One by one the others followed. In spite of darkness, in spite of solemn promises extracted from sitters not to break the circle or seize the ghost, the materializers were all exposed. One man shot a ghost with ink, and the ink was found on the medium. Stuart Cumberland squirted cochineal on a ghost, and the medium could not wash it away. One American with a gun had a shot at a ghost. At another place tin-tacks were strewn on the floor, and the spirit's language was painful to hear. In 1876 Eglinton was exposed by Mr. Colley; he had in his trunk the beard and draperies of his ghost "Abdullah." In 1877 Miss Wood was caught at Blackburn, and Dr. Monck was caught and sent to jail. In 1878 Rita and Williams were caught, with all their tawdry ghost-properties, at Amsterdam. Spiritualists were getting a little nervous, though as a rule they accepted every excuse. The medium had acted "unconsciously," or under the influence of evil spirits. Sir A. C. Doyle boasts that it is Spiritualists who weed out frauds. On the contrary, they have shown a very grave willingness to accept the flimsiest excuses and reinstate the medium. Miss Wood was exposed, for instance, in 1877. They at once admitted her defence, that she had been quite unconscious in impersonating the ghost, and she went on. In 1882 a sceptical sitter seized the "pretty little Indian girl" who came out of the cabinet while Miss Wood was entranced in it; and the Indian girl-ghost was Miss Wood walking on her knees, swathed in muslin.
Ah, but this is ancient history, your Spiritualist friend says. Listen! About fifteen years ago, when I was already making that inquiry into Spiritualism which Spiritualists say I have never made, I was told by a group of London Spiritualists, all cultivated men and women, that it was useless to go the round of the mediums who advertised in Light, since they were "all frauds." I was told that the one genuine medium in London was a certain F. G. F. Craddock, who performed in a studio at the back of Mr. Gambier Bolton's house. The minor phenomena I saw did not impress me, and I asked to be allowed to see these wonderful materializations of Mr. Craddock. Three ghosts—a nun, a clown, and a Pathan—walked the room (successively) while Craddock sat (unseen) in a trance. I saw pictures of these materialized forms, and was told that they were accurate. But before I could get admission Craddock left, and he began to hold sittings for his own profit at Pinner. And on March 18, 1906, the "ghost" was seized, in the usual way, and found to be Craddock. On June 20 (see the Times of June 21) Craddock was fined ten pounds, and five guineas cost, at Edgware Police Court, on the charge "that he, being a rogue and a vagabond, did unlawfully use certain subtle craft, means, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive the said Mark Mayhew and others." He had been controlled as carelessly as F. Cook was in 1874. He had smuggled in masks and drapery, and impersonated his ghosts.
After all, Sir A. C. Doyle may say, in his blunt way, this was 1906. I do not know if he knows it—he seems to have an exceedingly limited knowledge of his own movement—but Craddock is giving materialization-séances in or near London to-day; and prominent Spiritualists know it, and condone it, on the ground that some of his phenomena are genuine.
The imposture has continued to flourish in all parts of the Spiritualist world since 1906. In 1907 it was the turn of Marthe Beraud, of whom I will say more presently. In 1908 exposure fell upon Miller, the most famous of the American materializing mediums. Such was his repute that the French Spiritualists invited him to Paris, and were delighted with him. The figures which appeared while he sat before the cabinet were suspiciously like dolls, but there was no mistake about the "beautiful girl" (in dull, red light) who came out, and offered her hand, when Miller was (presumably) inside the cabinet. But when the spirits announced that it was improper to strip and search him, and when they said that, though he was an "unpaid" medium, they must make him a nice little present before he went back to San Francisco, there was a chill in the Spiritualist world. And when he produced the ghosts of Luther's wife and Melanchthon, when they found bits of tulle and a perfumed cloth in the cabinet after a séance, they sent Miller back to America without his present.
This fiasco, which agitated the Spiritualist world in the beginning of 1909, had not yet been forgotten when, in October of the same year, Frau Anna Abend and her husband were arrested by the police at Berlin. Frau Abend was the leading German medium. Strings of motor-cars stretched before her door of an afternoon. For several years she and her husband had duped and fascinated Berlin by their accurate knowledge of the dead you wished to see. You heard on every side, what you hear on every side in London to-day: "I was quite unknown to the medium," and "She could not possibly know by natural means what the spirits told me." The police thought otherwise. They found in her cabinet tulle enough to drape six ghosts; and they found in her house quite a detective-bureau of information about dead folk and possible sitters, and a secret address to which she had the flowers sent which her spirits would produce as "apports." The whole machinery of her information and trickery was laid bare. Was she ruined? Not a bit of it. She and her husband got off on technical grounds, and the Spiritualists showered congratulations on them and set them up again.[6]
In 1910 our Spiritualist journal, Light, which is so zealous to root out fraud, announced that a really genuine materializing medium had appeared in Costa Rica. It seemed a safe distance away, but Professor Reichel, of France, had actually been to Costa Rica and found it a flagrant imposture at the very time when Light was confirming the faith of English Spiritualists with the glorious news.
