Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 14, 2014 13:50:24 GMT -5
Ghosts: Scientists, Frauds and Debunkers
Since the days of Mrs. Leonora Piper and Mrs. Pearl Curran, science and mediumship have gone their separate ways, the latter dissolving into the often-suspect claptrap of channeling and psychic hot lines, the former searching for spirits in wholly new directions. These days, the serious scientists speculating on the soul’s possible survival tend to be, of all things, physicists. Their mystical turn of mind is doubtless linked to quantum mechanics itself, the science describing the cosmos as a mysterious mesh of being and non-being in which tiny, invisible bits called quanta – the building blocks of the universe – behave in exotically erratic and unpredictable ways.
All creation is joined “in a state of unending flux of enfoldment and unfoldment,” says the University of London’s David Bohm, a leading authority on quantum mechanics and also a student of Eastern mysticism. Bohm asserts that human consciousness is part of a unity that includes the whole universe. If such oneness is indeed the case, it is logical to assume that somewhere in that universe, disembodied souls exist.
Another physicist influenced by Eastern thought is Brian Josephson, a nobel laureate and professor at England’s Cambridge University. “One is not the same as one’s body,” said Josephson, who defines the soul as a nonphysical “organizing center” of the self. He is convinced this organizing center survives death.
Mind, Brain, Soul. Other scientists approach the soul by speculating on whether human consciousness is separable from human flesh: is the mind merely what the brain does? Or is it more, and other – an entity that can exist independent of the brain and survive the brain’s death? One renowned thinker who argues for the second proposition is Australian neurophysiologist Sir John Crew Eccles, another Nobel Prize winner. “I cannot believe,” says Eccles, “that the wonderful gift of a conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some unimaginable conditions.”
Eccles has an ally in Sir Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science. Popper posits the existence of three worlds: a material one containing the brain and all other material objects, an abstract world in which the mind dwells, and a world that holds all the mind’s achievements, all the fruits of civilization. These worlds interact constantly, but they are essentially separate: the mind, therefore, enjoys an existence independent of the brain.
No End in Sight. Inquiring minds, including some of the best minds around, do indeed want to know. But this side of the grave, will we ever really understand what death is and what the spirit is and whether it survives after the body dies? The best minds seem to think not.
Physicist Josephson contends that physical science will never, by itself, unravel all reality’s secrets, although he concedes that mystical insight may open new pathways for rational thought.
Neurophysiologist Eccles is even more modest about the prospects, although – good scientist that he is – he allows for all possibilities. “I don’t want to claim that I have some extraordinary revelation telling me the answer,” says Eccles. “I keep everything open. I keep so many doors open because I am, as it were, a lost soul trying to find my way to the unknown.”
Frauds and Debunkers. In Victorian times, when Spiritualism was all the rage, almost every medium worthy of renown had a sort of signature gimmick. The famous Daniel Dunglas Home , for instance, was best known for levitation, for he seemed to float above the heads of sitters at his séances with majestic disdain for gravity. French medium Marthe Beraud was best and extruding copious gobs of a mystical good called ectoplasm from a variety of bodily orifices. And earthy Eusapia Palladino, child of Neapolitan streets, was remarkably sexual, displaying a look that one bemused researcher described as “voluptuous ecstasy” as she made chairs skitter mysteriously across the floor and solid objects vanish into air. That same researcher, British anthropologist Eric Dingwall, also chronicled that after sittings, Eusapia would sometimes “throw herself into the arms of men attending the séance and signify her desire for more intimate contacts in ways which could hardly be misinterpreted except by the most innocent.”
Then there was Agnes Guppy (above) of London, whose celebrity rested with her “apports” – objects that materialized out of the air during séancés, supposedly dropped by spirits. Mrs. Guppy could produce apports by the bushel on cue and on request. When one of her sitters once asked for a sunflower, for instance, a six-foot-tall specimen clunked obligingly down on the séancé table with roots and soil still attached. Mrs. Guppy’s most famous apport, however, was herself. One night as she sat at home doing household accounts, the story goes, she had no sooner written the word “onions” than she was suddenly transported to a séancé in progress two miles away. the feat was no less remarkable for its lack of grace. Mrs. Guppy, a lady of wondrously elephantine proportions, made a thunderous landing.
