CHAPTER XII

THE ACCOUNTS OF BELIEVERS One is repeatedly faced with a story of the marvellous and invited to explain it away or believe in the supernatural. My favourite way of dealing with such a proposition is to borrow a pack of cards, invite the story-teller to take a card, and, without letting me see it, to think of it whilst holding my hand. After a silent pause I name the card and may be told, 'of course that's a trick', and on assuring my friends that the spirits have told me the name of the card I am called a scoffer; somehow a pack of cards is not spiritual enough. Some stories are hard to explain without full evidence, and here is one of them: A friend assured me that in _Raymond_ was an account of how one of Sir Oliver Lodge's family went to London to visit a medium, and how after she had started some others of the family met in Birmingham, and, calling up the spirit of Raymond, asked him to say 'Honolulu' at the London seance. Sure enough at the London seance held on the same day 'Honolulu' came into the spirit talk. This account is substantially correct (see pp. 271 _et seq._) and the incident is inexplicable so far; Sir Oliver Lodge says of the episode:-- '1. It establishes a reality about the home sittings. 2. It so entirely eliminates anything of the nature of collusion, conscious or unconscious. 3. The whole circumstances of the test make it an exceedingly good one.' Then, after suggesting Telepathy as an explanation, he writes: 'I venture to say there is no normal explanation, since in my judgement chance is out of the question.' If the information had stopped at this no explanation on natural lines would be possible, but so painfully honest is Sir Oliver that in the same book he supplies full material for such an explanation. At a London seance on December 20th, 1915, with the same medium there occurs the following:-- (Question): 'What used he to sing?' (Answer): 'Hello-Hullolo, sounds like Hullulu-Hullulo, something about "Hottentot," but he is going back a long way he thinks.' On April 11th, 1916, a song of Raymond's is found with the words written in pencil:-- 'Any little flower from a tulip to a rose If you'll be Mrs. John James Brown Of Hon-o-lu-la-lu-la town.' This song is fitted to the medium's revelations as given above, and the next point of interest is whether the medium is informed of her success. This we are not told, but we find on page 95 that when another medium had hit the mark, with a sentence now interpreted as a warning of the death of Raymond before it took place, Sir Oliver wrote to the daughter of the medium: 'The reference to the Poet and Faunus in your mother's last script is quite intelligible, and a good classical allusion; you might tell the communicator sometime if there is opportunity.' Plainly he is desirous of letting his mediums know when they succeed and it is fair to suggest that the Hullulu medium found she had hit the mark, the interpretation of the gibberish being 'Honolulu', though Hottentot failed to score. A medium will always follow up a lucky shot and it needs not even an appeal to chance to explain the repetition of the word at the next sitting, after the verification, which was on May 26th (the date of the simultaneous test), the following being the words used:-- (The medium says): 'You could play.' (N. M. L. asks): 'Play what?' (The medium): 'Not a game, a music.' (N. M. L.): 'I'm afraid I can't, Raymond.' (Feda (_sotto voce_): 'She can't do that'): 'He wanted to know whether you could play Hulu-Honolulu.' One of the strongest 'evidential' stories in the book being thus explicable without calling upon the supernatural, any others lose their value even if no explanation can be based on the available facts; but apart from this explanation the choice of the test word throws a light upon the little group tilting the table at Birmingham. With the whole dictionary and all geography from which to choose, they selected a sound which had occurred in a former revelation and therefore had a chance of repetition. If in his laboratory days Sir Oliver examined a substance for the presence of arsenic, he would first test his reagents for the presence of that metal lest they might contain a trace of it and vitiate the experiment. In this test the experimenters did what was equivalent to selecting an arsenic-contaminated test-tube to use in an analysis for that substance. How did the word come to be selected? If the family of this distinguished man had used ordinary caution in formulating the test, they would certainly have chosen a word that had not occurred before, and I think that point must be clear to the reader. But, though they are probably sensible people in ordinary life, when they turn to the spirit world they fall a prey to their dissociated streams, in which was the knowledge that the word or something like it had been used before and was likely to be used again, especially if, as I suggest, the medium knew it had scored. Hence these believers were, as far as concerned their dissociated streams, deliberately introducing a source of error or, in laboratory language, cooking the experiment. Among my card tricks is included the elementary one (technically known as 'forcing a card') described at the beginning of this chapter, but I may let some one choose a card from the pack on the table whilst my back is turned; then, the card being placed in the pack which I have now taken in my hand, I do some other trick. It is common for these tricks to be confounded, and for one of my audience to assure friends that I let him or her take a card from the pack on the table when my back was turned and then named it by 'thought-reading.' Such a performance is beyond me, but a like garbled account is characteristic of what we hear concerning seances: the story-tellers are in a state of mental confusion, they add or subtract in order to make the result emphatic, any power of criticism they possess is suspended, and we are asked to swallow the final product and confess ourselves believers. After considering my own experiences and the evidence produced by Sir Oliver Lodge, I have reached the conclusion that no one desirous of believing only the truth can accept anything 'supernormal' without the strictest investigation on the spot, aided by a knowledge of trickery, verbal or material, as well as of the results produced by dissociation and logic-tight compartments in the minds of the would-be honest. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shows how convincing a twice-told tale becomes. I borrow from _The New Revelation_ (p. 64):-- 'Or once again, if Raymond can tell us of a photograph no copy of which had reached England, and which proved to be exactly as he described it, and if he can give us, through the lips of strangers, all sorts of details of his home life, which his own relatives had to verify before they found them to be true, is it unreasonable to suppose that he is fairly accurate in his description of his own experiences and state of life at the moment at which he is communicating?' The words 'can tell us of a photograph no copy of which had reached England' would lead us to believe that information that the photograph existed came from Raymond: fortunately the original account is accessible. Here is the photograph story, taken from _Raymond_ (p. 195). The medium speaks, saying: 'You have several portraits of this boy. Before he went away you had got a good portrait of him--two--no three. Two where he is alone and one where he is in a group of other men. He is particular that I should tell you of this. In one you see his walking-stick'. (Moonstone here put an imaginary stick under his arm.) This is ordinary guess-work, and it would be true of the families of most officers, even as to the stick; but it was not true in this case, for we read that though they had 'single photographs of him of course, and in uniform', they had _not_ one of him in a group of other men; yet this is the revelation referred to by Sir Arthur--the photograph incident that has impressed so many. Let us put the two statements side by side:-- Before he went away you ... Raymond can tell us had ... one where he is in a of a photograph no copy of group of other men. He is which had reached England? particular that I should tell you of this. Not being able to explain the extraordinary identity of these photographs, I must leave the problem to the creator of Sherlock Holmes; we shall gain no help from Sir Oliver, for his ideas of identity, as we shall see in the next paragraph, are equally curious. Now for 'exactly as he described it': Sir Oliver Lodge, having been informed in an ordinary letter that a group photograph containing Raymond is being sent to him from France, went to another medium and told her, 'He said something about having a photograph taken with some other men' (this itself is a garbled statement); leading questions followed, and the medium fenced with them. Here are the important ones:-- O. J. L.: 'Do you recollect the photograph at all?' 'He thinks there were several others taken with him, not one or two, but several.' (This is not even a guess.) O. J. L.: 'Does he remember how he looked in the photograph?' 'No, he doesn't remember how he looked.' O. J. L.: 'No, no. I mean was he standing up?' 'No, he doesn't seem to think so. Some were raised up round; he was sitting down, and some were raised up at the back of him. Some were standing, and some were sitting, he thinks.' (Here is a correct description, anyhow; it is an even chance whether he is sitting or standing, and, the sitting chance being taken, the rest is padding. We are told on page 279 that another photograph showed him standing, so that a hit could have been scored if the other chance had been taken.) O. J. L.: 'Did he have a stick?' 'He doesn't remember that.' (Yet the presence of a stick in the picture is hailed on page 110 as one of the strikingly correct peculiarities mentioned by Raymond. Be it noted that the stick was spoken of in connection with one of the three photographs that the family was said to have _before he went away_, and is used as 'evidence' concerning _the one sent home from France_.) O. J. L.: 'Was it out of doors?' 'Yes, practically.' Feda (_sotto voce_): 'What you mean, "yes practically," must have been out of doors or not out of doors. You mean yes, don't you?' Feda thinks he means 'yes,' because he says 'practically'. O. J. L.: 'It may have been a shelter.' 'It might have been. Try to show Feda. At the back he shows me lines going down. It looks like a black background, with lines at the back of them. (Feda here kept drawing vertical lines in the air.)' (The shelter is suggested by O. J. L.; Feda takes the hint and visualises the shelter. Most shelters have vertical lines in their structure. Such lines occur in the photograph and are strong 'evidence.' The background is not black except for two open windows.) The only revelation worthy of attention is this: 'He remembers that some one wanted to lean on him; but he is not sure if he was taken with some one leaning on him.... The last what he gave you, what were a B, will be rather prominent in that photograph. It wasn't taken in a photographer's place.' (Few out-door groups are.) In the photograph he has some one's hand resting on his shoulder, and an ambiguous guess scores a hit. As for B, Sir Oliver writes: 'I have asked several people which member of the group seemed most prominent; and except as regards central position a well-lighted standing figure on the right has usually been pointed to as the most prominent. This one is "B", as stated, namely, Captain S. T. Boast.' Some initials are guessed--C, B, R, and K. As there are twenty-one people in the group, and the alphabet contains only twenty-four letters (excluding X and Z), it is hardly a mathematical surprise that seventy-five per cent. are correct. So much for the photograph that proved to be 'exactly as he described it' (Sir Arthur) and 'one of the best pieces of evidence that has been given' (Sir Oliver). 