Jordan Maxwell & Other Paranormal Stories

[Frances]

Link to a very informative article, Amazing Stories.
The article details, dates and eye witness accounts of these flying machines.

Source :- http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2014/06...h-watch-skies/

And in the 1800s the craze was to see mystery airships.

In 1896, for instance, both the San Francisco Call and the Sacramento Bee reported wrote of a unknown flying machine that one night buzzed the California State capital. A Mr. R. L. Lowery described it as a pedal-powered dirigible sporting a passenger compartment operated by two men. Lowery also said that he could hear someone on board bark orders to climb to avoid colliding with either a church steeple, or a local brewery (depending on who was asked). Mr. Lowery wasn't the only witness, however: others were quoted as having heard singing from the craft as it floated.
Frances.

[Frances]

Source :- http://drdavidclarke.co.uk/secret-fi...an-photograph/

The Solway Spaceman photograph

by David Clarke & Andy Roberts (published by Fortean Times 286, April 2012)

Jim Templeton died on 27 November, 2011. His name will mean little to all but the most ardent students of British ufological history. But the photograph he took in 1964 will be familiar to most Forteans and has been reproduced numerous times on TV and in books and magazines during the past 48 years.

The Solway Spaceman photograph (Credit: Jim Templeton)

Although the photo depicts a strange space-suited entity rather than a UFO it nevertheless remains one of the most puzzling Fortean images ever taken. Though the photo itself is often claimed to be a hoax the circumstances that surround it are frequently used to justify the existence of shadowy, MIB-like, government agents.

Carlisle fireman Jim Templeton had a passion for photography, and on 24 May 1964 took a photograph of his eldest daughter on the Solway Marshes, the strip of land on the south side of the Solway Estuary, separating England from Scotland. When he collected the processed film the shop assistant said, “That’s a marvellous colour film, but who’s the big fellow”. Jim was baffled until he took a close look at the photographs. On one print, apparently standing just behind his daughter’s head was a large figure dressed in a ‘spaceman’ suit. Jim knew there had been no-one else around at the time he took the photograph and immediately had the negative tested by contacts in the police force and with the film’s manufacturers, Kodak. Both said the image had not been tampered with and could not account for what the Cumberland News began to call the ‘Solway Spaceman’.

The photograph was soon on the front page of the local newspaper and within days Jim and his daughter became media celebrities as the image was flashed round the world. But the price of this involuntary fame and attention was high. Jim’s daughter was taunted and bullied and he had to take his daughter out of school for a while because her nerves were suffering.

The Ministry of Defence showed no interest in the case until the Cumberland News contacted them for their opinion. The MoD said they would be pleased to analyse the photograph, but when Jim discovered they required the original film and camera for analysis he refused and no official file exists to show they pursued the matter any further. Whether or not Jim was just being cautious in refusing to supply the original film and camera for analysis or whether he had good reason for not letting them out of his hands is a matter for speculation, especially in view of information that has arisen in recent years. A strange event then took place which has convinced many UFOlogists that the MOD were interested enough to covertly send a pair of secret agents to investigate the bizarre photograph.

Later that summer Jim was visited at the Fire Station by two men. They were dressed entirely in black and drove a brand new black Jaguar car, unusual garb and transport for the times. They asked to be taken to the place where the photograph was taken. Jim queried their identity and was shown a card bearing an official crest and the word ‘Security’. They told him, ‘We’re from the Ministry, but you don’t need to know who we are. We go by numbers.’ Jim noticed the pair referred to each other as ‘nine’ and ‘eleven’. Their obvious lack of knowledge of the area and inability to pronounce local place names led Jim to conclude they weren’t local people. Once they reached the marshes Jim said the following conversation took place: “Pull up on here. This is where the photograph was taken.’ They asked, ‘Can you take us to the exact spot?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ So we walked across, and I said, ‘This is where the photograph was taken.’ One looked at the other, and the other looked at him and said, ‘This is where you saw the large man, the alien?’ I said, ‘No, we didn’t see anybody…I never saw anybody.’ ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, and he walked away.” In a somewhat bizarre conclusion to the encounter, the two men drove off, abandoning Jim to walk a mile to the nearest garage for a lift to Carlisle. Jim Templeton never saw the mysterious Men In Black again.

This case has become a cause celebre in ufology, and has featured in a number of books and articles within the context of a Government cover-up. Analysis of the paper trail surrounding the case demonstrates how fact has become entangled with fantasy, with the result that another layer of confusion has been added to the MIB mythology. When the authors questioned Jim Templeton in 2001 he told us he firmly believed the mystery visitors were sent by the British Government. He has also made this statement to UFO to other writers and researchers in recent years. Jim’s mysterious visitors have been tied in with all kinds of spurious events in an attempt to keep the idea of government MIB-type agents alive. For example, Jim’s photograph has been linked to an anomalous ‘figure’ that was supposed to have appeared on a Blue Streak missile firing range at Woomera in south Australia. The link with Solway Firth appeared to be that Blue Streak missiles were developed and tested at RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria. They were part of a British missile system designed to be used as the first stage of a satellite launcher.

According to a Wikipedia entry a Blue Streak launch at the Woomera range, using Cumbrian-built weaponry, had to be aborted the day after the Solway Spaceman photo was taken ‘because two large men [were] seen on the firing range…technicians at the time did not know about Templeton’s sighting until it appeared on the front page of an Australian newspaper…and they said the figure in Cumbria looked the same as the ones they had seen on the monitor at Woomera.’

Templeton repeated this story when interviewed by Jenny Randles for a BBC2 documentary on Tales of the Paranormal (1996). He said the Australian technicians had claimed the figures were ‘exactly the same type of man: same dress, same figure, same size as in the original photograph.’ The mystery appeared to increase when, as part of the research for the programme, Jenny searched UFO files from 1964 held by The National Archives. There she found letters from members of the public referring to both the ‘Cumberland spaceman’ and to a ‘mysterious object’ captured on film during the rocket launch. But there was no trace of the can of film referred to in the archives. Had it been removed by the Men in Black?

The mystery also gripped MP James Fraser who, following the 1996 TV show, asked MoD what had become of the ‘missing’ film. Files released by The National Archives in 2010 revealed that inquiries by the UFO desk discovered the film in question was neither secret nor ‘missing’ (DEFE 24/1983/1). It was in fact part of a British Pathe newsreel and the original is held by the Imperial War Museum. Stills from the film were widely published by newspapers and the British magazine Flying Saucer Review shortly after its release. It shows a rocket test on 5 June 1964 and the ‘mysterious object’ visible in the sky beside the launch pad is clearly the result of a classic lens reflection. The film ‘Blue Streak – Two, One, Zero! 1964’ can be viewed at the British Pathe website here.

