Spookiest Years, Part 11: The Year 1873

In previous posts in this intermittently appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) I had looked at some very spooky events reported between 1848 and 1872. In this installment I will look at accounts of spooky events occurring during the year 1873.

In a letter to The Times of London in January of 1873,  quoted on pages 67 to 71 of the February 1873 magazine here, Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution) stated the following about his investigation of paranormal phenomena:

"I began the investigation about eight years ago, and I esteem it a fortunate thing that at that time the more marvellous phenomena were far less common and less accessible than they are now, because I was led to experiment largely at my own house, and among friends whom I could trust, and was able to establish to my own satisfaction, by means of a great variety of tests, the occurrence of sounds and movements not traceable to any known or conceivable physical cause....Although I have heard a great many accusations of imposture, I have never detected it myself; and, although a large proportion of the more extraordinary phenomena are such, that, if impostures, they could only be performed by means of ingenious apparatus or machinery— none has ever been discovered. I consider it no exaggeration to say, that the main facts are now as well established and as easily verifiable as any of the more exceptionable phenomena of nature which are not yet reduced to law. They have a most important bearing on the interpretation of history, which is full of narratives of similar facts, and on the nature of life and intellect, on which physical science throws a very feeble and uncertain light; and it is my firm and deliberate belief that every branch of philosophy must suffer till they are honestly and seriously investigated, and dealt with as constituting an essential portion of the phenomena of human nature."

Around this time there were many claims of people having photos done in which unexplained figures seemed to appear, who the people being photographed said they recognized as some deceased person they had known.  Such cases were often cited as examples of "spirit photography." The average person should ignore all such reports unless they are first-hand testimony. 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:

"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 (one I have not read) is the one here. 

In the previous post in this series ("Spookiest Years: The Year 1872") I had quoted quite a few newspaper articles from 1872 that had documented the evolution of the phenomena at seances of Florence Cook. The phenomenon reported in 1872 would typically consist of something like this: (1) Florence Cook being tied up in a small wooden cabinet with a circular hole at its front, often with the knots being sealed; (2) the appearance of phantom faces at the cabinet hole, often a "Katie King" face looking different in several aspects from that of Florence; (3) the later opening of the cabinet door to reveal Florence in an entranced state, with the knots still undisturbed and the seals undisturbed.  The reports seemed to show a progression of the phenomenon, with witnesses reporting things such as hands of the mysterious Katie King phantom protruding from the cabinet hole. 

In the March 1, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, page 119, we have an account by G. R. Tapp describing a seance of Florence Cook. Tapp reports the figure of Katie King coming out of the cabinet, and walking around and talking. He says, "The resemblance of her features to those of Miss Cook (which has so often formed the subject of discussion and comment) was not now perceptible."  This is one of the earliest reports of a full-body appearance of the Katie King phantom, one that would be repeated many times in the coming months by many other witnesses. A similar account appeared in the March 15, 1873 edition of the same publication, by a B. W. Pycock describing on page 134 in great detail a seance of March 3, 1873. On page 133 of the same edition we have a similar account by J. C. Luxmore describing the same seance of March 3, 1873. He states this:

"When Katie appeared in full length outside the cabinet, her feet and legs were bare, whereas, of course, Miss Cook had on boots and stockings. Again, that Katie was clothed in a long and rather full white robe, such as Miss Cook could not possibly have concealed about her person, especially as her figure happens to be very small. I carefully examined every portion of the cabinet, and nothing of the sort was in it."

In the same edition we have seven named witnesses (all giving their names and addresses) stating that they saw a full-sized phantom of Katie King during a seance with Florence Cook in which she was tied up in a small cabinet, with the knots sealed:

"This evening, March 12th, 1873, we, the undersigned, were present at a seance at Mr. Cook’s. In the first part of the sitting, the full form calling herself Katie came out of the cabinet, draped in white, while Miss Cook’s hands were securely bound together with tape and sealed....At the close of each sitting the tapes and seals on Miss Cook’s hands were intact, and were then cut off and taken away by two of the visitors." 

We have here testimony meeting very high standards of evidence. The account has been published on March 15, 1873, and describes events witnessed only three days earlier, on March 12. The account is dated on the same day the witnesses saw the events, meaning the report is of something just observed. In addition, there are seven named witnesses. The testimony typically given in today's scientific papers (typically passive voice accounts of observations made by one or more unspecified witnesses claiming to have seen something at an unspecified date) usually are inferior from the standpoint of meeting highest standards of witness testimony.  

In the April 1, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, on page 152, we have this account:

"Spirit Forms—Last Sunday week, at a seance at Mr. Henry Cook's, at Hackney, Mrs. Bassett and Miss Cook were the mediums, and they sat in the cabinet for spirit forms. The observers present were Dr. J. E. Purdon, Sandown, Isle of Wight; Mr. Bassett, Thornham-Grove, Stratford; Mr. G. II. Tapp, Queen Margaret’s-grove, Mildmay-Park ; and Mr. and Mrs. Blyton, 74, Navarino-road, Dalston. Miss Cook's spirit guide 'Katie,' came out of the cabinet at full length, robed in white, in a good light. On giving her subdued light she was able to walk round the room, and to touch each sitter in turn. Mrs. Bassett told the company that Miss Cook had been entranced all the time, with her head lying on her (Mrs. Bassett’s) lap; that Katie appeared suddenly, and frequently, entered and left the cabinet; finally, she came in again, stood by Miss Cook, and slowly faded away." 