Science and Spirit. Needless to say, such marvels drew scrutiny from psychic investigators, among them some of the era’s foremost scientists, men eager to turn nebulous notions of the afterlife into matters concrete and quantifiable. These men tended to align themselves pro and con in assessing various mediums. For instance, Alfred Russell Wallace, the great naturalist who had worked out a theory of evolution independently of Charles Darwin, was an avid supporter of Mrs. Guppy’s claims. But John William Strutt, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, found the medium’s venomous nature most unspiritual. “Mrs. Guppy I don’t think I could stand,” Strutt once wrote, “even in the cause of science.” Many of his colleagues were of a similar mind – enough of them, in fact, to drag Mrs. Guppy down from the heights (literally and figuratively) that she’d once enjoyed.
Other mediums were not so easily dislodged. This was the case with Florence Cook, a young London medium whose signature shtick was the apparent ability to materialize the full form of a dead pirate’s daughter named Katie King. Despite numerous allegations of fraud – mostly from those who noted the resemblance between the living Florence and the dead Katie – Miss Cook supplanted Mrs. Guppy as the darling of London’s Spiritualists. It was an outcome most galling to poor, portly Agnes, who hated her slim and pretty successor. Charges of trickery notwithstanding, Florence excited the investigative interest of Sir William Crookes, perhaps the most respected physicist and chemist of his day. After observing five months’ worth of cook’s séances, Sir William pronounced her the genuine article. Alas, the endorsement fell rather flat among rumors that the engaging young medium and the esteemed man of science had become lovers.
Magicians Join the Fray. As time went on, Spiritualism began to lose its luster as one medium after another was either exposed as a hoaxer or widely suspected of being one. Palladino, Guppy, Cook, Beraud and many lesser lights dimmed. Some were exposed by scientists, but now another enemy of mediums was on the prowl, one generally harder to fool than those men who espoused rationalism in their work, but were sometimes amazingly gullible otherwise: It took a trickster to spot a trickster and magicians were good at it. So it was that by the early 1900s, mediums came to fear some who liked to disrupt sittings with shouts of “Fake!” But there was one particular stranger who soothed them with his very ordinariness. Behind the little fellow’s beard and spectacles shone a believers’ face. Reassured, the medium would carry on and soon apports would pelt, or ectoplasm ooze.
Then, as the séancé hit its stride, the stranger would leap from his chair and whip away the disguise. Without it, he was immediately recognizable. Pointing a finger accusingly at the medium, he would use the name by which the whole world knew him. “I am Harry Houdini!” he would exclaim, “and you are a fraud!” It was the worst news a medium could get. The master magician and greatest escape artist of all time was also the scourge of mediums everywhere. He would attend their séances incognito until they trapped themselves with some trick the master found utterly transparent.
Born Ehrich Weiss, the son of a Wisconsin rabbi, Houdini had embarked on his search-and-destroy mission after his beloved mother died in 1913. He visited many mediums, hoping to make contact with his mother, but finding instead only trickery of a very inferior sort. Disappointment turned to rage, rage to action. But what moved Houdini was not entirely his futile search. Magicians were the natural enemies of phony mediums who turned the innocent deceptions of stage magic into cruel fraud. Mediums gave magic a bad name. The world’s top magicians became debunkers of mediumship. Harry Kellar, dean of American magicians, and John Maskelyne of Britain, joined the battle. But none had the angry fervor of Houdini, the greatest debunker of all time.
