Produced by Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed

THE CASE FOR SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

_On the Life Hereafter_

    THE NEW REVELATION
    THE VITAL MESSAGE
    THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES
    THE CASE FOR SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
    THE WANDERINGS OF A SPIRITUALIST
    OUR AMERICAN ADVENTURE

_A History of the Great War_

    THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS—5 Vols.

_Poems_

    THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH

_Novels and Stories_

    DANGER! And Other Stories
    THE DOINGS OF RAFFLES HAW
    HIS LAST BOW
      Some Latin Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                              THE CASE FOR
                           SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

                                   BY
                           ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

                     WITH CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE BY
                         EXPERIENCED RESEARCHERS
                            AND PHOTOGRAPHERS

                               ILLUSTRATED

                                NEW YORK
                         GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                            COPYRIGHT, 1923,
                       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                   THE CASE FOR SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY. I

                 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PREFACE

The publicity given to the recent attacks on Psychic Photography has
been out of all proportion to their scientific value as evidence. When
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle returned to Great Britain, after his successful
tour in America, the controversy was in full swing. With characteristic
promptitude he immediately decided to meet these negative attacks by a
positive counter-attack, and this volume is the outcome of that decision.

We have used the term “Spirit Photography” on the title-page as being
the popular name by which these phenomena are known. This does not imply
that either Sir Arthur or I imagine that everything supernormal must
be of spirit origin. There is, undoubtedly, a broad borderland where
these photographic effects may be produced from forces contained within
ourselves. This merges into those higher phenomena of which many cases
are here described. Those desiring fuller information on this subject are
referred to “Photographing the Invisible,” by James Coates.

It was only when editing the matter for these pages that I fully realised
what an overwhelming mass of reliable material we had to work upon. In
restricting this book to the necessary limits it has only been possible
to make use of a small portion of this evidence. Many more cases have
been placed on record and may be published on some future occasion.
Most of the letters accompanying these descriptions display a deep
and genuine affection for the maligned mediums of the Crewe Circle.
Our hearty thanks are due to all those friends who have so readily
co-operated in this work and who are so willing to brave the discomforts
of publicity for what they know to be the truth.

                                                             FRED BARLOW.

CONTENTS

                                                                  PAGE

         PREFACE BY FRED BARLOW                                      v

    CHAPTER

       I THE CREWE CIRCLE                                           13

      II SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES                                  21

     III EVIDENTIAL TESTS AND THEIR RESULTS                         28

      IV AN EXAMINATION OF MR. HOPE AND HIS CRITICS                 38

       V FURTHER DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED                            55

      VI THE ATTACK ON MRS. DEANE AND MR. VEARNCOMBE                60

     VII THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF THE CREWE CIRCLE BY MISS
           F. R. SCATCHERD                                          70

    VIII EVIDENTIAL AND SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF PSYCHIC
           PHOTOGRAPHY BY FRED BARLOW                               79

      IX CONCLUSIVE PROOF FROM MANY SOURCES                         96

ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                                  PAGE

    Barlow, Mr. H. D., Psychic and Normal Photographs of           127

    Burgess, Mrs., with Psychic Picture of Her Uncle               127

    Buxton, Mrs., and Daughter, with Psychic Picture of
      Her Father                                                    47

    Colley, Archdeacon, Psychic Message in the Handwriting of       14

    Colley, Archdeacon, Normal Handwriting of                       14

    Colley, Archdeacon, Photomicrograph of Portion of Normal
      Signature                                                     78

    Colley, Archdeacon, Photomicrograph of Portion of Signature
      in Psychic Message                                            78

    Crawford, Dr. W. J., Psychic Message in the Handwriting of      15

    Crawford, Dr. W. J., Normal Handwriting of                      15

    Crookes, Sir William, with Psychic Face                         31

    Cushman, Agnes, Psychic Picture of                              63

    Cushman, Agnes, Normal Photograph of                            63

    Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, and Group, with Psychic Message
      from Archdeacon Colley                                        14

    East, Mr. and Mrs. H., with Psychic and Normal Pictures
      of Son                                                        47

    Foulds, Mrs. R., with Psychic Photograph of Her Mother         110

    Foulds, Mrs. R., Normal Photograph of the Mother of            110

    Griere, Mrs. A. E., with Psychic Likeness of Husband
      and Father                                                   111

    Griere, Mrs. A. E., Photograph of the Husband of               111

    Jeffrey, Mr. Wm., and Daughter, Showing Ectoplasmic Bag         62

    Jeffrey, Mr. Wm., and Daughter, with Psychic Likeness
      of Mrs. Jeffrey                                               62

    Maddocks, Mr. S., with Psychic Likeness of First Wife           95

    Maddocks, Mr. S., Normal Photograph of the First Wife of        95

    Pickup, Mrs., with Psychic Likeness of Husband                 126

    Pickup, Mrs., Photograph of the Husband of                     126

    S.S.S.P., Group Photograph with Psychic Face                    30

    Spencer, Major R. E. E., with Psychic Face                      31

    Tweedale, the Rev. C. L., and Wife, with Psychic Likeness
      of Mrs. Tweedale’s Father                                     46

    Tweedale, the Rev. C. L., Photograph of the Father-in-law of    46

    Walker, Mr. and Mrs. Harry, and Friends, with Psychic
      Likeness of Mr. Wm. Walker                                    79

    Walker, Mr. Wm., with Psychic Message in Handwriting
      of Mr. W. T. Stead                                            79

    Walker, Mr. Wm., Psychic Message in Handwriting of              94

    Walker, Mr. Wm., Specimen of Handwriting of                     94

THE CASE FOR SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I

THE CREWE CIRCLE

An accusation of a damaging, and, as I believe, of an entirely unfounded
character, has been brought forward by Mr. Harry Price against Mr. Hope,
whose name has for more than seventeen years been associated with the
strange phenomenon which has been called spirit photography. I will deal
later with this accusation with which the Society for Psychic Research
has unfortunately associated itself by publishing the report of it in
their official journal. Before touching upon it I should wish to take
a broader sweep and to show the overpowering weight of evidence which
exists as to the reality of Mr. Hope’s most remarkable gift.

If a man were accused of cowardice it would be natural that his defender
should not confine himself to the particular case, but should examine the
man’s whole career and put forward instances of valour as an argument
against the charge. So also if a man is accused of dishonesty a long
record of honesty would be his most complete defence. Therefore in
considering the case of Mr. Hope, and the value of his mediumship, one
must not limit one’s investigation to a single case, where errors of
observation and of deduction may creep in, but must take a broader view
which will embrace an account of a long series of cases, vouched for by
men and women of the highest character, and incompatible with any form
of fraud. If the reader will have the patience to follow my facts and my
argument, I hope to make it clear to any unprejudiced mind that there is
overwhelming evidence that we have in Mr. Hope a man endowed with most
singular powers, and that, instead of persecuting and misrepresenting
him, it would be wiser if we took a sympathetic view of his remarkable
work, which has brought consolation to the afflicted, and conviction to
many who had lost all belief in the independent life of the spirit.

Many speak of Mr. Hope and of the Crewe Circle without any definite idea
of what the words mean. Let me explain, then, that Mr. William Hope, who
is a working-man, discovered, some seventeen years ago, quite by chance,
that this remarkable power of producing extra faces, figures or objects
upon photographic plates had been given to him. In the first instance he
was taking a fellow-workman, and the plate, when developed, was found to
contain an extra figure which was recognised as being a likeness of his
comrade’s sister, who had recently passed away.

This form of mediumship is rare, but from the days of Mumler, who
first showed it in 1861, there has never been a time when one or more
sensitives have not been able to demonstrate it.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Impression received upon a marked plate which
never left the author’s hands, save when in carrier. (_See_ p. 21.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.—Specimen of Archdeacon Colley’s writing during his
lifetime. (_See_ p. 22.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 3.—Psychograph in the handwriting of Dr. W. J.
Crawford. (_See_ p. 25.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 4.—Specimen of Dr. W. J. Crawford’s writing during
his lifetime.]

Hope was greatly surprised at his own results, but he had the good
fortune in early days to meet the late Archdeacon Colley, an enlightened
member of the Anglican Church, who tested his powers, endorsed them and
appreciated their value. It was he who gave Hope his first stand camera,
the old-fashioned instrument to which he still clings, and which, with
its battered box and broken leg, is familiar to many of us.

No one knows the story of these beginnings so well as Miss Scatcherd, who
was the intimate friend of the Archdeacon and shared the evidence which
had so impressed him. Miss Scatcherd has kindly consented to jot down her
reminiscences of these early days, that I may include them in the later
pages of this volume.

Suffice it if I say, at present, that Hope has been before the public
for seventeen years, that during that time many special tests have been
demanded of him and have been successfully met, that he has been closely
observed by experts of all sorts—scientific men (including Sir William
Crookes), journalists, professional photographers and others—that he
has patiently submitted himself to all sorts of experiment, and that
he has emerged from this most drastic ordeal with the complete support
and approval of far the greater part of his clients. That he has been
fiercely attacked goes without saying, for every medium has that
experience, but each fresh allegation against him has ended in smoke,
while his gifts have grown stronger with time, so that the percentage
of blanks in his results is, I should say, lower than it used to be. No
medium can ever honestly guarantee success, but it would probably be
within the mark if one claimed that Hope attained it three times out
of five, though the results vary much in visibility and value, being
mere vague outlines in some cases, and in others so detailed in their
perfection that the extra is clearer and more life-like than the sitter.
These variations seem to depend upon the state of health of the medium,
the qualities of the investigator, the atmospheric conditions and other
obscure causes.

In person, Hope is a man who gives the impression of being between fifty
and sixty years of age, with the manner and appearance of an intelligent
working-man. His forehead is high and indicates a good, if untrained,
brain beneath it. The general effect of his face is aquiline with large,
well-opened, honest blue eyes, and a moustache which is shading from
yellow to grey. His voice is pleasant, with a North Country accent which
becomes very pronounced when he is excited. His hands with their worn
nails and square-ended fingers are those of the worker, and the least
adapted to sleight-of-hand tricks of any that I have seen.

Mrs. Buxton, who aids him, is a kindly, pleasant-faced woman on the sunny
side of middle-age. Her mediumistic powers seem to be akin to those of
Hope, and though the latter had all his earlier results independently, he
is stronger when he combines his forces with Mrs. Buxton’s.

They both give an impression of honesty and frankness, which increases
as one comes to know them more closely. I have never met two people who
seemed to me from manner and appearance to be less likely to be in a
conspiracy to deceive the public.

They and all their circle are spiritualists of a Salvation Army type,
much addicted to the hearty singing of hymns and the putting up of
impromptu prayers. Hope, the most unconventional of beings, has been
known in the midst of one of his photographic lectures (which he delivers
occasionally in his shirt-sleeves) to say, “And now, my friends, we will
warm up with a hymn,” in which the audience, unable to escape, has to
acquiesce. It is a type of character which associates itself sometimes,
I admit, with a loathsome form of hypocrisy, but which has in it
something peculiarly childlike and sweet when it is perfectly honest and
spontaneous as it is, to the best of my belief, in the case of the two
mediums in question.

Some prejudice can be excited against Hope by the mere assertion that
he is a professional medium. The public is aware that fraud—sometimes
unhappily real, sometimes only alleged—is too often associated with this
profession. Sufficient allowance is not made for the fact that the papers
only take note of psychic things when they go wrong, and never when they
go right. The dishonest medium is so easily found out that one could
hardly make a living at so precarious a trade.

In a very extended experience, which covers many hundreds of séances,
I have only encountered fraud three or four times. Had I registered
those cases and omitted the others, I would have given the impression
of continued fraud, which is exactly how the matter is presented to the
public who are continually hoodwinked, not by the spiritualists but by
the critics and so-called “exposers” who represent what is exceptional as
being constant.

It is exactly this prejudice which prevents a medium or his friends from
bringing an action for libel, so that the unhappy man or woman becomes a
butt for any charge or any ridicule, the assailants knowing well that
the ordinary legal rights of a Briton are hardly applicable to one who
can be represented as living from a profession which is not recognised by
our laws. This cowardly medium-baiting will cease only when the public
show, by abstaining from the purchase of the journals which pursue it,
that they have no sympathy with such persecutions.

I would wish to point out, however, that Hope is not in a strict sense a
professional medium. I have never met anyone who seemed to me less venal
than he. I am aware of a case where an exploiter approached him with a
proposal to turn his gift into money, but was received in the coldest
possible manner. Twice when I have sat with him at Crewe he has refused
to take a fee, though he could never have known that the fact would be
made public. It is true that on each occasion I disregarded him to the
extent of leaving some remembrance upon the mantelpiece when his back was
turned, but I have been assured by others that he has again and again
refused all remuneration for his sitting, and has charged the ridiculous
sum of 4s. 6d. per dozen for prints from the negatives obtained. This
sum is calculated upon the average time expended at the rate of his own
trade earnings. I do not wish to overstate this side of the question or
to pretend that he would not be open to a present from a grateful client.
Of how many of us could that be honestly said? But my point is that his
gifts have been as open to the poor as to the rich—which all spiritual
gifts should be.