Research published at www.cumberlandspaceman co.uk reveals there were two aborted rocket launches at Woomera the preceded the test shown in the British Pathe footage. The first, on 25 May, was halted due to ‘bad weather’, the second on 2 June was aborted due to a systems fault. One of these events must logically be the source of the ‘spaceman’ rumour overheard and spread by Jim Templeton. But there is no contemporaneous record, either from a newspaper or official source, that refers to the appearance of a ‘spaceman’. There were, however, lots of stories about a ‘UFO’ – actually a lens flare – spotted on the film of the 5 June rocket test.

The most straightforward explanation is that the story combines two separate events into one ‘urban legend’ which has subsequently spread like a virus through the UFO grapevine and is still reproducing itself almost 50 years later. But the bottom line remains, as Australian UFOlogist Bill Chalker concluded, ‘…there would appear to be no links between the Solway photograph and the 5 June 1964 Woomera footage. Case solved.’

No real evidence of any connection between these events, or indeed proof that a similar ‘figure’ was ever seen at Woomera, exists. UFOlogists have never let UFO fact get in the way of UFO fiction and an air of mystery still pervades these claims. The story of the Solway Spaceman has become a UFOlogical legend. But there is another much more interesting view of the story and one which, while it may not solve the case entirely, could, once and for all, cast reasonable doubt on Jim’s claims that the photograph and the MIB story is genuine. Contemporary newspaper records from 1964 reveal that Jim Templeton took a very different view of the matter shortly after he had taken the infamous photograph. In September that year his story of the MIB visit reached the national media and journalists asked the Carlisle police for confirmation that Jim has been quizzed by the security services.

Detective Chief Inspector Stanley Armstrong told the Cumberland News: ‘I know nothing whatsoever about this meeting. I don’t know who the men were and I have told Mr Templeton that he should have taken the number of the car and reported the incident to the police.’ After the police became involved Jim clearly wanted to play down the significance of the ‘meeting.’ He told the paper: “It all looks like a leg-pull to me. I’m sure the men were not security agents and I have no idea why they should want to pass themselves off as such.”



Jim Templeton was a very sincere man but it seems that his interpretation of what took place on the lonely Solway Marshes in 1964 has, like so many elements of the UFO mystery, been coloured by what the media and UFO writers have wished to be the truth. In 1964 British UFOlogy was in the doldrums. The great days of the 1950s saucer scares and contactees, when flying saucers made news headlines on a daily basis, were long gone and both flying saucer enthusiasts and media alike were looking for any story that would keep flying saucers in the public eye. The Solway Spaceman photograph did just that and paved the way for British ufology’s great re-invention in 1966 when the so called Warminster Phenomenon began.

That leaves the photograph itself. However the sceptics decry it as being a hoaxed photo no one has actually been able to prove how it was faked. A detailed photographic analysis carried out in 1997 by Roger Green of Bradford University concluded that the image was, “…a composite made using some superimposition technique.”, but failed to demonstrate exactly how the composite and been achieved. And of course Kodak’s analysis claimed the photograph was genuine and had not been tampered with. Neither can we prove that Jim Templeton faked the photograph himself but there is evidence that he enjoyed playing practical jokes. For example he told us that he had created a faked five pound note for amusement only weeks before the photograph was taken, to demonstrate his photographic skills. Templeton took the film for processing locally where, he said “everybody in the developing department knew me.”

Perhaps, in trying to perfect his photographic techniques, Templeton did create the ‘spaceman’ photo or perhaps, knowing of his liking for practical jokes and eager to play one on him, it is not inconceivable that someone in the processing labs tampered with the film to create the ‘alien’ image. Within days the image was world famous. That, coupled with the fact that Jim’s daughter was upset because of all the attention she attracted, would make it impossible for Jim to confess to a hoax or for someone to say ‘sorry, Jim, it was just a joke’. This is exactly what took place in other celebrated UFO photographic cases, where the instant fame achieved by the pranksters later prevented them from making a full confession and the stories became cemented as ‘fact’. Subsequent retractions years later were either dismissed by media and UFOlogy or fudged by the witnesses themselves to minimise embarrassment.

So who were the Jim Templeton’s mystery ‘MIB’ visitors? Former incumbent of the British government’s UFO desk, Nick Pope believes that there may be ‘Walter Mitty’ types among the civilian population who are prepared to impersonate MOD officials in order to speak to UFO witnesses for their own reasons. Evidence for such individuals is well documented in the MOD files. And there, the story ends, for now. Jim is gone, but his story and photograph live on. The Solway Spaceman is an iconic image from a simpler time. A time when people believed you if you said you were from ‘the ministry’ and when the photograph of a ‘spaceman’ held untold potential for the human race. For some, it still does.
Frances.

[jimmer]

here's a theory that has been picking up traction: The Solway Firth Alien

it was the child's mother.



here's another image showing what her mother was wearing.

[Frances]

Good one Jimmer, makes sense now that the photograph has changed colour.
We can at least put this one on the shelf as, solved.
Frances.

[Frances]

Source :- http://whofortedblog.com/2014/12/22/...e-santa-claus/

Article by Tim Grieve - Carlson.

Yes Forteans, (Maybe?) There is a Santa Claus.

Footsteps On The Roof.

“VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.”

- “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” Francis Pharcellus Church. New York’s Sun, Sept. 21st, 1897.

It is once again that special time of year when shopping malls are full, our wallets are empty, and distant relatives make themselves at home. Children all over the world send prayers and letters to Santa Claus, a composite image of the Greek St. Nicholas (especially his Dutch form, sinterklass), the old Nordic Odin, and the creative vision of Haddon Sundblom, an artist working for the Coca-Cola company in 1931.

Of course, countless mythic and commercial interests had a hand in creating the image of Santa we cherish today. Sundblom himself turned to Clement Clark Moore’s 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (often called “‘Twas the Night before Christmas”) for inspiration. Moore describes Santa as a rotund and benevolent being:

“His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;”

Those lines formed the basis for Haddon Sundblom’s paintings of Santa for Coca-Cola: fat, rosy-cheeked, red coat and hat, boots, white beard, and a sack of gifts for good girls and boys.[1] This is the image that many young people are encouraged to believe in today, and we reward the fervor of their belief with gifts that we tell them came from Santa Claus himself (as clearly evidenced by the missing cookies).

(Earlier this month, another Who Forted? contributor deftly explained some of the mythic, and possibly supernatural/fae characteristics of Santa Claus, with special attention given to Moore’s poem).

