The committee carefully examined the camera and watched as Marriott took two photographs of Conan Doyle. His plan was to invite Conan Doyle and three other witnesses to observe him as he took and developed photographs of the great writer. On 5 December 1921, Marriott set out to demonstrate that eliminating the impossible was much more difficult than Conan Doyle might have wished to believe. Some even took it upon themselves to actively expose fraudulent mediums, both as a public service and as a means of self-promotion. Many magicians – including one of Conan Doyle's own friends, Harry Houdini – were staunch sceptics of the paranormal. Unlike the spiritualist mediums, they saw themselves as "honest deceivers" who performed illusions for entertainment, and their audiences were fully expected to understand the fact that they were witnessing carefully constructed tricks.
As an experimental psychologist and magician, however, I believe it is one of two hoaxes that can offer special insight into Conan Doyle's apparent credulity and also some fascinating cognitive illusions that may sometimes affect us all. The case of the "Masked Medium" was ultimately revealed to be hoax. As a spiritualist, Conan Doyle also asserted that he witnessed mediums make direct contact with the spirits of the dead. He famously fell for the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies, for instance, faked by two children – Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright. Today, Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, but the good doctor was also an illustrious paranormal investigator who often failed to see the frauds in front of his eyes. The creator of Sherlock Holmes declared that he was highly impressed with the clairvoyant demonstration, although he said he would need to see the ghost again before he would attest to its paranormality. Was it a genuine glimpse of a world beyond our own? The committee was divided, and while you may not be familiar with most of its members, you have almost certainly heard of the paranormal investigator – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The form drifted about the room, appearing to pass directly through the medium, before evaporating into the opposite wall. One of the committee members later asserted that the mist formed into the shape of an old woman. The medium appeared to enter into a trance, and a "luminous mist" materialised behind her. The committee members tied the medium to her chair and the lights in the room were dimmed. Next came a "materialisation" of a spirit. She divined that one of the objects was a ring belonging to the deceased son of the paranormal investigator, and even read the faded inscription. The medium held the locked box in her lap, and while the committee watched carefully, she proceeded to not only name the objects within, but to describe them in vivid detail. Before the medium arrived all the objects were placed into a bag, which was then locked inside a box. Each member of the committee had been instructed to bring with them a small personal item or written letter. She began with a séance which involved a demonstration of "clairvoyance". The woman who entered the room was wearing a veil that concealed the lower half of her face. "Now at last, I have come across a genuine medium." "I have spent years performing with fake mediums all over the world in order to disprove spiritualism," declared their host. On 21 March 1919, a committee including a paranormal investigator, a viscountess, a mind reader, a Scotland Yard detective, and a coroner were all assembled in a small flat in Bloomsbury, London.
0 kommentar(er)
