Most mediums during the heyday of Spiritualism were charlatans using cheap tricks to fool grieving family members out of their money with the promise of communicating with their deceased loved ones. There were some, however, that proved this isn’t true for all mediums.
Daniel Douglas Home
Daniel Douglas Home (1833 – 1886) was an opportunistic Scotsman who had a talent for charming people and was rumored to be bisexual. His alleged psychic talents were with him, he maintained, from the very beginning. When the infant Daniel would cry, unseen hands would rock his crib. At the age of four, he foretold the death of a cousin. Understandably, this made his parents a little nervous. At the age of nine, he moved to Connecticut to live with his aunt, Mary Cook, and while in America he got the terrible news: he had tuberculosis (TB). The unusual things that seemed to accompany Daniel wherever he went was surely because he was in league with the Devil, or so his aunt thought. She threw him out of the house when he was only 15 years old. It seemed his family wanted nothing to do with him. Penniless and alone in the world, he could have easily slipped through the cracks and succumb to his disease, but Daniel was a survivor. Spiritualism had been born a few years earlier with the antics of the Fox Sisters in New York, and he gravitated to dimly lit parlors for sittings, perhaps trying to figure out how he could best channel his psychic gifts. He soon found that most mediums were frauds.
For the rest of his life, he traveled all over the world, holding sittings in the houses of those wealthy and affluent families who took him in. He never took money for his sittings, per se, but each one had all of the hallmarks of a séance held by a physical medium. Then, in August of 1852, he preformed one of the most daring of feats, one that baffled witnesses and researchers alike. This highly debated incident took place in the home of home of Ward Cheney in Connecticut. Ward was a wealthy man and was accompanied by journalist F. L. Burr, whose main goal was to catch Daniel in the act of trickery. This did not happen. Daniel suddenly lifted into the air with no evidence of fraud. He hung suspended with no ropes or wires.
In 1958, he married Alexandria de Kroll, the daughter of a rich Russian man. The happy couple had one child, Gregoire, but sadly, Alexandria passed away in 1862. He later lived with a middle-aged woman and held sittings for her. In 1866, she successfully sued Daniel for all the money he had “duped” her out of.
His antics in December 1868 remain the most controversial. He was staying with Lord Adare, who was accompanied by his cousin Captain Charles Wynne, when suddenly Daniel went into a trance and floated out a third-story window and back into another one, where his companions were watching in awe.
Eusapia Palladino
Italian medium Eusapia Palladino (1854 – 1918) was one of the most well known physical mediums in the séance circuit. She was also one of the most frequently exposed as a fraud. She was caught countless times cheating and trying to use cheap tricks to convince others of spirit communication. If she could pull a hand or foot free she would move something close by. Why then would she be tested so many times by highly educated men and women? Not everything at her séances was faked.
After successful sittings in Poland, Paris and Milan, she was invited to Naples, Italy to be investigated by members of the esteemed Society for Psychical Research (SPR). The committee consisted of researchers and stage magicians Hereward Carrington and W. W. Baggally and investigator Everard Fielding. Their findings were positive. In her presence, tables tipped and musical instruments seemingly played on their own. In one stunning display, a table was placed outside and investigators held her a few feet away to preclude cheating. In full sunlight, the table levitated three-inches off the ground! They maintained this was no trick.
The reports were too good to be true, so in 1910 the SPR did a follow-up. The highly trained stage magician William Marriott and investigator Howard Thurston accompanied Everard Fielding this time. This time, she was detected cheating. The men claimed they were obvious tricks, but she displayed some uncanny feats nonetheless. The most amazing involved another heavy table. In the séance room, it tilted towards her. Was she leaning heavily on her side to make this happen? Thurston checked. Her arms were still controlled. He scurried under the table, but her legs were being held. There were no rods or wires. In fact, there were no tricks at all.
Leonora Piper
Leonora Evelina Simonds Piper (1859 – 1950) was considered one of the most impressive mediums in recorded history. Her first psychic experience happened when she was just eight-years-old. She was struck by a deafening blow to the ear that formed into the message, “Aunt Sara is not dead, but still with you.” She ran to her mother holding her ear, but her mother just dismissed it as foolishness. However, the next day news reached them that Sara had actually died at the time of little Leonora’s episode. After this incident, her life was relatively normal.
