A rope trick which always causes astonishment and helps to create a belief in supernatural aid is done by a woman medium who enters a cabinet with a rope bound around her neck. The loose ends of the rope are forced through opposite sides of the cabinet and held tightly by two members of the committee. Nevertheless the manifestations take place just the same and when the cabinet is opened afterwards the medium is found bound just as she was before the seance. As a matter of fact when the curtains have been closed and the committee have a grip on the ends of the rope the medium cuts the specially tied loop around her neck. When she is ready to come out she simply ties another loop, using a duplicate piece of rope which she had concealed on her person. When the committee release the ends of the rope she slips the mutilated piece into her bloomers and appears with the duplicate, which looks like the original one.
There are various methods of producing Spirit photographs. One is to have a table prepared so that a developing pan is placed where an X-ray penetrates to the negative. This produces a “Spirit light.” Another is to fix the side of the plate with some luminous substance, shape, or flash, and it is astonishing what these things look like. You get forms and frequently recognize faces in the splotches. Father de Heredia has palmed a figure in his hand and as the investigator signed the negative remarked: “I might as well sign it myself.” In so doing he rested the left hand over the plate while signing with his right and the phosphorous figure in his hand was photographed on the negative. A simple method is to have something concealed in the hand and hold it over the lens instead of a cap, and still another is to get the camera out of focus and snap it secretly, then when the regular exposure is made there is an additional hazy something on the plate.
One of the most startling swindles I ever heard of a medium working was called “finger-printing a Spirit.” In this test the medium shows the sitter finger prints of the departed soul. I hesitated at first about including this fake, fearing to add to the stock of unscrupulous mediums but I finally concluded that the public should know about it. The scheme was first discovered by a sculptor who dabbled some in Spiritualism. One day, several years ago, a workman fell from the top of the building, in which this man had his studio, and was killed. The body was carried into the studio and while alone with it the sculptor conceived the idea of fooling some guests who were to hold a seance that night. He hurriedly made a plaster of Paris mould of the dead man’s fingers and later filled it with a rubber-like substance used in his work. When this had hardened and the plaster had been removed it resembled, even to the most minute detail, the dead hand.
During the seance that night he produced finger prints with it on a trumpet which he had lampblacked and upon investigation it was found that these finger prints corresponded exactly with those of the man in the morgue. No one was able to explain the mystery and he kept the secret for some time but later another medium learned it and obtained a position in an undertaking establishment where he found an opportunity after a while to secure the finger prints of several of the dead who belonged to the wealthy class. In due time he arranged seances with the relatives and convinced them of his genuineness. There are two cases on record where fortunes were at stake because of this sort of fraud. In one case five hundred thousand dollars changed hands upon the recognition of the finger prints of a man who had died two years before. His hand had been maimed in an accident and all the scars showed in the impression on the Spirit slate. Fortunately a confession was wrung from the medium and the money went to the rightful heirs.
A “manifestation” which seems mysterious but which is in reality ridiculously simple is worked as follows. A glass is filled with water and placed on the table in a cabinet. Ribbons or bands of tape are then drawn over it at right angles and the ends fastened to the table with nails. Thus secured the glass cannot be lifted and the top is entirely covered except some small openings. The medium is then locked into the cabinet for a few minutes, during which he keeps up a continual clapping of his hands, but when the cabinet is unlocked the glass is empty of water and the general impression is that the Spirits drained it. As a matter of fact the medium had worked his hands up near his face and shifted from slapping his hands to slapping his face with one hand. This left a hand free and with it he had no difficulty in producing a straw from his pocket and sucking the water from the glass.
Of course these examples are only a few of the many means employed by mediums to produce their “manifestations” and take advantage of the credulity of the average sitter, but they are enough to show the reader the sort of methods practiced and the lengths to which they will go in their deceptions.
CHAPTER VIII
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
With what is perhaps pardonable pride we point to the genius of American enterprise in scientific advancement but it is with decided chagrin that I repeat that, as modern Spiritualism was born in America, so also have been most of the phenomena that under the mask of Spiritualism have unbalanced so many fine intellects the world over. Spirit photography, the most prominent of mediumistic phenomena, had its beginning in Boston, “Hub” of intellectual development, its coming being announced by Dr. Gardner, a devout Spiritualist, who discovered a photographer that “in taking a photograph of himself, obtained on the same plate a likeness of a cousin dead some twelve years before.”
This was in 1862, but a little more than a decade after the original demonstration of so-called Spirit power at Hydesville. Fortunately for the success of the new art the photographer selected by the inhabitants of “Summerland”[72] to use for the demonstration of the new phenomena was a medium and of all the hosts in heaven the spirit chosen to be photographed was (singular coincidence) a cousin of his who had passed the border some years previous.