Conclusionary Responses

                   Well now it comes to that point in the semester when the solution to the inevitable questions are found. At the start of the semester I too had one of these questions in mind "The role of mediums and seances in early American spiritualism." Like many arguments today I found myself caught up in a circular argument. Like many controversial topics that have been around since the dawn of time spiritualism and whether it is fact or fiction is one of them. The answer to this question, in my opinion,
is  in the eye of the beholder. Mediums and seances for those who believed served as saviors allowing believers to converse with deceased loved ones. For non-believers seances and mediums were one of the greatest acts of fraudulence known to man. I wonder if they would feel the same if they were around today?

Houdini in The Right Way to do Wrong
An Expose of Successful Criminals
1906

                     From the resources that I have found over the course of the semester I can not find any true accounts of mediums and the acts that they produced to be of a faulty nature. Of course there are those who can't believe what they themselves don't see or truly understand but one can't argue with the fact that in several of my resources that some very well known critics were swayed by the spiritualist movement. Spiritualism, like many belief systems, is not scientifically certifiable. It requires those involved to believe in something of which they cannot see. For some, in the case of spiritualism, this inability to believe in something non-tangible, is  not achievable. Houdini himself, who actually did believe in spiritualist, could not in all honesty disprove what the Davenport Brothers and their spirit communications did with their cabinet act. Houdini might have been able to untie himself but he did not have the aid of spirits to tie him back up.

               Mediums and seances roles in early American Spiritualism are similar as mediums and seances are today. Though today I believe there to be less pomp and circumstance. For those who want to believe, or like me believe, in what mediums and seances can do they act as a means to communicate with deceased loved ones. Mediums and seances act in a way as a final step in the grieving process. Mediums allow people to truly come to grips with death. By being able to have that missed conversation with a loved one for some makes what mediums and seances do an invaluable asset to society.

             The role of mediums and seances in early American Spiritualism is up for grabs. From the resources I have gathered it was for some a means to communicate with lost loved ones and for others like a trip to the circus. Whatever the feeling gathered from mediums/seances in early America, I have found no truly definitive resources that have been able to disprove what was done.

The Davenport Brothers

Ira and William Davenport

For this weeks post I am continuing on with a chapter in the book The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown. The chapter I chose for this weeks blog post is about the Davenport Brothers, William Henry and Ira Davenport.

In Buffalo, the Davenport brothers, who would later become some of the most well known mediums made their first public appearance in 1855. At that time Ira Davenport was 16 and William was 14. From the start their demonstrations were similar to the Koonses with their boisterous nature and playing of instruments with spectral hands that touched and prodded spectators.

The Davenport brothers seances were even resided over by the same King, though the Davenport brothers stripped him of his regal title and called him John or Johnnie King. For a while the brothers conducted seances in their own home but under the instruction of King they rented a public hall in which the boys gave public demonstrations and collected a small fee for their services.

Toward the end of 1855 the Davenports paid a visit to New York City and arrived with a far more spectacular repertoire of manifestations. Among them was one that they exhibited in public for the next twenty five years and was regarded as their masterpiece. This consisted in freeing themselves from ropes with which volunteers from the audience bound them in full view of everyone. The process of binding the two brothers often required three quarters of an hour or more, but the boys seldom took more than two minutes to get free, untying every knot.

The Davenport Seance Cabinet

After performing in New York for several weeks the brothers returned home to Buffalo where they devoted a lot of time perfecting their routine. Among their new creations was a cabinet, a sort of portable spirit room in which the brothers could sit in darkness, which, like most mediums, they insisted was best for the production of a successful seance. The Davenports official biographer wrote that the plan and specifications for the cabinet came direct from John King.

During a performance the brothers sat at opposite ends of the cabinet on a plain board bench. The center stage between them, equipped with a bench, was used for the musical instruments, and on occasion a dauntless member of the audience was permitted to sit there. A diamond shaped aperture had been cut near the top of the center door to let in air and for spirit hands to emerge. Dr. S.L. Loomis, a professor at the Medical College of Georgetown University, declared that the structure was "so light and frail as to utterly preclude the idea that anything whatever could be concealed within or about its several parts." (pg. 187).

