by David Jaher
He held in his hand a sinewy piece of thread. To his chagrin, Mrs. Crandon burst into laughter. She now realized it was all a game. Dr. McDougall, recent president of both the American and English SPR, had no natural explanation for her phenomena. Walking out of his office, she was struck by the absurdity of it all. McDougall wanted to hang her with a thread? She doubted that his mentor, William James, would have stooped to such burlesque.
♦
That afternoon, the Crandons met Malcolm Bird at the Back Bay Station. The medium looked strikingly different in her gray brocade jacket from what he was expecting. The female candidates the editor had thus far considered for the Scientific American program—Mesdames Bessinet, Stewart, and Tomson—were middle-aged, stout, and unrefined. In contrast, Mina was a youthful blonde, he observed, with fashionably bobbed hair. Comfortable behind the wheel, she drove them directly to Lime Street.
They had barely sat down for dinner—the Crandons, Bird, and Aleck Cross—before Mina brought up her interview with Dr. McDougall. It sounded to Bird like the bearding of the lion of Harvard Psychology in his den. She said that he had subjected her to a medley of threats, cajolery, kindness, and persuasion in trying to get her to concede false spookery. She did a fine imitation of McDougall haranguing her like an underclassman caught cheating on an exam. She appeared to be hurt and confused, though. What did he think she had to gain from faking psychic manifestations?
“It was impossible for her to talk about anything other than the allegation of fraud, or to listen to anything else for more than a minute at a time,” Bird remembered. She was reacting with the genuine indignation, he thought, of one falsely accused. But if Lime Street was—like the committee’s other cases—another dead end, he didn’t blame Dr. McDougall for wanting to get there sooner rather than later. Bird was as determined to find out whether Mina was genuine or a cultured impostor. He told her he knew that Harry Helson had discovered a thread attached to a stool that Walter was supposed to have propelled across the room. In response she produced a piece of string for Bird, though not the actual piece of evidence. If he were to find it on the floor after a séance, what would he think? she asked him. He said it looked to him like the raveling from a rug. But what about this matter of it being tied to a chair?
Helson, she flared, had not found anything tied to a chair! He didn’t? puzzled Bird. From the other side of the table, Roy insisted that he was ready to accept a plausible explanation for his wife’s effects, but none of the psychologists had come up with one. Then Aleck described how Walter tore the spirit cabinet to pieces around McDougall, and suggested there were bad feelings between the ghost and the alienist.
While touring the house after dinner, Bird recognized one strong impediment to any investigation. Ten Lime Street had an elaborate layout, and he knew that it would not be easy to secure the place for a controlled experiment. “It possesses an architectural complexity (largely the result of extensive remodeling) which surpasses belief,” he noted. “There are two flights of back stairs, affording four independent points of access to the front of the house; there is a butler’s pantry with a dumb-waiter. The whole house fairly teems with curious closets, crannies, cubbyholes large and small, blind shaftways, etc., the utility or necessity of which is not always apparent. The more mysterious ones doubtless occupy space that hung heavy on the remodeler’s hands, but even when one has formulated this idea some of them are very puzzling.”
The couple, he felt, were less eccentric than their residence. Even as the evening progressed and the conversation flowed naturally toward its macabre channels, Bird found the Crandons engaging and refreshingly rational. When he spoke of his aversion to the occult, he knew that Roy understood his language. The doctor had a strong grasp of physics and chemistry. And Bird was as impressed with the Crandons’ obvious social credentials. A stranger to their sphere, he was of much humbler origins. Bird’s roots were in Brooklyn, where his father had been a carpenter. It was his gift for science and mathematics that had advanced him: to Cornell and Columbia, and now to his position at the journal. For all his studiousness, though, Bird was no “scientific iceberg,” and he would soon have a good rapport with the medium. Whoever said the Boston gentry were stuffy, he reflected, had not spent an evening with the Crandons.