In the May 15, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, page 200,  we have a long account of attempts to photograph the mysterious phantom Katie King. We have an assertion signed by five witnesses (Amelia Corner, Caroline Corner, J. C. Luxmore, G. R. Tapp and William H. Harrison) stating on May 7, 1873 that what they describe as "the spirit 'Katie King' " was successfully photographed, and they she walked around and talked at length. We are given an artwork and told that this is a copy of one of the photos taken. The artwork is below (the rather poor visual quality apparently being due to a photo being taken of the old newspaper):

A matching artwork (also identified as a copy of a photograph) appears at the front of Epes Sargent's 1876 book The Proof Palpable of Immortality, which has many pages dealing with the Florence Cook seances discussed above, and similar sessions of the next year.  The artwork is below:

 

The portrait above from the May 15, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist (along with a smaller woodcut in the same edition) seem to be the first images of Katie King to appear in print.  In the June 1, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, page 217, we are told this:

"Last Wednesday evening, at a seance at Mr. Henry Cook’s, Haekney, four more positive photographs on glass were taken by the magnesium light, of the materialised spirit form of Katie King. One of the Daily Telegraph correspondents, the author of the Unorthodox London letters, bound the hands of Miss Cook (the medium) together with tape, sealed the knot between the wrists with wax, stamped by his signet ring, then he fastened her to the floor inside the cabinet with thc long end of the tape from the wrists, and brought the same end of the tape out of the cabinet, and tied it to a chair. The tapes and seals were perfect at the close of the seance.  The witnesses were also Dr. J. M. Gully, of Malvern ; Miss Katherine Poyntz (whose vocal abilities are so well known) ; the two Misses Withall, of Brixton ; Mr. II. Withall, Mr. G. 11, Tapp, and Mr. Harrison."

In the November 1, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, page 381, we read more about recent seances with Florence Cook, involving the appearance of the mysterious phantom Katie King. 

"At a seance held October 7th, Mr. C. Blackburn and Miss Blackburn of Manchester, also Dr. Gully, were present. Miss Blackburn and another lady thoroughly searched Miss Cook (who requested that they should do so) in a bedroom, after which they accompanied her to the cabinet which had been thoroughly searched just previously. Her hands were then secured with tape, by which also she was fastened to the floor in the cabinet. All the knots were sealed, with signet rings. The spirit came out of the cabinet with bare feet, robed from head to foot in white, as usual, in a good light. She talked for about an hour as usual, entering and leaving the cabinet occasionally; once she walked about a yard from the cabinet, towards the centre of the room."

We then read this, indicating that very many named witnesses saw effects like those described above:

"Last Tuesday there was a seance at Mr. Luxmoore's house, 16, Gloucester-square, Hyde-park. Among the guests were Mr. and Mrs. Mankiewiez, Pembridge-gardens, Bayswater ; Mr. and Mrs. Cook, of Hackney ; Mr. H. M. Dunphy, Barrister-at-law, Essex-court, Temple ; M. Alexandre Aksakof, of St. Petersburgh ; Mrs. Whyte, 33, Richmond-road, Bayswater ; Mrs. Corner, Miss Corner, and Mr. T. Corner, of Connaught-square, Haekney ; Mr. Stanhope Templeman Speer, M.D., of Alexandra-road, St. John's-wood ; Mr. G. R. Tapp, 18, Queen Margaret's-grove, Mildmay-park ; Mr. J. M. Gully, M.D., Streatham ; and Mr. W. H. Harrison, Hernehill. The darkened back drawing-room was used as a cabinet, a curtain being suspended between the two rooms. Miss Cook was bound and sealed as usual, a seal belonging to Dr. Speer being used ; the medium was fastened to the floor, with sealed tape, just behind the curtain. The seance proceeded as usual, Katie in one instance turning round to show her back to the company...The tapes and seals were intact at the close of each seance, and the tapes were stretched before use. "

In the November 14, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, page 396, William Oxley (in a statement dated November 4, 1873) describes a similar seance ("at the house of Mr. Cook") involving Florence Cook on October 31, 1873. We read this:

"Miss Cook, the medium, was securely fastened by tapes going round each wrist, and knots sealed with my signet; the tape round the waist ' ditto,' and brought through a strong staple in the floor of the cabinet, thence conveyed across a side table, so that any movement by the medium would have been instantly detected. A lamp was burning the whole evening, with the exception of once, when it was accidentally turned out by Mr. Tapp. The light was sufficient for all present to see each other and every thing that was in the room. That Miss Cook and Katie King are not the same person was evident to my mind from the following facts :—Katie appeared full three or four inches taller than Miss Cook ; the arms, hands, and feet, which were all bare, were also longer and stouter in proportion. Katie, I particularly noticed, had hair of a lightish brown tint, and which projected beyond the encircling head-dress quite straight, and half-way down the back, while Miss Cook's hair is very dark and arranged in long profuse curls and ringlets. As I saw Katie two minutes before Miss Cook came out of the trance state, and was liberated by cutting the tapes, the seals on which were intact, I am sure any lady will bear me out in the assertion that it would not be possible in so short a period to change the hair from straight to ringlets or long curls.  Katie came out of the cabinet into the midst of the circle at least six or seven times, and conversed with most of those who were present. On one occasion she went to the side-table, and taking up some paper in the presence of all, wrote two messages, one of which she presented to me, and which is now in my  possession; this was done in a good light and witnessed by all who were present.

On one occasion, while Katie was in the centre of the room, we heard a slight moan inside the cabinet, when immediately she returned, saying it was necessary to keep her medium asleep. Mr. Luxmoore put his hands and arms inside the cabinet and adjusted the medium, who had slightly fallen on one side of her chair ; this done I was summoned by Katie to leave my seat and go and examine the tapes. I did so, and felt the tapes inside the cabinet; these were all tight. I was astonished during this episode to find that Katie had vanished, for we could see inside the cabinet, while Mr. Luxmoore was adjusting the medium, but before I had time to resume my seat, Katie asked me if I had examined the tapes, and if I was satisfied. Of course my reply was in the affirmative." 