She married William Piper of Boston, Massachusetts at the age of 22 and soon after paid a visit to a blind healing medium, Doctor J. R. Cocke, for reoccurring stomach ailment. On her second visit, Cocke placed his hand on her head and an explosion of light and faces flooded her vision. She slipped into a trance, walked over to a pad of paper, wrote a letter, handed it to another sitter and went back to her seat. When she woke up, she couldn’t understand why the man was insisting she had just passed him a posthumous letter from his deceased son. Word soon spread of the letter and callers wishing to contact their deceased loved ones besieged the Piper home. Leonora couldn’t understand what was going on but decided to give it a shot to one sincere woman. Unknown to her, she was the mother-in-law of psychical researcher William James. The two women sat in Leonora’s living room and the medium slipped into a trance. Her control, an Indian girl named “Chlorine” communicated with those who passed on. The sitter wrote a letter to her son-in-law, who soon paid the medium a visit himself. Fearing a charlatan was reeling his mother-in-law in, he was prepared to expose her; 18 months later, he finally conceded she was genuine.
To keep up with increasing demand, the Chlorine control was replaced by others, including Commodore Vanderbilt, Longfellow, Lorette Penchini, J. Sebastian Bach, Mrs. Siddons and finally after the death of the blind X-ray clairvoyant, Phinuit. Phinuit had been his control and proclaimed to be the spirit of a deceased French doctor even though he didn’t speak French and knew next to nothing about medicine. This control maintained control of trances from 1884 to 1892.
Richard Hodgson of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) came to the United States to continue investigations. He was a fraud hunter who had exposed the Italian physical medium Eusapia Palladino and mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. As far as he was concerned, he believed Leonora was a fraud as well. He went as far as to hire detectives to follow her everywhere she went to make sure she wasn’t getting any information the conventional way. He controlled what newspapers she read, who she was visited by, what letters she received and introduced sitters under the pseudonym “Smith.” In late 1888, Doctor James H. Hyslop joined the proceedings. To preclude the possibility of being recognized, he donned a mask for the first few sittings and would only enter when the medium was in trance. He concluded that she suffered from what today is called dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly multiple personality disorder. Still, the messages they obtained were uncanny and they asked her to accompany them to England for studies.
Arriving by train in a strange land, she was met by Sir Oliver Lodge who escorted her to Cambridge to stay with president of the SPR, Frederic William Henry Myers and his family. His wife made sure to hide the family Bible and hire all new servants so she could not obtain any information by normal means. Between November 1889 and February 1890, she held 88 sittings. They were all amazing. Returning to America, Hodgson took over the case again.
In 1892, Leonora slipped into a trance and suddenly a control named George Pelham came through. This control, unlike many others in the history of Spiritualism, was indeed a deceased person that could be verified. He was killed in an accident earlier that year and was friends with Richard Hodgson. He and the new guide communicating and he was convinced his friend’s personality had survived death. When Phinuit was speaking, Pelham would busy himself influencing automatic writing. While speaking and writing on two different topics, Mrs. Piper seemed to be in no distress.
In 1897, after the death of influential Spiritualist William Stainton Moses (1839 – 1892), his controls, the “Imperator Group” came though to replace all others. Phinuit completely disappeared and Pelham only came through occasionally in automatic writing. The group consisted of 49 spirits lead by Preceptor who claimed to speak to Jesus and whose real name, he said, was Malachias. Some of the others also claimed Biblical names: Preceptor claimed to be Elijah; “The Prophet,” Haggi; Vates, Daniel; Ezekiel; Theologus, Saint John the Baptist. Some claimed philosophic identities: Salon; Plato; Aristotle; Seneca; “The Doctor,” Atehnodorus; Rector; Hippolytus; Predens, Plotinus; Philosophus; Alexander Achillini; “The Mentor,” Algazzali or Ghazali; Kabilla; Chom; Said; Roophal; Magus. In 1909, Hodgson died and it wasn’t until 1909 that Mrs. Piper was invited back to England by the SPR. Overseas, she held 74 sittings for various members and during her last sitting a new control Madam Gyon appeared.
Between 1914 and 1924, she was caring for her ailing mother and had little time for psychical research. However, in 1915 she received anomalous information that Sir Oliver Lodge was going to die; her prediction was correct. After her mother’s death, she held one last sitting.
Gladys Osborne Leonard
For over 50 years, Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882 – 1968) subjected her gift to rigorous testing by some of the most seasoned and skeptical paranormal investigators. She was an avid Spiritualist who only wanted to prove some part of people, be it a soul or consciousness, survived death. In the minds of researchers and thousands of sitters, she did just that.
