In view of these facts, it seemed to me then, and seems to me still, that it was quite impossible that Mr. Hope could have consciously produced that likeness either by skill or trick or both.
I was afterwards present at several of Mr. Hope’s sittings and was allowed on at least two other occasions to accompany him into the dark room and to watch the whole of his procedure. I kept a keen look-out for tricks—with many of which I was acquainted, but I saw none.
Also I have discussed the details many times with photographic experts and I have read the accusations brought against Mr. Hope, and I am quite satisfied that—whatever may have happened on other occasions—none of the suggestions of trickery put forward can account for the “extras” I have described, and particularly for that in which I am most directly interested.
(Signed) George H. Lethem.
Hazeldene, Harehills Lane, Leeds.
The Evidence of W. G. MITCHELL, ESQ., OF DARLINGTON
(Mr. Mitchell is a Vice-President of the S.S.S.P., and President of the Darlington Photographic Society. He is a photographer and investigator of considerable experience.)
I first came in touch with Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton at Crewe. My second meeting with these good people was at Middlesbrough, where they were spending a holiday. I have thus had an opportunity of experimenting in the atmosphere of their own séance-room and studio, and also under the improvised conditions of a friend’s residence.
The subject of supernormal photography was not entirely new to me. I had met Mr. Edward Wyllie, the “spirit” photographer, when in Ireland, and watched his operations almost daily during his fortnight’s sojourn in that country. I subjected him to the most stringent and ingenious tests that I could devise. As founder and president of a photographic society, I was fully alive to all the possibilities of faking, but was quite satisfied that I had removed from Mr. Wyllie any opportunity to indulge in photographic legerdemain. With all my caution, results persisted. All the ordinary laws of photography, as far as I understood them, were upset and violated.