Add in: Chaotic, Concealment, Cleverness, Confederacy, Chicanery, Conjuring, and Conspiracy, and it makes for the most intriguing story ever over the past 100 years. Beyond all that, it was bewildering, befuddling, baffling, beguiling and bewitching. It was far too much for the scientific mind, and not nearly enough for the skeptical mind. More than a dozen Harvard professors, instructors, and graduate students bucked heads over it. It received front-page coverage in Boston and New York.
Now, one-hundred years later, it remains a mystery, although most historians seem convinced that it was nothing more than a giant hoax, one that carried on for several years, beginning in 1923 and through 1926. In fact, it was 100 years ago, on July 1, 1926, that Dr. Joseph Rhine, one of the founders of the field of parapsychology, observed it and declared it all chicanery. Wikipedia mentions Rhine’s conclusions and clearly suggests that it was fraudulent. Other references lean toward fraud.
I’m referring to the mediumship of Mina Crandon, who went by the name “Margery” (middle photo). Wikipedia calls it a “stage name,” but all indications are that it was a pseudonym intended primarily to protect her privacy and the professional reputation of her husband, Dr. Leroi Crandon, who in addition to his private practice in Boston was an instructor in surgery at Harvard University.
Margery discovered her mediumistic abilities in 1923, at age 34. Most of the phenomena produced through her trance mediumship were physical, including levitations of a table, apports (objects floating around the room) the materialization of hands and arms, the ringing of a bell not within her reach, paraffin hand molds purportedly produced by spirits, but the primary phenomenon was a voice said to be that of Walter Stinson, Margery’s older brother, a Canadian who had been killed in a railroad yard accident in 1911 (bottom right photo). He served as something of a director for all the phenomena.
Walter would speak through his entranced sister and also independently of her in a masculine voice. He would carry on conversations with the sitters, joke with them, curse at them, whistle tunes, and do automatic writing through Margery. She is said to have produced writing in nine different languages, including Greek and Chinese.
Hamlin Garland, a renowned Pulitzer prize-winning author and experienced psychical researcher representing the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), studied Margery and described the Walter voice as “that of a vigorous, humorous rough-and-ready man of twenty-five or thirty, with such intonation as a Canadian youth working as a conductor on a street car would use.” He further described Walter as “shrewd, unrefined, resourceful and combative.” Garland was somewhat taken aback by Walter’s lack of reverence. “He ordered us about like children. He assumed the tone of a master as though by the mere act of dying he had become possessed of all the wisdom of Lodge and Edison, and yet he busied himself with tricks to astonish us like a boy of twelve.”
Truth & Self-Control
Although the sittings were not tape recorded, Malcolm Bird, another ASPR researcher, jotted down one “lecture” from Walter, who was first heard whistling and singing, then saying: “Never inflict your will on anyone else, except an untrained child. It’s terrible. Two free wills in a house are better than one. Make harmony your pet; keep it around. Tame it, have music in your home.”
Walter continued: “When you sit in a chair, twice as much of you as is seen is all around you, making an aura of about a foot in thickness. I make my invisible hand out of the Kid’s (referring to his younger sister, Mina) aura. These sittings are fine preparation for a four-dimensional life. There are two fundamentals in preparing for the next life: telling the truth, and self-control. If your mind is prepared from the first, you will never have to suffer homesickness as I did.”
It’s easy to understand that orthodox religions wanted nothing to do with the Margery phenomena, as there is no room in their belief system for spirits like Walter. They’re all either strumming harps in heaven, burning in hell, or sleeping until some far-off judgment day. With religion opposed at one end, science at the other, it’s also easy to understand that Walter had little chance of convincing most observers of his reality as a spirit. Moreover, Margery was not of a saintly character, more of a “flapper” type of that era and said to be somewhat flippant.
If it was all a big hoax carried on several times a week over three or more years, it is difficult to believe that Dr. Crandon and his wife didn’t have better things to do during their evenings, and that those sitting with Margery couldn’t find something more entertaining. However, it is easy to understand that if the phenomena were genuine, materialistic science would have to rethink its position, one in which there was no room for spirits of the dead talking with them and playing games with them.
A committee of five Harvard graduate students, supervised by psychology professors, studied Margery and concluded that in her trance state she was unconsciously impersonating her deceased brother. The major obstacle to verifying it all was that, as with most physical mediumship, darkness was required. According to the “invisible intelligences” directing the experiments with other mediums, light had a harmful effect on the ectoplasm, the substance exuded by the medium which gave rise to the phenomena, and the light could cause serious injury to the medium. The skeptics saw the darkness as a cover permitting the medium to perform tricks. Nevertheless, it prevented clear observation and verification and the skeptics concluded that Margery was a skilled conjurer, possibly aided by a confederate, most likely her husband.
The witness that nearly every reference fails to fully credit was Dr. Mark W. Richardson, who taught medicine at Harvard and is most remembered as a pioneer in the development of a vaccine for typhoid fever (top right photo). He attended nearly every experiment with Margery and developed an apparatus (see photo on left with Richardson and Margery) designed to rule out the possibility of Margery or anyone else in the room faking the voice of Walter and others.
Harvard friends
Richardson’s participation in the Margery mediumship was a result of his friendship with Dr. Crandon, who was said to be an ardent rationalist until hearing a lecture by renowned British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge about his research into psychic matters, reading Lodge’s 1916 book, Raymond or Life and Death and then reading books authored by Sir William Barrett, an English physicist and co-founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), and Dr. William J Crawford, an Irish engineer and university lecturer.
Richardson and his wife Josephine had lost two sons to polio in 1909 and it was their experience with mediums that got Le Roi Crandon interested in the subject even before reading, hearing and meeting Lodge. The Richardsons were regular attendants at the earliest experiments with Margery in 1923 and continued their participation over the years, even after the more formal investigations ended in 1926. Richardson had absolutely no doubt about the honesty and integrity of Doctor and Mrs. Crandon.
