The Mammoth Book of True Hauntings

by Haining, Peter

  Hope, when he sits at the College, enjoys quarters specially reserved for him. This includes two small rooms on the top floor, one serving as the studio and one as the dark-room. The only entrance to the suite is through the studio. This room has one window, opening out of doors. It is furnished with a bare table, a few chairs, and the oldest, most disreputable camera in the world. As Mrs McKenzie very pertinently says: “you mention the meagre furnishing of the studio. We purposely do this, for if we had other cameras about, or any appliances, we should immediately be suspect.” The general effect upon me was well in line with the psychology of this remark; I looked about the room, and asked myself how in the world fraud could be committed here.

  The camera, by the way, is Hope’s property rather than that of the College. It was given him by Archdeacon Colley, years ago, and he always uses it. Quoting Mrs McKenzie again, “he has another camera provided by a group of friends, but as some feel happier with a special pen or a favorite old smoking jacket, he likes his old camera.” Whether he uses the same box at Crewe, and brings it to London with him, I do not know.

  The dark-room is even more startling in its poverty than the studio. There is a single large washing basin, part of the plumbing; there are three developing trays, three jars of chemicals on a wooden shelf, one glass beaker, and three wooden plate-holders; and there is a red lamp on either side of the room. That is literally all. Sir Arthur’s habit is to refer to this equipment and to Hope himself with the phrase that Hope is “unquestionably the worst professional or semiprofessional photographer in the world.” He is certainly the worst equipped, and I suspect that the plain adjective is not unmerited.

  His recent imbroglio with the organized researchers has made Hope realize that test conditions of some sort are his only protection. Hence he sits, now, only with control substantially as found in my session with him. In particular, he insists that all plates used be brought in, in the original seals, by the sitter. I had been advised of this, and, on the morning of the séance, I purchased at the Westminster Photographic Exchange, in Victoria St, a package of a dozen rapid quarter-plates, the size used by Hope’s camera. This store, I might say, was neither dictated nor suggested to me; I found it in the classified telephone book, and selected it as the nearest to my hotel of the supply stores there listed. After getting the plates, I dropped the package in my pocket, and carried it about with me until I reached the séance room. From the time it was selected until the time it was used it was not out of my possession, save as detailed below; and never was it out of my sight.

  The seats at the table, in numerical order, were occupied by Mr. Hope, Mrs. Buxton, Sir Arthur, Sir X, Y, Z., Mr. Bird and Lady X, Y, Z., During the actual photography, the places 7–10 were occupied, respectively, by Sir Arthur, Mr. Bird, Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton.

  Arrangement of the rooms and the sitters at the photographic seance with William Hope

  There were to be present Sir Arthur and myself, and two friends of the Doyles, Sir X Y Z and Lady Z. The two mediums – Hope and Mrs Buxton – made six in the party in the studio. The four “sitters” taxied out to Holland Park together after luncheon in Sir X Y Z’s apartment. Sir Arthur was very perturbed by the muggy weather. It appears that of all plates exposed by Hope, about one in seven shows a psychic extra. One never knows whether one will draw a blank or not; and damp weather is supposed greatly to interfere with the exercise of any mediumistic powers.

  The Zs were introduced to the mediums by name; so was I, without mention of my identity or even of my profession. Examination of the premises was first in order, with the general result noted above. I gave my detailed attention to the camera and the other tools of the photographer’s profession that were to be used. I am not a professional photographer, but I believe I know what to look for in examining a camera for evidences of trickery. Both box and lens were gone over carefully, without result; but the reservation ought to be made that a pin hole in the bellows, capable of admitting enough light to affect the plate moderately, could perhaps not have been found with the eye. As far as any actual extraneous apparatus inside the box or on the lens is concerned, there wasn’t any.

  Hope uses no shutter, nor even a lens cap; he makes his exposures by covering and uncovering the camera with the black focussing cloth, after the removal of the dark slide. This struck me as rather curious technique, and I accordingly examined the cloth in question with even more care than I should ordinarily have employed. I found nothing suspicious.

