This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 5, Issue 5, from 1991.
One of the most difficult notions for psychic investigators to get through their heads is that the deceptions of magicians rest on peculiar principles that must be thoroughly understood if one intends to investigate psychic miracles. As all conjurors know, intelligent persons are extremely easy to deceive; if they are trained in science they are even less likely to penetrate the deceptions of skilled mountebanks. Electrons and microbes don ‘t cheat. Psychic miracle workers do. Over and over again in the history of psychic research, scientists have assumed that they were capable of detecting fraud without troubling to learn even the simplest of magic techniques. As a result, they have repeatedly played the roles of gullible fools.
This is as true today as in the past. Ted Serios, for example, the Chicago bellhop who claimed he could project photographs from his mind onto Polaroid film, completely convinced two psychiatrists, Jule Eisenbud and Ian Stevenson, that his feats were genuine. Joseph Gaither Pratt, John Beloff and many other eminent parapsychologists were similarly taken in. To this day Eisenbud, Stevenson and Beloff have been unable to accept the exposure of Ted’s methods that was published in Popular Photography (October 1967). On the contrary, Eisenbud recently issued a new edition of his book about Serios. He has accused the magicians responsible for exposing Ted of setting psychic research back fifty years by causing Ted to lose his powers!
Nina Kulagina, in Russia, using magnets and invisible thread in ways familiar to magicians, made dupes of scores of psychic investigators. Charles Honorton still refuses to believe that his friend Felicia Parise used invisible thread to move a plastic bottle across her kitchen counter. Dozens of parapsychologists around the world were for a time convinced that Uri Geller was able to bend spoons and keys by psychokinesis. Science writer Charles Panati, totally ignorant of magic, edited The Geller Papers – a collection of embarrassing articles defending Uri ‘s psychic powers.
During the heyday of Spiritualism, thousands of mediums around the world were levitating tables, floating luminous trumpets, exuding ectoplasm through their mouth and nose, and producing unearthly music, strange odours and photographs of the dead. Some of the best minds in science and literature – physicist Oliver Lodge and writer Conan Doyle, to mention two – accepted all these wonders without taking the time to learn even the most rudimentary elements of deception. Hundreds of other examples could be cited of intelligent investigators who were hornswoggled by the simplest of conjuring tricks. Let me focus on one outstanding example from the nineteenth century that is not as well known as it should be.
The story begins in 1882 when journalist Douglas Blackburn, editor of a weekly journal in the seaside resort of Brighton, became a friend of G A Smith. Smith, age 19, was then performing a stage act as a hypnotist. The two young men decided to team up and develop a mind-reading act in which Blackbum would send messages telepathically to Smith.
To publicize their act, Blackbum wrote a letter to Light, a Spiritualist magazine which published it in their August 26, 1882 issue. Here is how Blackbum described what they did:
‘The way Mr Smith conducts his experiment is this: He places himself en rapport with myself by taking my hands: and a strong concentration of will and mental vision of my part has enabled him to read my thoughts with an accuracy that approaches the miraculous. Not only can he, with slight hesitation, read numbers, words and even whole sentences which I alone have seen, but the sympathy between us has developed to such a degree that he rarely fails to experience the taste of any liquid or solid I choose to imagine. He has named, described, or discovered small articles he has never seen when they have been concealed by me in the most unusual places, and on two occasions, he has successfully described portions of a scene which I either imagined or actually saw.’
The letter caught the eye of Edmund Gurney (1847- 1888), one of the distinguished founders in 1882 of England’s Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Gurney later wrote numerous books on psychic phenomena, of which his two-volume Phantasms of the Living (1886) was the most notable. Written with the help of friends Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore, it became the classic account of persons who claim to see spirit forms of friends and relatives shortly after they die. Myers (1843-1901) – he coined the word ‘telepathy’ – was another founder and active member of the SPR. His two volume Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (posthumously issued in 1903) was his magnum opus.
Smith and Blackburn joined the SPR, and Smith even became Gurney’s private secretary and research assistant, a post he held until Gurney died. Smith brought to London from Brighton a number of young men who demonstrated telepathy after Smith hypnotized them. These experiments were supervised and reported in the SPR ‘s journal by Mrs Henry Sidgwick, wife of the Cambridge philosopher who had been the SPR ‘s first president.
Not until after Myers, Gurney and Podmore died did Blackburn publish three remarkable articles in which he explained how he and Smith secretly signaled to each other. His ‘Confessions of a Famous Medium’ in John Bull, a popular magazine (December 8, 1908), was followed by a more detailed ‘Confessions of a Telepathist’ in London’s Daily News (September 1, 1911). This article should be carefully read and pondered by every person who wishes to investigate psychic wonders, or to evaluate reports of such investigation by others. Here is the article in full:
‘For nearly 30 years the telepathic experiments conducted by Mr G A Smith and myself have been accepted and cited as the basic evidences of the truth of Thought Transference.
Your correspondent ‘Inquirer’ is one of the many who have pointed to them as a conclusive reply to modem skeptics. The weight attached to those experiments was given by their publication in the first volume of the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vouched for by Messrs F W H Myers, Edmund Gurney, Frank Podmore, and later and inferentially by Professor Henry Sidgwick, Professor Romanes, and others of equal intellectual eminence. They were the first scientifically conducted and attested experiments in Thought Transference, and later were imitated and reproduced by ‘sensitives’ all the world over.
I am the sole survivor of that group of experimentalists, and as no harm can be done to anyone, but possible good to the cause of truth, I, with mingled feelings of regret and satisfaction, now declare that the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus, and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish.
And here let me say that I make this avowal in no boastful spirit. Within three months of our acquaintance with the leading members of the Society for Psychical Research, Mr Smith and myself heartily regretted that these personally charming and scientifically distinguished men should have been victimized, but it was too late to recant. We did the next best thing. We stood aside and watched with amazement the astounding spread of the fire we had in a spirit of mischief lighted.
The genesis of the matter was in this wise. In the late (eighteen-) seventies and early eighties a wave of so-called occultism passed over England. Public interest became absorbed in the varied alleged phenomena of Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and thought-reading. The profession of the various branches abounded, and Brighton, where I was editing a weekly journal, became a happy hunting ground for mediums of every kind. I had started an exposure campaign, and had been rather successful. My great score was being the first to detect the secret of lrving Bishop’s thought-reading. In 1882 I encountered Mr G A Smith, a youth of 19, whom I found giving a mesmeric entertainment. Sensing a fraud, I proceeded to investigate, made his acquaintance, and very soon realized that I had discovered a genius in his time. He has since been well known as a powerful hypnotist. He was also the most ingenious conjurer I have met outside the profession. He had the versatility of an Edison in devising new tricks and improving on old ones. We entered into a compact to ‘show up’ some of the then flourishing professors of occultism, and began by practicing thought-reading. Within a month we were astonishing Brighton at bazaars and kindred charity entertainments, and enjoyed a great vogue. One of our exhibitions was described very fully and enthusiastically in Light, the spiritualistic paper and, on the strength of that, the Messrs Myers, Gurney and Podmore called on us and asked for a private demonstration. As we had made a strict rule never to take payment for our exhibitions, we were accepted by the society as private unpaid demonstrators, and as such remained during the long series of seances.
It is but right to explain that at this period neither of us knew or realized the scientific standing and earnest motive of the gentlemen who had approached us. We saw in them only a superior type of the spiritualistic cranks by whom we were daily pestered. Our first private seance was accepted so unhesitatingly and the lack of reasonable precautions on the part of the ‘investigators’ was so marked, that Smith and I were genuinely amused and felt it our duty to show how utterly incompetent were these ‘scientific investigators’. Our plan was to bamboozle them thoroughly, then let the world know the value of scientific research. It was the vanity of the schoolboy who catches a master tripping.
A description of the codes and methods of communications invented and employed by us to establish telepathic rapport would need more space than could be spared. Suffice it that, thanks to the ingenuity of Smith, they became marvellously complete. They grew with the demands upon them.
Starting with a crude set of signals produced by the jingle of pince nez, sleeve-links, long and short breathings, and even blowing, they developed to a degree short of marvellous. To this day no conjurer has succeeded in approaching our great feat, by which Smith, scientifically blindfolded, deafened, and muffled in two blankets reproduced in detail an irregular figure drawn by Mr Myers, and seen only by him and me.
The value of a contribution such as this should lie not so much in describing the machinery as in pointing out how and where these investigators failed, so that future investigators may avoid their mistakes.
I say boldly that Messrs Myers and Gurney were too anxious to get corroboration of their theories to hold and balance impartially. Again and again they gave the benefit of the doubt to experiments that were failures. They allowed us to impose our own conditions, accepted without demur our explanations of failure, and, in short, exhibited a complaisance and confidence which, however complimentary to us, was scarcely consonant with a strict investigation on behalf of the public.
That this same slackness characterized their investigations with other sensitives I am satisfied, for I witnessed many, and the published reports confirmed the suspicion. It is also worthy of note that other sensitives broke down or showed weakness on exactly the same points that Smith and I failed – namely, in visualizing an article difficult to describe in words signalled by a code. A regular figure or familiar was nearly always seen by the percipient, but when a splotch of ink, or a grotesque irregular figure, had to be transferred from one brain to another, the result was always failure. We, owing to a very ingenious diagram code, got nearer than anybody, but our limitations were great.
Smith and I, by constant practice, became so sympathetic that we frequently brought off startling hits, which were nothing but flukes. The part that fortuitous accident plays in this business can only be believed by those who have become expert in the art of watching and seizing an opportunity. When these hits were made, the delight of the investigators caused them to throw off their caution and accept practically anything we offered.
I am aware that it may reasonably objected that the existence of a false coin does not prove the non-existence of a good one. My suggestion as the result of years of observation is that the majority of investigators and reporters in psychical research lack that accurate observation and absence of bias which are essential to rigorous and reliable investigation. In fine, I gravely doubt not the bona fides, but the capacity, of the witnesses. I could fill columns telling how, in the course of my later investigations on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research, I have detected persons of otherwise unimpeachable rectitude touching up and redressing the weak points in their narratives of telepathic experiences.
Mr Frank Podmore, perhaps the most level-headed of the researchers – and to the end a skeptic – aptly put it: ‘It is not the friend whom we know whose eyes must be closed and his ears muffled, but the ‘Mr Hyde’, whose lurking presence in each of us we are only now beginning to suspect’
I am convinced that the propensity to deceive is more general among ‘persons of character’ than is supposed. I have known the wife of a Bishop, when faced with a discrepancy in time in a story of a death in India and the appearance of the wraith in England, [to] deliberately amend her circumstantial story by many hours to fit the altered circumstances. This touching up process in the telepathic stories I have met again and again, and I say, with full regard to the weight of words, that among the hundreds of stories I have investigated I have not met one that had not a weak link which should prevent it being accepted as scientifically established. Coincidences that at first sight appear good cases of telepathic rapport occur to many of us. I have experienced several, but I should hesitate to present them as perfect evidence.
At the risk of giving offence to some, I feel bound to say that in the vast majority of cases that I have investigated the principals are either biased in favor of belief in the supernatural or not persons whom I should regard as accurate observers and capable of estimating the rigid mathematical form of evidence. What one desires to believe requires little corroboration. I shall doubtless raise a storm of protest when I assert that the principal cause of belief in psychic phenomena is the inability of the average man to observe accurately and estimate the value of evidence, plus a bias in favour of the phenomena being real. It is an amazing fact that I have never yet, after hundreds of tests, found a man who could accurately describe ten minutes afterwards a series of simple acts which I performed in his presence. The reports of those trained and conscientious observers, Messrs Myers and Gurney, contain many absolute inaccuracies. For example, in describing one of my ‘experiments’ they say emphatically, ‘In no case did B touch S, even in the slightest manner’. I touched him eight times, that being the only way in which our code was then worked.
In conclusion, I ask thoughtful persons to consider this proposition: If two youths with a week’s preparation, could deceive trained and careful observers like Messrs Myers, Gurney, Podmore, Sidgwick, and Romanes, under the most stringent conditions their ingenuity could devise, what are the chances of succeeding inquirer being more successful against ‘sensitives’ who have the advantage of more years’ experience than Smith and I had weeks? Further I would emphasize the fact that record of telepathic rapport in almost every instance depends upon the statement of one person, usually strongly disposed to belief in the occult.’
Smith and Blackburn’s most convincing demonstration took place when Smith was securely blindfolded, his ears stuffed with cotton and putty, and his entire body and the chair he sat in covered by blankets. Myers drew a complicated figure of randomly tangled lines. Blackburn was successful in sending in telepathically to Smith.
When Blackburn wrote his two confessions he was living in South Africa and under the impression that his former friend was no longer living. Actually, Smith not only was alive but he was still employed by the SPR.
In an interview in the Daily News on September 4 he denied that he and Blackburn had ever used trickery, and that the feat described above was genuine telepathy. However Blackburn followed with a third article, in the Daily News of September 5, in which he gave a detailed account of how the miracle was accomplished. It is hard to believe, but so strong was the mind-set of most SPR members that they believed Smith and accused Blackburn of lying! I know of no parapsychologist today who doubts Blackburn’s detailed explanation. Here is an excerpt.
Blackburn began his reply to Smith by writing:
‘Why does Smith deny my statement? That we had a code is proved because we gave exhibitions of thought reading at Brighton prior to our experiments with the Society for Psychical Research and no public exhibition without a code is possible.
If I had been aware of Smith’s existence, I should not have opened up the subject, for I am aware that Smith spent many of the years that elapsed since our acquaintance in the close association of the leading members of the Society for Psychical Research in a fiduciary capacity. I am also aware that that position was the legitimate reward for his services in connection with our telepathic experiments. I am sorry that I should have unintentionally forced him into having to defend the position he has so long occupied.
If Smith could see, why did he always fail on irregular things? Because our code didn’t cover irregular or grotesque things.
We failed so often on the irregular things that the committee abandoned them in the tests.’
