In my series of posts entitled "Spookiest Years" (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), I have quoted some of the very many reports of dramatic spiritual manifestations that began appearing around the middle of the nineteenth century. In many different towns and cities and in quite a different countries, a host of witnesses began to report manifestations such as these:
- Mysterious raps that would occur without any physical cause that could be discovered, with the raps very often seeming to display strong signs of intelligent agency. It was very frequently reported that when the alphabet was recited, raps would occur just after particular letters were spoken, and that when the raps corresponding to letters were put in a chronological sequence, an intelligent message would be the result. Often it was reported that the resulting message would correspond to something that was being privately thought of by someone present and known only to him, or would correspond to some fact subsequently verified but known at the time to no one present when the raps were heard.
- There were very many accounts of musical instruments mysteriously playing by themselves, and sometimes it would be reported that the musical instrument itself would levitate.
- There were innumerable reports from a host of witnesses of mysterious phenomena regarding tables. The least dramatic of these would be reports of tables simply moving after a small number of people lightly touched the table with their fingers. It was also very abundantly reported that tables would dramatically move about when no one was touching them. It was often reported that tables would fully levitate above the ground, or half-levitate in a manner that involved one half of the table rising up in the air, so that the table produced a 45-degree angle (or 30-degree angle) while suspended in the air.
- There were many reports of humans inexplicably rising in the air, in particular the medium Daniel Dunglas Home.
- There were very many reports made by many witnesses of mysterious figures arising out of small cabinets that had been carefully inspected, with the mysterious figures often described as walking around and speaking (a phenomena called materialization).
The people producing these reports caused outrage and fury in writers who wrote works trying to discredit or debunk the reports. The foes of the spiritual manifestations often came from opposite ideological standpoints. Some of the foes were Christian traditionalists who were eager to attack something that they suspected might be a future rival to Bible-based Protestantism or Roman Catholicism. Other foes of the spiritual manifestations were those eager to defend materialism against what seemed like evidence defying the dogmas of materialism.
" ' Supernatural Knocking. — A ' knocking at the door ' at nights, which has alarmed the good people of Rochester, who attributed it to spiritual agency, is explained in the American Journal of Science, by Professor Loomis, as the effect of the vibration of a dam over which the water falls. Professor Loomis describes this vibrating as producing sounds like a loud knocking on the doors and walls of buildings, and gives a particular account of the phenomena as observed at the dams of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio ; East Windsor, Connecticut ; Springfield, Massachusetts ; Northampton, Massachusetts ; Gardiner, Maine ; and Hartford, Connecticut. He attributes the vibrations to the friction of the running water which falls over the dam, and shows how these sounds are transmitted to a distance by the earth, and produce that sudden and alarming knocking sound in dwellings. Professor Loomis has pointed out very simple and easy methods of checking this vibratory action in the dams ; and the people of Rochester, who have been troubled by an invisible spirit, will find it easily exorcised by mechanical means."
We have here a great example of a mainstream science publication giving us its laziest effort when trying to explain reports of the paranormal, a sin scientists frequently commit. Anyone making the most cursory examination of the reported phenomena would have known that the reports were of the strange raps giving intelligent and correct answers to questions, something that would never happen because of random vibrations caused by dams. The Scientific American claim also was deceptive, as it implied that Professor Loomis had offered his theory as an explanation for the mysterious raps, when his paper referring to dam vibrations was actually published years earlier, before any reports of mysterious raps were made.
Let's look at a few of the books attempting to discredit the reported spiritual manifestations. The earliest such work I could find is a short 1851 book entitled "Rochester knockings! : Discovery and explanation of the source of the phenomena generally known as the Rochester knockings." At the time it was written, no phenomena of dramatic table movements had yet been widely reported. The book is a compilation of writings with no single author. The first article is by three doctors who show no familiarity with the history of the Hydesville and Rochester sound phenomena. They confess at the end of the article that it is a "hastily penned exposition." They state the following:
"Now, it was sufficiently clear that the rappings were not vocal sounds: these could not be produced without movements of the respiratory muscles, which would at once lead to detection. Hence, excluding vocal sounds, the only possible source of the noises in question, produced, as we have seen they must be, by voluntary muscular contractions, as in one or more of the movable articulations of the skeleton. From the anatomical connections of the voluntary muscles, this explanation remains as the only alternative. By an analysis prosecuted in this manner, we arrive at the conviction that the rappings, assuming that they are not spiritual, are produced, by the action of the will, through voluntary muscles, upon the joints."
