above: ectoplasm beginning to form into a materialized spirit (Medium: Kathleen Goligher, photographer, Dr. William Crawford)  

      Vice-Admiral W. Usborne Moore, a retired British naval commander, began investigating mediums in 1904. One of the first he sat with was Cecil Husk, an English materialization medium.   Like so many mediums of the day, Husk had been charged with fraud a number of years earlier.  "Mr. Cecil Husk's séances have been the theme of many discussions amongst spritists," Moore addressed the concerns.  "I have sat with him over forty times, and have only once suspected fraud.  On that occasion the conditions were bad, and I am by no means sure that my doubts were reasonable.  Even supposing my first ideas were correct, there were good reasons for attributing the trick I thought I had witnessed to unconscious fraud."   As Moore came to understand unconscious fraud,  the medium, while in a trance state, will sometimes be prompted by spirits to move things when the power is low and the spirits cannot accomplish it on their own.    Such unconscious fraud was interpreted by skeptical investigators to be outright fraud rather than unconscious attempts to achieve a result.

         Moore also noted that many materializations with Husk as well as with other mediums did not look completely lifelike.  Some looked like stage dummies while others had a parchment appearance. Some were just heads, others busts of the person.  Many were only half or two-thirds normal human size.  Moore came to understand that many of the unlifelike materializations were failed attempts by spirits to fully materialize.  

       These unlifelike manifestations,  like partial materializations (hands only, arms, heads) were scoffed at by the skeptics and debunkers.  "Did the charlatan think we would believe that something so ridiculous is the materialization of a spirit entity?" the smug debunker would ask.  Indeed, were all the mediums who produced these strange unlife-like objects so stupid as to think they could fool people with them?  It is easier for those with open minds to believe that they were, as Moore concluded, failed attempts at materialization. 

       As indicated in Part I of this series on ectoplasm, Dr. Charles Richet, a Nobel-Prize winning scientist, told of 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.

     Admiral Moore was present in England when William T. Stead, a social activist, began communicating through several mediums, including Etta Wriedt, after dying in the Titanic disaster.   Stead explained that there were souls on his side who had the power of sensing people (mediums) who could be used for communication.  One such soul helped him find mediums and showed him how to make his presence known.  It was explained to him that he had to visualize himself among the people in the flesh and imagine that he was standing there in the flesh with a strong light thrown upon himself.  "Hold the visualization very deliberately and in detail, and keep it fixed upon my mind, that at that moment I was there and they were conscious of it," Stead explained, adding that the people at one sitting were able to see only his face because he had seen himself as only a face.  "I imagined the part they would recognize me by." 

        It was in the same way he was able to get a message through.  He stood by the most sensitive person there, concentrated his mind on a short sentence, and repeated it with much emphasis and deliberation until he could hear part of it spoken by the person.

       In her 1892 book, There is No Death, Florence Marryat, a popular writer of the Victorian era, told of a sitting with a medium in which an old family friend, John Powles, communicated but initially declined to materialize.  Peter, the medium's spirit control, communicated that "he doesn't want to show himself because he's not a bit like what he used to be."  However, when Marryat persuaded Powles to show himself, she saw only a face that didn't resemble her old friend in the slightest.  She wrote that it was "hard, stiff, and unlifelike.  Powles then told her that he would try to do better the next time.

         For the next sitting, Marryat brought along a necktie that had belonged to Powles, keeping it in her pocket and telling no one about it.  Soon after the séance began, Peter told Marryat to hand over the necktie and put it on Powles' neck.  "The face of John Powles appeared, very different from the time before, as he had his own features and complexion, but his hair and beard which were auburn during life, appeared phosphoric, as though made by living fire," Marryat wrote, adding that she then mounted a chair, put the tie around his neck and asked if she could kiss him.  Powles shook his head, but Peter then told her to give him her hand. "I did so, and as he kissed it his moustaches burned me," Marryat wrote.  "I cannot account for it.  I can only relate the fact.  After which he disappeared with the necktie, which I have never seen since, though we searched the little room for it thoroughly."

         The prima facie most impressive evidence there could be of the survival of a deceased friend or relative would be to see and touch his materialized, recognizable bodily form, which then speaks in his or her characteristic manner," wrote C. J. Ducasse, a professor of philosophy at Brown University in his 1961 book, A Critical Examination of the Belief in Life After Death. "This is what appeared to occur in my presence on an occasion three or four years ago, when during some two hours and in very good red light throughout, some eighteen fully material forms - some male, some female, some tall, some short, and sometimes two together - came out of and returned to the curtained cabinet I had inspected beforehand, in which a medium sat, and to which I had found no avenue of surreptitious access."

