Again "Margery"

Another chapter came to light in the exoteric history of "Margery" (Mrs. L. R. G. Crandon), Boston medium.

Having tried out (unsuccessfully) for the $2,500 prize of The Scientific American (TIME, Feb. 23) for "proof of spooks," and having quarreled with Harry Houdini the Handcuff King (who claimed to have "shown her up"), Margery was invited to perform for a committee of experts at the Harvard University psychological laboratories. Scientists of no small account attended the seances--Drs. Harlow Shapley (astronomer), S. B. Wolbach (pathologist), W. J. V. Osterhout (botanist), Edwin G. Boring, William McDougall and Hudson Hoagland (psychologists).

Margery was made to disrobe under the eagle eye of a trained nurse. She put on an examined dressing gown and slippers, decorated her face, wrists and ankles with luminous paint, and placed her hands in those of an observer in the darkened room. An electric current was passed through the bodies of all the observers so that if any one broke his neighbor's grip, a bell would ring. Despite these and other "laboratory test" conditions, Margery was able to summon "Walter" (her brother, killed in an accident), who whistled, cracked jokes, pulled the professors by their forelocks, bantered them, played checkers with (and beat) one of them, lifted weights (a corresponding increase in Margery's weight being observed when he did so), rang a bell--and disappeared when the lights went up. During his "presence," the observers beheld strange luminosities about the medium and a translucent material shape, like an arm, cold and clammy (said one) "as an eel's heel," was seen, measured (against a radium-painted board) and felt. Warned that violence to this "emanation" would seriously injure the entranced medium, none of those present employed the obvious investigatory stratagem of seizing the ghostly arm and calling for lights.

Reports taken at the seances consistently stated that nothing supernatural had been observed, but that there was "no trickery." One observer demonstrated how many of the effects could be reproduced by clever acrobats, but when additional precautions were taken the next night, the phenomena appeared stronger than ever.

Last week, an article in the Boston Herald (allegedly published to anticipate an article in the November Atlantic Monthly) gave as the decision of a minority of the scientists the theory that, in all good faith, Margery had exhibited powers of hypnosis and automatism only; nothing inexplicable or supernormal. Even to this conservative statement, a majority of the scientists, swiftly dissented, declaring there had been "trickery," conscious or unconscious, and retracting their previous agreement with the hypnosis theory.

The Upshot, as is usual in these investigations, was nothing proved for or against physical manifestation from the spirit world. Scientists are not prepared to stake their reputations upon the slim data at hand; mediums, however honest, become hipped on their powers.