Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885

by Various

A CHAPTER OF MYSTERY.

Science, as a rule, has avoided the subject of Spiritualism. Its results are too much unlike the hard, visible, tangible facts of scientific research to attract those accustomed to positive investigations. And its methods and conditions are usually of a character to set a scientist beside himself with impatience. Crucial tests do not seem acceptable to spirits in general. They decline to be placed on the microscopic slide or to show their ghostly forms in the glare of the electric light, and prefer to haunt the society of those who do not pester them with too exacting conditions. Thus they have been mainly given over to a class of somewhat credulous and, in some instances, not well-balanced mortals, whose statements have very little weight with the general public, and whose strong powers of digesting the marvellous have originated a plentiful crop of fraud and trickery sufficient to throw discredit on the whole business.

It cannot be said, however, that all the adherents of Spiritualism are of this character, or that science has completely failed to investigate it. It has won over many persons of good sense and sound logic, including several prominent scientists, to a belief in the truth of its claims. Were its adherents all cranks or credulous believers, and its phenomena only such common sleight-of-hand performances as suffice to convince the open-mouthed swallowers of conjurers' tricks, it would be idle to give it any attention. But phenomena sufficiently striking to convert such men as Hare, Crooks, Wallace, Zöllner, and the like are certainly worthy of some attention, and cannot be at once dismissed as results of skilful prestidigitation.

In fact, it is evident to those who have taken the trouble to investigate the question seriously, and who do not dismiss it with an a priori decision, that in addition to the fraudulent mediums who make it their business to trick the public, and are ready to produce a new marvel for every new dollar, and to call "spirits from the vasty deep" of the unseen universe in form and shape to suit every customer, there are some private and strictly honest mediums, and many phenomena which no theory of conjuring will explain. To what they are due is another question, in regard to which no hypothesis is here offered. It may be said here, however, that the work of the Psychic Research Society has demonstrated rather conclusively that certain hitherto unknown and unsuspected powers and laws of nature do exist, and that man's five senses are not the only means by which he gains a knowledge of what is going on in other minds than his own. The facts of thought-transference, of mesmeric control, of apparitions of the living, and the like, as critically tested by the members of this society, seem to indicate clearly that mind can affect, influence, and control mind through some other channel than that of the senses, usually over short distances, but in case of strong mental concentration over long distances. That some psychic medium, some ethereal atmosphere, infiltrates our grosser atmosphere, and is capable of conveying waves of thought as the luminiferous ether conveys waves of light, is the theory advanced in explanation of these phenomena. Spiritualists had long before advanced a like theory in explanation of their phenomena, claiming that disembodied as well as living minds have the power of influencing and controlling other minds, through the agency of such a psychic atmosphere, and also of acting upon and moving physical substances through a like agency. As to the probability of all this, no opinion is here offered.

It is our purpose simply to select some of the more striking instances of spiritualistic phenomena, as recorded by scientific observers. Those placed on record by the numerous unscientific and unknown investigators are not the kind of material to present to the general public. Statements of an unusual character need to be thoroughly substantiated before they can be accepted, and the remarkable phenomena adduced as spiritual demand evidence of the most unquestionable character. There is always the feeling that the observer may have been deceived by some shrewd trickery, or have credulously accepted what others would have readily seen through, or that the senses may have been under some form of mesmeric control. Instances of such phenomena, therefore, need to be attested by the names of persons of well-known honesty, judgment, and discrimination, and attended with an exact statement of the tests applied, before they can be accepted as thoroughly trustworthy accounts. Some instances of this character may be here given.

The phenomena known under the general name of spirit-manifestations vary greatly in different instances. In some cases they take the form of strange dreams, in which some warning or information concerning coming events is given that afterward proves true. In others they occur as seeming apparitions of persons recently or long dead. In others, as in the case of haunted houses, there are noises of great variety, moving of objects, opening and shutting of doors, appearances of unknown forms, and all the phenomena which might be produced by an invisible inhabitant of the house who was able to become visible under certain circumstances. More ordinary manifestations are rapping sounds and lifting of heavy bodies, writing either with or without apparent human agency, and mental communication of facts unknown to or forgotten by the persons present. Other phases are those presented by professional mediums,—the tying and untying of ropes, playing on musical instruments, the production of luminous phenomena, slate-writing under tables, and the like. Performances of this character are usually done in the dark, and the fraud which may be present is therefore not easily detected. It is impossible to apply tests under such circumstances, and nothing can be accepted as positive that cannot be tested. Performances similarly surprising are constantly offered by professional conjurers, and nothing claiming the high origin of spiritual phenomena can be received in evidence where trickery is possible or has not been rendered impossible by the employment of adequate tests.

