There is only one body in this country which can claim any authority, and that is the S.S.S.P., or Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, of which Dr. Abraham Wallace is President, while I share with Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Blackwell the honour of being vice-president. We number among our members Miss Scatcherd, whose experience is probably unique, Mr. Coates, who has written two excellent books upon the subject, Colonel Baddeley, Major Spencer, whose experiments have extended over many years, Colonel Johnson, a pioneer investigator, professional and expert photographers, and others of all shades of opinions, save that all, so far as I know, are convinced by actual experience of the reality of the phenomenon. Of its methods and curious, almost inconceivable and most freakish manifestations we have collected a mass of material and have even cleared a few permanent pathways among the jungle.
It is to this society, and not to the S.P.R. as at present conducted, that the world may look for accurate information upon this subject. It would not be reasonable for me to go at any length here into the results obtained. I would only say that so far as my own conclusions go, basing my studies upon the photographers of the past as well as the present, I think that the evidence is strong that there is on the other side an intelligent control for each photographic medium, whose powers are great but by no means unlimited and who endeavours to give us convincing results each in his own characteristic way. These results are sometimes obtained by actual materialisations, sometimes by precipitations of pictures apart from exposure, sometimes, as I believe, by the superposition of screens which have the psychic face already upon them, and which give marks as of a double exposure. Among the powers of the control is to build up a simulacrum which may be the image of someone who is still alive, or he may produce upon the plate facsimiles of pictures and portraits which do at present exist, but which are entirely beyond the normal reach of the medium. All these and other equally strange points I could illustrate by many examples, but their mere recital will show how many snares lie before the explorer, and how many things might seem to be fraudulent when they are really the doing not of the medium but of the control.
Any further expansion of this fascinating subject would be out of place on my part, since I am by no means one of the authorities, and can only claim that I study and assimilate the results of others, to which, of course, I add my own personal experience. I have, however, asked Mr. Barlow, the Honorary Secretary of this Society, whose experience is so extensive as to be almost unrivalled, to add a short essay upon the subject, with an account of some of the cases which bear upon the matter.
CHAPTER VI
THE ATTACK ON MRS. DEANE AND MR. VEARNCOMBE
I took up my pen for the purpose of considering the case of the Crewe Circle and urging the folly of discarding the work of seventeen years on the score of a single case. I cannot, however, end my task without saying a few words as to the attack upon Mrs. Deane and Mr. Vearncombe, two other photographic mediums. This attack hardly deserves attention as it was anonymous, but it was brought out under the auspices of the Magic Circle, a society of conjurers who have been interesting themselves in matters psychic. As the two attacks were issued almost simultaneously they seem to have had some common inspiration, and to have formed a general assault upon the whole position of psychic photography. The same individual, Mr. Seymour, the amateur conjurer, actually took part, I understand, in both transactions.
Mrs. Deane, the person attacked, is a somewhat pathetic and forlorn figure among all these clever tricksters. She is a little, elderly charwoman, a humble white mouse of a person, with her sad face, her frayed gloves, and her little handbag which excites the worst suspicions in the minds of her critics. Her powers were discovered in the first instance quite by chance. When she first pursued the subject her circumstances were such that her only dark room was under the kitchen table with clothes pinned round it. None the less, she produced some remarkable pictures under these conditions, one of which fell into my hands, and I at once concluded that she had real powers. The portrait was of a young man in life, with a female spirit face behind him. This might well have been faked. Something seemed to be emerging from the young man’s head, however, and on observing this object with a lens I distinguished that it was a small but correct representation of the Assyrian fish-god, Dagon, wearing the peculiar hat with which that deity is always associated. This was so entirely the kind of freakish result which I expect from spirit photography, and was so removed from the normal powers of a charwoman, that I provisionally accepted her in my mind as a true medium, a position from which I have never been compelled to budge. I still retain this photograph, but the little head is too small for satisfactory reproduction.
Mrs. Deane (or Mrs. Deane’s control) has one embarrassing habit which I believe to be unnecessary, and which makes it very difficult to convince the sceptic, or, indeed, to prevent him from writing her down as an obvious fraud. Far from insisting that you bring your own plates, as Hope does, she likes them to be sent to her in advance, and she does what she calls “magnetising” them, by keeping them near her for some days. This is so suspicious that it can hardly be defended, but here, again, there is an element of fanatical obedience. My own personal belief is that her results are perfectly honest, that they are actually formed in the shape of psychographs during the days before the sitting, and that if her plates were examined before they were exposed to light, the pictures would be found already on them. This, of course, would very naturally be taken as clear proof of fraud by the superficial investigator, ignorant of the strange possibilities of psychic photography, but I believe myself that the psychic effect is a perfectly genuine one, but that the extra will very probably bear no relevancy to the sitter. I am speaking now of her general routine, for how can I guarantee every particular case or judge what a medium may do when dealing with so evanescent and elusive a thing as psychic power? When they have it they use it—when it fails them the human element may come in.
I have had one sitting with Mrs. Deane in which six plates were exposed. In four of them there were abnormal results. One of these was a female face smiling from an ectoplasmic cloud. What does Mrs. Deane know of ectoplasmic clouds? One such is visible in the specimen of her work which is shown in [Figure 30]. Exactly similar are some of the clouds which appear in Hope’s work. Such appearances do not aid deception. Why, then, should they appear if it is not that it is part of a psychic process?