Reports of Dramatic Paranormal Activity in the House of the Physicist Dolbear

 The book Forty Years of Psychic Research by Hamlin Garland is an astonishing account of observation of the paranormal. At its beginning Garland says that he was living in Boston in 1891, a young novelist who was an agnostic evolutionist who enjoyed the Darwinist writings of Herbert Spencer. He was asked to join a new research society that would research paranormal phenomena, one called the American Psychical Society. Although inclined to disbelieve in the type of things that might be investigated, Garland was attracted to the idea that a physicist (Professor Amos E. Dolbear) would be one of the investigators, so he agreed to serve on the board of directors of the new society. Journals published by this society (which included some articles by Garland) can be read here. 

On page 10 Garland reports observing the phenomenon of slate writing, the mysterious appearance of writing on slates either untouched by human hands or tied together. Usually when this would occur a piece of chalk would be put between two bound slates observed to be blank before the tying; and the bound slates looked rather like this:

Here is Garland's account:

On pages 13-14 Garland reports a favorable experience with another slate-writing medium:

On page 16 Garland gets an amazing account from the physics professor Dolbear:

On pages 19 to 20 we have a narrative from Garland that is one of countless narratives by respectable reliable witnesses testifying to the paranormal movement of a table. Garland is introduced to a young medium, and he and the medium merely touch the top of a table with their fingertips. He says, "With both of us standing and only the tips of our fingers touching its top, the table rose completely from the floor and hung about twenty inches from the carpet." In full light he asked the young medium to stand away from the table, and the table continued to levitate, even though he could see there was no contact between the medium and the table. Garland says, "The table was being lifted by an unknown force, and was held suspended in the air for a minute, possibly longer." See my six posts with a tag of "table turning" to read many similar accounts. 

On page 25 Garland reports a variation of the phenomenon of slate writing, one in which writing mysteriously appears under the base of goblet filled with water. He says this:

Garland requests that a specific name be written underneath the base of the goblet, the name William Dean Howells. He reports the name was mysteriously written under the round base of the water-filled goblet. On page 27 Garland says he was extremely satisfied with the result of this test, and convinced it was evidence of something supernormal:

On page 28 Garland is involved in another test of slate writing, one involving a medium identified as Mrs. Flower. Garland requests that the word "Constantinople" be written on the slate, but is told that "they" don't know the spelling. Garland then requests that there be written something like a lightning bold, in yellow, within a circle. On the next page he reports that this request succeeded:

No one who has read my two previous posts with the tag of "slate writing" should be surprised by this account. Successes in very strict tests of paranormal slate writing were very widely reported in the years before Garland's tests. 

Garland states this:

About page 34 Garland begins to discuss some tests he made with what is called a trumpet medium, a type of medium who may be involved in seances in which there seems to occur mysterious voices, sometimes identified with spirits of the dead. On page 36 Garland asks the medium a good question, and gets a response that will "ring a bell" with any serious scholar of out-of-body experiences. We read this:

When Garland first got this report, he probably thought to himself something like:  well, that's a weird claim --no one else has reported something like that. At the time almost no one had reported out-of-body experiences. But anyone today who has studied this topic will recognize these claims. They are two of the most common features in reports of out-of-body experiences.  You can read many other cases of people reporting both of these things in my post here. 

Pages 38 to 45 discuss various tests with the same medium, which Garland says were highly successful. Garland tied up the medium with silk threads (which he says are impossible to untie once they are knotted). Then in a state of darkness various objects seemed to be levitated mysteriously, and also mysterious voices were heard.  Garland says this all occurred in front of several seated witnesses. The account is less convincing as evidence than some other accounts of similar phenomena, because (1) no exact observation date is given; (2) the real name of the medium is not given, only a pseudonym of "Mrs. Smiley"; (3) we lack an observation report that was published soon after the phenomena were observed; (4) the only person writing an account of these events is Garland. 

Garland said he arranged for the same medium to travel to Boston, so that tests could be done to some members of the American Psychical Society. The first of these were failures. But still remembering the previous successful test, Garland arranged for a test at the home of the physicist Dolbear. The test was very successful. The date of the test is given: November 10, 1893.  The only people present besides the  medium were Garland, Dolbear and his wife. 

On pages 56 to 57 we read of how the medium was elaborately tied up to a chair with silk threads that are supposedly impossible to untie. Also a newspaper was placed on her knees, to cause a sound alert if she tried to move. On page 60 we read that something like two dozen books started flying mysteriously from bookshelves in the room. We also read that when Mrs. Dolbear (the physicist's wife) requested that a candy box be brought, the candy box was retrieved from part of the room and "shoved down upon Mrs. Dolbear's hand," as if by some invisible hands. We read this:

We read on pages 61-63 of disembodied voices speaking and performing various wonders. A personality of "Mitchel" identifies himself as a deceased soldier who fought in the American Civil War. This is the strange phenomenon called "direct voice phenomenon," discussed in my post here. On page 64 we read this: 

"The table was grasped and shaken violently from side to side as if by a powerful impatient man; and yet the newspaper on the psychic's knees uttered no sound and the threads tied to the chair legs remained unbroken! Such violent side-to-side motion requires two hands."

On page 66 Garland reports that when the lights were turned on, the medium was found just as she had been set up, tied up in the chair, her legs still tightly tied to the table legs. She was found with a weak pulse and cold skin. She had apparently been in a deep trance as all the strange phenomena were occurring.

On page 68 we have Garland confronting the skeptical physicist Dolbear with the results they have just observed, such as something like two dozen books inexplicably flying out of Dolbear's own bookcase:

Page 69 of the book is rich in the psychology of stubbornness. We have a portrait of a physicist who simply won't give up his belief dogmas, no matter what he has observed. 

Showing excellent psychological insight, Garland predicts on the next page that if the physicist Dolbear meets one of his colleagues, he will not mention a word of what he saw during this seance in which so many inexplicable things happened such as dozens of books flying out of a bookcase. Sure enough, Dolbear wrote in 1897 a long book First Principles of Natural Philosophy which talked for hundreds of pages about scientific investigation, but which failed to make any mention of Garland, mediums or the paranormal phenomena Dolbear had seen. It was just as if Dolbear's rule was "I will banish from my memory everything I see or read about that contradicts my belief dogmas." And that seems to be the rule of the great majority of scientists today. 

There follows in Garland's book a description of quite a few experiments in which many equally strange things happened in seances of the same medium, although results on any one day seemed to be unpredictable, with quite a few days producing unimpressive results. Conversely, on other days, under the strictest test conditions in which the medium was all tied up to a chair, there reportedly occurred results such as writing on sheets of paper that were blank at the beginning of the test, with all witnesses present denying they did anything to produce such writing. 

Around page 112 and the following pages, Garland gives more reports of dramatic successes doing experiments with slate-writing.  On page 118 he reports a dramatic success when testing an unnamed medium in Chicago. While he held the medium's hands and also controlled the medium's feet, a metal cone was seen rising up from the floor and flying around the room mysteriously:

On page 187 Garland quotes a later letter from Dolbear, in which Dolbear states this:

"I didn't make out how some of the things were done. For instance, how the books, 24 of them, got off of the shelves, without Mrs. Smiley's hands being free, she was tied good." 

I will in a later post discuss many other equally striking claims made in Garland's book. If the topic of this post interested you, check out my free 292-page book "Eeriest Events," now available on www.archive.org using the link here. The book discusses phenomena such as near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, apparition sightings, deathbed visions and precognitive visions.  Using the native www.archive.org file viewer in single-page mode,  you can conveniently read the whole book by finger swiping. Scholars who are interested in following the links may prefer to download the book as a PDF file, which will allow opening links by right-clicking on a link.