In the December 1873 edition of The Spiritual Magazine  on page 555 we have this account of a seance at the house of  J. C. Luxmoore, Esq., 16, Gloucester Square, Hyde Park, on November 18th, 1873:

"The fourteen ladies and gentleman who formed a horseshoe circle in front of the cabinet could see each other the whole evening. A low chair was placed in the cabinet, upon which Miss Cook, the medium, was seated, and Mr. Luxmoore invited Mr. B., of Manchester, and myself to witness the tying and securing of Miss Cook. Her hands were first tied together with a piece of tape, the ends of which were sewn and sealed with wax, and then the tape was passed round her  waist and tightly knotted and sewn and sealed again. The tape was then passed through a staple in the floor, leaving a slack of about a foot, and there knotted again, which restrained Miss Cook from standing up to her full height, and then the same piece of tape was brought into the room m which we were seated, nearly up to our feet, where it remained undisturbed to the last. In this way the most satisfactory proof was given that whoever the figure of Katey may be, it was not Miss Cook, who lay during the whole stance, as we had proved to us by the undisturbed line of tape, and by Mrs. Honywood being invited to enter the cabinet by the spirit the instant she, Katey disappeared; which Mrs. Honywood did, and there she saw Miss Florence Cook asleep, leaning over nearly to the floor,— the ties on her hands and waist sealed as they had been left at the commencement of the sitting, from which, as soon as she awoke, she was relieved by cutting them. Here we all saw within an instant or two, this young girl recovering from her trance, dressed in black, wearing stockings and spring boots, having just lost sight of Katey, the spirit, who was clothed in pure white garments, and whose feet were naked."

In accounts such as these we have quite a few characteristics of very good evidence. The accounts are extremely explicit, giving all relevant details. The accounts are firsthand accounts by named witnesses (giving their addresses also) in dated statements mentioning when the event was witnessed. In most cases we can see that the account was written on the same day as the witnessed events or only a few days after the witnessed events, and that the account was published in a newspaper or magazine within a few days after the account was written. Accounts such as these have much higher value as evidence than accounts of people recalling something they saw months or years ago.  The smaller the time interval between an account and when the event account occurred, the more reliable the evidence is.  People are often sentenced to long jail terms on the basis of much weaker evidence, such as someone recalling in a court something he saw months ago or years ago. Another strong aspect of good evidence here is that quite a few different witnesses on different dates and in different homes report seeing the same thing: (1) Florence Cook being tied up in a "cabinet" (usually a small wooden cabinet, but sometimes a sealed-off area of a  room), with seals placed on the knots; (2) the appearance of a mysterious Katie King phantom who comes out of the cabinet, having an appearance different from Florence; (3) the disappearance of this Katie King followed by an opening of the cabinet, with Florence still tied up in the sealed knots.  These three things are reported occurring in not just one home, but different homes. 

In the December 12, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist, we have a description of what happened at a December 9, 1873 seance involving Florence Cook.  We read this:

"This evening at Miss Cook’s seance, during the appearance of what purported to be the spirit ' Katie,' a man, named Volckman, rose up, grasped her round the waist with both arms, and tried to throw her down with his feet. Mr. Tapp and Mr. Comer seized the man who thus broke the conditions which we were all admitted on the understanding we would keep. 'Katie' instantly extricated herself from his clutches, and aided by Mr. Luxmoore, was in a moment back in the cabinet. After a delay of about five minutes, during which Katie gave earnest instructions to the sitters, the cabinet was opened and Miss Cook found in black dress, and boots, with the tape tightly round her waist as at the beginning of the seance, the knot sealed as at first with the signet-ring of the Earl of Caithness, and sewn underneath the seal with thread, as it had been sewn before the seance by Mr. Luxmoore."

In the next edition (December 26, 1873) William Volckman gives his account of the incident:

"In reply I have to state, that having for forty minutes carefully observed and scrutinised the face, features, gestures, size, style, and peculiarities of utterance of the so-called spirit, the conviction irresistibly forced itself upon me that no ghost, but the medium, Miss Florence Cook, herself, was before the circle. I perceived also an occasional tip-toeing by the young lady as if to alter her stature, and was much struck by the utter puerility of her remarks throughout the seance. I am confirmed in my conviction, as above stated, by the facts that the struggling ghost had to be forcibly extricated from my grasp, and afterwards to be 'aided' into her cabinet by a Justice of the Peace."

Although sometimes quoted by the very rare skeptics who discuss the case of Florence Cook, the incident provides nothing to discredit the Katie King phenomenon, other than one man's negative impression. If you read the long 1873 accounts of the Katie King appearances, partially quoted above and fully readable in many of the 1873 editions of The Spiritualist, you will not hear claims of Katie King being some immaterial translucent ghost who could not be grasped, but instead accounts of a mysteriously appearing solid form. For example, in the June 1, 1873 quote above, Katie King is referred to as a "materialized spirit form" not some immaterial ghost. In reports of later tests by a doctor and Sir William Crookes, we are told the same mysteriously appearing "Katie King" would have her pulse measured and her skin temperature felt. So some possible brief clutching of this Katie King by a skeptic does nothing to discredit the phenomenon. In the December 26, 1873 edition of The Spiritualist we are told by a witness that Volkman's clutching attempt was a matter of no more than about six seconds. Often the witnesses would report Katie King looking much like Florence Cook, and often the witnesses would report substantial differences in appearance. 

On page 534 of the December 1873 edition of The Spiritual Magazine we have this account of mysterious appearances during a seance occurring in October 1873. 

"Seance at 1, Morland Villas, Highbury Hill Park, October 23. Present: Professor Aksakoff, Mr. Serjeant Cox, Mr. Volkman, Mr. and Miss Shorter, Miss Ingram, Miss Houghton, Mrs. Fisher, and Mr. and Mrs. Guppy. We sat for about half-an-hour, the door locked, all hands joined, and light extinguished; during which several objects were thrown upon the table. On lighting the gas, these were found to consist of a stone, a knitting needle, a potato, a turnip, a carrot, a Spanish onion, thirteen dahlias, six apples, three pears, four walnuts, two almonds, twelve mussel-plums, a lemon, three gold fishes, a water-mussel, a lobster, two eels, and a knife and fork. The dahlias were wet with the rain which had just fallen ; the fishes were all alive; the gold fishes and the mussel were brought from an aquarium in an adjoining room ; the rest of the things were not in the house or grounds. A stone had been asked for by Miss Houghton, and the one brought was wet and soiled, as if picked up from the street. One of the eels was placed around the neck of Mrs. Guppy, and the other was drawn over the face of Mrs. Fisher, and the screaming which followed led to the gas being lit, and brought the seance to an end. Mr. Volkman had asked for a vegetable marrow, and after the seance, was over, and we had risen from our chairs, a large marrow fell at our feet in view of all present, and in full gaslight. Just before the seance began, at the suggestion of Mrs. Guppy, the room was carefully searched, so that it can be certified, from thorough examination of the room and its contents, that these things were not then in it."