'All sorts of details of his home life' we must suppose refers to the scenery of Woolacombe, the tent, the boat that went (or didn't) on land, the song about Hululu and the Hottentot, the fishing rods that are not understood at present, and so on. As a test of unintentional garbling I asked a professional man, who had read _Raymond_ sympathetically, to give me a short account of what the medium said about the photograph. Here is his version, and it must be understood that he knew I should criticise it:-- 'Sir Oliver Lodge was told by a medium that Raymond wished to tell him about a photograph taken in France. The medium said the photograph was of a group of officers including Raymond--a photo Sir Oliver had not seen. _There were lines running vertically in the background. Raymond is seated._ Some one's knee was preventing him from sitting comfortably and annoyed him. He was holding a stick. _The photo was out of doors_, but in a sheltered position.' The only points in which this tallies with the book description of what the medium (not Sir Oliver) said are those shown by the words in italic. The rest is garbled, and for the garbling my friend and Sir Oliver are about equally responsible. I have since asked other intelligent people to read the chapter and then write out the story; the result is generally similar to that just given. The affair is such a to-do about nothing that the sympathetic and uncritical reader, deceived by the fuss, thinks there must be something in it and makes additions of his own to account for his belief. Had he read it critically he would have recognised the emptiness of the story, but once he is impressed by it he must improve it or become aware of its flimsiness. Once again I must emphasise the way in which a guess, wide of the truth, is wrenched into an application to something entirely irrelevant. The first medium says that before Raymond went away his family had a photograph which showed him in a group of other men; _because this is not true_, it is twisted into a reference to a photograph taken in France and not yet received. The revelations of this medium must be cut out of the story, and the whole incident is reduced to Sir Oliver Lodge being told in an ordinary letter that a group photograph is on its way to him; then he tells another medium about a group photograph, and in answer to leading questions she makes the halting guesses reproduced above. This is the famous photograph story, stripped of exaggeration and garbling. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would lead us to believe that the medium told Sir Oliver about the existence of the photograph, but the true account shows that, so far from this being the case, _Sir Oliver told the medium_. It is a commonplace of spiritualism that a medium may be guilty of trickery at one time and genuinely gifted at another. We may freely admit that mediums are peculiar people, but when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes on a subject that needs careful observation and description and gives this distorted account of the photograph story, he can expect little credence when he writes in the same book equally convincing stories of the supernatural and puts them before the public as a contribution to religious thought. He gives a list of eminent men who vouch for the genuineness of supernatural phenomena, and says that the days are past when their opinions can be dismissed with the empty 'All rot' or 'Nauseating drivel' formula. I agree, and regard their opinions as interesting objects of psychological study. A little research could produce a longer list of men, equally eminent in their day, who believed in witchcraft and were willing to execute people in accordance with that belief. The belief may yet return with all its horrors if _The New Revelation_ is taken seriously. On page 168 we read concerning the Cheriton poltergeist[19]:-- 'It is very probable that Mr. Rolfe is, unknown to himself, a physical medium, and that when he was in the confined space of the cellar he turned it into a cabinet in which his magnetic powers could accumulate and be available for use.' (It is hard to believe that he who speaks like this about 'magnetic powers' once had at least an elementary knowledge of physics.) On page 170 we read, concerning another poltergeist, that '... a clergyman, with some knowledge of occult matters, has succeeded by sympathetic reasoning and prayer in obtaining a promise from the entity that it will plague the household no more.' [Footnote 19: A poltergeist is a spirit that throws things about; its appearance is generally associated with the presence of some young person, whose tricks may be detected to the discredit of the ghostly cause. If trickery is not detected the poltergeist is the manifestation of an evil spirit.] Poor Mr. Rolfe has had a narrow escape of being mixed up with an 'entity' who, or which, might have led him to the stake in a thorough-going spiritualist age. This relation between spiritualism and witchcraft is not a fantasy of my unconscious; listen to this from another believer:-- 'The dangers of the spiritual world are greater because, bad as a man living on our plane may be, he cannot compare in that respect with a thoroughly wicked denizen of the fourth-dimensional space, whose power is all the greater because his very existence is almost universally denied. What little good was ever in him has been blotted out in the course, perhaps, of centuries; his cunning passes earthly comprehension; his experience of the ways and foibles of humanity is profound; his malignity is dreadful. To be fully under the influence of such an entity as this is to be at his mercy, and, as no such word exists in his vocabulary, the end is a foregone conclusion, unless another force of a contrary character and at least as powerful is directed against him.'