If Mina were the mistress of a den of tricksters, as McDougall had hinted, then she was ready to show her guest how the plot was masterminded. “She has a sense of humor quite as wicked as my own,” Bird realized. “My visit at this time was made into one continuous circus by the fashion in which that confederacy theory was batted about the house.” It began when he explained how magicians use horsehair to invisibly levitate objects; hence McDougall’s theory as to how she caused the table to rise. Amused, Mrs. Crandon led Bird on a search for damning evidence. He was in stitches as she pointed out various features of the Lime Street architecture or its furnishings, and gravely explained its role in the ruse. They looked for threads and horsehairs under ashtrays and teacups. They sought out accomplices in the closets and lifted up rugs that might cover trapdoors. At one point Mina dramatically thrust open drapes behind which one of her coven might hide, though she claimed to have no idea whom that might be.
The Crandons’ maid, Lydia, was too scatterbrained for flimflam, she decided. Lydia would walk into a séance and blurt to the Harvard investigators that she forgot to crank the Victrola that played the spectral sounds. Aleck Cross was too clumsy to tiptoe about in the dark. Bird and Mina agreed that it was the Japanese butler who was her partner in crime. “If we cracked one joke about strings we cracked a hundred,” Bird wrote. He believed their horseplay was her way of dealing with the strain that came of her visit to McDougall. She captivated Bird as no medium had before. But the Scientific American was not offering a prize for ethereal beauty and charm. He sought to discover her methods, he later said, by getting her to let down her hair.
As the magazine’s psychic detective, Bird was thought to be “bad medicine for fake ghosts.” In fact, Dr. Crandon suggested that the Harvard researchers may have been in a hurry to expose Mina before Bird got the credit for unveiling yet another hoax. As it turned out, the Boston medium would not be thwarted by a thread; she was vindicated practically as soon as Bird took on the case. Harry Helson, the investigator who plucked the string from the floor, stopped by Lime Street the day after Bird arrived. He said that he wanted to make amends. Just as Roy had conjectured, Helson admitted that he had been too eager to solve the mystery that was puzzling his department. The string had not been attached to any object; he claimed to have been misquoted on that score. He produced the incriminating thread and conceded that it was identical to the rug fringe Bird showed him. With no other evidence, Helson apologized for offending the Crandons. The witch was absolved. Later McDougall called to say that he was withdrawing his accusatory letter. He too apologized. By Bird’s account, it hadn’t been a good showing by the Harvard boys.
The following day, Bird visited the lion in his den. “I can’t seem to impress upon these impulsive young men that they mustn’t get ahead of their research,” McDougall said. He also confirmed with a grudging smile that Mrs. Crandon’s version of her unpleasant interview with him was “substantially correct.” But contrary to what McDougall might expect, the Crandons were willing to continue with the Harvard tests. Neither he nor Helson was to be banished from Lime Street. Most psychics Bird knew, including Ada Bessinet, refused to sit with researchers who expressed doubts about their work. It was to her credit, both men agreed, that Mina was willing to perform again for the wary Harvard group. What had made him suspicious from the beginning, McDougall confessed, was how unusually clever the lady seemed. Bird responded that psychics need not be morons to be genuine, though he wanted to avoid any assumptions about Mrs. Crandon until he had a chance to sample the goods.
That night he heard the hair-raising whistle and greetings from Mina’s dead brother for the first time. Walter’s mannish voice was so different from the medium
’s that Bird could not imagine the same vocal cords producing both sounds. He could see, though, that both siblings liked to banter. To Walter, the important New York visitor was “Birdie”—a writer to be made fun of for his quaint attire, as Bird dressed like an Oxford don. Yet aside from the vocal effects, the ghost was not active. Roy explained that the medium’s force was unaccountably weak.
