Spiritualism
Pseudoscience does not progress, but it does change. It
leaps from fad to fad; old crazes are forgotten as new crazes come in, or old,
old crazes are revived. One of the longest lasting pseudoscientific fads,
dominating the field for almost 70 years from the mid-1850’s to the mid-1920’s,
has recently experienced a major resurgence:
Spiritualism. In the history of
pseudoscience, Spiritualism occupies a central position. In the 19th
century, Spiritualism spawned an important offshoot, the synthetic religion
Theosophy, which has had a heavy influence on 20th century
pseudoscience and pseudoscientists, from Edgar Cayce to Charles Berlitz, from
George Adamski to Erich Von Daniken. Even more important, Spiritualism, as it
faded in the early 20th century, gave birth to all the familiar
folderol about “psychics,” and “psychic phenomena,” including extrasensory
perception, telepathy, psychokinesis, psychic detectives, and psychic
“supermen.” Key figures in 20th century pseudoscience, like Uri
Geller, are direct descendants to the great figures of Spiritualism a century
before, particularly Daniel Home and Henry Slade.
The 19th century’s first popular pseudoscientific
fad was Mesmerism, or hypnotism as it later came to be called. Most people
encountered Mesmerism in the form of a stage act in which a mesmerist “cast a
spell” on local townspeople, getting them to act crazy, mainly — to imitate a
chicken, etc. — but sometimes to demonstrate supernatural powers such as
thought-reading. By 1850 interest in Mesmerism had largely faded — you can
watch just so many people imitate chickens before it gets to be a bore — and
the stage was set for something new. It came, from the consequences of a prank
played by two girls, ages 8 and 6-1/2, on their superstitious and somewhat
dimwitted mother. The two girls, Margaret and Katherine Fox, teased their
parents by making noises in their attic bedroom at night in hopes of getting
their mother to proclaim the house haunted. As both Margaret and Kate later
confessed, independently, they were sure their mother would finally catch on to
the prank when the produced the mystery noises (“raps”) with their mother watching,
as the girls lay in their bed in the attic. Instead, Mom ran out to get
neighbors to witness the “miracle” of spirits of the dead communicating with
the living via “spirit raps.” Thus, on March 31, 1848, was Spiritualism born!
When the girls’ adult sister, Anna Leah Fox Fish, showed up
from Rochester, NY, in the tiny town of Hydesville where her parents lived, she
saw the possibilities instantly. Despite the tender age of the girls, they were
hauled off to Rochester, and resulting newspaper coverage of the girls’ ability
to communicate with anyone’s dead relatives for a fee caused an explosion of
interest all over America and Europe. Soon every town of any size had a
practicing “medium,” usually a woman, who for the right payment would call up
the invisible ghost of Uncle Charlie so that his family could ask him where he
buried all the money he was supposed to have had. Fierce competition between
rival mediums caused a rapid escalation of the types and kinds of phenomena
produced as “evidence” that departed souls were present.
The method of communication inherited from the Fox sisters
was incredibly laborious, as an anonymous humorist pointed out in 1854 in
depicting Wagstaff, a “writing, tipping, knocking, rapping, and speaking
medium.” Sitters of the medium recited the alphabet while the spirits rapped
softly or vigorously to indicate a hit:
“A?” (Silence) “B?” (Silence) “C?” (Silence) “D?” (Silence)
“E. F. J?” Rap, rap, rap. “O?” Rap, rap, rap. “Well, let the ‘seph’ go, it’s
Joseph, ain’t it?” Rap, rap, rap. “A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O,
P” — Rap, rap, rap! “P, says I .. what’s the use of wastin’ time. It’s Joseph
Pipkins, ain’t it?” Rap, rap, rap!
From loud raps produced near the center of a table, mediums
went on to cause the table to tip and turn and even float in the air, still a
laborious way of spelling out the spirit messages. The spirits contacted by
“Dr.” Henry Slade, more reasonable, wrote in a clear hand on a school slate
with chalk or a slate pencil, in the “new look” of Spiritualism for 1860. By this time the full “spirit séance” was
born. In a semi- or totally darkened room, customers held hands around a table
— usually holding the medium’s hands , too. The medium went into a “trance” and
eventually spoke in a strange voice … the spirits were speaking through her!
She could then be questioned directly, omitting the laborious spelling out of
answers. As “proof” the medium was in contact with the spirits, various
“phenomena” were produced. As the room was usually totally dark these phenomena
were limited to sounds, odors, luminosity, and the like. Raps sounded, tables
tipped, musical instruments played by themselves, ghostly cold winds blew down
the necks of the sitters, objects appeared in midair and fell to the tabletop,
strange incenses and perfumes were smelled … Following the lead of music hall
performers Ira and William Davenport, some mediums allowed themselves to be
tied hand and foot with rope before exhibiting their phenomena. Thurs was born,
in actual fact, the “escape act” that magicians like Houdini later made a
headline feat. But the medium did not observably escape. After the séance she
could be found still apparently securely tied, still in a “trance,” whatever
that is.
Each medium had his own trademark effects, and these tended
to become more and more spectacular as the century wore on. Daniel Home
“materialized” tiny hands, which appeared at the edge of the table — about as
far as Home’s feet could reach! — and which the sitters could touch. By the
early 1870’s, mediums were undertaking “full figure materializations.” While
the medium retired to another room to “go into a trance,” all the lights were
turned out and the sitters sang hymns until they were half asleep … Suddenly,
the very form and figure of the departed loved one was dimly seen to enter the
room … always wearing a concealing robe, a hood, a helmet, and often even a false
beard! These materializations invariably proved to be the most risky of all
Spiritualist phenomena. For every medium who was caught releasing her hands or
feet to work a trumpet or a tambourine, several were caught playing the part of
the “full figure materialization.” The temptation of members of the audience to
reach out and grab the “spirit” proved almost irresistible, and every medium
who performed such materializations was publicly exposed at one time or another
when a skeptic or an overenthusiastic believer accidentally or on purpose
jerked off the “spirit’s” robe or hood or wig, to reveal, usually, the medium
herself, but always a very much alive and unspiritual person in costume.
Almost every prominent medium was caught in one or more acts
of gross trickery. In the Fall of 1888, Margaret and Kate Fox told their full
story, confessing to every detail of their original and later trickery, and
giving a public demonstration. None of these exposures had any effect on
believers, but the scandals and the preposterous claims kept scientists as far
away from Spiritualism as they could get, especially after physicist William
Crookes (1832-1919) and his girlfriend, medium Florence Cooke, were involved in
a remarkable scandal that is still being studied by historians of the period.
Crookes later renounced totally all interest in Spiritualism, and in the latter
part of his life did reputable — indeed excellent — work in physics. Other
scientists who investigated without getting emotionally involved — including
Michael Faraday, the greatest experimental physicist of the 19th
century — found nothing but trickery and self-deception in the phenomena of
Spiritualism.
“Researchers” in Spiritualism tended to have no scientific
training at all, like the founders of England’s Society for Psychical Research,
who were trained in classics and music. The interest of such societies and
“researchers” was shifting by 1890 from Spiritualism to “psychic phenomena” in
general. The evolution came about as Palladino levitated tables and caused
impressions to appear in wax, “Margery” extruded what looked like a hand carved
from liver from her navel; Slade caused the spirits to write with a regular
piece of chalk on a regular slate. No two mediums did the same “act.” How then
could the totally random range of phenomena all be explained by the same
process, “actions of the spirits?” The obvious explanation, that each medium
had her own favorite repertoire of personal tricks, was rejected by the
“researchers,” since that would leave them looking like fools. The
“researchers” thus put forward an alternate conclusion: that what one is seeing in a séance has
nothing to do with spirits, but rather is a demonstration of the supernatural
mental powers of the medium herself. The information revealed about dead
relatives of the sitters thus came not from spirits, but by the medium
unconsciously reading the minds of the sitters! (It actually usually
came from cold reading of the sitters by the medium before the séance).
Mediums, in addition to telepathy, were supposed to exhibit clairvoyance (the
ability to see without the use of vision), precognition (the ability to be
aware of events before they happen), astral projection (the ability to
“project” one’s awareness to spots arbitrarily distant from one’s entranced
body), and psychokineses (the ability to move objects by the power of the mind
alone). The uncritical marveling at and cataloging of mediumistic stunts thus
evolved into the uncritical marveling at and cataloging of supposed mysterious
powers of the human mind, and the societies originally formed to “investigate”
mediums and séances evolved quickly, by 1890-1900, into societies to
“investigate” psychical abilities in humans. The tricks done by the “psychics”
under investigation were generally exactly the same as the tricks earlier done
by mediums, but they were generally done under different conditions (no
darkness, no hand-holding, no tying up the psychic with ropes) that made some
tricks more difficult and others much easier to get away with. As a result, the
famous “psychics” of the 20th century, like Uri Geller, are very
direct heirs of the repertoire of the famous “mediums” of the 19th
century.
How direct the connection is between Spiritualism and “ESP”
(Extrasensory perception, whatever that is) research can be seen from the early
careers of the two best-known 20th century ESP researchers, Joseph
Banks Rhine and Dr. Samuel G. Soal. Rhine and his wife Louisa were trained in
botany, but after hearing an enthusiastic 1925 talk on Spiritualism by novelist
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, they dove with religious fervor into “psychic” studies
that evolved gradually into the notorious ESP “experiments” done at Duke
University in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Similarly, Soal’s interest in ESP began
with his meeting with a Spiritualist medium in 1922. During the 1930’s he was a
sharp critic of the fumbling experiments of Joseph Rhine, but Soal’s own
experiments conducted in the 1940’s and 1950’s are equally flawed, and the
surviving records of these experiments also indicate that Soal perpetrated a
deliberate fraud in recording the data to indicate the presence of more correct
guesses than the subjects actually made. Both Soal and Rhine, and most later
so-called “parapsychologists,” tended to be motivated not by an spirit of
scientific inquiry, but rather by a sort of religious fervor … the
“experiments” were done only to “validate” pre-existing beliefs. Rhine was
quoted as saying that the primary goal of all his work was to “prove the
existence and immortality of the human soul.” A lofty goal indeed, but one
science is unlikely ever to achieve, for several excellent reasons! The
religious fervor we have mentioned traces back directly to Spiritualism, which
survives in the U.S. and England today mainly as a branch of organized
religion. Spiritualist churches in areas heavily populated by the retired, such
as Florida and Arizona, send hundreds of thousands of believers to summer
Spiritualist camps in Indiana and Pennsylvania, where the faithful attend very
traditional séances, and the mediums take in many millions of dollars per
season. Under the new name of “channeling,” the basic appeal of Spiritualism
has also been retreaded for the 1980s with spectacular success.
Acknowledgments
ASTOP – The Austin Society to Oppose Pseudoscience – has
prepared fact sheets on various pseudoscience topics for the benefit of
teachers and others interested in promoting critical thinking. Dr. Rory Coker,
Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of
this fact sheet. The International Cultic Studies Association (formerly American Family Foundation), a professional research and
educational organization concerned about the harmful effects of cultic and
related
involvements, prints and helps distribute these fact sheets. Because ASTOP fact
sheets seek to stimulate critical thinking, rather than advance a particular
point of view, opinions expressed are those of the authors. These fact sheets
may be copied for educational purposes, but they may not be reproduced for
resale.