Strange Bedfellows. Sherlock Holmes meets Harry Houdini. Sounds improbable, but it happened back in 1920 and they really hit it off. It was not exactly Holmes, of course, but his alter ego, Arthur Conan Doyle. The creator of the world-famous sleuth went to Portsmouth, England, to see the equally famous illusionist in action. They met and took a liking to each other. Harry and wife Bess visited the Doyle estate and charmed Sir Arthur’s children with their bag of magical tricks. Doyle, in return, visited the Houdini home in New York. They made an incongruous pair, the serene British surgeon-author with his walrus moustache and upper-crust stature looming over the smaller high-strung, powerfully-built American. In fact, they were bound by differences, but not those of appearance.
Doyle was a lifelong champion of all things psychical; Houdini was their nemesis and scourge. But they shared a keen interest in the supernatural and both, in their disparate ways, were true believers. “Who was the greatest medium-baiter of modern times?” Doyle asked in one of his Spiritualist essays. “Undoubtedly, Houdini. Who was the greatest physical medium of modern times? There are some who would be inclined to give the same answer.” In Doyle’s views, a man without supernatural powers could not do what Houdini manifestly did.
Their strangest encounter came in 1922. Doyle was making his second American tour since the Great War and in Atlantic City, he and his wife were visited once again by Houdini. Lady Doyle invited the magician to participate in a séancé and Houdini understood she intended to raise the spirit of his mother, Cecilia Weiss (above), who had died July 17, 1913, nine years earlier. Houdini’s acute skepticism had been curdled into hatred by psychic frauds, but, knowing the Doyles to be sincere, he kept an open mind and accepted the invitation.
To make conditions more favorable to the maternal spirit’s appearance, the June 17 séancé was limited to Houdini and the Doyles. Lady Doyle sank into a trance holding a pencil ready to write on a pad of paper. Suddenly, she went rigid, as though possessed; her pencil drew the sign of the cross. Sir Arthur asked: Was this the spirit of Houdini’s mother? Lady Doyle rapped the table three times. Then her pencil flew into motion. “Oh my darling, at last I’m through.” The message went on and on, until finally, the pencil dropped from Lady Doyle’s fingers.
Afterward, the Doyles thought the visitation, which they believed was genuine, should have cured Houdini’s skepticism. For his part, Houdini wondered why a Hungarian Jew like his mother would use the sign of the cross, or master English after death, or say nothing about June 17 being her birthday. He politely kept quiet. The two men parted on good terms that night, but six months later, Houdini openly expressed his conviction that the experiment had failed. Doyle thought Houdini churlish for ignoring what he truly believed to be proof positive of Spiritualism. Henceforth, the spirits that had united them would keep them apart. The next time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini met, it would not be as friends who differed, but as bitter adversaries in the strange case of The Amazing Margery.
Amazing Margery. Usually, the mediums were easy prey, their clumsy magic childishly simple. Usually, but not always. A case in point: Mina Crandon, the Witch of Lime Street. Her presumed psychic potency had been discovered in 1923 when her husband, Boston physician Le Roi Goddard Crandon, developed an interest in mediumship and arranged a small séancé at their Beacon Hill home. For a time, nothing happened; then the heavy wooden séancé table began to thrash about. Crandon had the guests leave, one by one, but the table continued hopping. Finally, only Mina and Le Roi remained and still, the table moved. She was the medium!
Both were much taken by this discovery. Mina, at 30, liked having a skill that so delighted her 44-year-old husband. The Crandons held regular séancés through the summer and she became better and better. From spooky knockings and bursts of light, she moved on to apports and self-playing musical instruments. She then added a spirit guide, her rough-tongued dead brother, Walter. He was a good choice: No one believed his vulgarities could have come from Mina.
Her husband, thrilled by this development, wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The famed author of the Sherlock Holmes crime mysteries was a committed Spiritualist who was quick to believe whatever spectral contact was reported anywhere. Doyle immediately accepted Mina as authentic, then ratified his endorsement with a sitting in England. He also commended her to J. Malcom Bird, an associated editor at Scientific American. The magazine was then offering $2,500 to any medium who could prove genuine to a blue-ribbon investigating committee, a six-man group consisting mostly of skeptics – the most skeptical of all being Harry Houdini. The Crandons welcomed the gauntlet. In a note to Doyle, Le Roi Crandon wrote they would “crucify” Houdini.
