How can anything so repulsive and so repugnant in appearance be real?  And how can there possibly be any spiritual connection with it?

       No doubt this is the first reaction of intelligent, rational people who come across old photos in books about paranormal phenomena of a substance referred to as ectoplasm.  The photos usually show a seemingly thick foamy or slimy substance - sometimes looking like vomitus, other times like shaving soap, and still at other times more like cheesecloth - flowing from one of the orifices of a so-called "medium" in an entranced state - from the nostrils, mouth, ears, vagina, and even the pores.   Some of the photos show what are claimed to be materialized human forms - occasionally just a face or an arm - forming within the ectoplasm.

       If we are to believe the debunkers and skeptics, ectoplasm is nothing more than cheesecloth stuffed into one or more of the cavities of the body and then extruded at an opportune time, the sole purpose being to dupe those present.  However, it is difficult to believe that some of the most eminent men of science, who observed it, examined it, tested it, and proclaimed it real, could have been fooled over and over again, especially under laboratory conditions.  It stretches the imagination to believe that as much "cheesecloth," as seen in many of the photographs, could be stored in an orifice of the body, especially the ears and pores, and so dramatically extruded, then to have human forms shaped from it or within it, and then, in some cases, to have those human forms emerging from the ectoplasm and carry on conversations with those present, sometimes about personal matters known only to the sitter.

        Equally puzzling is why numerous alleged charlatans would dream up something so seemingly ridiculous and revolting.  Couldn't they come up with a trick a bit more realistic and believable?  If it all began with one trickster, why were so many other charlatans impressed by something so bizarre?  

       "It is a whitish substance that creeps as if alive, with damp, cold, protoplasmic extensions that are transformed under the eyes of the experimenters into a hand, fingers, a  head, or even into an entire figure," explained Dr. Charles Richet.

      Winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Richet (1850-1935) was a physiologist, chemist, bacteriologist, pathologist, psychologist, aviation pioneer, poet, novelist, editor, author, and psychical researcher.  After receiving his M.D. in 1869 and his Ph.D. in 1878, he served as professor of physiology at the medical school of the University of Paris for 38 years.

      It was Richet who gave the name ectoplasm to what had previously been referred to as od, psychic force, and teleplasm. When Sir William Crookes, the esteemed British chemist, first reported on it in connection with the mediumship of Florence Cook, Richet was among the many scientists who scoffed and thought that perhaps Crookes, a pioneer in X-ray technology, had "lost it."  .  "I avow with shame that I was among the willfully blind," Richet wrote in dedicating his 1923 book, Thirty Years of Psychical Research, to Crookes, commending him for his courage and insight.     

     "This ectoplasmic formation at the expense of the physiological organism of the medium is now beyond all dispute," Richet stated.  "It is prodigiously strange, prodigiously unusual, and it would seem so unlikely as to be incredible; but we must give in to the facts...Yes, it is absurd; but no matter - it is true."

        Richet saw it as some sort of exterior ("ecto" meaning exterior) protoplasm.  In his  book, Richet referred to the ectoplasm produced by the medium Marthe Béraud as "gelatinous projections," explaining that "a kind of liquid or pasty jelly emerges from the mouth or the breast of Marthe which organizes itself by degrees, acquiring the shape of a face or limb.

      "Under very good conditions of visibility, I have seen this paste spread on my knee, and slowly take form so as to show the rudiment of the radius, the cubitus, or metacarpal bone whose increasing pressure I could feel on my knee," Richet wrote. 

       Richet further observed that the materializations are usually gradual, beginning with a rudimentary shape and then complete forms and human faces only appearing later on.  "At first these formations are often very imperfect.  Sometimes they show no relief, looking more like flat images than bodies, so that in spite of oneself one is inclined to imagine some fraud, since what appears seems to be the materialization of a semblance, and not of a being.  But in some cases the materialization is perfect.  At the Villa Carmen I saw a fully organized form rise from the floor.  At first it was only a white, opaque spot like a handkerchief lying on the ground before the curtain, then this handkerchief quickly assumed the form of a human head level with the floor, and a few moments later it rose up in a straight line and became a small man enveloped in a kind of white burnous, who took two or three halting steps in front of the curtain and then sank to the floor and disappeared as if through a trap door.  But there was no trap door."

      While skeptics find much humor in some of the flat, paper-like materializations, Richet had no difficulty with them.  "The fact of the appearance of flat images rather than of forms in relief is no evidence of trickery," he wrote.  "It is imagined, quite mistakenly, that a materialization must be analogous to a human body and must be three-dimensional.  This is not so.  There is nothing to prove that the process of materialization is other than a development of a completed form after a first stage of coarse and rudimentary lineaments formed under the cloudy substance."      

      Richet referenced one sitting in which a communicating spirit said that he could not materialize because he could not remember what he looked like when alive.  At a later sitting, this same spirit materialized in body but without a face.  In effect, the success of the materialization appears to depend upon the ability of the particular spirit to visualize his old self and somehow project that thought-image into the ectoplasm.  Apparently, the ability to do this varies as much with spirits as does artistic ability among humans.

     Richet also observed somewhat similar phenomenon with Eusapia Palladino, the controversial Italian medium, although never a full body materialization.  She most often produced ectoplasmic arms.  He referred to it as a kind of supplementary arm that came from Palladino's body. "Once I saw a long, stiff rod proceed from her side," he explained, "which after great extension had a hand at its extremity - a living hand warm and jointed, absolutely like a human hand." 

      Replying to skeptics, Richet said that we have no warrant to deny a phenomenon because we do not know its laws.  "If that were the case we should have to close all scientific books."                        

          While the "veil-like" or "cheesecloth" form is often seen in photographs taken in infrared or phosphorescent light, ectoplasm apparently comes in many forms, including gaseous, liquid, or fibrous.  It can assume different colors from soft white to gray and black.  It can move slowly but disappear in a flash.  It can be stiff or pliable. It can be invisible, seen only by clairvoyants, or seen by all present.  

        The inconsistent nature of ectoplasm is just one of many aspects of it that defies scientific scrutiny and gives fuel to the attacks by debunkers.  Adding to this is the fact that darkness is usually required.  This is because the ectoplasm is said to be sensitive to light rays, and exposure to light can result in serious injury to the medium, who must reabsorb the ectoplasm at the conclusion of the séance before the lights are turned on.  Further complicating the observation is the fact that a materialization "cabinet" is usually required.  This cabinet is often nothing more than a corner of the room curtained off for the medium to sit within.  It further protects the medium from light rays but is said to also be necessary to concentrate the ectoplasm and permit the spirits a certain privacy in their attempts to take shape.

       Of course, the debunkers see the cabinet as nothing more than a "dressing room" which permits the "fraudulent" medium to quickly change costumes and emerge from the cabinet as a spirit entity.  To advance such a debunking theory is to assume that men like Richet, Crookes, Professor Gustave Geley, Baron (Dr.) von Schrenck Notzing, and a dozen or more other distinguished scientists were duped over and over again under controlled conditions.  Only the most arrogant and closed-minded person would dare challenge the observations of these respected scientists without doing any kind of investigation of his or her own.  Nevertheless many did.  And mainstream science continues to ignore what could be the most important scientific subject in the physical realm.  

      Part II of The Mystery of Ectoplasm will appear here in two weeks. 

       Skeptical scientists insisted that ectoplasm was nothing more than cheesecloth or some other substance cleverly packed in the body and regurgitated at an opportune moment.  They gave examples of this "rumination hypothesis," showing how some people are able to use the stomach as a hiding place and later bring it back up.

       However, as Dr. Albert Von Shrenck Notzing, a German forensic psychiatrist, pointed out to the doubters, more than half of the 180 observations of ectoplasm by him did not involve ectoplasm flowing from the mouth.  It sometimes came from the nose, from the ears, from the vagina, and quite often just from the pores of the skin.  In the case of medium called Eva C. (Marthe Beraud), Shrenck Notzing often observed it oozing from the pores near her shoulder.   

       Schrenck Notzing was so careful in his study of Eva C. that he had her completely strip before many of the sittings and then subject herself to a gynecological exam.  She was then given special attire, consisting of knitted tights and an apron tunic closed down the back.  Before each sitting, the tunic was sewed up at the back, the wrists, and the junction of the tights with the dress. There was, von Schrenck Notzing said, absolutely no opportunity for her to smuggle any kind of foreign substance or object into the room.  On several occasions, Eva C. volunteered to sit in the nude and did so to satisfy various skeptical scientists who observed the phenomenon with Schrenck Notzing.    

        "Not one of the observers during these four years has ever found on the medium's body, or in the séance costume, anything which could have been used for the fraudulent production of the phenomena," Schrenck Notzing wrote, adding that the various rooms in different houses had no secret passages or trap doors, as skeptics claimed, and were regularly examined, both before and after every sitting by him and visiting savants.  Moreover, the room was locked by him so that there was no possibility of another person entering.   