The account has no named author, which subtracts a little from its value as evidence. The same edition lists a similar occurrence at a seance of October 28, 1873. On page 431 of the September 1873 edition of The Spiritual Magazine we have a similar account of dramatic mysterious appearances inside a seance room with locked window and doors, occurring on August 14, 1873, with the author (Margaret Fisher) reporting the appearance of " six cups and six saucers, six tea spoons, two knives, six tea plates, a jug of milk, loaf of bread uncut, basin with sugar, plate of butter garnished with parsley, a large twelve cup teapot with tea in it ready for infusion, two beautiful Madeira cakes, and a large dish containing several pounds weight of beautiful English hothouse grapes."   On page 453 of the October 1873 edition of the The Spiritual Magazine, we have an account by Margaret Fisher of a recent 1873 seance. The report claims that "after seeing to the perfect security of doors and windows, we sat down to the table, extinguished the lights, and...on the large table we found seven pounds weight of plums, and six pounds’ weight of fine grapes, and twelve pounds of pears, most tastefully garnished with leaves and flowers, and a dessert plate placed before each of our party." Margaret follows with a mention of the mysterious appearance of a horse, but the description is too vague to be worth quoting. 

In an 1873 publication we have this interesting claim by Benjamin Coleman:

"It will be recollected by those who have read my American Notes, that Miss Laura Edmonds, daughter of Judge Edmonds, told me that her spirit in natural form had more than once appeared to friends at a distance; and Miss Mapes, daughter of Professor Mapes, assured me that her friend, Miss Edmonds, had appeared to her, and delivered messages, though bodily they were living twenty miles apart."

When "Spirit Writings" Show an Impressive Prowess (Part 2)

 In Part 1 of this two-part series, I examined some cases of claimed "spirit writings" which seemed to show great skill beyond any we would expect from those that put the words down on paper.  Perhaps the most astonishing case of possible "spirit writings" is the case of Patience Worth. In 1913 two women (Pearl Curran and Emily Grant Hutchings) sat at an Ouija board. The Ouija board soon spelt out messages claiming to be from someone named Patience Worth, such as this message:

"Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name."

There eventually followed over the years a huge quantity of very high quality writings that seemed to have arisen by paranormal means, including many poems and even novels such as the roughly 380-page novel Hope Trueblood and the roughly 600-page novel The Sorry Tale.  They would only come when Pearl Curran was around. According to a book on the topic, Pearl was someone who "has a taste for literature, but is not a writer, and has never attempted to write anything more ambitious than a personal letter." 

Some of the greatest poems of Patience Worth are to be found in the collection Light from Beyond. Here is an example, a very good free verse poem entitled "Ever the Pupil":

"Teach me. Teach me! 

Let me never become so old

That my ears are not pits.

Teach me. Teach me!

Let every man become my teacher. 

Let every sorrow speak deeply. 

Let every joy inscribe me.

Teach me. Teach me!

For if I stop listening,

I shall stop forever!

Yea, the writing of the ages 

Speaks Eternity as ever 

Listening, ever waiting.

Teach me. Teach me!

Let me ne’er forget that I am a child; 

That tomorrow is a secret,

A joyful secret, not yet imparted; 

That Yesterday was a plaything 

Which I loved, but left

Upon a pathway within a shadow.

Teach me. Teach me— 

That I am a little child! 

Let me be forever learning,

Ne’er forever yearning!"

Another very good poem in the collection is the poem The Typhoon, which takes on a deeper inspirational significance when you consider that the Mariner mentioned in the poem symbolizes not just a sea captain, but anyone of us facing some difficulty which may seem frightening but we are capable of successfully handling.

"Why need ye fear, O Mariner?

Why need ye fear?

The winds sing no new song, and the waves

Have spoken their words since time—

With them thou art familiar.

Why need ye fear, O Mariner?

The craft is thine, and each cunning trick

Of steering lies within thy brawn.

The wheel turns slow, eh, Mariner?

And the waters heavy swell.

Yon, faint coming, like a veiled lady

Rising from the sea—the storm!

Why need ye fear? 

Baring thy breast to the gale,

Let the masts bend low and thy prow ride free!

What needst thou fear, O Mariner? -

Is the water black and yellow-lashed,

In venom tipped the waves; and the lightnings,

Like talons, grasp the waves and wring them dry, 

And cast them back unto the sea!

What needst thou fear, O Mariner?

What needst thou fear?

The winds wail like shrieking mermaids

That disport some wanton land.

What needst thou fear, O Mariner,

Though they laxy their beauty o’er

- Thy very keel, and beckoning, tempt thy smile! 

What needst thou fear, O Mariner?

For thou canst hear the flapping of the gulls

— And port is near!"

The last two lines sound a hopeful note, suggesting the Mariner facing a storm (who represents any one of us in a difficulty) will soon find some deliverance from his danger.  

The poems of Patience Worth are overflowing with a rapturous love of nature and its wonders. Her poem "The Hastening Earth" is an example of her mastery when treating themes of nature and its wonders. Note the great coherence of the poem, in which every group of lines echoes the same theme of nature in motion: 

"What is this urge, this hastening,

This lashing something which besets all creation?

I watch the moving clouds making their way

In haste across the summer sky,

Making away, away! To where, where?