The conclusion is contradicted by a previous statement of the doctors asserting this:
"Next, it is taken for granted that the rappings are not produced by artificial contrivances about the persons of the females, which may be concealed by the dress. This hypothesis is excluded, because it is understood that the females have been repeatedly and carefully examined by lady committees. It is obvious that the rappings are not caused by machinery attached to tables, doors, etc., for they are heard in different rooms, and different parts of the same room, in which the females are present, but always near the spot where the females are stationed. This mechanical hypothesis is then to be excluded."
How could a voluntary muscle action from females produce noises "in different rooms, and different parts of the same room, in which the females are present"? The hypothesis of the doctors does not fit the facts. Earlier in their article the authors state this about a visit to the Fox sisters: "From motives of curiosity we were led, with some of our colleagues, to pay them a visit, and, we must confess, we were surprised and puzzled by the loudness of the sounds, the apparent evidences of non-instrumentality on the part of the females, and the different directions from which they seemed to emanate." Clearly the doctors have ignored the testimony of their own senses, which does not fit their hypothesis. An examination of the literature, such as the earliest available document, would have revealed that from the beginning the mysterious raps were very heavily reported when the Fox sisters were not in the same building. And you are hardly debunking claims of spiritual manifestations by making the weak statement that "the rappings, assuming that they are not spiritual, are produced, by the action of the will," a statement which does not actually exclude a spiritual explanation. That's as weak as saying "the apparition, assuming it was not a ghost, was probably a hallucination."
We then have a long postscript in which some writer or writers (we can't tell whether it was the authors of the original paper) offer some ridiculous evidence to try and debunk the mysterious raps. Their evidence is that when they put a pillow under the feet of the Fox sisters, and waited for about a half an hour, they heard no raps. We read, "The company, seated in a semi-circle, quietly waited for the 'manifestations' for more than half an hour, but the 'spirits,' generally so noisy, were now dumb." To claim this debunks anything is preposterous. According to the theory that the raps were caused by spirits, the raps would occur unpredictably, at the arbitrary will of some unseen spiritual agency. You never discredit such an idea by some half-hour observation (or even days or months of observation) in which the effect is not observed. In general, you never discredit observations suggesting a paranormal effect or paranormal agency by observing some time in which the effect was not observed. If I report seeing a ghost on January 1, my non-observation of ghosts for the remaining 364 days of the year does nothing to discredit my January 1 report.
An 1852 book called "Mysteries, or Glimpses of the Supernatural" by Charles Elliott has a chapter attempting to debunk the raps reported at Rochester. It offers nothing substantial-seeming other than a letter by a Mrs. Norman Culver claiming that "Catherine [Fox] told me that when the committee held their ankles in Rochester, the Dutch servant girl rapped with her knuckles under the floor from the cellar," and claiming other similar confessions. E. W. Capron later stated this statement by Culver "was an entire fabrication in all its essential statements." Capron wrote a letter to the editor pointing out (1) that the claim by Culver of the committee investigating at the Fox family residence was false, with the investigation taking place elsewhere; (2) that the Fox family never had any servant, Dutch or otherwise, up to the time of the committee's investigation; and (3) that Catherine Fox was not even in Rochester when this committee made its investigation, but was seventy miles away. The claim by Culver is not a credible one, as someone rapping their knuckles from a cellar underneath a room would not even be audible in that room.
On page 304 of the June 29, 1877 edition of The Spiritualist, Catherine Fox (then Catherine Fox-Jencken) rebutted the earlier claim by Culver, stating this:
"At the time of
the publication of this defamatory, unsworn deposition I was
a mere child. My family, however, took up the matter,
and Mrs. Norman Culver, subsequently, not only verbally,
but in writing, retracted all the charges brought against me
and my sister....I may be perhaps permitted to state that, as regards Mrs.
Norman Culver, she left her husband some year or two prior
to the year 1851, and wandered about with a person named
Burr, who gained a livelihood by giving public lectures,
principally denunciatory of Spiritualism. After her return
to her husband her mind gave way, and she had temporary
attacks of kleptomania; her husband, in despair, committed
suicide."