Actual Image of the Davenport Seance Cabinet

The brothers were tied up by members of the audience, one of which was in the navy, were always able to come out of the contraption with all of the knots untied. Such the same happened at their first performance. What was not repeated by predecessors, such as Houdini, was the second part of the demonstration in which the brothers having been set free from their bonds, "now returned to their seats in the cabinet. A pile of rope was placed between them, the doors were closed, two minutes passed by the audiences watch, the doors swung open, and the two Davenport brothers were found tied up as securely and intricately as before." (pg. 188).

Throughout several of their public demonstrations the Davenport brothers had people sit in the middle cabinet compartment with their respective hands tied to each of the brothers legs. Each witness who was a part of this experiment attested to the fact that the two brothers did not and could not remove the ropes that bound them or play the instruments that continuously played in the middle cabinet above the witnesses head.

Emperor Alexander II

Emperor Napoleon III

The Davenports toured Europe for four years, appearing in large cities and often before royalty. Both Emperor Alexander II and Emperor Napoleon III were fascinated spectators.

Unlike most mediums, the brothers rarely claimed in public that spirits were responsible for the manifestations. Moreover, they never dealt in spiritual communications. Privately, however, they believed in the existence of their spiritual overseer, John King, and at times turned to him for advice, which he gave through a gruff voice through a trumpet. But throughout their career they exhibited their manifestations as itinerant vaudeville performances that and left the audience to decide whether spirits or human beings were responsible for the phenomena. Other mediums, perhaps from professional jealousy, were inclined to suspect them, for the brothers almost never failed to give an exhibition, though gifted mediums like D.D. Home never knew if a seance would be successful.

The Heyday of Spiritualism

                                This rest of my blogs are going to be concerned with a selection of chapters  from some books I have found on spiritualism. The first of which is The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown. 

Visitors to the Koonses' Spirit Room would have a trek similar to this

                          The first chapter that I chose to read was Chapter 12 The Koonses' Spirit Room. I couldn't find any good pictures of the Koonses' or their infamous spirit room but I would still like to share their story. The Koonses' spirit room for a brief time in the 1850's served as a spiritualist Mecca and was visited by hundreds of spiritualists from across sections of the United States. The trip to visit the Koonses' spirit room was not an easy one. The room was located in a remote and hilly region near the West Virgina lines. To reach it patrons had to travel by stagecoach from Columbus, Ohio over hilly roads for seventy two miles. This might not seem like a long trek but  one pilgrim estimated the trip to take two and a half jolting miles an hour. That wasn't the end of the trek though. Patrons then had to walk two more miles on foot along a muddy cow path. 

Jonathan Koons

            Jonathan Koons along with his wife Abigail and his eighteen year old son Nahum were all endowed with the medium gift. Jonathan was introduced to his own gifts while on his many travels to a seance in which the spirits there told Jonathan he was a powerful medium. Jonathan and his family held a number of seances and then they were ordered by a band of communicating spirits to build a Spirit Room.


            The spirits gave exact specifications to the Koonses' on how the Spirit Room should be built, its furnishings and equipment. What came out of the spirits instructions was a "log cabin twelve by fourteen feet, with three shuttered windows, a single door, and a ceiling of seven feet high" (pg. 178). Along with a detailed layout the spirits also requested a number of musical instruments to be placed in the Spirit Room. Some of the instruments included a tenor drum, a bass drum, two fiddles, a guitar, a banjo accordion, a French horn, a tin horn, a tea bell, a triangle and a tambourine.