To the same class belong the cabinet performances and the so-called materialization of spirit forms, which have been the favorite cards of professional mediums of late years. So far as yet offered in public, they may be dismissed in the mass as pure trickery. The fact that stage-performers of sleight-of-hand tricks can repeat the cabinet phenomena in every detail, and that the materialized spirit showmen have been caught in numerous instances in the very act of fraud, throws utter discredit on the business. No repetition by new mediums of other forms of the exposed tricks carries any weight. In fact, in a matter of such importance nothing can be accepted as settled until it has been subjected to the strictest scientific tests and every possible opportunity for deceit or trickery eliminated. We are not ready to believe that the spirits of our departed friends are able and willing to talk with or show themselves to us, or create disturbances in the arrangement of our furniture, unless we are absolutely positive that our eyes, ears, and nerves are not being cleverly fooled by some skilled and unscrupulous show-man, or that we are not self-deceived by some temporary vagary of our brains or senses.

In addition to the purely physical phenomena are others of a more or less mental character. One interesting phase of the latter is that of planchette-writing, which attracted so much attention a few years ago. The planchette, a heart-shaped board moving easily on casters, and with a pencil supporting it at one extremity, moves with great readiness when touched by mediumistic fingers, and is responsible for acres of communications purporting to come from the world of spirits, and conveying the greatest variety of information, alike as to the thoughts and deeds of particular spirits and the general conditions of disembodied spiritual existence. In other instances the planchette is dispensed with, and the writing done by a pencil held in the hand of the medium, or occasionally, as some persons positively declare, by a pencil that is held in no mortal hand. In still other cases the medium, either awake or entranced, gives the communication by word of mouth. And this is asserted to be the case not only in respect to brief messages, but in long addresses, which are given every Sunday in our principal cities before large audiences, and in the writing of books of considerable length, but not, as a rule, of any great profundity or literary value. To all these claims, however, we can simply record the verdict "not proven." When a man writes or says anything we want more than his mere assertion to prove that it does not come from his own mind. And, even if we are satisfied that he is not consciously deceiving, the possibility remains that he is affected by some unconscious mental action. We shall certainly not accept his declaration that spirits of the dead are talking through him unless he gives information that could not possibly have been in his own mind, and could not have been received by thought-transference from the mind of any other person present or in rapport with him at a distance. The discoveries in thought-transference open possibilities of mental influence between living persons which aid to explain many hitherto incomprehensible phenomena.

Clairvoyant and clairaudiant mediums fall into the same category. They profess to see forms which no one else can see, and to hear voices which no one else can hear, and describe these forms, or repeat the words of these voices, often with the effect of recalling the appearance or character of deceased persons whom they could not possibly have known. Yet the fact remains that the persons who recognize these descriptions as accurate must have known the parties described, and it becomes possible that the mental impression of the medium may have been received by thought-transference from them. We do not assert that it has been so received. We assert nothing. In fact, phenomena are claimed to occur which it is difficult or impossible to explain on any such theory, or on any other theory yet promulgated. Among these is the conveyance of matter through matter, as of an object from the interior to the exterior of a corked and sealed bottle, of other objects from a distance into locked rooms, of writing by a sliver of pencil in the interior of a double slate firmly screwed together, of the placing of close-fitting steel rings in one solid piece around human necks, and their subsequent removal, of writing and speaking in languages unknown to some or all of the persons present, and a considerable variety of similar performances, declared to have occurred under strict test-conditions. Yet if we cannot explain we retain the right to doubt, and such statements cannot be received as facts except on the strongest substantiation.

The phenomena whose main forms we have here given, but whose actual variety we cannot attempt to give, are offered on the testimony of a great variety of persons, many of whom are plainly too credulous for their evidence to be of any value whatever, while others, who seem to have exercised great caution and cool judgment, are unknown to the general public, and therefore not likely to be accepted as witnesses in such a critical case. Others, again, who are well known and highly respected, have invalidated their testimony by clearly letting themselves be deceived. Such was the case with Robert Dale Owen, one of the main historians of spiritual phenomena, who permitted himself to be pitifully humbugged in Philadelphia by the somewhat famous spirit of Katie King, whose spirit face was afterward discovered on the sturdy shoulders of a very decidedly incarnate young lady. This was one of the first instances of that throng of materialized frauds with which this country has ever since been well supplied.