We get a good chronicle of the mysterious events occurring in New York State and New England between 1848 to 1851 in the 1852 book by John C. Bywater entitled The Mystery Solved, or a Bible Expose of the Spirit Rappings, Showing That They Are Not Caused by the Spirits of the Dead, But by Evil Demons or Devils. The second half of the book (attempting a "demons did it" explanation) will be of no value to any of today's materialists attempting to explain these events. But the first half of the book provides some careful documentation of the mysterious events occurring between 1848 and 1852, helping to show the lack of any credible natural explanation for such events.
An 1853 book by Z. Campbell was entitled "The spiritual telegraphic opposition line, or, Science and divine revelation against spiritual manifestations." On page 148 and the next few pages the author quotes attempts to explain the dramatic table manifestations under the idea that it was mere electricity or that tables became "magnetized." At about this time electricity and magnetism were poorly understood, and people were willing to attribute all kinds of mysterious phenomena to electricity or magnetism. Part of the reason was that decades earlier various phenomena occurring under hypnosis were called examples of "animal magnetism," that term being replaced in the middle of the nineteenth century with the term "hypnosis." Scientists now understand magnetism and electricity far better than people did around 1853. Scientists know that magnetism only occurs with metal objects, and can never occur with wood. Nothing that science has discovered about electricity and magnetism in the 170 years since 1853 provides any warrant for the belief that either electricity or magnetism can explain the mysterious table movements and table levitations reported so abundantly around 1853. After quite sensibly debunking the claimed-as-scientific attempts to explain the massively observed mysterious table movements and table levitations as being caused by magnetism and electricity and noting that they don't agree with what science then knew about electricity and magnetism, the skeptical author (Campbell) then introduced his own explanation: that the reports were all just mass hallucinations. He states this:
"No matter how many persons are ready to testify to their locomotion, no human testimony is to be allowed in the case. It is contrary to all known and immutable laws of nature, but is in harmony with a certain kind of phantasm known in all ages. Under certain circumstances, people have, from time immemorial, seen things which did not exist. But these things never happen in the normal play of the faculties of the mind. To produce them, the equilibrium of the mind must be destroyed by some exciting cause. This cause is sometimes sickness — exhaustion from fatigue — the action of certain medicines, and sometimes fear; but more frequently by something being presented to the mind of a wonderful or marvellous nature...Feeding the desire for the marvellous results in hallucination, or intoxication of the mind. Under such circumstances, a man's testimony is not to be taken, any more than when he is drunk. The deranged play of the senses presents things to the mind, in strength, according to the degree of excitement, but not at all according to facts."
The attempted explanation of hallucinations is a ridiculous one. In the case of the table manifestations there would very many times occur in many different places a set of witnesses at the same place all reporting the exact same testimony of tables moving and levitating in ways that science cannot account for. If there were a group of people together having random hallucinations, they would never all report seeing the same thing as a result of hallucination, but would each report seeing a different thing. There is zero evidence that people tend to hallucinate when they want to see marvelous things. Millions have come to see the magic shows in places such as Las Vegas, and I have never heard of any of them hallucinating when seeing such a show.
In the same year (1853) there was published the book "Psychomancy : spirit-rappings and table-tippings exposed" by Charles Grafton Page. Early on the author takes an extremely emotional tone:
"Shall the silence of the grave be disturbed by grovelling mountebanks, or its stern abodes become vocal through these gross mediums of rappers and tippers? IMPIOUS! IMPIOUS!"
Writing constantly like some raging prosecutor of the witch-burning trials of the 16th century, the author gives us a good example of the type of volcanic hatred and seething vituperation which authorities gave to the people reporting phenomena such as mysterious rapping and mysterious table movements and table levitations. The author's hatred and contempt seems to have no bounds, and there is no insult too strong for him to use against the phenomena witnesses he despises so intensely.
His refusal to pay attention to compelling evidence is shown on page 48. He participates in an experiment in which he is asked to think of a person and how he died. The answer apparently occurred after repeated recitations of the alphabet, in which raps occurred after particular letters were named. The author confesses "The rappers hit it right as to the name" (a Mr. Webster). But he rages that the raps did not give the place and mode of death correctly. But there are many Websters, so would it not have been more logical to be impressed by the mysterious raps getting the name he silently thought of correctly, so unlikely to occur by chance? Having two sittings with mediums, the author produces no compelling evidence of any fraud, and none of the insinuations or generalizations he makes should be regarded as reliable, given his very obvious extreme bias.
