intelligence and shot on to the plate, why we find results which are reproductions of old pictures and photographs, and why it is as possible that the face of a living man may appear on the plate as that of a disembodied spirit. In one instance, quoted by Dr. Henslow, the reproduction of a rare Greek script from the British Museum appeared in one of the plates from Hope, with a slight change in the Greek which showed that it was not a copy.* Here apparently the Intelligence had noted the inscription, had shot it on to the plate, but had made some small slip of memory in the conveyance. This explanation has the disconcerting corollary that the mere fact that we get the psychic photograph of a dead friend is no proof at all that the friend is really present. It is only when that fact is independently asserted in some seance, before or after, that we get something in the nature of proof.
* “Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism,” p. 218. Henslow.
In his experiments with Hope the author has seemed to catch a glimpse of the process by which the objective photographs are built up-so much so that he has been able to arrange a series of slides which exhibit the various stages. The first of these slides-taken with Mr. William Jeffrey, of Glasgow, as a sitter-shows a sort of cocoon of thinly veined, filmy material which we must call ectoplasm, since the various plasms have not yet been subdivided. It is as tenuous as a great soap bubble and has nothing within: This would appear to be the containing envelope within which the process is carried on, force being collected there as in an earthly medium’s cabinet. In the next slide one sees that a face has formed inside the cocoon, and that the cocoon is opening down the centre. Various stages of this opening are seen. Finally, the face looks out with the cocoon festooned back, and forming an arch over the face, and a hanging veil on either side of it. This veil is highly characteristic of Hope’s pictures, and when it is wanting one may argue that there was no objective presence and that the effect is really a psychograph. The veil or mantilla effect in various forms may be traced back through the whole series of previous photographs, and is especially noticeable in one taken by an amateur on the West Coast of Africa, where the dark spirit has thick folds over the head and down to the ground. When similar results are obtained at Crewe and at Lagos, it is only common sense to agree that a common law is at work.
In pointing out the evidence for the psychic cocoon, the author hopes that he has made some small contribution to the better understanding of the mechanism of psychic photography. It is a very true branch of psychic science, as every earnest investigator will discover. We cannot deny, however, that it has been occasionally made the tool of rogues, nor can we confidently assert that, because some results of any medium are genuine, we are therefore justified in accepting without question whatever else may come.
It is impossible to devote separate chapters to each form of psychic power, as the result would far transcend the limits of this work, but the phenomena of voice production and also of moulds are so clear and evidential that some fuller account of them may not be superfluous.
Many thousands of people can echo the words of job, “And I heard a voice,” meaning a voice coming from someone not living on earth. And they can say this with the assurance of conviction, after a series of exhaustive tests. “The Bible narrative abounds with instances of this phenomenon,* and the psychic records of modern times show that here, as in other supernormal manifestations, what happened at the dawn of the world is happening still.
* See Usborne Moore’s “The Voices” (1913), p. 433.
S.P.R. JOURNAL, Vol. III., 1887, p. 131.
Historic instances of voice messages are those of Socrates and Joan of Arc, though it is not clear that in either case the voice was audible to others. It is in the light of the fuller knowledge which has come to us that we may conclude with some probability that the voices they heard were of the same supernormal character as those with which we are acquainted to-day.
Mr. F. W. H. Myers
would have us believe that the Daemon of Socrates was “a profounder stratum of the sage himself,” which was communicating with “the superficial or conscious stratum.” And in the same way he would explain the voices which came to Joan. But in saying this he is not explaining anything. What are we to think of the reports that ancient statues spoke? The learned, anonymous author, said to have been Dr. Leonard Marsh, of Vermont University, of that curious book “Apocatastasis; or Progress Backwards,” quotes Nonnus as saying:
Concerning this statue (of Apollo), where it stood, and how it spoke, I have said nothing. It is to be understood, however, that there was a statue at Delphi which emitted an inarticulate voice. For you must know that spirits speak with inarticulate voices because they have no organs by which they can speak articulately.
Dr. Marsh comments on this:
The author seems not to have been well informed in regard to the speaking power of the spirits, since all ancient history declares that their voice was often heard in the air, speaking articulately, and repeating the same words in different places; and this was called, and universally known, by the name of “Vox Divina.”
