When Newspaper Accounts Said an Apparition, Levitation or Teleportation Was Seen by More Than One

 Let us look at some old newspaper accounts describing an apparition seen by multiple witnesses. The first dates from 1910. We hear of two seeing the ghost of a miner who died, with them reporting that the ghost vanished into a wall:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085947/1910-03-27/ed-1/seq-12/

The newspaper account below tells one of the most startling ghost accounts you will ever hear. We read of a justice of the peace (one often marrying couples) who reports encountering a pair of spirits who requested to be married, with the justice's wife seeing the same pair. 

You can read the full account by using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn99021999/1887-12-30/ed-1/seq-6/

The 1860 account below is one of very many accounts describing great paranormal wonders occurring in the presence of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home, who was investigated at length by the leading physicist Sir William Crookes, who asserted in print that several dramatic types of paranormal occurrences really did occur around Home (as discussed here).  We have an account of multiple witnesses seeing an apparition of a hand, one that reportedly picked up a pen and signed the name "Napoleon." The emperor mentioned was Napoleon III. 

The world-class physicist William Crookes stated in writing that he had seen levitations of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home. The newspaper account below summarizes part of a paper Crookes published with a title of "Human Levitation."

You can read the full article below, which cites many additional reports of human levitation:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SCR18600714.2.3&srpos=355&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------

The article above is summarizing the paper "Human Levitation" by William Crookes, which can be read here:

https://archive.org/details/per_the-quarterly-journal-of-science_the-quarterly-journal-of-science_1875-01_5/page/31/mode/1up

On the page here of the 1875 paper, Crookes speaks of recent reports of levitations and teleportation:

"As Newton is held to have proved that gravitation and inertia in every mass are proportional, we might expect that whatever overbears the former would be equally capable of neutralising the latter; and, in fact, the elder records hardly speak of visible suspensions like those of Mr. Home, but mainly of sudden unseen transfers of the person to a distance; like that alleged of Dr. Monck last year, from his own residence at Bristol to the garden of his friend, Mr. Young, at Swindon ; or the earlier but better attested one of Mrs. Guppy, from her house at Holloway to a circle of her friends assembled at No. 61, Lamb’s Conduit Street; or, a few months ago, that of Mr. Henderson, a well-known photographer of London, for a smaller distance, but attested by eighteen persons besides himself—the nine assembled with him at Mr. Guppy’s, and the whole Stokes family, at Highbury, where he was unexpectedly found."

On one page of the paper, Crookes this list of forty saints who were supposedly levitated:

The references are to volumes and pages of the Acta Sanctorum series of volumes, which can be found on www.archive.org.  Referring to the people in the list above, we read this in the article by Crookes:

"Many were levitated only in these unconscious states; others, as Joseph of Cupertino (the greatest aerobat in all history), both in the trance and ordinary state, and (like Mr. Home) most frequently in the latter; while a very few, as Theresa, seem to have been always conscious when in the air. Several were, in certain states, fire 

handlers, like Mr. Home. The Princess Margaret was so  from the age of ten. ..The great majority of them, though often seen suspended, were at heights from the ground described only as ‘a palm’ half a cubit, a cubit, and thence up to five or six cubits, of,  in a few cases, ells. But the Princess Agnes and the Abbess Coleta were, like Elijah, carried out of sight, or into the clouds ; and Peter of Alcantara and Joseph of Cupertino others were watched off the ground often exceeded an hour; and the Archbishop of Valencia (1555) was suspended in trance twelve hours, so that not only all the inmates of his palace, and clergy, but 'innumerable' lay citizens, went to see the marvel."

On another page, referring to accounts of teleportation by saints, Crookes states this:  "Of invisible transfers to a distance, the only subjects seem to have been Columba of Rieti, said to have been carried from her mother’s house in that town to the nunnery that afterwards received her, at Spoleto, twenty miles distant; and the river transits of Peter of Alcantara." 

Crookes refers in his article above to claims in his own time that Mrs. Elizabeth Guppy was teleported. The original source of such claims is the June 15, 1871 edition of The Spiritualist, a weekly newspaper. On page 170, we have a report by numerous witnesses claiming to have seen a case of human teleportation.  Here is the original account, signed by a series of witnesses, along with the witnesses who attested to have seen this marvel on June 3, 1871:

" On Saturday evening, June 3rd, at 61, Lamb’s Conduit-street, High Holborn, London, W.C., a séance was held in the rooms of Messrs. Herne and Williams, mediums. Before the séance began, the doors communicating with the passage outside were locked. The proceedings began, at the request of the mediums, with prayer. Then spirit lights, like small stars, were seen moving about, after which a conversation between the spirits John King and Katie King, was heard. John said, 'Katie, you can’t do it.’ Katie replied, ‘ I will, I tell you I will.’ John said, ‘ I tell you you can’t.’ She answered, 'I will.’ Mr. Harrison then said, ‘ Can you bring Mrs. Guppy ? ’ There was no reply, but a member of the circle urged that the attempt should not be made. Within three minutes after Katie had said, ‘ I will,’ a single heavy sound was heard for an instant on the centre of the table. Mr. Edwards put out his hand and said, ‘ There is a dress here.’ A light was instantly struck, and Mrs. Guppy was found standing motionless on the centre of the table, trembling all over ; she had a pen and an account-book in her hands. Her right hand, with the pen in it, was over her eyes. She was spoken to by those present, but did not seem to hear ; the light was then placed in another room, and the door was closed for an instant ; John King then said, ‘ She’ll be all right presently.’ After the lapse of about four minutes after her arrival, she moved for the first time, and began to cry. The time of her arrival was ten minutes past eight. Mrs. Edmiston, Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Harrison went at once to one of the doors, and found it still locked; the other door could not be opened during the séance, because the back of the chair of one of the sitters was against it. There was no cupboard, article of furniture, or anything else in the rooms, in which it was possible for anybody to conceal themselves, and, if there had been, we, the undersigned witnesses, are all certain that by no natural means could Mrs. Guppy have placed herself instantaneously on the centre of a table round which we were all sitting shoulder to shoulder." 