  The three plate-holders were handed me, and I was asked to select one. Having done so, I examined this holder with extreme care. It had been thoroughly marked by numerous previous sitters, so that substitution could not profitably have been attempted. Having been examined, it went into my pocket and stayed there until it was needed in the dark-room.

  The door was now locked, and the six sitters drew up to the table. The package of plates, still with its original wrapper intact, was transferred from my pocket to the center of the table. The six of us joined hands about the table, and hymns were sung, without music, to the best of our miserable collective ability. Once or twice Hope or Mrs Buxton interpolated a prayer. Presently Mrs Buxton took the package between her hands; Hope added his hands outside hers; and the rest of us, one at a time, followed suit. The package remained above the table and in plain sight here, in its nest of hands. The pose was held for several minutes while Mrs Buxton, apparently in silent prayer, “influenced” the plates. Nobody knows, least of all the mediums, if their claims be valid, in just what this process consists. The procedure is an empirical one, and the nearest one can come to rational explanation is some rather loose statements about harmonious currents and harmonious vibrations.

  While the plates were having the spell placed upon them, it was explained again that we might draw a blank, and speculation was indulged in whether this would be the issue. At a word from Hope, the preliminaries were ended; I regained, identified and pocketed the package of plates and Hope and I adjourned to the dark room. During the“influencing” Mrs Buxton gave a convulsive little shudder, like a man with a fly in his ear; this Sir Arthur announced, on the basis of previous experience, to be an almost certain sign that we should have results.

  In the dark-room, Hope did not once touch the plates. I was quite aware of the fact that if he did touch them, nothing that might be found on them would be of the slightest significance; therefore it may be taken for granted that whatever else I may have missed, I watched effectively for this. He stood at my shoulder, superintending my manipulation of the glasses and occasionally offering a suggestion; but he did not at any time, under cover of this, attempt to put his hands upon them.

  I took the package from my pocket and broke the wrappings. Before I got past the outer one, Hope reminded me that the plates were in pairs, hinged together by a flap of the emulsion; and he suggested that I decide, now, which ones I should use. Whether this was suspicious I am not quite sure. It certainly made it impossible, thereafter, for him to force any particular plate upon me; it also, if he had means for exposing the plates to an extra image in the darkroom, enabled him to know what plates thus to expose, without waiting until I had actually got them in my hands en route to the holder.

  I chose the bottom plate of the first pair, and the top plate of the second pair. When I had got the four topmost plates separated from their common inner wrapper, I broke the second away from the first and the third away from the fourth with considerable difficulty. In doing this I was rather inclined to think that I might have touched the emulsion side of one of them, with the ball of my thumb, but said nothing of this. As I got each of the desired plates free, I laid it on the table before me, emulsion side up, and traced my name on it with a blunt lead pencil. I then rewrapped the remaining ten plates and replaced them in my pocket, since it was necessary to keep them under control against the subsequent use of two more of them; and only when I had them thus out of sight and mind did I get the plateholder out of my other pocket. It was of a
type unfamiliar to me, and Hope had to tell me what to do; but he scrupulously refrained from pointing or making any other false moves. There was a glass slide outside of each plate, and these I signed as I had signed the plates, to insure against substitution of the entire ensemble or of the slides alone. I finally got the plates, the glass slides and the dark slides in place, latched the holder, and restored it to my pocket. Then we returned to the studio, where the others awaited us.

  Sir Arthur and I were to sit together for the first exposure, I alone for the second. Hope focussed the camera upon the two empty chairs, and called me to verify the range and direction. He shifted the hood to the front of the camera; I placed the holder in its seat and removed the dark slide. Sir Arthur by this time was in his seat; I went to mine. Hope raised the hood, held it clear of the camera for about fifteen seconds, and dropped it back into place. During this time he and Mrs Buxton stood at either side of the camera and slightly behind it, with hands joined above it, Hope’s free hand holding the cloth, and Mrs Buxton’s free member resting lightly upon the box, in plain view.