[20] [Footnote 20: _Problems of the Borderland_, p. 49, by J. Herbert Slater. Wm. Rider & Sons, 1915.] It is indeed fortunate that the existence of these entities is almost universally denied. Hangings and burnings would be soon in fashion again if any large proportion of us were influenced by such a horrible complex. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has given an account to the papers (see _Daily Telegraph_, February 18th, 1919) of a seance in Wales. Hymns were sung to produce a suitable emotional state, and 'the lights were turned down in order to obtain the proper conditions, because ether transmits light, and is also the source of all psychic phenomena.' Then, the medium being tied down, a tambourine rattled, and a coat and furniture flew about. The bearing of this upon life in the hereafter, which Sir Arthur discusses in connection with the performance, is not clear, but the effects are identical with those produced by the Davenport Brothers, who were exposed in 1868.[21] [Footnote 21: See _The Question_, p. 103.] The list of witnesses, who numbered about twenty, leads me to remark that though in a multitude of counsellors there may be wisdom yet in a crowd of witnesses there is Herd Instinct. With a conspicuous member of the Herd like Sir Arthur in the lead, the sway of emotion will dull any criticism, and if a few are unconvinced they will remain silent.[22] [Footnote 22: In _Spiritualism--the inside Truth_ (chap. vi) Stuart Cumberland tells how this medium refused to admit him to a seance. Stringent precautions, however, were followed by a failure to produce spirit manifestations.] The statement that ether is the source of all psychic phenomena is startling, but unsupported. Another believer, Sir William Crookes, says, concerning exhibitions of what he calls 'Psychic Force', that '... everything recorded has taken place _in the light_'.[23] So there seems to be some fundamental error about the observations of one of them. But Sir William's results were obtained from the famous Daniel Home, whose years of experience in credulity allowed him to take risks which the humble beginners in Wales hardly dared. [Footnote 23: _Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism_, p. 25. 'Two Worlds' Publishing Co., 1903.] To examine all the stories of the supernatural is impossible; many are, I frankly admit, inexplicable _on the evidence_; but it is fair to assert that when an observer, on a subject which requires the most careful watching and closest reasoning, shows by his own account that he is ready to be deceived, then we cannot be convinced by his statements when they are unverifiable. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is thus ruled out of court, for his account of the photograph story shows, to put it gently, a lack of clear writing, and his readiness to thrust upon the public a repetition of the Davenport tricks, without a warning as to their history, is not what we should expect from a man who has studied the subject for thirty years. Sir William Crookes gives detailed accounts of marvellous happenings, but two mediums in whom he had implicit trust were detected in deliberate fraud by other people,[24] so that his critical powers failed him. [Footnote 24: Miss Fox and Mrs. Cook; see _The Question_, pp. 84 and 127.] Some of his accounts show curious lapses. In one experiment an accordion is placed in a cage under the table and Mr. Home puts his hand into the top of the cage to do psychic things with the instrument. The temperature of the room is carefully recorded (that doesn't matter, but imparts a scientific flavour to the observations) although we are not told why the experiment was done under the table instead of in a more convenient position on top of it, though 'my assistant went under the table, and reported that the accordion was expanding and contracting,' and 'Dr. A. B. now looked under the table and said that Mr. Home's hand appeared quite still.' Sir William would never have made such an omission if he had been using the same reasoning powers that he used in his scientific descriptions. It is noticeable that the chief 'scientific' supporters of spiritualism are eminent in physical science; they have been trained in a world where honesty is assumed to be a quality of all workers. A laboratory assistant who played a trick upon one of them would find his career at an end, and ordinary cunning is foreign to them. When they enter upon the world of Dissociates, where deceit masquerades under the disguise of transparent honesty, these eminent men are but as babes--country cousins in the hands of confidence-trick men--and their opinions are of less value than those of a smart schoolboy. Spirit photographs are useful to people who desire to show material evidence for their beliefs, and for more than fifty years the desire has been met by periodical outbreaks of this particular manifestation, with occasional exposures of fraud. The spirit effects can be produced by double exposure of one plate or by printing on one paper from two negatives, so that the declaration that a photograph is that of a spirit carries no proof with it and one must examine the circumstances under which the photograph is obtained. A friend of mine, with a decided tendency to belief in the reality of spirit photography, was good enough to show me photographs of himself with spirit forms beside him, and undertook to repeat his visit to the photographer--who is accepted as genuine by leading spiritualists and appears to be the chief exponent in the art of spirit photography in this country--and