“My signature appended to the above statement sets forth that investigation of all the facts available up to date shows that the plate containing the psychic extra in the Price test sitting with Hope did not match up with the other plates marked by the Imperial Dry Plate Company. The only possible inference is that the plate in question was substituted by someone at some time either deliberately or accidentally. I do not commit myself as to the authorship of the substitution. After careful experimentation I do not consider the system of X-ray marking adopted by Mr. Price to be infallible, but quite the reverse, as the markings quite disappear on long exposures and over-development. I am also unimpressed and unconvinced by Mr. Price’s method of marking the plate-holder. I have had in all five sittings with Hope and four with Mrs. Deane. Of these nine sittings, seven were conducted under test conditions in which Dr. H. Carrington and other witnesses participated. I have obtained psychic extras from both mediums on plates marked by X-ray by the Imperial Dry Plate Company, and boxed and sealed by them, and also on plates purchased by Dr. Carrington just previous to one of the Hope sittings, all of which were marked by us with every precaution. I am convinced that there was no substitution possible in at least five of the seven test sittings. I consider that the mediums possess genuine psychic power, and are capable of obtaining marvellous, genuine results.... The more I investigate the subject the more convinced I am that the marvellous evidential case of spirit photography obtained by me through Mrs. Deane in July, 1921, was genuine and true. “Yours faithfully, “ALLERTON F. CUSHMAN.” [1] I let these words stand as written, but further information, which only came later to my knowledge, has, as the text will show, caused me to take a less entirely charitable view.—A.C.D. CHAPTER V FURTHER DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED It might well be urged, “Why should Hope go into the dark room at all? Why should he not allow the sitter to charge his carrier by himself and so remove all possibility of transposition?” It is natural that Hope should show the stranger where the various conveniences of the dark room are, but apart from this there is the reason that Hope in the course of his career has had all sorts of tricks played upon him by dishonest investigators, and that he has to protect himself, so far as he can, against doctored plates or plates with extras already prepared which will be ascribed to him and made the ground for charges. I have heard him tell such instances. When he knows his sitter he has no objection at all to leaving him alone in the dark room.