This etching by James Tissot was inspired by an 1885 seance and was featured in Clairvoyance and Materialisation (1927) by Gustave Geley. A caption noted that "a double materialisation by the mediumship of Eglinton" was depicted. The light illuminating the visitors was described as "bluish-white."
This summer I completed a chapter about Spiritualism for my future book and was surprised by how many 19th Century and early 20th Century books on this subject—the famous as well as the obscure—are now available to be read without charge online at such websites as www.archive.org, www.hathitrust.org, www.spiritwritings.com, www.survivalebooks.org and Google Books.
Among the authors whose books I studied were Arthur Conan Doyle, W. Usborne Moore, Edward C. Randall and J. Arthur Findlay, to name a few. Some other books are mentioned in the preceding blog post. I read two books by Psychic News founder/editor Maurice Barbanell: his autobiographical This Is Spiritualism (1959, revised edition 1967) and The Case of Helen Duncan (1945).
In This Is Spiritualism Barbanell attempted to express the momentous implications of seance room phenomena. Here is one of his recollections from his book's third chapter "Voices From Beyond."
Spirit voices can sometimes be produced in ordinary light. I heard this phenomenon at a spontaneous and unexpected demonstration when I was in America. As part of my lecture tour, I had reached Lily Dale, New York, which is America's largest Spiritualist camp. It is not, as you might infer from this description, a collection of tents. It is a small town with two hotels which, in the summer months, becomes the Mecca of thousands interested in Spiritualism. Nearly all phases of psychic phenomena are demonstrated by as many as sixty or seventy mediums. There is an auditorium which holds two thousand people.
On the day of our arrival, a tea party was given in honour of my wife and myself. To it were invited all the mediums then staying in Lily Dale. It was a brilliant summer afternoon, with sunlight streaming through the windows. There was a hubbub of conversation, as is usual when seventy or eighty people are having tea. Many of them were smoking.
Yet in these surroundings, which I would have regarded as being unfavourable to psychic phenomena, I had an outstanding experience. My wife was introduced to a stranger, a medium named Mrs. Ann Keiser, who had come from Buffalo. I must stress that this was their first meeting.
Unexpectedly, a third voice broke into the conversation and announced itself as belonging to my wife's dead grandmother. She gave her name and mentioned that my wife had been named after her. This statement was correct and was one which the medium could not have known, seeing that the grandmother had died in Britain. I say this confidently because even I did not know that my wife had been named after her maternal grandmother. She had died when my wife was three years old.
Next came the equally audible spirit voice of my wife's dead brother, a victim of the First World War, who also gave his name and said: "I have been waiting for this opportunity to talk to you." My wife came to me to describe this unexpected happening.
I took Mrs. Keiser into an adjoining room, where there was less noise, wondering whether the demonstration would be repeated. At first there was a sibilant whisper, which gradually became louder, until my dead brother-in-law was speaking quite distinctly and in a masculine voice. All that he said was of a highly evidential nature, referred to matters which had arisen since I left England and answered some questions which were in my mind, though the medium knew nothing about them.
The spirit voice, so far as I could tell, came from the region of the medium's solar plexus. All the time that the voice was speaking, Mrs. Keiser's lips were tightly closed. This was a phenomenon that could not be explained away by ventriloquism. And it was certainly not the medium's voice.
This Is Spiritualism also offered some of Barbanell's remembrances of mediums Helen Duncan and Estelle Roberts, among others. Barbanell described a seance with Mrs. Duncan that he attended just prior to her sad 1944 trial when she was charged at London's Old Bailey courthouse under the archaic Witchcraft Act of 1735. Mrs. Duncan was known as a materialization (or 'physical') medium. At her seances, she was in a trance while there were seen and heard materialized people and 'simulacrums' (representations) of people from the ascended realm.
Despite the strain of her ordeal, she willingly offered us an experimental séance which was remarkable in its results. Yards and yards of ectoplasm streamed from her, and billowed and flowed in swirling masses until even experienced Spiritualists like myself gazed with astonishment at the spectacle.
With Helen Duncan I have been privileged to see the growth of a materialisation inside the cabinet. Outside, I have observed the ectoplasmic forms as they gradually dwindled in size until they resembled small globes of light, and then finally disappeared as if sinking through the floor.
Inside the cabinet, I have watched ectoplasm exude from the medium's nostrils, mouth and ears in waving billows of luminosity that gradually solidified into the six-foot figure of her guide.
Barbanell mentioned that he had handled some of the ectoplasm immediately after it had been produced: "It was always bone dry, and had a curious stiff 'feel' . . ."
The simulacrums associated with Mrs. Duncan and some other physical mediums are something worth pondering. The witnesses who saw these forms throughout the stages of materialization understood them to be authentic yet individuals who know little about seance room phenomena when confronted with this evidence might make hasty assumptions.
A Helen Duncan Simulacrum with Ectoplasmic Veil
Barbanell also recounted witnessing a materialization at a seance with Estelle Roberts. The being that appeared was her guide 'Red Cloud,' a Sioux Indian during his Earth life. Barbanell commented about 'spirit guides' frequently being Indians: "In the days of their prime, the North American Indians were masters of psychic laws, with a profound knowledge of supernormal forces and how they operated." Barbanell wrote that the materialization seance with Roberts was a rare occasion because this form of phenomena was not often seen at her seances.
Prior to the seance, Red Cloud had requested that two luminous plaques and a red torch (lantern) be placed in the seance room. "These were put in the curtained recess which became the improvised cabinet." The medium became entranced at the beginning of the seance.
The two luminous plaques floated out of the cabinet and passed in front of the curtains. Between their phosphorescent glow I soon discerned the silhouette of a face. From the direction of its lips, I heard a voice which I identified as belonging to Red Cloud. I have heard it too many times not to recognise it.
At his invitation I approached within two or three inches of the cabinet. "Give me your hand," he said to me, while proffering his own. We shook hands. There was no doubt that I was not holding the medium's hand. The materialized spirit hand was strong and masculine, entirely different from that of Estelle's, which is slim and unmistakably feminine."Feel my hair," was Red Cloud's next request. When I complied, I noticed and felt, that his hair was long and silky and reached almost to where his shoulders would be.
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During the seance, Barbanell stood very close to the materialized form of Red Cloud as the light from the red lantern illuminated his features. Barbanell recalled, "It was a handsome face, with eloquent eyes."
Helen Duncan
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