The Science of Ghosts

by Joe Nickell

  But then what about the peddler's trunk, allegedly found at the same site and time as the bones? As a matter of fact, the trunk was never reported in any of the contemporary sources we uncovered. The earliest mention of it I have found is an account penned years later by one P. L. O. A. Keeler (1922), a Lily Dale medium who had a reputation for faking spirit writing and other phenomena (Nickell 2007). I examined the trunk at the Lily Dale Museum, whose curator, Ron Nagy (2006), conceded there was no real provenance for it or any proof of its discovery in 1904. And the trunk's condition appears far too good for its supposed half-century burial (again, see figure 23.2).

  CONCLUSIONS

  The modern unearthing of the Fox cottage's foundations did nothing to support the claim that in 1848 schoolgirls had communicated with the spirit of a murdered peddler. Instead, the excavation made it possible for everyone to see that no “false wall” had been built to hide the legendary peddler's remains but that it was merely part of an earlier, smaller foundation. The best evidence indicates that the 1904 “discovery” of the peddler's bones was a hoax; ditto the later appearance of the tin trunk. Therefore, the Fox sisters’ confessions stand, corroborated by independent evidence that the spirit rappings they produced were accomplished by trickery.

  Rivaling the new burst of rationalism among philosophers and scientists that was spawned by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in the late nineteenth century, a countermovement of “spiritualism” and “unexplained” phenomena spread among the credulous. The craze had been sparked in 1848 at Hydesville, New York, when two schoolgirls, Maggie and Katie Fox, supposedly channeled the ghost of a murdered peddler. Although four decades later they confessed that their “spirit rappings” had been produced by trickery (see previous chapter), in the meantime, “mediums” and “psychics” flourished.

  In her book Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death (2006) (figure 24.1), journalism professor and Pulitzer Prize–winner Deborah Blum chronicles the response of the scientific community. She focuses on a small band of scientists who set out with the intention of proving the reality of the supernatural and thus uniting religion and science. In 1882 in London they founded the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

  In an apparent attempt at evenhandedness, however, Blum risks giving readers the impression (so criticizes the New York Times) that the SPR “was on to something” (Gottlieb 2006). She opens the book with a spine-tingling tale investigated by William James himself, the noted Harvard philosopher and psychologist. Blum tells how sixteen-year-old Bertha Huse of Enfield, New Hampshire, set out one October morning in 1898 for the mill where she worked. She left a trail of footprints in the frost but they soon disappeared, along with Bertha herself. One hundred and fifty people searched nearby woods and fields—even the waters of Mascoma Lake, traversed by an old Shaker bridge. A Boston diver was called in, but he too failed to locate the girl. “It was as if,” writes Blum, “Bertha had vanished into the dawn itself.”

  Then came “the nightmare that caused a woman in a nearby town to start screaming in her sleep” (Blum 2006, 2). Soon the woman, Nellie Titus, was very precisely directing the diver to a spot where, she said, the girl was wedged head down in the bridge's wooden structure, as indeed Bertha was soon found. James had his wife's cousin interview those involved, and he concluded, “My own view of the Titus case consequently is that it is a decidedly solid document in favor of the admission of a supernatural faculty of seership” (5).

  Blum is prepared to leave readers with the distinct impression that only Mrs. Titus's clairvoyant powers could explain such a remarkable case. She writes: “When I started this book, I saw myself as the perfect author to explore the supernatural, and a career science writer anchored in place with the sturdy shoes of common sense.” But her research changed the way she thought: “I still don't aspire to a sixth sense, I like being a science writer, still grounded in reality. I'm just less smug than I was when I started, less positive of my rightness” (Blum 2006, 323). She may also be less critical in her judgments.

  CRISIS APPARITIONS

  Blum does acknowledge the frequent revelations of genuinely skeptical scientists and investigators, like British zoologist Ray Lankester, who caught medium Henry Slade faking “spirit” writing on blank slates (Blum 2006, 67), and physicist Michael Faraday, whose table-tipping experiments demonstrated that mediums and amateur spiritualists were guilty of putting pressure on table tops, often unconsciously (20–21).