"Ghost's" playing music [not real]

                                              After all was said and done the Koonses' began to conduct seances in the Spirit Room. Before long people from all over the country were coming to view the wondrous things going on inside the desolate log cabin out in the middle of nowhere. The exhibition was often boisterous, and the spirits performance on the musical instruments was at times ear-splitting. All reports agree that in the total darkness of the crowded room it would have been impossible for the Koonses to have provided the uproarious entertainment. According to another witness, "all the floating instruments playing in unison created an unearthly din making the whole house roar so as to almost deafen us." (pg. 180). Charles Partridge reported "the instruments started together as if at a signal and would stop just as abruptly." (pg. 180). The spirits would also sing songs and all the witness agreed that the words were never distinguishable as English.

               The spirits were lead by King Number One, the spirit master of ceremonies who spoke through a tin horn. King Number One explained that he was the chief of the band of spirits, which numbered 165 in all. He declared that they were members of the most ancient and primal order of men predating Adam and Eve by many years. King Number One had two adjutants, King Number Two and King Number Three also called himself Servant and Scholar of God. King Number One delivered addresses, exchanged witticisms with spectators, and at times would give medical advice. 

Unidentified Seance

                The musical program was usually followed by the appearance of hands, either luminous themselves or illuminated by phoshporized sheets of paper prepared by the Koons. Visible to a little above the wrist, the hands were sometimes warm, sometimes cold. 

                The seance in the Spirit Room ended with the spectacle of the luminous hand writing messages (automatic writing of which I have written about before) in pencil on a sheet of paper.All those who described their visit to the Spirit Room saw it write communications, and all agreed that it wrote with incredible rapidity. One spectator put their face so close "that the hand playfully poked his nose with the butt end of the pencil." (pg. 181). 

                   Even if all the reports of what went of in the Spirit Room were made by avowed spiritualists, the general agreement of all of the various accounts as to the flying instruments and the hands offers a good deal of evidence that the Koonses were not putting on a fraudulent performance. The Koonses' did not make any money off of their seances and Jonathan Koons still worked the family farm during this time, sometimes even falling asleep at seances because of his hard labors. The Koonses' Spirit Room continued to operate until the end of 1858. After a half a dozen years of public demonstrations the Koonses moved west to Illinois. 
                               

The Great and Powerful ????? Nope not Oz...It's D.D. Home!

This weeks article was entitled Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence by Peter Lamont. When I found this article on Jstor I thought it would be a debunking article of which I discovered it was not. I will elaborate on its main points below.

Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence by: Peter Lamont

Daniel Dunglas Home

              The main argument of the essay dealt with seance phenomenon. The article cited that the events of the seance room were central to spiritualist practice and belief. Spiritualist beliefs, like other articles I have written of, viewed spiritualist beliefs as being a result of "The Victorian Crisis of Faith", Lamont begged to differ. Seance phenomena, according to Lamont was the primary reason given by for initial conversion to spiritualism. 

A artist rendering of
D.D. Home levitating

           The man of the hour in this article was none other than Daniel Dunglas Home. D.D. Homes, as Daniel is better known, was and is one of the most famous Victorian mediums. He conducted seances for British aristocracy, Continental royalty and other very influential peoples. Victorian's interested in spiritualism recognized Home to be rather different from other contemporary mediums. He was fairly well educated and NEVER accepted payment (according to Lamont).  His success, however, relied upon an ability to produce a wide range of seemingly inexplicable phenomena in the seance room without any signs of trickery being involved (pg. 899).  

              A "typical" Home seance would take place in a well lit room, in which spectators could easily investigate for fraudulence. Home was able to produce raps, moving tables, playing of musical instruments without a visible hand playing them and much more. Witnesses could not debunk him in his 25 years of conducting seances. He was never caught cheating and was tested more thoroughly than any medium in this period. Home became the exemplar medium used as a reference for many other spiritualist mediums. 

                                     Naturally critics were lurking around every corner. Some cited witnesses of Homes' seances as being victims "of some kind of mental condition" (pg. 900). Others suggested Home's reported phenomena were the results of 'imaginings'. Some critics sought to coin what Home's did as a form of Mesmerism. William Gregory and John Elliotson, experts in Mesmerism, both after attending a seance conducted by Home stated that what Home did was not mesmerism. 