She was born with second sight in Lytham, Lancaster, England. It seemed anywhere she looked, even at a stone wall, she saw an overlay of what she called “happy valleys.” The heavenly glimpses of lush, rolling valleys and cool springs only disappeared when her father William scolded her for making up stories. It wasn’t until years later that she learned what she had been seeing was the afterlife of the Spiritualists, Summerland. Nothing strange happened to her until December 18, 1906. She was sleeping over at a friend’s house and around 2:00 AM woke to see a window of brilliant light open in the middle of the room. Her mother Isabel was peering through at her, looking younger and happier than Gladys had ever seen her. The next morning, she got the devastating news that her mother had died at the time she had the vision.
Not long after, she met her husband Frederick Leonard, who introduced her to acting. The couples appeared in various venues in different cities. It seemed everywhere she went she could find other actresses interested in spirit communication like herself. During one particularly long running show, she and two others, whom she identified as sisters Florence and Nellie, found an out of the way place to practice table-tipping. It wasn’t long until it began to tilt and tap out messages; messages that surprised Gladys. With an alphabet system in place, the table operator identified herself as Feda, Gladys’ great-great-grandmother. She claimed to have been a 13-year-old Hindu girl when she died. Feda relayed that she was Gladys’ guide and that she had a destiny, if only Gladys would allow Feda to control her. This wasn’t something Gladys was willing to do no matter how much her company pleaded. The three women carried out their tedious experiment until one evening Gladys fell asleep with her hands on the table. When she woke up, she was looking across the table at the astonished faces of the sisters. The said Feda had come through while Gladys was in a trance and that the discarnate personality communicated with their deceased family members with amazing accuracy. From that point on, she never failed to find work as a reasonably priced medium.
In 1915, she held a serious of sittings with studious Sir Oliver Lodge and his wife. He was no fool. He needed irrefutable proof of the survival of his son’s personality. Raymond Lodge had been killed in action during the ongoing World War I and his parents wished to communicate with him. They weren’t disappointed. Through Gladys and Feda, they truly believed they were talked to Raymond. Her sittings were never as entertaining as those hosted by physical mediums. She wrapped herself up in blankets and rugs because she said she became very cold when Feda was communicating; she was never conscious of anything Feda said. If messages didn’t come through, she didn’t fake them.
July 26, 1937 was the start of the “Bobby Newlove Case,” arguably her most astounding communication. American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) member Lydia W. Allison was acting as proxy sitter for a Boston, Massachusetts man known by the pseudonym “Francis W. Blair.” Gladys slipped into a trance and Feda began speaking with a discarnate woman. She immediately relayed a message about a ten-year-old boy named Charles who died of diphtheria a few months previous. The absent sitter confirmed this was indeed a relative and the family was still grieving. They had no closure because they could not decide how he had contracted the disease. In subsequent sittings, the only answer Feda could give was, “Pipes!” Lydia set out to put the mystery to rest. She visited the family in question and was directed to the cattle pasture the boy and his friends usually played in. She met the property owner who walked with her and explained there were two springs on the land. The water coming out of the pipes was safe to drink, the owner said, but the pools were contaminated. At one of the pools, the pipe was broken and lying to the side. Could the boy have knocked it off and got some water in his mouth? She felt certain.
Throughout her career, she was investigated by some of the greatest and most critical minds in psychical research. Everyone confessed she was the real deal. However, she was closest to Sir Oliver Lodge. She wrote him after his book The Last Crossing was published and congratulated him. In the letter, she joked that helping him was like a mouse helping a lion. Later in June 1940, she had a dream about a lion and woke up sure he was going to die soon. She wrote about it in her diary and told enough people that two months when he did in fact die, it could be verified.
Eileen J. Garrett
Eileen J. Garrett (1893 – 1970) wasn’t your typical medium. She was business-minded and rational and had a healthy curiosity about the mechanics of mediumship. She wasn’t religious and Spiritualist philosophies didn’t sit well with her all the time. Her role in psychic research was invaluable and she proved some of the best evidence for survival to date.
Her life was tragic from the start. In little over a month after being born, her parents Anthony and Anna both committed suicide. Her aunt and uncle raised her in County Meath, Ireland. They weren’t too concerned when she talked about children she played with that only she could see. Children sometimes have imaginary friends, after all. But when she told them she had seen her favorite aunt, Leone, carrying an infant outside of the house, they thought her imagination might be too vivid. The next day they learned that Leone had died in childbirth at the same time young Eileen had said she had seen her. In her early teens, misfortune struck again; her uncle, the man who had raised her and had always been a trusted confidence suddenly died. But a short time later, his spirit came to visit her. He convinced her at the age of 15 to move to London, England. At first she regretted the advice.