  Yet she presents, for instance, case after unexplained case of what SPR researcher Edmund Gurney called “crisis apparitions.” Typically someone encountered a loved one in a dream or apparition, only to discover later that—at that precise moment—the person had died. Blum seems to accept Gurney's evidence (in Phantasms of the Living [1886]) that the tales were well authenticated, rather than follow a journalist's instinct that they seem too good to be true.

  Indeed, one early case reported by Gurney and his colleague Frederic Myers (1884)—supposedly providing irrefutable evidence for apparitional phenomena—is instructive. A Shanghai jurist, Sir Edmund Hornby, had been awakened one evening by a newspaperman who had arrived belatedly to get the customary written judgment for the next day's edition. The man, appearing “deadly pale,” only left after the judge provided a verbal summary, which the reporter recorded in his notebook. The following day Judge Hornby learned that the newspaperman had died during the night; although his family attested that he had never left the house, with his body was discovered a notebook containing a summary of Hornby's judgment! The judge added that his wife would verify what he had told her on the night in question and that other details were confirmed by an inquest.

  Alas, investigation soon revealed that the newspaperman had not died at one in the morning as reported, but between eight and nine a.m. “after a good night's rest”; that the judge could not have told his wife about the events at the time, because he was then between marriages; and finally, that although the story depends on a certain judgment that was to be delivered the next day, no such judgment was recorded. Confronted, Judge Hornby conceded, “My vision must have followed the death (some three months) instead of synchronizing with it.” Bewildered, he added that had he not felt he could rely on his memory, he would not “have ever told it as a personal experience” (quoted in Hansel 1966, 188–89). This case clearly shows why investigators must be suspicious of such anecdotal evidence.

  ON CREDULITY

  Much of Blum's attention is appropriately given to William James and to “the medium that James knew best” (Blum 2006, 224), Leonora Piper, a medium who—in contrast to the likes of the infamous Eusapia Palladino1—was never exposed. But Blum could have profited from reading Martin Gardner's two-part treatise on how Mrs. Piper bamboozled James and others.

  James (1992, 1:20), reports Gardner, “was too gullible and ignorant of methods of deception to appreciate the ease with which intelligent persons can be deceived by crafty charlatans.” He adds: “As all magicians know, men of science who know nothing about magic are the easiest of all people to fool. As I like to say, electrons and microbes don't cheat, but psychics do.” Gardner shows how Mrs. Piper “did an enormous amount of what was then called ‘fishing’ and today is called ‘cold reading’” (1:23). She also appeared to use information learned in earlier sessions and to benefit from what was said and done while she was in a “trance.” Notes Gardner (2:38), “Because believers in Mrs. Piper were convinced she could recall nothing of what was said during a séance, it never occurred to them that Mrs. Piper might be lying.”

  TOWARD A SOLUTION

  But what about William James's report on the disappearance and clairvoyant discovery of the body of young Bertha Huse, mentioned earlier? Surely that cannot be explained away. Well, as it happens, I looked into that very cold case, and here is what I found.

  The tragedy occurred on Monday, October 31—Halloween—1898. SPR's journal observed, regarding the supposed “superno
rmal character” of the case, that “the main question would seem to be how much information existed in the neighborhood about the girl's doings which might have furnished the material for Mrs. Titus's trance-impressions” (“Proceedings” 1907, 124).

  As it happened, the missing girl had been seen not only on the street that led to the bridge but, by one witness, actually on the bridge itself. Moreover, according to contemporary reports, a light frost on the morning the girl vanished recorded her footprints “on to the bridge and up to a distance unrecorded upon it,” a fact “known to all the town” (“Proceedings” 1907, 125). Of course, it may not have been known to everyone at the time of the initial search, and the diver may not have been apprised of it. He had searched the length of the long bridge on both sides in water so dark that he could not see at all. He would no doubt have benefited from having his search redirected to an area just beyond where the footprints had ended, where, indeed, he “found the body entirely by feeling” (125). In other words, Mrs. Titus's vision might have had a natural, rather than supernatural, explanation.