Sir David Brewster

Table Turning in 19th Cent France

                                       Stage conjurers and scientist were the next peoples to be called in to prove Home's phenomena as trickery. Neither group, however, appears to have known how the phenomena associated with the most famous medium of the period were produced. W.B. Carpenter tried to explain Home's table-tipping/turning by "ideomotor action" An Ideomotor phenomenon is defined as in reflexive responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action (Wikipedia).  Sir David Brewster, an expert on optics and author of Letters of Natural Magic, a book that had sought to provide natural explanations for ostensibly supernatural phenomena (pg. 901) attended a seance conducted by Homes and later wrote a letter to his sister saying "he did not believe the phenomena to be the result of spirits, he could not conjecture how they were produced." Brewster seeking answers went on to make stuff up. It was clear that Brewster did not know how to explain what he had seen and, as such as position would no doubt have been embarrising for the author of a debunking publication it is not surprising that he came up with some conjectures, as he put it 'for the information of the public' (pg. 902). 

                                   Home's reputation continued to grow in the decades to come even with all the critics. He conducted regular seances for Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, Queen Sophia of Holland, and Tsar Alexander II, whose goddaughter he later married. As one would suspect Home's seance received a lot of publicity. The central argument of the periodical press was an appeal to the authority of conjurers that were experts in such matters and would know how Home performed his tricks. 

Conjuring

Modern Magic by Professor Hoffman: seemed to be the debunkers guide to magic. From what I gathered from online research it provided some answers to conjures trickery that was used by critics to try and debunk Home.

A floating head trick in Modern Magic

Levitation Trick

           One source of an answer that article speaks of in large detail is conjuring.  Conjuring as an entertainment may be seen withing the context of leisure as a whole. Leisure pursuits were evolving from a love of sports and reading an other forms of entertainment to avenues that produced wonder. Modernity in its quest to squelch this wonderment changed fanatical creatures into representations-a dwarf and giantess were turned into a drunkard and Chrisitinized African. "Curiosity and amazement were still used to draw the audience but that audience was now offered explanation and the orderly knowledge of modernity." (pg. 903).  

                   Magic and mystery made the world more ambivalent, less certain and orderly. Conjuring relied upon wonder perhaps more than any other form of entertainment and did so in a way that had obvious links to the mystery and magic that modernity fought against. Conjuring provokes wonder through providing an audience with an anomaly and effect for which there is no explanation, agencies such as slight of hand were ruled out. Could Home's be a conjurer? The exemplar magician was by the late nineteenth century, 'well dressed, well mannered, and well skilled in the art of expose (pg. 905). 

                  Conjurers could not provide an answer to what was going on in the seance rooms either. With the emergence of Modern Spiritualism conjurers were appearing who claimed their were genuine. This went against old conjurers who explicitly stated they performed mere tricks. Robert-Houdin, a renowned French conjurer cited that Home's reported levitation was a stage illusion known as Pepper's Ghost

Representation of the Peppers Ghost stage illusion

, an illusion requiring a huge glass plate positioned in front of the stage, a method that could not have been conducted in Home's private drawing room. (The video is a modern day explanation, though smaller scale of how the Pepper's Ghost illusion works).

                     

      The article went on to describe in some other sources of evidence for Home's debunking but Lamont states in conclusion that the problem of spiritualism and people believing it was not a crisis of faith but a crisis of evidence. No matter what critics tried they could not come up with an explanation to how Home's did what he did. Perhaps we will never know. Though many believers of Home's abilities did not necessarily believe it was the work of spirits they could not provide any evidence that he conducted any form of trickery. What if not spirits caused these wondrous

seance phenomena? The world may never know

Everyone's A Critic

As promised here is my second blog post of the week...


