More Tricks of Spiritualists - Hereward Carrington

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
More tricks of spiritualists matter through matter. There is one
very clever test that is sometimes performed which would seem
to show that something of this sort is accomplished. It is, however,
nothing more than an ingenious trick, and this might be
a good time to explain its modus operindi. The general

(00:21):
effect of the illusion is this. The medium requests some
one to assist him in an experiment in which he
is going to attempt to pass matter through matter. As
the test is one in which a confederate might easily
be employed, he is very careful to choose some person
who is well known or whose character is above all suspicion.

(00:43):
If this were not so, the entire effect of the
test would be lost upon the investigators. Having secured his assistant,
he hands him for examination a solid steel ring, just
large enough to slip on and off the hand and
arm easily. The ring is perfectly solid and may be
examined by anyone desirous of doing so. When this part

(01:06):
of the performance is finished, the medium and his sitter
then join or clasp their right hands as in handshaking,
and the sitter is instructed not to release the hand
for a single instant to quote, make assurance doubly sure
close quote. However, the hands are fastened together in any way.

(01:26):
The sitter may desire the hands being tied together with
tape e g. And the ends of this tape tied
in the knots sealed. The tape connects the wrists and
the hands of the medium and his sitter, and this
tying may be made as secure as possible. A piece
of thick cloth is now thrown over the two hands
and the lower part of the arms, concealing them from view.

(01:50):
With his disengaged hand, the medium now takes the iron
ring and passes it up under the cloth so as
to bring it in contact with his own He holds
it there for some time, but ultimately snatches off the
covering cloth and reveals to the eyes of the astonished
audience the ring now encircling his own arm. In spite

(02:12):
of the fact that the ties are still in status quo,
and the sitter never let go his hold for an instant,
the ties and the ring may again be examined, if desired,
before the hands are separated. This is an exceedingly effective
test and has every appearance of being genuine. Indeed, it
is hard to see where trickery can come in. The

(02:35):
trick is one of the simplest imaginable, however, and is
performed in the following manner. The medium has provided himself
with two rings exactly alike. One of these the audience
is free to examine. The other the medium is wearing
on his right arm under his coat when the two
hands are clasped together. Therefore, it is a simple thing

(02:56):
for the medium, under cover of the enveloping cloth, to
slip the duplicate ring down his sleeve and onto his
own hand, and that part of the miracle is accomplished.
It remains only to explain what becomes of the first ring.
The cloth thrown over the arm is very thick and stiff,

(03:16):
as stated, and the inner side of this contains a
double partition, a sort of bag into which the medium
slips the duplicate ring the cloth now being shown on
both sides without disclosing the ring, and the medium makes
away with it as soon as possible, in order to
avoid detection deception explained by the science of psychology. The

(03:40):
object of this passage is to enable the reader to
see more easily how it is that the watchful observer
is deceived into believing that a thing is so, when
in reality it is not, and vice versa. And also
to give an idea of the various methods employed by
the medium in order to publish his results, I must

(04:02):
first of all call the reader's attention two one or
two rules which every conjuror learns at the commencement of
his study, and which he learns to apply so constantly
that it becomes second nature to him. The first is,
never let the eyes rest on the hand that is
performing the slight, but always on the other hand, or

(04:22):
or on some object on the table or elsewhere, as
this will have a tendency to draw the eyes of
the audience to that point. Also, these sitters or audience
will always look at the point closely watched by the magician.
Their eyes have a tendency to follow his, and wherever
he looks, there will the onlooker look also. Needless to say,

(04:43):
the magician makes use of this fact, and many tricks
and illusions are dependent upon it for their successful accomplishment.
Whenever the magician or medium looks intently at one hand,
therefore the other hand should be watched, as it is
a sure sign that that is the hand which is
performing the trick. Another fundamental rule that is observed by

(05:06):
all sleight of hand performers is never let an audience
know beforehand what is to be done. That is the
nature of the trick that it is intended to perform.
If a spectator knew what was forthcoming, he would be
on the lookout from movements of the performer at certain
critical times, just at the periods when close observation is

(05:27):
least wanted, and would quite possibly detect the performer in
the act of executing certain movements, which would show how
the trick was performed. But not knowing what is coming,
the spectator is unable to watch closely at the critical moment,
not knowing what that moment is, and so is unable
to detect the trick, his attention being diverted by the

(05:49):
performer just before this movement is made to some other
object or movement. The methods of diverting the spectator's attention
are various. There is the use of the eye as
shown before. Then there is the spoken word, the performer
telling the onlookers to observe some certain object or action,

(06:10):
and the effect is to cause them to watch it
as they are told. They follow the line of least resistance.
The combined effect upon the spectator of the spoken word
and the eyes together is generally irresistible. Another important factor
is this a performer should always let any suggestion, right

(06:31):
or wrong, soak well into the spectator's mind before attempting
to change it. This is for two reasons. In the
first place, if the suggestion is correct, If, for example,
the performer really does place an object in his left
hand and it is shortly found to have vanished from
that hand, he is annoyed by hearing someone say that

(06:54):
he was not really sure it was there in the
first place, as it was covered up so quickly. On
the other hand, the suggestion given was a false one. If,
e g. The performer says he has placed an object
in his left hand, when in reality he has not
done so, but has palmed it in his right hand,

(07:14):
then it is still necessary to allow a certain time
interval to elapse between the performing of the action which
apparently placed the object in the hand and the showing
of the hand empty. For this reason, if the hand
into which the object is supposedly placed is immediately shown empty,

(07:34):
the natural conclusion of the sitter is that the object
was not in reality placed there at all, but was
retained in the other hand, which would be the fact if, however,
the performer allowed some time to elapse between the action
of placing the object in that hand supposedly and the
showing of the hand empty. He meanwhile keeping his eyes

(07:55):
fixed on the hand, suggesting to the sitters that the
object is there, and in every way acting as if
it were there. The idea will gradually gain a firm
hold on the minds of the spectators that the object
is there in reality, and they are correspondingly surprised to
find it ultimately vanished. It is just such a knowledge

(08:19):
of the way people's minds work, as a friend once
said to me, which enables the conjuror to deceive the public,
and it is precisely the same cast of mind that
the medium possesses. He is, in fact a good judge
of human nature. Another fact that must be born in
mind is that when once a spectator has seen a

(08:40):
movement made two or three times in the same manner,
he frequently sees the performer make that movement on another occasion,
when the performer had in reality only started to make
the movement, and suggested the rest Thus, if the performer
throws a ball up into the air two or three
times in succession, and on the fourth occasion merely pretends

(09:05):
to throw it up, really retaining it. In the other hand,
the great majority of the spectators will really see the
ball ascend into the air on the fourth occasion, and
will so state on being asked, we here depend upon
association and habit. Professor Jostro summed up this portion of
the psychology of deception very well when he said, quote,

(09:29):
he the conjuror must associate the natural factors of his habits,
actually attending to one thing while seemingly attending to another
at the same time, His eyes and his gestures and
his patter misdirect the attention to what is apparently the
essential field of operation, but really only a blind to

(09:50):
distract the attention away from the true scene of action.
The conjuror directs your attention to what he does not do.
He does not do what he pretends to to do,
and to what he actually does. He is careful neither
to appear to direct its own attention nor to arouse
yours close. Quote Professor Max Dessoirs, in a very fine

(10:12):
article on quote the psychology of conjuring close quote writes
as follows quote. By awakening interest in some unimportant detail,
the conjurer concentrates that attention on some false point or
negatively diverts it from the main object. And we all
know the senses of an inattentive person are pretty dull.

(10:35):
When causing the disappearance of some object, the conjuror counts one, two, three.
The object must really disappear before three, not at three,
because the attention of the public being diverted to three,
they do not notice what happens at one and two.
A specially successful method of diversion is founded on the

(10:56):
human craze for imitation. The conjurer on this In many
cases he always looks in the direction where he wants
the attention of the public, and does everything himself which
he wants the public to do. If the trick is
in the left hand, the conjurer turns sharply to the
person to his right, presuming correctly that the spectators will

(11:18):
make the same movement and will not notice what is
going on in his left hand. Every sharp, sharp remark
will for a moment at least divert the eyes from
the hands and direct them to the mouth according to
the above mentioned law of imitation. Close. The successful conjurer
has carefully studied beforehand every movement that is made, every

(11:41):
word that is spoken during a conjuring performance, and has
seen that these all fit naturally into place and help
conceal the real workings of the trick. The right and
the left hands must be trained to operate independently and
without the need of looking at either. Many conjurors practice

(12:01):
doing two separate things at the same time, one with
either hand, and the ability to do this is essential.
Above all, the performer must be full of conscious self
possession and feel himself to be master of the situation,
no less than to feel the ability to cope with
any emergencies that may arise. Turning now to a consideration

(12:24):
of the seance, we find that many of these psychological
rules still hold good, and their operation enables the medium
to perform many actions which would otherwise be impossible. A
certain suggestion is given to the sitters, and imagination and
inference do the rest our. Conclusions as to what we

(12:45):
see or hear are always founded on a combination of
observation and inference, but in daily life it is seldom
necessary to distinguish between the two elements, since when the
object and its mode of presentation are familar failure, our
inferences are generally correct. But it is different when owing
to circumstances such as a bad light, we have to

(13:08):
infer more in proportion to what we perceive than usual,
or when someone e g. A conjurer or a ventriloquist
is trying to deceive us by presenting one object under
the familiar aspect of another and suggesting false inferences. It
is not uncommon to find people at seances encouraging each

(13:30):
other in the belief that they see, say, a living
human figure, when all that they actually see is something
moving which is about the size of a human being.
The rest is inference. Close quote. How true these last
remarks are is demonstrated by the statement made in the
revelations of a spirit medium that an old wire mask

(13:52):
frequently used at materializing seances had been recognized quote by
dozens of persons as fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, sweethearts, wives, husbands,
and various other relatives and friends. None but the medium
knew that it was only a fifty cent wire mask.

(14:13):
Hence none but the medium could enjoy the humor of
the occasion. Close quote. One of the most instructive incidents
I know in relation to this question of the psychology
of deception is the one given by doctor Hodson the
case of the officer and the Hindoo juggler. In this case,
a trick was performed before an English officer and his wife,

(14:35):
and Doctor Hodgson happened to overhear this officer telling some
travelers of the experience at dinner that evening. Quote referring
to the movements of the coins, he said that he
had taken a coin from his own pocket and placed
it on the ground himself, yet that this coin had
indulged in the same freaks as the other coins. His

(14:57):
wife ventured to suggest that theuckler had taken the coin
and placed it on the ground, but the officer was
emphatic in repeating his statement and appealed to me for confirmation.
He was, however, mistaken. I had watched the transaction with
special curiosity, as I knew what was necessary for the
performance of the trick. The officer had apparently intended to

(15:21):
place the coin upon the ground himself, but as he
was doing so, the juggler leaned slightly forward, dexterously, and
in a most unobstrusive manner, received the coin from the
fingers of the officer as the latter was stooping down,
and laid it close to the others. If the juggler
had not thus taken the coin, but had allowed the

(15:42):
officer himself to place it on the ground, the trick,
as actually performed, would have been frustrated. Now I think
it highly improbable that the movement of the juggler entirely
escaped the perception of the officer. Highly improbable that it's
to say that the officer was absolent unaware of the
juggler's action at the moment of its happening. But I

(16:04):
suppose that although an impression was made on his consciousness,
it was so slight as to be speedily effaced by
the officer's imagination of himself as stooping and placing the
coin upon the ground. The officer, I may say, had
attained no insight into the modus operandi of the trick,
and his fundamental misrepresentation of the only patent occurrence that

(16:29):
might have given him a clue to his performance debarred
him completely from afterwards on his reflection, arriving at any explanation.
Just similarly, many an honest witness may have described himself
as having placed one slate upon another at a sitting
with a medium, whereas it was the medium who did so,

(16:50):
and who possibly affected at the same time one or
two other operations, altogether unnoticed by the witness close. In
reading through descriptions of slate writing seances, we very seldom
find the statement made as to who placed the slates
on the table or under the table, et cetera. Generally,
the account reading quote the slates were then placed on

(17:13):
the table close quote, without any qualifying statement as to
who placed them there. Accounts of this kind are absolutely
worthless from an evidential standpoint. We must at once ask
ourselves who placed the slates in that position, and if
it was the medium, as it probably was in the
vast majority of instances, then that test, in all probability

(17:37):
ceases to have any evidential weight. Anyone can read over
a number of accounts of slate writing performances and verify
these statements if he chooses to do so. Frequently the
statement is made that the sitter did actually place the
slate on the table when in reality the medium did so.
This error is quite unconscious on the sitter's part, of course,

(18:00):
but the account is falsified. Nevertheless, mistakes of this kind
are very common, the sitter thinking afterwards that he the sitter,
must have placed the slates on the table himself. It
will be seen from the above that there is a
great difference between what actually transpired at any given seance
and what the accounts say transpired. The general public cannot

