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Science of the Seance 35

Science of the seance: why

speaking to spirits is

talking to yourself

Spiritualism fascinated the 19th
century public and was furiously
debunked by scientists. But its
modern, “scientific”, incarnations are
just as sinister

In the run up to Halloween, many of us are open
to a frightening supernatural adventure. A good
scare can be a bonding experience, and in this
spirit many of us have dabbled with Ouija
boards, either in earnest or jest - perhaps even
getting slightly phased by the apparent
disembodied messages, sometimes surreal and
foreboding, emanating from the board. While
there is no evidence that we can truly
communicate with the dead, phenomena like the
Ouija board and automatic writing can truly The discovery of the ideomotor effect
give us a fascinating insight into our own demonstrated that there was no mystery
psychology, and serve as a reminder that we can underpinning the eerie happenings of late 19th
all too easily fool ourselves. and early 20th century séances – merely the
Our fascination with words from beyond heady mixture of delusion and occasionally,
the grave is nothing new. In the mid- 19th outright fraud . Many of the popular trance
century, the growing spiritualist movement had mediums of the era used unadulterated
begun to experiment with ghostly messages showmanship to improve their audience
transcribed by table-turning, a precursor to the numbers; famed medium Mina Crandon
modern Ouija board. In table turning, the performed her séances nude, and allegedly
alphabet was inscribed on a table, upon which secreted ectoplasm from her vagina before
all participants laid their hands. Seemingly being debunked by renowned magician and PARANORMAL STAKEOUT
ethereal whisperings would soon appear from escape artist Harry Houdini. Houdini had with
the void as the table tilted towards the imprinted something of a passion for debunking frauds, LARRY LAWSON
letters. Such demonstrations of spiritualism and took a delight in exposing trickery using his
convinced many in high society that a new expertise in the subject to detect bogus claims. Investigating and Research Ghosts,
force, perhaps a mystical one, was behind the This made him highly unpopular with Hauntings, and things that go “BUMP” in
haunting messages. spiritualists of the era, some of whom –such as the night using Police Investigative
Yet not everyone was so easily Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle – Techniques to Solve the Paranormal.
convinced: Michael Faraday, the prominent believed that Houdini himself had spiritual To contact Larry Lawson - Email -
British scientist, was incredibly dubious on the powers, a claim which irked the proud larrylawson@xzbn.net
claims of the spiritualists. To test the professional Houdini no end.
phenomenon, he set about eliminating variables Another individual not taken in by the
and alternative explanations. Using wood and passion for spiritualism was Charles Arthur www.XZBN.net
rubber to increase resistance to movement, he Mercier, a psychiatrist with precious little time
observed no effect on the table’s motion. His for nonsense. Mercier had spent a great deal of
efforts showed that no special force was at play, time debunking trance mediums, painstakingly
and his continued investigations lead him to dismantling their claims. His particular bugbear
conclude that far from being some bizarre was automatic writing, the supposedly
supernatural event, table tipping was nothing supernatural “channelling” of writing from a
more than ‘a quasi-involuntary muscular remote source. Mercier’s investigations showed
action’. Faraday’s careful experiments had that the only curious phenomena at play was yet
revealed there was no mysterious force at play, another variant of the ideomotor effect.
natural or supernatural – just a propensity for Summing up his findings for the British
men and women to delude themselves. Medical journal in 1894, he robustly dismantled
This conclusion was supported by the the spiritualist presumption that spirits were the
meticulous parallel experiments of French cause of automatic writing by stating bluntly
chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul. Chevreul was “there is no need nor room for the agency of KNOW THE NAME,
steadfastly opposed to charlatanism. In his 1854 spirits, and the invocation of such agency is the KNOW THE GENIUS IN YOU
paper on the subject, he turned his attention to sign of a mind not merely unscientific, but with SHARON LYNN WYETH
table-turning, divining rods and magic uninformed.”
pendulums, demonstrating how involuntary and From the creator of NEIMOLOGY,
subconscious muscle reactions are the cause of (Continued on Page 36) Sharon Lynn Wyeth interviews and discovers
ostensibly magic movements. More than this, the genius in the name of her guests and will
Chevreul discovered that once the person tell listeners how they can find out what their
holding the rod was made aware of this reaction, names tells them about their inner genius. To
the movements ceased and could not be contact Sharon Lynn Wyeth - Email -
reproduced. That same year, the term knowthename@xzbn.net
“ideomotor” was introduced by physician
William Carpenter to describe this very www.XZBN.net
phenomenon.