Is physical mediumship fraudulent?

You can burn the levitator in using a mask.  It's the simplest of darkroom special effects.

It is possible, therefore it is true?

Jim on your website you seem to make the argument that Helen Duncan was a genuine materialization medium and that Harry Price should not be trusted.

How do you explain the photographs of Duncan such as these? They were taken during the Price investigation at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in 1931.






I am confused. Are you claiming the above cheesecloth is evidence for real materializations? In the second photograph you can see that a cut-out head from a magazine is attached to the cheesecloth. If you reject fraud, how do you explain this?

Some more of the photographs can be found here:

http://www.harrypricewebsite.co.uk/Seanc...-intro.htm

Jim,

There are errors on your website. I believe you should correct them.

For example you wrote:

As further evidence that Helen Duncan was falsely convicted of fraud, consider that her mediumship was investigated and validated by the stage magician Will Goldston.

https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/s...ion_duncan

Will Goldston claimed in his own words that Duncan was fraudulent. I quote Goldston here (my bold):

Some time later, I was given the opportunity of examining Mrs. Duncan in seance. I imposed no difficult conditions, but took my chair to within a yard of the cabinet, determined to watch and listen closely. After a suitable period, Mrs. Duncan’s control, Albert, appeared from the cabinet, a vague and shadowy shape with no clear detail of the features. At this point I began to suspect that Mrs. Duncan might not be all that she claimed for herself.

Albert informed me that a friend of mine would shortly appear. He then withdrew into the cabinet. After a few moments, I discreetly raised a corner of one of the cabinet curtains. The light within was poor, but I could see well enough. Mrs. Duncan was not in trance, but sat bolt upright, and was carefully winding some diaphanous material round one of her wrists. One end of this material was allowed to fall, so that at quite a short distance it seemed like a shrouded human form. A voice, supposedly that of Albert, complained that light was coming into the cabinet, and so I let the curtain fall. But I knew already that Mrs. Duncan was faking her phenomena.

Mrs. Duncan, amongst her many achievements, can produce slate writing in the full light of day. It is cleverly and convincingly done, but it is not genuine.

From my observations of Mrs. Duncan, I am not prepared to say that she does not possess some genuine psychic powers. It may be so. What is quite certain is that she does not hesitate to use trickery when it suits her purpose. In this connection, it is interesting to recall the discovery made by Harry Price concerning her. When Director of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, Price put Mrs. Duncan to exhaustive tests, and discovered her in fraud. In an interesting book he published about her he says that she possesses the rare power of regurgitation, and that before a sitting she swallows a length of cheese cloth, regurgitates it in the secrecy of her cabinet, and with it produces various " spirit " forms.

Taken directly from his book Tricks of the Masters, 1942 pp. 5-7

Your website is meant to expose 'skeptical misdirection' but you have performed misdirection yourself. You are not quoting people properly and misrepresenting their position. Will Goldston was indeed a spiritualist open to psychic powers existing, but from his own words above he never endorsed Helen Duncan as a genuine materialization medium. I believe you should correct these mistakes on your website.

You say on your website that the British Government 'framed' Helen Duncan. Why would they have done this? You also do not refer to the London Spiritualist Alliance (LSA) investigation that I quoted earlier. They investigated Duncan and discovered that her ectoplasm was made from cloth, eggs and toilet paper. The LSA was a spiritualist organization, do you accept their findings?

I'm trying to arrange to attend a demonstration. They are out there. But hard to find and hard to get in. Of course you need to take what you see and decide. There are lots of way for fakers to fake. And sitting in a chair 10 feet away, you won't be able to employ any controls.

So if you are inclined not to believe, I suppose seeing it face to face probably won't convince you.

You can be chosen as a control for the modern mediums but they usually reserve one of the two controls for a wife, close friend, host that they trust, etc.

lol True that in the bold. The most asinine sitter I have ever sat with, right next to, was a trumpet medium himself. Yes, a trumpet medium. Who actively teaches mediumship. 

Vito The Dumbass

He sat through the seance criticizing Kai Muegge mercilessly, called out how he was seeing a Big Red Indian spirit (later admitting to lying), the trumpet used by Kai was only for purposes of being displayed as flying about the room unassisted (by sitters or medium)...uh unh trumpets are for ectoplasmic voice box amplification ONLY. 

 Dumbass is not returning.

Your post is lacking evidence. Do you agree physical mediumship is fraudulent? If not what do you think it is evidence for?

No interest whatsoever in discussing this with you as long as you take the biased position that you chosen.

Jim I noticed you have not responded in this thread to criticisms of your website. You copied your post to another section of the forum http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-249.html but have not acknowledged the criticisms or corrected the errors in your post.

In your post (copied from your website) you say Helen Duncan was framed by the British Government and she was a genuine materialization medium. You do not give any evidence for this conspiracy theory.

You have not responded to these facts:

1. Helen Duncan was caught in fraud by the London Spiritualist Alliance in 1931. Her ectoplasm was made of cloth, eggs and toilet paper.
2. There are photographs of Duncan's ectoplasm from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research investigation that reveal it was made from cheesecloth, cut out faces from magazines etc.

The London Spiritualist Alliance was a spiritualist organization, you have not referred to the LSA.

The London Spiritualist Alliance had fifty sittings with her between October 1930 and June 1931; for these sittings she was stripped, searched and dressed in 'seance garments'. Two interim reports in Light were favourable, a third found indications of fraud. Pieces of 'ectoplasm' found from time to time differed in composition. Two early specimens consisted of paper or cloth mixed with something like white of egg. Two others were pads of surgical gauze soaked in 'a resinous fluid'; yet another consisted of layers of lavatory paper stuck together. The most usual material for 'ectoplasm' however, seemed to be butter muslin or cheesecloth, probably swallowed and regurgitated. Distressing choking noises were sometimes heard from within the cabinet; and it was interesting that when she was persuaded to swallow a tablet of methylene blue before one of the seances at the London Spiritualist Alliance, no ectoplasm whatsoever appeared."

Renée Haynes. (1982). The Society for Psychical Research 1882–1982: A History.  p. 144

How do you respond to all this? Eager to see your reply.

These photos by Sven Turk and others are made by making multiple exposures on the same film. So obvious from inspection they are fraudulent.

To answer the OP: yes I believe all physical mediumsship is fraud.

There isn't much information about that photographer I could find in English (outside of this rather respectable-looking collection of work); certainly not anything to indicate a reputation for hoaxes.

I'm well aware of fraudulent photographs achieved through double exposures and other camera tricks (I cringe whenever anyone tries to pass off that photo of Mary Todd Lincoln with Abe behind her as anything but a hoax); but if these are fakes by that method, they're of much higher quality than most. Though the copies posted here don't have enough resolution to analyze detail.

There isn't much information about that photographer I could find in English (outside of this rather respectable-looking collection of work); certainly not anything to indicate a reputation for hoaxes.

I'm well aware of fraudulent photographs achieved through double exposures and other camera tricks (I cringe whenever anyone tries to pass off that photo of Mary Todd Lincoln with Abe behind her as anything but a hoax); but if these are fakes by that method, they're of much higher quality than most. Though the copies posted here don't have enough resolution to analyze detail.

He is danish as I am. Apparently he also wrote a book about this topic I may try to aquire one day (sadly not something you can aquire from Amazon - only available at the royal library)

Anyway - try to look at this photo


The chandelier in the roof has two shadows which indicates the flash was fired twice on this subject while the chair only has one shadow (no shadow in the roof)
[Image: turck2.2.jpg]

Jim I noticed you have not responded in this thread to criticisms of your website. You copied your post to another section of the forum http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-249.html but have not acknowledged the criticisms or corrected the errors in your post.

In your post (copied from your website) you say Helen Duncan was framed by the British Government and she was a genuine materialization medium. You do not give any evidence for this conspiracy theory.

You have not responded to these facts:

1. Helen Duncan was caught in fraud by the London Spiritualist Alliance in 1931. Her ectoplasm was made of cloth, eggs and toilet paper.
2. There are photographs of Duncan's ectoplasm from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research investigation that reveal it was made from cheesecloth, cut out faces from magazines etc.

The London Spiritualist Alliance was a spiritualist organization, you have not referred to the LSA.


Renée Haynes. (1982). The Society for Psychical Research 1882–1982: A History.  p. 144

How do you respond to all this? Eager to see your reply.

You arbitrarily made a statement devoid of evidence in the reincarnation thread, avoided responding to my response, and asked that it (for whatever reason) be moved to Skeptic v. Proponents, which it then was. How do you respond to all that? Been eagerly awaiting your reply. Don't call others out for the same transgressions you're committing