Supernatural

by Colin Wilson

  It is a convincing theory, and surprisingly ‘modern’; in all the years since The Law of Psychic Phenomena appeared, nothing more plausible or ‘scientific’ has been advanced. But does it really cover all the facts? Hudson’s solution to the problem of spirits is that ‘the subjective mind of the medium, being controlled by suggestion, believes itself to be the spirit of any deceased person whose name is suggested’. But this fails to explain cases—like Swedenborg’s case of the ‘secret drawer’ mentioned in Chapter 3—where the medium was able to produce information that was only known to the dead person. It seems, on the whole, more straightforward to accept the possibility of life after death—or the spirit’s independence of the body—as a working hypothesis.

  The other major objection to spiritualism—that it somehow ‘reduces’ the spiritual to the material—was expressed by Dean Inge when he wrote: ‘The moment we are asked to accept scientific evidence for spiritual truth, the alleged spiritual truth becomes neither spiritual nor true. It is degraded into an event in the phenomenal world.’1 And, oddly enough, Rudolf Steiner agreed with him, remarking: ‘The spiritualists are the greatest materialists of all.’ This sounds baffling, in view of the fact that Steiner not only accepted the reality of life after death, but of reincarnation as well.

  The explanation is important, and accounts for the general feeling of hostility that is so often aroused by Spiritualism. One of Steiner’s basic doctrines was that ‘the supersensible world appears to us in such a way that it resembles our perceptions of the sense world’.2 So that he says of Swedenborg:

  He was a man who, in the time of dawning natural science, had become accustomed only to recognise the sensible, the visible . . . Since he insisted on recognising as true only what he could calculate and perceive with his senses . . . he drew down the supersensible world into a lower sphere under the influence of his habits of natural science.’3

  What Steiner is saying here is something that soon dawns on most readers of accounts of near-death experiences. Some find themselves walking towards a celestial city, some find themselves in flowery meadows, some find themselves drawn towards a heavenly gateway or a whirlpool of light. It looks as if everyone is interpreting the experience in terms of their own familiar concepts. Steiner is suggesting that visionaries like Swedenborg, who have caught a glimpse of the ‘supersensible world’, are bound to interpret it according to their ingrained mental habits, and that this explains why the revelations of spiritualism often seem slightly ludicrous.

  Oddly enough, Steiner thoroughly approved of Kardec, who obtained the material for his books from automatic writing. This clearly suggests that what Steiner disliked so much about Spiritualism was its literal-mindedness—the trumpets and accordions floating through the air, the tables dancing around the room, the spirits made of ectoplasm. His attitude could be compared to that of a Christian mystic who wishes to explain that heaven is not full of angels sitting around on clouds and playing harps.

  At the same time, there is bound to be an element of unfairness in such an attitude. Many mediums who started off by producing automatic writing later became ‘voice mediums’, and some even ‘materialisation mediums’. It is impossible to draw a sharp line between them. Steiner is not really criticising Spiritualism; he is criticising spiritualists. Once we have grasped this, one of the major problems disappears—or at least, is revealed as a misunderstanding.

  It was a misunderstanding that caused a great deal of trouble and bitterness in the early days of Spiritualism. It was useless for investigators like Catherine Crowe and Allan Kardec to demand a fair hearing for the ‘supernatural’; scientists and intellectuals felt they were being asked to swallow a farrago of childish nonsense. They pointed angrily at the Spiritualist churches that were springing up all over America, and asked how anybody could be serious about a religion started by two silly girls. Their scepticism seemed to be justified in April 1851, when a relative of the Fox family, a certain Mrs Norman Culver, announced in the New York Herald that Kate and Margaretta Fox had shown her how they made the rapping noises with their knees and toes. This may or may not have been true. The girls—and their mother—had become celebrities, and spent a great deal of time travelling around the East coast giving demonstrations. Fate had promoted them from the boredom of small-town life in upper New York State to the equivalent of stardom. If the spirits were occasionally unco-operative, it would have been surprising if they had not been tempted to do a little cheating. What seems perfectly clear is that the original phenomena—bangs that were strong enough to make the house vibrate—could not have been caused by cracking the joints of the knees. Neither could Kate and Margaretta have answered all the questions about the people in the room. The accusations of fraud were just one more excuse for refusing to look dispassionately at the evidence.