I beheld a thrush burst forth from the hedgerow,

Carrolling, carrolling, letting free its song,

Making away, surely, surely. To where, where?

I saw the moon coming up over the somber eve,

Hastening, hastening through the fleecy clouds,

Urging them to make a free path for her tread;

Unto where, where?

I saw the sun press his golden lips

Upon the wood's flanks, and they

Flushed scarlet at his wooing.

But he, hastened up, up, up!

Unto the zenith but for one precious moment,

Then hastened downward—unto where, where?

And the summer! I saw her bind

Poppies within her golden locks,

And veil her blue eyes with the lace of cloudlets.

I saw her laugh upon the fields,

But for a little season, and, leaving,

The fields were haunted things, while she

Hastened, hastened on—to where, where?

Oh, the Spring was fretful, yea, weeping;

But the moon, and the stars, and the sun,

Wooing her, caused her to smile

But for that rare hour, then wane,

Leaving her gentle footfall but in the echoes,

As she hastened on—to where, where?

Oh, I am consumed with the urge!

What is this thing which beckons then?

I, too, feel that mystic touch upon me,

And I gird the loins of my spirit,

And make me ready for this journey—

Unto where, where?"

The case of the writings of Chico Xavier are another case of alleged spirit writings of impressive prowess. Francisco Cândido ("Chico") Xavier was born in 1910 in Brazil. From his teens Xavier claimed to be writing down speech that was dictated to him by spirits. By 1932 he had accumulated enough material to make a book, and his book of poetry "Parnassus from Beyond the Tomb" became a best seller. Xavier went on to produce more than 400 books. This was astonishing partly because his formal education seemed to have ended at the age of 13. We read this in the Psi Encyclopedia article on Chico Xavier:

"Much of his writing was done at public sessions, several of which were filmed showing him at work, his left hand covering his eyes and his right hand filling sheet after sheet of paper at extraordinary speed. More writing was done during Chico’s lunch break when he was working at his day job. Thus there was clearly no time for him to do any research, nor was there any local library where he could have done it. One of his early novels, set in Rome in the first century, contained such an abundance of details about Rome and its empire that a guide to the historical and geographical references in it ran to 157 pages and contained more than 450 entries. No plausible explanation of how Chico could have acquired such information by conventional methods has yet been given.

Also unexplained was the steady stream of personal messages given to those attending his public meetings, many of whom came in the hope of receiving news from their deceased loved ones. Again and again he would give precise details of their death, usually a premature one, sometimes not only giving the names of members of their family but signing off with nicknames – one young man named Milton ended his message as he used to do when alive with ‘1000 Ton’, the Portuguese word for one thousand being mil. A team of Spiritists from São Paulo managed to track down 45 recipients of such messages, and found that not only was every single statement attributed to the deceased communicators agreed to be accurate, but that much of the information they provided had never been made."

Chico reportedly gave away all of his royalties to charity. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, with a petition signed by two million Brazilians sent to the prize committee. The nomination documents described how over 100,000 had benefited from the donated royalties coming from Chico's books. Chico's funeral got more than 100,000 attendees or attempted attendees. 

You can see some examples of Chico's work in the book "Poetry From Beyond the Grave," which can be read for free online using the link here. Below is an excerpt from one of the poems:

"Brethren, here I am again at your side!

 I come from lucid, splendid spheres,

I have crossed gloomy roads

And starry, wondrous fissures,

Wielding the psalms of hope.

I could overcome abysses of gold and roses,

Fissures of dream and dark chasms,

Planets like vessels without pilots

On the oceans of Endless ether.

I have gazed the haunting Milky Ways,

Visions of eternal suns confused

Among fiery, distant stars;

I have seen prodigious stars firing

Harmonies of love and clarity,

And humanities among humanities

Populating the splendorous Universe...

I have rested on islands of repose,

In beautiful distant archipelagos,

Inhabited, enchanted palaces,

In retreats of calm and peaceful love,

Where the soil is gold and snow,

Where the darkness and the night are only

Memories of obscure worlds!

Where the flowers of undying affection

Do not wither as on Earth.

There, on these lucid, holy orbs,

Love, and only love, nurtures and gives life...

Death corroborates our faith,

Our deepest hopes,

Braking the veil that covers from our sight 

The eternal landscape of the Universe,

And death points to us the sky, the immensity,

Where the happy soul grows grander, 

Leading other souls in mazes

To the light, to life and love!"

Later in the book is a good poem entitled "Death":

"Silent maiden of sorrow,

Death has opened for me radiant cathedrals

Where hover the vaporous shapes

Of the forgotten land of Beauty.

In a deluge of lilacs and roses,

Sons of light, of another Nature,

That shaped in space the subtlety

Of the incense of luminous ships!

Monk of merciful look, calm and distant,

Brings to Earth the shy humming

Of the mansion of wondering stars...

Sister of peace and serenity,

That opened my eyes to immortality,

To the hope of all my days!"

A Misleading and Very Lame FAQ Page of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

My post here discusses very shady shenanigans that have gone on for many decades at  natural history museums, funny business involving misleading fossil displays. Recently the Washington Post published an article on some shady business going on at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. We read about some weird collection of brains and human bones held by the museum:

"Most of the brains were removed upon death from Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. They are part of a collection of at least 30,700 human bones and other body parts still held by the Natural History Museum, the most-visited museum within the Smithsonian. The collection, one of the largest in the world, includes mummies, skulls, teeth and other body parts, representing an unknown number of people. The remains are the unreconciled legacy of a grisly practice in which bodies and organs were taken from graveyards, battlefields, morgues and hospitals in more than 80 countries. The decades-long effort was financed and encouraged by the taxpayer-subsidized institution. The collection, which was mostly amassed by the early 1940s, has long been hidden from view....The vast majority of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves."