This is also the time of year when Stephen Wagner of paranormal.about.com starts to post some very interesting submissions: stories from individuals who claim to have encountered Santa Claus, but not on his break near the food court in their local mall. Stephen collects stories from people who have encountered the real Santa Claus. Stephen has been collecting and publishing these stories for a few years now, and he believes that many of his informants are well-intentioned in their submissions: for the most part, they aren’t messing with us. They do believe that they’ve seen the real Santa Claus, or at least something a lot like him, which they are at a loss to explain:

I had an experience when I was three years old and still young enough to wear footed pajamas. The year was maybe 1969, Christmas Eve. I wanted to see what Santa had brought me, so I quietly walked down the hallway and looked around the corner to our living room. I saw my parents and someone I didn’t know around our Christmas tree. The stranger was an old guy with a white beard and hair with a red suit. I quickly went back to my room as fast as I could with footed pajamas and slid into bed.

I told my mom what happened many years later and she insisted that I was dreaming or that it was my dad. That wasn’t possible because my dad was sitting in a chair behind the stranger and my mom was standing right next to my dad! I’m African American, and during that time the tenants in our building were all African American, so Santa stood out! -Joanne

SCOTLAND – 1978

An old friend came to see me a couple of weeks ago. We lost touch years ago, but he managed to trace me and he brought me a Christmas card. After a few minutes, I asked him if he remembered the Christmas Eve about 30 years ago when we were outside our houses. We grew up next to each other.

It must have been around 7.30 p.m., a clear night, when we suddenly heard a bell or bells in the distance getting closer real fast. As we both looked up, there was the reindeer, the sleigh and Santa flying very fast and low over my house. It was brief, but we both ran to tell our families. Of course, everyone laughed, but I tell you it was real!

So when my friend turned up I asked him if he remembered, and he said of course he did… but he didn’t like telling people about it now. You can imagine why! – Jimmy

You can check out the entire selection of Santa encounters here.

Even in a fairly skeptical 2012 article on Wagner’s Santa reports for the Boston Globe, London author Chris Wright was impressed by the serious tone of many of the accounts: “…the overall tone is of people giving courtroom testimony…Reading these accounts, you feel that these are people who are desperate to be taken seriously, and who see Wagner’s site as a chance to present their case.

(Mr. Wright’s article also included what might be one of the greatest quotes from any paranormal investigator in history: ‘The only possibility of this being real is if it’s an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa.’ - Loyd Auerbach, Atlantic University. Anything is possible at Christmas, Loyd. And what’s with leaving out Bigfoot?)



In his fortean classic The Mothman Prophecies, John Keel describes the home and work of a writer named Walter Gibson, a prolific novelist whose subject was a character named “the Shadow.” As Keel relates it, the Shadow was “fond of lurking in dark alleys and wearing a wide-brimmed hat.” Interestingly enough, an apparition matching the appearance and behavior of the Shadow now appears in Gibson’s former residence, the very place in which he dreamed of and wrote about the character so often. Keel suggested that this Shadow-like apparition might be a “tulpa”: a thought-projection, a being brought into existence by the concentrated mental energy of human belief. Keel postulated that Gibson’s years of thinking about the Shadow in that space eventually brought a Shadow-like apparition into existence there. He then went on to wonder whether some of the other apparitions people were seeing might be something like a tulpa.

Keel drew the idea of tulpas from the Belgian-French explorer Alexandra David-Neel’s 1929 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet, in which she describes their tendency to eventually develop their own agency, entirely separate from the pure will that generated them:

“Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother’s womb.

Or as Santa leaves the North Pole?

Since Keel introduced us decades ago, forteans have fallen in love with the notion of the tulpa. Nick Redfern referenced the idea heavily in his book Three Men Seeking Monsters (in which the cryptozoologist Richard Freeman conjures a spider-tulpa in the basement of his home), and Chris Savia of The Anomalist once suggested in an article for Who Forted? that the belief in “Slender Man” among the denizens of the internet has granted the entity “form and agency as a tulpa. Just like the Jersey Devil.” If one person thinking about the Shadow was enough to generate an apparition, could the believe of the world’s children generate a Santa-tulpa? Could this be the source of people’s Santa encounters?



I can almost hear your stockings getting in a bunch. Do I really mean to suggest that Santa Claus is as really real as our thoughts, or as (now I’m looking at you, Loyd) “ghosts” and “aliens”? No, I am not writing this in an effort to prove that the collective powers of children’s minds have created a red-coated being who lives at the north pole, operates a high-flying sleigh, and keeps elves as slaves. I’d rather not even take a stand on the objective reality of any sort of tulpa. It is, however, my intention to point out that if tulpas are indeed an appropriate explanation for the various fortean phenomena to which we might ascribe them, then we must be willing to consider the far-reaching implications of suggesting that the human mind has the ability to conjure thought-forms of any sort. If Walter Gibson’s mind was enough to create an apparition of his character, shouldn’t the imaginations of all the world’s children conjure the image of Haddon Sundblom’s Santa Claus? But why stop there—maybe this spring Stephen Wagner should solicit Easter Bunny reports. In fact, we would have strong ground on which to question the utility of describing certain apparitions as “tulpas” if no one ever claimed to encounter the real Santa, given that sincere belief in him is so widespread. The fact that many people seem to actually experience something like the real Santa Claus supports the tulpa-ish notion that there may be blurry lines between belief and experience, between place we describe as thought and the thing we agree to call reality.

As forteans, our supreme objective is the consideration of every available data-set. There is nothing Charles Fort detested more than the rejection or suppression of data that did not conform to existing paradigms of the time. And if there’s one batch of stories that does a poor job of conforming to today’s paradigms, it’s Stephen Wagner’s Santa-data.

The only indisputable fact to come out of all this is that a great many people have come forth with their stories of Santa encounters, and isn’t that the raw material of the fortean endeavor itself? Fantastic stories? The present writer, for one, celebrates the experiences of those who have been lucky enough to encounter that jolly old elf. I’d like wish you a holiday season as full of magic as these stories.



Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. 1975. New York: Tor, 2002. pp. 5-7.

Alexandra David-Néel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, 1929, pg 283
Frances.

[Frances]

Link to Jimmer's Well Researched Thread. John A Keel. Adventurer?
http://jandeane81.com/threads/4277-J...hn+keel+thread

Tulpa's, Posts & Links On This Thread :- Page 3. Post 40. Alexander David-Neel. Tibet.
Frances.

[jimmer]

On a cinematic side note, be sure and check out one the very earliest science fiction films for a taste of airship wonderfulness:Luftkrieg Der Zukunft*protected email*, (The Battle in the Clouds as it was called in the US) directed by Walter R. Booth back in 1909.


Frances

here's "The Battle in the Clouds."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ZrTtKPxDw

[Frances]

Source :- http://davidpratt.info/twilight1.htm

Article by David Pratt.