Page cites triumphantly that he tried testing the Fox sisters standing on a pillow: "While standing upon the cushion they could not rap at all." This is ineffective as a debunking, because the nonoccurrence of some paranormal phenomena at some particular moment does nothing to debunk observations of its occurrence at other moments. Moreover, a newspaper had previously reported three witnesses saying that three witnesses had previously tried the same test of standing the Fox sisters on a cushion, and that " we all heard the rappings on the wall and floor distinctly."
Turning to the topic of mysterious table movements, the author gives away his attitude when he says, "We were much gratified recently at the remark of an experienced friend, that 'he would not believe these things, even if he saw them with his own eyes.' " The author has nothing to offer as an explanation other than voluntary or unconscious muscle movement. He attempts to insinuate that the mysterious table movements only occurred when hands were on a table. He obviously had failed to study the topic, because by 1853 innumerable witnesses had reported tables mysterious moving, half-levitating by standing on two legs, or fully levitating, all when no one was touching the table.
In 1853 there also appeared the book "RAPPO-MAMA OVERTHROWN: IN TWO PARTS PART FIRST,
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION TRIUMPHANT,
OR, THE SCRIPTURES. REASON, PHILOSOPHY, COMMON-SENSE AND RELIGION VINDICATED AGAINST THE CLAIMS
OF THE 'SPIRITUAL' RAPPERS," by Henry Wickliffe. The first 10 pages offer objections that are purely theological, along the lines of complaining that the spiritual manifestations are leading to some ideas that are not orthodox Christianity. On page 11 the author makes the extremely untrue claim that those making claims about the spiritual manifestations are materialists. No, they were not materialists, and were bitterly opposed by materialists. The next forty pages of argumentation are purely arguments appealing to scripture, the kind of arguments that will have no appeal to those who are not fundamentalists or near-fundamentalist.
We then have a chapter entitled "The Testimony of Reason" which consists of arguments such as this (referring to mysterious movements of tables):
"We would like to see a Spirit move a table in a way that even God does not attempt, for he has certainly never been suspected of being one of the Tipping Spirits. If, then, God does not choose to operate in this way, why does a Spirit ?"
Trying to rule out the possibility of actions by spirits (or by men) on the grounds that God does not do them is an absurd line of reasoning, as it would rule out the possibility of half of the things that humans are observed to do (such as filling out government forms and swimming in pools and raising children and dancing theater shows). On page 61 we have some ridiculous reasoning that if spirits could move tables they could also move houses, but no houses are seen moving, so spirits cannot be moving tables. It's not good reasoning, because it does not logically follow that if spirits could move tables they could also move houses. The chapter has no attempt to explain the reports of tables moving and raps occurring. We have "rhetorical question" reasoning like this:
"Again : where is the proof, that a Spirit can leave its home in the skies ? What powers of locomotion does it possess ? Allowing that its ethereal nature, immediately on its separation from the body, causes it to ascend to the Second Sphere, by what process is it to be able to descend again to our earth ? Has God provided it with an air balloon to travel in ? No, for we have seen, that he does not countenance the movement, and if he does it for a good spirit, he must also for a bad one. How then can the spirit move?"
Such objections are very easily answered with an answer such as this: "We do not understand the relation between some spiritual realm and our earthly habitat, and not knowing that, are not in any position to exclude things we see and do not understand, merely because we don't understand how they work." The author makes no attempt to explain the very hard-to-explain reports of paranormal phenomena that were so abundant in 1853. He had no theory to offer of why people should be reporting mysterious raps spelling out intelligible messages, or why untouched tables would be seen moving about dramatically or levitating.
In 1853 there also appeared the odd work "Philosophy of mysterious agents, human and mundane: or, The dynamic laws and relations of man. Embracing the natural philosophy of phenomena styled 'spiritual manifestations' " by E. C. Rogers. An 1855 book has a quote summarizing the underlying theory like this:
"Mr. Rogers credits the existence of a newly- discovered physical agent, 'distinct from electricity, but closely allied with animal magnetism,' and which is identical with the od or odylic force of Baron Reichenbach. This force can be traced in two distinct forms of operation ; one is totally independent of a presiding intelligence — the other exhibits the phenomena of intelligence ruling and guiding it. It thus becomes prevision — intelligent clairvoyance— acts at a distance through matter and space, and thus produces all the phenomena that have been attributed to direct spiritual agency."
A person trying today to dismiss such phenomena will take no comfort from such a theory, which requires some occult force imitating intelligent spiritual agency and acting in all kinds of spooky ways. The underlying theory has no support among modern scientists.