It seems that quite a few people have been asking the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to return some of these bones and brains that were improperly taken. We read that "The Natural History Museum said that in the last three decades it has returned 4,068 sets of human remains." A secretary of the Smithsonian (in charge of the museum) confesses, "these brains were really people of color to demonstrate the superiority of White brains, so I understand that is just really unconscionable." Apparently it's been a dirty little secret of the National Museum of Natural History. We read, "Though top Smithsonian and Natural History Museum officials have long known about the tens of thousands of body parts held by the institution, the full scope of the brain collection has never been publicly disclosed."

Part of the disreputable doings of the Smithsonian Institution are the kind of misleading articles we often read at its site www.smithsonianmag.com. A recent example is an article with the misleading clickbait title "How NASA Captured Asteroid Dust to Find the Origins of Life." Many readers will get from that title the impression some capture of asteroid dust has found the origins of life. Nothing of the sort has happened. Nothing of any value in illuminating the origin of life has come thus far from NASA's retrieval of some asteroid dust. And no one at NASA thought that the origin of life could be solved by retrieving some asteroid dust. It is universally agreed that asteroids are sterile objects incapable of supporting life. So the subtitle of the story ("The sample of the space rock Bennu that OSIRIS-REx collected could unlock an ancient existential mystery") is untrue.

The article tells us that the dust returned from OSIRIS-REx is "older than any substance on Earth," which is not true. Pieces of asteroids routinely fall to Earth as meteorites. Recovered meteorites are just as old as the OSIRIS-REx sample. We have nonsensical claims in the article, such as the claim that "we have to understand the composition of Bennu in order to understand how life could have started on this planet." No, understanding the composition of a distant sterile asteroid will not do anything to explain how life could have started on Earth. And scientists have already known the composition of asteroids for a long time, because pieces of asteroids often fall to Earth in the form of meteorites; and the composition of such meteorites has been thoroughly analyzed. The article confesses this  (with a confession contradicting some of its other claims) by saying this:

"We have samples from asteroids: They’re meteorites. They’ve been landing on Earth since there was Earth..." 

In the article a scientist tells us that "on Earth—this is so weird—all of the organic materials used in living processes are left-handed." This is the mystery of homochirality, discussed here. When created in labs, molecules such as amino acids form equally in left-handed and right-handed amounts. But that's not what we see in life. Instead we see something rather like a million coin tosses, all landing heads rather than tails.  Besides the accidentally unachievable very high levels of information-rich organization in even the simplest living things, homochirality is one of the major reasons for thinking that life cannot originate from non-life by any unguided process. In the Smithsonian article a scientist makes the groundless claim below:

" But asteroids will be able to help us understand these things, and we’ll be able to confirm that, yep, all of these right-handed substances are right-handed on the asteroids, too. Or they’re left-handed on the asteroids."

No, getting a soil sample from an asteroid will do nothing to solve the mystery of why there is homochirality in living things.  Amino acids are incredibly rare in asteroids, having abundances of only about 1 part in a billion. The amino acids already detected in a Japanese soil sample from an asteroid (and from meteorites that came from asteroids) were left-handed and right-handed in equal amounts.  That finding does not make homochirality understandable, but leaves it all the more accidentally unexplainable. 

Previously at the Smithsonian magazine web site, there was an end-of-year-recap article with the title "Ten New Things We Learned About Human Origins in 2020."  In huge boldface letters we see a section heading entitled "Fossils Show Ancient Primates Also Undertook Major Journeys." We are then told the extremely absurd claim that monkeys rafted across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, no fossils told any such tale. It was merely a case that some New World monkey fossils millions of years old were found similar to equally old monkey fossils from Africa.  Rather than realize that this is an indication that their ideas of the common ancestry of all species are wrong or in need of repair, evolutionary biologists have asked us to believe in the preposterous fable that monkeys from Africa rafted across the Atlantic ocean to the Western hemisphere.  This migration tall tale reminds me of another motion fable: the story that Dorothy traveled to Oz when a tornado blew her house up into the air, causing it to land in the land of Oz. 

For further evidence of silly error-ridden ideology-driven education coming from the Smithsonian Institution, let us look at a FAQ page on the web site of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History run by the Smithsonian Institution. The first question is "How does evolution work?" We have an answer that fails to explain any of the vastly impressive and enormously complex and gigantically organized biological innovations that we need to explain. Here is the answer:

"To survive, living things adapt to their surroundings. Occasionally a genetic variation gives one member of a species an edge. That individual passes the beneficial gene on to its descendants. More individuals with the new trait survive and pass it on to their descendants. If many beneficial traits arise over time, a new species—better equipped to meet the challenges of its environment—evolves."

We see a big diagram that merely shows how there might occur color changes in a population of mice. But that does not explain how the idea of evolution or natural selection can explain the appearance of enormously complex novel innovations in biological organisms, such as new organs, new types of functional limbs, new types of cells and new types of protein molecules. Getting such things (involving enormous leaps of purposeful organization) is more than trillions of times harder than getting mere color changes.  And you cannot explain such things by the idea of genetic variation, because genes contain only low-level chemical information such as which amino acids make up a particular protein, not high-level information such as how to build a body or any of its organs or cells. 

So the "how evolution works" answer has failed. All it has explained is how some tiny tweak could occur, not some new biological invention such as new types of protein molecules, new types of cells, new types of organs or new types of organ systems.  Along the way, the answer has planted in our minds the vastly erroneous idea that new genes can arise from mere random variations.  A gene contains a specification of the amino acid sequence of a protein molecule. There are more than 20,000 types of protein molecules in the human body, each with its own unique amino acid sequence specified by some gene.  The protein molecules of mammals contain an average of about 475 very well-arranged amino acids,  and each type of protein molecule has a sequence that has to be just right for the protein molecule to fold properly and serve its biological function. According to the 2012 scientific paper here, "Eukaryotic proteins have an average size of 472 aa [amino acids], whereas bacterial (320 aa) and archaeal (283 aa) proteins are significantly smaller (33-40% on average)." Mammals such as humans have eukaryotic proteins.