"Mrs. Guppy said that the last thing she remembered before she found herself on the table, was that she was sitting at home at Highbury, talking to Miss Neyland, and entering some household accounts in her book. The ink in the pen was wet when she arrived in our midst ; the last word of the writing in the book was incomplete, and was wet and smeared. She complained that she was not dressed in visiting costume, and had no shoes on, as she had been sitting at the fire without them. As she stated this to Mr. Morris, and Mr. and Mrs. Edwards, a pair of slippers dropped on the floor from above, one of them grazing Mr. Morris’s head ; this was after the séance, and in the light. We all went into the dark room for a few minutes afterwards, and four flower-pots with flowers in them, which Mrs. Guppy declared to be from her home, were placed on the table at once. "

“After tea a second séance was held. Within a minute or two after the light was put out, there was a cry for a light, and Mr. Herne was seen by four persons falling from above, on to his chair. There were bundles of clothes belonging to Mr. Guppy, Mrs. Guppy, and Miss Neyland on the table, and Mr. Herne declared he had just seen Miss Neyland in Mrs. Guppy’s house ; that she had pushed the clothes into his arms, and told him to ' go to the devil.'  The light was again put out, and when it was struck once more, Mr. Williams was missing. He was found in the next room, lying in an insensible state on some clothes belonging to Mr. Guppy. He said on awaking that he had been to Mr. Guppy’s house, and saw Miss Neyland, who was sitting at a table, and seemed to he praying."

N. Haqger, 46, Moorgate-street.

Caroline Edmiston, Beckenham. 

C. E. Edwards, Kilburn-square, Kilburn. 

Henry Morris, Mount Trafford, Eccles, near Manchester.

 Elizabeth Guppy, 1, Morland Villas, Highbury Hill Park, N. 

 Ernest Edwards, Kilburn-square, Kilburn. 

Henry Clifford Smith, 38, Ennis-road, Stroudgreen. 

H. B. Husk, 26, Sandwich-street, 

W.C. Charles E. Williams, 61, Lamb’s Conduitstreet, W.C.

 E. Herne, Gl, Lamb’s Conduit-street, W.C. 

W. H. Harrison, Wilmin Villa, Chaucer - road, S.E.”

We have here an astonishing report of a seance in a dark room with locked doors. The witnesses claim that a woman living quite a distance away was inexplicably deposited on the round table that they surrounded. There is no way to explain this report by imagining some kind of trickery by one or two people.  The only halfway-credible hypothesis a skeptic might use to dismiss the report is to claim that the report is all a big lie, and that nothing of the sort happened.  Here the skeptic is forced into becoming a conspiracy theorist, imagining some conspiracy by witnesses who falsely claimed to have seen something they never saw.

Crookes also refers in his paper to a report of a teleportation of a Mr. Henderson.  The account first appeared in the December 5, 1873 edition of the publication Medium and Daybreak, which you can read using the link below:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/medium_and_daybreak/medium_and_daybreak_v4_n192_dec_5_1873.pdf

Below is an image from the front page of that publication.

We read this:

"To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. Nov. 14th, 1873,—

The object of this communication in to place on record an event of most remarkable character which occurred on the 2nd inst., when a gentleman-making one of our party at a seance - was transferred, instantaneously as he alleges, from within a sitting-room duly locked and with windows closed and shutters bolted, to a distance of one mile and a half under the circumstances herein detailed and testified to by the writers of this letter...."

The preserved version of the next page of the edition (page 562) is rather hard to read in some spots, but we get the main details about the seance, when it was held, its location (Mr. Guppy's house) and who were the witnesses:

The persons at the dark seance expressed various wishes, and Mrs. Guppy expressed the wish that someone might be carried out of the room. The table was reported to have made dramatic movements. After several minutes, it was found that the Mr. Blank (a pseudonym for a person who did not wish to give his name) had mysteriously vanished from the ring of attendees holding the hands of each other in the dark seance room.  Reportedly a message was given that Mr. Blank had been carried away and would not be seen that evening. Apparently the physical arrangement of the room meant that no one could have left without an opening of a door which would have caused light to pour into the dark room, light that no one observed. 

The vanished Mr. Blank gave a report that he found himself in a disoriented state, far away from the seance he had been in at Mr. Guppy's house. He reported that he found himself at the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Stokes, giving their address of 29 Kingsdown Road, and that he was "wholly unconscious of how he had got into their premises." He stated that he had no memory of how he had got from the seance room at Mr. Guppy's house to the location of  29 Kingsdown Road, about two miles away. Hearing this strange account from Mr. Blank, some of the members of the seance at Mr. Guppy's house went and interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Stokes, getting an account that was consistent with Mr. Blank's account. 

The Mr. Blank of the account (a pseudonym of someone who did not wish to give his name) was apparently the Mr. Henderson referred to in the paper by Crookes. 

The account has on page 562 with nine named witnesses agreeing to the testimony supplied. On the next page we have these named witnesses agreeing to the supplied account:

As evidence of a teleportation, the account here is weaker than the account of the teleportation of Mrs. Guppy, largely because of the refusal of the supposedly teleported person to give his real name. Accounts which hinge on the testimony of anonymous witnesses must be ranked as second-class evidence rather than first-class evidence. But the account of teleportation of Mrs. Guppy (to the ire of materialists) has the hallmarks of first-class observational evidence.  

Press accounts of apparitions seen by more than one