In 1854 there appeared a book by John Bovee Dods entitled "
Spirit manifestations examined and explained, Judge Edmonds refuted, or, An exposition of the involuntary powers and instincts of the human mind." On one page the author states this:
"I now say, that all the so called spirit-manifestations are produced by the involuntary powers of the human mind through the nervous force of those persons only who are either in the electro-psychological state, or in the mesmeric state, or in an entire or partially cataleptic state — these three. All my arguments center here, and hinge on the involuntary powers of the mind. These three conditions, it is to be understood, involve not only somnambulism and trance, but every abnormal condition to which human beings may be subject."
The author was clearly a poor student of these phenomena. It is true that many of the most dramatic events called spiritual manifestations occurred in the presence of a medium who was in a trance. But more frequently dramatic paranormal events would occur when no one in the room was in any special state of consciousness. In countless well-documented cases, ordinary people (none calling themselves a medium) would gather together around a table, place their fingers lightly on the table, and and witness dramatic movements of the table beyond anything that can be accounted for by unconscious muscle movements. Such table movements would very often be described as including full levitations and partial levitations of the table. As for the rap phenomena, it typically occurred when no one was in any special state of consciousness. The rap phenomenon was reported countless times in the presence of Kate Fox when she was in no special state of consciousness. The rap phenomenon was also reported in endless cases when none of the Fox sisters were present, and when no entranced person was around.
The quote below from page 82 shows how little the author is doing to debunk the reported phenomena:
"It is often requested that some skeptic present at the meeting of a circle shall state mentally how many times he desires the table to tip. He consents, and says mentally four times — I will now suppose no failures to occur — and, sure enough, the table tips four times ! He again merely thinks and proposes thirteen ; and it tips thirteen times ! All are awe-struck at the mysterious nature of that invisible spirit that reads the thoughts ! But do you not understand, that mesmeric clairvoyants have done this in thousands and thousands of instances, and so often repeated, that the experiment has become stale ? But do you object, and contend that the medium is not in the mesmeric state ? How do you know this ? What immortal spirit has revealed it to you, and not to us ?"
The phrase "the mesmeric state" refers to what we now call a hypnotic trance. The author is asking us to believe that in such a trance a medium can have powers of mind-reading, and also of mind-over-matter psychokinesis or telekinesis. You're hardly debunking the paranormal if you ask someone to believe all that; instead you're giving an explanation relying heavily on an appeal to paranormal human powers. It was very often observed that such wonders would occur when no one nearby was in any hypnotic trance, but the author most implausibly asks us to believe that someone not appearing to be in such a trance was in such a trance. The author is also incorrect in claiming that "mesmeric clairvoyants" had demonstrated mind-over-matter powers countless times. There is very good evidence that while under hypnotic trances people could show dramatic powers of clairvoyance (see, for example, my posts
here and the book
Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance by the very accomplished surgeon James Esdaille). But I am aware of no evidence existing by 1854 that people put into such trances would show mind-over-matter powers sufficient to move tables. Eventually a researcher would report a young woman with the power to levitate small objects while in a hypnotic trance (as reported
here), but those were merely small objects.
On
page 90 we have a quote that shows the author is not presenting anything that will be of use to one of today's materialists trying to debunk the spiritual manifestations of the nineteenth century. He states this:
"Though I am perfectly aware that there are mediums and other persons who have become so electrically charged through passivity as to be capable of giving off electro-magnetic discharges sufficient to be heard at considerable distances, and in certain rare cases to move light substances alone, with little or no contact ; and though I conceive it possible for about one in fifty million, like the Seeress of Prevorst, to produce electromagnetic sounds in other dwellings while in the mesmeric state, and for which she claimed no assistance from departed spirits — though I admit all this, yet I now seriously and decidedly challenge any medium in the United States to raise the lightest stand from the floor to the ceiling without contact, or to sit down alone and place his hands upon the end of a table, that has its four legs at the corners, and make it tip from him. I believe that persons have seen apparently a table rise from the floor to the ceiling, but they were in the electropsychological state, and I have produced that impression upon hundreds, yet the table never stirred from the spot where it stood !"