In terms of its information content, a gene is roughly comparable to a well-written grammatical paragraph. The chance of a new functional gene arising by a random variation is roughly equivalent to the chance of an ink splash producing a well-written functional paragraph, something so improbable we would never expect it to occur in the history of the universe. Darwinists lack any credible explanation for the origin of genes and lack any credible explanation for the origin of the protein molecules that genes partially specify.  You cannot credibly explain new genes by simply imagining random variations or random mutations. 

Part of the reason why genes and protein molecules cannot be credibly explained by Darwinist ideas is that genes and protein molecules are very sensitive to small changes, being broken by such small changes. See the appendix of this post for quotes establishing this fact.

The next question answered by the FAQ is: "What do scientists mean when they call evolution a theory?" We are told the untrue claim that in science "a theory is the most logical explanation for how a natural phenomenon works," and that when scientists refer to a theory they mean something "quite the opposite from our informal use of the word theory." No, that isn't true at all, and scientists use the word theory just like ordinary people use it, to mean all kinds of things ranging from groundless to near-certain, as when scientists massively use the term "string theory" to refer to a groundless and massively speculative family of physics theories, when they use the term "supersymmetry theory" for a theory that has failed all empirical tests, and when they frequently use terms such as multiverse theory and parallel universes theory to refer to groundless speculative theories for which there is no evidence. 

The next question in the FAQ is "How does evolution explain complex organisms like humans?" The answer is a laughably lame little speck of fluff.  Here's the whole answer:

"Evolution doesn’t happen all at once, especially in complex organisms such as human beings. Modern humans are the product of evolutionary processes that go back more than 3.5 billion years, to the beginnings of life on Earth. We became human gradually, evolving new physical traits and behaviors on top of those inherited."

My goodness, could we ever find a more lame and pathetic answer to the great question of how we got humans? Physically humans are a state of enormous hierarchical organization more impressive than anything humans have ever constructed.  A volume of 1,000 pages would be grossly inadequate for storing all of the information needed to construct the vast state of organization and dynamic functionality that is a human body.  Mentally humans are something vastly different from anything found in the animal kingdom, with there existing very many uniquely human characteristics and capabilities. Explaining humans would be a task of oceanic depth. The answer above does not even "wade its feet in the water" of such an ocean.  You're not explaining things by saying they happened gradually, or took a long time. 

Attempting to answer the question "how are humans and monkeys related," we have an answer that is vacuous. We are given a chart that attempts to persuade us that humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor. What was this common ancestor? We are never told. No fossils have been found corresponding to such an alleged common ancestor.  The complete vagueness here about this alleged common ancestor is a strong reason for believing that the claim is false. Similarly, if a man claims that he and John F. Kennedy have a common ancestor, but refuses to say anything about who this ancestor is, you have a strong reason for suspecting the claim about this ancestry is untrue. 

In the FAQ we have the untrue claim that there is no scientific controversy over whether evolution "explains the history of life on Earth." There very much is such a controversy, as we can see from examining some of the quotes from scientists I list in my post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" here. In fact, it is almost universally admitted by scientists that Darwinian evolution fails to explain the beginning of life on Earth.  A December 2023 paper by several biologists states this:

"There is a growing sense of unease among biologists that there are serious shortcomings in the Neo-Darwinian framework, in particular that several of its central assumptions are wrong and that, as a result, it lacks explanatory power. The problems are many and likely fatal."

A statement signed by about 1000 scientists states the following:

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Ask a biologist whether Darwinism explains the history of life, and you'll probably get some overconfident "repeat the chant" claim that it does. But if you ask the right follow-up questions, you'll expose the reality contradicting such a claim. The conversation might go like this:

Reporter: So does Darwinism and evolutionary theory explain the history of life on Earth?

Scientist: Yes, absolutely. Darwin rules! 

Reporter: So can you list some unsolved problems of biology?

Scientist: Well, there's the origin of life. We don't understand that.

Reporter: You mean the origin of prokaryotic cells. But what about the origin of the vastly more complex eukaryotic cells?

Scientist: We have a theory that covers that, a theory of a huge leap in organization by endosymbiosis, kind of like a house converting into a high office tower.

Reporter: Is that a Darwinian theory, involving nothing but very gradual steps over a long time?

Scientist: No, it actually involves a gigantic sudden leap in a short time, not actual evolution in the Darwinian sense. 

Reporter: And so what about the Cambrian Explosion, when all or almost all the animal phyla originated rather suddenly?

Scientist:  That's quite a mystery. We're still working on trying to explain how that happened. Quite a few say that oxygen levels had something to do with it. 

Reporter:  Are oxygen levels part of Darwinian theory?

Scientist:  No, not actually. 

Reporter: And do you understand the origin of language?

Scientist: Little progress has been made on that.

Reporter:  Each of us has more than 20,000 types of protein molecules in our bodies, and almost all of these types contain hundreds or thousands of well-arranged amino acid parts. How did Darwin explain the origin of all those molecule types?

Scientist: Well, that kind of complexity was not discovered until the 20th century, so it's not fair to expect he explained that. 

Reporter: What about morphogenesis, how a speck-sized zygote progresses to become the vast organization of an adult human body?

Scientist: That's one of the biggest unsolved problems of biology.

Reporter: Do you understand how a single human cell is able to reproduce?

Scientist: Well, we can describe the stages. But the "how" is very puzzling. We don't really understand the how. 

Reporter: And how does a human being instantly remember a complex answer upon hearing a single name or short question?

Scientist: I don't know. That's a puzzle the neuroscientists are working on. 

Reporter: How can people remember things for fifty years, when the proteins that make up neurons and synapses have lifetimes of only a few weeks?

Scientist:  Memory is quite the mystery. 

Reporter: So why do you claim that evolutionary theory explains the history of life, when it seems like it does not explain most of the biggest things that occurred in that history? 