It is, of course, another matter when he comes to London and gives
sittings by appointment at the British College of Psychic Science. That
college is an expensive and most useful establishment, which is run, with
a yearly deficit, through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Hewat McKenzie,
and it is only right that those who use it should contribute an adequate
sum to its maintenance.

To illustrate my remarks upon Hope’s character and the general lines upon
which the Crewe Circle is conducted, I would like to give this extract
from the letter of a miner, Mr. East, of 36, New Street, Port Talbot, who
describes an experience which he had in 1920. After giving an account of
the precautions taken, and of the appearance upon the plate of his son’s
face: [_See_ Figure 11.]

    “Hundreds of persons who knew him have seen the photo and
    recognised him.” He adds: “When I asked what their charges
    were, Mr. Hope replied: ‘Four and sixpence a dozen. For the
    sitting, nothing. This is a gift from God and we dare not
    charge for what is freely given us. Our pay is often the wonder
    and joy depicted on the faces of those, like yourselves, who
    have found that their loved ones are not entirely lost to them.
    We get all kinds and classes of people here. Some even are
    threadbare and too poor to pay train-fare, but we treat them
    all alike as we recognise in each a brother or sister.’

    “I could not but be impressed by the Christ-spirit of the two
    friends, whom we had never seen before that short half-hour,
    and not since. And when I read of men who try to make those two
    persons appear something detestable I go back in memory to that
    day when it was our good fortune to meet them and recall their
    more than kind attitude to two bruised hearts. God bless them,
    say I.”

With these preliminary remarks I will now lay before the reader a
selection of cases which I have taken from Mr. Hope’s record, and I will
ask him to read them carefully and see if they can be reconciled with
any possible system of fraud. We are, of course, always open to the
objection that a man may be perfectly honest fifty times and fraudulent
the fifty-first. That is undeniable and constitutes the great difficulty
in dealing with isolated cases where no impartial witness was present,
and where both the accusation and the defence are equally _ex-parte_
statements. We can only say in rebuttal that previous honesty must
predispose us to assume that there is no fraud, and remind our readers
that if we can only show one single case, which is absolutely beyond
criticism, then we have for ever settled the larger contention, that
it is possible in the presence of certain individuals, whom we call
mediums, to produce effects which are supernormal and which would appear
to indicate separate intelligences acting visibly quite independently of
ourselves.

CHAPTER II

SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

I will first give an account of my own visit to Crewe which was in the
summer of 1919. I bought my plates in Manchester and then travelled over
to keep the appointment which had been made a week before. Arriving at
Crewe, I went down to the little house in Market Street, which is so
modest and humble that it furnishes an argument in itself against any
undue cupidity on the part of its tenant. Two spiritualistic friends, Mr.
Oaten, editor of the _Two Worlds_, and Mr. Walker, were my companions.

Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton were waiting for us, and, after a short
religious service, Mr. Hope and I went into the dark room. There I opened
the packet of plates, put two into the carrier and marked them then and
there. The carrier was then taken into the room and Mr. Hope inserted
it into the camera. We three spiritualists sat in front with a rug, or
blanket, as a background. The exposure having been made, the carrier was
taken back into the dark room where, with my own hands, I took out the
plates, developed them and fixed them. So far as I could judge, there was
at no stage any possibility of changing the plates.

But this question does not really arise. No changing of plates would
account for the effect actually produced. This effect I have shown in
Figure 1. There is a hazy cloud covering us of what I will describe as
ectoplasm, though my critics are very welcome to call it cotton-wool
if it eases their feelings to do so. In one corner appears a partial
materialisation of what seems to be the hair and forehead of a young man.
Across the plate is scrawled, “Well done, Friend Doyle, I welcome you to
Crewe. Greetings to all. T. COLLEY.”

I have already explained that Archdeacon Colley was the founder of the
Crewe Circle, and if, as we believe, we continue our interest after
death it would seem not unnatural that he should send a kindly word to
a visitor who was working for the cause. How can we determine that the
message was really from Archdeacon Colley? The obvious way would be to
get a sample of his writing in life and to compare it with that upon the
plate. This I have done, as shown in Figure 2. Can anyone deny that the
handwriting is the same in both instances, or can anyone suppose that
the rough script of Hope could possibly be modified into the scholarly
handwriting of the Archdeacon? Whence, then, did this message come?
Does anyone imagine that a private forger is retained by Hope and lurks
somewhere in that humble abode? It is a problem which calls for an
answer, and no talk about conjuring tricks or transposition of plates has
the least bearing upon it. It may be remarked incidentally that my own
strong desire was to obtain some sign from my son who had passed away the
year before. The result seemed to show that our personal wishes do not
effect the outcome.

Having failed to get what I desired, I remained at Crewe for the night,
and next morning went down to Market Street again. On this occasion I
used Hope’s own plates, having left mine at the hotel. He gave me the
choice of several packets. The result obtained under all the precautions
which I could adopt (it would only weary the reader if I gave every
point of detail) was a photograph of the face of a young man beside my
own. It was not a good likeness of my son, though it resembled him as
he was some eight years before his death. Of the three results which I
obtained at Crewe it was the one which impressed me least. On examination
with a lens it was noticeable that the countenance was pitted with fine
dots, as in the case of process printing. This is to be noticed in a
certain proportion, possibly one in ten, of Hope’s results, and occurs
in the case of persons whose faces could by no possibility have appeared
in newspapers. One can only suppose that it is in some way connected
with the psychic process, and some have imagined a reticulated screen
upon which the image is built up. I am content to note the fact without
attempting to explain it. I have observed the same effect in other
psychic photographs.

The third result was the most remarkable of any. I had read that Hope
can get images without the use of the camera, but the statement sounded
incredible. He now asked me to mark a plate and put it in a carrier,
which I did. We then placed our hands on either side of the carrier,
Mrs. Buxton and her sister joining in. At the end of about a minute Hope
gave a sort of shudder, and intimated that he thought a result had been
obtained. On putting the plate into the solution a disc the size of a
shilling, perfectly black, sprang up in the centre of it. On development
this resolved itself into a luminous circle with the face of a female
delicately outlined within it. Under the chin is a disc of white, and
two fingers which are pointing to it. The disc is evidently a brooch,
and the pointing seemed to indicate that it was meant to be evidential.
The face bore a strong resemblance to that of my elder sister, who died
some thirty years ago. Upon sending the print to my other sisters they
not only confirmed this, but they reminded me that my sister had a very
remarkable ivory brooch in her lifetime and that it was just the one
object which might best have been chosen as a test. I regret that this
picture is so delicate that it will not bear reproduction.

Such were my three results at Crewe, and I should, I hold, have been
devoid of reason had I not been deeply impressed by them. Here was a
message in Archdeacon Colley’s own handwriting. Here was a test from my
own dead sister which seemed to be beyond all possible coincidence, apart
from the extraordinary way in which the picture was obtained. Neither
sleight-of-hand nor transference of plates could have any bearing upon
such results as those. Their full significance was not realised until I
had made enquiries, but after that time I felt it impossible to doubt the
supernormal nature of the powers which had produced such effects.

It might perhaps be argued that as Archdeacon Colley’s writing was
familiar to Hope, he had, in spite of his disabilities, made some
special effort to master and reproduce it. As a matter of fact, however,
this case does not stand alone, and many evidential writings have been
obtained at Crewe, notably those of W. T. Stead and of the late Dr.
Crawford. The latter is a recent incident, and I would take it as my next
example, since it illustrates this phenomenon of writing, and is again
free from the bogey of transposition.

Upon June 30 of this year (1922) three delegates from Belfast, Mr.
Skelton, Mr. Gillmour and Mr. Donaldson, were coming over to the London
Spiritualists’ Conference. They broke their journey at Crewe in order
to have a sitting with Mr. Hope, who was in deep distress at the time
on account of the attack made upon him in Mr. Price’s report. It is
worth noting that Mrs. Crawford, the widow of Dr. Crawford, had come
over with them on the boat, and that Dr. Crawford’s affairs had been
under discussion, though Hope had no means of knowing it. Under good
fraud-proof conditions, on their own specially-marked plate, the visitors
obtained a message in Dr. Crawford’s handwriting, which runs thus, I
supplying the punctuation:

    “DEAR MR. HOPE,

    “Needless to say I am with you where psychic work is concerned,
    and you can be sure of my sympathy and help. I know all the
    difficulties and uncertainties connected with the subject. I am
    keenly interested in your circle and will co-operate with you.
    Regarding your enemies who would by hook or by crook dispose of
    the phenomena, leave them alone. I, W. J. Crawford, of Belfast,
    am here in Crewe on Friday, June 30th.

                                                    “W. J. CRAWFORD.”

Each word is on its own little patch of ectoplasm, or upon its own pad
of cotton-wool, if the critics prefer it, though it would puzzle them,
I think, to reproduce the effect which is given in Figure 3. The plate
alongside (Figure 4) shows a reproduction of an actual note of Crawford’s
which will enable the reader to judge the extreme similarity of the
script. Once more we confront the critic with this fact and ask him to
face the difficulty and to tell us whence this writing came; whether it
is a production of Mr. Hope’s, or whether the theory of a private forger
upon the premises can be sustained.

Apart from these cases of the reproduction of handwriting, copies of
documents have appeared upon the plates at Crewe which could by no means
have got there in a normal fashion. A case in point is given in detail
by the Reverend and venerable Professor Henslow on p. 217 of his _Proofs
of Spiritualism_. In this case, the truth of which is vouched for by the
Professor, although it did not actually occur to him, the plates were
held between the hands of the sitters in the manner already described,
but the packet had not been opened and was as it had come from the
chemist. When the packet was opened and the plates developed there was
found impressed upon the fifth plate a number of Greek characters, which
proved to be a copy of four lines of the _Codex Alexandrinus_, a rare
Greek text kept in a glass case in the British Museum. The interesting
point appears that the two documents are not facsimiles, and that there
is some slight difference in the formation of the letters, thus meeting
the objection that the text photographed might have been got from some
facsimile of the original _Codex_. The photographs of the original Greek
and of the Crewe reproduction are given in Professor Henslow’s work.
Here, again, we may well ask the critic to face the facts and give us
some feasible explanation as to how this Greek text was precipitated
on to a plate in a sealed packet under the mediumship of an unlearned
carpenter at Crewe.

EVIDENTIAL TESTS AND THEIR RESULTS

We will now turn to the reproduction of faces, and I will give an
instance where all the stock theories about changing or superposition
of plates become untenable. At the annual meeting of the Society for
the Study of Supernormal Pictures, I being present, a photograph of the
members was taken in the normal way as a souvenir. As Hope was present,
it was suggested that a second photograph be taken by him in the hope
that we might get some psychic effect. The plate was taken from an
unopened packet in the pocket of the secretary, and some fifteen of us
were witnesses of the whole transaction. Hope had no warning at all,
and could have made no preparation. The plate was at once developed
by one of our own members, and a well-marked extra, amid a cloud of
ectoplasm, appeared upon the picture. This extra was claimed by one of
our members as a good likeness of his dead father. This result, which is
illustrated by Figure 5, was obtained before an audience of experts, if
any men in this world have a right to call themselves experts upon this
subject. How can it be explained by fraud and how can such a case be
lightly set aside? Granting for argument’s sake that the sitter may have
been mistaken in the recognition, how can the actual psychic effect be
accounted for?

It happens, occasionally, that these ghost-faces which appear upon the
plates retain some remarkable physical peculiarity which prove beyond all
question who they represent. One such case has been handed to me by the
Countess of Malmesbury, whose own account is so clear and condensed that
it could not be bettered:

    “I sat with Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton on Friday, December
    9th, 1921, and was accompanied by ‘Val L’Estrange,’ a lady
    professional photographer, who watched the proceedings on my
    behalf, as I do not understand photography. She states that
    from first to last she could not detect any fraud. As I sat
    for the photograph the wish just crossed my mind that I might
    obtain a photograph of J. H., who died in 1880, and that I
    could receive a definite sign that it was genuine.

    “J. H. died as the result of an operation for the removal of
    the lower jaw, which had been seriously injured. No one saw him
    after this terrible misfortune except five persons, of whom I
    am the only survivor, and I need not say that no photograph was
    then taken of him.

    “I showed the photograph to Dr. Fielding Ould, who at once
    recognised it as that of a man who had had his lower jaw
    removed. This opinion was confirmed by several of his medical
    friends, to whom he showed the picture.

    “I should add that the plates were bought by ‘Val L’Estrange’
    direct from the manufacturer, and that we brought them with
    us. The exposure was forty seconds. The plate which produced
    the portrait was manipulated by Mr. Hope under the supervision
    of ‘Val L’Estrange.’ We both superintended the development and
    fixing of the negative.

    “As an impartial investigator of psychic matters I have stated
    exactly what took place, without comment.

                          (_signed_) “SUSAN, COUNTESS OF MALMESBURY.”

It must be admitted that this case, so exactly recorded, would be a
difficult one to explain away.

I would now quote the case furnished by Major Spencer, who is an
experienced and careful observer, and has given much attention to psychic
photography. In this experiment he used his own camera, his own carriers
and his own plates. What could be more drastic than that! He says, if I
may abbreviate his account:

    “The box of plates was never out of my sight and was cut open
    in the dark room by myself; Hope or Mrs. Buxton in no instance
    touching them.”

The red light, he explains, was a good one and he could see all that
occurred.

    “Hope stood on my left hand for the whole time in the dark
    room and I kept the box of plates under my right elbow during
    the operations of initialling and inserting the plates in the
    slides.... My own camera remained closed in my despatch-case
    (also closed) till I returned from the dark room, when I set it
    up on its tripod, extending it, and focussing it upon the chair
    afterwards used. When the exposures were made by Hope I had to
    explain to him how to actuate the shutter, as the lever on the
    camera front was new to him. The only contact with the camera
    was when he touched this lever. Exposure thirty-five seconds.
    Neither Mrs. Buxton nor Hope knew that I had intended using my
    own camera and dark slides till we met in the studio. These
    slides are metallic and each contains one plate.”

[Illustration: FIG. 5.—Group of Members of the S.S.S.P. The psychic face
will be seen in the centre of the plate and situated horizontally to the
sitters. (_See_ p. 28.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 6.—Major R. E. E. Spencer and psychic face obtained
in special test. (_See_ p. 31.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 7.—Sir William Crookes with psychic face obtained in
his own laboratory through the mediumship of the Crewe Circle. (_See_ p.
33.)]

(For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the carrier and
the dark slide are different names for the same thing, the receptacle
into which the plates are put in the dark room, which is then inserted
into the back of the camera.)

Now this is a case which any reasonable man would say eliminated every
possible source of error. The actual result was that out of six plates,
two showed unrecognised extra faces. One of the results is reproduced
in Figure 6. How came those faces upon the plates? How can our critics
explain it? They cannot explain it, and yet they have not the honesty
to admit their inability. Among our chief enemies is that inner circle
which for the moment controls the destinies of the Society for Psychical
Research. What flaw do they find? I am sure the honest common-sense
reader would never guess. The flaw adduced is that Major Spencer left his
camera inside his despatch-box in the studio while he was in the dark
room. Mrs. Buxton was in the studio. She might have dashed at the box,
pulled it open, dragged out the camera, and then ... well, what then? No
one can imagine what the next stage would be. Dr. Abraham Wallace has
publicly asked the critic to state what could then be done which would
have put two human faces upon different plates and none on the others.
If Major Spencer had locked his box it would then have been claimed that
Mrs. Buxton had a skeleton key in her pocket. It is puerile criticism
of this sort which has lowered that intellectual respect which we older
members had once for the S.P.R. It is intellectually dishonest and
the sign of a frame of mind which is not there to follow facts or to
ascertain the truth, but only to argue a preconceived case as a lawyer
speaks from his brief. The S.P.R. (or their present spokesmen) are
against psychic photography, and therefore it is better to put up the
most childish and preposterous objections rather than to say that a case
is clearly proved. I would appeal to any impartial mind whether this case
of Major Spencer’s does not absolutely cover every objection.

I would now give the case of the dream-hand of Lady Grey of Falloden.
When I was going to Australia this lady most kindly wrote out the facts
for me and gave me a copy of the photograph, which I used upon my screen.
Lady Glenconner, as she then was, dreamed that if she was photographed
at Crewe she would see her son’s hand resting upon her left shoulder.
She said nothing to Hope, but she put the fact of her dream upon record.
Sure enough, in the photograph there is a small cloud of ectoplasm,
and emerging from it a hand, which is resting even as it rested in the
dream. Where does fraud come in, in such a case as that? Surely those
who circulated a libellous pamphlet against Hope upon the strength of a
single case must feel ashamed when they consider such a result as that,
where no possible manipulation could have affected the picture. Psychic
caution is an admirable quality, but extreme incredulity is even more
disastrous than extreme credulity. The psychic investigator should be a
filter, not a block.

I would now quote the case of Mr. Pearse, a well-known business man of
Manchester. This is no psychic fanatic, but a hard-headed Northern man of
business. He visited Hope at Crewe, taking with him his own new camera
and his own carrier, which was loaded by his daughter. No chance of
transposition here, unless Hope had a duplicate carrier.

    “The result,” he says, “was an undisputed likeness to
    my father. _No photograph of him in that position is in
    existence._ Everyone who has known him has recognised him, and
    my mother treasures the photograph very much.”

In this account the sting lies in the statement that no such photograph
is in existence. Again and again—it would not be too much to say that
fifty instances could be produced—this statement can be made. Is it not
incredible that people should be found who cannot see that such a fact is
evidential of supernormal action?

I have alluded to the fact that Sir William Crookes received such a
photograph at Crewe, and that it bore a close resemblance to his deceased
wife. I have not been able to get any copy of this photograph, but it
is devoutly to be hoped that it, and Sir William’s invaluable psychic
papers, are being duly cared for by his executors and biographer, for
they have there a precious trust, and any tampering with it on account
of their individual opinions would entail upon them the censure of
generations yet unborn. In an interview in the _Christian Commonwealth_
(December 4th, 1918) the interviewer, Miss Scatcherd, asked, “And may I
say how you went north with another friend and myself and procured on
your own marked plate, under your own conditions, a likeness of your
beloved wife, the late Lady Crookes?” To which Sir William answered:
“You may say that, since it is the truth.... You may add that the picture
obtained after her passing on is unlike any of the many which I possess,
but certainly resembles my dear one in her last days of failing health.”
In a private letter, which I have seen, Sir William, writing on December
14, 1916, shortly after the incident, says: “The photograph is easily
recognised by all to whom I have shown it. I find that it is very similar
in likeness to one I took about ten years ago, although by no means a
facsimile reproduction. This makes it all the more satisfactory to me.”

Though I am unable to reproduce this photograph, I have been able, by
the kindness of Miss Scatcherd, to reproduce (Figure 7) the preliminary
experimental photograph got in Sir William’s laboratory, which induced
him to take the Crewe Circle seriously. Only Mr. Hope and Miss Scatcherd
were present on this occasion. It was taken, says the latter, “under the
strictest conditions that the genius of Sir William Crookes, backed by
his unusual common sense, could suggest.” The face here is not that of
Lady Crookes, and was not recognised. But surely such a result must show
the public how superficial is the view which on the strength of a single
experiment endeavours to discredit the whole life’s work of Mr. Hope.

Several examples of Crewe photographs are reproduced (Figures 8, 9, 10)
which show the similarity to the living man, and yet are declared by
the relatives to be unlike any existing picture. That which is shown on
Figure 8 is the result obtained by that brave psychic pioneer, the Rev.
Charles Tweedale, who from his little Yorkshire vicarage beckons the
Church on the road that it should go. In this case Mr. Tweedale called
upon Hope without any appointment and obtained, as has several times
been obtained on surprise visits, an excellent result. The psychic face
is that of his wife’s father, whose features in life, for purposes of
comparison, are shown by Figure 9. The picture is unlike any in existence.

I have said that the psychic faces are sometimes more animated and
life-like than the original photographs taken in life. In support of this
assertion I would point to Figure 10. The old man who smiles so happily
is Mrs. Buxton’s own father, then very recently dead. I do not think that
the most cynical of my readers will contend that a daughter is likely to
make a blasphemous faked picture of her own father, even if it had been
possible to produce so vital an effect.

Anyone who is familiar with Hope’s results is aware that over many of the
psychic faces there appears a roll or arch of some peculiar substance
which has never been explained upon any supposition of fraud, but is so
constant that it would appear to be part of the psychic process. Some of
us have always contended that probably this arch represents a formation
corresponding to the Cabinet upon this side—an envelope or enclosed space
within which psychic forces are generated and condensed. The arch is by
no means peculiar to Hope, though the exact form and texture of it is
such that one could pick out a Hope photograph among a hundred others.
This psychic arch, as it has been named, appears in many forms and many
places, some of them very unexpected. I have, as an example, a photograph
before me as I write which was taken by Mr. Boyd, the respected provost
of a Scotch borough, upon a recent journey which he made upon the West
Coast of Africa. On taking a small group of natives he found an extra
of a woman and child (negroes) upon his plate. This extra figure is
surrounded and surmounted by the psychic arch in an exaggerated form.
Mr. Boyd has no axe to grind, and, so far as I know, he is not even a
spiritualist. How comes it, then, that his result fits so definitely
into the arch system, if it be not that there is some general law which
regulates results whether they be obtained in Crewe or on the Gold Coast?

Again, I have a friend, an amateur, who has himself developed psychic
photography from the time that it was a mere luminous blur upon his
plates, until now he receives very graceful and perfect pictures which
are in some cases recognised faces of the dead. In his case the arch
adjusts itself into the form of an artistic hood or mantilla. But the
arch principle carries on. It is only by a comprehensive view of this
sort, and by the comparison of different independent results, that we
are likely to get at some of the laws which underlie this matter. At
present the system adopted in quarters which should be responsible ones
is to concentrate attention upon whatever may seem to be failure or
deception, and to take no notice at all of the broader aspects of the
question. In every science the methods of advance are to pay strict
attention to the positive results and to regard the negative ones as mere
warnings of what to avoid. This process has been reversed in considering
psychic photography, and the world has been deceived by those who should
have been its guides. Truth will, of course, prevail, but its progress
has been grievously retarded by this unhappy and unscientific mental
attitude.

On one occasion remarkable evidence was afforded that we were right
in our surmise that a cabinet of ectoplasm for concentration is first
constructed, and that the psychic effect is developed inside it. The
result, which is depicted in Figure 12, was got by Mr. Jeffrey, of
Glasgow, who was, I may add, the President of the Scottish Society of
Magicians, and is therefore the last person to be deceived by any sort of
trick. In this case the exposure seems to have been too early so that the
ectoplasmic bag is exposed in its complete form, without any contents. In
the second picture, Figure 13, taken immediately afterwards, the face of
Mr. Jeffrey’s deceased wife has appeared, and the bag has split to show
it, forming the familiar fold over both sides of the face. This picture
seems to me to be quite final in showing us exactly how the matter is
worked by the forces which direct things upon the other side.

Each of these cases which I have given is impressive, I hope, in
itself, but their cumulative effect should be overpowering. They are
but selections out of a very long list which I could provide, but
repetition would be unprofitable, for if those which are here quoted fail
to convince the reader then he is surely beyond conviction. One or two
might conceivably be the result of imperfect observation or incorrect
statement, but it is an insult to common sense to say that so long an
array of honourable witnesses, with their precise detail, with their
actual photographic results, and with the complete exclusion of any
possible trickery, should all be explained in any normal fashion.

CHAPTER IV

AN EXAMINATION OF MR. HOPE AND HIS CRITICS

Having said so much in support of Mr. Hope’s mediumship, let me say what
I can in the way of personal criticism, for I hold no particular brief
for him, and am only anxious to follow truth wherever it may lead. I have
written this pamphlet because I think that truth has been grievously
obscured, and that the fruit of seventeen years of remarkable psychic
demonstration is, for the moment, imperilled by the attention of the
public being directed entirely to a single case which is, admittedly upon
the face of it, of a damaging character. We spiritualists should be, in
Stevenson’s fine phrase, “steel-true and blade-straight,” and we should
never avoid an issue, or fall into the error of our opponents who have
no sense of balance and can only focus their gaze upon one side of a
question.

It has been said that Hope is suspiciously restless and fussy in the
dark room. This, so far as my own observation goes, is correct. It may
be that he is nervously anxious for success, or it may be that he is not
in a normal condition—for he usually holds a service and occasionally
goes into apparent trance immediately before the experiment. Whatever
the cause, I am not prepared to deny the fact, or that not unreasonable
suspicions might be awakened by his attitude in the minds of those who
are brought for the first time in contact with his personality. I can
only point to the cases already given, and say once more that _no_ action
upon his part could have produced them.

Again, it is said of Hope that he is impatient of tests and restrictions.
Some of his best friends have been alienated by this fact. Mediums are
touchy people—more delicately organised in many cases than any other
human type. They may occasionally show an irrational annoyance and
resentment against any action which implies personal suspicion. And yet,
though he certainly prefers to be left to his own methods unrestrained
save by ordinary observation, it is a fact that he has in the past
consented to a great number of tests and has come out of them remarkably
well. I have heard him say, “What have I to gain from tests? I am put to
a deal of trouble, I do what I am asked to do, I get result, and then I
hear no more about it except that perhaps I have convinced the person. Or
perhaps, even if I have done all he asks in his own way, he still says
he is unconvinced.” I can bear him out in this latter statement, for I
have knowledge of three separate sittings which he had with a well-known
London editor, where, under the latter’s ever more stringent conditions,
Hope got results certainly twice, and, I think, thrice, and yet when I
asked this editor to vouch for these results that I might quote them in
this pamphlet, in the interests of truth and justice, I could get no
reply to my letter. This seems to indicate either that he was not yet
satisfied, though his own conditions had been carried out, or else that
he had not the moral courage to help the medium at the time when he
needed testimony.

