Several examples of Crewe photographs are reproduced (Figures [8], [9], [10]) which show the similarity to the living man, and yet are declared by the relatives to be unlike any existing picture. That which is shown on [Figure 8] is the result obtained by that brave psychic pioneer, the Rev. Charles Tweedale, who from his little Yorkshire vicarage beckons the Church on the road that it should go. In this case Mr. Tweedale called upon Hope without any appointment and obtained, as has several times been obtained on surprise visits, an excellent result. The psychic face is that of his wife’s father, whose features in life, for purposes of comparison, are shown by [Figure 9]. The picture is unlike any in existence.
I have said that the psychic faces are sometimes more animated and life-like than the original photographs taken in life. In support of this assertion I would point to [Figure 10]. The old man who smiles so happily is Mrs. Buxton’s own father, then very recently dead. I do not think that the most cynical of my readers will contend that a daughter is likely to make a blasphemous faked picture of her own father, even if it had been possible to produce so vital an effect.
Anyone who is familiar with Hope’s results is aware that over many of the psychic faces there appears a roll or arch of some peculiar substance which has never been explained upon any supposition of fraud, but is so constant that it would appear to be part of the psychic process. Some of us have always contended that probably this arch represents a formation corresponding to the Cabinet upon this side—an envelope or enclosed space within which psychic forces are generated and condensed. The arch is by no means peculiar to Hope, though the exact form and texture of it is such that one could pick out a Hope photograph among a hundred others. This psychic arch, as it has been named, appears in many forms and many places, some of them very unexpected. I have, as an example, a photograph before me as I write which was taken by Mr. Boyd, the respected provost of a Scotch borough, upon a recent journey which he made upon the West Coast of Africa. On taking a small group of natives he found an extra of a woman and child (negroes) upon his plate. This extra figure is surrounded and surmounted by the psychic arch in an exaggerated form. Mr. Boyd has no axe to grind, and, so far as I know, he is not even a spiritualist. How comes it, then, that his result fits so definitely into the arch system, if it be not that there is some general law which regulates results whether they be obtained in Crewe or on the Gold Coast?
Again, I have a friend, an amateur, who has himself developed psychic photography from the time that it was a mere luminous blur upon his plates, until now he receives very graceful and perfect pictures which are in some cases recognised faces of the dead. In his case the arch adjusts itself into the form of an artistic hood or mantilla. But the arch principle carries on. It is only by a comprehensive view of this sort, and by the comparison of different independent results, that we are likely to get at some of the laws which underlie this matter. At present the system adopted in quarters which should be responsible ones is to concentrate attention upon whatever may seem to be failure or deception, and to take no notice at all of the broader aspects of the question. In every science the methods of advance are to pay strict attention to the positive results and to regard the negative ones as mere warnings of what to avoid. This process has been reversed in considering psychic photography, and the world has been deceived by those who should have been its guides. Truth will, of course, prevail, but its progress has been grievously retarded by this unhappy and unscientific mental attitude.
On one occasion remarkable evidence was afforded that we were right in our surmise that a cabinet of ectoplasm for concentration is first constructed, and that the psychic effect is developed inside it. The result, which is depicted in [Figure 12], was got by Mr. Jeffrey, of Glasgow, who was, I may add, the President of the Scottish Society of Magicians, and is therefore the last person to be deceived by any sort of trick. In this case the exposure seems to have been too early so that the ectoplasmic bag is exposed in its complete form, without any contents. In the second picture, [Figure 13], taken immediately afterwards, the face of Mr. Jeffrey’s deceased wife has appeared, and the bag has split to show it, forming the familiar fold over both sides of the face. This picture seems to me to be quite final in showing us exactly how the matter is worked by the forces which direct things upon the other side.
Each of these cases which I have given is impressive, I hope, in itself, but their cumulative effect should be overpowering. They are but selections out of a very long list which I could provide, but repetition would be unprofitable, for if those which are here quoted fail to convince the reader then he is surely beyond conviction. One or two might conceivably be the result of imperfect observation or incorrect statement, but it is an insult to common sense to say that so long an array of honourable witnesses, with their precise detail, with their actual photographic results, and with the complete exclusion of any possible trickery, should all be explained in any normal fashion.
CHAPTER IV
AN EXAMINATION OF MR. HOPE AND HIS CRITICS
Having said so much in support of Mr. Hope’s mediumship, let me say what I can in the way of personal criticism, for I hold no particular brief for him, and am only anxious to follow truth wherever it may lead. I have written this pamphlet because I think that truth has been grievously obscured, and that the fruit of seventeen years of remarkable psychic demonstration is, for the moment, imperilled by the attention of the public being directed entirely to a single case which is, admittedly upon the face of it, of a damaging character. We spiritualists should be, in Stevenson’s fine phrase, “steel-true and blade-straight,” and we should never avoid an issue, or fall into the error of our opponents who have no sense of balance and can only focus their gaze upon one side of a question.