take with him plates supplied by myself. The photographer allows you to bring your own plates, goes with you into the dark-room, and allows you to initial the plate before it is put in the frame (whether it is your plate which you mark depends upon the will and dexterity of the artist, aided by the darkness and a preliminary hymn and prayer which should remove all doubts from your mind). Then the plate is put in the camera and, whilst attendant ladies pass into a trance, an exposure is made with yourself as the sitter. Next the plate is developed under your eyes and perhaps a spirit form is revealed. I provided my friend with a packet of four plates, three of which had been exposed so that on being developed they would show a very conspicuous cross. At the seance two plates were first exposed and developed; on one appeared a cross with the portrait of the sitter, on the other appeared only the portrait. The photographer now knew that one plate at least was marked, and when the remaining two plates were exposed and developed the cross appeared on both of them.[25] There had been no substitution, but no spirit photographs either. Then the old excuse appeared--'one negative thought will spoil a whole circle', or, in other words, 'if you are on the watch for trickery we won't perform'. [Footnote 25: This is doubtful. My informant reported that he saw no cross on the last two plates, but when the four prints came to hand the cross appeared on three of them. Two prints were identical--though each was supposed to be from its own negative. If the photographer aimed at puzzling me he has succeeded.] It must be remembered that even in a 'good' seance only one or two spirit results may appear in several exposures, so the photographer can always expose, develop, and examine any or all of your plates, and at the least suspicion that yours are marked he may refrain from substituting his own prepared plates and blame the spirits for the lack of manifestations. One may ask why a private mark (say a faint file scratch on the edge) was not put on the plates so that the photographer himself could not detect, even after development, that they were marked in any way? Such a course would at once reveal whether substitution had taken place--though even then the real believer could declare that the spirits had removed the scratches. But this test is frustrated by the photographer--simple honest man--who refuses to part with the plates; he says they are now his property, but he will let you have some prints! In this example we find, as in so much 'evidential material', a point where investigation is blocked and credulity is demanded. Another piece of evidence is produced in this case, and I am shown a spirit photograph beside a lady's. The lady claims that the spirit is that of a young man, now deceased, to whom she was engaged. She was a stranger to the photographer, so how could he produce the likeness even if he substituted his own plates? But when I showed this spirit photograph to a friend, with a query as to sex, she answered, 'But it _is_ a woman, isn't it? It looks rather like N----.' Now N---- is a mature maiden lady, so that the sexless features of the spirit leave plenty of room for the play of fancy. We are invited to accept or disprove stories of spirit photography reported from the Continent, but whilst leading spiritualists in this country accept the productions of the man whose methods I have described I must refuse attention to anything they vouch for farther afield. Mr. Crawford, a mathematician and engineer of Belfast, has published reports of investigations of table-lifting seances, and builds up a theory of spiritual cantilevers which he believes to explain his results. The theory is pretty and the diagrams are impressive, but the facts first call for examination. Reading his accounts, I find that the experiments are carried out in a dim red light, for a sudden white light causes the immediate cessation of the phenomena. In addition there is a sacred line between the medium and the levitated table which must not be investigated on pain of dreadful results to the medium. This threat of physical evil to the medium if the sceptic should investigate at a crucial point is a common pretext, but though sceptics have often taken the risk, and seized a spirit to discover a disguised medium, there is no record of such disastrous results as Mr. Crawford would have us fear. I suggest that this investigator should use his technical knowledge to show how a simple but material cantilever, operated by the medium along the sacred line, can produce levitation of the table. The complaint is made that scientific men scoff at spiritualism and yet refuse to investigate it; in the last two examples we see why this is inevitable. Investigation is prevented in each at the very point where fraud might be detected; so long as such obstruction is maintained the spiritualists are likely to continue their complaints, and one must be content to speculate on the mental state which allows a few men of scientific training to support their claims. The reader must not think that my aim is to convert spiritualists from their belief. It is, as I have tried to show in earlier chapters, useless to attack rationalisations in an effort to penetrate a logic-tight compartment; as soon as one defence is broken down another is built up, and one can only take comfort from the history of other examples of _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_, as Sir Thomas Browne (he himself being, strangely enough, an active believer in witchcraft) called them, and look forward to the fading away of this delusion. Just as the belief in witchcraft passed away from the educated and intelligent, lingering only amongst the ignorant, so this delusion will pass and leave our descendants to wonder how some of us came to be its victims.