                               Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of Spirit Rappings 

                                                                 By: R. Laurence Moore

William Lloyd Garrison

I thought that this article would be more help with my research than it actually was. It seemed to be more ethereal and philosophical. Commenting on the relationship between science and spiritualism and spiritualism and religion. That being said some aspects of the article are worth mentioning and I will do so below.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The article mentioned several abolitionist leaders that believed in spirit voices as strongly as they did the wickedness of slave holding. These leaders included William Lloyd Garrison, Joshua R. Giddings, Benjamin Wade, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Parker Pillsbury, even Harriet Beecher Stowe!

 Even though spiritualism had its supporters the critics had a lot to say as well.

George Templeton Strong, a prominent NYC lawyer was disturbed by the popularity of the movement. He found "the acceptance of spiritualist explanation by many educated and otherwise levelheaded people inexplicable." (pg. 475).

Historians at large, according to the article have "reduced spiritualism to a symptom of a restless, trouble society and has placed it in the same category as Mormonism, Shakerism, Millerism, and Grahansim." (pg. 476).

Unsettling social conditions such as a high degree of social mobility, a sudden influx of immigrants with different cultural experiences, and an accelerating rate of industrialization. The spiritualist movement allotted people a form of comfort in a time of mass change.  The Industrial Revolution can be credited with creating the public medium.

 "Spiritualism satisfied man's craving for mystification and grew as a reaction to the encroachements of scientific naturalism." (pg. 477).

Emanuel Swedenborg

                                                               Mesmerism

The article also speaks at length about Mesmerism and its life before the growth of spiritualism and even the Fox Sisters. With many variations mesmerism became for the first fifty years of the 19th Century a widely demonstrated procedure in Europe and America. Some mesmerized persons attributed their powers to the inspiration of guardian spirits.

In the United States in the 1840s the main man for mesmerism was Emanuel Swedenborg and his Church of New Jerusalem, which exposed Swedenborg as a prophet and accepted his detailed revelation of Heaven and Hell. 

Students of the Church of New Jerusalem also had significant impacts in the Mesmerism movement. Most promising would be Andrew Jackson Davis who as a man exhibited characteristics of a "good " medium being sickly and nervous during his younger years. It is said that Davis "when mesmerized, he could visualize the interior organs of ailing persons and diagnose their illness." (pg. 479).

Davis also spoke in Hebrew, Arabic and Sanskrit while under mesmerism, languages he did not know.




                                                                    Evolving into the 1850's

The Fox sisters did bear responsibility for the new directions of the spiritualist impulse in the decade of the 1950's. " The impressive rappings produced in their presence suggested that spirit messages could be subjected to an objective test verifiable by a group of impartial witnesses." (pg. 482). One did not have to trust the word of previous mesmerist, such as Davis, that spirits inspired their utterances. "Spirits now stood available to answer test questions put to them by an investigating audience." (pg. 482).

Who wouldn't want to see this!!!

In the 1850's mediumship became more democratic as it became a source of profit. Spirits in the 1850's discovered that they had to tailor their manifestations to the demand of public demonstrations. Rambunctious spirits has an advantage over gentle saints in that their tricks were more easily seen and heard.

The article also cites four principles that mediums of the 1850's used to make spirit communication credible 1) a rejection of supernaturalism 2) a firm belief in the inviolability of natural law 3) a reliance on external facts rather than on an inward state of mind and 4) a faith in the progressive development of knowledge (pg. 485).

A typical diagnosis for conversion is also given on page 485 of the article as an individual experiences a death of a loved one attends on seance. The visitor has questions that need to be answered so they keep going back, taking extensive notes and after analysis of these notes can not argue with the plain facts before them.

Lastly an intersting analogy is given in the article on page 486:

Spiritualist urged science to recognize an extension of mechanical laws into unseeable worlds, they went most mechanists one better.

Spiritualist journals typically used mechanical images. Why you might ask?  One used a lot is the telegraph. Spiritualists though "it illustrated the reduction of something once considered marvelous to a completely understandable occurrence and furnished an analogy of how spirit communication might take place." Spirits themselves demonstrated a mechanical aptitude by handing down inventions for riving shingles, milling and net weaving.

