The Case Against Spirit PhotographsPatrick, C. Vincent
History
The Case Against Spirit Photographs
Patrick, C. Vincent
Parapsychology; Spirit photography; Spiritualism
There are undoubtedly many other methods used by mediums for this
purpose; but if the sitter who has obtained spirit extras under test
conditions carefully considers the procedure employed, in the light
of the suggestions made above, he will probably find that several
loopholes were left by which fraud might have been introduced.
_B.--Experiments in Fraud_
The argument most frequently brought forward, in favour of the
genuineness of spirit photographs, is that the conditions employed in
their taking leave no loophole for fraud. It has been pointed out in
the preceding section that the usual “test conditions” leave not one,
but many, such loopholes. Evidence of fraud has at some time or other
been brought against most spirit photograph mediums, and they have
consequently been more or less discredited. Other mediums have been
more clever--or more fortunate--and many people therefore argue that
they are not all to be tarred with the same brush; it is pointed out
that spirit extras _have_ been obtained under the strictest conditions
imposed by acute observers who have found nothing suspicious of
trickery.
It occurred to me that the most effective way to refute this argument
was actually to produce bogus spirit photographs under similar, or
even more stringent, test conditions. This I accordingly attempted in
a series of _séances_, held in my rooms at Cambridge in the summer
of 1919. At four of these _séances_ photographs were taken, and on
each occasion one plate showed a more or less conventional spirit
extra. As I was experimenting primarily for my own satisfaction, my
seven victims were drawn from among my own friends, and were enjoined
to keep the matter as quiet as possible. They were not, of course,
specially trained psychic researchers, but could not, I think, be
considered as being particularly easy men to deceive. Five of the seven
were ex-Service men, and all were of B.A. or “fourth year” University
status; they included two chemists, two medical students, a geologist,
and two physiologists who were also studying psychology. They were
all therefore of a scientific bent, and, with possibly one exception,
were completely sceptical about spiritualistic phenomena when the
experiments started.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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