Attempting to answer the question "What has been discovered about evolution since Darwin?" the FAQ gives us this lame and misleading answer:

"A lot! Since Darwin died in 1882, findings from many fields have confirmed and greatly expanded on his ideas. We’ve learned that Earth is old enough for all known species to have evolved. We’ve discovered DNA, which confirms that all organisms are related to one another. And we’ve uncovered millions of fossils that provide evidence of how one life form evolved into another over time."

No, findings since 1882 have never confirmed the main claim of Darwin, that new species and new biological innovations in natural history occur because of unguided processes such as random mutations.  In fact, what has been discovered since 1882 has made such claims untenable. We now know that biological organisms are almost infinitely more functionally complex, information-rich and well-organized than Darwin ever dreamed, making his ideas seem like quaint old wives' tales.  DNA does not confirm that all organisms are related to one another in the sense of sharing a common ancestry. The use of a common genetic code is something we might expect from some designer of biological organisms trying to standardize on an encoding scheme. The gigantic levels of functional information in DNA makes ideas of accidental biological origins all the more implausible. We now know that the total amount of functional information stored in the DNA of all the world's organisms is greater than the total amount of information in all the books in a very large library of 100,000 volumes or more.  To maintain that all that information arose from accidental unguided processes is like claiming that all the books in a library of 100,000 volumes arose from accidental ink splashes. 

Contrary to the FAQ's claim that "we’ve learned that Earth is old enough for all known species to have evolved," realistic calculations of the "waiting time problem" suggest that a few billion years is  enormously insufficient for even a hundredth of the known genes to have evolved by Darwinian means. Referring to a probability of less than 1 in a billion trillion quadrillion, two scientists state in a 2022 paper that "macroevolution (required for all speciation events and the complexifications appearing in the Cambrian explosion)" is "probabilistically highly implausible (on the order of 10−50) when based on selection by survival of the fittest."

As for fossils, it is false to claim that "they provide evidence of how one life form evolved into another over time." Fossils do nothing to show how one species could have evolved into some greatly different species, nor do fossils in general even show that one species even did evolve into some very different species. Fossils generally only show that some type of species existed at some time in the past.  A large part of the problem with fossil displays in museums such as  the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is that a large fraction of the fossil displays are largely or mostly fake or constructed through extremely dubious methods in which scattered fragments of bone (often gathered from a wide area) are built into "fossil displays" using very large amounts of wishful-thinking guesswork and filler material such as fiberglass, plaster, or a mixture of baking soda and superglue. That problem is discussed in my post "Fossil Exhibit Shenanigans of the Natural History Museums" here.  

A "Human Family Tree" visual published by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History inadvertently gives us an indication of how current claims of human evolutionary origins are in disarray. Instead of giving us a tree-like diagram making a claim of an ancestry between Homo sapiens and species such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis and Homo heidelbergenis, we have a diagram with this structure:

The diagram specifies no ancestry within any of these groups. The diagram lists no species in the positions I have labeled "Missing Link 1" and "Missing Link 2." So don't be fooled by the branch-like artwork in the background: the diagram is not really an ancestry tree at all. It's merely a diagram that claims three groups of species had a common ancestor, without saying anything about such an ancestor.  This is as fishy and suspicious as someone claiming that he is an ancestor of President John Kennedy, while refusing to name any ancestors between himself and Kennedy. 

We have all seen very many times that iconic "Evolution of Man" visual showing four or five figures in a line, facing right. It seems based on the kind of diagram above that such a visual would be more honestly displayed like this:

The bad information and dubious ideology (marketed as science) that often comes from the taxpayer-supported Smithsonian Institution is only one of the many cases of US taxpayer dollars going to push bad ideas and doubtful theories.  For example, my post here documents how US government sites such as www.genome.gov continue to make outrageous misstatements about genes and DNA.  And how much money has the US government given in grants that are basically welfare programs for the pitchmen of dubious theories in fields such as physics and cosmology and astrobiology? Probably billions. 

Appendix: Below are some quotes showing how fragile are genes and protein molecules, being very sensitive to small changes that can break their function:

• "It seems clear that even the smallest change in the sequence of amino acids of proteins usually has a deleterious effect on the physiology and metabolism of organisms." -- Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, "The triple helix : gene, organism, and environment," page 123.
• "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." -- Science textbook "Molecular Biology of the Cell."
• "To quantitate protein tolerance to random change, it is vital to understand the probability that a random amino acid replacement will lead to a protein's functional inactivation. We define this probability as the 'x factor.' ...The x factor was found to be 34% ± 6%."  -- 3 scientists, "Protein tolerance to random amino acid change." 
• "Once again we see that proteins are fragile, are often only on the brink of stability." -- Columbia University scientists  Lawrence Chasin and Deborah Mowshowitz, "Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology," Lecture 5.
• "We predict 27–29% of amino acid changing (nonsynonymous) mutations are neutral or nearly neutral (|s|<0.01%), 30–42% are moderately deleterious (0.01%<|s|<1%), and nearly all the remainder are highly deleterious or lethal (|s|>1%).” -- "Assessing the Evolutionary Impact of Amino Acid Mutations in the Human Genome," a scientific paper by 14 scientists. 
• "An analysis of 8,653 proteins based on single mutations (Xavier et al., 2021) shows the following results: ~68% are destabilizing, ~24% are stabilizing, and ~8,0% are neutral mutations...while a similar analysis from the observed free-energy distribution from 328,691 out of 341,860 mutations (Tsuboyama et al., 2023)...indicates that ~71% are destabilizing, ~16% are stabilizing, and ~13% are neutral mutations, respectively." -- scientist Jorge A. Villa, "Analysis of proteins in the light of mutations." 2023.
• "Proteins are intricate, dynamic structures, and small changes in their amino acid sequences can lead to large effects on their folding, stability and dynamics. To facilitate the further development and evaluation of methods to predict these changes, we have developed ThermoMutDB, a manually curated database containing >14,669 experimental data of thermodynamic parameters for wild type and mutant proteins... Two thirds of mutations within the database are destabilising." -- Eight scientists, "ThermoMutDB: a thermodynamic database for missense mutations," 2020.