Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically ExaminedMcCabe, Joseph
Religion
Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined
McCabe, Joseph
Doyle, Arthur Conan, 1859-1930; Mediums -- Practice; Spiritualism
In 1894 Professor Richet, assisted by Mr. Myers and Sir O. Lodge,
examined her at Richet's house, and found no fraud. But Dr. Hodgson
insisted that she released her hands and feet from control and used
them, and Myers invited her to Cambridge in 1895. The result is well
known. In great disgust they reported that she cheated throughout, and
that not a single phenomenon could be regarded as genuine. This was, on
the most generous estimate, seven years after the beginning of her
public career; and Myers, the most conscientious and respected of
English Spiritualists, reported that she must have had "long practice"
in fraud. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle tells the public that she was "quite
honest" for the first fifteen years.
Her admirers were angry, and they continued to guarantee her
genuineness. She became the most famous and most prosperous medium in
the world. In 1897 and 1898 she was again in France, and Flammarion
detected her in fraud after fraud. She released her hands and feet
constantly from control. From 1905 to 1907 she was rigorously examined
by the General Psychological Institute of Paris. They reported constant
trickery and evasion of tests. Sitters were not allowed to put a foot
_on_ her right foot because she had a painful corn on it. One of her
hands must not be _clasped_ by the control because she was acutely
sensitive to pain in that hand. She will not allow a man to stand near
and do nothing but watch her. She wriggles and squirms all the time, and
releases her hands and feet. She learns that, in a photograph they have
taken of one high "levitation" of a stool, it is plainly seen to be
resting on her head, so she allows no more photographs of this. And so
on. Professor G. le Bon got her at his house for a private sitting in
1906. He was able to instal an illumination behind her of which she knew
nothing, and he plainly caught her releasing and using her hand.
In 1910 the Americans tried her. At one sitting Professor Münsterberg
was carefully controlling her left foot, as he thought, when the table
in the cabinet behind her began to move. But one man had stealthily
crept into the cabinet under cover of the dark, and he seized something.
Eusapia shrieked--it was her left foot![9] Then the professors of
Columbia University took Eusapia in hand, and finished her. They had
special apparatus ready for use, but they never used it. In a few
sittings they discovered that she was an habitual cheat, and they
abandoned the inquiry in disgust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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