      As Schrenck Notzing pointed out, even if the rumination hypothesis were true, the phenomena did not end with ectoplasm flowing from an orifice of the medium.  That was only the first stage.  Various objects, including fingers, hands, heads, and occasionally complete body materializations took shape from the ectoplasm.  It was one thing to advance the rumination hypothesis, quite another to explain how these various objects formed from the alleged regurgitated material.  

      To this, the skeptics claimed that Eva C. and other mediums had cleverly arranged wires in the room to transport in various objects, but Schrenck Notzing said that this was impossibility as he had the opportunity to examine the room before the medium entered and again at the end of the sitting.  Moreover, Eva C. did not have access to the room beforehand. 

       Dr. Gustave Geley, a professor of medicine at the University of Lyons and a Laureate of the French Medical Faculty, observed Eva C. in his own laboratory twice a week over a three-month period during 1917-18.  "It is needless to say that the usual precautions were rigorously observed during the séances in my laboratory," Geley wrote. "On coming into the room where the séances were held, and to which I alone had previous access, the medium was completely undressed in my presence and dressed in a tight garment, sewn up the back and at the wrists; the hair and the cavity of the mouth were examined by me and my collaborators before and after the séances.  Eva was walked backwards to the wicker chair in the dark cabinet; her hands were always held in full sight outside the curtains, and the room was always quite well lit the whole time. I do not merely say, ‘There was no trickery,' I say ‘There was no possibility of trickery."

      Geley described the process: "With Eva, the mode of operation necessary to obtain materializations is very simple. The medium, after having been seated in the dark cabinet, is put into the hypnotic state, slightly, but enough to involve forgetfulness of the normal personality.  This dark cabinet has no other purpose than to protect the sleeping medium from disturbing influences, and especially from the action of light.  It is thus possible to keep the séance room sufficiently well lit for perfect observations.

      "The phenomena appear (when they do appear) after a variable interval, sometimes very brief, sometimes an hour or more.  They always begin by painful sensations in the medium; she sighs and moans from time to time much like a woman in childbirth.  These moans reach their height just when the manifestation begins, they lessen or cease when the forms are complete."

      Of the ectoplasm, Geley wrote:  "The substance exudes specially from the natural orifices and the extremities, from the top of the head, from the nipples, and the ends of the fingers...the most easily observed from the mouth...The substance has variable aspects; sometimes, and most characteristically, it appears as a plastic paste, a true protoplasmic mass; sometimes as a number of fine threads; sometimes as strings of different thickness in narrow and rigid lines; sometimes as a wide band; sometimes as a fine tissue of ill-defined and irregular shape...In fine, the substance is essentially amorphous, or rather, polymorphous."

      Of the quantity, Geley said this is also very variable, sometimes very little and at other times covering the medium completely, like a cloak.  It most frequently appeared white, but occasionally black or gray.

     "Sometimes it is slowly evolved, rises and falls, and moves over the medium's shoulders, her breast, or her lap with a crawling, reptilian movement; sometimes its motion is abrupt and rapid, it appears and disappears like a flash.  It is extremely sensitive, and its sensitiveness is closely connected with that of the hyperaesthetised medium, and touch reacts painfully on the latter...The substance is sensitive to light rays; a light, especially if sudden and unexpected, produces a painful start in the medium. However, in some case the substance can stand even full light.  The magnesium flashlight (flash camera) causes a violent start in the medium...It shrinks from all contact and is always ready to avoid them and to be reabsorbed. 

       Several other scientists collaborated with Geley in his study of Eva C.  "We saw, touched, and photographed representations of heads and faces formed from the original substance," Geley wrote.  "These were formed under our eyes, the curtains being half-drawn.  Sometimes they proceeded from a cord of solid substance issuing from the medium, sometimes they were progressively developed in a fog of vaporous substance condensed in front of her, or at her side." 

    Schrenck Notzing also reported that when he tried to capture some ectoplasm it evaporated and seemed to be reabsorbed by the medium. However, there was some residue left behind, which Schrenck Notzing had chemically analyzed. "As regards the structure of the teleplasm (ectoplasm), we only know this," Schrenck Notzing wrote.  "That within it, or about it, we find conglomerates of bodies resembling epithelium, real plat epithelium with nuclei, veil-like filmy structures, coherent lamellar bodies without structure, as a well as fat globules and mucus."  Whether or not this residue represented the true nature of the ectoplasm or was just that part associated with Eva's own body Schrenck Notzing had no way of knowing. One thing for sure, he commented, the substance did not consist of India rubber, which many skeptics had suggested it was.