  I suspect that an in-depth skeptical investigation at the time would have rendered the case even less astonishing than it now appears—in contrast to Deborah Blum's rather mystifying version of events. Although Blum has written a good book, a more skeptical and investigative approach would, I am convinced, have produced a better one.

  Did famed orator Robert Green Ingersoll communicate posthumously through a spiritualist medium to recant his atheism? Published texts claim just such a visitation and recantation, but were they authentically written by him?

  DO SPIRITS WRITE?

  Spiritualist mediums—those who purport to communicate with the dead—use many approaches to convince the credulous of their ability. Many have been caught cheating when spirits purportedly produce physical phenomena such as slate writing, paintings, vocalizations, and “materializations,” as well as photography and other effects.

  The great magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926) spent his last years exposing spiritualist fraud. After his death, several mediums claimed to have contacted his repentant spirit. One, Arthur Ford, was later shown to be a clever fraud artist (Nickell 1991, 57–58). In 1969, I sat with a medium in a séance I had arranged for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio program. In the dimly lit Toronto studio, the medium went speedily into a “trance,” then vocalized an implicitly apologetic speech, supposedly from Houdini in the spirit realm but actually a most unconvincing bit of fakery (Nickell 2004, 6).

  One case I investigated supposedly involved an otherworldly Abraham Lincoln communicating by one of the two types of alleged spirit writing, slate writing—a “direct” form in which the entity itself wields the chalk. This occurred at a late-nineteenth-century séance conducted by fraudulent medium P. L. O. A. Keeler. In the brief text, “Lincoln” endorsed spiritualism and Keeler himself. However, in chapter 37 of this book, “Ghost Forensics,” the writing is shown to be spurious.

  Another allegedly reformed disbeliever, according to one Keeler séance, was famed orator Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) (figure 25.1). His “signature” was among a group of facsimile signatures—supposedly from spirits (of mostly now-obscure spiritualists)—but actually attributable to the artistic hand of Keeler (Nickell 2004, 7). (Keeler was subsequently caught cheating—appropriately enough—by one of Houdini's undercover agents [Kalush and Sloman 2006, 465–66].)

  Ingersoll also allegedly made after-death contact by means of the other type of reputed spirit writing: “automatic writing.” Ingersoll was a tempting target for spiritualists. Although a confirmed atheist, he had cordial relations with many American spiritualists (Smith 1990, 344–45; Nickell 1999). His acknowledgment of the “other side” would have been greatly valued—if believed.

  A version of the “Ingersoll” message first appeared in the June 1903 issue of the Sermon (a fact called to my attention by CFI Libraries director Timothy Binga. See figure 25.2), a spiritualist magazine published in Toronto by B. F. Austin, an excommunicated Methodist preacher and spiritualist convert. The message's recipient later said it was received in a somewhat “crude manner” and soon produced a more polished communication. This was published as a twenty-three-page pamphlet titled A Message from Robert G. Ingersoll Transmitted by Automatic Writing through a Philadelphia Psychic (1904).

  Asked by the psychic medium to explain how he communicated, “Ingersoll” replied in part:

  The pencil you are now holding is guided by my thoughts, but it is your physical strength which I use to move the pencil. The writing is inspired by me and I know that the work is as nearly automatic as many inventions worked by mortals.

  You hold the pencil and call a guide; the guide simply places their [sic] hand over yours to start the forces you possess into motion. The thought force we possess keeps the pencil moving until we have finished the work or your own mind becomes active. (Message from Robert G. Ingersoll 1904, 3–4)

  AUTOMATIC WRITING

  As this case indicates, many attribute automatic writing to spirits or other entities. In one famous instance, Pearl Lenore Curran of St. Louis discovered in 1913 that she was apparently taking dictation from a spirit. As her Ouija board's pointer spelled out: “Many moons ago I lived. Again I come—Patience Worth, my name.” Curran soon found that “Patience” could communicate by speaking through Curran's own voice or by controlling her fingers as she typed. Alas, however, there was no evidence to confirm Patience's claim that she was born in England in 1649 or that, at age forty-five, she was killed in America by Indians. Investigator Milbourne Christopher (1970, 129) concluded that Curran had “discovered not a spirit but a way to express herself.”

