A Medium Whose Work was 'Beyond Belief' Among People Ignorant about Spiritualism

These photographs show entranced medium Margery Crandon with ectoplasm materializing.  (more photos)

Margery Crandon (1888-1941) is one of the renowned mediums who became an acquaintance of Spiritualist journalist Maurice Barbanell (1902-1981).  She is the subject of a chapter in Power of the Spirit, his 1949 memoir about the diverse manifestations associated with Spiritualism that he'd personally witnessed.  Arthur Conan Doyle in his autobiography The Edge of the Unknown (1930) referred to the phenomena occurring in the presence of Margery as being "perhaps the best attested in the whole annals of psychical research."   Upon writing about Margery's passing, Maurice described her as "the eighth wonder of the world."  He reminisced in Power of the Spirit:

When my wife and I were her guests, at her Boston home and her seaside cottage not far away, we witnessed the extraordinary range and versatility of her mediumship for which, during the whole of her psychic career, she never charged a penny.

Though she was the centre of world-wide controversy and had many calumniators, Margery refused to speak ill of her opponents.  One test arranged for my wife and me was a striking one, but so that you should appreciate it I would like to supply the background.

Margery's interest in Spiritualism was aroused when her husband, a medical man of distinction, read the experiments in physical mediumship conducted by Professor Crawford at Belfast.  Crandon was so intrigued that he wondered whether he could obtain similar results in his own home.  At a series of regular sittings, he discovered that his wife was the medium.  The first to communicate was her Canadian brother, Walter Stinson, who was killed in a railway accident.  After Walter had proved his survival in ways that left no doubt of identity he became the presiding spirit genius at all his sister's seances.

First, they had elementary psychic phenomena—rappings and movements of the table.  Later, there came trance and direct voice, apports, the production of ectoplasm, materialisation, the passing of matter through matter, spirit writing in foreign languages and cross-correspondence—by this means messages given in part to different circles, separated by many miles, formed a sequential communication when pieced together.  It was a cross-correspondence test in which I took part.

Through the years, the evidence for Survival accumulated until one day Walter said, "What more proof do you require?"  They told him that fingerprints were considered indisputable proof of identity.  Walter asked them to provide wax and hot water in the seance room, and thumbprints which he said belonged to him began to arrive.  They were able to check these with part of Walter's thumbprint found on a razor he has used shortly before his death.

Not satisfied, Walter introduced variations.  At first the thumbprints were positive, which is the normal result.  Then came negative thumbprints, which meant that the ridges became indentations and the indentations became ridges.

 

 

The next stage was to produce negative thumbprints which were both convex and concave.  Walter complicated matters with mirror thumbprints, so that while they corresponded with the others, ridge for ridge, they were reversed.  All these thumbprints, which he produced one hundred and thirty-one times—when enlarged they showed perfect details of normal skin anatomy, sweat glands and characteristic loops and whorls—were confirmed by Government or police officials in Washington, Boston, Munich, Vienna and Scotland Yard.

 

 

Maurice reminded that the thumbprints among other phenomenal fingerprints were taken under rigidly controlled conditions and Margery "endured it all without complaint."  Shown above is one of the photographs too unexpected for belief among people who knew nothing about the phenomena of Spiritualism (encompassing materialized people and 'simulacrums' 1, 2) during the 20th Century.  Formed from ectoplasm, a materialized hand is seen making a print in dental wax.

Maurice Barbanell observed about Margery Crandon:

Her home at 10, Lime Street, Boston, became the most famous address in Spiritualism.  She gave seances to scientists whose names were world-famous.  Conjurers, lawyers, doctors, authors, clergymen and psychic researchers of all kinds were the guests of the Crandons.  Dozens of books were written about her mediumship.  In thousands of newspapers and magazines, millions of words appeared discussing her psychic powers.  Her seance room became a battlefield, and its happenings caused heated debates, controversies, disputes and arguments.  Some psychic researchers who came as friends and guests repaid their hospitality with vitriolic attacks.  Still, the Crandons made many friends—and many enemies, for they were guilty of the unforgivable sin of upsetting orthodox notions in science and religion.