I have not had access to the original newspaper article. The quotation above is taken from Joseph Rinn’s Sixty Years of Psychical Research (1950). The following excerpts from the rest of the article are from CEM Hansel’s ESP: A Scientific Evaluation (1966, revised edition 1980):
‘The committee had realised the possibility of conveying by signals a description of a regular figure or any object capable of being described in words… but the more irregular and indescribable… the greater and wider were the discrepancies between the original and the copy. I had a signal which I gave Smith when the drawing was impossible. We made a pretence of trying hard, but after a time would give up… As a matter of fact the committee were beginning to have grave doubts when the ‘great triumph’ I shall now describe saved our reputation.
The conditions of the trick were these: Smith sat at a table. HIs eyes were padded with wool and, I think a pair of folded kid gloves, and bandaged with a thick dark cloth. HIs ears were filled with a layer of cotton wool, then pellets of putty. His entire body and the chair on which he sat were enveloped in two very heavy blankets . I remember, when he emerged triumphant, he was wet with perspiration, and the paper on which he had successfully drawn the figure was so moist that it broke during the examination by the delighted observers. Beneath his feet and surround his chair were thick, soft rugs, rightly intended to deaden and prevent signals by feet shuffles – a nice precaution… At the farther side of… a very large dining-room, Mr Myers showed me, with every precaution, the drawing that I was to transmit to the brain beneath the blankets. It was a tangle of heavy black lines, interlaced, some curved, some straight, the sort of thing an infant playing with a pen or pencil might produce… I took it, fixed my gaze on it, pacing the room meanwhile… but always keeping out of touching distance with Smith. These preliminaries occupied perhaps ten minutes, for we made a point of never hurrying. I drew and redrew the figure many times, openly in the presence of the observers, in order, as I explained and they allowed, to fix it in my brain. I also drew it secretly on a cigarette paper. By this time I was fairly expert at palming and had no difficulty while pacing the room collecting ‘rapports’ in transferring the cigarette paper to the tube of the brass protector on the pencil I was using. I conveyed to Smith the agreed signal that I was ready by stumbling against the edge of the thick rug near his chair.
Next instant he exclaimed ‘I have it’. His right hand came from beneath the blanket, saying, according to the arrangement ‘Where’s my pencil?’ . Immediately I placed mine on the table. He took it and a long and anxious pause ensued.
Smith had concealed up his waistcoat one of those luminous painted slates which in the dense darkness gave sufficient light to show the figure when the almost transparent cigarette paper was laid flat on the slate. He pushed up the bandage from one eye and copied the figure with extraordinary accuracy. It occupied over five minutes. During that time I was sitting exhausted with the mental effort quite ten feet away. Presently Smith threw back the blanket, and excitedly pushing back the eye bandage produced the drawing, which was done on a piece of notepaper and very nearly the same scale as the original. It was a splendid copy.’
Had Myers and Gurney known something about conjuring they would never have allowed Blackburn to give his pencil to Smith.
Both Gurney and Myers were intimate friends of the American philosopher, psychologist and psychic investigator William James. According to Ralph Barton Perry, one of the James’s biographers, Gurney was the dearest of his friends among the SPR. In a letter to his wife, James described Gurney as ‘one of the first rate minds of our time… a magnificent Adonis, six feet four in height, with an extremely handsome face, voice, and general air of distinction about him.’ James called Gurney’s book on music The Power of Sound (1880) ‘the best work on aesthetics ever published’. He praised Gurney’s ‘metaphysical power’, and said there was a ‘very unusual sort of affinity between my mind and his… I eagerly devoured every word he wrote.’ Phantasms of the Living was for James ‘an amazingly patient and thorough piece of work… I should not at all wonder if it were the beginning of a new chapter in natural history.’ For James ‘s equally great admiration of Myers, see his tribute to Myers in his Memories and Studies.
Unlike his wife, James’s younger sister Alice was skeptical of her brother’s psychic enthusiasms, and had a low opinion of both Myers and Gurney. In letters to William she called Myers an ‘idiot’ and described Gurney as ‘weak’ and ‘effeminate’ – a man who had been persuaded by Myers to marry an ignorant woman far beneath him. Curiously, Myers insisted on accompanying his friend on his honeymoon in Switzerland even though Gurney’s wife Kate strongly objected. Kate, Alice wrote, chattered constantly on all subjects with ‘extreme infelicity’. She was ignored and constantly snubbed by her husband who quickly regretted marrying her.
Gurney killed himself in 1888, in a hotel in Brighton by inhaling chloroform. Trevor Hall, in The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney (1964) conjectures that Gurney’s mounting depression was caused not so much by his unhappy marriage as by a realization, many years before Blackburn confessed, of how thoroughly he had been flimflammed by Smith, his trusted friend.
