is an example of a milder form of dissociative state.
Phenomena that took place at seances run by professional mediums were sometimes extremely spectacular and were not so easily put to the test as table moving. For example, Alfred Russel Wallace, a codiscoverer with Charles Darwin of the principle of natural selection, reported (Wallace 1878, quoted in Hyman 1985) that at a seance he attended with five close friends, the entire seance table became covered with “fresh flowers and ferns” while the sitters carefully watched. The flora appeared from nowhere, and “the first thing that struck us all was their extreme freshness and beauty. The next that they were all covered, especially the ferns, with a delicate dew” (p. 20). Clearly, unconscious muscular exertions will not do as an explanation here. Thousands of other individuals were deeply affected by similar spectacular personal experiences with mediums that convinced them beyond any doubt that spiritualism was real.
One prominent scientist who was convinced of the reality of spiritualistic phenomena on the basis of the events he observed at seances was the American chemist Robert Hare. To further test the reality of spirit communication, Hare designed an experiment in which tipping and movement of a table at which a medium sat caused a pointer to indicate letters on a wheel that was out of sight of the medium. Hare would ask the medium questions, the table would move, and the answer to the questions would be spelled out. The results were very impressive, as shown in the following quotation from Hyman’s (1985a) description of Hare’s experiment, reported first in Hare (1855):
Hare then began by asking if any spirits were present to indicate so by causing the letter Y to be under the pointer. Immediately the pointer moved to the letter Y. Hare next asked, “Will the spirit do us the favor to give the initials of his name?” The index pointed first to R and next to H. Hare immediately asked, “My honoured father?” The index pointed to Y. After a few more tests such as these, the onlookers urged that Hare admit the reality of spiritual agency. Hare must have still shown some hesitation, because the index spelled out, “Oh, my son, listen to reason!” (p. 14)
This type of report seems convincing. Highly trained scientists, some conducting complex experiments that seemed to verify their initial impressions, concluded that spirit communication was real. The evidential value of these impressions and experiments is destroyed, however, when it is revealed that mediums accomplished their seeming miracles by cheating and using illusion and sleight of hand at every possible opportunity.
Remember that the reports of what occurred at seances—the reports that convinced so many of the reality of spiritualist phenomena—were eyewitness testimony. Such testimony is unreliable even when the object of the testimony is not making conscious and skillful efforts to deceive, mislead, and distract witnesses from what is really taking place. Of course, mediums were doing just that, so eyewitness reports of what happened at seances, given by individuals totally unfamiliar with the deceptive techniques used, are even less reliable than most eyewitness reports.
The literature on spiritualism is replete with stories of mediums being caught red-handed during a seance, cheating to produce some wonder or another. One of the greatest exposers of mediumistic fraud was the famous magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, who wrote of his experiences in his classic 1924 book,
Houdini deserves special mention here. Perhaps more than any other single person, he was responsible for the decline in public acceptance of spiritualistic claims. The public recognized both his name and his expertise as a magician and uncoverer of fraudulent mediums. That he never found a single genuine medium was very powerful evidence against spiritualism. Houdini himself was a skeptic who badly wanted to be able to believe, but the constant string of frauds he saw prevented him from doing so. His desire was to communicate with the spirit of his mother, whom he loved (Brandon 1983). Even in death, Houdini continued to expose the sham of spiritualism. Before he died suddenly in 1926 at the age of fifty-two, Houdini had arranged a secret code with his wife that he would transmit from the spirit world. If she received it, this would prove that the medium giving the code was truly in contact with Houdini’s spirit. In spite of years of searching, no medium was ever able to give the code, although many claimed to be in contact with the great magician.
Some mediums confessed their fraud. An apparently very accomplished medium wrote the anonymous
The methods used by mediums were many and varied. At some seances seemingly disembodied voices would move about the room, responding to the medium’s or the sitters’ questions. This was easy to accomplish as seances were almost always held in the dark. An assistant of the medium, or sometimes the medium in person, completely dressed in black clothing, head covered, would move invisibly about the darkened room. This general gimmick could be adapted to have the black-clothed individual hold some bright object that would then appear to float mysteriously about the room. On more than one occasion, a skeptical sitter would spring out of his chair and grab the “spirit,” only to find that he had grabbed a very angry and embarrassed medium. Cumberland (1888/1975) reports spraying red dye in the face of the spirit and later discovering the very same dye on the face of the medium. So-called spirit photographs, in which the head or the entire form of a spirit seemed to float about the medium, were easily produced by trick photography—usually double or multiple exposures of the same plate. They seem astonishingly crude today and were easily duplicated. Some female mediums went so far as to conceal in their vagina or anus objects to be “apported” during the seance and gauzy fabric that would become “ectoplasm” during the seance. These were places that Victorian gentlemen, no matter how skeptical, were highly unlikely to ask to search.
Does the critical literature on mediums and spiritualism contain an explanation for every single apparently wondrous phenomenon reported by sitters at the thousands of seances held over the years? Of course not. Many reports, such as medium D. H. Home’s levitation (Brandon 1983, pp. 71–73), the dewy flowers reported by Wallace, and the results of Hare’s (1855) experiments, remain to my knowledge without specific explanations. Should the lack of such explanations convince anyone that spiritualistic phenomena and claims are valid? Certainly not. The burden of proof must rest on the so-called psychic, and not on the skeptic. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that, when rigorous experimental conditions were imposed on mediums that truly excluded cheating, no spiritualistic phenomena were seen (Houdini 1924; Brandon 1983).
What of the scientists such as Hare and Wallace, who were convinced by what they saw at seances? Were they incompetent scientists, dupes, or just plain gullible? The answer is none of the above. They had simply ventured out of their own area of expertise—an often fatal mistake. They assumed, as did their critics in the scientific community, that if one is a good observer in the laboratory, one is also qualified to observe in the seance. This is simply not true. Mediums were known to cheat, using the magicians’ tricks of sleight of hand and distraction. Magic is a skilled trade requiring years of experience and practice. The training of a chemist, physicist, or psychologist confers no ability to spot magicians’ tricks To detect such cheating requires a magician. This is one of the most important requirements in research into paranormal claims. In the investigation of any type of psychic, only a magician can spot the tricks that mediums and other pyschics so often use. This is, of course, why Houdini was so successful in exposing mediums. He was a magician and knew exactly what to look for. In addition, a magician will be of immense help in any psychic investigation in designing procedures to eliminate trickery and sleight of hand.
The repeated revelations of fraud and trickery on the part of even the most famous mediums had surprisingly little immediate effect on believers in spiritualism. One common response, which presaged the responses of believers in psychic phenomena to similar revelations in the 1970s, was to admit that a particular medium did cheat sometimes, but that at other times the phenomena were real. This argument, of course, was an attempt to shift the burden of proof back to the skeptic by requiring that the skeptic explain away every single allegedly miraculous event before a medium, or spiritualism in general, would be considered discredited.
In the 1980s a new, simpler, form of mediumship became quite popular. Known as channeling, it dispenses with the sleight of hand and other gimmickery associated with classical mediumship. There are no floating,