         Ducasse went on to explain that the material forms were recognized by other sitters and in some cases the deceased spoke and caressed the living. One of the forms called his name and Ducasse went up to her and asked who she was.  "Mother," she replied.  "She did not, however, speak, act, or in the least resemble my mother," Ducasse continued the story.  "This was not a disappointment to me since I had gone there for purposes not of consolation but of observation."  The friend who had taken Ducasse to the circle informed him that his mother had materialized on a number of occasions and that the form sometimes looked like her and sometimes it did not.

         Whether it was his mother or not, Ducasse was fairly certain it was a materialized spirit.  "I can say only that if the form I saw which said it was my mother and which patted me on the head, was a hallucination - a hallucination ‘complete' in the sense just stated - then no difference remains between a complete hallucination on the one hand and, on the other, ordinary veridical perception of a physical object; for every further test of the physicality of the form seen and touched could then be alleged to itself hallucinatory and the allegation of complete hallucination then automatically becomes completely vacuous."

          Ducasse also had an opportunity to see the ectoplasm in good red light, to touch it, and take ten flash photos of the substance as it emanated from the mouth of the medium. "Whether or not it was ‘ectoplasm,' [it] did not behave, feel, or look like any other substance known to me could, I think, under the conditions that existed.   It was coldish, about like steel.  This made it seem moist, but it was dry and slightly rough like dough the surface of which had dried. Its consistency and weight were also dough-like.  It was a string, of about pencil thickness, varying in length from six to twelve feet.  On other photographs, not taken by me, of the same medium, it has veil-like and rope-like forms."

        When we consider Richet's comments about the spirit who forgot what he looked like when alive in the flesh, as well as Stead's comments about having to visualize himself in order to show himself, and Marryat's comments about Powles' first attempt not looking anything like she remembered him and his telling her he would try again,  Ducasse's comments about the spirit claiming to be his mother not looking like she did when alive makes some sense as it becomes clear to the open-minded person that the process of a spirit materializaing all or part of the body is a very complex and difficult procedure. 

       Much more recently in his 2008 book Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence, Dr. Jan W. Vandersande, a physicist, tells of his own observations of ectoplasm, while living in South Africa during the 1970s, with several mediums, including Kitty Gordon, under red light. "...Ectoplasm started pouring out of Kitty's nose and started to form a gauze-like sheet similar to that seen in photographs of the Johannesburg medium.  One of the sitters was then told to pick up the end of the ectoplasm on the floor, hold it high (about 5-6 feet) and then pull it partly across the room (about 4-6 feet) while it was still attached to Kitty's nose. It was truly spectacular to see. The ectoplasm was slightly transparent. The person holding the ectoplasm was then told to drop the ectoplasm. It fell to the ground and disappeared (quite fast, within seconds) back into Kitty's nose. Besides the very clear sight of ectoplasm there was also a very noticeable smell; I would call it a smell very much like a perspiration smell. It was a truly amazing experience and I have absolutely no doubt that it was ectoplasm we had just seen."

        The cover of Vandersande's book has a photo taken by Professor Jack Allen, one of Vandersande's colleagues who taught anatomy at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, of a materialized spirit, who had a very black beard, one that most people would say was a fake beard.  However, if we can accept the projected-image explanation and Marryat's comment about Powles' beard appearing phosphoric, we can understand how this materializing spirit probably visualized himself with a very black beard rather than a gray one.   

        The projected-image explanation might also help us understand why materialized spirits are seen wearing clothes.  If you were attempting to project an image of yourself to someone over the phone, it is unlikely you would project a picture of yourself in the nude. 

    And so it was also with the phenomenon called spirit photography.  In order to project their images on to the photographic plates, the spirits said they had to remember what they looked like and then project that image.  In once case, a spirit communicated that he had to visit his old home, view a portrait of himself on the mantel in order to remember what he looked like, and then return.  In fact, a number of old spirit photographs turned out to resemble old portraits of the person, which led debunkers to assume that the photographer/medium somehow obtained an old photo of the person and transposed it to the photographic plate - a reasonable assumption for those who close their minds to the reality of the spirit world and are determined to find fraud without attempting to understand spiritual science. 