While staying with family there, she met an up-and-coming architect named Clive. They lost two sons early on to childhood illnesses and the third shortly after birth. Perhaps seeing her husband every day just reminded her of everything she had lost because they eventually grew apart and divorced. She opened a tearoom on Heath Street to busy herself. As World War I approached, she converted it into a hostel for wounded soldiers. This is where she met her second husband. He was sensitive and artistic and they had a whirlwind romance. In a month, he had recovered enough to return to the Front. Not long after, Eileen was dining with friends at Savoy Hotel and “saw” him killed in action. The War Office confirmed her vision a few days later with a letter informing her he had been killed in Ypres in the Flemish province of West Flanders.
Like many grieving widows, she turned to Spiritualism and its offer of further communication with the departed. She began attending home circles were others were just as curious and inexperienced as her. After several sittings, she dozed off with her hands still on the table. When she woke up, other sitters told her she had slipped into a trance and the personality of a deceased Indian girl named Uvani had come through. The control had answered questions posed by other sitters, who were convinced 14-year-old Uvani had passed along information from their deceased loved ones. Eileen wasn’t too sure. In fact, she never totally believed her controls were discarnate personalities. She assumed they were separate personalities of her own that were more capable of dealing with psychic impressions. Soon, other controls surfaced. Abdul Latif claimed to have been a physician in the 14th century from the Court of Saladin. Tahotah and Ramah, later additions that never claimed to have lived as humans, spoke of philosophy and spirituality, respectively.
After the war ended, she made the acquaintance of James Hewat McKenzie, founder and director of the British College of Psychic Science. He was enthused when she offered herself as a test subject. Researcher Sir Oliver Lodge was amazed by her phenomenal scores on tests for extrasensory perception (ESP). She carried out controlled sittings until McKenzie’s death in 1929, which closed the institution. Shortly after, her latest husband, another wounded veteran named James William Garrett died of pneumonia.
Eileen was devoted to psychical research and was soon lending herself as test subject to renowned sensationalist and ghost hunter Harry Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. During a sitting on October 7, 1930, she provided the most impressive proof of her career. Uvani was passing along information when suddenly she fell silent. Tears began rolling down her cheeks and a man’s voice issued forth. The unexpected drop-in communicator identified himself as Flight Lieutenant H. C. Irwin:
“The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity. Engines too heavy. It was this that made me on five occasions have to scuttle back to safety. Useful lift too small. Gross lift computed badly - inform control panel. And this idea of new elevators totally mad. Elevator jammed. Oil pipe plugged. This exorbitant scheme of carbon and hydrogen is entirely and absolutely wrong. To begin with, the demand for it would be greater than the supply. Also let me say this: I have experimented with less hydrogen in my own dirigible, with the result that we are not able to reach 1,000 meters. With the new carbon hydrogen you will be able to get no altitude worth speaking about. With hydrogen one is able to do that quite easily. Greater lifting than helium. Explosion caused by friction in electric storm. Flying too low altitude and could never rise. Disposable lift could not be utilized. Load too great for long flight. Same with S.L.8 - tell Eckener. Cruising speed bad and ship badly swinging. Severe tension on the fabric, which is chafing. Starboard strakes started. Engines wrong - too heavy - cannot rise. Never reached cruising altitude - same in trials. Too short trials. No one knew the ship properly. Air-screws too small. Fuel injection bad and air pump failed. Cooling system bad. Bore capacity bad. Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 c.c., but that bore is not enough to raise too heavy load and support weight. It had been known to me on many occasions that the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure. This I had placed again and again before engineer - without being able to enlarge capacity of Diesel twin valve. Had this been interchangeable with larger capacity, we might have made it. But the structure no good. That actually is the case, not gas did not allow mixture to get to engine - back-fired. Fuel injection bad. This is inflammable. Also, to begin with, there was not sufficient feed - leakage. Pressure and heat produced explosion. Five occasions I have had to scuttle back; three times before starting not satisfied with feed. Already a meeting, but feel desirous to put off and set our course and overhaul completely against this. Weather bad for long flight. Fabric all water-logged and ship's nose is down. Impossible to rise. Cannot trim. You will understand that I had to tell you. There were five occasions I have had distinct trouble - new type of feed entirely and absolutely wrong. Two hours tried to rise but elevator jammed. Almost scraped the roofs at Achy. Kept to railway. At inquiry to be held later it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience and had far too much weight in envelope. This was not so until March of this year, when no security was made by adding of super-steel structure. I knew then that this was not a dream but a nightmare. The added middle section was entirely wrong - it made strong but took resilience away and entirely impossible too heavy and too much over-weighted for the capacity of engines. From beginning of trouble I knew we had not a chance - knew it to be the feed, and we could never rise. I am anxious about the health of a lady and child - am very worried over everything private.”