Visitors From The Twilight Zone.

1. Introduction.

Strange encounters between humans and a wide variety of otherworldly entities have been reported throughout history. These entities include gods, angels, ghosts, demons, fairies, gnomes, monsters, aliens, etc. Such encounters range from benign and uplifting to hostile and harmful. Some may involve visions or hallucinations but, as many of the cases presented below show, others appear to take place in our physical reality. In the latter cases, the entities are physically visible and sometimes tangible but their weird behaviour suggests that they are paranormal entities, who manifest briefly before fading back into the twilight zone.

Spirit materializations

Spirit materializations have often been reported since the resurgence of spiritualism in the second half of the 19th century. A.R. Wallace, co-developer with Darwin of the theory of natural selection, described these manifestations as follows:

These are either luminous appearances, sparks, stars, globes of light, luminous clouds, etc.; or hands, faces, or entire human figures, generally covered with flowing drapery, except a portion of the face and hands. The human forms are often capable of moving solid objects, and are both visible and tangible to all present.

He believed that such phenomena embodied truths of the most vital importance to human progress.

In the presence of the celebrated medium Daniel Dunglas Home, materialized hands could be touched and were seen to lift and carry objects. A newspaper editor shook hands with a materialized hand that ended at the wrist, describing it as tolerably well and symmetrically made, though not perfect, soft and slightly warm. A bell was brought to a journalist by a disembodied hand, but when he tried to hold the hand it melted away, leaving only the bell. At a session with the medium Kate Fox, a luminous hand came from the upper part of the room and, after hovering near the prominent scientist William Crookes for a few seconds, took a pencil from his hand, wrote on a sheet of paper, threw the pencil down, and then rose into the air, gradually fading into darkness. At a seance with Charles Williams in 1873, a large hand materialized which psychic researcher Frederic Myers seized and held in his; he felt it diminish in size until it was no bigger than a baby's, before it melted away altogether.2 H.P. Blavatsky argued that the spirit-hand or phantom-hand was often an extrusion from the mediums astral body, usually happening unconsciously, when the medium was in a trance.

The most famous full-form materialization was a white-robed, white-veiled, barefoot figure calling herself Katie King. After the medium Florence Cook, dressed in black, had been securely tied up in a cabinet (a niche with a curtain in front of it) and had gone into a trance, Katie would emerge from the cabinet and walk about the seance room, conversing with those present. She felt warm to the touch, and seemed just like a flesh-and-blood human. Immediately after an appearance, Florence would be found still tied up, with the knots of the ropes still sealed. In 1874 a scientist conducted a test in which wires were attached to Florence and a low electric current was passed through her body, so that even a movement of her hands would register on the galvanometer. But the current was not interrupted throughout the seance, in which Katie materialized and moved round the seance room. William Crookes was another scientist who investigated this phenomenon and concluded that it was genuine. He took 44 pictures of Katie, and saw both Katie and Florence together on several occasions. However, he was already convinced that Katie was not Florence in disguise, as Katie was six inches taller than Florence, her ears were unpierced, in contrast to Florence's, and her fingers were longer and her face larger than Florence's.





Fig. 2.1. Left: Having entered into a trance, Florence Cook has slumped over the arm of a chair. The towering ectoplasm shape behind her is just beginning to compress into the materialized form of Katie King. Right: Katie King, fully materialized.

In December 1873 a man tried to seize Katie during a seance, and a scuffle followed in which the man lost part of his beard. To escape his clutches, Katie partly dematerialized and slipped away to the cabinet. When the curtains were opened, Florence was found still tied up with the knots sealed and no white material of the kind Katie had been wearing could be found. The only proven instance of cheating came in January 1880 when the materialization was seized and really wasFlorence. However, the person responsible for securing Florence admitted that he had arranged with others that he would not secure her properly. Florence's supporters argued that this was a case of unconscious fraud. This certainly occurred with the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino; when in trance she was known to cheat whenever she could, clumsily levitating tables with her feet, but her remarkable phenomena continued to occur even under rigorous test conditions, amazing dozens of eminent European scientists over a 20-year period.

Impressive materializations were also produced by Horatio and William Eddy, two mediums living in the township of Chittenden, Vermont. Form after form would emerge from the cabinet, each quite different in sex, gait, costume, complexion, length and arrangement of hair, height and breadth of body, and apparent age. After an hour or so the session was brought to a close and the medium reappeared with haggard eyes and apparently much exhausted . These manifestations were investigated in 1874 by H.S. Olcott, who helped to found the Theosophical Society the following year. He had served as a field officer for the Union in the Civil War, and because of his reputation for integrity was given the rank of Colonel and assigned the task of uprooting fraud and corruption in the army and navy. Olcott witnessed some 300 or 400 spirit forms during his stay with the Eddy mediums and could find no evidence of fraud. He said that, when touched, the apparitions were as substantial as any human being in the flesh, but that their temperature was invariably lower than his own, and their skin was covered with a clammy sweat.

Dr George Beard of New York was convinced that the manifestations were simply the result of one of the Eddy brothers dressing up. Posing as a simple-minded spiritualist, he went to Chittenden secretly determined to expose them. However, during Horatio Eddy's seance, while the sitters were holding the mediums hands, a rogue guitar struck Beard repeatedly on the head, causing him so much pain that he jumped up and knocked down the curtains. After the sitting had resumed, all sorts of musical instruments were thrown over the curtain at him; a bell thrown with some force hit him in the face, after which he decided to return to New York. Beard had brought with him a powerful battery, whose current no mortal would have been able to withstand. Olcott connected the materialized form of a Hindu girl, Honto, to it, but it seemed only to amuse her. Beard, however, proceeded to denounce all materializing seances as stupendous frauds, and declared that Olcott's testimony couldn't be trusted as he had been immersed in the humbug for too long and also wore glasses!

Francis Monck had been the first medium not only to produce materialized forms but also to remain in full view while doing so. Spirit forms would grow out of his side: at first faces, then a fully-formed figure, nebulous at first but growing more solid as it issued from the medium until eventually it left him and appeared as a separate person, a couple of feet away but bound to him by a slender attachment of gossamer. Monck was tested several times with good results but, as with certain other mediums whose powers were not fully under their control, he resorted to deliberate deception on at least one occasion; conjuror devices were found in his possession and sceptics dismissed all his earlier materializations as fraudulent.

During the early decades of the 20th century, Marthe Braud(Eva C.) produced materializations in full view of investigators, after she had been put into a hypnotic trance. A soft, somewhat elastic substance named ectoplasm emanated from various parts of her body especially her mouth, ears, vagina, and nipples. The ectoplasm would quickly organize itself into the shape of a hand or head, on which a face might appear, sometimes in miniature. It would then solidify into a sort of paste, dry to the touch, before retracting into the mediums body or simply disappearing. Sometimes the materializations looked like flat images, but in other cases they were perfect. Charles Richet, a French physiologist (later Nobel Prize winner) and psychic investigator, described seeing a full form rise from the floor:

At first it was only a white, opaque spot like a handkerchief lying on the ground before the curtain, then this handkerchief quickly assumed the form of a human head level with the floor and a few moments later it rose up in a straight line and became a small man enveloped in a kind of white burnous [long circular cloak with hood], who took two or three halting steps in front of the curtain and then sank to the floor and disappeared as if through a trap-door. But there was no trap-door.

Since sceptics suggested Marthe might be swallowing muslin and regurgitating it, her hair, armpits, nose, mouth, and knees were examined before a seance, and sometimes her vagina and rectum too. She was also given an emetic. Even after syrup of bilberries was administered, the forms extruded from her mouth were absolutely white. Over a period of 20 years she was never detected in any attempt at trickery.



Fig. 2.2. Left: Eva C. producing ectoplasm, 13 March 1911. Her left hand is being held by Dr Charles Richet and her right by Prof. Schrenck-Notzing. The latters book Phenomena of Materialisation contains some 225 photographs of ectoplasmic materializations, all performed under strict test conditions. Right: An ectoplasmic face exuding from the neck of Eva C., 30 December 1911.11

By the mid-1920s, Eva's powers were deserting her. But by this time a Brazilian medium, Carlos Mirabelli, was demonstrating even more spectacular materializations.

Mirabelli's full-form materializations were of deceased individuals known to the witnesses: something which had often been reported from spiritualist seances, but ordinarily in dark or very poorly lit rooms, whereas Mirabelli's appeared in full light, and in test conditions, before numerous investigators appointed to examine the claims. In the course of more than a hundred sessions, more than half of which were productive, Mirabelli performed in a locked and sealed room, tied up in a chair; and he materialized, among others, the child of one of the investigators, dressed in her burial clothes, and a bishop who had been drowned in a shipwreck. They did not merely appear and fade away again; they were able to converse with the investigators, and to touch and be touched; a doctor present was able to feel the girlS pulse. These materializations were attested by scores of academics, prominent politicians, doctors and others, none of whom could offer any explanation other than that they were genuine; nor has any sceptic since been able to discover any evidence from the many witnesses still living to suggest that Mirabelli was involved in what would have been the most spectacular conjuring trick ever devised.



Fig. 2.3. The look of alarm on the part of Dr Carlos de Castro (right) is accounted for by the fact that a deceased poet (centre) has just materialized between him and the entranced Mirabelli (left), in the course of a test seance at the Cesare Lombroso Academy of Psychic Studies.

Materializations are still occasionally reported in spiritualist journals but they are no longer the object of serious investigation as most parapsychologists find the subject too hot to handle!

W.Q. Judge, a founder-member of the Theosophical Society, mentions three possible explanations of spirit materializations:
1) The mediums astral body is exuded, and gradually collects particles extracted from the air and the bodies of those present at the seance until it becomes visible. It may resemble the medium or assume the appearance of a dead person whose image is present on the astral plane.

2) The astral shell of a deceased person, i.e. the decaying ethereal form that served as the vehicle of their lower mind, and which is therefore devoid of conscience and the higher intellectual and spiritual faculties, becomes visible and even tangible when the condition of air and ether is such as to alter the vibration of its molecules to the necessary degree.

3) An unseen mass of chemical, electrical, and magnetic matter is collected from the atmosphere, the medium, or other people present, and a picture of any desired person, living or dead, is reflected on it out of the astral light.
Dimness of light is generally preferred for such manifestations because a bright light disturbs the astral substance and makes the projection more difficult.

In materializations and other seance-room phenomena, the medium and other sitters are often vampirized to some extent by the astral entities involved, as the necessary elements are drawn from their bodies, depleting their vitality. Blavatsky calls mediumship , one of the most dangerous of abnormal nervous diseases, and contrasts it with adeptship, which signifies full voluntary control over psychic powers and forces.
Frances.

[Frances]

Source :- http://davidpratt.info/twilight1.htm#t3

Article by David Pratt.

Angels and apparitions.

Most apparitions on record are of the living rather than the dead. Only a minority are visual; most involve sensing a presence, hearing thumps, moaning, and other strange noises, or smelling unexplained odours. Apparitions are usually seen only once, but some are repeatedly seen haunting the same location. R.E. Guiley writes:

Some apparitions seem real and corporeal, with definable form and features, and, if human, with clothing. Other apparitions are fuzzy, luminous, transparent, wispy and ill-defined; some are little more than streaks, blobs or patches of light.
Apparitions appear and disappear suddenly and sometimes just fade away. They both move through walls and objects and walk around them. They can cast shadows and be reflected in mirrors. ... Some are accompanied by sounds, smells, sensations of cold and movement of real objects in the percipient’s environment. In some cases, percipients attempt to touch apparitions; most find their hands go through them, but in a few cases, contact has been made with a substance that feels like a flimsy garment.

Some apparitions communicate verbally and seem to possess a certain degree of intelligence, while others do not respond to attempts at communication and display only a limited range of gestures and movements. For instance, they may call the percipient’s attention to a fatal wound on the ghostly body. Sometimes there is no interaction at all, and the percipient merely witnesses an ethereal repeat of events that once took place at the scene in question. There are reports of animal ghosts, and people have also seen ghosts of inanimate objects, such as spectral ships glowing at sea (e.g. ‘The Flying Dutchman’). In addition, phantom armies have been seen fighting in the sky. For instance, on Christmas Eve 1642, two months after the battle of Edge Hill during England’s Civil War, a kind of replay of the battle was seen in the skies above the battlefield, complete with sound effects. The reenactment was repeated on several subsequent occasions, though it varied each time. The king had a royal commission look into the case, and the investigators saw the spectacle for themselves. Ghostly replays of battlefield scenes tend to fade over time, though many continue for centuries.

Over 80% of apparitions seem to manifest themselves for a purpose. The persons whose apparition is seen may communicate their own crisis (e.g. that they are dying or have just died), usually to their loved ones or others with whom they have close emotional ties. Crisis apparitions appear to people both in dreams and when they are awake. Most apparitions of the dead appear to comfort the grieving or communicate information about the estate or unfinished business of the deceased. For instance, after his death, Dante appeared to his son and guided him to where he had hidden the last cantos of his Divine Comedy. Apparitions of the dead may also appear years later to loved ones in times of crisis. Sometimes angelic beings, religious figures, luminosities, and dead loved ones are reported by the dying shortly before death. Haunting apparitions usually have emotional ties to the site concerned, possibly resulting from violent or sudden death.

Many unexplained luminosities at haunted sites have been captured on film.3 Sometimes cameras fail to register what witnesses see, suggesting that the ghost was not seen with normal vision. This is also implied by the fact that sometimes one person sees a ghost while another person present does not. There are also occasions when cameras record a ghost even though the photographer was not aware of anything when the picture was taken.



Fig. 3.1. This famous photo was taken by two Canadian tourists on 19 June 1966 at Queen’s House on the Thames. Although nothing had been noticed at the time, two cowled ghostly figures can be seen on the developed photo (the two hands visible on the stair rail are both left hands).

Very strong, sharply fluctuating magnetic fields have been detected in places where people see ghosts. They tend to move from place to place and vary from the size of a basketball to that of a baseball. The electrical component of these fields is usually a DC field, like those emitted by living organisms, rather than the AC field typical of an electrical circuit. Sudden temperature drops (‘cold spots’) have also been measured, along with elevated levels of radioactivity.

Sceptics have suggested that people who see ghosts may be suffering hallucinations induced by freakish electromagnetic phenomena. But even if certain ghostly experiences are hallucinatory, it is implausible that an ordinary random electromagnetic field would induce similar hallucinations in different people on different occasions, as would have to happen in places apparently haunted by the same ghost.

W.Q. Judge divides apparitions into two general classes: 1) the astral shells of the dead or astral images, either actually visible to the eye or the result of vibration within thrown out to the eye and thus making the person think he sees a physical form; 2) the astral-mental form (mayavi-rupa, or thought-body) of living persons, often projected unintentionally and therefore only partially conscious. When conditions are right, any astral images or thought-forms from the collective imagination can manifest visibly and even tangibly through the agency of elemental and other ethereal entities.

Apparitions of people who are about to die or have just died are fairly common. For instance, in a letter to the famous 19th-century French astronomer and psychical researcher Camille Flammarion, the Princess de Montarcy recalled that her grandmother had always said that if they were not together when she was dying, she would let her know she was dead. One evening at 9 o’clock the princess’s dog jumped up on her bed, ‘howling as if he were being killed’. At the foot of her bed the princess saw the apparition of her grandmother, who threw her a kiss and disappeared. The following morning, a telegram informed her that her grandmother had died between 8 and 9 the previous evening.

In another case from the 19th century, the figure of a young soldier, in hospital dress, appeared before the captain of his company, and requested that his pay be forwarded to his mother, whose address he then gave. The captain made a note of the request, whereupon the man vanished. After making inquiries, the captain found that the soldier had died the previous day. H.P. Blavatsky says that the intense thought and anxiety felt by the soldier in his dying moments could easily create an astral form to achieve a certain object. The astral soul is the exact ethereal likeness of the body, though not of its temporary garments. However, the soldier would have imagined talking to his captain dressed, rather than naked, and his desire faithfully reproduced the scene planned beforehand.

In August 1864, May Clerke was reading on a verandah in Barbados while a native nurse was pushing her little girl in a pram. When Clerke got up to go into the house, the nurse asked who the gentleman was who had just been talking to her. Clerke replied that no one had been with her. The nurse was adamant and said that the gentleman was very tall and very pale. Clerke became annoyed when the nurse said she had been rude to ignore the man, who seemed very anxious to get her attention. A few days later Clerke learned that her brother had died in Tobago at the time of the apparition.

In general, theosophy rejects the idea that the actual spirits of the dead can appear after death. This is because the higher human soul, or reincarnating soul, usually separates from the lower human soul, or astral soul, soon after death. It then sinks into a peaceful dreamlike state of consciousness in the higher astral realms, leaving behind a decaying astral corpse or shell (kama-rupa, or ‘desire-body’), largely devoid of reason – and this is what mediums usually mistake for the ‘spirits’ of the dead. However, the spirit-soul may genuinely be present directly preceding or following physical death, especially if death came suddenly.

Encounters with ‘angels’ (from the Greek angelos, ‘messenger’) continue to the present day. G. de Purucker says that appearances of angels are often connected with the witness’s own inner self and are an externalization of his or her thoughts. Some involve the appearance of highly evolved humans such as mahatmas or their chelas, who can travel at will in their subtle body and make themselves seen whenever it is appropriate to do so. In rare cases nirmanakayas may appear – i.e. spiritually evolved humans belonging to the brotherhood of adepts, who choose to live in the earth’s auric atmosphere, without a physical body. In extremely rare cases certain advanced, ethereal beings from higher planes who are closely linked with the human race may appear visibly to people in an unusual state of consciousness, and the visioner’s imagination may endow them with wings or dress them in unusual garments.

Angels are usually sensed, or heard by clairaudience, but occasionally they manifest as apparitions in brilliant white robes or as balls of brilliant white light. They often appear as real persons in a ‘mysterious stranger’ encounter.

These encounters occur when a person is in a dilemma and needs quick action. A mysterious person suddenly appears out of nowhere and provides a solution. Mysterious strangers can be male or female of any race. Most often, they are male – usually a fresh-looking, clean-cut youth. They are invariably well-dressed, polite and knowledgeable about the crisis at hand. They often are calm but can be forceful, and know just what to do. They speak, though sparingly. They are convincingly real as flesh-and-blood humans; however, once the problem has been solved, the mysterious strangers vanish abruptly. It is their abrupt and strange disappearance that makes people question whether they have been aided by mortals or angels.

The 16th-century Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, for instance, was about to hang himself in prison when a luminous angelic youth appeared and hurled him to the ground.11 In the 1950s a German woman climbing alone in the Bavarian Alps found herself in danger; it was growing dark and she realized she had strayed from the path. Suddenly she saw a big ball of light, which condensed into the shape of a tall, rather Chinese-looking gentleman. At the time the apparition did not astonish her but seemed quite natural. The gentleman bowed to her, spoke a few reassuring words, and led her back to the tourist path. Then he turned into a ball of light that vanished. He acted like a guardian angel – perhaps a manifestation of her own higher self. The phenomenon of a figure materializing from a small luminous source or ball of light is quite common.



Fig. 3.2. Ball of light and oriental gentleman encountered in the Bavarian Alps.

The following ‘crisis apparition’ raises intriguing questions about the physical reality and identity of some ghostly figures.