In their study I saw some signed portraits.  "To Margery in gratitude and appreciation," was the inscription under the picture of Sir Oliver Lodge.  "Two splendid fighters for truth," was the tribute on the photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife.  Though, for many years Margery and her husband faced hostility, ridicule and antagonism, they remained calm, even when one opponent descended to such depths as describing their home as "a house of ill fame."  You must remember that they lived in priest-ridden Boston, where four-fifths of the population are Roman Catholics.

 

 

The Crandons, two modern martyrs, endured their persecution with smiling courtesy.  They would protest, if you spoke harshly of even their worst traducers.  I remember when I introduced Houdini's name, she replied, "He's my friend."  Yet Houdini vilified her all over the United States.  The first time he arrived in her home he said: "How do you do?  I am going to make five hundred thousand dollars out of this.  Think of the publicity I am going to get.  Why, you can get me front-page publicity every day.  I can't get it any more for myself."

When Margery repeated, "He's my friend," I reminded her of the occasion when Houdini secretly "planted" a ruler in the seance room so that when it was later discovered she would be accused of fraud.  She laughed and told me how, disguised in a blonde wig, she sat in the front row of Boston's largest hall to hear Houdini denounce her as "a fraud and a fake."

Crandon treated his wife's mediumship in a spirit of scientific detachment.  He was modest about her psychic achievements and asked that the name of Crandon should, as far as possible, be kept out of all references to his wife's mediumship.  In the talks I had with him he always referred to the mediumship of Margery, the name that was given to his wife—her own was Mina—in what seemed to be an impersonal manner.  The last time I met him, in London, he was going to pay a friendly call on some psychic researchers, whom he named.  I was surprised because they were among his traducers.

Crandon's attitude was to state the facts of the mediumship as impartially as he could and to leave others to draw their inferences from the facts.  On this occasion, he showed me three remarkable apports [materialized objects], one of them a large piece of amethyst in quartz formation.  It was nearly as big as a man's fist.  He told me, however, that he deliberately absented himself from the seance room when Walter promised the production of apports in case he might be regarded as a possible confederate.

Whenever another scientist who had come to inquire suggested a new test with specially devised apparatus to prevent the possibility of mal-observation, the Crandons agreed to its being used.  And always Walter triumphed, even under the most rigid conditions, in producing results.  When it was once suggested that his thumbprint resembled a living man's—this was not really an argument against the supernormality of his results but an allegation that fingerprints were not an infallible proof of identity—Walter's answer was to reproduce both his hands in wax.  Conan Doyle once returned through Margery's mediumship and autographed one of his books in writing that exactly matched his earthly signature.


Margery was a simple, honest woman, who could not cheat because trickery was foreign to her nature.  If you knew her you knew that fact.  The days I spent in her Boston home and seaside cottage are among my most treasured memories.

Walter suggested at an impromptu seance that we should have a test of cross-correspondence.  He asked Captain John W. Fife, head of Boston's naval dockyard, to select six people who were to choose a word or object the next night at 7 p.m.  Walter would then try to give this word to Margery and Sary Litzelman, another Boston medium who obtained her results by automatic writing.

Fife was starting the next morning on an automobile trip with his children.  He knew he would be motoring through New Hampshire, but he did not know where he would be at 7 p.m.  But he promised to find a group to select the word and to sign a statement telling what they had done.  Then Fife was to telephone French's Store at Royalston, about seventy miles from Boston, and give this word to them.

The next morning, Margery, my wife, and William H. Button, then president of the American Society for Psychical Research, left for Margery's country place, a collection of cabins in a forest, about a mile away from Royalston.  Sary Litzelman and her husband were staying there.  There was no telephone at this forest home.  For that reason, French's Store was chosen, it being the nearest place with a telephone.  I called and saw the manager, a man named Wilcox, and told him to take down any message he received soon after 7 p.m. and I would collect it.