Ofelia Corralès, the medium in question, was the daughter of a high civic functionary of San José; an unpaid medium, you notice. As soon as Reichel arrived he found that the wonderful manifestation which the Spiritualist journals of the world had announced was well known locally to be a hoax. The ghost was a servant-girl, who was recognized by everybody, smuggled in at the back door. Ofelia, under pressure, admitted this. Her "spirit-control," she explained, could not "materialize," so directed her to bring in this girl, who resembled her "in the last incarnation but one." Sometimes her mother took the part, and she was one night embraced by an ardent Costa Rican sitter. Reichel assisted at some of her performances, but the girl declined to materialize a ghost. What she did get was a chorus of ghostly voices in the dark. It says something for the robustness of Professor Reichel's psychic faith that, though the music was "rotten," though the whole family was suspect and all the members of it were present, though he caught the girl cheating and her "ghost" was an acknowledged imposture, he believed that this music was a "genuine" phenomenon! He was not going to make a journey to Costa Rica for nothing.
To English Spiritualists this case ought to be particularly interesting, because among the gentle Ofelia's admirers in San José was an Englishman, Mr. Lindo, and it was he who sent the outrageous account to Light. According to him—and he was present—they all saw Ofelia floating in the air. Now, Reichel had taken with him some phosphorized paper, and by the light of this he saw that Ofelia was standing on a stool. In fact, she fell off the stool, and was ignominiously exposed. What is worse, Reichel says (Psychische Studien, April, 1911, p. 224) that he had expressly warned Lindo, who used his name, that he "would not be mixed up with such a burlesque," and that the minutes of the sittings were grossly exaggerated by Ofelia's father. So much for first-hand Spiritualist testimony in Light. The French Annales des Sciences Psychiques gave an equally false account. The German Psychische Studien alone called it "a conglomerate of stupidity and lies." It certainly was; but when the whole truth was known Light mildly described it as "a girlish prank." It was calculated and shameless fraud.
A few months later it was the turn of Lucia Sordi, a famous Italian medium, a young married woman of the peasant class, assisted by her two girls. Her marvels put Eusapia Palladino in the shade. The guests were not merely touched, but bitten! A man's hat was brought from the hall and put on his head. The cat was brought in through the solid walls. The table was not merely lifted up, but carried into the hall. Professor Tanfani and other scientific men were taken in. Four "materialized spirits" seemed to be in the room at once, while Lucia was bound to her chair. They fastened her in a crate, and it made little difference. In 1911 Baron von Schrenck-Notzing went to Rome and exposed her. She could get out of any bandages. But when the War broke out she was still occupying the leisure hours of certain Italian professors.
Meantime, Dr. Imoda, of Turin, university teacher of science, was investigating the marvels of Linda Gazerra. Linda was not exactly an unpaid medium, but she was the cultivated daughter of a professional man. Being a lady and a good Catholic, she could not, of course, be stripped and searched. So she did wonderful things, which Imoda gravely watched and described and photographed for three years. Her "control" was "Vincenzo," a young officer who had been killed in a duel; and a terrible chap he was to choose so respectable and pious a medium. Things simply flew about when he was at work. At other times she "apported" birds and flowers, and the ghosts that materialized beside her—you could plainly see both her and the ghost—were very pretty, though remarkably flat-faced, and fond of muslin. As Linda's hands were controlled by the sitters, it did not matter that she insisted on absolute darkness until she pleased to say "Foco" ("Light") and let you take a photograph. She had a three years' run. Then Schrenck-Notzing studied her at Paris in the spring of 1911. She treated him to a "witches' Sabbath," he says. But he soon found that her feet were not where a lady ought to keep her feet. He felt a spirit-touch, grasped the touching limb, and found that he had the virtuous Linda's foot. Then he sewed her in a sack, and the spirits were powerless. Her materializations and tricks were simple. She brought her birds and flowers and muslin and masks (or pictures) in her hair (which was largely false, and never examined) and her underclothing, and she, by a common trick, released her hands and feet from control to manipulate them.