  As another example, Swiss medium Hélène Smith (real name Catherine Elise Muller, 1861–1929) conducted séances in which she became entranced, spoke in tongues, wrote in Sanskrit, and channeled a spirit guide named Leopold as well as the spirit of the Italian sorcerer Cagliostro (for which she spoke in a deep voice). She made “astral visits” to Mars and produced automatic writing in an alleged Martian language (Guiley 1991, 553). However, that language proved to be structurally related to French, and an investigator who studied her for many years—Theodore Flournoy (1963, 44)—concluded:

  No one dares tell her that her great invisible protector is only an illusory apparition, another part of herself, a product of her subconscious imagination; nor that the strange peculiarities of her mediumistic communications—the Sanskrit, the recognizable signatures of deceased persons, the thousand correct revelations of facts unknown to her—are but old forgotten memories of things which she saw or heard in her childhood.

  I once received a letter from a man who claimed to be in Ouija-board communication with ancient entities. The man requested I investigate his claim, and I did agree to test him at his own expense. I proposed to use a Ouija-style board on which the letters were scrambled, which would be hidden from his view during the test, predicting that he would thereby only spell gibberish. I never heard from him again.

  Automatic writing is produced while one is in a dissociative state. (See appendix.) It is a form of motor automatism, or unconscious muscular activity, the cause not only of Ouija-board planchette movement but also of such phenomena as table tipping, “trance” painting or music composition, dowsing, and so on. It is also responsible for some impulsive acts. (A second category, sensory automatism, includes apparitions, dreams, hallucinations, certain inspirations, etc. See Guiley 1991, 45–48; Gardner 1957, 109.)

  INGERSOLL VS. “INGERSOLL”

  But is the “Ingersoll” automatic writing merely the product of another imaginative person's fantasy? To assess its authenticity, I spent many hours comparing it with genuine Ingersoll selections, settling on one that was as seemingly comparable to the questioned text as I could find (Ingersoll 1887). The results were interesting.

  Here is an authentic passage from Ingersoll (from his “A Tribute to Henry Ward Beecher” [1887, 421–22]):

  All there
is of leaf and bud, of flower and fruit, of painted insect life, and all the winged and happy children of the air that Summer holds beneath her dome of blue, were known and loved by him. He loved the yellow Autumn fields, the golden stacks, the happy homes of men, the orchard's bending boughs, the sumach's flags of flame, the maples with transfigured leaves, the tender yellow of the beech, the wondrous harmonies of brown and gold—the vines where hang the clustered spheres of wit and mirth. He loved the winter days, the whirl and drift of snow—all forms of frost—the rage and fury of the storm, when the forest, desolate and stripped, the brave old pine towers green and grand—a prophecy of Spring. He heard the rhythmic sounds of Nature's busy strife, the hum of bees, the songs of birds, the eagle's cry, the murmur of the streams, the sighs and lamentations of the winds, and all the voices of the sea. He loved the shores, the vales, the crags and cliffs, the city's busy streets, the introspective, silent plain, the solemn splendors of the night, the silver sea of dawn, and evening's clouds of molten gold. The love of nature freed this loving man.

  Note the sophisticated poetic quality, complete with alliteration (“flower and fruit,” “bending boughs,” “silver sea”) and the striking imagery (“evening's clouds of molten gold”).

  For comparison, here is a paragraph from “Ingersoll” (Message from Robert G. Ingersoll 1904, 20), allegedly written automatically:

  You may believe I am drawing a fancy picture, my dear friends, but for the love of yourself, if not your fellow man, judge not what you do not believe, nor condemn not what is not absolutely wicked in the light of human kindness. Then remember that if man is capable of kindness and love the Creator of the universe is incapable of less love and kindness, and you are only a weak and ignorant vessel, touched with a spark for greater light, and when you wilfully destroy a human body you have done the utmost in your power, but you can so blacken your own soul by the desire to send others to your imaginary hell, that when you throw aside your mortal clothing you will see your soul marked with your evil intentions and hellish work, and ages may find you reaping, as you have sown, the seeds of hate and malice, and your victims reaping in your errors all the joys of eternal love in the mansions far above.