      As reported in Part I of this series on ectoplasm, Dr. Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, also attested to the genuineness of the phenomena produced by Eva C.

Interestingly, Richet, Schrenck Notzing, and Geley all resisted the spiritistic hypothesis, the idea that the phenomena were being produced by spirits.  All saw it as a possibility and indications are that Geley came around to see it as the most likely explanation.  Indications also are that Richet and Schrenck Notzing may have privately accepted the idea that spirits were producing the phenomena, but publicly they would not admit to it.  They were hard-core scientists and there was no room for spirits in their belief system.  They simply wrote it off as something that was beyond science at the time.

      Yet, in spite of the fact that these three distinguished scientists witnessed it over and over again and attested to the non-fraudulent nature of Eva's mediumship, modern references on Eva all suggest that fraud was involved, that the three scientists were duped by a master magician.

       One debunking theory holds that Eva had a hollow tooth and therefore was able to smuggle things into the séance rooms in her tooth.  Whether or not she actually had a hollow tooth is unclear from the modern sources.

       Another debunking theory had to do with Juliette Bisson, an influential artist who had become interested in hypnotism, telepathy, and clairvoyance because her physician father was interested in the subjects as she was growing up.   She collaborated with Schrenck Notzing in studying Eva and at some point allowed Eva, who was later married, to live with her and her husband in their Paris home. It was Mme. Bisson who did the gynecological exams and then put Eva into the trance state.  One debunking theory that has been handed down and accepted in modern references is that the two women had a lesbian relationship and therefore Bisson was a confederate in the sham. 

      Since Eva was strictly an amateur and apparently was not paid for her sittings, it is never made clear by those advancing this theory what the two women had to gain from the regular sittings - more than 180 by Schrenck Notzing over a four-year period, some lasting over two hours and quite a few in which they sat for an hour before anything developed, and still others in which nothing at all happened.  What was the point of it all?  There was no reality TV in those days.

    The facts that Mme. Bisson was well-to-do and that Eva C. preferred not to use her real name also seem to be in conflict with such a theory.

      After Geley's death in a 1924 plane crash, it was reported that a study of his notes supposedly indicated that Geley found objects hidden in Eva's hair in a most suspicious way, even though he made no mention of these in his reports.  Geley's notes were never produced to confirm such a claim.

       Perhaps more than anything, the debunkers pointed to some of the "ridiculous" manifestations produced from the ectoplasm, several of which looked like they had come from a local magazine.   Such manifestations will be the subject of Part III of this series    

       Schrenck Notzing mentioned that one of the scientists he invited to a sitting was in awe of what he saw and fully agreed with him that fraud was not possible under the strictly controlled conditions.  However, a week or so later, this same scientist stated that he had changed his mind because what he had witnessed was not possible and therefore it had to be a trick beyond his comprehension. Schrenck Notzing further observed that every scientist who was introduced to the subject matter seemed to discount all research that had gone on before them. "It is unfortunate," he wrote, "that learned men, who see the phenomena for the first time, commit the error of supposing that their entry into the arena marks the beginning of the proper investigation of mediumistic phenomena.  They disregard the copious literature and the many strictly scientific reports of their colleagues, such as the numerous unrefuted results obtained by eminent investigators with the medium Eusapia Paladino..."

      Schrenck Notzing also observed that the cynical press was quick to accept unsubstantiated debunking reports and sensationalize them, thereby defaming innocent people.  These sensationalized reports then became "fact" as far as the public is concerned and later became part of standard reference books, muddying up the waters so that people don't know what to believe.

       If Eva C. had been the only person producing ectoplasm and related phenomena, then there might be justification for being skeptical, but the fact is that the phenomena were observed by many distinguished men and women and their reports were consistent with those of  Drs. Schrenck Notzing, Geley, and Richet.

         This ectoplasmic formation at the expense of the physiological organism of the medium is now beyond all dispute," said Richet, who won the Noble Prize for his  research on anaphylaxis, the sensitivity of the body to alien protein substances.  "It is prodigiously strange, prodigiously unusual, and it would seem so unlikely as to be incredible; but we must give in to the facts...Yes, it is absurd; but no matter - it is true."                  

         Part III of this series on ectoplasm will appear here on Nov. 8..