5. Thought Photography.
During the year 1896 considerable stir was created by the investigation of Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc, of Paris, in the line of “Thought Photography,” which is of interest to psychic investigators generally. Dr. Baraduc claimed to have gotten photographic impressions of his thoughts, “made without sunlight or electricity or contact of any material kind.” These impressions he declared to be subjective, being his own personal vibrations, the result of a force emanating from the human personality, supra-mechanical, or spiritual. The experiments were carried on in a dark room, and according to his statement were highly successful. In a communication to an American correspondent, printed in the New York Herald, January 3, 1897, he writes: “I have discovered a human, invisible light, differing altogether from the cathode rays discovered by Prof. Roentgen.” Dr. Baraduc advanced the theory that our souls must be considered as centers of luminous forces, owing their existence partly to the attraction and partly to the repulsion of special and potent forces bred of the invisible cosmos.
A number of French scientific journals took up the matter, and discussed “Thought Photography” at length, publishing numerous reproductions of the physician’s photographs; but the more conservative journals of England, Germany and America remained silent on the subject, as it seemed to be on the borderland between science and charlatanry. On January 11, 1897, the American newspapers contained an item to the effect that Drs. S. Millington Miller and Carleton Simon, of New York City, the former a specialist in brain physiology, and the latter an expert hypnotist, had succeeded in obtaining successful thought photographs on dry plates from two hypnotized subjects. When the subjects were not hypnotized, the physicians reported no results.
FIG. 31—SIGEL’S ORIGINAL PICTURE OF FIG 30.
As “Thought Photography” is without the pale of known physical laws, stronger evidence is needed to support the claims made for it than that which has been adduced by the French and American investigators. “Thought Photography” once established as a scientific fact, we shall have, perhaps, an explanation of genuine spirit photographs, if such there be.
6. Apparitions of the Dead.
In my chapter on subjective phenomena, I have not recorded any cases of phantasms of the dead, though several interesting examples of such have come under my notice. I have thought it better to refer the reader to the voluminous reports of the Society for Psychical Research (England). In regard to these cases, the Society has reached the following conclusion: Between deaths and apparitions of dying persons a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact.
The “Literary Digest,” January 12, 1895, in reviewing this report, says: “Inquiries were instituted in 17,000 cases of alleged apparitions. These inquiries elicited 1,249 replies from persons [in England and Wales] who affirmed that they themselves had seen the apparitions. Then the Society by further inquiries and cross-examinations sifted out all but eighty of these as discredited in some way, by error of memory or illusions of identity, or for some other reason, or which could be accounted for by common psychical laws. Of these eighty, fifty more were thrown out, to be on the safe side, and the remaining thirty are used as a basis for scientific consideration. All these consisted of apparitions of dead persons appearing to others within twelve hours after death, and many of them appearing at the very hour and even the very minute of death. The full account of the investigation is published in the tenth volume of the Society’s Reports, under the title, ‘A Census of Hallucinations,’ and Prof. J. H. Hyslop, of Columbia College, wrote an article giving the gist of the report and his comments in the ‘Independent,’ (December 27, 1895), from which I cull these few notable paragraphs: