Last night, reading some notes I wrote last year, I noticed one in which I jotted down the idea that information can exist only in consciousness - so if information is the essence of the cosmos, then the cosmos must exist in consciousness. In other words, the information "2 + 2 = 4" can exist only in some mind. If the physical universe is organized around information - such as the gravitational coupling constant, the strong nuclear force coupling constant, the weak nuclear force coupling constant, and the electromagnetic coupling constant, among many other relationships - then it seems logically inescapable that the universe exists in consciousness.

Of course, it might be argued that these various constants do not exist as information until they are observed by us. Thus, as information, they exist only in our own minds. But this argument overlooks the fact that these constants are not arbitrary, but rather appear to be very precisely fine-tuned to produce a functioning, stable, complex universe. They are like ground rules laid down with a great deal of care, much like the instructions in a recipe. As such, they really do constitute information, no less than a recipe or a formula or a set of blueprints.

Again, one might quibble that the universe is a product of consciousness, rather than being in consciousness, just as a meal is the product of a recipe or a house is the product of a blueprint. But in this case, I wonder if the distinction is even meaningful. For someone to build a table, the thought of the table must first exist in consciousness. Then the thought is translated into physical form. The resulting table could not have come into existence apart from consciousness, and it only has a function, meaning, and identity within consciousness. So basically, the table is conceived within consciousness and, in its capacity as a table, it exists and functions only within consciousness.

The physical universe seemingly begins as a conception -- a mental conception -- and it has meaning, function, and identity only when viewed from the perspective of consciousness. Without consciousness, then, there could be no universe because there would be no organizing ideas (such as the constants mentioned above) and no purpose (teleology). In Aristotelian terms, there would be no formal cause and no final cause.

The long and short of it is that it doesn't matter very much if the universe is seen as pure Idea or as the manifestation or implementation of Idea in physical terms. The distinction is largely academic, although it is the issue at the heart of the debate between idealism and dualism. Either way, the universe begins with and embodies an idea (or set of ideas), and can be understood and appreciated only in terms of that idea(s). What matters is that Idea as such logically precedes the universe, and consciousness logically precedes (or at least it is coeval with) Idea.

At this point, the million-dollar question becomes: What is the relationship between this cosmic consciousness and our own? Are they one and the same? Or are our own minds a small offshoot of a larger whole? Or is there no connection at all, and do we merely flatter ourselves in imagining that there is?

I don't pretend to really know, but consider the following image as one possible illustration. Picture a blazing bonfire lighting a dark night. A procession of people pass by, each one holding a candle to the bonfire and tapping its flame. Each candle now burns with a light of its own, a much dimmer light, of which the bonfire is the ultimate source.

Cosmic consciousness is the bonfire that illuminates the physical world. Each individual consciousness is a candle lit from that bonfire, tapping that flame.

A possible weakness of this image is that it seems to suggest that the bonfire and the candles are separate from each other, when mystics and others who have pondered these matters deeply will tell us that all consciousness is ultimately connected or even indivisible. But this difficulty may be more apparent than real.

Here it may be relevant to glance at the "problem of universals" (perhaps more accurately characterized as the "problem of properties"). This old philosophical conundrum asks whether the same property observed in two different places is really the same thing or two different things. For instance, if we observe the property of whiteness in a picket fence and in a sheet of typing paper, is the whiteness the same in each case, or different? It is possible to argue that the property is always the same. In this particular case, we could argue that the fire of the candle is logically indistinguishable from the fire of the bonfire. They are actually the same fire, merely observed in two different places (or in two different respects).

As a side note, the quantum physicists' idea of non-locality may be useful in suggesting how two properties can actually be one and the same, even when apparently separated by space; in a non-local universe, space and separation are an illusion (or at least they are not an aspect of fundamental reality).

We could say, then, that the property (or quality) of consciousness is always the same, and that its apparent dispersal among many separate entities is no more real than the apparent dispersal of whiteness among the various entities possessing that property.

So what are we left with? The universe is organized around information; information exists only within consciousness; so the universe is logically dependent on consciousness to exist. Our own consciousness may be thought of as a small flame lit from a larger fire, but just as the property of fire is the same in all cases, so the property of consciousness is always and everywhere the same.

Though I hesitate to link to this, because I fear it may make some people's heads explode a la David Cronenberg's Scanners, I'll do it anyway. It's the last installment of a five-part interview with Tom Wolfe, whose Bonfire of the Vanities is the definitive American novel of the 1980s. Wolfe is a national treasure, always refreshingly unpretentious and optimistic, and never more so than when he sums up his thoughts on the next 800 years (!) of "American centuries."

As Wolfe puts it, "Be happy."   

FYI: My blog post "Words, Words, Words," a list of recommended titles on evidence for the afterlife, has been reprinted in the Windbridge Institute's newsletter, Winds of Change. If you'd like to take a look at the newsletter, please click here and then open the PDF file linked on that page.

My last post has inspired many interesting and helpful comments, one of which spurred me to a burst of poetic eloquence. I like it, so I'm putting it up as a separate blog entry. Be warned that, because of a sinus infection, I am currently taking prescription cough medicine laced with codeine; thus, what follows may be only the ravings of a fatigued and drug-addled brain.

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My best guess - which is only a guess - is that Mind does give rise to the physical cosmos, and that in some mysterious way our own individual minds are minuscule offshoots of this larger Mind.

Here's an image: There is a tree deeply rooted in good soil, with a profusion of leaves on its branches. Soil, roots, trunk, branches, and leaves are all one system, and when the leaves drop off they will return to the soil as nutrients. The soil is Universal Consciousness, the ground of being. The roots the means of translating the soil's stored energy into the form of a growing tree (i.e., translating Mind into physicality). The tree trunk and branches are the physical world. The leaves are our own individual consciousnesses, separate from each other, but grouped together, and fed by the same root system that supports the whole tree. And our ultimate fate is to drop from the branch, lose our form, rejoin the soil, and merge with the ground of being.

I sort of want to be an idealist. Philosophically speaking, that is. I certainly don't want to be a materialist, and idealism is the main alternative to materialism (though dualism and neutral monism are other options).

The problem I have with idealism, though, is that it doesn't quite make sense to me. It doesn't quite click into place. According to idealism, consciousness creates the world. All the physical things around us, even our own bodies, are actually manifestations of consciousness.

This means, of course, that our brains are created by consciousness. After all, brains are part of the physical world, and idealism ascribes all of the physical world to consciousness.

But here's the rub. Clearly our own particular consciousness is tied to our own particular brain in very obvious ways. We see only through our own eyes, smell only through our own noses. We cannot see what someone in China is seeing, and he can't see what we see.

Our brains, then, seem to constrain our consciousness. They provide sharp limits to what we can know and perceive. These limits may not be absolute; remote viewers apparently can see places that their physical eyes have not gazed on; but such exceptions are rare and still controversial. For most of us, most of the time, our consciousness functions in lockstep with our brain.

But if the brain is only an illusion created by consciousness, then how can this be?

How can a mere appearance (the brain) constrain a fundamental reality (consciousness)? How can an object within consciousness constrain and delimit consciousness itself?

If this is too abstract, consider a slightly more "scientific" version of this idea. Karl Pribram and David Bohm developed the theory that the physical world is a holographic illusion projected out of a substrate of wave patterns. Only the wave patterns are real; everything else is appearance, a mere image. What projects this complex illusion? What makes wave patterns look like tables and chairs and palm trees and Sno-Cones? Well, it's the brain, we're told. The brain is the projector that transforms the wave-pattern substrate into the illusion of physical reality.

But wait. The brain is itself a physical object - which means, according to the theory, that it's a holographic illusion. So do we have one holographic illusion (the brain) projecting the rest of reality as a holographic illusion?

In actual holography, the image may be unreal (in the sense that it is only the appearance of the object portrayed), but the projecting beam of laser light that reconstructs the image is quite real. But in the holographic brain theory, we seem to have unreal brains producing (how?) an equally unreal cosmos.

In either case - whether the purely philosophical argument or the somewhat more scientific argument offered by Pribram and Bohm - there seems to be a fallacy at the heart of the story. Essentially, it's circular reasoning (or begging the question). There doesn't seem to be any place to start, which means there is no solid ground to stand on. Or at least that's how it's always seemed to me.

Any thoughts?

There's no other way to describe this BBC report on a regenerative powder that apparently can regrow missing fingertips - and potentially much more.

Watch the video (it's slightly graphic), read the article, and be amazed.

HT: HotAir.

Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail points us to an interesting development: the complete archives of the Journal of Scientific Exploration are now available online in PDF form.

For two years during the early part of his long exile from France, Victor Hugo engaged in regular séances using a planchette – a forerunner of the Ouija board, which worked by tapping out words one letter at a time. Two small tables were employed, a three-legged table perched atop a four-legged one. The tilting of the tables produced the taps. Hugo and his family and friends, exiled to the Isle of Jersey (and later the Isle of Guernsey) would gather in the evenings and coax messages from the Beyond. Hundreds of messages were received, and the material appears to have had a profound effect on Hugo's thinking and on the writing of Les Miserables, in which he was presently engaged.

This intriguing corner of the great novelist's life is exceptionally well documented in Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World, by John Chambers. Chambers, the first person to translate the séance transcripts into English (in an earlier edition of this book), does a fine job of evoking the atmosphere of the exiles' home away from home, their bitter homesickness and burgeoning fascination with the occult. His book is unusually well written for a study of this kind, laced with keen character sketches and absorbing sidelights on William Blake, James Merrill, and Kabbalah. He presents the facts without undue speculation and lets his readers draw their own conclusions.

The first question to ask is, naturally: Were these phenomena really paranormal? Nearly always, Victor's elder son Charles – who seemed to have the most natural mediumistic ability – would be one of the two persons operating the planchette. Charles' constant participation has led some critics to suggest that he unconsciously fabricated the messages to please his domineering father. But some of the messages were tapped out in languages of which Charles was ignorant – Hungarian and English, for instance. And in some cases (e.g. the January 22, 1854 séance, described on p. 113 of Chambers' book), Charles did not operate the planchette.

Other apparently paranormal events that took place in conjunction with the séances cast additional doubt on the skeptical view. When dogs throughout the area began barking in the night, the planchette told them sternly to shut their mouths – and they did. Strange singing was heard in different parts of the house when Hugo's son was ill. A communicator calling itself the Lady in White arranged for a rendezvous at three AM; no one was bold enough to keep the date, but at three AM the Hugos' doorbell inexplicably rang.

Some of the spirits' statements are intriguing and possibly prescient. Distance, we are told, is illusory, and the entire universe can be found in – and reconstructed from – its smallest part. These ideas remind John Chambers of Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, which explores the cosmology of David Bohm.

But for the most part, the communications are rather banal. Nothing of evidential value was produced, and the sitters don’t appear to have pressed the spirits for proof of identity. When the spirits did make factual claims about their earthly lives, these claims were often wrong. The great Carthaginian general Hannibal, purportedly speaking through the planchette, described the city of Carthage as a vast expanse of six thousand temples on streets three hundred feet wide. This grandiose portrayal does not tally with any historical or archaeological findings. (On the other hand, when "Shakespeare" insisted that he had not died on April 23, 1616, we might wonder if it was the shade of Edward De Vere that the sitters were hearing from ... But the channeled Shakespearean drama produced by the sitters, though highly interesting and creative, does not bear any resemblance to the earthly Bard's work.)

Then there is the case of the Lion of Androcles. At times the sitters heard from the spirit of this beast, famous in folklore for having spared Androcles in the arena. It is, of course, quite unlikely that this folktale was based on fact, and even more unlikely that the noted lion was communicating with the Jersey exiles from beyond the grave. But what makes the Lion especially relevant is an incident that occurred on April 25, 1854. The Lion-persona, tapping out a lengthy poem, suddenly stopped after writing the lines

They raise against the saints their sacrilegious paw

And bury their blood-stained claws in the liv–.

A pause followed after which the Lion rewrote the last two lines, which apparently dissatisfied him. But in the interim, Victor Hugo wrote his own ending to the stanza, and showed his work only to one person (who, like Hugo, was not operating the planchette). Hugo's lines read:

They ripped open the saints dying in the mire

And their hideous claws enlarged the wound

In the side of Jesus Christ.

We are told that "almost immediately" after Hugo had written these words, the tapping recommenced, and the planchette spelled out

Their paws ripped open the martyrs here and there in the mire

And Jesus Christ slipped their claws into his wounds,

For a gift of nails to the gibbet.

The close similarity of the two verses suggests that the planchette operators – or the planchette itself – picked up the imagery from Hugo's own mind. But since the planchette operators had not seen Hugo's lines, the message must have been communicated via telepathy or via some even more mysteriously influence.

In the final analysis, if we view the sessions as spirit communications, they are unconvincing and unsatisfying. But if we view them as Consciousness interacting with itself – Consciousness creating a kind of feedback loop between the sitters on the one hand and the planchette on the other – then things get more interesting. To read excerpts from the transcripts is like reading an inner dialogue carried out at the unconscious level between Hugo and himself (with occasional contributions from other members of the party). The sessions perhaps can be best understood as the externalization of the unconscious, a breakdown of the seemingly solid barrier between objective and subjective experience. The stream of consciousness running through the deeper channels of Hugo's mind seems to have been objectified, brought out into the open. In a deep sense, Hugo was talking to himself.

No wonder, then, that the tables mostly told him what he wanted to hear. The tables reported that Hugo's archenemy Napoleon III would die in two years – when actually the dictator lived another two decades. The discarnate Shakespeare opined that French was superior to English. Other spirits verified Hugo's theory of a cycle of reincarnation that proceeds through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and his idea of the universe as a vast darkness, with only the shining stars retaining God's pure light.

The strengths and weaknesses of the communicators matched Hugo's own talents. The spirits were good at improvising poetry and long, eloquent monologues; so was Hugo. The spirits were useless at composing music, even when Mozart himself ostensibly spoke through the planchette. Hugo had no musical training.

The appearance of so many famous names among the spirits – Aeschylus, Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, even Jesus – also makes sense in terms of Hugo's psychology. No one ever accused Victor Hugo of being humble. His self-regard bordered on megalomania. Who would seek him out, if not the spirits of world-historical heroes like himself? Nothing less would do.

And what of the more abstract or surreal entities, such as Civilization, Death, and Idea, or Balaam's Ass and the Lion of Androcles? In the highly intellectual atmosphere of Hugo's salon, large abstract concepts and mythological or folkloric imagery must have been part of everyday conversation. It was how these people talked, part of their mental furniture. And Hugo had a particular fascination – part sentimental, part mystical – with the idea that animals are ensouled, and was especially fond of the Lion of Androcles tale.

How about the most consistent, overarching motif to appear in the communications – that the earth is a prison, a penal colony for wayward souls? It matches up quite closely with the gloomy outlook of the dispirited, homesick exiles, persecuted by a dictator, stranded among fellow outcasts on a tiny outcrop of rock. All the more reason to believe that the tilting tables were reflecting the sitters' own ideas and feelings back at them. Perhaps the isolation of their exile, and the intense emotions it stirred up, actually made it easier for the sitters to access the unconscious mind, or universal consciousness itself.

Whatever the explanation, Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World is a superb contribution to literary history and to the study of the paranormal. I recommend it highly.

Here's something I'm just noodling on. I don't know if it has any validity. Much of what follows isn't very polished - it's just a slightly cleaned up version of some notes I scribbled to myself. As such, it's repetitious and disorganized. But maybe it will strike a chord with someone.

I was thinking about a series of séances in which Victor Hugo participated while he was exiled on the Isle of Jersey. The subject came up because I'm in the middle of reading a very interesting book about these séances, Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World, by John Chambers. Despite the title, the book does not insist that these communications really came from spirits. They may have been mental projections of the sitters, especially of Hugo himself. Little evidential material was obtained, and when tests were applied, the spirits usually failed. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the séances were the result of conscious fraud. They continued over two years, during which time a variety of people handled the planchette (a precursor of the Ouija board), obtaining many messages. No money was involved, and only friends and family participated.

The séances, then, seem to have been on the up-and-up ... but how to account for the bizarre messages that came through, many of them from historical figures liker Hannibal and Shakespeare, or from entities calling themselves "Death" or "Civilization"? Was it all some kind of psychic projection on the part of the sitters? Were real spirits involved sporadically? Mischievous entities? How to make sense of all this?

Musing on this question, I found myself thinking of some excerpts I'd just read from the book Consciousness Is All, by Peter Francis Dziuban. It occurred to me that the problem might be easier to address if I adopted, at least provisionally, the idea that consciousness is the ground of being - that ultimately there is only one consciousness, and that everything that is specific and individual, whether trees and houses and mountains or thoughts and personalities, is ultimately an expression or manifestation of this great consciousness.

Now, in this case, hard-and-fast distinctions perhaps become more difficult to maintain. After all, the ultimate hard-and-fast distinction is that between consciousness and external reality. But if there is no clearcut line of demarcation between consciousness and external reality - if external reality emerges from consciousness - then not only is that fundamental distinction blurred, but many other distinctions may be blurred, as well.

The idea that ultimately there is only one consciousness may get some support from science. According to most interpretations of quantum physics, the observer affects the quantum phenomenon that is observed. But no two observers of the same event ever get different results; their observations always agree. Why is this? Perhaps the simplest explanation is that, in reality, there are not two observers, but only one. One consciousness, one observation, and therefore no possibility of disagreement.

In other words, if there is only one consciousness, then its division into separate minds is an illusion - or at least not the final truth.

Getting back to the séances, perhaps we can say that if there is only one consciousness, then Hugo and the spirits are all one. The spirits can be real or can be projections of Hugo's own mind - it makes no difference, or at most it makes only a superficial difference, of secondary importance.

To put it another way, suppose there is a vast field of consciousness that can produce innumerable varieties of manifestations. We cannot discriminate as finely as we might like among these manifestations. So we mix up real spirits with mental projections, and we mix up objective phenomena with subjective. We are hampered by the belief that hard-and-fast distinctions can be drawn, when the actual nature of reality is more like a sliding scale. We believe in hard-and-fast distinctions because we start with the fundamental hard-and-fast distinction between physical reality and consciousness. All our other discriminations follow this pattern.

If we start by saying "consciousness is all," then we can still draw distinctions, but they are more shaded. Since everything is ultimately one, we expect the lines of discrimination to be blurred. We do not expect hard-and-fast distinctions, but subtle shadings.

Instead of the Aristotelian duality of A or non-A, we have a range of possibilities, a spectrum in which each possible state of being blurs into the next, as colors on the color spectrum blur into one another. It is still possible to discriminate, but the categories cannot be so neat.

So we can say Hugo's spirits are mostly mental projections, while Leonora Piper's "control" George Pelham is mostly real (in the sense of apparently having more of an independent existence), and her later "control" Imperator might be somewhere in between. Imperator is more abstract than Pelham, but more independent than Hugo's spirits. Of course this independence is merely relative. All these entities are ultimately manifestations of the one and only consciousness, as is Hugo himself, and Piper, and all the sitters, and all the rest of us.

Similarly, poltergeists may be mental projections in some cases, spirits in others, and a combination in still others. Ditto for apparitions, which may be telepathically received or seen with the senses, and may be astral shells or memory patterns or actual spirits or mere hallucinations. Ditto again for electronic voice phenomena, which may exist on a continuum ranging from imagination to hallucination to psychic projection to spirit contact.

The key advantage of seeing consciousness as the ground of being is that it frees us from the supposition that absolute, hard-and-fast, black-and-white distinctions are normal and inevitable. It gives us the flexibility to say that different phenomena may overlap, and that there is a sliding scale rather than a sharp division. Dualism invites and requires two-sided, bifurcated thinking. Monism or Idealism allows for subtle shading. A particle can be a  wave. A spirit communication can be, in the same sitting, a genuine message and a case of mental projection.

If "consciousness is all," one would actually expect the sitter or the medium to contribute to the phenomena. After all, there is no clearcut dividing line between the consciousness of the sitter and the consciousness of the medium or of the spirit. There are no clearcut dividing lines, period.

And how about synchronicities? Aren't they simply cases where the dividing line between objective and subjective is more obviously blurred than usual? I think of something, and a moment later it appears in my "external" world. But really it appears in my consciousness, just like the thought itself.

Again, this is not to say no distinctions are possible. We can still distinguish between thoughts and objects, and so forth. But the distinctions are gentle, not severe; relative, not absolute; provisional, not final; there is room for ambiguity.

Perhaps the difficulty we encounter in studying the paranormal lies precisely in our habit of thinking dualistically and thereby missing the fine gradations that take us subtly but inexorably from "objective" to "subjective," from "real" to "unreal." Perhaps the scientific method, which is rooted in Aristotelian logic, is not the best way to approach these phenomena or to establish their legitimacy. Perhaps what is needed is a new way of thinking.

Or perhaps not. I'm not sure!

I just watched No Country for Old Men. This thing won Best Picture?

I don't get it. I mean, I really don't get it. The story was disjointed and ultimately pointless, the characters were shallow, and the nihilistic tone and slow pace quickly became tedious. The ending, if you can call it an ending, didn't work on any level. In fact, the entire last half hour didn't work.

Pretentious twaddle, though nicely photographed, I will admit.

The only other 2007 Oscar nominee I've seen, Michael Clayton, is far superior in every respect.

Oh, and while we're at it, how the heck did Javier Bardem win a Best Supporting Actor statuette for his one-note, by-the-book performance as an emotionless sociopath?

Is this where we are now, culturally? Have we gone so far down the path of philosophical materialism that we can respond only to empty characters populating an empty landscape and reciting empty dialogue in a film about emptiness? Has the very idea of meaning become such an anathema to the modern soul that we now celebrate only movies that revel in the utter meaninglessness of it all?

I'm depressed.

Here's an interesting commentary on ethanol production and how it may relate to global food shortages.

I'm no expert on biofuels, but from what I understand, it takes 400 pounds of corn to produce just 25 gallons of ethanol. It also requires several gallons of water to make just one gallon of ethanol. And ethanol, though it burns cleaner than gasoline, is less efficient, so you need more of it to travel the same distance. This would seem to nullify most, if not all, of its ecological advantages.

In short, it looks to me like a boondoggle, and one with dangerous consequences for hungry people in the Third World.

Another embarrassing logo.

You'd think someone would have noticed this.

HT: Ace of Spades.

After putting up my last post, on Arthur Conan Doyle's championship of the Cottingley fairies, I happened to come across a copy of Daniel Stashower's outstanding biography of Doyle, Teller of Tales, which I read a couple of years ago. Though plainly skeptical, Stashower does his best to present the Doyle's fascination with the paranormal in a sympathetic and positive light - but the Cottingley case proves too much for him.

The book as a whole is well worth reading, and Stashower's insights into the Cottingley episode provide a useful bookend to our earlier discussion. (All of the following quotes are from Chapter 25 of Teller of Tales, titled "Away with the Fairies.")

Stashower notes that a debate with a prominent skeptic in March of 1920 "had reinforced [Doyle's] reputation for plain speaking and common sense." But, he goes on, "[t]hat reputation evaporated in December, when the first of Conan Doyle's pronouncements on fairies appeared in The Strand [magazine]. Overnight, Conan Doyle became the spiritualist movement's greatest liability. 'Poor Sherlock Holmes,' ran one headline, 'Hopelessly Crazy?'"

Doyle, of course, was not crazy. He was however badly deluded, and Stashower presents several possible motives for his need to believe in the dubious photos. For one thing, Doyle

refused to entertain any possibility of deception on the part of the two young girls, as the very idea offended his notions of chivalry. This attitude was typical of him, as his son Adrian once learned to his sorrow. Asked by his brother Denis if he found a certain woman attractive, Adrian replied, "No, she's ugly." The statement drew a slap across the face from his father, who informed him that "no woman is ugly." One hesitates to offer criticism of such a gallant sentiment, but it could be argued, in the age of the suffragette movement, that Conan Doyle's views were naïve, if agreeably courtly. Where woman were concerned, he was blind to the possibility of deception, or indeed any base motive.

But, as Stashower notes, "Conan Doyle's actions in the Cottingley affair point to more than a gentleman's instincts.... There are two possible explanations. First, Conan Doyle had become deeply interested in the practice of spirit photography ..."

His commitment to photographs purporting to show deceased loved ones may have made him even more anxious to defend the Cottingley photos. Certainly he took the issue of spirit photography quite personally; he had quarreled vociferously with the psychic researcher Harry Price, after Price's investigation discredited spirit photographer William Hope.

"Price respected Conan Doyle's great integrity," Stashower observes,

but thought him something of a fool in psychic matters. "Setting aside for the moment his extraordinary and most lovable personal qualities," Price wrote, "the chief qualification that he possessed for the role of the investigator was his crusading zeal. Among all the notable persons attracted to spiritualism, he was perhaps the most uncritical. His extreme credulity, indeed, was the despair of his colleagues, all of whom, however, held him in the highest respect for his complete honesty. Poor, dear, lovable, credulous Doyle! He was a giant in stature with the heart of the child."

Stashower continues:

A second, far more personal motivation may also have guided Conan Doyle's actions. His own childhood had been especially rich in fairy lore. Conan Doyle's Celtic heritage was rife with tales of fairy midwives, leprechauns, brownies, and other sprites....

Conan Doyle's own family took a keen interest in fairies. His uncle Richard had been famous as an illustrator of children's books, many of which featured playful renderings of fairies. Conan Doyle's unhappy father [Charles Doyle] also drew fairies...

Charles Doyle's sketchbook offers additional evidence of his fascination with such creatures. Its pages are filled with fairies, goblins, and elves who crouch under toadstools, play upon pipes, and whisper into the ears of innocent children... On another page, Charles Doyle has scrawled: "I have known such a creature."

We are left to conclude that Charles Doyle, a man widely held to be insane, may well have believed in fairies. In some small measure, then, it is possible that his famous son regarded the Cottingley crusade as an act of redemption. If the existence of fairies could be proven, Charles Doyle could be seen as something of a visionary, rather than a broken-down drunkard.

The elder sister involved in the prank, Elsie, eventually admitted to the fraud -- but only when she was 81 years old. At that time she suggested yet another possible motive on Doyle's part.

According to Elsie, the two girls agreed to keep silent because they were "feeling sad" for Conan Doyle. "He had lost his son recently in the war," Elsie wrote..., "and I think the poor man was trying to comfort himself in these things, so I said to Frances, we are a lot younger than Conan Doyle and Mr. Gardner, so we will wait till they die of old age and then we will tell."

Edward Gardner [a Theosophist who first brought the fairies to Doyle's attention] lived to be one hundred years old, leaving the girls to maintain their silence well into their declining years.

Whatever unconscious motives may have driven him, Doyle paid a considerable price for his credulousness. Stashower reports that Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies, first published in 1922 (and "surely one of the most remarkable volumes ever written," he notes dryly), received mostly negative reviews studded with terms like "easily duped" and "sad spectacle." But the ridicule extended far beyond the newspaper pages.

A popular wisecrack suggested that at the crisis of the play Peter Pan, when Peter exhorts the audience to revive the dying Tinkerbell, the loudest shouts of "I do believe in fairies!" would be Conan Doyle's.

All but a few of his spiritualist allies deserted him. Conan Doyle had hoped that the episode would invite belief in spiritualism. But if anything it seemed to have the opposite result....

In time, the flood of scorn would subside, but Conan Doyle never lost hope that his faith in the two girls would one day be borne out.... In an addendum to his autobiography, written shortly before his death, he expressed a hope that the incident would "be recognized some day as opening a new vista of knowledge for the human race."

Needless to say, that new vista has yet to open, and the fairy episode has done more than any other to annihilate whatever reputation Conan Doyle might have had as a sober-minded investigator into the unknown.

More than 80 years after the publication of The Coming of the Fairies, Doyle's self-inflicted damage to his reputation has yet to be repaired.

Since I've written two recent posts on Arthur Conan Doyle, I thought I should take up the most notorious incident in his career as a paranormal investigator - the case of the Cottingley Fairies. The story is pretty well known and needs no retelling here; those who are interested can read the essentials in Doyle's own book on the subject, The Coming of the Fairies. The complete text is available online, along with all the photos that featured in the controversy. A much shorter version of the story, with some photos, is found at Wikipedia; unlike some Wiki articles on the paranormal, this one seems to be accurate, at least at the present time.

Probably the most famous criticism of the Cottingley case was presented by James Randi. In his well-known book Flim-Flam!, Randi devotes all of Chapter 2 to an in-depth analysis of the controversy, which includes original research making use of the then-new technique of computer scanning.

I must admit that when I read Doyle's book, I was hoping to find his presentation of the facts more convincing - and hence less damaging to his reputation - than I'd been led to expect. Not that I harbored any doubts about the photos; they are obvious fakes, and their artificiality is immediately apparent to any modern viewer, though people in Doyle's era were considerably less sophisticated in regard to trick photography. What strikes us as clear fakery apparently looked pretty convincing to some people - even presumed photographic "experts" - of that day.

So yes, the photos are undoubtedly fakes; nothing can alter that fact. But if Doyle had presented his case with appropriate qualifying remarks, he might have escaped much of the opprobrium he later suffered. Sadly, he did not. Though he sounds a few notes of caution, the overall attitude of his book is that of a true believer, doggedly certain that these five photos are the beginning of a new era for humanity, a time when the mystical creatures previously seen only by clairvoyants would become visible to us all. No wonder he described the Cottingley photos as "epoch-making."

In his book, elaborate and highly doubtful claims are made on behalf of the photos. It is claimed that the fairies are clearly in motion in the stills, when actually there is little if any blur on the figures - understandably, since they were cutouts. It is claimed that only a photographic genius with the full resources of a studio at his disposal could have attempted such fakes; in reality, the shots were easily done by placing the cutouts in front of a human subject. It is claimed that innocent little girls never lie; well, not all girls are so innocent. 

Though I'm not normally a fan of Randi, I must admit that in Flim-Flam! he makes mincemeat of the fairies - and, with his typically unsparing sarcasm, of Doyle as well. According to Randi, Doyle was "convinced of many irrationalities ... a man who needed such evidence desperately to bolster his own delusions... [and who] spent some L250,000 in pursuit of this nonsense [i.e., spiritualism]."

Doyle himself begins his book with the earnest hope that his arguments for the validity of the photos, even if rejected by the reader, will not prejudice anyone against the idea of life after death, which is to him a separate issue. In this he was surely naive. His exposure as disappointingly gullible in one area of paranormal investigation inevitably colored all subsequent perception of his efforts in other areas. If he could be taken in by two girls playing a childish prank, how can we trust his judgment regarding séances conducted by professional mediums?

Although the photos have been thoroughly debunked, interest in the fairies continues. This Web page, part of a site devoted to the Cottingley area, offers some useful information and links. The Museum of Hoaxes covers the topic and includes all five photos.  Joe Cooper, who wrote a book on the subject, presents the essentials of the case here. The Cottingley Network goes all-out with a multi-page presentation. An essay rather sympathetic to Doyle was put out by the Arthur Conan Doyle Society; it makes the point that the original prints were not as clear as the more modern ones (see the comparison at the very bottom of the page).

I have not found anyone who still believes the fairies were real.

For those who are interested, Box Office Mojo offers a brief but revealing interview with Vadim Perelman, slated to direct the feature film version of Atlas Shrugged. (The link takes you to p. 2 of the interview and the start of the discussion of Atlas.)

Perelman comes across as a thoughtful, perceptive guy, aware of the novel's flaws as well as its strengths. His background growing up in Soviet Russia also gives him a useful perspective on the book's themes.

Perhaps this movie will not be the debacle I've been expecting. Time will tell. But if they cast Brad Pitt as John Galt, all bets are off. Obviously the correct choice for the role is Kevin McKidd.

Here's some interesting material from Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, Vol. II. All the excerpts are taken from Chapter  10, "The Religious Aspect of Spiritualism." I have added a few pertinent links and omitted a couple of minor digressions (marked with ellipses).

Everything that follows is from Doyle's book.

----

[Start of excerpts]

It is quite amazing when we read the early documents of the Church, and
especially the writings of the so-called "Fathers," to find out the
psychic knowledge and the psychic practice which were in vogue in those
days. The early Christians lived in close and familiar touch with the
unseen, and their absolute faith and constancy were founded upon the
positive personal knowledge which each of them had acquired. They were
aware, not as a speculation but as an absolute fact, that death meant no
more than a translation to a wider life, and might more properly be
called birth. Therefore they feared it not at all, and regarded it rather
as Dr. Hodgson did when he cried, "Oh, I can hardly bear to wait!" Such
an attitude did not affect their industry and value in this world, which
have been attested even by their enemies. If converts in far-off lands
have in these days been shown to deteriorate when they become Christians,
it is because the Christianity which they have embraced has lost all the
direct compelling power which existed of old.

Apart from the early Fathers, we have evidence of early Christian
sentiment in the inscriptions of the Catacombs. An interesting book on
early Christian remains in Rome, by the Rev. Spence Jones, Dean of
Gloucester, deals in part with these strange and pathetic records. These
inscriptions have the advantage over all our documentary evidence that
they have certainly not been forged, and that there has been no
possibility of interpolation.

Dr. Jones, after having read many hundreds of them, says: "The early
Christians speak of the dead as though they were still living. They talk
to their dead." That is the point of view of the present-day
Spiritualists-one which the Churches have so long lost. The early
Christian graves present a strange contrast to those of the heathen which
surround them. The latter always refer to death as a final, terrible and
irrevocable thing. "Fuisti Vale" sums up their sentiment. The Christians,
on the other hand, dwelt always upon the happy continuance of life.
"Agape, thou shalt live for ever," "Victorina is in peace and in Christ,"
"May God refresh thy spirit," "Mayest thou live in God." These
inscriptions alone are enough to show that a new and infinitely consoling
view of death had come to the human race....

It is not possible, however, to draw any psychic inferences from the
inscriptions or drawings in the Catacombs. For these we must turn to the
pre-Nicene Fathers, and there we find so many references that a small
book which would contain nothing else might easily be compiled. We have,
however, to tune-in our thoughts and phrases to theirs in order to get
the full meaning. Prophecy, for example, we now call mediumship, and an
Angel has become a high spirit or a Guide. Let us take a few typical
quotations at random.

Saint Augustine, in his "De cura pro Mortuis," says: "The spirits of the
dead can be sent to the living and can unveil to them the future which
they them selves have learned either from other spirits or from angels"
(i.e. spiritual guides) "or by divine revelation." This is pure
Spiritualism exactly as we know and define it. Augustine would not have
spoken so surely of it and with such an accuracy of definition if he had
not been quite familiar with it. There is no hint of its being illicit.

He comes back to the subject in his "The City of God," where he refers to
practices which enable the ethereal body of a person to communicate with
the spirits and higher guides and to receive visions. These persons were,
of course, mediums -- the name simply meaning the intermediate between the
carnate and discarnate organism.

Saint Clement of Alexandria makes similar allusions, and so does Saint
Jerome in his controversy with Vigilantius the Gaul. This, however, is,
of course, at a later date-after the Council of Nicaea.

Hermas, a somewhat shadowy person, who was said to have been a friend of
St. Paul's, and to have been the direct disciple of the Apostles, is
credited with being the author of a book "The Pastor." Whether this
authorship is apocryphal or not, the book is certainly written by someone
in the early centuries of Christianity, and it therefore represents the
ideas which then prevailed. He says: "The spirit does not answer all who
question nor any particular person, for the spirit that comes from God
does not speak to man when man wills but when God permits. Therefore,
when a man who has a spirit from God" (i.e. a control) "comes into an
assembly of the faithful, and when prayer has been offered, the spirit
fills this man who speaks as God wills."

This exactly describes our own psychic experience, when séances are
properly conducted. We do not invoke spirits, as ignorant critics
continually assert, and we do not know what is coming. But we pray -- using
the "Our Father," as a rule -- and we await events. Then such spirit as is
chosen and permitted comes to us and speaks or writes through the medium.
Hermas, like Augustine, would not have spoken so accurately had he not
had personal experience of the procedure.

Origen has many allusions to psychic knowledge. It is curious to compare
the crass ignorance of our present spiritual chiefs with the wisdom of
the ancients. Very many quotations could be given, but a short one may be
taken from his controversy with Celsus.

Many people have embraced the Christian faith in spite of themselves,
their hearts having been suddenly changed by some spirit, either in an
apparition or in a dream.

In exactly this way leaders among the materialists, from Dr. Elliotson
onwards, have been brought back to a belief in the life to come and its
relation to this life by the study of psychic evidence.

It is the earlier Fathers who are the most definite upon this matter, for
they were nearer to the great psychic source. Thus Irenaeus and
Tertullian, who lived about the end of the second century, are full of
allusions to psychic signs, while Eusebius, writing later, mourns their
scarcity and complains that the Church had become unworthy of them.

Irenaeus wrote: "We hear of many brethren in the Church possessing
prophetic" (i.e. mediumistic) "gifts, and speaking through the spirit in
all kinds of tongues and bringing to light for the general advantage the
hidden things of men, and setting forth the mysteries of God." No passage
could better describe the functions of a high-class medium.

When Tertullian had his great controversy with Marcion, he made the
Spiritualistic gifts the test of truth between the two parties. He
claimed that these were forthcoming in greater profusion upon his own
side, and includes among them trance-utterance, prophecy, and revelation
of secret things. Thus the things, which are now sneered at or condemned
by so many clergymen, were in the year 200 the actual touchstones of
Christianity. Tertullian also in his De Anima says: "We have to-day
among us a sister who has received gifts on the nature of revelations
which she undergoes in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's
Day, falling into ecstasy. She converses with angels" -- that is, high
spirits -- "sees and hears mysteries, and reads the hearts of certain people
and brings healings to those who ask. 'Among other things,' she said, 'a
soul was shown to me in bodily form, and it seemed to be a spirit, but
not empty nor a thing of vacuity. On the contrary, it seemed as if it
might be touched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of the human
form in every detail.'"

One mine of information as to the views of the primitive Christians is to
be found in the "Apostolic Constitutions." It is true that they are not
Apostolic, but Whiston, Krabbe and Bunsen are all agreed that at least
seven out of the eight books are genuine ante-Nicene documents, probably
of the early third century. A study of them reveals some curious facts....

It is, however, in discussing the "gifts," or varied forms of mediumship,
that these ancient documents throw a light upon psychic subjects. Then,
as now, mediumship took different forms, the gift of tongues, of healing,
of prophecy and the like. Harnack says that in each early Christian
Church there were three discreet women, one for healing and two for
prophecy. The whole subject is freely discussed in the "Constitutions."

It appears that those who had gifts became conceited over them, and they
are earnestly adjured to remember that a man may have gifts and yet have
no great virtue, so that he is really the spiritual inferior of many who
have no gifts.

The object of phenomena is shown, as in Modern Spiritualism, to be the
conversion of the unbeliever, rather than the entertainment of the
orthodox. They are "not for the advantage of those who perform them, but
for the conviction of the unbelievers, that those whom the word did not
persuade the power of signs might put to shame, for signs are not for us
who believe, but for the unbelievers, both Jews and Gentiles"
(Constitutions, Book VIII, Sec. I).

Later the various gifts, which roughly correspond with our different
forms of mediumship, are given as follows. "Let not therefore anyone that
works signs and wonders judge anyone of the faithful who is not
vouchsafed the same. For the gifts of God which are bestowed through
Christ are various, and one man receives one gift and another another.
For perhaps one has the word of wisdom" (trance-speaking), "and another
the word of knowledge" (inspiration), "another discerning of spirits"
(clairvoyance), "another foreknowledge of things to come, another the
word of teaching" (spirit addresses), "another long-suffering," -- all our
mediums need that gift.

One may well ask oneself where, outside the ranks of the Spiritualists,
are these gifts or these observances to be found in any of those Churches
which profess to be the branches of this early root?

[End of excerpts]

In his book The History of Spiritualism, Vol. II, Arthur Conan Doyle relates the following story. (This material appears in Chapter 9, "Spiritualism and the War.")

Of the many cases recorded of the return of dead soldiers, the following stands out because the particulars were received from two independent sources. It is related by Mr. W. T. Waters, of Tunbridge Wells, who says that he is only a novice in the study of Spiritualism:

In July last I had a sitting with Mr. J. J. Vango, in the course of which the control suddenly told me that there was standing by me a young soldier who was most anxious that I should take a message to his mother and sister who live in this town. I replied that I did not know any soldier near to me who had passed over. However, the lad would not be put off, and as my own friends seemed to stand aside to enable him to speak, I promised to endeavour to carry out his wishes.

At once came an exact description which enabled me instantly to recognize in this soldier lad the son of an acquaintance of my family. He told me certain things by which I was made doubly certain that it was he and no other, and he then gave me his message of comfort and assurance to his mother and sister (his father had died when he was a baby), who, for over two years, had been uncertain as to his fate, as he had been posted as "missing." He described how he had been badly wounded and captured by the Germans in a retreat, and that he had died about a week afterwards, and he implored me to tell his dear ones that he was often with them, and that the only bar to his complete happiness was the witnessing of his mother's great grief and his inability to make himself known.

I fully intended to keep my promise, but knowing that the lad's people favoured the High Church party and would most likely be absolutely sceptical, I was puzzled how to convey the message, as I felt they would only think that my own loss had affected my brain. I ventured to approach his aunt, but what I told her only called forth the remark: "It cannot be," and I therefore decided to await an opportunity of speaking to his mother direct.

Before this looked-for opportunity came, a young lady of this town, having lost her mother about two years ago, and hearing from my daughter that I was investigating these matters, called to see me, and I lent her my books. One of these books is "Rupert Lives," with which she was particularly struck, and she eventually arranged a sitting with Miss McCreadie, through whom she received such convincing testimony that she is now a firm believer. During this sitting, the soldier boy who came to me came to her also. He repeated the same description that I had received, mentioned in addition his name -- Charlie -- and begged her to give a message to his mother and sister-the selfsame message which I had failed to give. So anxious was he in the matter, that at the close of the sitting he came again and implored her not to fail him.

Now, these events happened at different dates -- July and September -- the same message exactly being given through different mediums to different persons, and yet people tell us it is all a myth and that mediums simply read our thoughts.

When my friend told me of her experience I at once asked her to go with me to the lad's mother, and I am pleased to state that this double message convinced both his mother and his sister, and that his aunt is almost brought to the truth if not quite.

Now, at first glance this seems like quite a strong case, but when we look more closely, its evidential value is harder to establish.

For one thing, apparently no one in the soldier's family actually knew how (or even if) he had died, so the detailed report of his capture by the Germans and subsequent death cannot be verified.

Second, the soldier had been missing for two years, so it was probably safe to assume he was dead.

Third, in a relatively small town, word of the family's predicament would have spread to strangers. (Tunbridge Wells today has a population of 56,000; probably it was even smaller in Doyle's day.)

Fourth, the two mediums could have been in collusion. In his book The Psychic Mafia, M. Lamar Keene (a reformed fake medium) reports that unscrupulous mediums routinely exchange information.

On the other hand, the case does have its interesting features. Note that the dead soldier was "the son of an acquaintance of [the sitter's] family." This connection is close enough to explain why the spirit chose to come to this particular sitter, yet distant enough to make it unlikely that the medium could have known about it.

Also, the second sitter had no obvious connection to the narrator (unless of course she mentioned him to the medium), yet she got the same message.

It's also perhaps of interest that the soldier's name was not given in the first séance but was supplied in the second. If the first medium had already researched the family, why hold back this piece of evidence? But if genuine communication was going on, the absence of the name makes more sense, since names are often the most difficult facts to receive (and some mediums are better with names than others).

Overall, the case shows both the strengths and weaknesses of reports of this kind. It helps us see why spiritualism became so very popular during the First World War, but also why the doubts of skeptical critics were never quite assuaged.

Doyle also makes some interesting points about reports of mediumship by the early Fathers of the Christian Church. We'll cover that next time. 

Julie Beischel, who formerly worked with Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona, has opened a new research institute dedicated to exploring the survival of consciousness after death, alternative healing, intuition, and other subjects of interest to readers of this blog.

It's called the Windbridge Institute, and it boasts an impressive array of scientific advisors.

I certainly wish this new venture all the best. You can become a member here.

In the comments thread of my last post, Renaud Evrard pointed me to an excellent article by Mario Varvoglis on the Kluski materializations. This piece goes into more detail about the experiments and clearly shows the weaknesses of the attempted skeptical explanation.

The two skeptical researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, performed some tests supposedly showing how Kluski produced his spirit molds fraudulently. Their main intent was to prove that a person could remove his hand from the wax mold without cracking the mold. But in presenting this explanation, they left unmentioned a number of crucial points.

Polidoro and Garlaschelli write,

Strictly following Geley's instructions, we prepared two basins (each had a diameter of 10 inches): one with hot water (approximately 5 litres at 55ºC), in which we poured a layer of molten paraffin (approx. 1 kg, previously melted in a pan with boiling water on a kitchen stove), and the other with cold water (5 litres), which we later used to immerse our hands and allow the paraffin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our hands first in the basin filled with paraffin and then in the one containing water.

But this is quite misleading, as Varvoglis' article makes clear. In the Kluski tests, there was no basin of cold water. Varvoglis:

Rather than using a second bowl for cooling, the IMI [Institut Metapsychique International]researchers preferred to allow the wax moulds to rigidify on their own, this being, as we shall see, a precaution against fraud.

The unnaturally rapid rate of cooling of Kluski's paraffin molds was itself a sign that something unusual was going on. Without any cold water available, the molds still cooled and set within one or two minutes - much faster than should have been possible. Kluski's hands (controlled throughout) were observed to get quite cold at times, as if he could produce a change in temperature at will.

The two skeptics, Polidoro and Garlaschelli, continue:

In all of these cases, we were able rather easily to make some fairly thin moulds (a few millimeters thick) just by immersing the hands a couple of times in the basin with the paraffin. But our most significant result was that in every instance we managed to remove our hands from the solidified paraffin glove without breaking it.

This sounds persuasive until we realize that molds "a few millimeters thick" are still significantly thicker than those produced in the Kluski tests, as Varvoglis observes:

Finally, it should be mentioned that the wax moulds were less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a sheet of paper).

And again:

the wax moulds were exceptionally delicate : at most a millimeter thick.

The thinness and fragility of the Kluski molds would have greatly complicated efforts to extricate the hand from the mold without having the mold fall to pieces - something the skeptics fail to mention.

Another fact creating difficulty for the skeptics is that Kluski's molds were much smaller than his own hands. The molded hands were child-sized; no one in the séance room had hands so small. In addition, the fingerprints of the molded hands were not those of Kluski. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the researchers that they actually checked this detail with the help of the police.)

Polidoro and Garlaschelli try to address this point:

It would not be difficult to conclude ... that particularly complex moulds could have been shaped with extreme care, before a séance took place, by the medium himself or his accomplices and, during the séance, jumbled up with other moulds forged at the moment of performing the spiritualist occurrence.

This won't do. The séance room was locked; only the investigators and Kluski were present. Who, then, was the accomplice? More important, there could have been no substitutions in at least three of the cases, when the investigators secretly treated the paraffin wax with telltale chemicals.

Here is one such case, per Varvoglis:   

Just prior to beginning, Richet and Geley had secretly added a bluish coloring agent to the paraffin. Control of the medium was considered excellent, with controllers regularly checking and verbally reporting ‘I am holding the right hand’, ‘I am holding the left hand’. Splashing sounds were heard about twenty minutes into the session, and one to two minutes later two warm paraffin gloves were deposited next to the controllers. Both wax moulds had precisely the same bluish tint as that of the tank, strongly suggesting that these were indeed created during the séance, and not smuggled in by the medium. An additional control was the weighing of all substance. Prior to the experiment, the paraffin was 3.920 grams, while at the end of the session it weighed 3.800 grams. The two moulds weighed 50 grams, and there was considerable wax scattered near the medium (around 15 grams), on his clothing, and on the floor 3.5 meters away from him (about 25 grams). Insofar as the sum of these weights correspond very closely to the initial weight, this further establishes that the wax gloves were produced during the session.

Moreover, Kluski's hands were held at all times throughout the sessions by investigators who were well aware of the old "substitution of hands" ploy used by fake mediums. The red light in the room, though dim, was sufficient to allow the sitters to see the outlines of the people at the table. Any gross movements occurring right in front of their faces would have been seen.

Why, then, did the researchers not see the spirit hands entering the paraffin bath? On at least one occasion, they apparently did. Varvoglis writes:

Finally, in one session the researchers actually saw the production of the wax moulds. In other words, they witnessed a continuity between the visual apparitions of luminous hands and the creation of the moulds. As Geley describes it :

We had the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipping into the paraffin. They were luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us.

Varvoglis' complete article is well worth reading. In total, it makes a compelling case for the reality of the Kluski phenomena, and points up the extreme deficiencies of the skeptics' counterargument.

Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, in two volumes (complete text available online: Vol. I and Vol. II), makes rewarding reading for anyone interested in the early years of parapsychology. That's not to say there aren't problems with the book. Doyle's dogged commitment to the reality of psi phenomena, especially as pertaining to life after death, led him to endorse some questionable characters. In Volume I, he goes to some lengths to establish the Davenport Brothers as legitimate, even though most observers then and later have made then out to be clever frauds. He endorses such dubious activities as slate-writing and spirit photography, and seems genuinely peeved at the efforts of the Society for Psychical Research to tighten up the experimental controls on mediums.

Despite these caveats, the two volumes of his book are well worth a look. There are many fascinating anecdotes, and a good deal of seemingly solid evidence is presented. Doyle's smooth, lucid prose style makes the pages turn quickly.

One section I found particularly interesting is found in Vol. II, in a chapter titled "Voice Mediumship and  Moulds." Here Doyle discusses the practice of producing paraffin molds of spirit forms - faces and hands, usually - in the séance room.

Skeptics understandably dismiss such claims, saying that the medium or an accomplice made the impressions surreptitiously, or that pre-made molds were smuggled into the room and substituted in the dark. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, as in the infamous case of "Margery" (Mina Crandon), who produced a spirit thumbprint that turned out to belong to her all-too-living dentist.

But consider the following series of tests first reported in the magazine Revue Metapsychique in June, 1921. It seems that every reasonable precaution against fraud was taken, yet positive results were obtained. Doyle tells us: 

Dr. [Gustave] Geley carried out with [Franek] Kluski a number of remarkable experiments in the formation of wax moulds of materialized hands. He has recorded the results of a series of eleven successful sittings for this purpose. In a dim light the medium's right hand was held by Professor Richet and his left hand by Count Potocki. A trough containing wax, kept at melting-point by warm water, was placed two feet in front of Kluski, and for the purpose of a test the wax was impregnated (unknown to the medium) with the chemical cholesterin, this to prevent the possibility of substitution. Dr. Geley writes:

The feeble light did not admit of the phenomena being actually seen; we were aware of the moment of dipping, by the sound of splashing in the liquid. The operation involved two or three immersions. The hand that was acting was plunged in the trough, was withdrawn, and, covered with warm paraffin, touched the hands of the controllers of the experiments, and then was plunged again into the wax. After the operation the glove of paraffin, still warm but solidified, was placed against the hand of one of the controllers.

In this way nine moulds were taken: seven of hands, one of a foot, and one of a chin and lips. The wax of which they were composed on being tested gave the characteristic reaction of cholesterin. Dr. Geley shows twenty-three photographs of the moulds and of plaster casts made from them. It may be mentioned that the moulds exhibit the folds of the skin, the nails and the veins, and these markings in nowise resemble those of the medium. Efforts to make similar moulds from the hands of human beings were only partially successful, and the difference from those obtained at the sittings was obvious. Sculptors and moulders of repute have declared that they know of no method of producing wax moulds such as those obtained at the séances with Kluski.

Geley sums up the result thus:

"We will now enumerate the proofs which we have given of the authenticity of the moulds of materialized limbs in our experiments in Paris and Warsaw.

"We have shown that quite apart from the control of the medium, whose two hands were held by us, all fraud was impossible.

"1. The theory of fraud by a rubber glove is inadmissible, for such an attempt gives crude and absurd results which can be seen at a glance to be imitations.

"2. It is not possible to produce such gloves of wax by using a rigid mould already prepared. A trial of this shows at once how impossible it is.

"3. The use of a prepared mould in some fusible and soluble substance, covered with a film of paraffin during the séance and then dissolved out in a pail of water, will not fit in with the actual procedure. We had no pail of water.

"4. The theory that a living hand was used (that of the medium or of an assistant) is inadmissible. This could not have been done, for several reasons, one being that gloves thus obtained are thick and solid, while ours are fine and delicate, also that the position of the fingers in our moulds makes it impossible that they could be withdrawn without breaking the glove. Also that the gloves have been compared with the hands of the medium and of the assistants, and that they are not alike. This is shown also by anthropological measurements.

"Finally, there is the hypothesis that the gloves were brought by the medium. This is disproved by the fact that we secretly introduced chemicals into the melted wax, and that these were found in the gloves.

"The report of the expert modellers on the point is categorical and final."

Nothing is evidence to those who are so filled with prejudice that they have no room for reason, but it is inconceivable that any normally endowed man could read all the above, and doubt the possibility of taking moulds from ectoplasmic figures.

A rebuttal of Geley's work was presented by two Italian researchers, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, who cast doubt on some of his claims. In particular, they showed that thin molds could be obtained rather easily, and that it was possible for a person to twist his hand free of the paraffin without breaking the mold. Their work is important and interesting, but it does not address the most significant claims made by Geley - namely, that the medium's hands were controlled throughout the séance, and that the paraffin had been pretreated with a certain chemical (without the medium's knowledge) to expose any attempted substitution.

If substitution is eliminated as a possibility, and if the medium's hands were properly controlled, then the only remaining non-paranormal explanation is the action of an accomplice, who would make a mold of his own hand. Could Geley have been careless enough to allow a potential accomplice into the séance room, and would this person's actions pass unnoticed in the dim red light? It seems doubtful.

Skeptics will probably say Kluski fooled the experimenters into believing they had control of both his hands, when actually they were controlling only one. But remember that one of the molds was of a foot, and another was of a partial face ("chin and lips"). Maybe, just maybe, Kluski could have lowered his face into the paraffin, though it seems likely that this action would have been observed, and that some traces of the paraffin would cling to his face afterward.

More important, how would he get his bare foot onto the table and into the trough of paraffin?