In the summer of 1895, veteran sailor Captain Joshua Slocum was completing the first leg of the voyage which earned him his place in history as the first person to sail alone round the world. Between the Azores and Gibraltar his rugged but tiny sloop Spray ran into squalls. At the same time, Slocum was suffering from severe stomach cramps which so demoralized him that he went below, not taking in his sails as he knew he should, and threw himself on the cabin floor in agony. He lost track of how long he lay there, for he became delirious.
When Slocum came to, he realized this his sloop was plunging into a heavy sea. Looking out of the companionway, to his amazement he saw a tall man at the helm. His rigid hand, grasping the spokes of the wheel, held them as in a vise. He was dressed like a foreign sailor, with a large red cap over his left ear, and sporting shaggy black whiskers. Slocum wondered if this alarming personage, the very image of a pirate, had boarded his boat and planned to cut his throat.
The sailor seemed to read his thoughts, for he doffed his cap to Slocum, saying, with the ghost of a smile ‘Señor, I have come to do you no harm. I am one of Columbus’s crew, the pilot of the Pinta, come to aid you. Lie quiet, señor captain, and I will guide your ship tonight. You have a calentura [fever] but you will be all right tomorrow ... You did wrong to mix cheese with plums.’

Next day Slocum found that the Spray was still heading as he had left her, and felt that ‘Columbus himself could not have held her more exactly on her course.’ That night he received a second visit from the Spanish sailor, but this time it was in a dream. He explained that he would like to sail with Slocum on his voyage, for the love of adventure alone. Then, doffing his cap, he disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.

Slocum woke with the feeling that he had been in the presence of a friend and a seaman of vast experience. And though he recognized his second sighting as a dream, he also realized that the first had been something altogether different. Besides, what dream could hold a vessel on course through a violent sea?



Fig. 3.3. Ghost encountered at sea, July 1895.

Numerous visions or apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been reported over the centuries. At Guadalupe, Mexico, in 1531, ‘Mary’ appeared five times to Juan Diego, a middle-aged Aztec convert to Catholicism. On one occasion the apparition told Juan to pick flowers. Although it was a cold time of year, he found a garden of roses at a site where no flowers had grown before. The flowers were a species not grown in Mexico at that time. He was told to wrap the flowers in his cape and take them to the bishop. It was then found that a beautiful image of the Immaculate Conception had been imprinted on the cape, in a style not in the Maya-Toltec-Aztec tradition. The cape was made from a coarse fabric of cactus fibre and had a maximum lifespan of about 30 years, but both the cape and the ‘painting’ have lasted to the present day, and are on display in the church shrine built at Mary’s request.

The appearance of Mary seems to vary in accordance with witnesses’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds. For example, the image of the Virgin on the Guadalupe cape clearly resembles an Amerindian, not a Jewish girl. Michael Grosso suggests that Marian visions may be ‘expressions of the Goddess image, an archetypal pattern of great antiquity and psychological power’ and that ‘the cult of Mary gives a familiar psychic vehicle for the collective imagination to work through’. It is noteworthy that the hill where Jan Diego saw Mary was formerly consecrated to the Aztec goddess Teotenantzin, ‘Mother of God’.

At Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 Mary appeared repeatedly to three children (aged 7, 9 and 10), again at a place of ancient goddess worship – this time of Isis. The two girls saw a young lady and heard her speak; the boy saw her but did not hear her speak. The children said the lady was dressed in white and stood above a small tree. Before their meetings with Mary, the children also had encounters with an ‘angel’. At the time of the first encounter they were tending their sheep at a rocky knoll not far from their home. They heard a rumble, like a powerful wind (as often reported in UFO encounters), and saw a dazzling globe of light gliding slowly towards them from across the valley. As it approached, it gradually turned into a brilliantly shining young man, who seemed about 14 years old and identified himself as the angel of peace. After asking them to recite a prayer, he faded away.

The meetings with Mary occurred on the 13th of the month for six successive months, as Mary had promised at the first encounter. The children suffered paralysis during the meetings, as happens in some UFO encounters. Revelations were made to the three children in the presence of a large crowd of onlookers, which increased greatly from month to month. The actual visions of Mary were seen only by the three children, but during the revelations related phenomena occurred that were witnessed by a large number of people. These phenomena included the appearance of a glowing globe-shaped object and the occurrence of a shower of rose petals that vanished on touching the ground. (Showers of flower petals are often mentioned in Vedic accounts of celestial visitations.)

One of the children asked Mary to perform a miracle for the public at large, and Mary promised to do so on 13 October. On this date, some 70,000 people congregated in anticipation of the miracle. The day was overcast and rainy, and the crowd huddled under umbrellas amidst a sea of mud. Suddenly the clouds parted and an astonishing solar display began to unfold. The sun’s disc spun round in a mad whirl, taking on all the colours of the rainbow. It then appeared to plunge to the earth, giving off heat, and moving in a zigzag fashion (as UFOs are often reported to do). Some people in the crowd feared it was a signal of the end of the world, and panicked. Fear then gave way to awe as the sun returned to normal in the sky. The ‘miracle of the sun’ was witnessed by a large number of people from an area measuring about 20 by 30 miles, and lasted an estimated 10 minutes. Many onlookers afterwards found that their wet clothing was now completely dry. Photographers at the event documented the unusually fast change from wet to dry weather, but not the phenomenon of the rotating sun.

This sort of collective illusion is reminiscent of the way Indian fakirs can cause tigers and elephants to appear before a multitude of spectators. The fact that what the spectators see does not take place in our physical reality is proved by photography. This is illustrated by a performance of the famous Indian rope trick that was captured on film. Two psychologists together with several hundred other people saw a fakir throw a coil of rope into the air, watched a small boy climb the rope and disappear. They describe how dismembered parts of the boy came tumbling horribly down to the ground, how the fakir gathered these up in a basket, climbed the rope himself and came back down smiling, with the intact child. Others in the crowd are said to have agreed with most of the details of what happened, but a film record which begins with the rope being thrown into the air, shows nothing but the fakir and his assistant standing motionless beside it throughout the rest of the performance. The rope did not stay in the air and the boy never climbed it. The crowd, it seems, was party to a collective delusion.

The fakir was apparently able to project his own mental images into the mental spheres of the audience.

During the Fatima apparitions, Mary revealed that her purpose was to impress upon people the need for prayer, repentance, and mortification. As a result, many souls would be saved, Russia would be converted, and another world war averted! While clearly serving to strengthen the Catholic faith, Marian manifestations do at least challenge church patriarchy.

The manifestations could be generated by a coalescence of archetypal goddess imagery with the powerful thought-forms associated with the Virgin Mary cult. However, the events do not seem to be purely spontaneous; the fact that ‘Mary’ predicted her successive appearances at Fatima in advance and thousands of people saw the solar display at the prearranged time points to the involvement of a directing agency. Given the backward nature of key Catholic teachings, from original sin to forgiveness of sins through belief in Christ, this is most likely an inferior entity, though a powerful one.
Frances.