We have here a mish-mash that is no use to today's materialists. First there is the claim that mediums can give off "electro-magnetic discharges" capable of causing sounds to appear at "considerable distances." There is no evidence that any human body can cause sounds to be heard distantly through "electro-magnetic discharges," nor is there evidence that any human body can emit "electro-magnetic discharges" other than perhaps a tiny bit of static electricity. Later in the paragraph the author attempts to insinuate that the people reporting table levitations were hallucinating because they were in "the electropsychological state." No such "electropsychological" state is known to modern science, and the countless 19th-century witnesses who reported untouched tables dramatically moving and levitating or half-levitating were people in an ordinary state of mind. It is not credible to postulate that such people were hallucinating, because we are faced with an abundance of cases in which all of the witnesses reported seeing the same thing, which would never happen if they were merely hallucinating.
In 1855 there appeared the book "Modern Mysteries, Explained and Exposed" by the Reverend Asa Mahan. The book was an attempt to debunk the reports of spiritual manifestations that had appeared in the past seven years. But today's skeptic will not find much in its pages that will be of use to him in debunking such reports. The author writes this:
"We were forcibly struck with this suggestion, that they seemed evidently to imply the existence in nature of a polar force not yet distinctly recognized in philosophy, a force having, when developed, very strong attractive and repulsive power ; a force, the direction of whose action, when certain conditions are fulfilled, accords with mental states, and is determined by the same ; a force, finally, through which the mental states of one mind may be reproduced in others, and thus embodied, as in these communications."
The author dubs this force "the Odylic force." On the next page he postulates that this powerful mysterious force is generated unconsciously or subconsciously by mediums, and can explain all of the manifestations of spiritualism, mesmerism and clairvoyance. The "Odylic force" he describes seems to have unlimited powers of telepathy, levitation, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter psychokinesis. An explanation attempt like this is of no value to materialists. It involves attributing to the human mind all kinds of mysterious psychic powers that could never be explained by brain activity.
In appendixes to his 1855 work on spiritualism, E. W. Capron quotes at length from newspaper articles and "letters to the editor" trying to discredit the spiritual manifestations reported up until that time. His examples make it rather clear that nothing but unbelievable explanations were being offered. He also makes it clear that the methods of the opposition included frauds and imaginary tales of confessions. It is very clear that those eager to suppress the evidence for these manifestations would use all means "fair and foul" to achieve their ends, and seemed to have no scruples in combatting the observational reports they despised. They passed around libels and calumny as freely as an American householder throws around grass seed on his lawn, and seemed to spare no insult in attacking those making the reports they hated to hear.
In 1860 there appeared the work "Spiritualism tested, or, The facts of its history classified, and their cause in nature verified : from ancient and modern testimonies" by G. W. Samson. Using a rhetorical device of letters addressed to particular names such as Charles, the author appeals to the idea of a "nervous fluid," and tries to make us think that this mysterious invisible fluid can pass from one person to another. We read this:
"Moreover, since my nervous fluid, like an electric current, courses along the nerves leading from the brain, enters and controls the muscles of my mouth, and causes my lips to utter my thought, why may it not be, when I am put in communication with a mesmerized person, whose personal control over her nervous energy has been overpowered by another, and that nervous energy is left to be subject to the control of any one put in nervous connection with her, — why may it not occur that my nervous energy shall pass over, as electricity on connected telegraphic wires, to her frame, so as to control her lips ; and thus, when I am expecting the reply from her mouth, and unconsciously directing my nervous energy to her lips, through them I may speak out my own thought by an operation as purely mechanical as when I send my thought over the telegraph wires to be spoken out from a distant machine ? I think, Charles, that no instance of clairvoyance can be found in which the thought uttered by the clairvoyant may not be traced directly over to the mind of the person put in communication with her."
There is a very obvious answer to this question. It is that neither two separated people nor two people grasping hands are connected to each other by a linked nervous system. We now know that nerve impulses travel not by some vague invisible "nervous fluid" but by particular neurotransmitter chemicals that travel across axons of the nervous system and jump across synaptic gaps. We now know that no nervous system communication can occur between two people merely when people hold hands. One person's neurotransmitter chemicals cannot leap across his skin and travel into some other person's nervous system if the two hold hands with each other. The claim at the end of the paragraph above shows a failure to study clairvoyance, which very often involved reports that could not be explained by telepathy. And the spiritual manifestations reported during the previous twelve years were very often physical effects such as mysterious raps and table levitations, things that cannot be explained by any theory of telepathy.