(18:23):
get that all important fact, too strongly rooted in its mind,
that the events which transpired at a seance may not
be reported accurately, so that the report of the seance
may be altogether wrong and erroneous. Though the sitters and
those who drew up the report may have been thoroughly
honest in their belief that the report is accurate in

(18:46):
every respect, the effect of all this is very great. Indeed,
many spiritualistic seances are quite inexplicable as described, but the
description is not a true report of what took place
at the seance. The facts are distorted. Consequently, the person
taking it upon himself to explain what took place at

(19:07):
the seance is called upon to explain a number of
things which in reality, never took place at all. We
must remember in this connection that a number of conjuring
tricks as described would be quite impossible to explain by
any process of trickering. The description of the trick was
not correct. Let me make this still clearer and at

(19:28):
the same time illustrate the difference between what apparently occurs
and what actually happens by the following example. A conjurer
places a coin, say a quarter, in each hand, and
closes his hands. Another quarter is now placed upon the
fingers of each hand, so that there is now one

(19:48):
quarter in each hand and one quarter on the fingers
of each hand. The magician announces that by simply opening
and closing his hands, which are held at some distance
from each other, he will thereby transfer one of the
coins from one hand to the other, so that there
will be three coins in one of the hands and
only one left in the other. Now, if the sitter

(20:11):
were writing out an account of what happened, it would
most certainly read as follows quote. The magician then tried
the experiment of opening and closing his hands rapidly and
causing the coins to be transferred as promised, but failed
in the attempt the coins from the back of each hand,
falling on to the table in a rather clumsy manner.

(20:33):
They were, however, again placed upon the backs of the
magician's hands. The movement was repeated, and this time successfully
the coins disappeared from the backs of both hands, in
one of which was now found three of the coins,
while the other hand contained only one. Close quote, such
is precisely the description of the trick as it would

(20:54):
be given by the average person on seeing it, and
it would represent his honest opinion of what occurred. As
it stands, it is quite inexplicable by triggering. Needless to say,
the account is not a true statement of what actually occurred,
as the following explanation will make clear. The first time
the coins were dropped on the table, the movement was

(21:15):
not so clumsy as it might have been supposed. It
was in fact intentional, being the principal factor in the
accomplishment of the trick. What actually transpired at that time
was this, The magician, by a quick movement, dropped both
coins from one hand on to the table at the
same time, dexterously opening the other hand a trifle and

(21:38):
allowing the second coin on that hand to fall into
the interior of the hand itself. Thus, while both hands
are still seen to be closed, one is empty and
the other contains two coins. It is obvious, therefore, that
when a coin is placed upon each of the hands again,
the magician has only to repeat the opening and closing movement,

(22:01):
and there will be three coins in one of his
hands and only one in the other. This trick illustrates,
in a very simple and striking manner, the possibility of
reporting a fact in an entirely erroneous manner, quite unconscious
of the fact that this error in reporting has been committed.
Just in this same manner are many slate writing and

(22:22):
other phenomena misreported, and hence an explanation of the sance
as reported is rendered impossible. The trouble is that the
report does not really report what actually occurred. Many of
my readers may feel somewhat insulted at this accusation that
they cannot detect such obvious trickery when it exists, and

(22:44):
that they are liable to make such mistakes in recording
a sance as those here mentioned. They may comfort themselves
with the thought, however, that it is no disgrace to
make mistakes and errors of this kind far. As Professor
Jastrow pointed out, quote, the matter is in some aspects
as much a technical acquisition as in the diagnosticating of

(23:05):
a disease. It is not at all to the discredit
of anyone's power of observation or intellectual acumen to be
deceived by the performances of a conjurer, and the same
holds true of the professional part of the mediumistic phenomena.
Until this homely but salutary truth is impressed, with all
its importance upon all intending investigators, there is little hope

(23:29):
of bringing about a proper attitude towards these and kindred phenomena.
Close quote. These remarks will make it clear to us
why many men of science have been deceived by very
simple tricks and fraudulent devices while investigating spiritualistic phenomena. Their
scientific culture is no guaranteed that they are any more

(23:49):
capable of detecting fraud than is the man in the street.
In fact, their training has made them very much less
capable of detecting fraud than the average person who comes
more in contact with the world and is an acuter
judge of character and human nature.