An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural

by James Randi

  But, said Soal:

  We [the experimenters] were perfectly aware that boys of the calibre of Glyn and Ieuan could never hope to deceive us for more than a few minutes.

  The reference to the “calibre” of the boys no doubt refers to the fact that they were country folks, and therefore probably not very smart, certainly not as smart as the scientist Soal.

  Eventually the protocol for the tests was tightened to the point where the boys could not signal one another, and in the opinion of the investigators, they had suddenly “lost” their powers.

  All of Soal's work is now considered valueless.

  Society for Psychical Research

  (SPR) This British group, the parent organization of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), was founded in 1882 in London as an offshoot of the British National Association of Spiritualists, itself founded in 1873. The SPR is located at 1 Adam & Eve Mews, London W8 6UG, U.K.

  See also American Society for Psychical Research.

  Sorcery

  The word is derived from the same root as sortilege (sortiarius, Latin for “one who casts lots”) and refers to the use of magic methods, through evil spirits, for obtaining power over others. This would include the selling of one's soul, consulting with the dead (necromancy), and other such improbabilities.

  Sortilege

  A variety of divination by means of dice, bones, stones, sticks, or other objects being cast upon the ground in patterns. In a way, the gaming houses in Las Vegas use sortilege when dice are thrown to divine whether the customer will lose his money.

  See also I Ching.

  Soubirous, Bernadette

  (1844-1879) Most who uncritically accept the miracles of Lourdes (which see) are unaware of what occurred to young Bernadette Soubirous, the originator of the story of the vision in the grotto. She herself never made any claim that the entity she said she had seen there had promised cures at the shrine. In fact, she called the vision the local French equivalent of “the lady” and the identification of the figure with the Virgin Mary was made by others.

  On one occasion, Bernadette was asked by an English visitor about certain miracles that had been reported during her last visit to the shrine. She replied, “There's no truth in all that.” Asked about cures at the shrine, she answered, “I have been told that there have been miracles, but . . . I have not seen them.”

  Bernadette was herself chronically ill, and she chose to visit hot springs in another town to treat her ailments. She was taken into a convent and died slowly and painfully in 1879, at age thirty-five, of tuberculosis, asthma, and several complications. Her own father, crippled and partially blind, died still afflicted.

  Southcott, Joanna

  See Appendix III, year 1774.

  Speaking in Tongues

  See glossolalia.

  Speculum

  (plural, speculi) Any mirror, crystal, shiny stone, or metal surface which can be used for scrying.

  Spell

  A written or spoken incantation used in an attempt to produce magical effects. Not at all dependable.

  Spirit

  Derived from the Latin word for “breath.” A soul, or an immaterial substance, entity, or pattern said to inhabit a living creature. It can be coerced out of the body or will voluntarily leave the body for various reasons. However, it leaves involuntarily upon death and survives.

  No really good evidence for spirits is currently available.

  Spirit Bell

  The great conjuror Robert-Houdin is credited with having originated this trick, in which a small bell contained under an inverted glass cover rings in response to questions posed by the audience. The trick is still sold today from magic catalogs, in various forms. Spirit mediums have used the device to produce answers to questions posed by sitters and have represented the effect as a genuine spirit phenomenon.

  Spirit Guide

  Also known as “spirit helper.” This is the claimed spirit/ghost/angel that a spirit medium says is serving as a go-between with the “other world.” In America during the heyday of spiritualism, Native Americans were said to be the most common guides, since so many of them had “gone into spirit” (died) during the occupation of the continent. The fact that no sitter was likely to speak an American Indian tongue, also worked in favor of the mediums.

  Spiritism

  A philosophy very popular in nineteenth-century France which was very similar to spiritualism except that it taught reincarnation as well.

  Spirit Medium

  A person who claims to be able to call up ghosts, usually by going into some sort of trance in a darkened room. Mediums were very common in the United States up until the 1950s, when the interest in spiritualism and séances began to wane, though some are still doing business in England in a limited fashion.

  Spirit Photography

  The spiritualists have long embraced a physical phenomenon that they believe proves their basic premise of survival-after-death. They call it “spirit photography.”

  It all began in 1861, when a Boston engraver named William H. Mumler discovered extra images of persons on an amateur photograph he took of an associate. Mumler went into business as a medium/photographer, snapping photos of well-paying clients who recognized celebrities and friends in the extra images recorded on the portraits of themselves.

  Then two years after he'd begun the business, Mumler was exposed when some of his “extras” were recognized as living Bostonians. He eventually moved off to New York, reestablished his business, and was once again accused of fraud. His career was ended after a trial in 1869, and he died in poverty in 1884.

  An Englishman named Hudson, inspired by Mumler's idea, began taking spirit photos. It was clearly shown that he was producing double exposures and even posing himself, in disguise, for some of the “extras.” However, he was endorsed entirely by Reverend William Stainton Moses, who declared his work to be an “unassailable demonstration” of the existence of survival-after-death.

  A Frenchman, Buguet, entered the trade in 1874 in London, but was soon arrested for fraud and made a full confession. At the trial, his victims swore they had recognized their loved ones in photos of dummy “prop” heads that the police had seized at Buguet's studio. Reverend Moses had also endorsed Buguet's work just a month before the photographer's arrest.

  Many examples of so-called spirit photography have been published. Several offered by believers as proof of the validity of the phenomenon show a likeness of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, since he was a champion of the spiritualist cause. The spook-snappers claimed to have summoned him up after his death in 1930, and he was by far the most popular target for their cameras. The most used “spirit” photo of Sir Arthur is an ordinary one of that author in his prime, a photo that was and still is widely published and easily available. The “spirit” photo offered — apparently a cut-out of a reversed photo placed in what appears to be cotton wool — agrees in detail, lighting, and expression with that original.

  Spirit Sortraits

  Certain spiritualists claim that they can produce a drawn or painted portrait of a departed person that will be specifically identified by the intended sitter. Many tests of that claim have been made, one of them on a television series in the U.K. for Granada TV in 1991.

  Coral Polge is a U.K. spiritualist who makes her living producing pastel portraits of people who she vaguely defines as some sort of ambiguous entities. During her demonstration in Manchester for Granada, Ms. Polge skillfully drew in brown chalk the face of a middle-aged, rather ordinary lady that could be any one of a half dozen such women that the average person has encountered at one time or another. However, no one in the studio audience of ninety persons was able to identify with both the portrait that Coral Polge drew, and the description that she had verbally offered in a rambling, disconnected series of guesses and try-ons.

  When a vote was asked for on whether anyone could recognize the face Ms. Polge had drawn, the response was eleven percent yes. No two people in th
at audience should have recognized that person — unless they both had known her — and the generality of the drawing served to bring enough recognition votes that the scenario Ms. Polge was trying to build — that of a distinct person “coming through” for a specific member of the audience — was not at all established.

  The production of spirit portraits is a form of Rorschach ink blot test.

  Spiritualism

  (sometimes with an initial capital, to denote the formal church) There is confusion in the use of this term. More correctly, it would be reserved for designating one who follows the religion which teaches that ghosts can be summoned up by spirit mediums and communicated with, and that these ghosts can even touch, move, and physically affect objects and persons.

  It began with the performances of the Fox sisters and is still an important religion in England. The correct term for one who merely believes in calling up spirits, asking them questions and receiving inane answers, could be spiritist. However, the longer word is more impressive and now almost universally used.

  The oldest spiritualist group still in existence is the National Spiritualist Association of Churches, which dates from 1893. In the United States, the National Spiritualist Alliance was founded in 1913.

  Spiritualitis

  A term coined by author L. Sprague de Camp for the condition afflicting researchers into spiritualism. He defines it thus:

  The symptoms of this malady are a tendency to sneer at the “limited range of view” and “dreary agnosticism” of unbelievers; to defend mediums as “men of high intelligence and probity” or “simple, honest, kind-hearted people” whose feats, even after exposure, “remain to this day absolutely inexplicable”; to blame exposures on evil spirits or a Jesuit plot; and to assert sweepingly but untruthfully that “every trained observer” who has investigated the phenomena has either been converted “or has been forced to admit that the phenomena are at present wholly inexplicable.”

  Spondylotherapy

  See Abrams, Dr. Albert.

  Spontaneous Human Combustion

  (SHC) A not-too-well-explained phenomenon in which solitary humans have, in some unknown manner, burned up almost entirely, usually in a closed room, without setting fire to the room beyond a possible hole in the floor, a chair and some nearby furnishings.

  Often, the subject is an alcoholic, usually elderly and smoking, sometimes known to regularly take sleeping pills. It is not difficult to see that such a combination could lead to the person catching fire. Forensic scientists point out that the “candle effect” may be responsible for the dramatically complete burning that often takes place in SHC. This effect is the result of human fat percolating out of a burning body, permeating the clothing and the stuffing of a chair, and thus burning as a giant candle wick.

  Some point to the fact that the room — and house! — do not also burn, but this may be a case of selective reasoning; when the house does burn down, the question does not arise, and that condition is far more likely to exist than the alternate.

  An excellent discussion of this phenomenon is the book of Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer, Secrets of the Supernatural, 1991.

  Spoon-Bending

  See psychokinesis.

  SPR

  See Society for Psychical Research.

  Sprite

  A small demon, fairy, or other spirit with some supernatural powers, though on a minor scale. Little is known or said about the sexuality, if any, of sprites. Probably not much to say, really.

  Steiner, Rudolf

  See Anthroposophy.

  Stigmata

  As religious phenomena, spontaneous wounds of the hands, feet, and right side of the body — corresponding to the traditional wounds on the body of Jesus Christ — first were reported by a chronicler of Saint Francis of Assisi in 1229.

  Among modern stigmatists — and there are many — were Padre Pio (1887-1968) and Teresa Neumann (1898-1962). These people exhibited the wounds to varying degrees, Ms. Neumann even crying tears of blood. When she was in a coherent state, she claimed that she had survived only on sacramental wafers and a sip of wine each day for thirty-five years.

  Since twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance would be necessary to establish the validity of these phenomena as miracles, no case of stigmata exists that can be said to be free of suspicion. The attitude of church officials who looked into the Neumann claim that wounds appeared in her palms spontaneously, reflects the general indifference to rigor exhibited in such inquiries. One investigator, Father P. Siwek, S.J., wrote that though he had “the gravest doubts about the genuineness of the marvels attributed to Teresa,” those doubts did not exclude the possibility of “solid Christian virtues and genuine mystical states.”

  It is also interesting to note that in all such cases, the wounds in the hands appear at the palms, which agrees with religious paintings but not with the actualities of crucifixion; the wounds should appear at the wrists.

  Stokes, Doris

  (1919-1987) Primarily as a clairaudient, U.K. psychic performer Ms. Stokes became very popular in Australia in the 1980s. Her techniques were essentially cold reading, though she also depended on obtaining information in person in advance from her clients, who were then encouraged to show up at her public appearances, at which time the information could be given back to them as if received psychically from the Great Beyond.

  Subuh, Pak Muhammad

  (1901-1983?) An Indonesian monk who began a movement called Subud (a contraction of three mystical Sanskrit words: sushila, budhi, and dharma) in which a mystical phenomenon known as “latihan” was said to come to followers who studied under an appropriately trained disciple. The latihan occurred after a few moments, days, months, or even years of study.

  In the late 1950s, U.K. mathematician/author J. G. Bennett, a devotee of Gurdjieff — who had just died — came under the influence of Pak Subuh, brought him to England, and financed his career, believing him to be the New Messiah. Movie actress Eva Bartok, recovering from personal tragedies, joined the movement in 1957 and brought with her a covey of admirers and sycophants. Two years later, the guru was so popular that a congress at Coombe Springs (near Salisbury) attracted more than four hundred delegates from forty countries.

  By 1960, interest in the cult had faded, Pak Subuh moved back to Indonesia and J. G. Bennett left the group and became a convert to Roman Catholicism.

  Succubus

  (plural, succubi) A female demon that copulates with men. The princess of all the succubi is Nahemah, believed by the profane to have now retired from royalty and to have opened an all-night diner in Red Bank, New Jersey.

  Summerland

  The expression used by spirit medium “The Poughkeepsie Seer” Andrew Jackson Davis to denote the place where one “goes” at death. The term was free of religious requirements, thus satisfying those who wished to embrace spiritualism without those entanglements.

  Survival-After-Death

  There is probably no question which has preoccupied our species more than whether we can survive after clinical death. It is believed that other species are not aware of their own mortality, though that seems difficult to establish with any certainty.

  Over the years, famous figures like Sir William Crookes, Sir Arthur Eddington, inventor Thomas Edison, magician Harry Houdini, philosopher David Hume, and Sir Oliver Lodge occupied themselves with looking into this eternal question. But one figure in recent history stands out as the most important and influential advocate of the reality of life after death: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the internationally famed creator of Sherlock Holmes and an ardent promoter of spiritualistic matters, accepted claims that full-form materializations of the dead could be produced during séances and that survival-after-death had been firmly established.

  Sylph

  An elemental spirit of the air. Seldom — if ever — seen.