The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [74]
With its first report, released in the spring of 1887, the Seybert Commission predisposition became apparent to all. The commissioners had chosen exactly the kind of mediums that the SPR thought untrustworthy: psychics for hire, professionals with a known act, from slate writing to ghostly materializations. They’d even made a point of investigating performers long discredited, such as the slate writer Henry Slade, now also known as a notorious alcoholic and a testament to the seedy nature of the professional medium trade.
As for the once-admired Maggie Fox Kane, the commission members found her an obvious joke. When she met with the commission members, faint thumps did shake the floor. They let the medium interpret them. She announced that the knocks came from the late Seybert himself, indicating his wish that the commission be thorough and patient. The members were unimpressed. In a more stringent test, they stood her on glass tumblers, two under each foot, effectively immobilizing her. This time the only person in the room who claimed to hear raps was Maggie Kane. In the commission report, her claim was followed by a stenographer’s note: “No intimation is given that the rap here spoken of was heard by anyone other than the Medium herself.”
In his concluding remarks, Furness sent his own message to other investigators, including James and his friends: Don’t waste your time. “In my experience, Dante’s motto must be inscribed over any investigation of Spiritualism and all hope must be abandoned by those who enter on it.”
The report, published in the spring of 1887, produced a rare united reaction from the dedicated spiritualist community and the dedicated psychical researchers. Since serious investigations had started, the two groups had become increasingly alienated. True believers had resigned in mass from the British society after Hodgson completed his slate-writing expose; Nora Sidgwick’s response was that the group was better off without them. American spiritualists had begun referring to “Professor James and his ilk” after his exposes of Boston mediums. James had responded by publicly accusing them of defending fakes “through thick and thin.” But regarding the Seybert Commission, both sides agreed that the commission had only pretended to investigate, that the result was one more message of contempt from the mainstream science community.
James and his SPR colleagues worked, fruitlessly, to counter the bad publicity generated by the Seybert report. They wrote letters to their intellectual peers and to the press, pointing out that the Seybert Commission seemed to be deliberately investigating only those medium tricks already exposed time and time again. Why didn’t the commission spend a little time and money on the phenomena that still proved puzzling? Myers, while politely praising the skeptical approach, suggested an investigation of automatic writing and other “perplexing phenomena which do admittedly occur but which need not be interpreted in the Spiritualist sense.” And James wrote directly to Furness, urging an investigation of rare mental mediums such as Leonora Piper. Furness replied that he’d met with Mrs. Piper once and had not been impressed.
Anyway, Furness said, the terms of Seybert’s bequest barred him from spending money on such experiments. He wouldn’t bother to explain, he added in a sardonic postscript. Someday, when James had extra time, he could get Mrs. Piper’s Phinuit to hunt up the dead industrialist and “get all the details directly.”
THERE WAS NO LACK of grounds for such cynicism. As positive as the Sidgwick group was about their case for telepathy, they’d found plenty of fraud even in that area, thanks