[Frances]

The Physical Medium Francesco Carancini during his seance the table is levitating over the very heavily bound Medium.

Source :- http://psychictruth.info/Medium_Francesco_Carancini.htm

Medium Francesco Carancini Italy.
1863-1940.

Italian Physical Medium. He was widely tested by Baron L. von Erhardt and the Society for Psychical Research of Rome, further studied at Paris by Cesar Baudi De Vesme, Lemerle, and M. Mangin, and also investigated at Geneva by Professors Clarapede, Theodore Flournoy, and Batelli. He sat in darkness, tightly bound, and produced strong telekinetic phenomena, such as making objects float and levitation, and occasional materializations, of which infra red flashlight photographs were taken.

Several times he was accused of cheating, but Baron von Erhardt remarked that the hypothesis of fraud in this case implied that the experimenters were absolute imbeciles. Nevertheless, such charges were made by W. W. Baggally (1910) and by others (see Annales des Sciences Psychiques, 1913, pp. 243-47).

Sources:

Baggally, W. W. "Some Sittings with Carancini." Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 14 (June 1910). Reprinted in Everard Feilding, Sittings with Eusapio Palladino and Other Studies. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963.

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Physical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.
Frances.

[Frances]

1888 - 1941

Mina Stinson Crandon, wife of the surgeon L.R.G. Crandon (Harvard professor), better known as Margery, is undoubtedly one of the most reliable Medium and commonly recognized. Came to be known in order to take part in a competition for non-professional medium held in 1924 by Scientific American: those who had managed to produce paranormal phenomena considered reliable by strict Committee would receive 2,500 U.S. dollars prize.

Source :- http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Ectoplasm.aspx

In séances in Boston with Mina S. Crandon, ectoplasm was photographed as it was being reabsorbed by the medium's body through the openings of the mouth, nose, and ears. In several of these photographs the ectoplasm still had the form it had first assumed in the materialization, a form then reduced to a species of placenta attached to the medium by a cord similar to an umbilical cord.

Dr. F. Schwab, in his experiments with Maria Vollhardt, made a photographic record of telekinetic movements and found ectoplasm on them. The matter was usually streaming out of Vollhardt's mouth. Her teethmarks were often found in it, suggesting it was a plastic substance.

The sensation of touch produced by ectoplasm also varied in the experiments. According to the invisible operators of the séance room, it could be made to have any desired "feel." "Walter," the control of Margery (Mina Crandon), put an ectoplasmic terminal in the hand of Dr. Crandon, telling him to feel and squeeze it gently. It was a more or less conical mass, half an inch wide at its tip, getting rapidly wider, up to about an inch and a quarter where it left Dr. Crandon's hand. The mass was ice cold, somewhat rough on the surface, and yielded slightly as a rubber eraser might do. On repetition with another sitter, named Conant, he was required to scrape his hand carefully, and he stated that through this process he recovered and put down on the table at Walter's command something that acted much like the finer inner membrane of an egg.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also spoke of an occasion with Eva C. when, in good light, he was allowed to squeeze a piece of ectoplasm between his fingers. It gave him the impression of a living substance, thrilling and shrinking under his touch.

When ectoplasm was suddenly exposed to light, mediums reported being thrown into agony. However, it was suggested by Dr. W. J. Crawford that it is not so much the ectoplasm as the medium that cannot bear the light. If the medium is shielded with black cloth, the pain is considerably reduced and flashlight photographs become easily procurable. Juliette Bisson confirmed these observations with Eva C. Sudden flashes of light were avoided. Warnings were normally given before taking a picture, in the understanding that a sudden flash would drive the substance back into the medium's body with the force of a snapped elastic band.

Franek Kluski reportedly received an open wound from a violent retreat of ectoplasm. Doyle quoted the case of a medium who exhibited a bruise from the breast to the shoulder caused by the recoil of the ectoplasm. The medium Evan Powell, at the British College of Psychic Science, suffered a bad injury on the chest owing to an unintended violent movement of a sitter touched by an ectoplasmic arm. Hemorrhage was also reported as a result of sudden exposure to light. H. Dennis Bradley spoke of an instance in which the medium George Valiantine got a black bruise, measuring about two inches by three, on the stomach by the shock of returning ectoplasm when a powerful electric light was suddenly switched on in his garage, which faced one of the windows of the séance room. The substance was seen and described by the writer Caradoc Evans as a slimy, frothy bladder "into which you could dig a finger but through which you could not pierce."

Galey gives this report in From the Unconscious to the Conscious (1920):

"To its sensitiveness, the substance seems to add a kind of instinct not unlike that of the self-protection of the invertebrates; it would seem to have all the distrust of a defenseless creature, or one whose sole defence is to re-enter the parent organism. It shrinks from all contacts and is always ready to avoid them and to be reabsorbed."
Frances.

[Frances]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0HncGNBCqY


Uploaded Feb 27th 2008. Video 4mins.

In 1918, Dr T. G. Hamilton of Winnepeg, Canada, began researching the paranormal through seances and mediums.

The following authentic photographs were taken over the course of his investigations.

Although the photographs are authentic, it does not mean that trickery was not involved in some cases.
Frances.

[Frances]

In a low red light seance Physical Medium Mina Crandon in a trance state collapsed on the table while the sitters hold her and and the Spirit World use her to produce the ectoplasm seen forming over her head, which in turn produced other physical phenomena during the seance.



Physical Medium [Mina] Margery Crandon sitting in a trance state in a home Physical Circle, while the Spirit World is using her to produce ectoplasm from her nose, which can be seen forming an Etheric Amplifier ready to be used for a voice direct from the Spirit World [direct voice], which can be then heard by the human ear.
Frances.

[Frances]

An earlier photograph of Physical Medium [Mina] Margery Crandon in 1924, is sitting in a trance state in another home Physical Circle while the Spirit World is using her to produce ectoplasm, which can be seen forming an Etheric Amplifier ready to be used for a voice direct from the Spirit World [direct voice] which can then be heard by the human ear.




Margery 'Mina' Crandon producing ectoplasm whilst being observed by Scientists.
Frances.

[Frances]

On these last two photos the voice box is again displayed. Interestingly a photo of the UK Physical Medium Jack Webber from the fifties exists, that show exactly the same "model", including the cord-like connection to the Mediums ear.




Again two photos made only seconds after the other. This time the mysterious "voice box" is displayed. An ectoplasmic production many mediums claim to be the origin of the autonomous "Direct Voices". There is a row of photos exisisting showing mediums worldwide displaying this kind of alike looking ectoplasmic product.
Frances.