The incident shows that there is some truth in Hope’s contention that
tests are often a waste of energy. At the same time, it should be known
that when the S.P.R. made their recent attack, founded upon a single
case, Hope at once offered to give fresh sittings and to submit to the
most drastic tests so long as those who were in sympathy were also
associated in the experiment. For some reason the S.P.R. refused this,
and it is a serious flaw in their position. None the less, we must make
the admission that, in general, Hope is not fond of tests.

But there is another and more serious admission which I would make,
although in doing so I may possibly be doing Hope an injustice. He
is, in my opinion, not only a spiritualist, but a fanatic, which is a
dangerous thing in any line of thought. We are aware that one must “test
the spirits,” but I believe that Hope has such childlike and blind faith
in his guides that he would obey their directions whatever they might
be. I recollect one case where a distinguished man of science sent Hope
a sealed packet, upon which the latter placed it in a bucket of water,
under the alleged prompting of some spirit message. The natural result
was to alienate the scientific man from psychic photography for many
years. It is easy to say that this was simply a case of vulgar fraud,
but fraud would be done in some manner which could be concealed and not
in so drastic a manner as that, and, as I have shown, fraud does not at
all fit in with Hope’s usual results. I make the critic a present of the
case, merely adding that I believe Hope’s account of his motives to be
absolutely true, however incomprehensible it might seem.

I have now, I hope, convinced any reasonable reader of the genuine nature
of Hope’s powers, which, after all, wonderful as they may seem, are by
no means unique, but are to be matched by those of several contemporaries
both in England and in America—not all of them professionals.

We will next turn to the particular case treated in the report of the
S.P.R. drawn up by Mr. Price, and afterwards published in a sixpenny
form and widely distributed gratis with the evident intention of ruining
Hope. Apart from its truth or falseness, the pamphlet is in deplorable
taste, with puns upon Hope’s name, and tags of Johnson and Dryden dotted
over it. So grave a subject should be treated with dignity even when
severity is necessary. I will now state the case as clearly as I can,
together with some remarkable side-lights which have appeared since the
publication.

Having determined to catch Hope out, Mr. Price, who has considerable
knowledge both of conjuring and of photography, procured from the
Imperial Dry Plate Company eight plates, all of which had been cut
from the same sheet of glass. Six of these plates were made up into a
single packet, and all were treated by X-rays, so that while there was
no outward sign that they had been marked there would, according to the
testimony of the Company, appear upon them when they were developed a
design of the Company’s trademark.

Carrying with him this doctored packet, and accompanied by a friend,
Mr. Seymour, also a conjurer, Mr. Price kept an appointment which Mr.
Hope had given him at the British College of Psychic Science, London, on
February 24th, 1922. The mediums were quite unsuspicious of any trap, nor
did they hear anything of the matter till four months later.

Mr. Price says: “I made myself very pleasant, said how sorry I was that
they had been ill with influenza, and asked after the Crewe Circle,
saying that my people were natives of Shropshire.” A private detective
must, of course, use deception, but when Mr. Price at a later stage
proceeded to ask that “Onward, Christian soldiers!” be the hymn sung, and
suggesting that the extra finally shown was that of his own mother, he
really does seem to be wallowing in it to an unnecessary degree. After
all, the matter was one of business; he had paid for his sitting, he
would surely get it, and no elaborate deception was needed.

After the usual ceremonies Mr. Price and Mr. Hope went into the dark
room, where the package was opened and the two top plates put into the
carrier. Hope then took up the carrier, asking Price to wrap up the
remaining plates, and it was at this moment that Price “saw him ...
put the dark slide to his left breast-pocket, and take it out again
(another one?) without any ‘talking’ or knocking.” I copy this sentence
as printed, and it is curious to find the S.P.R., which is continually
claiming from others the utmost exactness of statement, passing one which
is so involved and unintelligible. However, it is certain that Mr. Price
means that Hope at that moment changed the carriers, though he does not
even tell us where the second carrier went to. Mr. Price had endeavoured
to mark with some pricking instrument of his thumb the original carrier,
but carriers are often of very hard wood, and he could not, one would
think, have verified such a result, therefore the fact that no marks of
pricks were found upon the carrier cannot be regarded very seriously. It
is an instructive fact that the S.P.R. receives all these very loose
tests without question or comment, while when the evidence is the other
way, as in the case of Major Spencer, they are ready with the most
extraordinary explanations rather than admit a positive result.

The couple then emerged from the dark room—I am omitting unessential
and wearying details—and the photographs were duly taken with no exact
record of the time of exposure, though Mr. Price roughly placed it at
from eighteen to nineteen seconds. The point was really of great, and
might have been, of vital importance. When the plates were developed
one was normal of Price alone, and the other had a female extra looking
over Price’s shoulder. This female face has the psychic arch and bears
every sign to my eye, and to that of every spiritualist whom I have heard
discuss it, of being true to type and a real Hope extra.

Mr. Price complimented the medium upon his success, carried off the
plates, and then set himself to dictate an article which was duly printed
in the “Proceedings” of the S.P.R. to show that the whole business was a
swindle, that the plates had been changed, and that the extra had been on
a plate which Hope had foisted upon Price by the device of changing the
carriers in the dark room.

The points upon which Price relied in his charge may be taken in their
order. They were:

    1. That on the plate with the extra the X-ray marks of the
    Imperial Company were not present.

Experiments were at once undertaken by several investigators, including
Dr. Cushman, of Washington, and Mr. Hewat McKenzie. They showed that
with long exposures, such as Hope gave, the X-ray marks vanish, so that
this test, as was admitted by the Imperial Company, ceases to be valid.

    2. That he made marks upon the carrier, which were not found
    upon the carrier actually used.

These marks seem to have been mere pricks, and there is no independent
evidence as to their existence.

    3. That he saw Hope make a suspicious gesture in the dark room.

This would be more convincing if any indication could be given as to what
became of the discarded carrier. In cross-examination Mr. Price weakened
on the point.

    4. That the glass of which the plates were made and on which
    the photos appeared, was different in colour and thickness from
    the glass of the Imperial plates brought by Mr. Price for the
    experiment.

This statement holds good. The plates have been examined and compared,
and those who desired to guard the interests of Mr. Hope (or rather of
truth) agreed that this contention was right, and that there had actually
been a substitution of plates at some time by somebody. There we are all
on common ground. How then, and why, were the plates changed?

Many who were convinced by experience of Hope’s powers and of his
essential honesty, and who were aware of the bitter antagonism which
exists against him, as against all psychic phenomena, in certain circles
of conjurers and of sceptical researchers, and of indiscreet expressions
before the experiment, were of opinion that the whole transaction was an
organised conspiracy to discredit the medium. The packet of plates had
been for several weeks before the experiment in the possession of the
officials of the S.P.R., and was accessible to clever-fingered people who
were hostile to Hope’s claims, and who had frequently averred that the
opening of sealed packets was an easy process. There were other arguments
which I will not state lest I should seem to be endorsing them. Let me
say, at once, that I believe Messrs. Dingwall, Price and Seymour to be
honourable gentlemen, however much I differ from their point of view, and
that I will not advance any hypothesis which is not consistent with that
position.[1]

At the same time, I would point out that all their difficulties, which
have increased with fuller knowledge, are due to their own tortuous
and indirect way of approaching the question. Suppose that instead
of all this juggling of X-ray marks Mr. Price had simply initialled
his plate the moment he took it from the packet as I and many other
experimenters have done, surely if he had afterwards received an extra
upon that initialled plate the test would have been complete, so far
as substitution is concerned. If he had not done so, I am sure that
Hope would have given him a second appointment, and he could have gone
on until he had either succeeded or until he had proved that with an
initialled plate Hope was helpless. Had this been done much trouble would
have been saved, and the result been equally clear.

Or, again, when he was, as he says, morally sure that Hope had changed
the carrier, suppose that instead of complimenting Hope upon results and
suggesting that the image was that of his mother, he had said, “You will
excuse me, Mr. Hope, but I must really examine you and your dark room,
for I think I can find a marked carrier which you have concealed while
you substituted your own.” A refusal from Hope would have really been a
confession. But, all through, a tortuous course was preferred.

I have nothing against Mr. Price’s honour, but a very great deal against
his methods, winding up with his sixpenny attack upon Hope, when the
matter, as events have proved, was very far from being settled.

This pamphlet would certainly convey to the public the idea that Mr.
Price looked upon psychic photography in general as the greatest humbug
in the world, whereas since then he has signed a document which ends with
the words:

    “We are convinced that the test with Hope on February 24th does
    not rule out the possibility that Hope has produced supernormal
    pictures, or that he is able to produce ‘extras’ by other than
    normal means.”

Had he been wise enough to adopt this humbler tone in the first instance
we could all discuss the question now in a more placid frame of mind.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.—The Rev. C. L. Tweedale and his wife with psychic
likeness of Mrs. Tweedale’s father. (_See_ p. 34.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 9.—Photograph of Mr. Frank Burnett—Mrs. Tweedale’s
father—who died in 1913. Compare with Fig. 8, showing psychic likeness
obtained six years later.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.—Photograph of Mrs. Buxton of the Crewe Circle
with her daughter. Psychic likeness of Mrs. Buxton’s father unlike any
other picture in existence. In the bottom left-hand corner is reproduced
a normal photograph of Mrs. Buxton’s father for comparison. (_See_ p.
35.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 11.—Photograph of Mr. and Mrs. H. East, with psychic
likeness of their son obtained on a surprise visit to Crewe. Normal
photograph reproduced alongside psychic effect for comparison. (_See_ p.
19.)]

But irritability must not make us unjust, and we have to face the
question how came the plates to be changed? The only honest answer is
that we do not know, but that the evidence taken on its face value at
this stage was against Hope, in spite of his long record of honesty.
Mr. Barlow has put forward the plea that Hope was in an abnormal mental
condition at such times, and was to that extent irresponsible. I fear I
cannot accept this, for such substitution must be thought out beforehand,
an image must be prepared, and the whole transaction is not an act of
impulse but a deliberate plan.

There has, however, been a most singular sequel to the case which causes
an extraordinary complication, and when closely examined seems to me to
turn Hope from the defendant into the accuser. The S.P.R. claims that
after this experiment one of the two marked plates had been returned
to them, but in so secret a fashion that it could not be explained who
had brought it or how it had been obtained. This was apparently a point
against Hope, the charge inferred, though not stated, being that he had
left this plate about, after abstracting it from the carrier, and that
some enemy had recognised it and brought it to clinch the case against
him. So secret were the proceedings of the Society that though I am
one of the oldest members of that body I was refused leave to see this
mysterious plate. Eventually, however, some of our people did see it, and
then an extraordinary state of things revealed itself. First of all the
plate was undoubtedly one of the original set supplied by the Imperial
Dry Plate Company. Secondly, it was a virgin unexposed plate, so that it
is impossible that anyone at Hope’s end could have picked it out from any
other plates, since the marks were invisible. Third, and most wonderful,
it actually, on being developed, had an image upon it, which may or may
not have been a psychic extra. This plate was sent on March 3rd, a week
after the experiment and three days after Hope and Mrs. Buxton, who
knew nothing yet of Price’s trap, had returned home to Crewe. It was
in a double wrapper, with a request upon the inside cover that it be
developed. The wrapper was formed of Psychic College literature, and it
bore the Notting Hill postmark.

Now consider the situation thus created. Since the plate had not been
developed it is clear that neither Hope nor anyone at the College
could possibly have known that it was a marked plate, for there was no
publication of the alleged exposure until more than four months after.
Who was there in the whole world who did know that this was a marked
plate and one in which the S.P.R. might be expected to take a special
interest? Clearly the experimenters of the S.P.R. and their confidants—no
one else. But if the marked plate had been abstracted by Hope in the
dark room and mixed up there with other plates how could any friend or
emissary of the S.P.R. have picked it out as being the plate that was
marked? It could not have been done. Therefore the conclusion seems to be
irresistible that this plate was abstracted from the packet _before_ the
experiment by someone who knew exactly what it was. If this be so, Hope
is the victim of a conspiracy and he is a much ill-used man. I see no
possible alternative to this conclusion.

Let us see if we can build up any sort of theory which would cover all
the known facts. Any such theory is bound to be improbable, but the
improbable is better than the impossible, and it is quite impossible
that Hope could have known that a plate was secretly marked when it had
not been exposed or developed. We have to remember that the knot of
conspirators (some consciously so, and some not) are in close touch with
a group of conjurers. These gentlemen have announced that there is no
packet which cannot be opened and no seal which cannot be tampered with
undetected. For twenty-four days after Mr. Price takes his packet of
marked plates to the headquarters of the S.P.R. it was locked up not in
a safe but in an ordinary drawer, which may or may not have been locked,
but could presumably be easily opened. My belief is that during that long
period the packet was actually opened and the top plates taken out. Upon
one of these top plates a faked photograph was thrown from one of those
small projectors which produce just such an effect as is shown on the
returned plate. The idea may have been that Hope would claim this effect
as his own and that he would then be confounded by the announcement that
it was there all the time. That was the first stage. The second stage was
that either the original conspirator relented or someone else who was in
his confidence thought it was too bad, so the packet was again tampered
with, the marked and faked plate taken out and a plain one substituted.
The packet was then taken to Hope as described. Mr. Hope then got a
perfectly honest psychic effect upon the unmarked plate. Meanwhile the
abstracter, whoever he may have been, had the original faked plate in his
possession, and out of a spirit of pure mischief—for I can imagine no
other reason—he wrapped it in a sheet of the College syllabus, which can
easily be obtained, and returned it to the S.P.R., to whom it originally
belonged. Wherever it came from it is clear that it did not come from
the College, for when a man does a thing secretly and anonymously he
does not enclose literature which will lead to his detection.

It is possible that this thing may originally have been conceived as a
sort of practical joke upon Hope and upon spiritualists generally, but
that some who were not in the joke have pushed the matter further than
was originally intended. Whom can we blame? I am in the position of never
having personally met any of the three protagonists, Price, Dingwall
or Seymour, so that my view of them is impartial. Mr. Price is popular
among the spiritualists who know him, and all agree that he would be
unlikely to lend himself to any deception. Mr. Dingwall was possessed
by an extreme prejudice against Mr. Hope, and yet I cannot conceive him
as gratifying that prejudice by such a trick. He cannot, however, be
acquitted of having aided and abetted in issuing the libellous pamphlet
against Hope before all the facts were known, and before Hope’s friends
could examine any of them. It was an unworthy thing to do, and Messrs.
Price and Dingwall must share the responsibility. It is a curious fact
which should be recorded that, although the experiment was on February
24th, and though the report of the alleged exposure was not issued till
the end of May, we find Mr. Dingwall applying for a sitting with Hope
early in May, and writing, when Hope refused to give him one: “As I
understand from your letters that you still refuse to have sittings with
the only scientific body in Great Britain investigating this subject, I
shall be obliged in my coming report on psychic photography to publish
certain facts which may not be of advantage to yourself.” That letter
was on May 2nd. Apparently, therefore, the publication of the “exposure”
depended upon whether Mr. Dingwall was piqued or was humoured. If he were
sure that the exposure was a genuine one this is a very singular attitude
to assume.

There remains Mr. James Seymour, the amateur conjurer, who has been
concerned in several so-called exposures. It would be unjust to assert
that it was he who carried out this deception, for when a packet is left
for twenty-four days in a drawer many people may have had access to it,
and none of the three experimenters may have known the facts. This, I
think, is very probable. At the same time, as Mr. Seymour has been very
searching in his inquiries about mediums, he will not take it amiss if
I ask him what he meant when in his evidence (“Cold Light,” etc., p. 7)
he says: “They” (_i.e._, Hope and Mrs. Buxton) “were thoroughly taken in
by the packet and were not suspicious of it.” How could they possibly be
suspicious of a packet which had never been opened? On the other hand, if
the speaker knew that the packet had been tampered with, it would be a
most natural remark to make. The words may be innocent, but they demand
a clear explanation, and so does the fact that an extra was found upon a
marked plate which obviously had never been in Hope’s dark room at all.

So secretive and tortuous have been the methods of the agents of the
S.P.R. that each fresh piece of evidence has to be wrung from them, and
they seem to have no conception of the fact that a man who is accused
has a right to know all the facts concerning the accusation. Even now,
nine months after the event, constant pressure has to be put upon them
in order to get at the truth. Only at this last moment has a new and
strange fact been admitted. It is that when the mysterious marked plate
was returned it was not alone, but that three other plates, not belonging
to the marked series, were with it, _each_ of them adorned with psychic
photographs. These photographs in no way resembled the results of Hope or
of Mrs. Deane, nor were they like the one upon the marked plate. I should
be interested to know whether Mr. Marriott was ever in the counsels of
the conspirators, for there is something in this incident which rather
recalls that gentleman’s powers and also his somewhat impish sense of
humour.

Even now—I write nearly nine months after the original investigation—we
have no assurance that this secret of the S.P.R. has been fully divulged
or that they have been frank with the public. It is possible that they
have received other anonymous communications which bear upon the case.
The first one was within a week of the investigation, and if divulged
at the time it might have been possible to find the source. After such
a lapse of time it is far more difficult. As I have shown, these new
facts place the Society in a very invidious position and that may be the
cause of their hesitations and concealments, but they have to remember
that they have made a wanton attack upon a man’s honour, and that their
own _amour propre_ is a small thing compared to the admission of the
injustice they have done. They should now come forward honestly, admit
the blunders they have committed, apologise to Hope, and remove any
slur which they have cast upon one of the most important and consistent
psychic manifestations ever known in the history of the movement. In all
attempted explanations let them bear in mind the central fact that no one
but themselves and their associates knew that there was a marked plate
in existence until several months after the experiment and after one had
been returned to them.

Among those who examined the evidence at that time available was Dr.
Allerton Cushman, for whose independence of mind and strong common sense
I have a great respect. Having signed the document in which he admitted
that there had been substitution of plates, he added the following
impressive note:

    “My signature appended to the above statement sets forth that
    investigation of all the facts available up to date shows
    that the plate containing the psychic extra in the Price test
    sitting with Hope did not match up with the other plates
    marked by the Imperial Dry Plate Company. The only possible
    inference is that the plate in question was substituted by
    someone at some time either deliberately or accidentally. I do
    not commit myself as to the authorship of the substitution.
    After careful experimentation I do not consider the system of
    X-ray marking adopted by Mr. Price to be infallible, but quite
    the reverse, as the markings quite disappear on long exposures
    and over-development. I am also unimpressed and unconvinced
    by Mr. Price’s method of marking the plate-holder. I have had
    in all five sittings with Hope and four with Mrs. Deane. Of
    these nine sittings, seven were conducted under test conditions
    in which Dr. H. Carrington and other witnesses participated.
    I have obtained psychic extras from both mediums on plates
    marked by X-ray by the Imperial Dry Plate Company, and boxed
    and sealed by them, and also on plates purchased by Dr.
    Carrington just previous to one of the Hope sittings, all of
    which were marked by us with every precaution. I am convinced
    that there was no substitution possible in at least five of
    the seven test sittings. I consider that the mediums possess
    genuine psychic power, and are capable of obtaining marvellous,
    genuine results.... The more I investigate the subject the more
    convinced I am that the marvellous evidential case of spirit
    photography obtained by me through Mrs. Deane in July, 1921,
    was genuine and true.

                        “Yours faithfully,

                                           “ALLERTON F. CUSHMAN.”

[1] I let these words stand as written, but further information,
which only came later to my knowledge, has, as the text will show,
caused me to take a less entirely charitable view.—A.C.D.

CHAPTER V

FURTHER DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED

It might well be urged, “Why should Hope go into the dark room at all?
Why should he not allow the sitter to charge his carrier by himself and
so remove all possibility of transposition?” It is natural that Hope
should show the stranger where the various conveniences of the dark room
are, but apart from this there is the reason that Hope in the course
of his career has had all sorts of tricks played upon him by dishonest
investigators, and that he has to protect himself, so far as he can,
against doctored plates or plates with extras already prepared which will
be ascribed to him and made the ground for charges. I have heard him tell
such instances. When he knows his sitter he has no objection at all to
leaving him alone in the dark room.

In 1919 the Society which I have already referred to as the S.S.S.P.
presented Hope with a new camera. Mr. Barlow, Mr. Pearse and Mr.
Walker—all experienced photographers—were the three delegates who
conveyed it to Crewe. On this occasion photographs were taken with the
new carriers and camera, _Mr. Barlow loading the carrier with his own
plate alone in the dark room_. In developing, all three delegates went
into the dark room, but Hope did not accompany them. Three out of four
slides showed no supernormal result, but the fourth showed three faces,
one clearly recognised. “We were carefully watching Mr. Hope all the
time and are absolutely sure that there was no trickery.” The document,
which contains a detailed account of these facts, is signed by all three
observers. Could any case be more satisfactory and more final?

I have said that professional photographers were among the sitters. I
would instance as a good example Mr. A. R. Gibson, of Nottingham, who
testifies that he took every possible precaution against deceit, and that
none the less he received an excellent likeness of his dead son which
does not correspond to any existing photograph and is recognised by all
who knew the lad.

There is one final case to which I would particularly desire to draw
attention because it is exactly parallel to that of Mr. Price, but had a
diametrically opposite result. The inquirer, too, has the advantage of
being absolutely impartial, which cannot be said of the two conjurers nor
of Mr. Dingwall, who was behind them—and even with every intention to be
honest, a strong bias can distort the results. The case to which I refer
is that of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, of 7, Turners Wood, Hampstead Garden
Suburb, who sat to Mr. Hope in March, 1921. Before the sitting Mrs.
Stobart’s plates were marked with a secret mark, which she herself did
not know, by the Kodak Company. The result is told in full in _Psychic
Science_ for October of this year. Briefly, after every conceivable
precaution by Mrs. Stobart and her husband, two extras were got in four
attempts, one a head only and the other a full-length figure of a woman,
clothed in the usual filmy drapery. “Mr. Hope never handled the plates
at all.” Mrs. Stobart concludes: “I took the negatives to the Kodak
Company—to the manager and chief assistant. ‘Are these the plates you
marked? Can you see the marks?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes,’ they replied. ‘Look,
here they are—a tiny circle enclosing a cross.’ And for the first time I
saw the marks which they had put. The Kodak Company allow me to say that
their affirmation as to this can be used freely.”

Now surely this is very important. There seems no loophole for error,
and it entirely reverses the results of the S.P.R. Why should more
credit be given to one than the other? Of the two, Mrs. Stobart’s is
undoubtedly the more scientific, for we have no story of plates being
left about for twenty-four days before an experiment, and, as I have
pointed out, there is no possible bias. Taken with all the other examples
which I have given, and with those given later by Mr. Barlow, I claim
that no reasonable man can doubt that Hope’s hands are clean. It is the
S.P.R. clique with their tortuous methods, and with their mystery plate
unexplained, who can most reasonably be accused of a want of frank,
straightforward dealing. It is sad to think that a society which has done
good work in the past, and which has been made famous by the labours of
great spiritualists like Myers and Hodgson, Barrett and Crookes, should
be mixed up at all with so ugly a business handled in so questionable a
way.

Before bringing to an end this short sketch of the work of the Crewe
Circle, I would beg the reader to consider the positive cases which I
have laid before him and to remember that in order to establish the
intervention of external, intelligent forces—which is our sole and only
aim—we have only to make _one_ case good. One positive case outweighs
all the negative ones which the industry of the most energetic “exposer”
could collect. Our enemies take the perverse course of dwelling entirely
upon negative results, a line of reasoning which would have killed any
science in the world. They know, as a matter of fact, very little about
the subject, for starting, as they do, with the presumption that it is
a palpable fraud, they do not devote to it the time and the close study
which it calls for.

There is only one body in this country which can claim any authority, and
that is the S.S.S.P., or Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures,
of which Dr. Abraham Wallace is President, while I share with Mr.
Mitchell and Mr. Blackwell the honour of being vice-president. We number
among our members Miss Scatcherd, whose experience is probably unique,
Mr. Coates, who has written two excellent books upon the subject, Colonel
Baddeley, Major Spencer, whose experiments have extended over many
years, Colonel Johnson, a pioneer investigator, professional and expert
photographers, and others of all shades of opinions, save that all, so
far as I know, are convinced by actual experience of the reality of the
phenomenon. Of its methods and curious, almost inconceivable and most
freakish manifestations we have collected a mass of material and have
even cleared a few permanent pathways among the jungle.

It is to this society, and not to the S.P.R. as at present conducted,
that the world may look for accurate information upon this subject. It
would not be reasonable for me to go at any length here into the results
obtained. I would only say that so far as my own conclusions go, basing
my studies upon the photographers of the past as well as the present,
I think that the evidence is strong that there is on the other side
an intelligent control for each photographic medium, whose powers are
great but by no means unlimited and who endeavours to give us convincing
results each in his own characteristic way. These results are sometimes
obtained by actual materialisations, sometimes by precipitations
of pictures apart from exposure, sometimes, as I believe, by the
superposition of screens which have the psychic face already upon them,
and which give marks as of a double exposure. Among the powers of the
control is to build up a simulacrum which may be the image of someone who
is still alive, or he may produce upon the plate facsimiles of pictures
and portraits which do at present exist, but which are entirely beyond
the normal reach of the medium. All these and other equally strange
points I could illustrate by many examples, but their mere recital will
show how many snares lie before the explorer, and how many things might
seem to be fraudulent when they are really the doing not of the medium
but of the control.