  The exposure terminated, I rose to replace the dark slide and remove the plate-holder. In writing up the sitting in the June issue of the Scientific American, I indicated that I replaced it, reversed, immediately. This was obviously an error; the camera would have to be focussed, first, upon the single chair which I was to occupy in the second exposure. My notes indicate that the camera was not disturbed, but that focussing was accomplished by moving the chair. My recollection would contradict this. The point is of some importance, since in the one case we can insist that the camera was in exactly the same condition for both exposures and in the other we cannot. In any event, I have a very distinct remembrance that focussing was accomplished while I stood beside the camera with the plate-holder assembly in my hand, in order to be sure that this should be properly reversed. I glanced through the instrument to verify the focussing with Sir Arthur in my chair, and then replaced the plate-holder in its grooves. The exposure was made as before, and again I accompanied the medium into the dark-room.

  If I were having a series of test sittings, I should insist that, part of the time at least, the medium stay out of the dark-room. His presence there, no matter how strongly one may insist upon his inaction, will always be attacked, and the very pertinent question proposed: “What was he doing there, anyhow; why couldn’t he stay outside during loading and development?” In a single sitting like mine, this question is easily answered; he didn’t stay outside because he was as much privileged to regard me with suspicion as I, him.

  Hope got down his beaker and his two jars, and mixed his developer. He was ready with it before I was ready with the plates; to keep him busy I managed to knock it over with my elbow and he had to mix it afresh. The precaution was doubtless superfluous, but certainly harmless. When he was ready again, I had my plates out of the holder and waiting for him in the developing tray. The latter, by the way, I had scratched across with my thumb-nail quite thoroughly, so that it might at least be hoped that if there were the makings of an extraneous image on it, I should effect recognizable damage thereon. I poured the contents of the beaker in, and proceeded with the rocking of the plates. The images came out slowly; but in a couple of minutes it became obvious that the plate with the single portrait on it, at least, was going to show some extras. In a moment or two more the other one was sufficiently developed to make sure that it would be normal.

  Development completed, the negatives were placed in the fixing bath, and a report made to those in the studio. All waited in great tension until the fixing was complete; and were then disappointed to find that, as is usually the case, one could not say from the negative whether one recognized the extra or not. Prints would not be ready until next day, and I was obliged to leave for Paris that evening. It was arranged that prints should go to Sir Arthur, who would hand them to me on board the Olympic; and, as a very special concession on the part of the College, quite opposed to their ordinary routine and seldom if ever made before, it was agreed that I might have the negative too. I examined the negative very carefully before leaving it, and again on getting it back on the ocean. It had not been altered in any respect.

  The prints have been carefully examined by all four sitters and both mediums, and the clear extra has not been recognized – it is not necessary to make this statement of the other mark, between the good extra and my own head, which might by a liberal exercise of the imagination be a human face but by no stretch an identifiable one. This result is not at all unusual; in only a minority of cases is the“psychic extra” recognizable as pertaining to one of the sitters.

  Sir X Y Z and his Lady next sat twice, together each time, with Sir XYZ playing the rôle in the dark-room which I had played during my half of the sitting. They used plates from the second four of my package. They got no extras, nor any extraneous mark of any description whatever.

  The photograph is either the product of fraud, or a genuine psychic phenomenon – not necessarily spirit, but merely psychic, supernormal. One who takes it to be a fraud must make a plausible showing as to how it could have been produced, under the conditions described. Substitution of plates or pre-preparation of a plate absolutely will not do. Whatever else Hope may have put over on me, he certainly did not put that over.

  Admittedly, photography is peculiarly susceptible to tricks which are difficult of discovery. There is no thought of presenting a complete catalog of these, but some of the types of fraud which might be attempted by a fake psychic photographer may well be considered in the present connection. A member of the faculty of the College of the City of New York, who sat some time ago with Hope, with a result similar to mine, puts forward one suggestion involving nothing more elaborate than ordinary sleight of hand. Working from the obvious fact that the extra image could be obtained by slipping a thin celluloid transparency, showing the face clear on a slightly opaque ground, into the camera with the plate-holder and immediately in front of the latter, he catalogs the following suspicious circumstances:

  Hope wore a coat considerably too large for him, with loose sleeves and large pockets. He used an old camera with very loosely fitting plate-holders. He used, not a lens-cap or a shutter, but the dark cloth, and this hung down in front of the camera in such a way as to hide it and part of Hope’s body. He posed the subject against a plain background which was dull but not black. All this gave, in the case of the gentleman who puts forward the suggestion, ample opportunity for the clandestine insertion of such a transparency as is described above, and this gentleman has since then got an amateur conjurer to play the trick upon an intelligent audience with complete success. All his suspicious details were repeated at my sitting.

  If such a transparency were used, the plate that was exposed through it would have to stay longer in the camera, or else would be much slower in developing. The exposures were not timed, but to my best judgment were of approximately equal duration. I am quite certain that both came out substantially with equal speed in the developer. I have a rather distinct recollection that the four hands of the two mediums were in plain sight throughout the exposure; whether one of them took a brief trip under the black cloth while I was seating myself would of course be much harder for me to say. If the transparency were in front of the plateholder, it could easily be of such size that there would be no danger of my bringing it out with the latter. It would have been used on my second exposure; and the mediums would have had opportunity to recover it, during the examination of my negative and before Sir X Y Z sat.

  Such a transparency represents only one of a large number of ways in which the plate could have been surreptitiously exposed to an extra of some sort. Perhaps the most dangerous possibility lies in the very curious type of plateholder used. Not alone in its fashion of opening with a hinge does this depart from standard American practice, but the use of a glass screen over each plate is apparently quite superfluous and certainly very suspicious. There are no grooves sufficient to hold the plat
e in place after the removal of the dark slide; instead of being slipped in from one edge, the plate is laid in the open holder, the glass slide laid in over it, and the frame shut down upon the latter – or perhaps the glass slide is an integral part of the frame, I am not sure which. In any event, it is abundantly clear that an image could be stencilled upon the glass screen and thereby impressed upon the plate. Such an image might be actually radio-active, or it might be a chemical substance that would sufficiently affect the passage of light to make an impression upon the plate, without being visible to the eye. In the latter event, the slide would presumably be treated as the transparency of the previous suggestion.

  Another possibility which was in my mind at the time of the séance, and which has been put forward by several correspondents in response to my Scientific American article describing this sitting, is that a radio-active image was upon Mrs Buxton’s palm while she was influencing the plates in their package. At the time, I was under the impression that this was sufficiently guarded against by the fact that Sir X Y Z’s two plates, from my package, showed no extra. But on giving more careful consideration to the matter, it appears that this is not quite the case.

  Sir X Y Z did not use my two plates, left over from the package of four at the top of my dozen. Had he done so, I should have been completely protected, since no radio-active or X-rayed image could have reached either of my plates without penetrating, and leaving an impression upon, one of his. But both of his were below both of mine in the package. If this trick were played, my plate that shows the extra must have been the second in the pile; and after the paper wrappings, the rays carrying the extraneous image would have had to penetrate only the glass and the film of the first plate to reach the film of this one. To reach the film of the next one, however, they would have to penetrate the film of the second, and the glass of both second and third – one more film and two more glasses. (The first and second plates are packed with their film sides together, as are the third and fourth.) It seems barely possible, though not at all probable, that rays strong enough to go through one glass and make so marked an impression as my best extra, would be cut down by two further glasses below the point where they would make any visible impression at all. The glasses rather than the films are the critical element here, because whatever of opacity may have been present was in them and not in the films. Had I realized the absence of absolute proof here, at the time of the sitting, I should have developed the two idle plates. If they showed no extras it would be proved that the package, as such, was not tampered with.