In 1923 an Editor of Scientific American Confessed the Reality of Telepathy and Mind Over Matter

Nowadays it seems that whenever the leading publication Scientific American discusses the topic of telepathy, we get statements by ESP denialists, despite centuries of evidence for the reality of psi phenomena such as extrasensory perception (ESP) and clairvoyance. But it wasn't always this way. In earlier years the editors of Scientific American confessed that telepathy was proven. 

In my post "In 1941 the Editors of Scientific American Confessed That Telepathy Was Proven," which you can read here, I documented how the editors of Scientific American had publicly confessed that telepathy was a proven fact. 

On this same page of the April 1941 Scientific American, we had a box describing an offer of the magazine to pay $15,000 for proof of the paranormal. Here is part of that box:

Note well item 6 in the list of conditions. We read, "Since experiments by Dunninger and others have proved telepathy to an acceptable degree, demonstrations of this nature are not eligible for the award."  That is a confession that the reality of telepathy had been proven. At the time this was written, the person who had done the most to prove telepathy was Duke University professor Joseph Rhine (whose laboratory experiments are discussed here), and other researchers such as Professor Riess (whose enormously convincing experiment is discussed here). Later researcher Louisa Rhine documented very many cases of telepathy outside of laboratory settings, in her book Hidden Channels of the Mind, which may be read here. Sally Rhine Feather documented very many other cases of telepathy outside of laboratory settings, in her book The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People, which can be read here.

So why in so quite a few decades after the 1940's have Scientific American writers and Scientific American editors misled us by claiming that there is no good evidence for ESP? Nothing happened to warrant such a change. To the contrary,  experiments after 1941 using the Ganzfeld protocol provided extremely well-replicated evidence for the reality of ESP. A paper on the Cornell Physics Paper server gives this summary of the telepathy evidence from the ganzfeld experiments run in recent decades, in which the success rate expected by chance is 25%:

"From 1974 to 2018, the combined ganzfeld database contained 117 studies. Of those, studies using targets sets with 4 possible targets included 3,885 test sessions, resulting in 1,188 hits, corresponding to a 30.6% hit rate. With chance at 25%, this excess hit rate is 8.1 sigma above chance expectation (p = 5.6 × 10^-16). Analysis of these studies showed that similar effect sizes were reported by independent labs, that the results were not affected by variations in experimental quality, and that selective reporting biases could not explain away the results. The Bayes Factors (BF) associated with the last 108 more recently published ganzfeld telepathy studies was 18.8 million in favor of H1 (i.e., evidence favoring telepathy). Given that BF > 100 is considered 'decisive' evidence, this outcome far exceeds the 'exceptional evidence' said to be required of exceptional claims.[48,49] By comparison, in particle physics experiments effects resulting in 5 or more sigma are considered experimental 'discoveries.' ”

The probability of 1 in 5.6 × 10^-16  cited is a likelihood of less than 1 in a quadrillion. 

Researching old newspaper articles, I found an earlier confession by an editor at Scientific American that telepathy had been proven.  The confession occurs in the 1923 newspaper article you can read here. 

In an article entitled "Spirit Messages Declared Frauds," we read the opinion of J. Malcolm Bird, who the article describes as "editor of Scientific American."  Bird declares that he does not believe in messages or manifestations from spirits after investigating them. But he casts doubt upon his qualifications as an objective judge of this topic, by confessing that he has an "emotional preference against the idea that spirits come back and produce physical effects upon our physical plane.”

But later in the article we read this confession from Bird:

"He concedes, first, that what scientists call subjective phenomena, under the head of which come hypnotism and telepathy, do occur, and he cites instances in support of the belief. He concedes, also that he has been impressed with objective phenomena, such as objects moving about at high velocity, weaving themselves, in dark rooms, in and out of chandeliers and other furnishings without contact. His theory is that, with the brain giving off energy, with other brains as the receiver, it is possible also to reach the point of concentration where physical objects may also be the receivers and may be controlled by the brain. If such is true, he holds, It is an entirely human process and not spirits working through the medium."

The underlined part of the statement is a confession of the reality of telepathy. The other part of the statement amounts to a confession of the reality of mysterious movements of matter seeming to be what is called psychokinesis, telekinesis or mind-over-matter. The Scientific American editor Byrd attempted to account for these incredibly spooky movements of matter (including "objects moving about at high velocity, weaving themselves, in dark rooms, in and out of chandeliers and other furnishings without contact") by advancing a theory that remote objects can be moved around by brains giving off energy. 

We know of no energy from a brain that can explain mysterious movements of matter outside of a person's body. We should have a low opinion of Byrd's attempt to create a mechanistic theory to account for the spooky movements of matter he saw. But at least we got from Byrd a confession of the reality of mind over matter, something like psychokinesis or telekinesis. 

In the news article we then read this statement from the Scientific American editor:

"In support of his admission that telepathy is existent, Mr. Bird points to the case of a Scottish woman. Her husband was a seafaring man and at the time was at sea and not expected home for several weeks. She was observed to rush out of the door of her house, with her arms extended, and to walk thus a distance of about one hundred yards on the moor In front of her cottage. She suddenly folded her arms as if about an object and fell In a faint. When she revived, she said, 'my husband is dead.' It was later established that at about that exact moment her husband had been drowned at sea."

We then read in the newspaper article about Bird's interaction with a British medium of the early twentieth century (Gladys Osborne Leonard), who seemed to produce psychic or paranormal results so impressive she was often called "the British Leonora Piper."  (Piper's prowess is discussed here.) The most impressive existing record of the results of Gladys Osborne Leonard is the 1916 book Raymond, or Life After Death by Sir Oliver Lodge, which can be read online for free here. The book is a meticulous account of interactions Lodge had with mediums after the death of his son Raymond, which occurred on September 14, 1915. The book has transcripts of quite a few sessions Lodge had with mediums such as Leonard.  

We read this about how the Scientific American editor Bird had two seemingly paranormal encounters with Gladys Osborne Leonard:

"In one of his sittings with the clairvoyant medium, Mrs. Leonard, she told him that he had booked passage on two separate ships when he left America for England. Mr. Bird had told no one in England of this, but as a matter of fact, he had done so as a precaution.

Through her 'control' (the spirit working through the medium’s
mouth), she told him also of the existence of a picture of three women, taken by the seashore. One of the women, now a spirit, was supposed to be communicating with him through the medium. Mr. Bird recalled no such picture at the time, but upon his return to America his mother verified its existence. It was a picture of his grandmother and two of his woman relatives taken by the seashore. He attributed this to the workings of telepathy, the explanation being that the medium had taken in through this source the workings of his subconscious mind."

Here Bird is not merely assuming the reality of telepathy, but actually assuming the existence of a kind of super-super-telepathy, in which a mind reader cannot merely detect what you are thinking at the current moment, but also kind of dive into your memories, extracting things you may have seen, but are not currently thinking about, and cannot even currently remember. We have here an example of the infinite explanatory flexibility of those trying to explain away evidence of some mysterious spirit beyond their ken. It kind of goes like this. 

Cannot explain what you saw? Try to explain it as thought-reading and maybe also brain-caused telekinesis.

That still is not enough? Explain the results as super-telepathy involving the ability of someone to read not just your current thoughts but also your memories. 

That still is not enough? Explain the results as super-super-telepathy involving the ability of someone to read not just your current thoughts and also your memories but also something locked in your subconscious mind that you cannot remember if you try. 

Bird seems to have failed to ever convincingly back up his claim that one of the mediums he investigated was involved in fraud.  You can read about the case using the links here, here and in another account you can read below. 

What seems to have happened is that Bird and his Scientific American committee got baffling results while testing Josie K. Stewart, results that originally impressed them (as described in the article above). Later Bird and his men devised a theory of fraud to explain away the results. But none of the later news stories seem to discuss any convincing evidence to back up such a theory of fraud. The accusation was vigorously denied by Stewart.  

We read in the article here some claim of a measurement backing up the claim of fraud. But it does not sound like very reliable evidence at all, as it hinges upon a supposed difference of paper thickness reported as being merely two ten-thousandths of an inch. With a difference that small, the possibility of measurement error is too high, particularly when someone making a measurement may be motivated to get some particular result. 

