C. This will fitly crown the chapter for two reasons. First, because Sir

A. C. Doyle recommends her to us as a genuine materializing medium of
our own times. He says in the Debate that, while Spiritualists have been
much "derided" for claiming that spirits build up temporary forms out of
the medium's body, "recent scientific investigation shows that their
assertion was absolutely true. (Cheers.)" I quote the printed Debate (p.
32), and it will be recognized that here at least I am not shirking my
opponent's strongest evidence, for Sir A. C. Doyle at once explains
that he means the case of Eva C. He gave his own (quite inaccurate)
version of the facts, and, to the delight of his supporters, he went
on:--


Don't you think it is simply the insanity of incredulity to waive
that aside? Imagine discussing what happened in 1866 ... when you
have scientific facts of this sort remaining unanswered.


So, you see, I was very heavily punished in that contest, and I have to
try to redeem my "insanity"; but perhaps the reader will remember what
Sir A. C. Doyle forgot, that he had stipulated that I should open the
debate and _deal with his books_. No doubt I was quite free to take
other evidence also, but I had an idea that, since this evidence was
published in 1914 and Sir Arthur's books were published in 1918 and
1919, he had not mentioned it because he disdained it.

The other reason why the case of Eva C. is important is because it shows
us modern scientific men at work. In the earlier days of the movement
faking was easy. No one searched a medium, especially a lady medium. She
could have yards of butter-cloth or muslin and even dolls or masks under
her skirts. Even now the ordinary medium is not searched, as a rule. A
friend of mine went recently to a materializing medium near London--it
is all going on still--and was allowed to feel the medium over his
clothes. He could easily tell that the man had yards of muslin wrapped
round his body, but he said nothing, and he got his money's worth; a man
dressed in muslin, in a bad light, being recognized by Spiritualists as
a deceased relative. Most materializations are still the medium in a
mask or beard and muslin. In some cases, in very poor light, the ghost
is merely a white rag, a picture, or even a faint patch of light from a
lantern, or a phosphorized streak.

Now we come to the "scientific facts." Half the professors and other
scientific men quoted as adherents by modern Spiritualist writers and
speakers are not Spiritualists at all. Flammarion, Ochorowicz, Foa,
Bottazzi, Richet, de Vesme, Schrenck-Notzing, Morselli, Flournoy,
Maxwell, Ostwald, etc., are not, and never were, Spiritualists. Most of
them regard Spiritualism as childish and mischievous. But they believe
that mediums have remarkable psychic powers, and they admit levitations
and (in many cases) materializations. They think that a mysterious force
of the living medium, not spirits, does these things, and they talk of a
"new science." I agree with them that the idea of spirits strolling
along from the Elysian fields to play banjoes and lift tables and make
ghosts for us is rather peculiar, but I am not sure that _their_ idea is
much less peculiar. However, they promise us research under scientific
conditions, and they say that they have got materializations under such
conditions. "Eva C." is the grand example.

Who is this mysterious lady? I have already let the reader into the
secret. Sir A. C. Doyle may justly plead that he does not read German;
and the French version of her exploits is, he may be surprised to hear,
very different from Baron Schrenck's fuller version in German, and very
wrong and misleading. But does Sir Arthur never read the _Proceedings of
the Society for Psychical Research_?

As long ago as July, 1914, it contained a very good article on Marthe
Beraud, which tells most of the facts (except about her morals), and
quite openly disdains these wonderful photographs which have made such
an impression on Sir A. C. Doyle. From that article, which betrays, in
the official organ of the Society, almost the same "insanity of
incredulity" as I did, he would have learned things that might have
saved him from the worst "howler" of the Debate. It tells that "Eva C.,"
as was well known all over the continent in 1914, was Marthe Beraud, the
medium of the "Villa Carmen materializations" in Algiers in 1905. It
gives a lengthy report on the case by an Algiers lawyer, M. Marsault,
who knew the family at the Villa Carmen intimately, and often saw the
performances; and this report contains an explicit confession by Marthe
that she had no abnormal powers whatever. To excuse herself she said
that there was a trap-door in the room, and "ghosts" were introduced by
others. That was a lie, for there was no trap-door; and those who
obstinately wished to believe in the ghosts rejected the whole of
Marsault's weighty evidence on the ground that _he_ said there was a
trap-door!

I have before me photographs of the Algiers ghost and of Eva C.'s ghost.
They plainly show Marthe dressed up as a ghost, in the familiar old way,
while Professor Richet gravely photographs her, and Sir Oliver Lodge
recommends these things to our serious notice. However, Marthe found
Algiers unhealthy after this, and she returned to France and set up in
the materializing trade. Mme. Bisson found her and adopted her, and
changed her name; and Baron von Schrenck-Notzing settled down to a three
years' study of her marvellous performances. It was on the strength of
his book and photographs that Miss Verrall in 1914 (in the _Proceedings
S. P. R._) gave a verdict not much different from my own. She found
some evidence of abnormal power, and a great deal of fraud. I see no
evidence whatever of abnormal _psychic_ power if--it is not clear--this
is what Miss Verrall means. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle, who seems to know
nothing about the matter beyond Mme. Bisson's worthless work, puts the
facts before a London audience in the year 1920 in the language I have
quoted.