The investigation of Mina – now known as Margery the Medium, or simply The Amazing Margery – got under way in November 1923. Five members gradually came to view Mrs. Crandon in a favorable light. By spring, the committee was ready to hand her the $2,500 prize. Incredibly, however, this position had been reached without consulting the missing sixth member, who was on tour. Houdini learned of it from a headline. “Houdini the Magician Stumped.”
Houdini vs. Mina. The famed magician sped to Boston and discovered the committee’s findings had been compromised in no small measure by Mina’s allure. Indeed, when he first visited her in July 1924, he felt some of her magnetism himself. She was, he sensed, a natural like himself, born to trickery. Besides, she was very attractive. Legend has it that Houdini asked her to disrobe to prove she concealed no hoaxing paraphernalia on her person. When she complied, he gallantly observed that if she could not raise the dead, no one could. But, he concluded, she could not: Her tricks were slick, he conceded, but tricks nevertheless. In the end, Mina Crandon did not receive $2,500 from Scientific American and Houdini’s efforts made doubters of some of her formerly faithful. Still, she strode from the battle intact and with the support of such celebrity believers as Conan Doyle.
Margery added new refinements to her act, including the extrusion of a grosser form of ectoplasm said to resemble animal lung tissue. But Eric Dingwall, the researcher who had earlier reported on Eusapia Palladino’s sensual shenanigans, thought he could see the wires from which the ectoplasmic limbs dangled and opined that Margery discharged false ectoplasm hidden in various body cavities. With this and other assaults, belief soured into doubt. Soaked in alcohol, widowed in 1939, Mina, the Witch of Lime Street, turned toward the Other Side.
The Channelers. The heyday of spirit mediums is long past, but some magicians continue to ferret out fakery and foremost among them is Toronto-born James Randi, who, like Houdini, embarked on a lifelong crusade to expose phony psychics, fraudulent psychokinetic spoon-benders and other hoaxers. The Amazing Randi, as he is known professionally, has even offered a million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate to his satisfaction paranormal abilities of any kind. So far, no one has collected.
Among the purveyors of the paranormal who excite Randi’s ineffable contempt are channelers, the present-day successors to the mediums. There are certain differences between the two breeds. Whereas the old-time mediums purported to deal solely with spirits of the dead, for instance, channelers invoke all sorts of spirits – not just of the dead, but of aliens, or the inner self, or of creatures never incarnate at all. Randi finds such distinctions trifling. Channeling, he says, “is just Spiritualism that’s been stuck in the microwave for a few months to warm up.” Even so, he might admit that many channelers make more money than the mediums ever did and they don’t have to work as hard. Eschewing taxing physical stunts – no ectoplasm or apports – a channeler may merely sit quietly and act as the alleged conduit for dead rock stars or denizens of Alpha Centauri. Aside from saving energy, this approach also makes fraud harder to prove: Who can say, in fact, whether John Lennon’s spirit is speaking through a channeler? One either believes or not.
Channelers became popular in the 1970s and peaked in the 1980s. One typical exemplar, albeit a phenomenally successful one, was J. Z. Knight, a one-time cable-television executive from Washington state. Claiming to channel Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior spirit from the lost continent of Lemuria, Knight attracted enough support to buy a multimillion-dollar mansion and stable her purebred Arabian horses in barns lit by chandeliers. Ramtha’s brand of cosmic knowledge was generally vague, cryptic and couched in wrenching syntax. He described himself, for example, as “that which is termed servant unto that which is called Source, to that which is termed the Principal Cause, indeed, unto that which is termed Life, unto that which is termed Christus – God experiencing that which is termed Man, man experiencing that which is termed God – am I servant unto also.”
It is perhaps no wonder that, today, “channeling is pretty well faded,” as Randi notes. He, among others, seems relieved.
Sources: Carl A. Posey, Discovery Travel, and The Spiritualists.