Postscript: On the morning of this post's publication, I observed a spooky effect I have seen more than 28 times, in addition to another spooky effect, both of which I discuss in my post here. The effects  may suggest some "mind over matter" interaction going on. 

Spirit Photography Topic Deserves Deep Scholarly Study, Not Hasty Snob Scorn

Those covering the topic of spirit photography have typically acted like swift snobs, people who dismiss the topic as being unworthy of serious attention. This does not make sense, because there is a large body of evidence hinting that the topic is very much worthy of serious scholarship. When we get the "swift snob" treatment of this topic from hard-score skeptics, that may be predictable. What is rather less predictable is when people receptive to reports of paranormal phenomena act like swift snobs when discussing the topic of spirit photography, giving us a strong feeling they were thinking something like "I can't soil my hands by diving deeply into this topic." 

I have a theory about such treatment.  My theory is that a scholar  discussing the paranormal and acting as if he is persuaded for the evidence for some phenomena may pick some types of spooky phenomena as a target for a hasty, contemptuous rejection, choosing anything he thinks is particularly likely to be scorned.  The scholar may be thinking that he will thereby show his critical acumen, that he has the ability to reject those spooky reports worthy of rejection.  But just as an analysis of a reported phenomenon should not be biased by someone's desire to show himself as a "good Darwinist" or a "good materialist" or a "good Catholic" or a "good spiritualist," an analysis of a reported phenomenon should not be biased by some desire of someone to show himself as a half-skeptic.  The topic of spirit photography is one deserving some serious objective scholarship, not quickie forays by swift snobs eager to prove they are bona fide this or bona fide that. 

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 to be 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.  

In the text of the Harper's Magazine article, we read this:

"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 by 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 off 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, Wm. 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. H. 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 fraud, 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.  A French work giving some examples of Mumler's photos can be read in the 1890 book here.  Some other examples of Mumler's photos can be seen on this page of an 1894 German book. 

Below is an example of Mumler's work, with some background details given in the 1894 book here. 

"As a fair specimen of spirit photographs obtained through Mumler, I submit one (see opposite) got by the Hon. Moses A. Dow, who was editor and proprietor of the Waverley Magazine, Boston. The portrait was fully recognised by Mr. Dow as that of an amiable and accomplished young lady who had been his assistant editor. Before sitting for the portrait Mr. Dow had a stance with a lady medium, and received from her a message, which purported to be from his late assistant editor, instructing him when to go to Mumler's  for the picture, stating that she would appear with a wreath of lilies on her head, would stand by his side, would put her hand on his shoulder, and would bring him beautiful flowers. The photograph has lost some of its intensity ; but in the original negative the wreath of white lilies is very distinct, and the spirit is holding between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand an opening moss-rosebud, the exact counterpart of one which Mr. Dow placed between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand, while her body lay in the coffin just before the funeral."

Here is the photo as presented in the book:

An author (James Robinson)  states this:

"Over twenty years since, in New York, a photographer named Wm. H. Mumler succeeded in getting hundreds of pictures of the so-called dead, which were recognised by their friends as portraits ; the great body of people who went to him were total strangers, one of them, thickly veiled, being the wife of the murdered President Lincoln. On the plate was seen her husband and one of her children, who had passed on. I had the good fortune to come in contact with those who went to Mr. Mumler shortly after arriving in New York, and who got test pictures which were beyond cavil or suspicion....Mr. Hudson, of London, got many test pictures, and a whole crowd of eminent people have vouched for the reality of the likenesses of their deceased friends."

An example of quickie snob scorn on this topic was how the www.snopes.com site handed the question of whether the Mumler photograph of Mrs. Lincoln was authentic. This web site is a supposed "fact checker" site that delivers verdicts on claims in the press. The site has an article attempting to discredit the Mumler photo of Mrs. Lincoln, but provides no evidence to support its claim of a fraud.  The photo can be seen here, on a page of James Coates' book on this topic "Photographing the Invisible." 