Telegraph = Spirit Communication?

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711685

Through the Witnesses' Eye: A First Hand Account of Mediums in Action

            I would first like to apologize for not getting a post up last week. I am going to make it up to you all by posting twice this week! So enjoy :)

                                                      Early Investigations into Spiritualism
                                                             by: John Townsend Trowbridge

This article was written over a hundred years ago in 1908 and showcases John Townsend Trowbridges' experiences with spiritualism. Mr. Trowbridge does this through analysis of his experiences with two mediums.

Typical Seance Set-Up

 In Early 1852 Mr. Trowbridge visits the home of Dr.William R. Hayden, the publisher of the weekly newspaper in Boston at the time. Mr Trowbridge arrived at the home of Mr.Hayden to discover it was Mrs. Hayden who was the medium. The seance was already in motion when Mr. Trowbridge arrived with three or four people seated around a table. Mr. Trowbridge quotes " I observed her carefully during the evening, and never for a moment doubted her sincerity of character and honest of purpose..." (pg. 526)


Also during this session Mr. Hayden showcases automatic writing, of which I have spoken of in previous blogs. "Mr. Peabody [the individual asking the question] passed a pencil up and down a printed alphabet that lay on a table, and paused when a rap was heard. Thus words, sentences and finally a long communication were spelled out. It was something quite commonplace; but was astounded me [Mr. Trowbridge] was that any message at all should be given in that way. The mediums hands were in sight all the time, usually folded on the edge of the table, and she seemed to

Ouija Board

await the result of the word building with as genuine an interest as ours." (pg. 527)

Mr. Trowbridge along with the others present came up with several "tests" to gauge Mrs. Haydens' honesty. None of which really struck him as inspiring until he asked her about his father. Automatic writing was used and Mr. Trowbridge expected his fathers first name Windsor to be spelled out but instead "Wstone" was what came up. "The right reading flashed upon me [Mr. Trowbridge] and when I rewrote them, "W.Stone" the glee manifested by the little concussions in the board was something affectingly human." (pg,529) "Stone" was his fathers middle name and something of which he did not have in his mind at all.

Mrs. Hayden also asked mental questions in which no words were spoken out loud. Material objects also moved without the help of any of the spectators at her seances, including a very large table. Like one would expect people were skeptical and all moved back from the table put still it moved again! The floor was carpeted as well so even a kick from a witness could have not moved the table as far as it was flung.

Robert Owen

In her early seances, Mrs. Hayden was not paid. However she continued to get busier and busier and her husband concluded "It's one of two things; it has got to stop, or it has go to be a business." (pg. 531). It's important to note that Mr. Hayden has also fell on hard times and needed money. Therefore, Mrs. Hayden became a public medium. Mr. Hayden devoted his life to the business and even moved them both to London. In London she was visited by many famous peoples including Robert Owen, the Socialist. "The fee of a guinea was paid as readily for admission to these London sittings as half a dollar have been paid in Boston." (pg. 531).

                                                                        Mrs. Newton (2nd Experience)

August 1886 Pathfinder

The second medium that Mr. Trowbridge speaks of in the article is Mrs. Newton, the wife of Alonzo E. Newton the editor of "The Pathfinder Railway Guide".

In October of 1852, Mr. Trowbridge meet with Mrs. Newton. "She was petite in person, of a singularly trustful and sympathetic nature, generously impulsive, and like her husband, earnestly religious." (pg. 532).

Unlike Mrs. Hayden, Mrs. Newton was a trance medium. As noted in a previous blog trance mediums were defined as others as a was for women to speak out about societal things that they normally wouldn't be allowed to do. This is just what Mrs. Newton did. Mrs. Newton spoke out loud about her troubles with the church. 

Mrs. Newton also possessed the "psychometric faculty" of being able to read the characteristics of a person from a material item. Some might argue that this was her just being clairvoyant but "often in reading characters in this way, she would have visions of spirits that were giving her impressions, and sometimes she would describe the departed friends or relatives of the writers of the letters." (pg. 534). 