He goes on to say that with the statue mentioned the spirit was evidently experimenting with the perverse material of which it was made (probably stone) to see if he could make it articulate, but could not succeed because the statue had “no larynx or other organs of voice, as modern mediums have.” Dr. Marsh in his book set out to show that the Spiritualistic phenomena at that time (1854) were crude and immature in comparison with ancient spirit intercourse. The ancients, he says, spoke of it as a science, and asserted that the knowledge obtained by it was certain and reliable, “in spite of all fraudulent daemons.” Granting that the priest was a voice medium, the speaking oracle is easily explained.
It is worth noting that the Voice, which was one of the first forms of mediumship associated with modern Spiritualism, is still prominent, whereas many other aspects of earlier mediumship have become rare. As there are a number of competent investigators who consider that voice phenomena are among the most convincing of psychic manifestations, let us glance at the records.
Jonathan Koons, the Ohio farmer, appears to have been the first of the modern mediums with whom it appeared. In the log-hut already mentioned, called his “Spirit Room,” he had in 1852, and for some years after, a number of surprising phenomena, included among which were spirit voices speaking through a tin megaphone or “trumpet.” Mr. Charles Partridge, a well-known public man, who was an early investigator, thus describes hearing the spirit known as John King speak at a seance at the Koons’s in 1855:
At the close of the seance the spirit of King, as is his custom, took up the trumpet and gave a short lecture through it-SPEAKING AUDIBLY AND DISTINCTLY, presenting the benefits to be derived both in time and eternity from intercourse with spirits, and exhorting us to be discreet and bold in speech, diligent in our investigations, faithful to the responsibilities which those privileges impose, charitable towards those who are in ignorance or error, tempering our zeal with wisdom, etc.
Professor Mapes, the well-known American chemist, said that in the presence of the Davenports he conversed for half an hour with John King, whose voice was loud and distinct. Mr. Robert Cooper, one of the biographers of the Davenport Brothers, often heard King’s voice in daylight, and in the moonlight when walking in the street with the Davenports.
At the present day we have come to have some idea of the process through which the voices are produced at a seance. This knowledge, by the way, has been corroborated by communications received from the spirits themselves.
It appears that ectoplasm coming chiefly from the medium, but also in a lesser degree from the sitters, is used by the spirit operators to fashion something resembling a human larynx. This they use in the production of the voice.
In the explanation given to Koons by the spirits they spoke of using a combination of the elements of the spiritual body, and what corresponds to our modern ectoplasm, “a physical aura which emanates from the medium.” Compare this with the spirit explanation given through Mrs. Bassett, a well-known English voice medium in the ‘seventies: “They say they take the emanations from the medium and other members of the circle, wherewith they make speaking apparatus which they use to talk with.”*
* THE SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE (London), 1872, p. 45.
Mrs. Mary Marshall (died 1875), who was the first English public medium, was the channel for voices coming from John King and others. In London in 1869 Mr. W. H. Harrison, editor of THE SPIRITUALIST, conducted exhaustive tests with her. As the early Spiritualists were supposed to be people who were easily imposed upon, it is interesting to note his careful scrutiny. He says,* speaking of Mrs. Mary Marshall:
* THE SPIRITUALIST (London), Vol. 1, p. 38.
Tables and chairs moved about in daylight, and sometimes rose from the ground, whilst at the dark seances voices were heard, and luminous manifestations seen; all these things purported to come from spirits. I therefore resolved to be a constant visitor at the seances and to stick at the work till I either discovered the assertions to be true, or detected the imposture with sufficient accuracy and certainty to expose it in the presence of witnesses, and to be able to publish the facts with complete sectional drawings of the apparatus used.
The voice calling itself “John King” is backed by an intelligence apparently entirely different in kind from that of Mr. or Mrs. Marshall. However, I privately assumed that Mr. Marshall did the voice, and by attending a few seances found that it was a common thing for Mr. Marshall and John King to speak at the same time, so I was obliged to throw over that theory.
Next I assumed that Mrs. Marshall did it, till one evening I sat next her; she was on my right-hand side, I had hold of her hand and arm, and John King came and talked into my left ear, Mrs. Marshall being perfectly motionless all the time, so over went the other theory. Next, I assumed that a confederate among the visitors to the circle did John King’s voice, so had a seance with Mr. and Mrs. Marshall alone; John was there, and talked for an hour.
Lastly, I assumed that a concealed confederate did the voice, so attended two seances where Mrs. Marshall was present among strangers to her, in a strange house, and again John King was as lively as ever.
