Seeing Yourself After Death

The images in the photos of the accompanying collage are so ridiculous that it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that they are all fake.  Not so fast, though.  First, a little history.

As it was explained by several distinguished researchers, the “spirit” had to project an image of him- or herself as he/she recalled his/her physical appearance, into the ectoplasm exuded by a medium.  A “spirit” told Professor Charles Richet, one of the foremost researchers of the early 1900s, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winner on more earthly matters, that he could not remember what he looked like when in the earth life and therefore wasn’t able to show himself.  Richet reported that the spirit later showed himself as a body without a face.  

Renowned British author Florence Marrayat reported that a deceased friend, John Powles, materialized before her but that he looked nothing like she remembered him. He told her he had to practice and that he would do better on her next visit, when he much more closely resembled his actual appearance when alive in the flesh.  Apparently, he had to practice the projection aspect of it. 

Although the reference escapes me as I write this, I recall a report of a spirit telling a researcher that he had to make a quick visit to his old home to view a framed photo of himself in order to recall what he looked like.  He returned in a minute or two and his materialized face appeared much as in the framed photo.  This seems to have been the case with both Raymond Lodge and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with photographic materializations in experiments by Dr. T. Glen Hamilton, of Canada during the early 1930s.  Both appeared very much like old photos of themselves, which, of course, invited claims of fraud. 

When British journalist William T. Stead materialized before a group in England shortly  after becoming a victim of the Titanic disaster, he showed only his face, not his entire body.  When he was later questioned on this in another séance, he explained:  “I had to visualize myself among these people in the flesh, to imagine I was standing there in the flesh, in the center of them, and then imagine myself still there with a strong light thrown upon me…Create the picture.  Hold the visualization very deliberately and in detail, and keep it fixed upon my mind, that at that moment I was there and that they were conscious of it.  I failed of course, at first, but I know that after a few attempts I succeeded and those people did actually see me.  My face only, but that was because in my picture I had seen myself only as a face. I imagined the part they would recognize me by.” 

The top photo is said to represent the materialization of a Native American girl known as Silver Belle, as materialized through the medium Ethel Post Parrish, in 1953. According to Wikipedia, it was all exposed as a hoax using a paper cutout for the girl. That was my first impression, since the materialization looks much more like a doll or mannequin than a real person. However, the spiritualist explanation is that Silver Belle lived before photography and didn’t have a good grasp on what she really looked like, perhaps only her reflection from a pond of water. If I were asked now to project an image of myself at age seven, I would rely on photos in a family album. If I had never seen a photo of myself as a child, how would I know what I looked like at that age? 

If artistic ability is a factor, my projected image might very well look like the materialization of a spirit known as “Peggy” produced through British medium Helen Duncan, as seen in the lower left photo.  My daughter recently snapped a photo of me with her son, my grandson. When I saw the photo, I was shocked at how old I looked.  I pictured myself as at least 20 years younger.  I immediately went to the mirror and the image I saw in the mirror agreed with my self-image, not with the photo.  If I were asked to somehow project an image of myself over the phone lines, I’d probably use a portrait of myself at age 23 for reference, not the mug I see when shaving in the morning.

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 various moments if I stop to search my memory for a time when I was with my brother, but it is much easier to just picture the graduation photo.

Katie King

One of the most famous materializations on record was reported by Sir William Crookes, a distinguished British chemist, with the medium Florence Cook. Crookes discussed the materialization of Katie King and even photographed her with the medium.  However, skeptics claimed that King resembled Cook, although Katie was significantly taller.  The resemblance also suggested that Florence’s sister played the role of Katie. Could it be that Katie King, who apparently lived before photography, didn’t know or remember what she looked like when in the flesh and therefore used her medium as a model to picture herself?  One way or the other, Crookes and others witnesses saw the two of them separately, which should have ruled out fraud. Katie was also witnessed dematerializing into the floor.   

Based on all the credible witnesses to the mediumship of Helen Duncan, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that “Peggy,” the hokey looking materialization in the lower left photo, was not a very good artist or not very good at remembering what she looked like when alive.  I know that researcher Harry Price is said to have exposed her ectoplasm as nothing more than cheesecloth, or at least it looked like cheesecloth when he saw it and photographed it.  However, the more dedicated researchers, including Richet, Gustave Geley, Albert von Shrenck-Notzing, and T. Glen Hamilton, reported that materializations often took up to an hour to develop and that in their early stages they were quite crude, often just two dimensional.   Thus, I am left wondering if Price based his “exposure” on the ectoplasm in the early stages. Various references make out Price to have taken pride in his debunking of fake mediums, although he changed his mind on at least a couple of them, including Austrian Rudi Schneider. One must also wonder if Duncan was so stupid as to think that anyone would believe that Peggy actually looked like the materialization. 

The spirit known as Bien Boa, witnessed and photographed by Richet (lower right photo),  is almost as hokey as Silver Belle and Peggy, while not appearing to have any legs. However, the experienced researchers reported that most materializations were imperfect or partial, sometimes only a hand or a face.  The feet were usually the last part to materialize in the rare case of a full materialization. 

Spirit Involvement

It might be noted that Richet and Schrenck-Notzing each carried out hundreds of experiments with physical mediums and were left with no doubt as to the genuineness of ectoplasm and materialization.  However, both researchers were opposed to the idea of spirits being involved in the process. Indications are that both came to accept the idea but were reluctant to admit it since it was “unscientific.” Schrenck-Notzing reported that in her somnambulistic state  the medium Marthe Béraud with whom he carried out 180 experiments over a four-year period, said, “It is not I who produce or create.  It is an entity independent of me, which borrows material from me and can go out beyond my body. That cannot take place in the light and in the daytime.” He estimated that 40 percent of his experiments were without phenomena in the first year of his study and 60 percent were failures in later years.

As Richet said of ectoplasm and materializations after 30 years of research, “Yes, it is absurd, but no matter – it is true.” And yet, over a century later, it’s still a laughing matter.  As Imperator told William Stainton Moses, the spirit world overestimated the ability of “earthlings” to grasp it all and so they had to partially withdraw.   

Next blog post:  June 1

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. and No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. His latest book Consciousness Beyond Death: New and Old Light on Near-Death Experiences is published by White Crow books.