Avocation in Ectopiffle

SIXTY YEARS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH (618 pp.)--Joseph F. Rinn--Truth Seeker Co. ($5).

In 1848, Margaret and Katie Fox, two mischievous little girls of Hydesville, N.Y., thought up a way to mystify their ma. In bed at night they tied an apple to a string and bumped it loudly on the floor. Hearing the sonorous raps, Mrs. Fox climbed upstairs to investigate, and of course found both children apparently fast asleep. Cried puzzled Mother Fox: "Is this a disembodied spirit that has taken possession of my dear children?"

A century later, thousands of men & women still answer Mrs Fox's query with a fervent yes. For the Fox sisters, though they later went on tour to confess that their apparent psychic powers were an "absolute fraud," really started something. By 1854 (while the Fox sisters were still "psychic"), 15,000 earnest believers had signed a petition demanding that Congress appoint a committee of scientists to investigate such phenomena.* And belief in spiritualism continues to flourish. This month, Britain's House of Commons gravely read for the second time a bill to protect "genuine" mediums by repealing the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

Once the Kettle. This sort of thing may strike the average man as harmless pother, but not Author Rinn. At 82, he is a onetime Manhattan produce broker and skilled amateur magician who has spent most of a lifetime trying to expose fake mediums as "the vilest gang of crooks that ever lived." No magician at writing a book, Rinn has nonetheless succeeded in presenting a bulky and formidable blast against spiritualism in all its forms.

Like his friend and fellow fake-hunter, Magician Harry Houdini, Rinn spent a long time looking for evidence of psychic power he could believe in. As a youngster, he was bowled over when a medium ordered him to place the spout of a kettle to his ear and thus receive the words of a "spirit voice." Only after he himself became a magician did Rinn realize that he had been duped (out of $5) by a double-bottomed kettle equipped like a telephone receiver and in contact with a "spirit" hidden behind a panel.

Always the Normal. Thenceforth, Magician Rinn fervently practiced what he and most of his fellow magicians insistently preached: that no "spirit manifestation" existed that they could not duplicate by plain trickery. They showed how clammy "spirit hands" (that brushed the brows of spectators at dark seances) were concocted out of paraffin or simply from "a kid glove filled with wet sawdust . . . kept on ice." One piece of so-called "ectoplasm" ("ectopiffle would be a better name," remarked a surly magician) proved to be a chunk of animal lung. The only "spirit body" that Rinn failed to duplicate was that of a "baby" which, in a dim light, a famous woman medium of the '80s used to permit patrons to kiss: it proved to be her own bosom, painted with a cherubic visage.

There is always, concludes Rinn, "a normal explanation."

*After brief debate in the Senate, the petition was pigeonholed.

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