Any further expansion of this fascinating subject would be out of place
on my part, since I am by no means one of the authorities, and can only
claim that I study and assimilate the results of others, to which, of
course, I add my own personal experience. I have, however, asked Mr.
Barlow, the Honorary Secretary of this Society, whose experience is so
extensive as to be almost unrivalled, to add a short essay upon the
subject, with an account of some of the cases which bear upon the matter.

CHAPTER VI

THE ATTACK ON MRS. DEANE AND MR. VEARNCOMBE

I took up my pen for the purpose of considering the case of the Crewe
Circle and urging the folly of discarding the work of seventeen years
on the score of a single case. I cannot, however, end my task without
saying a few words as to the attack upon Mrs. Deane and Mr. Vearncombe,
two other photographic mediums. This attack hardly deserves attention as
it was anonymous, but it was brought out under the auspices of the Magic
Circle, a society of conjurers who have been interesting themselves in
matters psychic. As the two attacks were issued almost simultaneously
they seem to have had some common inspiration, and to have formed a
general assault upon the whole position of psychic photography. The same
individual, Mr. Seymour, the amateur conjurer, actually took part, I
understand, in both transactions.

Mrs. Deane, the person attacked, is a somewhat pathetic and forlorn
figure among all these clever tricksters. She is a little, elderly
charwoman, a humble white mouse of a person, with her sad face, her
frayed gloves, and her little handbag which excites the worst suspicions
in the minds of her critics. Her powers were discovered in the first
instance quite by chance. When she first pursued the subject her
circumstances were such that her only dark room was under the kitchen
table with clothes pinned round it. None the less, she produced some
remarkable pictures under these conditions, one of which fell into my
hands, and I at once concluded that she had real powers. The portrait
was of a young man in life, with a female spirit face behind him. This
might well have been faked. Something seemed to be emerging from the
young man’s head, however, and on observing this object with a lens I
distinguished that it was a small but correct representation of the
Assyrian fish-god, Dagon, wearing the peculiar hat with which that deity
is always associated. This was so entirely the kind of freakish result
which I expect from spirit photography, and was so removed from the
normal powers of a charwoman, that I provisionally accepted her in my
mind as a true medium, a position from which I have never been compelled
to budge. I still retain this photograph, but the little head is too
small for satisfactory reproduction.

Mrs. Deane (or Mrs. Deane’s control) has one embarrassing habit which I
believe to be unnecessary, and which makes it very difficult to convince
the sceptic, or, indeed, to prevent him from writing her down as an
obvious fraud. Far from insisting that you bring your own plates, as Hope
does, she likes them to be sent to her in advance, and she does what she
calls “magnetising” them, by keeping them near her for some days. This
is so suspicious that it can hardly be defended, but here, again, there
is an element of fanatical obedience. My own personal belief is that
her results are perfectly honest, that they are actually formed in the
shape of psychographs during the days before the sitting, and that if her
plates were examined before they were exposed to light, the pictures
would be found already on them. This, of course, would very naturally be
taken as clear proof of fraud by the superficial investigator, ignorant
of the strange possibilities of psychic photography, but I believe myself
that the psychic effect is a perfectly genuine one, but that the extra
will very probably bear no relevancy to the sitter. I am speaking now of
her general routine, for how can I guarantee every particular case or
judge what a medium may do when dealing with so evanescent and elusive a
thing as psychic power? When they have it they use it—when it fails them
the human element may come in.

I have had one sitting with Mrs. Deane in which six plates were exposed.
In four of them there were abnormal results. One of these was a female
face smiling from an ectoplasmic cloud. What does Mrs. Deane know of
ectoplasmic clouds? One such is visible in the specimen of her work which
is shown in Figure 30. Exactly similar are some of the clouds which
appear in Hope’s work. Such appearances do not aid deception. Why, then,
should they appear if it is not that it is part of a psychic process?

Mrs. Deane gave me the choice of two packets of plates upon this
occasion, and I admit that the effects may very well have been on the
plates before the exposure. None the less, they were probably quite
genuine as supernormal pictures. Such a statement may raise a smile from
Mr. MacCabe or from Mr. Paternoster in _Truth_, but I have the advantage
over them in the fact that I have had practical experience of the matter
at issue.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.—Photograph of Mr. Wm. Jeffrey and his daughter,
showing ectoplasmic bag. (_See_ p. 37.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 13.—Photograph taken immediately after that shown by
Fig. 12. Position of sitters is unchanged, but the ectoplasmic veiling
now contains an excellent likeness (slightly distorted) of Mr. Jeffrey’s
deceased wife.]

[Illustration: FIG. 14.—Psychic likeness of Agnes, daughter of Dr.
Allerton Cushman. A life-like picture obtained by Dr. Cushman through a
surprise visit paid to Mrs. Dean. (_See_ p. 63.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 15.—A normal photograph of Agnes Cushman for
comparison with Fig. 14.]

But I am bound to give my reasons for such a statement, or I might well
be branded as credulous. My reasons are that I am convinced that this
magnetising process is perfectly unnecessary and Mrs. Deane, within my
knowledge, obtains her best results when there has been no possibility of
knowing who her sitter will be. The very finest result which I know of in
psychic photography was that obtained by Dr. Cushman with Mrs. Deane. Dr.
Cushman, a distinguished scientific man of America, had suffered the loss
of his daughter Agnes some months before. He went to the Psychic College
without an appointment or an introduction. When he arrived he found Mrs.
Deane in the act of leaving. He persuaded her to give a sitting, and then
and there he obtained a photograph of his “dead” daughter which is, he
declares, unlike any existing one, and is more vital and characteristic
than any taken in life. When I was in the States I showed this picture on
the screen as in Figure 14, and there was abundant testimony from those
who knew Agnes that it was a life-like picture.

I would refer this case to the anonymous writers of the Magic Circle,
who has done all they could to worry this poor woman and to destroy her
powers, and I would ask them how that little bag of tricks which exists
only in their own imagination could have affected such a result as that.
It will be noted in the already quoted opinion of Dr. Cushman that since
this scandal Mrs. Deane has been severely tested by him and others, and
that they have been able under the Doctor’s own conditions to get psychic
results.

Another excellent case of Mrs. Deane’s power is that which forms the
subject of Figure 30. The extra in the ectoplasmic cloud is Mr. Barlow,
senior, the father of the Secretary of the S.S.S.P. Beside him is a
picture of how he looked twelve years before his death. No one can deny
that it is the same man with the years added on. Mrs. Deane never knew
Mr. Barlow’s father in life. How, then, was this result obtained? These
are the cases which the Magic Circle report avoids, while it talks much
of any negative results which it can collect or imagine. I hope that this
short account may do something towards helping a woman whom I believe to
be a true psychic, and who has suffered severely for the faith that is in
her, having actually, I understand, endured the excommunication of her
church because she has used the powers which God has given her. I have a
recollection that Joan of Arc endured the same fate for the reason “_le
plus il change, le plus il reste le même_.”

It only remains for me now, before giving place to others, to say a
word about Mr. Vearncombe, the psychic photographer of Bridgwater. Mr.
Vearncombe was a normal, professional photographer, but he found, as
Mumler did, that inexplicable extras intruded upon and spoilt both his
plates and his business. He then began to study this new power, which he
seemed to possess, and to develop it for commercial use. Mrs. Humphreys,
a member of the S.S.S.P. and a student of psychic affairs, lived in the
same town and submitted him to certain tests which convinced her and
others of his _bona fides_, though I cannot repeat too often that no
blank cheque of honesty can ever be given to any man.

My own experience of Mr. Vearncombe and my knowledge of his work are far
less than in the cases of Mr. Hope and Mrs. Deane, so that I can only say
that I believe he produces genuine results, whereas in the other two
cases I can say that I _know_ they produce genuine results.

I have had two experiments with Vearncombe, but did not impose any test
conditions in either case. I simply sent a closed envelope containing a
letter and asked him to photograph it in the hope that some extra might
appear which I could associate with the sender of the letter. In both
cases a large number, six or seven, well-marked faces developed round
the letter, but none which bore any message to me. Others, however, have
been more fortunate in their experience and have assured me that they
have received true pictures of the dead in that fashion. There is no
ectoplasmic cloud or psychic arch, but the faces are as clear-cut as if
they were stamped with a die.

I am in some degree responsible for Vearncombe’s troubles, as I mentioned
his name as being one who might repay investigation upon the occasion
when I gave evidence before a committee of these conjuring gentlemen.
They seem to have made up a sealed packet to Mr. Vearncombe with
instructions to get what he could. Upon its return they declared that the
packet, which had furnished a psychic result, had been tampered with. No
independent proof whatever was offered in support of this assertion, and
Mr. Fred Barlow, who had obtained results from Mr. Vearncombe, where he
was sure that the packets had _not_ been tampered with, was sufficiently
interested to hunt up the name of the sender and some details of the
case from the Vearncombe end, rather than from that of the “exposers.”
Fortunately Vearncombe had preserved the letters, and it was then
found that the sender, when the packet and the psychic result had been
returned, had at once written to Vearncombe to acknowledge receipt,
adding the two statements:

    (1) That one of the faces strongly recalled “an old true friend
    who had not been heard of for many years,” and

    (2) That the packet had been returned intact.

Thus the Magic Circle had clearly fallen into the pit that it had digged,
and its agent is convicted either of being a senseless liar without
any cause, or else of having completely endorsed the result which the
Circle afterwards pretended was a failure. It was one of those numerous
instances when it is not the medium but the investigators who should
really be exposed. My experience is that this is the case far more
frequently than the public can realise, and that it is amazing how men of
honour can turn and twist the facts when they deal with this subject. A
well-known “exposer” assured a friend of mine that he would think nothing
of putting muslin in a medium’s pocket at a séance, if he was sure that
he could thereby secure a conviction.

I have seen a letter from Mr. Marriott, who is also busy in showing up
“frauds,” in which, writing to Mr. Hope, he offered to teach him to make
more artistic spirit-photographs, charging thirty guineas if the lessons
were in London and forty if at Crewe. I am quite prepared to anticipate
Mr. Marriott’s explanation that this was a trap, but it is an example
of the tortuous, deceptive methods against which our mediums have to
contend.

I understand that Mr. Vearncombe is so disgusted with the whole episode
that he declares he will demonstrate his powers no longer, save to
private friends. We can but hope that he will not allow ignorant or
dishonest anonymous criticism to influence him to this extent. If all of
us who endure annoyance, and even insult, were to desert the spiritualist
cause in order to save our private feelings, we could hardly expect the
truth to prevail.

Let me conclude by saying that I speak from a far larger experience than
the representatives of the S.P.R. or of the Magic Circle, and that,
leaving out Mr. Vearncombe, who needs no defence in the face of the
admission quoted above, I have no doubt whatever of the true psychic
powers of Mrs. Deane and of Mr. Hope, though I cannot pronounce upon
every single case at which I was not present and when I have had no
opportunity of examining the complete evidence. I fear that the most
permanent result of this episode will be that the spiritualists will
very reasonably refuse the present régime of the Research Society all
access to their mediums, since experience has shown that they may,
without a chance of self-defence, be attacked in consequence in a cheap,
popular pamphlet before even the case has been examined by any impartial
authority.

POSTSCRIPT

At the last moment before this booklet goes to press, I am able to
insert the fact that Hope’s complete innocence has now been clearly
established, and he stands before the world as a man who has been
very cruelly maligned, and the victim of a plot which has been quite
extraordinary in its ramifications. It was at last found possible to get
the cover in which the original packet of plates was wrapped, and on it
were found unmistakable signs that it had been tampered with and opened.
Thus the deductions made in the text from the evidence already to hand
have been absolutely justified, and it is clear that the marked plates
were abstracted before the packet reached the Psychic College and two
ordinary plates substituted, upon one of which Hope produced an “extra.”
The conclusion was reached by the acumen and patience of Mr. Hewat
McKenzie, but his results were examined and endorsed unanimously by a
strong committee, which included, besides myself, Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie,
General Carter, Colonel Baddeley, Mr. Stanley de Brath, Mrs. Stobart,
Miss V. R. Scatcherd, Mrs. de Crespigny, Mr. H. C. Scofield and Mr. F.
Bligh Bond. It now only remains to find out who is the culprit who has
played this cunning trick, and it is not difficult to say that the hand
which returned the marked plate through the post is the same hand as
that which took it out of the packet. A reward has already been offered
for the identification of the person concerned. In the meantime it would
be unfair to blame the agents of the S.P.R., who may, while trying to
trick Hope, have been themselves tricked. Nothing, however, can excuse
them from the charge of culpable negligence in failing to examine the
wrappers which so clearly tell the story, and which have been kept so
long in their possession. As the matter stands, five persons stand as
defendants: Mr. Harry Price, Mr. Moger, Mr. James Seymour, Miss Newton,
Secretary of the S.P.R., and Mr. Dingwall, Research Officer of that body.
If there is someone else in the background who has tricked them, then it
is for them to find out who it is. Their negligence has been such that
it is difficult to say what atonement can meet it, and it throws a very
lurid light upon some of the so-called “exposures” of the past. As one
of the oldest members of the S.P.R., I feel that the honour of that body
will not be cleared until they have appointed an impartial committee to
consider these facts and to determine what steps should be taken.

                                                      ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

_November 14th, 1922._

CHAPTER VII

THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF THE CREWE CIRCLE

BY F. R. SCATCHERD

Member of the Society for Psychical Research, Co-Editor of the _Asiatic
Review_

    (Miss Felicia Scatcherd, who has been one of the true psychic
    researchers and pioneers of knowledge in this country, has
    contributed the following information which she gained during
    her close association with the Crewe Circle at and after the
    time of its formation.)

Questioned about himself, Mr. Hope said that he was christened “Billy
Hope,” and was born at or near Manchester. His first memory is of having
scarlet fever when he was four years old. During the fever he used to
see all sorts of faces peering at him through the doorway, and became
so frightened that he screamed for his father to come and send them
away. Now that he knows about clairvoyance, he thinks otherwise of those
visions. He lost his mother when he was nine, and remembers little about
her. It is a curious fact, as he observed: “I have wished for her picture
hundreds of times, and sat for it many a while, and have never yet got
it. These things beat me.”

When asked did he grieve much for his mother’s death, he replied that he
was brought up in a religious family, his father being a local preacher.
Later on Mr. Hope, Senior, lost all his worldly possessions.

“My father was wealthy according to my ideas,” said Mr. Hope. “He had
two farms, but late in life lost his money.”

Mr. Hope was well cared for by his mother as long as he had her, and
afterwards by his step-mother.

“She was a good woman: and I had an aunt of a religious frame of mind who
also kept an eye on me.”

“You must have been a very good little boy,” I said.

“Oh dear, no! I was much the same as the other lads. I played plenty
of truant, and once joined a party of seven and ran the schoolmaster
round the room. We had agreed beforehand what we would do if he began
a-thrashing of us. But don’t put that in, Miss Scatcherd!”

Spirit photography first interested him when he was working at a bleach
and dye-works near Pendleton. Being an amateur photographer, he and a
comrade agreed to photograph each other one Saturday afternoon. Mr. Hope
exposed a plate on his friend and developed it, when they saw a woman
standing beside him. The brick wall showed through the figure, there
being no background. The sitter, a Roman Catholic, was frightened, and
asked how the woman had got on the plate, and did Mr. Hope know her. When
Mr. Hope replied that he did not know the lady nor how she got there,
_the man said it was his sister who had been dead for many years_.

Neither knew anything of spiritualism, so they took it to the works on
Monday and showed it to their foreman, who happened also to be an amateur
photographer, and was “lost in wonder” over it. But there was a fellow
worker, a spiritualist, who said it was a spirit photo. The foreman
arranged that the experiment should be repeated with the same camera the
following Saturday, when not only the identical woman appeared again but
with her, her little dead baby.

“I thought this very strange,” said Mr. Hope; “it made me more interested
in spirit photography, and I have been dabbling at it ever since. I felt
sorry for my mate, he was so scared. When he saw the second result, I
thought he would have pegged out” (died of fright).

The Circle used to destroy all negatives. The members did not want anyone
to know about their spirit photography, as many people did not want to do
business with them, saying it was all the devil’s work. Till the advent
of Archdeacon Colley on the scene not a single negative was kept. After a
print was taken the negative was destroyed.

Mr. and Mrs. Buxton met Mr. Hope some seventeen years ago at the
Spiritualist Hall at Crewe, where Mr. Buxton was organist. After the
service Mr. Hope asked Mr. Buxton if he could find one or two friends to
form a circle to sit for spirit photography. This was done, and it was
arranged to use the next Wednesday evening from eight to nine.

One of the circle of six was a non-spiritualist, but was converted when
a picture of his father and mother was obtained. A strange thing is
that when all were anxiously desiring a picture, a message appeared on
the first plate exposed. This message promised a picture next time, and
stated that it would be for the master of the house. The promise was kept
several sittings later, when the picture of Mr. Buxton’s mother and of
Mrs. Buxton’s sister came on the plate. Mr. Buxton was of the opinion
that this was given to do away with the idea of thought photography. They
were all thinking of a picture and never dreamed that such a thing as a
written message would be given. They have been very persevering, having
sat regularly ever since, each Wednesday from eight to nine, securing a
picture on an average of one a month at the outset.

There have been many storms before which have broken over the Crewe
Circle, but the cause of them has usually been the limited knowledge
of the strange possibilities of psychic photography on the part of the
sitters and of the public. One of the most notorious of these so-called
“exposures” (which really were exposures of the critics’ ignorance) was
in 1908, and arose out of Archdeacon Colley’s first sitting. He had
heard that the Crewe Circle were simple-looking folk, and this attracted
him, so he broke his journey at Crewe and called upon Mr. and Mrs. Hope,
who had just lost their eldest daughter. The Archdeacon apologised for
having come at such a time, but Mr. Hope sent him on to Mr. and Mrs.
Buxton, where he was shown the photos and asked to see the negatives.
He was shocked when he heard that they had all been destroyed, and from
that time kept all negatives he was able to get hold of. The Archdeacon
brought his own camera, loaded at Stockton with his own diamond-marked
plates. He kept the plates in his own possession and focussed the camera,
_which he put up outside the house_, although it was raining. Mr. Hope
merely pressed the bulb and Archdeacon Colley developed the plates with
his own developer. When he held the picture to the light he exclaimed:
“My father and my sainted mother!”

Mr. Hope was the first to notice the likeness between “Mrs. Colley” and
a picture he had copied about two years ago, and cycled with it to Mr.
Spencer, of Nantwich. Mrs. Spencer declared it to be her grandmother, and
cried out, “Oh, if this had only come with us how pleased we should have
been!”

Mr. Hope then wrote to Archdeacon Colley telling him it could not be his
mother, as it had been recognised at Nantwich. The Archdeacon said it was
madness to think a man did not know his own mother, and advertised in the
Leamington paper, asking all who remembered his mother to meet him at
the Rectory, when eighteen persons selected the photograph from several
others and testified in writing that the picture was a portrait of the
late Mrs. Colley, who had never been photographed.

The Crewe friends heard no more about the matter until the controversy in
_Light_ (February 14th, 1914, and subsequent numbers). The extraordinary
ignorance, even of the spiritualistic public, on these matters, was
revealed by the storm of indignation that burst upon the devoted heads
of the Crewe Circle and their supporters. The testimony of such students
and scholars as the late Mr. James W. Sharpe, M.A., of Bournemouth, an
eminent mathematician and expert authority on all questions of psychical
research, did little to allay the outburst. In vain it was pointed out
that no fact was better vouched for than the reproduction by “spirit”
photographers of well-known pictures and photographs, often true in every
detail to the originals. The theory and fact of ideoplasticity were
ridiculed just as they are ridiculed to-day by those who should keep
themselves up-to-date in physical science, if they wish to judge justly
the yet more complex problems of psychical science.

The Society for Psychical Research was as unhelpful as the “man in the
street,” so far as its leading authorities were concerned.

To return to the beginning of things: it was on July 16th, 1909, when,
in response to a telegram from Archdeacon Colley, I went to Leamington,
where I first met the Rev. Prof. Henslow and two members of the Crewe
Circle who were on a visit to the Archdeacon. A séance for spirit
photography was held. It was disappointing in one sense. Prof. Henslow
was told that he would find impressions on certain plates in a sealed
packet on the table _which was not to be opened for a fortnight_.

I prepared to say good-bye, when Mr. Hope said he would like to do
something for the visitor from London. “The friends say that if the lady
can remain the night they will give her a test.” I replied that the only
test of interest to me was one that would convince my fellow-members of
the Society for Psychical Research. The mediums insisted, but I refused
to stay unless Prof. Henslow also remained and took charge of the
proceedings.

“Sir, do stay!” pleaded Mr. Hope. “There are five of us—you, the
Archdeacon, Mrs. Buxton, Miss Scatcherd and myself. You must buy five
plates from your own photographer. Each plate must be put into a
light-tight envelope and worn by the sitter, with the sensitised surface
next to the person, until the séance. It will not take long to fetch the
plates and bring them back to us. Thus we shall have an hour to wear
them before the séance this evening. It is the only way to get them
magnetised so as to have immediate results. You can each develop your own
plate to-night and then Miss Scatcherd will know whether the friends have
kept their word.”

Prof. Henslow good-naturedly agreed and drove off with the Archdeacon to
purchase the plates. I remained with Mrs. Buxton and Mr. Hope. Within
an hour the Archdeacon returned with four plates put up as directed.
Professor Henslow had gone home to dinner wearing his plate in a wood
slide contrived by Archdeacon Colley. Mrs. Buxton and I tucked ours
inside our blouses and Mr. Hope placed his in that trouser-pocket which
has aroused such evil suspicions in the minds of investigators. We
remained together until Prof. Henslow joined us. It was full daylight. We
sat round the table when Mr. Hope asked:

“What do you want, Miss Scatcherd? A face? A message? What shall it be?”

“You forget my conditions; Prof. Henslow must decide. Let him choose,” I
replied.

Prof. Henslow said he did not care what came so long as _the same thing
appeared on all the plates_. It was a remark worthy of the speaker,
conveying, as it did, a most crucial test, in view of the fact that he
had never let his plate out of his own keeping. The usual séance was held.

Prof. Henslow developed his plate first. I developed mine under
Archdeacon Colley’s supervision, then Mrs. Buxton and Mr. Hope developed
theirs.

The results are of interest. The Archdeacon did not wear a plate so as
to leave “more power for the others.” Mr. Hope’s plate was blurred. The
tablet on Prof. Henslow’s was identical in outline with Mrs. Buxton’s and
mine, both of which were sharp and clear, but Mrs. Buxton’s was the best.
Mrs. Buxton had been with me the whole time, and her six-months-old baby
had never left her arms.

The message addressed to Prof. Henslow was appropriate, but the writing
was so microscopically fine that we could not read it that night. Mr.
Hope was very disappointed. “Never mind,” he said, “when we get home we
will ask the guides to give it us again!” He and Mrs. Buxton were leaving
by the early morning train. The Archdeacon had charge of the negatives
and had promised to let us know as soon as he had deciphered the message.

The mediums did not like their lodgings, so slept at my hotel. I saw
them off in the morning, _before any of us knew what the message was_. A
day or two later I received from the mediums a duplicate of the message
not yet known to them or to myself. But this time the writing was large
enough to be read by the naked eye. As Prof. Henslow had requested,
the same thing had come on all the plates in differing degrees of
distinctness.

This was my first experience of a Crewe skotograph, and it was decisive.
As I wrote in the _Psychic Gazette_ from notes submitted to Archdeacon
Colley at the time, and afterwards read by Prof. Henslow when published,
no suspicions could fall either on the mediums, Archdeacon Colley or
myself, as not one of us had had the chance of tampering with Prof.
Henslow’s plate, nor could Prof. Henslow and his photographer have
prepared a series of plates for an occasion on which they had no reason
to have reckoned.

I wrote a minute account of these early experiments, according to the
strictest psychical research methods, and left it with Mr. Wallis, the
then editor of _Light_. He did not publish it, and when I returned to
England it could not be found. This incident is briefly recorded by Prof.
Henslow in _Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism_, pp. 224-7.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.—Photomicrograph by Major R. E. E. Spencer of
portion of Archdeacon Colley’s signature taken from letter written during
his lifetime. (_See_ p. 84.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 17.—Photomicrograph by Major R. E. E. Spencer of
portion of Archdeacon Colley’s signature on psychograph appearing after
his death. Compare with Figs. 2. and 16.]

[Illustration: FIG. 18.—Photograph of Mr. Wm. Walker with message in the
handwriting of Mr. W. T. Stead. (_See_ p. 87.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 19.—Mr. and Mrs. Harry Walker and two friends with
psychic likeness of Mr. Walker’s father. Compare with Fig. 18.]

CHAPTER VIII

EVIDENTIAL AND SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF PSYCHIC PHOTOGRAPHY

BY FRED BARLOW

Hon. Sec. S.S.S.P., Hon. Sec. Birmingham and Midland S.P.R.

No phase of psychical research has been more adversely criticised in the
past than psychic photography. This is undoubtedly due to the prevalence
of many erroneous ideas on the whole subject.

It is a popular fallacy that it is the easiest thing in the world to
fake a “spirit” photograph. Those few photographers who have tried to
imitate a genuine psychic effect have usually made the discovery that it
is by no means so easy a matter as it appears, even when no restriction
is placed on the conditions under which the fake should be produced.
When conditions are imposed, similar to those usually obtaining with,
say, the Crewe Circle, the difficulty of producing a fraudulent result
is enormously increased. Under certain conditions, where suitable
precautions are employed and where the sitter has a thorough knowledge
of photography, plus an acquaintance with trick methods, even the
_possibility_ of deception without detection can, for all practical
purposes, be ruled out of court. _Under these special conditions,
investigators of repute have on many occasions secured successful psychic
results._

Apart altogether from any question of test conditions, however, there are
certain results which, _in themselves_, afford definite proof of their
genuine nature. I refer to those recognised psychic likenesses obtained
by sitters who are quite unknown to the sensitives and who have secured
results which could not possibly have been prepared in advance. One such
case would be sufficient to establish the reality of psychic photography.
It is no exaggeration to say that this has actually occurred on scores of
occasions, and, in consequence, _the evidence for the truth of psychic
photography is overwhelming_.

It has been said that recognised psychic likenesses exists only in the
imagination of the individuals claiming them as such. It is, alas, too
true that some well-meaning individuals will see a likeness where none
exists. It is, however, equally true that many bigoted sceptics will
refuse to acknowledge a likeness that is obvious to the unprejudiced on
comparing normal and supernormal photographs. There are two sides to the
question of credulity, and I have known sceptics deny the reality of a
likeness where the supernormal effect has been an exact (but draped)
duplicate of a normal photograph!

We must remember that it may be difficult to recognise a likeness between
a normal and supernormal photograph where the subject to us is unknown.
Two photographs of the same individual, taken at different periods, will
often vary considerably, but those acquainted with that individual can
recognise the likeness of each photograph to the original without the
slightest difficulty. So in a supernormal photograph: those claiming
a likeness between the supernormal effect and some near relative, or
friend, who has crossed the border, are in a better position, from
their knowledge of that person, to speak with authority on the question
of recognition than those who never saw the original. This question of
recognised likenesses is a point the critic tries to evade. The reader
can judge of the value of this evidence from the few illustrations in
this booklet which are typical of _hundreds_ of similar results.

The mental attitude of some intelligent people to psychic photography
is distinctly curious. They have got the idea fixed into their heads
that these photographs _must_ be one of two things—“fakes” or “spirits.”
Naturally enough, in some of the cases that have been reported they
find it difficult to believe that such a result could have been
produced entirely by a discarnate entity. Therefore they jump to the
false conclusion that the result must of necessity have been faked. In
a scientific investigation we should first of all concern ourselves
with _facts_, without troubling over-much with theories. A very little
first-hand investigation will satisfy any unprejudiced individual as
to the reality of psychic photography. Having reached that stage such
a person will be in a better position to theorise on the cause of the
phenomena.

After many years of close concentration on this subject I have arrived at
the conclusion that psychic photography differs only in kind and not in
degree from other phases of psychic phenomena. _I do not see how we can
possibly get away from the fact that many of these photographic effects
are produced by discarnate intelligences._ Whilst firmly believing this,
I should never be so dogmatic as to claim that _all_ supernormal pictures
have been produced by discarnate spirits.

Spirit, whether discarnate or incarnate, to manifest to our material
senses must make use of matter—there must be a medium. A medium, or
sensitive, is just as essential for psychic photography as for, say,
automatic writing. As investigators are aware, in automatic script it
frequently happens that along with communications from the “other side”
come writings derived from the subconsciousness of the automatist, and
such, I am convinced, is often the case in psychic photography.

The subconscious is used to cover a multitude of theories. Certainly it
is not an unfeasible explanation in some instances. Let me cite one case,
which is typical of many. One of the members of the S.S.S.P.—Mr. Hobbs,
of Purley, a keen business man—travelled to Crewe with his wife. They
and the Crewe Circle were perfect strangers to each other. Mrs. Hobbs
at the time was wearing a locket containing a photograph of their son,
who had been killed in the war. This was tucked away out of sight in her
blouse. The usual séance was held and to their great delight the visitors
secured a picture of their boy. Trickery was impossible. Even supposing
Mr. Hope had seen the photograph in the locket there was no time to
produce a fraudulent result and foist this upon the alert sitters. A
careful examination of the print, however, reveals the fact that the
psychic picture is an exact but reversed duplicate of the photograph in
the locket. Even the rim of the locket can be clearly seen. This sort of
thing has occurred time and again.

The image of the locket would be indelibly impressed on the memory of
the mother, and it may well be that in some peculiar way the sensitive
proved a medium for the projection of that conscious or subconscious
image on to the photographic plate. Such an argument is not to be lightly
dismissed, and the fact that the image obtained on the plate may not have
been in the conscious mind of the sitter at the time does not necessarily
affect the issue. I candidly admit that some such explanation may account
for many of these curious effects.

Sometimes the psychic pictures are facsimile copies of magazine covers
and pictures no fraudulent medium would ever think of producing, and,
like the faces in our dreams, they may come from the subconscious. At
the same time, attempts to produce definite conscious thought-pictures,
with the co-operation of a photographic medium, have almost always proved
abortive in our experiments in this country. Some of the Continental
members of the S.S.S.P., however, have concentrated on this line of
research and have succeeded in obtaining thoughtgraphs which, more or
less, resemble the object on which the thoughts of the subject have been
intensely concentrated. These experiments, and, in particular, recent
photographic experiments in connection with subjects under hypnosis, are
yielding encouraging results.

We must be careful not to overdo the subconscious. It is no
self-contained unit, but rather an instrument used in the production
of these phenomena. In consequence, it frequently happens that along
with communications from the “other side” comes matter derived from the
subconsciousness of the sensitive and even from that of the sitter. An
investigator obsessed with the idea of fraud will often effectively
negative all phenomena by his unconscious action on the mentality of the
medium. In these investigations we must use that uncommon faculty of
common sense. Common sense tells us that we cannot accept the explanation
that _all_ psychic photographs are produced by the thoughts of incarnate
beings. Whether it agrees with his pet theories or not, the serious
student is bound to realise that, sooner or later, other minds are at
work distinct from, and often superior in intelligence to, that of either
medium or sitter. These intelligences claim to be the spirits of the
so-called dead. They substantiate their claims by giving practical proof
that they are whom they purport to be.

For example, what better proof of survival could be given by a deceased
person than that of a message in his own handwriting, referring to
events that happened after his death? Such messages are by no means an
unfrequent occurrence. There can be no doubt about the genuineness of
the handwriting. Major R. E. E. Spencer has gone to an immense amount of
time and trouble in making photomicrographs of normal and supernormal
writings for the purpose of comparison. Illustrations are given of two
of these photomicrographs. Figure 16 shows a portion of the signature of
Archdeacon Colley taken from a letter written by him before death, whilst
Figure 17 shows a corresponding portion reproduced from a photographic
message received after his death. This message referred to events
subsequent to his decease.

Occasionally, in these psychographs, as these written photographic
messages are termed, the mentality of the medium or sitters will get
in the way, with very curious results. Throughout all these phenomena,
however, there is every indication that other influences are at work.
Whoever or whatever these intelligences behind the scenes may be, in no
uncertain voice they claim to be discarnate souls. Surely _they_ are
in a better position to form a correct opinion hereon than we material
outsiders?

How do the psychic images get on to the plate? Far too much time, in the
past, has been lost in attempting to convince those who do not believe
(and those who do not _want_ to believe), of the genuine nature of
psychic photography, and our ignorance of this phenomenon is appalling.
The difficulties attending scientific research in this domain are
considerable. So far, we can only definitely say that in many instances
the psychic figures on the plate are not objective in the same sense
as the sitters. The supernormal images have every appearance of having
been projected on to the sensitive plate, independently of the lens and
camera. In employing several cameras simultaneously, together with a
stereo camera, I have only succeeded so far in securing a psychic image
on one of the plates exposed.

There are indications that in some cases the psychic effects are
printed on to the plate through a psychic equivalent to our normal
transparency—in fact, it has come to be known as a psychic transparency.
Identical transparency markings are to be found on the plates of
photographic sensitives from all parts of the world. These particular
markings can clearly be seen over the negative obtained by Mr. Harry
Price in his experiment with Mr. Hope. I am convinced that the effect
obtained on this occasion was a genuine psychic result. The possibility
of this is freely admitted by Mr. Price. The fact that in nine cases out
of ten the psychic images are the same way up as the sitter suggests that
the “something” that occurs actually takes place after the plate has been
inserted in the dark slide. Such small points as these may eventually
play an important part in the final solution of the _modus operandi_.

Now let us return to the object of this book—the question of evidence.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has dealt so thoroughly, earlier in these pages,
with the recent attacks by the S.P.R. and the Magic Circle that I do
not propose to refer to them again here at length. As illustrating the
impartial attitude of the Society of which I have the honour to be
Secretary, however, I would like to say that almost immediately on the
publication of these critical reports the matter was discussed by the
members of this Society, and it was arranged to subject the whole of the
evidence to a thorough investigation. In this connection the S.S.S.P., in
conjunction with the B.C.P.S., sought the co-operation of the Society for
Psychical Research and the Occult Committee of the Magic Circle.

A proposal was sent to the bodies mentioned expressing the desire of the
S.S.S.P. to subject the charges to thorough and impartial investigation,
and suggesting that three members from each of these four bodies should
form a committee of investigation. The members elected by the S.S.S.P.
were Dr. Abraham Wallace, President, Col. C. E. Baddeley, C.M.G., O.G.,
and Major R. E. E. Spencer, three careful and experienced investigators.
For reasons best known to themselves, both the S.P.R. and the Occult
Committee of the Magic Circle refused to entertain this suggestion. The
reader can draw whatever inference he likes from this uncompromising
attitude. To my mind such a refusal is directly opposed to the objects
for which the Society for Psychical Research was formed.

A striking example of the persistence of personality is to be found
in the case of the late Mr. Wm. Walker, of Buxton. Mr. Walker was the
President of the Buxton Camera Club. Being a keen photographer, he took
an intense interest in the work of the Crewe Circle and co-operated with
them in numerous experiments. He was the first photographer to obtain
psychic photographic results in colours (by the Paget process) through
the mediumship of his friends.

Shortly before the late Mr. W. T. Stead left this country for his last
voyage to America, Mr. Walker saw him in London. Mr. Stead was very
interested in the results obtained at Crewe and strongly urged his friend
to keep him posted as to future developments. A little while later Mr.
Stead was drowned on the ill-fated _Titanic_. On May 6th, 1912, Mr.
Walker, in experimenting at Crewe, was surprised and pleased to receive
on his plates a message from his friend, which read:

    “DEAR MR. WALKER,

    “I will try to keep you posted.

                                  “W. T. STEAD.”

Two plates had been exposed; both contained the same message, but in one
case the writing was reversed and appeared as “mirror writing,” as it is
called. This result is shown by Figure 18. The writing does not reproduce
very clearly, but experts have declared that, beyond all doubt, it is
identical with the handwriting of the late W. T. Stead.

Mr. Wm. Walker followed Mr. Stead into the Great Beyond a few years
later. Since his death his relatives and friends have received
innumerable tokens of his activities on the “other side,” in connection
with the subject in which he was so interested whilst in the body. The
illustration shown by Figure 19 represents a normal photograph of Mr. H.
Walker and his wife (son and daughter-in-law) and two friends, with a
clearly-defined supernormal likeness of the late Mr. Wm. Walker. This was
taken under satisfactory test conditions on February 19th, 1916.

As illustrating the interest Mr. Walker still takes in the Crewe Circle,
attention is directed to the psychograph shown by Figure 20. This was
secured late on Friday evening, July 28th, 1922, and reads (my own
punctuation):

    “Dear Friends of the Circle,

    “I would not spend a moment with the Psychical Research Scty,
    because they are nothing more nor less than fraud hunters and I
    want you to come to Buxton for a sitting with Mrs. Walker, 3,
    Palace Rd., about the 8th-9th of Aug. Then the spirit friends
    can further demonstrate the wondrous powers which to-day are
    needed more than ever. Peace be with you.

                         “Yours faithfully,

                                                         “W. WALKER.”

    “Please inform Henry.”

The postscript refers to Mr. Walker’s son, who resides in Crewe. I have
examined a number of letters in the handwriting of Mr. Walker, senior,
and find that the slip in spelling is such that he might make. A portion
of one of these letters is reproduced on Figure 21, and when compared
with the psychograph alongside it should leave no doubts in the mind of
the reader as to authorship.

It is perhaps unnecessary to state that the instructions given by Mr. Wm.
Walker were carried out to the letter. The results of the short visit of
the Crewe Circle to Buxton are best described by quoting an extract from
a letter I received from Mr. Henry Walker: