In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1861. In this installment I will look at accounts of spooky events occurring during the years 1868 and 1869.
Around the year 1868 we had increasing use of an invention called the planchette that was used to try to receive mysterious communications. The planchette was a predecessor of the Ouija board, and used for similar purposes. A surprisingly fair article in the July 8, 1868 edition of Scientific American deals with this device, and has the drawing below of a planchette:
The planchette had two little wheels and a hole through which someone would put a pencil. Two people would put their fingers on it, and see whether any writing or drawing resulted. The Scientific American article says this:
"The instrument is usually operated by two persons, or perhaps we should say it generally operates when two persons lay the tips of their fingers gently upon it. Occasionally it operates with less force when only one places his hands upon it...The phenomena attributed to the Planchette are various, but they consist essentially in writing and drawing. The latter we have never witnessed, but we state it upon good authority. In fact, the wonders of Planchette are backed by the statements of the most reliable people — statements which constitute such a mass of evidence that we should feel bound to accept the facts stated, even though we had not witnessed them ourselves.
You may hold a conversation with Planchette, provided your own part in it consists of interrogations. Its replies, so far as we have seen, are sometimes true and sometimes false. So are the replies often given by human respondents. It sometimes refuses to write at all, and plays the most fantastic tricks, in apparently willful disregard of the feelings of those who are anxious that it should do its best. When, however, it chooses to be good, it moves gently and steadily over the paper upon which it is placed, the pencil point tracing letter after letter, until the reply is written, when with a rapid sweep it announces its conclusion by rushing swiftly back to the left, and stopping suddenly at the edge of the paper. These motions seem to those whose fingers rest upon the board to be entirely independent of their own wills, their only care being to avoid any resistance to its motions. The fact that it is impossible to suppose that the wills of two persons could be by their own desire mutually coincident, without previously concerted action, forms one of the most puzzling features of the subject, as the nature of the questions asked and answered precludes the possibility of collusion."
The article then ends with a little paragraph suggesting that the topic was worthy of further study, without offering any explanation for the observed phenomenon.
Epes Sargent's 1869 book Planchette has this account from 1869 (the references to "Hon. --- ---" refer to Lord Lindsay, quoted below, and the references to Mr. Home refer to Daniel Dunglas Home):
"A man of science, Mr. Jencken (see page 100), communicates to the public, under date of January, 1869, a statement that, at a recent meeting of several gentlemen, at Ashley House, London (all of whom are ready to verify this account), Mr. Home was lifted by some unknown force four feet off the ground. Travelling thus, suspended in space, he made a circuit round those in the room. The levitation lasted from four to five minutes. His trance state changing, Mr. Home opened the door and went into the corridor. A voice then said, 'He will go out of this window and come in at that window.' The only one who heard the voice was the Hon. --- ---; and he shuddered at the thought of a feat which the great height of the third-floor windows rendered more than ordinarily perilous. The others present, however, having closely questioned him as to what he had heard, he at first replied, 'I dare not tell you; ' when, to the amazement of all, a voice said, 'You must tell; tell directly.' The Hon. --- --- then said, 'Yes, yes! terrible to say, he will go out at that window and come in at this; do not be frightened, be quiet.' Mr. Home now re-entered the room, and opening the drawing-room window, was pushed out demi-horizontally into space, and carried from one window of the drawing-room to the furthermost window of the adjoining room. This feat being performed at a height of about eighty feet from the ground, naturally caused a shudder in all present."
This is one of history's most astonishing accounts: an account of a man levitating into the air for minutes, and then floating out a window about eighty feet above the ground, and then floating back in to the same building through a nearby high window. A matching account of this incident was given by Lord Lindsay, who testified this to the investigative committee of the London Dialectical Society:
"I saw the levitations in Victoria Street, when Home floated out of the window ; he first went into a trance and walked about uneasily; he then went into the hall ; while he was away, I heard a voice whisper in my ear, ' He will go out of one window and in at another.' I was alarmed and shocked at the idea of so dangerous an experiment. I told the company what I had heard, and we then waited for Home's return. Shortly after he entered the room, I heard the window go up, but I could not see it, for I sat with my back to it. I, however, saw his shadow on the opposite wall ; he went out of the window in a horizontal position, and I saw him outside the other window (that in the next room) floating in the air. It was eighty-five feet from the ground. There was no balcony along the windows, merely a strong course an inch and a-half wide ; each window had a small plant stand, but there was no connection between them. I have no theory to explain these things. I have tried to find out how they are done, but the more I studied them, the more satisfied was I that they could not be explained by mere mechanical trick. I have had the fullest opportunity for investigation. I once saw Home floating in space."
Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution) stated the following about reports of levitation:
"A few well-known examples are those of St. Francis d'Assisi, who was often seen by many persons to rise in the air, and the fact is testified by his secretary, who could only reach his feet. St. Theresa, a nun in a convent in Spain, was often raised into the air in the sight of all the sisterhood. Lord Orrery and Mr. Valentine Greatrak both informed Dr. Henry More and Mr. Glanvil that at Lord Conway's house at Eagley, in Ireland, a gentleman's butler, in their presence and in broad daylight, rose into the air and floated about the room above their heads. This is related by Glanvil in his Sadducismus Triumphatus. A similar fact is related by eye-witnesses of Ignatius de Loyola ; and Mr. Madden, in his life of Savonarola, after narrating a similar circumstance of that saint, remarks, that similar phenomena are related in numerous instances, and that the evidence upon which some of the narratives rest is as reliable as any human testimony can be. Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, says that many such facts are related by persons of undoubted veracity, who testify that they themselves were eye-witnesses of them. So we all know that at least fifty persons of high character may be found in London who will testify that they have seen the same thing happen to Mr. Home."
The February 1868 edition of the publication Human Nature has an account by an author claiming to have witnessed very astonishing phenomena in the presence of Daniel Dunglas Home. On pages 28-29 we read that an accordion played while suspended in the air, and that a semigrand piano was lifted "bodily off of the ground." We read, "This I have remarked on many occasions; also that the table is generally bodily raised into the air, not tilted, and I have seen instances where the table remained suspended in the air three to four minutes." We read this on page 30:
"Mr Home said, ' I am now going to grow taller' and then the remarkable phenomenon of elongation was witnessed. The elongation repeated itself three times. The first time, Mr Home lengthened to about 6ft. 9 in.; then he shortened down below his normal height to about five feet. He then asked me to hold his feet, which I did by planting my foot on his instep, whilst Mr ------held his head, his left hand being placed on his left shoulder. We carefully measured the extent of elongation against the wall; it showed eight inches. M r------, who had been watching the extension at the waist, measured six inches elongation!...Mr Home had now seated himself. Again he said, ' I am going to be elongated. Daniel will be elongated thirty times during his life : this is the sixth time ' (?) M r s-------, who sat next to Mr Home, placed her hand on his head, and her feet on his feet. Thus held, the elongation nevertheless proceeded, measuring six inches. I repeat, Mr Home was seated all the time, and held by those present, anxious to verify this truly unaccountable phenomenon. By this time Mr Home had awakened from his trance."
Although a very interesting tale, this is not first-class evidence of the paranormal because of the failure to list the name of the witnesses, and the fact that the account is written under a pen name of Honestas. But in a later edition of the Human Nature journal (the March 1869 edition) we have a named witness who gives a similar report of a paranormal elongation of Daniel Dunglas Home. We read this on page 139, an account written by H. D. Jencken:
"Our circle, consisting in all of seven, met as usual at tea. During the whole of the time we were seated at the tea-table, raps were heard close to the mantelpiece, and the chair behind the friend who was seated next to me trembled and moved. On reseating ourselves in the drawing-room, a cold current of air was felt to pass over our hands ; the floor vibrated, and the table tilted, moved, and finally was raised into the air, remaining suspended in space for nearly a minute, as if balanced, if I may use the comparison, upon a cushion of steam. The semigrand [piano] then moved spontaneously from the wall into the room, and raps and a tremulous vibration-movement of the instrument were noticed....The right leg of Mr Home was then elongated about six inches, then shortened, the foot literally shrinking into the trouser. I carefully examined the leg from the ankle joint to the hip. The limb felt shrunk and withered, and, gradually elongating, it felt as if it were being expanded by air being inflated. Whilst the leg was so shortened, he walked about the room, proving, that though lessened in size, the function of the limb was unimpaired. The final and most satisfactory test was, however, the lengthening and shortening of the hand. Of this extraordinary phenomenon I have given a sketch or tracing made at the time, and, as the weight of the testimony depends much upon the accuracy of the tracing taken, I will describe my method in making the outline. I caused Mr Home to place his hand firmly on a sheet of paper, and then carefully traced an outline of the hand. At the wrist joint I placed a pencil against the ' trapezium,' a small bone at the end of phalange of the thumb. The hand gradually widened and elongated about an inch, then contracted and shortened about an inch. At each stage I made a tracing of the hand, causing the pencil point to be firmly kept at the wrist. The fact of the elongating and contracting of the hand I unmistakably established, and, be the cause what it may, the fact remains ; and in giving the result of my measurements, and the method adopted to satisfy myself that I had not been self- deceived, I am, I believe, rendering the first positive measurement of the extension and contraction of a human organism. Mr Home now resumed his seat, and awoke from his trance, exhausted and feverish. These phenomena took place in a well-lighted room."
