In the introduction to Barnum's "Humbugs of the World," the great showman says, "I once travelled through the Southern States in company with a magician. The first day in each town he astonished his auditors with his deceptions. He then announced that on the following day he would show how each trick was performed, and how every man might thus become a magician. That expose spoiled the legerdemain market on that particular route, for several years. So, if we could have a full exposure of the tricks of trade of all sorts, of humbugs and deceivers of past times—religious, political, financial, scientific, quackish and so forth—we might perhaps look for a somewhat wiser generation to follow us."
Thus, we could go on at great length to show how easy it is to deceive people. It is one of the easiest things in the world to make up tricks to fool the best of us, and all operators in occult or physic phenomena know it. "Am I not to believe what I see with my own eyes, and hear with my own ears?" they all say,—at least ALL who want to be convinced. The answer is, "No, you are not."
Ghosts
One by one the great superstitions of the world are slowly but surely disappearing. It was not long ago when we, in this new country of enlightenment, believed in witchcraft, and were burning witches at the stake; but now it would take a long hunt to find a man, woman or child who believed in that horrible and disastrous superstition. The same is almost true of "Ghosts," for that word is now used more in jest than in earnest; but to believe in "apparitions" is not altogether of past centuries, for there are still many who cling to the delusion of supernatural appearances. The modern way of putting it is "Spirits."
Authors, poets and dramatists of all ages, sacred and profane, have made endless allusions to supernatural appearances, not only because ghosts are convenient and entertaining characters to introduce, not only because writers naturally tried to reflect the beliefs of the periods of which they wrote, but because they could make a deeper impression on the minds of a superstitious world. Shakespeare makes fine use of the Ghost in Hamlet and in Macbeth, just as Goethe does of Mephistopheles in Faust. Not only is fiction and the drama full of Ghosts, but there are hundreds of volumes in the libraries giving serious, and apparently "well-authenticated" cases of supernatural appearances. Mrs. Crowe's "Nightside of Nature" is probably the classic of this line of literature—at least, it appears to be quoted more than any other. The author of Robinson Crusoe wrote "An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions; being an account of what they are and what they are not, when they come and when they come not; as also how we may distinguish between apparitions of Good and Evil Spirits, and how we ought to behave to them; with a variety of surprising and diverting examples never published before."
I have frequently been asked by believing friends, "How do you account for this?"—following with, perchance, an elaborate account of what the aunt's mother's sister's nephew once saw. My answer has always been, and still is, to those friends, to Mrs. Crowe, Daniel DeFoe and all others, "I cannot account for what somebody else saw, says he saw, or thinks he saw; but let me see it and I will guarantee to give you a reasonable explanation." John Ruskin says somewhere that the greatest thing in this world is to see something and to be able to tell simply and accurately just what you saw, and nothing else. There is the secret! I remember the first time I saw Hermann the Great, and how I went home and told everybody about the wonderful trick he had performed. Of course, nobody could tell me how it was done, for, from the way I described it, it was an impossibility. Sometime later I had occasion to meet Mr. Hermann in his dressing room, and I then learned how the trick was done. How simple! I had been duped and deceived. My eyes had not seen aright. How different was the story I had told, from the story Hermann told!
I have often thought, if Hermann had been in the Ghost business, what harm could he not have done!
We all know what becomes of the bodies and clothing of the dead. Of this there can be no doubt. What becomes of the soul, the spirit, nobody knows. Assuming that this does not die, which seems probable, we know that it cannot again live within the same body and apparel, for that is destroyed. To assume that the spirit procures a new and similar body and clothing, is to assume the existence of material, physical matter in the spiritual world. Does it not require quite a stretch of a sacrilegious imagination to picture a clothing factory in the spiritual world? And yet, we are told that ghosts appear "in the very clothes they used to wear." Mrs. Bargrave "took hold of Mrs. Veal's gown several times" and recognized the velvet. (Drelincourt on Death, 1700). We are also told of "rustling of silk," "creaking of shoes" and "sounds of footsteps" (Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, Owen).