At the sitting the next evening, they weren’t favored with a visitation for some time. What was the matter? Kitty asked. When finally the Crawford table began to move, something was different. Walter typically turned the table in a circular motion. It moved this time in more of a straight and jerky fashion—a sign that an unfamiliar spirit was in control. The intruder would only communicate by the old method, abrupt tilts that spelled out yes or no. Churlishly, it answered no to every question put to it. All were relieved when the energy seemed to change and Walter returned. The table started dancing to the circular movements that were his trademark. But Big Brother did not stay; soon the other personality was directing the psychic. A frightening male whisper—“Break the circle, quick!”—was heard. It was like all hands abandoning ship when the sitters pushed away from the table. Only Mrs. Crandon remained—oblivious in her trance to any danger. Without waking, she urged her nervous friends back into the circle. Thinking that unwise, Dr. Crandon turned on the lights to wake her. She abruptly went into a seizure. Her body jerked wildly, her limbs thrashing against the spirit cabinet. Her face took on a feral expression. She spewed curses “in tones of the mud gutter,” Bird observed, “rather than the Back Bay.” Suddenly, the intruder barked, “Get the hell out of here!” as Walter tried to come through. To all appearances there was a struggle for control of the medium. “It was obvious that, genuinely or fictitiously we had to do with an evil possession,” Bird realized. He didn’t know whether a priest or psychologist was more needed on Lime Street.
The following night the Harvard group was invited to sit with Mrs. Crandon once again, both at the dinner table and for a séance. Dr. McDougall thought it improper to return so soon after offending the psychic, but Roback was there, along with Helson and Gardner Murphy—the alternate judge in the Scientific American contest. As the séance proceeded, the researchers realized that the medium was in no better form. She demonstrated only the least impressive table effects; the mysterious intruder was still preventing her brother from manifesting. Bird found it more disturbing that the table continually shot toward him, confirming the suspicions of the medium’s friends: that the Scientific American editor, being the only stranger to the circle, was responsible for attracting the dark spirit. He was taken aback by their attitude. The psychics had often considered him an energizing presence—he was not used to being thought of as a demon carrier.
It was decided that he and the Harvard group should leave the house, to see if the medium was less inhibited without them. Stepping outside the Crandons’ front door, Bird lit a cigarette and stared up at the red-hued room where Walter was presumably battling the other wraith. A full moon shone overheard; and as the scientists took their late-night stroll, Bird wondered if it was more to blame for the medium’s hysterics.
In the meantime, Mina’s friends were able to contact Walter. He told them that the interfering force was on a lower plane, closer to them than he was—therefore it was easier for the intruder to control the medium. Big Brother said the situation was only dangerous if Mina slipped into trance. It was OK to hold séances, he allowed, as long as she was conscious. But if he said to break the circle, then they had better break it, he warned.
At the séance the next evening, Bird sat with a circle on pins and needles. Seeing how vigilant the ABC Club was, lest she slip into trance, Mrs. Crandon teased, “The goblins’ll get you if you don’t watch out for me!” She had as much fun with the scientists. When the table moved slightly, Helson complained that he was tired of that kind of phenomena. He wanted Walter’s more exciting stuff. “Let’s get on to levitation and the music,” he urged. It was a remark that Bird felt disqualified the Harvard rug hopper from psychical research—if his previous misconduct had not already done so. Mina explained that she was helpless without her magic thread that lifted tables and pulled piano strings. At this crack, they all laughed—even Helson. Moments later, Aleck Cross began acting strangely. No longer alarmed, the sitters found it amusing when he left the circle. A short time later, Gardner Murphy announced that he had to make a train back to New York and departed. The commotion led Mina to wonder if Walter had ordered them to break the circle. Yet her brother had not returned.