      An article in the January 1933 issue of Psychic Science told of an experiment conducted by T. Glen Hamilton, M.D., a Canadian psychical researcher, in which two spirit communicators built an ectoplasmic ship.  Coming through two mediums, the spirit communicators carried on a dialogue in which they pretended they were on a pirate ship and among a crew of ruffian pirates.  It was stated that this play-acting was intended to recover past memories and better facilitate a thought-image of the ship.  Hamilton remarked:  "No matter how great we may conceive the unknown powers of the human organism to be, we cannot conceive of it giving rise to an objective mass showing purposive mechanistic construction, such as that disclosed in this ship-teleplasm (ectoplasm).  We are forced to conclude that the supernormal personalities in this case (by some means yet unknown to us) so manipulated or otherwise influenced the primary materializing substance after it had left the body, or was otherwise brought into its objective state, as to cause it to represent the idea which they, the unseen directors, had in view, namely the idea of a sailing ship." 

      When we begin to understand how thought-imagery plays into materialization, things begin to make more sense.  Still, however, the debunker wants to apply terrestrial science to celestial matters and continues to scoff.    
         Part IV in this series on ectoplasm will appear on Nov. 22.

     The first infra-red photo above shows a materialization in process with the medium Ethel Post Parrish.  Note the ectoplasmic trail from the medium in the cabinet to the materialization.  The second photo shows the completed materialization of a spirit giving her name as Silver Belle, an Indian girl who claimed to be Parrish's spirit guide.

     It is easy to dismiss the completed materialization as a fake, since it looks much more like a painting or a mannequin than a real person. However, an understanding of the ideoplastic nature of the materialization phenomenon helps us make sense of it, assuming an open mind.     

     One Internet site states that Professor Julian Ochorowicz, a Polish psychologist and psychical researcher, coined the term "ideoplastic," referring to the "unconscious power of a medium to create tangible and apparently autonomous physical forms."  However, the author, who calls it is a "stupid" idea, shows his own ignorance, as it is not the power of the "medium" that creates the materialization.  It is the ability of the communicating "spirit" to project its image into the ectoplasm emitted by the medium.       

      In his 1942 book, Life Now and Forever, Arthur J. Wills, Ph.D., president of the U.S. College of Psychic Science and Research, tells of an experiment carried out by Mary C. Viasek  and Mrs. Z. J. Allyn, a materialization medium.

      Mrs. Viasek, who had learned to travel out of body, told Mrs. Allyn that she would attempt to visit her circle on September 28 while she was traveling by train from California to Toledo, Ohio.   At the time of the séance in Los Angeles, the train was in Utah.   After leaving her body, Viasek willed herself to Allyn's circle in Los Angeles.  The circle was already in progress and Viasek entered the materialization cabinet, where she found Allyn entranced in a chair and a number of spirits waiting to materialize.  The "cabinet guide" told her that she was welcome to observe but because she was mortal she could not participate.

      Viasek then observed three "spirit chemists" collecting something.  Looking closer, she saw a band of light, of bluish-grey vibrations, resembling heat waves, passing around the circle and into the cabinet. "The stream of vibrations started from the medium's husband, Mr. Allyn, who sat by the right side of the cabinet, and gradually increased in size as the various members of the circle contributed their vibrations to it," Wills quoted the report, going on to explain that the stream was about two inches in width and six inches in depth and increased in size as it passed around the circle and then into the cabinet, at which time it was about a foot in width and 18 inches in depth.   It was further noted that not all of the sitters contributed to the stream, as it appeared to go around a couple of them.

       Once the stream reached the cabinet, a spirit chemist took it and appeared to pour it into the back of the head and neck of the medium.  At the same time that the light, bluish-grey vibrations were being poured into the medium, a white substance (not named, but apparently ectoplasm), began to emanate from the medium's chin, throat, and chest. This emanation was then taken by another spirit chemist and put over the spirit to be clothed.   As he was pouring the substance over the spirit, he said in a firm positive voice:  "Think your features!  Think your face!  Think your eyes! Think your form!  Think positively!  Think your form as you were on earth!  Think your arms!"  As the spirit thought these things a form gradually built up over him. 

      All the while the circle members were singing in order to establish and maintain harmonious vibrations.  When they finished one hymn and before starting another hymn, the materialization failed as "the substance fell from the spirit."  The spirit chemist then began attempting to clothe another spirit and it also failed when the hymn was abruptly changed.  Viasek noted that the vibrations changed when the singing changed and interfered with the manifestations.