Finally, on Thursday evening December 30th, 1869, John King came and talked to eleven persons at Mrs. C. Berry’s circle, in the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, the medium being Mrs. Perrin.
While Mr. Harrison satisfied himself in this way that no human being present produced the voices, he does not mention-what was the case-that the voices often gave internal proofs of identity such as neither the medium nor a confederate could have supplied. Signor Damiani, a well-known investigator, in his evidence before the London Dialectical Society, declared * that voices that had spoken to him in the presence of unpaid mediums had subsequently conversed with him at private seances with Mrs. Marshall, and had “there exhibited the same peculiarities as to tone, expression, pitch, volume, and pronunciation, as upon the former occasions.” These voices also talked with him on matters of so private a nature that no one else could have known of them. At times, too, they foretold events which duly came to pass.
* Report of the London Dialectical Society (1871), p. 201.
S.P.R. JOURNAL, Vol.
IV, p. 127.
It is natural that those who come in contact for the first time with voice phenomena should suspect ventriloquism as a possible explanation. D. D. Home, with whom these voices occurred often, was careful to meet this objection. General Boldero, describing the seance when Home visited him at Cupar, Fife, in 1870, writes:
Then voices were heard speaking together in the room, two different persons judging from the intonation. We could not make out the words spoken, as Home persisted in speaking to us all the time. We remonstrated with him for speaking, and he replied, “I spoke purposely that you might be convinced the voices were not due to any ventriloquism on my part, as this is impossible when anyone is speaking in his natural voice.” Home’s voice was quite unlike that of the voices heard in the air.
The author can corroborate this from his personal experience, having repeatedly heard voices speaking at the same time. Examples are given in the chapter on Some Great Modern Mediums.
Admiral Usborne Moore testifies to hearing three and four spirit voices simultaneously with Mrs. Wriedt, of Detroit. In his book “The Voices” (1913) he quotes the testimony of a well-known writer, Miss Edith K. Harper, formerly private secretary to Mr. W. T. Stead. She writes*:
* “The Voices,” pp. 324-5,
After considering a record of about two hundred sittings with Mrs. Etta Wriedt during her three visits to England, of which the notes of the general circles alone would fill a huge volume, were they written IN EXTENSO, I will try to relate, in brief, a few of the most striking experiences my mother and I were privileged to have through Mrs. Wriedt’s mediumship. Looking over my notes of her first visit in 1911 the following details stand out as among the principal features of the seances:-
(1) Mrs Wriedt was never entranced, but conversed freely with the sitters, and we have heard her talking to, even arguing with, some spirit person with whose opinions she did not agree. I remember once Mr. Stead shaking with laughter on hearing Mrs. Wriedt suddenly reprimand the late editor of the Progressive Thinker for his attitude towards mediums, and the evident confusion of Mr. Francis, who, after an attempted explanation, dropped the trumpet, and apparently retired discomforted.
(2) Two, three, and even four spirit voices talking simultaneously to different sitters.
(3) Messages given in foreign languages-French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Arabic and others-with which the medium was quite unacquainted. A Norwegian lady, well known in the world of literature and politics, was addressed in Norwegian by a man’s voice, claiming to be her brother, and giving the name P-.
She conversed with him, and seemed overcome with joy at the correct proofs he gave her of his identity. Another time a voice spoke in voluble Spanish, addressing itself definitely to a lady in the circle whom none of the sitters knew to be acquainted with that language; the lady thereupon entered into a fluent conversation in Spanish with the Spirit, to the evident satisfaction of the latter.
Mrs. Mary Hollis (afterwards Mrs. Hollis-Billing) was a remarkable American medium who visited England in 1874, and again in 1880, when a presentation and address were given her in London by representative Spiritualists. A fine account of her varied mediumship is given by Dr. N. B. Wolfe in his book, “Startling Facts in Modern Spiritualism.” Mrs. Hollis was a lady of refinement, and thousands obtained evidence and consolation through her powers. Her two spirit guides, “James Nolan” and an Indian named “Ski,” talked freely in the Direct Voice. At one of her seances, held at Mrs. Makdougall Gregory’s house in Grosvenor Square on January 21,
* SPIRITUAL NOTES, Vol. I., p. 262, iv.
Mr. Edward C. Randall gives an account of another good American voice medium, Mrs. Emily S. French, in his book “The Dead Have Never Died.” She died in her home in Rochester, New York, on June 24, 1912. Mr. Randall investigated her powers for twenty years, and was convinced that her mediumship was of a very high character.