  The real tragedy in all this was that the cloud of polemical steam obscured a great deal of serious research into the paranormal, including the work of Reichenbach, Buchanan, Denton and Hudson himself. We can see, in retrospect, that the sceptics and the scientists did not behave too badly; they were often narrow-minded and impatient, but they did their best to be fair. It was the spiritualists themselves who were largely to blame for all the hostility. They were too gullible, too prone to accept any banal nonsense as a message from ‘the other side’. Hundreds of fake mediums took advantage of their credulity to practise barefaced impositions, and whenever one of them was caught in the act, scientists shook their heads wearily and made comparisons with the mediaeval witchcraft phenomenon. Most of them had become too blasé even to say ‘I told you so’. Genuine mediums like the Davenport brothers did themselves no good by appearing in theatres and performing hair-raising feats of escapology that would have done credit to Houdini. They allowed themselves to be tied so tight that the ropes cut into their flesh and caused bruises; but after a brief period in a cabinet, they would step out with the ropes around their feet. Professor Benjamin Pierce, a member of an investigating committee, sat between them in the cabinet. As soon as the door was closed, a hand shot the bolt—both brothers were trussed up like mummies—and briefly felt the professor’s face before going on to untie the brothers. Professor Loomis of the Georgetown Medical College admitted that the manifestations were produced by a force with which he was unacquainted. But this kind of testimony meant nothing compared to the fact that the brothers appeared on the same bill with conjurors and acrobats.

  All this explains why so little was achieved by the most remarkable medium of the 19th century—perhaps of all time—Daniel Dunglas Home. Home retained his powers for more than a quarter of a century, with the exception of a period of one year when, as we shall see, the ‘spirits’ decided to punish him. He performed his astonishing feats in broad daylight. He caused heavy articles of furniture to float up to the ceiling; he himself floated out of one window and in at another; he washed his face in blazing coals; he could make himself several inches taller at will. He was tested dozens of times by committees of sceptics, and was never once caught out in anything that looked like fraud. Yet posterity remembers him chiefly as the man Dickens called ‘that scoundrel Home’, and about whom Robert Browning wrote a scurrilous poem called ‘Mr Sludge the Medium’.

  A typical Home seance is amusingly described by his biographer Jean Burton. It took place on an evening in January 1863, in the fashionable home of Madame Jauvin d’Attainville, and the guests included Princess Metternich and her husband, the Austrian ambassador. The guests—fifteen in all—sat at the table in the magnificent second empire drawing room, while Home sat in an armchair three or four yards away. When everyone was ready, he sat back in his chair, became paler, and went into a light trance. He asked ‘Bryan, are you there?’ (Bryan being his spirit guide). Sharp raps came from the table, the chandeliers began to swing, and a chair moved of its own accord across the room and stopped in front of the guests. At the same moment, Princess Metternich screamed, as she felt a powerful but invisible hand grip hers. Others also
felt hands lightly touching them. (All this was in a room ‘blazing with light’.) The tapestry tablecloth now rose into the air, and underneath it, something seemed to be moving, like a hand or a small animal, towards them. This was too much for the men, most of whom were sceptics; Prince Metternich dived under the cloth and tried to grab the ‘creature’; there was nothing. One of the men pulled the cloth away, while others dived under the table to find the source of the raps; again, they were disappointed. As they scrambled out again, a hailstorm of raps sounded, as if in derision. The angry Prince Metternich was now convinced that they were coming from under the table, and scrambled underneath again. Raps sounded, and Metternich yelled indignantly: ‘No jokes, please!’ The company assured him that they were not responsible.