The same Honestas referred to above makes this astounding report in the May 1868 edition of Human Nature (page 194), involving a seance with Daniel Dunglas Home:
"We next suggested trying the alternating weight and lightness of the table, a manifestation occasionally produced. M r-----reexamined the table to satisfy him self that no disturbing cause could interfere; this done, we made the request to have the table ' heavy.' On attempting to raise it, we could not possibly manage to lift it. Then we requested that the table should be made ' light,' and the table only just before heavy and immovable, could now be raised upon the slightest effort. Mr— , satisfied with this test, suggested repeating the experiment with the music book, which had been placed on rollers on the table. I at first quite doubted the result, but on trying to raise the edge of the book it felt as if cleaved to the table, and then on changing to, ' Let it be light,' the book became as light as a feather. Again and again we repeated the experiment, and finally satisfied ourselves of the reality of the important fact of an independent agency, guided by intelligence, and of the presence of an invisible being, possessing the power of reading our thoughts, and of producing at will the phenomenon of alternately making the book heavy or light."
If there were no further corroboration of this outrageous-sounding claim about a paranormal change in the weight of bodies, we might be entitled to dismiss it, on the grounds that we have no fully named witness, but merely a witness using the pen name of Honestas. But in this case we have a very strong corroboration of the report. Within a few years the eminent scientist Sir William Crookes would publish his "Experimental Investigation of Psychic Force," which would state this:
"Among the remarkable phenomena which occur under Mr. Home's influence, the most striking, as well as the most easily tested with scientific accuracy, are — (i) the alteration in the weight of bodies, and (2) the playing of tunes upon musical instruments (generally an accordion, for convenience of portability) without direct human intervention, under conditions rendering contact or connection with the keys impossible. Not until I had witnessed these facts some half-dozen times, and scrutinised them with all the critical acumen I possess, did I become convinced of their objective reality. Still, desiring to place the matter beyond the shadow of doubt, I invited Mr. Home on several occasions to come to my own house, where, in the presence of a few scientific enquirers, these phenomena could be submitted to crucial experiments. The meetings took place in the evening, in a large room lighted by gas."
On the page here Crookes tells how he very carefully verified the inexplicable effect of a paranormal alteration in the weight of objects, using some fancy equipment he devised. We can surely trust one of the most accomplished physicists of the 19th century to have correctly handled the elementary task of correctly weighing simple objects.
The year 1869 saw the case of the trial of William F. Mumler on charges of faking "spirit photographs." Mumler would take photographs, typically of strangers. The photographs would often seem to show figures who never appeared during the photographic session. Often when presented with such a photograph, someone might say the figure matched or appeared some deceased person known to him. Nowadays such images can easily be produced by computer software, but in the 1860's there was no known way of producing such images without some elaborate artistic process that would take quite a while and be easily detectable by anyone watching the photographer. Witnesses would often say they watched Mumler at work, seeing no signs of anything special going on before the appearance of such enigmatic images.
It was a disgrace that Mumler was ever put on trial for fraud, as there never existed any prima facie evidence of a fraud. The trial quickly showed how weak the prosecution's case was. You can read here a newspaper account of the early testimony. The prosecution's main witness was Joseph A. Tooker, who witnessed no deceptive photography activity, and whose claim of fraud was based on this claim:
"They promised to give me a portrait or picture of a deceased relative, or of one nearest in sympathy with me: they did not do it. I was therefore deceived."
Getting a photo that does not match what was promised may be grounds for a refund, but is not a basis for a fraud arrest.
A judge found Mumler not guilty of the charges after a three-week trial. Examples of Mumler's photographs can be seen on this page. Below is one of his photos.
"The counsel for the defense have brought forward a number of witnesses who testify to the genuineness of spiritual photographs taken for them by Mr. Mumler. William P. Sneed, a photographer of Pougheepsie, testifies that Mumler succeeded in producing spiritual photographs at his gallery in Poughkeepsie, and he was unable to discover how it was done. Judge Edmonds, one of the most distinguished advocates of Spiritualism, deposed that he had two photographs taken by Mumler; the spirit form in one of them he thought he could recognize, but not the one in the other.... A large number of witnesses testified that they recognized the faces of departed friends (in some cases of those long dead) in the photographs taken for them by Mumler. The most striking case was that of a gentleman of Wall Street, whose deceased wife's features both he and his friends distinctly recognized in a photograph taken for him in this way. If there is a trick in Mr. Mumler's process it has certainly not been discovered as yet."
No one ever showed that Mumler was guilty of fraud. The treatment of him in the press and by skeptics is a classic example of groundless libel so often practiced by the mainstream when dealing with the paranormal. Many witnesses stated that they had observed Mumler's entire activity during the production of photos with mysterious figures, and that they had seen no evidence of fraud. For example, in the January 1, 1863 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, page 34, we read this:
"As I have been commissioned bv Messrs. A . J. Davis and Co., you can rest assured that I was resolved, if permitted, to allow nothing to slip my utmost scrutiny. Having had ten years’ continual practice in this particular branch— that is, negative on glass, and positive on paper from negative— I felt competent to detect any form of deception. Having been permitted by Mr. Mumler every facility to investigate, I went through the whole of the operation of selecting, cleaning, preparing, coating, silvering, and putting into the shield, the glass upon which Mr. M. proposed that a spirit form and mine should be imparted, never taking oft’ my eyes, and not allowing Mr. M. to touch the glass until it had gone through the whole of the operation. The result was, that there came upon the glass a picture of myself and, to my utter astonishment— having previously examined and scrutinized every crack and corner, plate-holder, camera, box, tube, the inside of the bath, &c.—another portrait. Having since continued, on several occasions, my investigations, as described above, and received even more perfect results than on the first trial, I have been obliged to endorse its legitimacy.
Respectfully yours, W m . Guay .”
Guay then states that he recognized images of his father and mother on photos taken by Mumler, and that "it is impossible for Mr. Mumler to have procured any pictures of my wife or father.” On page 35 we also read this:
"Another photographic artist, Mr. II. Weston, of 31, Province street, Boston, writes that after making a full examination of the process, he found a spirit-figure on the negative. He also says that he cannot conceive of any process by which imitations could be made without his detection."
There follows in the same article quite a bit of similar testimony from other people. We have three hard-to-explain aspects in the Mumler and quite a few similar cases of this time:
(1) The appearance in mid-nineteenth-century photos of ghostly figures that could not have been produced at such a time except through some elaborate fakery process requiring very substantial time and work, such as manually painting on a photographic plate.
(2) The testimony of quite a few witnesses that they observed Mumler's operation when some mysterious figures appeared in his photos, and saw no evidence of any such work, and no evidence of anything unusual.
(3) The mysterious appearance of figures in photographs of someone, with that person recognizing the figure as a deceased relative, even though Mumler had no knowledge of the appearance of such a deceased relative. Some examples are here.
In the November 1869 edition of Human Nature (page 563), we hear this remarkable account:
"Mrs. Bowcroft stated that in July, 1860, she had seen the apparition of her husband. ' I was lying,' she said, ' on the sofa, at about six and seven o'clock in the evening, perfectly awake, and not thinking at all about my husband, when I heard three distinct knocks at the door. Thinking it must be one of the waiters, I said 'Come in,' and my husband, who had been dead five years, entered, dressed in the morning dress prescribed for British consuls —a blue coat, with Victoria buttons, a straw-coloured waistcoat, and a white hat, such as he always used to wear in the summer. He had also a walking stick with a chamois-horn handle. I jumped up and advanced towards him. He then went into the next room ; and when I had recovered myself sufficiently to follow him, he was gone.' In answer to questions, the lady stated that she was unable to say how long the apparition lasted ; she had every reason to believe that her husband was poisoned on board a ship; the door actually opened when she said 'Come in'; the door was not open when the apparition disappeared."
On page 619 of the December 1869 edition of Human Nature, we hear this testimony from some British figure with the title of the Master of Lindsay, regarding Daniel Dunglas Home:
"A few minutes after I saw an apparition, which seemed like a cloud of vapour or an indistinct shadow, which grew gradually into a definite shape, and I saw the form of a woman standing en profile to me. She stood between me and Home; I saw the features plainly, and should have recognised them again anywhere. She seemed to be attired in a long flowing gown, which hung without belt from the shoulders. The figure seemed quite solid; I could not see through it. I spoke to Home; he said he saw her plainly, and that it was the apparition of his late wife, who often came to him. She moved and stood by his side ; she then walked to the right of the bed and rather behind it, but not out of my sight, and then slowly faded away like a column of vapour. The next morning I found an album, and on looking over the pictures carelessly I saw a photograph exactly like the figure I had seen. Edward Jencken said it was the likeness of the late Mrs. Home. When I saw the apparition I remarked that Home's eyes shone in the dark with a very singular lustre."
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