The www.snopes.com article's attempt at discrediting consists of almost nothing other than a quote from someone making the untrue claim that Mumler's photos were "very obviously fakes." If Mumler's photos were fake, they were persuasive-looking fakes, and certainly not "very obviously fakes," given that no one understood how to make such photos at that time while a photographer was being watched by people looking for evidence of fraud.  The author article (Jordan Liles) provides no evidence that any of Mumler's photos were fakes, and also gives nothing other than hand-waving vague strained speculation about how photos of this type could have been faked at this time. The author shows no evidence of having seriously studied the topic of claims of spirit photography.  We have no mention of all the many people who came to Mumler and walked away with photos that seemed to include images of their deceased relatives, at a time long before the Internet when it was impossible for Mumler to have known what such relatives looked like. We end up with an article so poor-quality and biased that it casts serious doubt on the credibility of www.snopes.com as a fact checker site. 

An important point here is that there is no existing photo or drawing of Lincoln produced before Mumler's photo with an image of Lincoln that matches that of the Lincoln figure in Mumler's photograph of Lincoln's wife.  The person imagining fraud in this case is therefore in the most difficult position, forced to imagine scenarios that are too far-fetched. Can we imagine some very skillful and very fast-working portrait painter conspiring with Mumler to paint an original Lincoln portrait that somehow got added to the photo? Now you are in conspiracy theory territory. Mumler's report (never disputed by Mrs. Lincoln) was that Mrs. Lincoln arrived at Mumler's place heavily veiled, and using a false name, which would seem to prevent any time for such a conspiracy to unfold. 

Mumler's account of the taking of the famous photo is to be found on page 1 of the January 30, 1875 edition of the periodical Banner of Light, which you can read here. The photograph of the original page is missing the last letter of each sentence. But it is easy enough to follow Mumler's narrative. He says that a woman came in wearing a veil, and "the veil was so thick it was impossible to identify a single feature of her face." He says she removed the veil only just before the picture was taken, and that when asked her name she said "Mrs. Lindall." 

The serious scholar of this topic should look for relevant first-class observational reports: reports written by witnesses who reported something impressive-looking after visiting a photographer or taking the photos themselves, particularly reports published soon after the reported events.  The type of report that would be most convincing is one in which a person reports visiting a photographer, and then getting one or more "extras" in the photograph, who the visitor identifies with some relative that the photographer knew nothing about. There seem to be many cases of this type. 

The account below signed by a doctor and his secretary  appeared on page 292 in the July 4, 1873 edition of the publication Medium and Daybreak. The reference to "spirt that came" refers to unexpected figures appearing in photographs took of the visitor. 

"While in London I visited the photograph rooms of F. A. Hudson 177 Palmer Terrace, Holloway Road, being a perfect stranger to that gentleman. I was accompanied by my secretary, Mr. T. R. Poulterer. We sat for pictures. The first spirit that came was Mr. Poulterer's mother ; the second, unknown ; the third, apparently only clouds: but  an account of which will be given hereafter, as a prophecy has been made in regard to this picture ; the fourth was distinctly recognised by both Mr. Poulterer and myself as the spirit of my former partner, E L. Hamilton, M.D. So distinct was the picture, that we recognised it from the negative. We would recommend Mr. Hudson to those investigating the spiritual philosophy." 

 J. Wm. Van Namee MD

 T. R. Poulterer, Sec."

The report above is hard-to-explain through any hypothesis of fraud, as the photographer apparently did not know the two men. Rodger I. Anderson's Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules notes that Hudson "was never caught in any overt act of deception," although the authenticity of his photos was widely debated by those believing in other paranormal phenomena. A book on Hudson and his photos is the one here. 

William Howitt was a respected scholar, who was the author of a very long two-volume history of reports of the supernatural, which can be read here and here. In the October 1872 edition of The Spiritual Magazine, pages 477 to 478, we have an account by William Howitt of making an unannounced visit to photographer Frederick Hudson, who had reported getting anomalous figures in some of his photos. This is the same F. A. Hudson referred to in the account above. Howitt did not tell his name. Howitt claims to have got from this visit "two photographs, perfect and unmistakable, of sons of mine, who passed into the spirit-world years ago."  Two other people claimed the same identification after seeing the results. Howitt says that there was no existing image of one of the sons.  The topic of Hudson's photos is dealt with in the book here, which has some interesting examples. 

On the 43rd page of the October 1873 edition of The Spiritual Magazine (with a listed page number of 475), we have this account:

" 4, Worcester Lawn, Clifton, Bristol, 44 August 5th, 1873. 

Dear Sir,— As I promised, I write to let you know that the spirit-figure in my photograph has been recognised as a likeness of my mother, who died 44 years ago, when I was born, and as there was no picture of her of any kind, I was unable to trace any resemblance in the photograph. I sent the latter however to her brother, simply asking him to let me know if he recognised in the figure any resemblance to any of my relations who have died, and he has written to say that he recognises in it the likeness of my mother.  Yours faithfully, G . T h o m s o n . 

P .S.— I should perhaps add that I do not think my uncle knows anything about Spiritualism or spirit-photographs, as he resides in a remote part of Scotland; I infer this too from his remarking 'but I cannot understand how this has been done.' "

John Traill Taylor was a mainstream figure who was very long the editor of the British Journal of Photography. Taylor published a paper in the March 17, 1893 edition of the British Journal of Photography, page 107, a paper you can read here.  The paper is "required reading" for anyone seriously studying this topic. The paper starts out with remarks like I make at the beginning of this post:

"The presence of smoke maybe considered as implying the existence of flame. Spirit photography, so called, has of late been asserting its existence in such a manner and to such an extent as to warrant competent men making an investigation, conducted under stringent test conditions, into the circumstances under which such photographs are produced, and exposing the fraud should it prove to be such, instead of pooh-poohing it as insensate because we do not understand how it can he otherwise — a position that scarcely commends itself as intelligent or philosophical."

Eventually in the paper Taylor discusses how he went about testing a medium who some claimed to be associated with the production of spirit photographs. The "Mr. D." he refers to is David Duguid, and is identified as such in a book Taylor later wrote. Taylor says this:

"For several years I have experienced a strong desire to ascertain by personal investigation the amount of truth in the ever-recurring allegation that figures other than those visually present in the room appeared on a sensitive [photographic] plate. The difficulty was to get hold of a suitable person known as a sensitive or 'medium.' What a medium is, or how physically or mentally constituted to be different from other mortals, I am unable to say. He or she may not be a photographer, but must be present on each occasion of trial. Some may be mediums without their being aware of it. Like the chemical principle known as catalysis they merely act by their presence. Such a one is Mr. D. of Ghugovv, in whose presence psychic photographs have long been alleged to be obtained. He was lately in London on a visit, and a mutual friend got him to consent to extend his stay in order that I might try to get a psychic photograph under test conditions. To this he willingly agreed. My conditions were exceedingly simple, were courteously expressed to the host and entirely acquiesced in. They were, that I for the nonce would assume them all to be tricksters, and, to guard against fraud, should use my own camera and unopened packages of dry plate purchased from dealers of repute, and that I should be excused from allowing a plate to go out of my own hand till after development, unless I felt otherwise disposed; but that, as I was to treat them as under suspicion, so must they treat me, and that every act I performed must be in presence of two witnesses, nay, that I would set a watch upon my own camera in the guise of a duplicate one of the same focus — in other words, I would use a binocular stereoscopic camera and dictate all the conditions of operation. All this I was told was what they very strongly wished me to do, as they desired to know the truth and that only. There were present, during one or other of the evenings when the trials were made, representatives of various schools of thought, including a clergyman of the Church of England ; a practitioner of the healing art who is a fellow of two learned societies ; a gentleman who graduated in the Hall of Science in the days  of the late Charles Bradlaugh ; some two extremely hard-headed Glasgow merchants, gentlemen of commercial eminence and probity ; our host, his wife the medium, and myself. Dr. G. was the first sitter, and, for a reason known to myself, I used a monocular camera. I myself took the plate out of a packet just previously ripped up under the surveillance of my two detectives. I placed the slide in my pocket, and exposed it by magnesium ribbon which I held in my own hand, keeping one eye, as it were, on the sitter and the other on the camera. There was no background. I myself took the plate from the dark slide, and, under the eyes of the two detectives, placed it in the developing dish."

Immediately after the description of rigorous controlled conditions, Taylor then discusses how the developed photo contained a female figure, one that was not present when the photo was taken:

"Between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed, rather in a more pronounced form than that of the sitter. The lens was a portrait one of short focus, the figure being somewhat in front of the sitter was proportionately larger in dimensions. I submit this picture. It is, as you see a lady. I do not recognise her or any of the other figures I obtained as like any one I know, and from my point of view, that of a mere investigator and experimentalist, not caring whether the psychic subject were embodied or disembodied. Many experiments of like nature followed ; on some plates were abnormal appearances, on others none."

Taylor then reports getting a variety of "psychic extras" in the photos he took, mysterious forms that should not have been there:

"The psychic figures behaved badly. Some were in focus, others not so; some were lighted from the right, while the sitter was so from the left ; some were comely, as the dame I shall show on the screen, others not so ; some monopolised the major portion of the plate, quite obliterating the material sitters ; others were as if an atrociously badly vignetted portrait, or one cut oval out of a photograph by a can-opener, or equally badly clipped out, were held up behind the sitter. But here is the point : not one of these figures which came out so strongly in the negative was visible in any form or shape to me during the time of exposure in the camera, and I vouch in the strongest manner for the fact that no one whatever had an opportunity of tampering with any plate anterior to its being placed in the dark slide or immediately preceding development. Pictorially they are vile, but how came they there ?"

The paper led to a book that included the paper by Taylor, along with comments by those he presented the paper to at a meeting, comments about the paper in the press, and some essays by other authors ( the book "The Veil Lifted: Modern Developments of Spirit Photography. With Twelve Illustrations"). The book includes the paper quoted from above, and the photo of the female figure. The photo is shown below, from page 29 of the book. This is the exact photo referred to by Taylor above when he states this:  "Between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed, rather in a more pronounced form than that of the sitter."

We have here a photo that should be included on any list of the top ten most convincing ghost photos or spirit photos ever taken, and also deserves to be on any list of the top ten photos ever taken of the paranormal. The provenance of the photo is impeccable, and as evidence what we have in the photo above seems "good as gold." The photographer is a mainstream figure (John Traill Taylor, a long-time editor of the British Journal of Photography); and he has described how the photo was produced by himself under conditions which should have made fraud impossible. The lady figure in the photo was not present when the photo was taken, and was not recognized by anyone involved in the taking of the photo. 

Page 41 of a book gives the same photo, but in a sepia version in which the figure appears with slightly greater resolution. We can see the eyes of the ghostly woman clearly open, causing the figure to have a somewhat warmer appearance. Page 43 of the book has a photo seeming to show a ghostly figure of stunning female beauty. 

The striking photo below appears on page 120 of "Photographing the Invisible" by James Coates. The photo is of John Dewar, who recognized the figure on the right as being his deceased sister. 

In a footnote on pages 120 to 121 of the book, we are told this by Andrew Glendinning: 

"Mr. John Dewar, Jr., went to Mr. Boursnell’s, hoping to get a picture of his mother, but received instead a good portrait of his deceased sister Janie....I went twice with Mr. Dewar to Boursnell’s, Mr. Dewar taking his own plates with him. Mr. Boursncll invited Mr. Dewar to examine the camera and also invited us both into the dark room and requested Mr. Dewar to put the plates in the slides. After exposure of the plates in the camera, Mr. Boursnell asked Mr. Dewar to take the slides to the dark-room, to remove the plates and to develop them. I was with them in the darkroom during the process of development and fixing."

Again, we have a photo in which there appears a figure the photographer should have known nothing about, and also an examination of the photographic process that should have ruled out fraud. On page 264 of Photographing the Invisible by James Coates, PhD,  we have a photo that was taken in 1909 when only the woman was present. The figure on the photo was recognized by the woman and a friend as the face of the woman's deceased son. The woman says no photo was ever taken of the son while he was alive. The book  gives us quite a few similar photos. 