At 7:10 p.m.. Margery sat in one cabin and Sary in another.  In the presence of Button, her Japanese servant and myself, Margery wrote "Water Melon."  Sary, in the presence of my wife, wrote the same words!  While she was writing, the Japanese servant was playing with Margery's dog, making him growl.  The medium told him to stop, but the distraction made no apparent difference to her writing.

I went by car to French's Store and collected from Wilcox the message he had received a few minutes earlier.  He handed me a sealed envelope.  Inside it I found the words "Water Melon" on a slip of paper.  All those who participated gave their signed testimony.

Button told me that these experiments succeeded only when mooted by Walter or conducted with his approval.  One interesting fact about Sary's mediumship is that her communications are received in mirror writing and you have to hold them to a looking glass before you can read them.

In Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science (1934), Nandor Fodor described investigation results of the manifesting phenomena during the 1920s.

At the end of 1923 Margery and Dr. Crandon visited Europe.  In Paris Margery sat for Dr. Geley, Professor Richet and others.  With the strictest control excellent phenomena were produced.  Still more successful was a seance before the S.P.R. in London.  Harry Price's famous fraud-proof table was, in white light, twice levitated to a height of six inches.  Other sittings at the British College of Psychic Science and psychic photographs obtained with Hope and Mrs. Deane established Margery's powerful mediumship without question.

Nandor Fodor commented about the Scientific American Committee in 1924:
 

. . . despite many striking and excellent demonstrations, the committee came to a deadlock and the only thing approaching a verdict was a series of individual statements published in the  November, 1924, issue of the Scientific American.  Carrington pronounced the mediumship genuine, Houdini fraudulent, Comstock wanted to see more, Prince said he had not seen enough and McDougall was non-committal.  Malcolm Bird, the secretary of the committee, was satisfied, after 10-12 sittings that the phenomena were genuine.


Another [second] Harvard Committee, with Dr. Sharpley, the astronomer, followed suit and precise conclusions were absent from the report of Dr. E. J. Dingwall (Proceedings, Vol. XXXVI) as well.  He had many sittings in January and February, 1925, in Boston.  He admitted that "phenomena occurred hitherto unrecorded in mediumistic history . . . the mediumship remains one of the most remarkable in the history of psychical research," but obsessed with fear of hoax and fraud he made strenuous efforts to throw doubt on his own observations . . .

Maurice Barbanell also reported details about witnessing "a demonstration of her ability to name correctly the denomination of playing cards that she could not see."  As the experiment progressed with impressive results, Maurice's wife was holding up the cards with only the backs of the cards seen by Margery.
 

Margery then announced with a smile that she would "switch the influence" to my wife.  While under this alleged influence, my wife succeeded in attaining a high degree of accuracy in naming unseen cards.

Considering this predicament, the beginning of a statement made by Maurice Barbanell in the Foreword of This Is Spiritualism (1959) provides the key to comprehending the essential insight made possible from all circumstances involving 'supernormal' phenomena:  "The happenings in the séance room are all pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that make a pattern . . . ."

Concerning Margery's simplicity and honesty, these traits are evidently shared by Maurice Barbanell and many others who have known the necessity of informing others about the significance of 'unexplained phenomena.'  Some of these individuals mentioned in previous articles at this blog include 'psychics'/'mediums'/'channelers' such as: Rosemary Brown, Edgar Cayce, Leslie Flint, Eileen Garrett, Helen Greaves, Marjorie Livingston, Ray Brown, Ryuho Okawa; and journalists/authors such as: John Dee, Donald Keyhoe, Meade Layne, Mark Macy, Matthew Manning, William Usborne Moore, Andrija Puharich, Arthur Shuttlewood, A.P. Sinnett.