All agreed that they would try a final time to contact Walter. The sitters were still chattering when Roy turned the lights down. Bird soon noticed that Mina had become silent. Someone announced that she was in trance. Before any of them could wake her, the intruder was back. The medium made anguished noises. She kicked over her chair and toppled onto the floor, overturning the spirit cabinet. Dr. Crandon warned that in this state she couldn’t be allowed to break the circle. At his command, four of the men struggled to hold Mina. Her resistance was fierce, though the seizure was shorter than it had been the previous evening. She came out of it moaning, as if waking from a disturbing dream. If she is faking this, thought Bird, she ought to be in movies.
On his way back to New York, Bird mulled over what he had seen. Dr. McDougall had indicated that this case might have more to do with abnormal psychology than supernatural possession. He had sensed something illicit in the relationship between the spirit and the medium. At one sitting, Walter told his sister to remove her corset, as the stays were impeding his force. She complied, according to McDougall. Riding on his train, Bird pictured her undressing in the scarlet light while the Harvard professors watched her every move.
Much about the case would have interested Dr. Freud, the psychologists decided. As for Bird, he was impressed with the sincerity of the medium, and he found her unusually gifted, even if he had witnessed none of the physical effects that baffled the other researchers. It worried him, moreover, that Walter had open contempt for the Harvard team. “It takes a crook to catch one,” the ghost had said of the investigators trying to discredit his sister. Yet for a change it was science on the defensive. Two nights earlier, while walking down Beacon Hill with the alienists, Bird heard Gardner Murphy interpret the case according to the Freudian model. Walter was the Id—a primal force unleashed in the darkness; Mina the Ego—the ghost’s conduit; and the investigators, particularly McDougall, the Superego that would not abide Walter, for his effects were a violent assault on a scientist’s beliefs and authority. The idea that a ghost might really exist was hard to swallow even for many psychical researchers. They believed in supernormal phenomena while doubting that discarnate beings were the cause.
Whatever was at the root of the clash, Bird saw that it made great drama. Back in New York, he informed Orson Munn that there had been a war between the Crandons and the Harvard scientists. Who won? Mr. Munn wanted to know. The medium won, Bird told him.
The White Dove
And moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The appearance of the malefic spirit that Bird had carried like a bug to Beacon Hill was thought to be only a temporary setback to the Crandon mediumship. But even if Mrs. Crandon shook it off, Roy was wary of the invasive attention that came with the Scientific American tests. The Crandons had just gone through a war with McDougall, and were not sold on Bird’s psychic tournament. Despite that, they were ready to work with other scientists. In December, the only month that Roy could get away from his medical practice, he and Mina planned to visit France and England, where they would hold séances for the venerable European researchers. “There was accordingly little time for peaceful resumption of the Lime Street routine after the war,” wrote Bird. Under a dark pall, Harry Helson tried to test the
medium. He arranged a séance at the Harvard Psychological Laboratory, and left the ABC Club alone there with Mina—so that she might orient herself to a new environment.
The sitting started with promising table action, yet Walter indicated that he was not in control of the psychic. Then one in the group foolishly brought up Bird, the mention of whose name seemed to cause a disturbance. Walter gave the signal to break the circle. The séance was over. The bells of Harvard’s Memorial Church would not toll that night to ghostly accompaniment. Days later the sittings were resumed in Roy’s den. Though the intruder was gone, Mrs. Crandon produced little more than verbal communications from her brother. Then, on November 25, Walter promised to do something showstopping.
He would cause a live dove, he said, to pass through the walls of 10 Lime Street. If the thing were done, it would be another bolt hurled at the skeptics. While such “apports,” as researchers called them, were often faked, some believed that certain mediums had the power to manifest objects and even living creatures directly from the ether. Those who credited the effect speculated that dematerialized animals and articles could be conveyed through the molecular interspace in walls and closed doors, then restored to solidity as they appeared on the séance table. It was the psychic equivalent of Houdini walking through walls, and Mrs. Crandon had never done anything like it. When Walter announced that he would try an apport, the ABC Club was thrilled; though there was chuckling when one sitter suggested that the ghost apport a kitten instead, and Kitty Brown requested a human baby from the fourth dimension.