      During these failures, Viasek was in the cabinet but could not get her feet on the floor. When the group members started singing Shall we gather at the river, her feet touched and she found herself standing in front of one of the chemists.  He said, "You are mortal.  You cannot go," but she appealed to him and he then consented.   The chemist then turned her around with her back toward him and began pouring the substance drawn from the medium over her, while saying:  "Think your features positively, just as you are!  Think your hair! Your eyes!  Think your form!  Think your arms!  Think your hands!  Think your feet!"

      Then the chemist placed some substance over her to form her dress, a garment of white lace. "This was a creation of the chemist, not of her thought."

       When Viasek stepped through the curtain into the circle, she felt that she was blind for several seconds, but her sight then came to her.  However, she found she could not speak.   As one of the sitters approached her, she received "strengthening vibrations" and was able to speak.  As she began to talk to the group, something happened to upset the vibrations of the circle and Viasek felt as if her breath had been knocked out of her by a blow to the solar plexus.  She stepped backwards toward the cabinet and seemed to lose consciousness before regaining it again and observing other materialization successes and failures. She could not discern exactly when the forms began to materialize, but she noted that they began to dissolve outside the cabinet.   What little of the substance was left when the materialization dissolved flowed toward the incoming stream of light, bluish-gray vibrations.

       Members of the circle confirmed Viasek's materialization and it was noted that her "breathing" problems began when Dr. H. H. Turner, one of the circle member, increased the light in the room so that he could make a note of the time and record Viasek's words.

       As indicated in parts II and III of this series, some spirits communicated that they were unable to materialize because they had difficulty remembering what they looked like when alive in the flesh. Therefore,  the ability or inability of Silver Belle to visualize what she looked like when incarnate can explain the seemingly hokey appearance.  She probably lived before photography, but may have had a painting of herself to visualize, or perhaps she had an idealized recollection of what she looked like.
  
   Visualization self-experiment

      A little self-experiment will help in better appreciating the problems involved in both materializations and spirit photography.  Imagine, if you will, that you were once a great athlete. Further imagine that you are sitting at home when you receive a phone call from the director of your sport's Hall of Fame.  He or she tells you that you have been voted into the Hall and will be inducted next month.  Two photographs of you are needed - an action shot and a portrait.  The director tells you that the Hall has the latest in photographic technology.  All you have to do is visualize the two photos you want put on the Hall of Fame wall and transmit those visualizations over the telephone lines.   Those visualizations will be recorded on a special machine and photographs made of them.

      Now, visualize the action shot you want to transmit over the telephone wires.   Then, visualize your portrait shot.   If you are a man, it's unlikely that you imagined yourself as you appear looking in the mirror when you shave in the morning, and if you are a woman it's highly unlikely that you imagined yourself as you appear before putting on your makeup in the morning. If you are much over 40, you probably transmitted an image of yourself at a younger age.

      The fact is that most of us really have a somewhat distorted image of ourselves.  Often the image is based on photographs, including portraits, of ourselves when we are looking our best, both younger and slimmer.   Moreover, we don't always visualize ourselves from head to foot.  Was the action image you sent a full body shot or just an upper body shot?    

         When I mentally searched for an action shot of myself, I focused in on a photograph of myself during the 1977 New York City Marathon. The photo is from the waist up only.    Although I ran scores of races during my younger years, I cannot really visualize a moment in any one of those races that is not recorded on a photograph; thus, I had to rely on a photograph of myself.

       And so with this little self-experiment we might appreciate the problem spirits had in transmitting photographs of themselves in the phenomenon known as spirit photography.  Many of those old photos were supposedly debunked because they looked very much like photographs or portraits that were taken of the person when he or she was alive.  It was assumed that the photographer somehow got hold of an old photograph of the person, doctored it a little, and used it to trick his gullible customer. 

       When I summon up an image of my brother, who died in 1971, I visualize him as he appeared in his high school graduation photo, not at some moment in time that was not recorded anywhere other than in my memory.  I can bring up the latter if I stop to search my memory for a time when I was with my brother, but it is much easier to just bring up the graduation photo.

       A spirit photo purporting to have come from Father Junipero Serra, the early California missionary, shows Father Serra with his mother.   It appears very hokey, because his mother is only about half his height, meaning around three-feet tall, and Father Serra appears somewhat wooden.  However, when we consider the ideoplastic nature of the phenomenon, it makes sense.  Father Serra lived before photography and probably didn't have many mirrors, if any, around his missions.  Thus, the projection was far from representing what he really looked like and probably indicates that he saw himself so much taller than his mother. 

The final part of this series on ectoplasm will be posted on Dec. 6