A few pages later the author states this:
"Moreover, Charles, reflect a moment on the character of the media [mediums] and on the nature of the communications and, and see if you can believe that spirits in another world are the communicators ; see if all does not confirm the fact that these responsive rappings are the working of our own nervous organism, echoing to our own thoughts. We should not disparage at all, we wish not to do so, the character of those who are generally the media. We allude not to the act that they are generally young, and inexperienced, and females. But observe simply this fact : they are just that class whom we ordinarily speak of as persons of a high nervous temperament, of an acute mental organism. It is the very class of persons in whom the nervous principle is active, from whom we seem to see the nervous energy thus flowing off."
This explanation attempt will be of no value to the modern skeptic trying to explain the reported spiritual manifestations of this time. We now know that there is no such thing as nervous energy which projects beyond a person's body. So mysterious raps cannot be explained by any explanation having to do with the human nervous system.
An 1861 book by William Ramsey discussing the reports of spiritual manifestations was an example of Bible-based reasoning and the most seething hatred towards those making such reports. Not believing in the devil, a modern materialist will find no arguments of value in it. The same can be said of an 1861 work by Samuel Post.
In 1875 the previously mentioned reverend Asa Mahan made another long attempt to debunk the reports of spiritual manifestations, producing a work entitled "The phenomena of spiritualism scientifically explained and exposed." The work has a failure to discuss any of the more dramatic phenomena mentioned. For example, Mahan makes no mention of Daniel Dunglas Home or William Crookes or Florence Cook. Home was reported by dozens of reliable witnesses to have levitated, but Mahan's attitude is "so what?" He states this:
"Much is said in the papers, at the present time, on the subject of levitation, the ascent of human and other bodies from the earth, and that from no visible cause. In the progress of this treatise, facts of this character will be undeniably verified. Such facts, however, as will also appear, have no more connexion with the claims of Spiritualism, one way or the other, than they have with the transit of Venus. Suppose that a human or any other heavy body should rise up before us, and we cannot tell the reason why. What infinite fools we should make of ourselves, if we should leap to the conclusion, that intangible, impalpable, and unearthly spirits laid hold of that object, and lifted it from the earth."
Such reasoning will be of no use to the modern materialist, who cannot resort to "it might have been demons showing off their powers" ideas such as Mahan might have had. Asa's 1875 book contains some extremely bad lies and internal contradictions. On one page he will confess that all sorts of inexplicable wonders really have occurred and on some other page he will say the wonders were all fake. He tells very bad lies such as on page 32 when he says, "Not only have these wonder-workers been exposed as deliberate impostors, but their impositions, in all essential particulars, have been copied," then claiming that stage magicians duplicated artificially the spiritual manifestations reported in previous decades. No, the most famous names of the time such as Daniel Dunglas Home and Florence Cook and Kate Fox had not been exposed as deliberate imposters when Mahan's book appeared; and the best documented observations of wonders when such persons were around have never been credibly explained as imposture or deceit. And stage magicians were not able to make any relevant duplications of their phenomena under similar conditions. A stage magician who causes someone connected with piano wires to seem to levitate has no relevance to reports in which people said they saw someone levitate who had no such piano wires attached to him. And a stage magician utilizing a stage's trap door (combined with a cabinet's trap door) to produce an effect of a mysterious figure appearing has no relevance to reports of mysterious figures appearing from small cabinets in rooms, when both the cabinet and the room were very carefully checked to make sure that no such trap door existed.
Some of these works attempt the "incompetent witnesses" lie used by Michael Faraday. Under this type of deceit, an attempt is made to exclude the testimony of large numbers of people by simply branding them as "incompetent witnesses." Any person with good vision not under treatment for mental illness and with no criminal record or indictment record or arrest record qualifies as a competent witness. The vast majority of the witnesses reporting spiritual manifestations during the 19th century were competent witnesses, and it is simply a lie to claim they were incompetent witnesses. The witnesses of these manifestations included good-as-you-can-get witnesses such as the world-class scientist Sir William Crookes (whose reports on such manifestations are discussed here), John W. Edmonds (former Chief Justice of the New York State supreme court), Harvard chemistry professor Robert Hare (whose observations are discussed here), and Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution, whose observations are discussed here).
In fact, the people reporting the most dramatic spiritual manifestations in the nineteenth century were very often not merely witnesses of high competence but often witnesses following best-practices observation methods, such as writing up very detailed reports on the same day as observations were made, and very soon publishing reports of very great detail only a few days or weeks later in specialized newspapers, with a full listing of all relevant details, and a full listing of the names and addresses of all of the witnesses. I give many examples of such best-practices methods in my "Spookiest Years" series of posts you can read using the links at the top of this post. To call such witnesses following such best-practices methods "incompetent witnesses" is just a big lie. It is a fact that witnesses of this type were for many years subjected to very bad libels, slander and persecution (examples can be found here, here and here).
There were two other works of the nineteenth century or very early 20th century that tried to explain that century's abundant reports of spiritual manifestations: Edward W. Cox's 1872 book Spiritualism Answered by Science, and e 1905 book Metaphysical Phenomena: Methods and Observations by J. Maxwell, who was not only a doctor of medicine but also a deputy attorney general. I already discussed these books at length in my post "They Tried to Set Up a Halfway House Between Materialism and the Supernatural." Both books took an approach of conceding that there was very much reality to all the reports of spiritual manifestations, while trying to explain them under a hypothesis of something like subconscious mind-over-matter combined with various other dramatic human abilities such as clairvoyance and telepathy and the ability to levitate objects. You could summarize the explanations of these books by saying they made the claim "it's not spirits, but mysterious human superpowers." The modern materialist (unwilling to allow such claims) will not find much of anything of use in such books.
In 1877 there appeared the book "Mesmerism, spiritualism, &c. : historically & scientifically considered : being two lectures delivered at the London Institution, with preface and appendix" by W. B. Carpenter. Carpenter's book contains many misstatements. On pages 76-80 he discusses the case of Alexis Didier, who abundantly demonstrated powers of clairvoyance in a host of tests before very many witnesses. Carpenter's idea of debunking Alexis Didier is to claim one or two tests in which Alexis Didier failed. But you don't debunk a phenomenon by discussing one or two cases in which it did not occur. Similarly, you don't show that lightning does not occur by going out and looking for lightning, and reporting that you didn't see any.
Regarding the phenomenon inadequately described as "table turning, " he states emphatically on page 99 "there is no evidence whatever of the exertion of any other force than the Muscular action of the operators." To the contrary, very many witnesses in very many places reported tables levitating when no one touched them. Later on page 105 Carpenter refers to some of the more dramatic reports:
"Of the ' higher phenomena ' of Spirituahsm — the " ' levitation ' of chairs and tables, and even of men and women ; the ' elongation ' of Mr. Home's body, his handling of heated bodies, and his heaping hot coals on the head of a bald gentleman without any discomfort to him ; the untying of knots and change of coats ; the production of 'spiritual photographs ;' the bringing-in of fruits, flowers, or live lobsters, in dark seances ; and the like — I have left myself no time to speak. The very catalogue speaks, to any sober and unprepossessed mind, of the extreme improbability that any ' spiritual ' agents should so manifest their presence. And in regard to the spirit-writing by pens or pencils, I can only say that of the revelations given by its means, I have seen none that could claim any higher character than that of unmitigated ' twaddle.' "
Carpenter fires only blanks here, and in the remaining pages. He doesn't know how invisible spirits would act, so his "they wouldn't act that way" argument has no force. He shows no signs of having studied the relevant literature, so his "I have seen none" claim has no force. In the few pages which treat of the claims of spiritual manifestations, Carpenter has nothing to say of note to defeat all of the observations of paranormal events that occurred. He shows no signs of having seriously studied the literature documenting such phenomena.
Carpenter makes no mention of the books and writings of the world-class scientist Sir William Crookes who a few years earlier documented some of the paranormal phenomena so carefully, some of the very phenomena Carpenter mentions in the quote above (including the levitation of objects and a human, the mysterious elongation of a body, and the handling of hot coals without injury). Crookes works were his 1874 Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism and his writings here and here and here. Carpenter's only comment about Crookes is this feeble comment: "I cannot but believe that if Mr. Crookes had been prepared by a special training in the bodily and mental constitution, abnormal as well as normal, of the Human instruments of the Spiritualistic enquiries, and had devoted to them the ability, skill, perseverance, and freedom from prepossession, which he has shown in his Physical investigations, he would have arrived at conclusions more akin to those of the great body of scientific men whom I believe to share my own convictions on this subject." That's a feeble rebuttal, because Crookes was one of the leading physicists of his time, and his reports of paranormal phenomena were reports of inexplicable physical phenomena.
Having almost nothing he can use from the works of the nineteenth century attempting to explain away the abundant reports of dramatic spiritual manifestations during this time, today's materialists will typically resort to just ignoring any detailed discussion of this topic. It's as if their underlying thought is, "Let's just not talk about it, and here's hoping people don't read up about this."