It is clear from the above that a serious "deep dive" into the topic of spirit photography reveals a very weighty line of evidence worthy of very serious consideration, not at all something that should be lightly dismissed by glib putdowns. The skeptic tries to explain away all the reports of spirit photographs with a simple idea of "there were trickster frauds, and they fooled people." Such an idea is incapable of explaining the reports. No credible sleight-of-hand can explain frequent nineteenth century reports of someone going to a photographer he has never met, and getting a photograph of himself which also included another image matching those of his dead relative, whose appearance was unknown to the photographer. Nor can any conceivable sleight-of-hand theory credibly explain the appearance of such images on photographic plates when the whole photographic process was carefully monitored by someone looking for fraud, someone bringing his own blank photographic plates (as was so often reported), someone who found nothing unusual occurring. 

Below is Plate 1 from the beginning of Helene C. Lambert's very interesting book "A General Survey of Psychical Phenomena," which you can read here. We have some text at the bottom of the photo that seems to describe a photographic situation in which fraud was not possible, with the medium never touching the photographic plates. The anomalous figure was identified as the late Letty Hyde, by her relatives. 

There is one explanation that could explain the reports without resorting to the paranormal: a conspiracy theory explanation. A skeptic could claim that the reports of experiences with spirit photography were mainly lies, and that there was some big conspiracy involving the photographers and the people who came to get the photographs, a conspiracy to spread false tales causing people to believe that paranormal "extras" were appearing in photographs. The problem with advancing such a story is that no one ever confessed to being involved in such a big conspiracy. Moreover, being someone who nowadays scorns certain type of people as being "conspiracy theorists," the skeptic is putting himself in a very bad spot if he resorts to becoming a conspiracy theorist himself. 

Of some relevance to this topic is the fact that in our century there have gradually been published very many photos seemingly inexplicable under materialist theories, with some dramatic examples you can view in the photos here, the 400+ photos here, the 800+ photos here, the thousands of photos here and the retrospective post here. The continued occurrence of such photographic anomalies should make us all the more inclined to seriously study inexplicable-seeming photos appearing many decades ago. 

In 2019 I published a video of my camera's viewfinder as I was photographing mysterious "orb faces" appearing as I photographed drops of clean, pure water falling against a black background.  The video is shown below. In the video, you can clearly see the face-like details appear many times in the camera's viewfinder as I was photographing nothing but ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background. Similar videos of my camera's viewfinder during photography of the inexplicable can be seen in my posts here. 

In the video below, you can watch my camera viewfinder as I photographed some photos like the ones above.

You can use this link if you prefer to watch the video in a separate tab.

When dealing with mysterious photos such as these we should remember that we do not have a simple choice between "something purely natural" and "a photo of a spirit or spirits." There's a third possibility of "something beyond material explanation that is a manifestation of some spirit power." 

Spirit photography was not a mere phenomenon of the 19th century. Seemingly inexplicable photos were often produced in the 20th and 21st centuries. The link below takes you to a series of photos produced by the long investigation of the paranormal undertaken by the Hamilton family. It will work much better if you use such a link on a PC, where you can see a thumbnail of each image. 

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3Ahamilton_family

An example is the 1932 photo here, showing very sharp images of three faces within a strange blob described as "teleplasm":

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A1524108

The photo has this description: "A photograph of a teleplasmic mass that contained the faces of Lillian Hamilton's aunt Christine and her brothers that appeared during a seance at the home of the British chemist, Mr. Myers, in August 1932."

The Hamilton family that did these investigations includes the physician T. Glen Hamilton MD, who devoted years of serious study to documenting the paranormal. The book "Intention and Survival" by T. Glen Hamilton MD is a book that documents seances observed by Hamilton and quite a few other observers. You can read the book online here. Some of the images are quite ugly. But among the images are some images of stunning beauty. 

On November 12, 1931 such images were photographed. Under controlled conditions in which no such face should have appeared, witnesses reportedly saw (and photographs reportedly showed) a mysterious floating face, the one shown below. Below we see that face, which appears on  page 223 of the book.  The book identifies it as an example of "teleplasm," a term Hamilton used (a term less well-known than the similar term ectoplasm). In the book the description of the experimental conditions is very exact. 

Postscript: In the 1923 New York Times article you can read here, we head of an apparently successful test of spirit photography in the presence of a "mediumistic photographer." The headline is "Psychic Photograph Puzzles Scientist for Explanation." Underneath that we have a header of "Points to Unknown Force," followed by a header of "Plates Carefully Guarded to Prevent Any Fraud." 

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.