  Apparently in a trance, Home pointed to a corsage of violets on the piano and asked that it should be brought over to them. The violets glided across the piano, floated unsteadily across the room, and fell into the princess’s lap. Prince Metternich bounded forward and grabbed them, then proceeded to search for the thread that he was convinced must be attached; he found nothing.

  In a faint voice, Home now demanded an accordion, a popular instrument of the period. When it came, the princess was asked to stand alone in the middle of the room with the instrument held high above her head. As she stood there, her arm in the air, an expression of astonishment crossed her face. There was a tug on the accordion, and it proceeded to play, moving in and out. What impressed everyone was that it was a fine performance, the playing so soft and melodious that it brought tears to the eyes of some of the audience. After that, anything would have been an anticlimax, so the seance finished. But, typically, the men began to speculate how it had been done; no one seemed to doubt that it had been some form of conjuring trick; others spoke of electro-biology and mass hypnosis. The princess had to admit that she had no sensation of being hypnotised . . .

  Daniel Dunglas Home (he pronounced it Hume) was born near Edinburgh in March 1833—his mother was a highlander and had a reputation as a ‘seer’. He was probably illegitimate—he liked to claim that his father was Lord Home. At the age of nine, he moved to America with an aunt, Mary Cook, and her husband. His mother and ‘father’, and seven brothers and sisters, were already there. Daniel suffered from tuberculosis, and was subject to fainting fits—a typical ‘sick sensitive’. His closest friend was a boy called Edwin, and they went for long walks in the woods of Connecticut. They made a boyish pact—that whoever died first would show himself to the other. In 1846, when Daniel was thirteen, he told his aunt and uncle that he had just seen Edwin standing at the foot of his bed, and that the figure had made three circles in the air with his hand—which Daniel took to mean that he had died three days ago. It proved to be true.

  There were no more supernatural experiences for another four years; then Home saw a vision of his mother, and knew she was dead. Soon after that, he was brushing his hair when he saw, in the glass, a chair moving across the room towards him. He was terrified and rushed out of the house. In bed, he was awakened by three loud bangs on the headboard. The next morning at breakfast, when his aunt was mildly teasing him about tiring himself out by attending too many prayer meetings (Home was a religious young man), raps sounded from all over the table, and his alarmed aunt cried: ‘So you’ve brought the devil into my house, have you?’ and threw a chair at him. The Baptist minister was called in to pray the devil away but had difficulty in making himself heard above the hail of knocks. Unaware that poltergeist phenomena are usually harmless, his aunt requested him to leave her house. So, at the age of seventeen, Home had to fend for himself.

  But Home had such charm and gaiety that there were dozens of acquaintances who were delighted to offer him hospitality. And the spirits gave him their full support. He went easily into trance, and in that state talked fluently in French and Italian—neither of them languages in which he had become proficient. He could not have chosen a better time to launch himself on the world, with everyone in the United States talking about spirits. An evangelist named Dr George Bush—a professor of oriental languages—persuaded him that he ought to become a Swedenborgian and use his considerable preaching talent in the pulpit; Home agreed, then came back two days later to say that his dead mother had expressly forbidden it, telling him that he had a ‘more extended’ mission.

  Looked after by the ‘spirits’, and by kindly acquaintances, Home wandered around through New England, always a welcome guest in the homes of the well-off middle classes; his pale good looks brought out the protectiveness in middle-aged ladies. In Springfield, Massachusetts, he stayed at the home of a wealthy citizen named Rufus Elmers, and agreed to be investigated by a delegation from Harvard, including the poet William Cullen Bryant. They, like many other ‘delegations’ after them, had no doubt about the genuineness of the phenomena. The table not only ‘rapped’ and floated off the floor, but stood on two legs like a circus horse while three members of the committee sat on it and tried to force it down again. The floor vibrated to shocks that were as powerful as cannon fire. All this took place in broad daylight, and members of the committee held Home’s hands and feet while most of the phenomena were taking place. Their report, entitled ‘The Modern Wonder’, concluded: ‘We know that we were not imposed upon nor deceived.’ Rufus Elmers was so impressed that he offered to adopt Home and make him his heir; Home declined with thanks.

  In August 1852, sitting in a circle, Home floated up to the ceiling—a feat that became virtually his trademark. And his other phenomena continued to be almost as astonishing. Grand pianos would float across the room, bells would ring, cymbals clash, and there would be sounds of birdsong and assorted animal noises. One day, a table with a candle on it tilted at an angle, and the candle flame went on burning at the same angle, as if it was still resting on a horizontal surface. On another occasion, at the home of the Rev. S. B. Brittan, he went into a trance, and a voice announced: ‘Hannah Brittan here.’ Home began to wring his hands, and for the next half hour, talked in a wild, distracted way about the torments of hell. The Rev. Brittan was staggered, for he was certain that no one knew that the lady—a relative—had been a prey to religious mania, and had died insane, obsessed by visions of eternal punishment. (On a subsequent appearance, Hannah Brittan told them that her present life was calm, peaceful and beautiful and that the torments of hell had been a delusion of her distracted brain.)

  Most women adored Home, who was attentive and thoughtful—he loved sending flowers on anniversaries. Men either liked him or loathed him. He had effeminate manners, and many suspected he was homosexual. (For some odd reason, a surprising number of mediums are.) He was undoubtedly rather vain about his pale good looks and silky, auburn hair. He loved expensive clothes. He was an outrageous snob, who took pleasure in being inaccessible. (He would only condescend to know people if introduced by a mutual acquaintance.) He would be mortally offended if anyone offered him money, and he resented being treated as a ‘performer’; as far as he was concerned, he was the social equal of anyone he met, including kings. Yet he was becomingly modest about his achievement, insisting that he himself had nothing whatever to do with the phenómena. All he had to do was to relax and put himself in the right mood (and ‘right’ is probably here the operative word) and things simply happened.

  By 1855, Home’s consumptive cough had become so bad that his admirers decided he ought to move to a healthier climate. For some unaccountable reason, he chose England. Admirers paid his passage, and with a crowd waving frantically, he sailed from Boston in March; he was just twenty-two.

  As usual, the spirits were looking after Home. In London, he moved into Cox’s Hotel in Jermyn Street; the owner, William Cox, was a Spiritualist, and welcomed Home ‘as a father would a son’. So Home got free lodgings and an introduction to the London society people who made regular use of the hotel. In no time at all he was calling on marchionesses and baronesses. He went to visit the novelist Lord Lytton, who made literary use of many of Home�
�s seance phenomena—a luminous form that dissolved into a globe, a disembodied hand, loud bangs, fiery sparks—in his famous story ‘The Haunted and the Hunters’. But Lytton declined to believe spirits were responsible: he thought the phenomena were due to Home’s unconscious mind. He became a friend of the socialist Robert Owen, who was a convert to spiritualism, and who introduced him to his old friend Lord Henry Brougham, a Voltairean sceptic. Brougham and Sir David Brewster had a private session with Home at which the table rose into the air and a bell floated across the room. Brewster described these things in his diary and told them to friends, but later insisted that the table had only ‘appeared’ to rise, and that Home had probably moved the bell with some hidden apparatus. The resulting controversy brought Home much publicity, and provided the spiritualists with some excellent ammunition to use against scientific dogmatism, since Brewster’s own diaries justify Home.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning called on Home, together with her husband Robert. Ghostly hands materialised, music sounded from the air, the table rapped loudly and invisible spirits caressed them. Mrs Browning was totally convinced; her husband—vigorous, sturdy, just over five feet tall—sat there scowling, and resolutely declined to accept the evidence of his eyes. Home became an unmentionable subject in the Browning household, and after his wife’s death, Browning wrote the flagrantly unfair ‘Mr Sludge the Medium’. He may have been prejudiced by an episode that took place at another Home seance, when a detached hand took up a garland of flowers and placed them on the poetess’s brow; Browning was jealous of his wife. Home made things worse by telling people that Browning had tried to place himself in the trajectory of the wreath so it would alight on his brow . . .