In the beginning Marthe plainly impersonated the ghost, as Baron
Schrenck admits. He believes that she did it unconsciously. The sooner
that excuse for fraudulent mediums is abandoned the better. She was
quite obviously _not_ in a trance, though she pretended to be,
throughout the whole three years. For smaller "ghosts" (white patches,
streaks, arms, etc.) she used muslin, gloves, rubber--all sorts of
things. As a rule, she knew when they were going to let off the
magnesium-flare and photograph her. She had had ample time behind the
curtain to arrange her effects. In one photograph, taken too suddenly,
she has a white rag on her knee, which would look like a hand in the red
light, and her real hand is holding the "ghost" over her head! After
that Baron Schrenck sadly admitted that she used her hands. Mme. Bisson
does not; so Sir Arthur does not know this. In another photograph she is
supposed to accept a cigarette in a materialized third hand. It is
obviously her bare foot, and, if you look closely, you see that her
"face" is a piece of white stuff pinned to the curtain. She is really
leaning back and stretching up her foot. The book reeks with cheating.

After a time she began to stick or paste on the cabinet or the curtain
pictures cut out of the current illustrated papers, and daubed with
paint, provided with false noses, or adorned with beards and moustaches.
President Wilson has a heavy cavalry moustache and a black eye; but the
glasses, collar, tie, and tie-pin, and even the marks of the scissors,
are unmistakable. Baron Schrenck was forced to admit that dozens of
pinholes were found (not by him) on the cabinet-wall, and that the pins
must have been smuggled in, deceptively, in spite of a control which he
claimed to be perfect. In fact, poor Baron Schrenck was driven from
concession to concession until his case was very limp. Of all these
things Sir A. C. Doyle knew nothing; and, although he had the portrait
of President Wilson in his hands at the Queen's Hall, only disguised by
a moustache and a few daubs of paint, he assured the audience he
believed that it was the ectoplasm of the medium's body moulded by
spirit forces into a human form!

The point of interest to us is to find how the medium concealed her
trappings. No medium was ever more rigorously controlled, yet the fraud
is obvious. The answer shows that you can almost never be sure of your
medium. She was stripped naked before every sitting and _sewn_ into
black tights. Her mouth and hair were always examined. Occasionally her
sex-cavity was examined. South African detectives have told me how this
receptacle is used for smuggling diamonds, and, as Marthe was rarely
examined there by a competent and reliable witness, she probably often
used it. Dr. Schrenck admits that the outlet of her intestinal tube was
scarcely ever examined until very late in the inquiry, and an
independent doctor gave positive reason to suspect that she used this.
There is only one photograph in the book that shows a ghost which,
tightly wrapped up (and nearly all show plain marks of folding, as Baron
Schrenck admits), might be too large for such concealment; and the
careful reader will find that on these occasions there was no control at
all! They were impromptu sittings, suddenly decided upon by Marthe
herself.

There is strong reason to believe that usually she swallowed her
material and brought it up at will from her gullet or stomach. More than
a hundred cases of this power are known, and there is much positive
evidence that Marthe was a "ruminant." She sometimes bled copiously from
the mouth and gullet, and she used the mouth much to manipulate the
gauzy stuff. When I mentioned this well-known theory of Marthe Beraud
Sir Arthur laughed. He said that he doubted if I had read the book I
professed to have read, because Marthe had a net sewn round her head,
which "disproved" my theory. He summoned me to retract. He said I had
"slipped up pretty badly."

Well, the theory was not mine, but that of a doctor who had studied
Marthe, and who has little difficulty in dealing with the net. Had it
not been the end of the debate, however, our audience would have heard a
surprising reply. They would have learned that the net was used only in
_seven_ sittings out of hundreds, and that the medium then compelled
them to abandon it. They would have learned that the net, instead of
"not making the slightest difference to the experiments," as Sir A. C.
Doyle says, made _four_ out of these _seven_ sittings completely barren
of results! And they would have further learned that when the net was
on, and Marthe could not use her mouth, she stipulated that the back of
her clothing should be left open.

Just one further detail of this sordid imposture. I said that on one
occasion Marthe allowed the very title of the paper out of which she cut
her portraits, _Le Miroir_, to appear in the photograph, and gave it a
spiritual meaning. Now, that is Mme. Bisson's version. But Baron
Schrenck's version is in flagrant contradiction, and an examination of
the photographs proves that he is right. The words were caught,
_accidentally_, by a camera placed in the cabinet, and the excuse was
concocted the next day!

Enough of these miserable "materializations." They are always dishonest.
Every materializing medium has been found out. Almost since the birth of
the movement there have been, and are to-day, hundreds of these men and
women, paid and unpaid, who have masqueraded as ghosts, or duped their
sitters in a dull red light with muslin and butter-cloth and
phosphorized paper, with dolls and masks and stuffed gloves and
stockings and rubber arms. If Spiritualists would persuade us that they
are scrupulously honest, they must drive the last of these people out of
their fold, and they must expunge every reference to these
materializations from their literature. When we get such phenomena with
a medium who has been searched by competent and independent witnesses,
whose body-openings have been sealed and clothing changed, in a cabinet
set up by independent inquirers, with _each_ hand and foot controlled by
a separate man, or in a good light, we may begin to talk. Never yet has
the faintest suggestion of a phenomenon been secured under such
circumstances.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] I take this from the German psychic journal, _Psychische Studien_
Nov., 1909.