The committee sent Vearncombe a package of plates under an assumed name
but received word from him that it was not necessary to send plates.
That small objects which had belonged to the deceased would do and
that if the proper fee were enclosed photographic prints showing the
“psychic extras” obtained would be supplied. As a full compliance with
this suggestion would have been useless as a test, a box of plates, a
small object supposed to have belonged to the deceased, and the fee
were sent.
Again Vearncombe protested that he did not treat unopened boxes
of plates owing to many failures but offered to expose plates on
the object which had been supplied. He was informed that such
exposure would be unsatisfactory whereupon rather than disappoint
his correspondent, he consented and forwarded the package with the
statement that he had treated the plates as desired and hoped for
success. On development a “psychic image” appeared on one of the plates
but the committee found that the wrappers of the package had been
unsealed and the plates disturbed in their arrangement.
In order to clinch the results of their trapping Vearncombe was
informed that the experiment had been a “success” but in order to
“avoid criticism” he was asked for an assurance that the package had
not been tampered with. It soon came in the form of a written statement
that the package had been treated by him and returned to the sender as
originally sealed when he received it.
The committee has arranged fourteen tests, twelve of which had been
violated, and as two or three violations would have been sufficient
evidence of fraud it did not consider more necessary but reported that
it had been established by the evidence that fraud-proof packages
produced no results whereas it found “Spirit extras” in packages which
had been tampered with and that “collectively the result is damning.”
The committee next directed its attention to Mrs. Deane who, because of
“complications from annoying sitters,” had given up private practice at
her residence and was working under engagement with the British College
of Psychic Science. The Principal of the College, Mr. McKenzie, had
vouched for her as being absolutely conscientious and straightforward
in her work and one fully qualified to produce “psychic extras without
resort to trickery.” Mr. Harry Price and Mr. Seymour negotiated for
a private sitting with her. She required that sealed plates should
be sent several days in advance for “magnetization.” Six plates were
exposed at the sitting and on most of them “extras” appeared, but
evidence was obtained that the package had been opened previous to the
sitting and the plates _treated_ but there had been no substitution of
plates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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