In his conclusions, Mr. Trowbridge quotes " I was forced to conclude that they were for the most part genuine. By this I mean that they were not produced by any sleight-of-hand or system of deception, but that mediums themselves understood no more of their nature and origin than the intelligent, unbiased spectator." (pg. 573).

 " The one incredible thing, from a materialistic point of view, is that the individual spirit should continue to exist after the body's dissolution." (pg. 538).

Bad Mediums Bad Mediums What You Gonna Do What You Gonna Do When They Come For You (Pun Intendend)

Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee

This week I read about Spiritualism and Crime by Blewett Lee. It is important to note that this article was written in 1922. The thoughts and ideas presented in this article need to be taken in regards to the decade in which it was written.

D.D. Home "The Man Who Could Fly"

The article starts out with an interesting quote to define Spiritualism as a form of insanity

           “ mischievous nonsense, well calculated, on the one hand to delude the vain, the weak, the foolish, and the superstitious; and, on the other, to assist the projects of the needy and of the adventurer.” –Vice Chancellor Giffard (pg. 439).

Lee makes sure that readers know that the article is solely interested in how the beliefs in spiritualism affect the law. Several times throughout the article the author makes note that it is hard to say spiritualism phenomena doesn’t occur because it is seen in the literature, especially sacred literature. The law cannot also lawfully assumer every spiritualistic phenomenon is a delusion yet assures the reader that there are several cases in which fraudulence can occur. Fraudulent automatic writing in which the writer produces whatever they want and claims it to be automatic, sham trances, and materialization just to name a few.

Lee makes reference to Belshazzar’s feast in Daniel 5:5 as a resource of a genuine case of spiritualistic happenings. I myself and not religious and had to do some research on what Belshazzar’s feast was about I found http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+5&version=KJV . I located the verse that implied spiritualistic influences in the form of materialization of a man’s hand.



Belshazzar's Feast by Vasily Surikov

 

 

“5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the pilaster of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”

If you wish feel free to see the verse in its context by clicking on the link.

 

The article does not come right out and say that mediums are all frauds and that they are not any genuine ones out there. In the article it mentions that many mediums could very well possess actual abilities but occasionally produce fraud because the sitters attending the séance want results. Instant gratification at its worst. It would be a denial of human liberty to NOT allow a genuine medium to practice? But the never-ending paradox of genuine or not is always around. To force a medium to prove their selves would be a conviction in advance because if they are truly genuine and can communicate with spirits that does not mean that spirits will come on demand.

The article does make reference to several court cases that involved spiritualists, mediums and the like. One of these cases was Nurse v. State in which a man was accused of swindling because he communicated with spirits to find buried money for his clients, on his advice they reburied it and it later showed up missing. Nurse was not convicted. The court ruled that “since the money was actually found as the defendant represented it would be, there could be no conviction for swindling.” (pg. 443).  Other cases ended up in a similar manner. If a medium delivered a message in good faith she/he was not quality of any fraud. Other mediums close to her could strengthen a mediums case.

Lee calls for the sensible route for the law to take is for it to not deny a spiritualistic experience is possible but to call for proof. The article ends in a manner that I think is remarkable. Lee makes note that in regards to the law the communications should be looked at as if they were delivered by a real person since the spirit in all actuality is a real person. If the spirit does unlawful things then it, as a person, can be punished by law. On page 449 it states that “if by any chance some of the acts or communications should really come from dead men, that makes no difference from a legal point of view; they would be human actions just the same.” An interesting thought to ponder on.

 

 

 

* The article makes reference to a very famous male medium D.D. Home. I have included a link to an unscholarly websites that gives some background http://www.prairieghosts.com/ddhome.html. D.D. Home's is mentioned in this article because he did not charge for his services and therefore could not be charge for fraudulence by making his customers pay. D.D. Home's will show up again in my research.

D.D. Home

 

 

 

 

* http://www.jstor.org/stable/1112490