Everyone present, including the reporter, was amazed. Irwin’s emotional message came from the British dirigible R101 that had crashed two days ago. A copy of the transcript was sent to experts at the Royal Airship Works at Cardington, Bedfordshire, England. They were astounded. Most of the highly technical information was confidential and they had no clue how Eileen had obtained the information let alone the list of malfunctions. There was serious talk of arresting her on suspicion of espionage.
In 1931, she was invited to New York by the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). She spent around 500 hours being tested. They were most impressed by her contribution to a missing person case. She was handed a square of cloth from a man’s shirt and told nothing about it. This was a piece from the shirt of a missing man and police were at a loss at to his whereabouts. That was until Eileen came along. She held the cloth and located him in La Jolla, California. The authorities verified this statement and were amazed by her accuracy.
During World War II, she volunteered her time running a soup kitchen for displaced children in Southern France. She left just before the city fell and made it safely to New York. For the next ten years she worked as a publisher, but later returned to parapsychology by creating the Parapsychology Foundation.
Maria Bocca
Doctor Giuseppi Stoppolini was the professor of psychology at University of Camerino in Italy. He was a favorite with the student body because he also taught classes on the occult. In early September 1950, they were discussing mediums. The professor introduced local medium Maria Bocca. She slipped into a trance in front of fascinated students and began passing along information that seemed to be from deceased relatives of the student body. Suddenly, Maria became frantic. Another who was nearly hysterical replaced her voice. The drop-in communicator announced, “I was born Rosa Manichelli. When I died, I was Rosa Spandoni, but my husband has died since then, too. We are both in the cemetery at Castel-Raimondo a few miles from Camerino. I am asking only that you help others, because the same thing can happen to them. Two days after the death certificate was signed, I was taken to the cemetery in a deep coma and buried alive!” Maria collapsed and the communicator was gone. Understandably, the students were in awe.
On September 13, 1950, the students accompanied by the professor, the medium, a photographer, two workmen, a pathologist from the Camerino Board of Health and two government officials gathered around the grave of poor Rosa Spandoni for the exhumation. If what Maria had told everyone were true, it would offer fantastic proof of the survival phenomenon. When the lid was removed, they were met with a gruesome sight. The skeleton inside was leaning to the left instead of flat on its back. The left arm was bent up and fingers jammed into the mouth and throat cavity. The knees were bent as if to open the lid and there were tale tell scratch marks on the inside of the coffin lid. She had been buried alive. The pathologist issued a public statement about the incident, expressing amazement as to how Maria Bocca had obtained the information.
Allison DuBois
Phoenix, Arizona native Allison DuBois, the inspiration for the NBC show Medium staring Patricia Arquette is a new breed of medium that like to call themselves psychic profilers. They assist police any way they can in hopes of providing useful information that leads to an arrest.
She claims her first experience happened at the age of six after her grandfather died of intestinal cancer. The night after the funeral, she woke and saw him standing at the foot of her bed. He had a message he wanted to get across, “Tell your mom I’m still with her and that I’m not in pain anymore.” When she was eleven-years-old, two men tried to entice her into a car outside her house. She was frozen to the spot until an impossibly loud voice screamed at her, warning her to get back inside as fast as possible. By the age of 17, she was already living away from home. One night a voice again lent life-saving advice. It instructed her to move her bed. A few hours later, a truck came through the wall where her bed used to be.
While interning at Glendale’s prosecutor’s office, she decided to put her psychic abilities to the test. She offered herself as a test subject to Gary E. Schwartz Director of The VERITAS Research Project at the University of Arizona's Human Energy Systems Lab at the University of Arizona. For four years she was asked to relay messages from the deceased so that the information obtained could be verified; she had an 80% accuracy rate. However, this wasn’t enough to satisfy her curiosity. She picked three missing persons cases and faxing her impressions to the authorities. The Texas Rangers faxed back and asked for her help. By looking at pictures, she was able to “see” pieces of information that related to the crime and helped profile serial killers. She was also an invaluable jury consultant and had a knack for telepathy, finding the motive within the criminal’s mind.