Richardson first heard the “Walter voice” in 1923. Initially, it was only a whisper, but after four months of development, it became a loud masculine voice. “The voice has increased steadily in strength up to the present time, and now, at its best, can be heard easily by the entire circle of sitters,” Richardson explained in the December 1925 issue of the ASPR Journal. “When, as frequently occurs, the control uses a megaphone, the whisper can be heard throughout a large room. Although other controls have at times communicated in this whispered voice, the attempts have, in the main, been weak and not satisfactory.”
Richardson went on to explain that Walter developed as the main control (other spirits also speaking at times) and that “several hundred sitters can now testify to extraordinary evenings of wit and wisdom spent with Walter at Lime Street.”
There is no record of the number of experiments carried out with Margery between 1923 and 1926, but indications are that it was well over one-hundred and that Richardson attended nearly all of them. Some skeptics have discounted his testimony because he was friends with Dr. Crandon and therefore felt obligated to go along with his tricks. It is difficult to imagine, however, that two reputable physicians who were on the Harvard staff had nothing better to do several nights a week than to play games with many other educated and esteemed people.
Richardson’s device should have put an end to the skepticism regarding the Walter voice. “In over thirty tests with this apparatus there have been no failures,” he reported. “Any attempt by a sitter to whisper or whistle has been detected immediately by a fall in the water level, due to the release of air pressure. Nevertheless, although all mouths have been sealed, Walter has been able to whisper freely, to enunciate sentences containing a large number of sounds (such as ‘David dug a deep and dirty ditch’ or ‘George is an extraordinary jazzy jay-bird, by jingo.’) and to whistle in a most complicated manner. Thus, the proof has been forthcoming that Walter’s voice is independent of any vocal organ normally present in the séance room.” Richardson further noted that throughout the procedure, Margery’s hands were held, preventing her from interfering with the tubing of the apparatus.
Margery was selected by Scientific American magazine to be studied by a panel of five appointed by the magazine, which was sponsoring a contest with a $2,500 prize to anyone able to satisfy four of the five panel members that his or her abilities were genuine and not the result of deception of some kind. While the Crandons were well-off and had no need for the cash prize, they agreed, at the urging of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the world’s leading promoter of Spiritualism, to participate in the contest, and to give the money to charity.
One of the judges was Professor William McDougall, head of the psychology department at Harvard. In the end, Margery did not get the prize, because the five panel members could not agree. One of the five found in her favor, three others, including McDougall, sat on the fence with uncertainty and said further investigation was necessary, while the fifth member, Houdini, the great magician, called her a fraud. Although not a voting member, the mathematician in charge of the contest for the magazine, took a lead part in the panel’s investigation and clearly believed that Margery deserved the prize. Some modern references have taken the “no-decision” result to mean that the panel found Margery to be a fraud.
Both Dr. Rhine and Houdini claimed to have witnessed movement by Margery when phenomena were taking place, thereby concluding she was a trickster, perhaps collaborating with her husband. One skeptic considered the possibility that Dr. Crandon had surgically enlarged his wife’s vagina to store whatever it was that was taken to be ectoplasm. A British researcher was convinced that all the phenomena were genuine until he noticed Margery’s mouth was moving at the same time Walter was laughing.
Coincidentally, the May and June 1926 issues of the ASPR Journal, in circulation about the same time as Rhine’s visit, carried articles (Parts I and II) by Karl Gruber, a German physician, biologist, and zoologist, reporting on his research of the physical mediumship of Willie and Rudi Schneider. His report, translated from German to English by Mrs. Rhine, included “synchronous movements” between the medium and objects out of the medium’s reach. “If this connection is broken by movements of the hand or other object across the field of activity, or if it is roughly torn away, either temporary or lasting bodily injury to the medium results,” Gruber stated, noting that his research involved more than one-hundred experiments. “This fact has been repeatedly misunderstood by the skeptical, who have seen in it the unmasking of a frightened medium.”
Other researchers, including Crawford, had reported the same movements, the explanation being that invisible ectoplasmic rods ran between the medium and the objects moved and were being triggered by “invisible beings.” Of course, that was not a scientific explanation and could not be accepted as fact. The only acceptable explanation was “fraud.”
In the September 1928 issue of Psychic Research, Dr. Richardson wrote: “… there comes a point at which this hypothesis of universal confederacy must stop; or if not this, that the entire present report may be dismissed off-hand as a deliberate fabrication in the interests of false mediumship. I respectfully submit that no critic who hesitates at this logical climax may by any means escape the hypothesis of validity. If the present paper is worthy of and if it receives the slightest degree of respectful attention, the facts which it chronicles must constitute proof of the existence of Margery’s supernormal faculties, and the strongest sort of evidence that these work through the agency of her deceased brother Walter.”
A hundred years later, however, Margery remains a “clever conjurer.”
Next blog post: July 13
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.
Michael, I found a good deal of this article very interesting, so thanks for it – particularly regarding the voice of Margery’s brother, Walter. Six years ago, in February 2020 I launched a Youtube video entitled “Houdini versus Margery, Immortality on Trial”. It takes a slightly different approach to her mediumship and Houdini’s determination to undermine her work. It also examines Richardson’s investigations. You might find it worth a visit at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxvXXLYsIU&list=PLLB-82YMhiPFPKSm2Ke69aK0DKTftpvo0&index=31
Keep up the Good Work.
Keith,
Many thanks for posting the link to your outstanding video. I watched it when it was first produced and again this morning. It touches all bases and was clearly the result of considerable research on your part. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the least interest in this subject.
I might add that while I am listed as the co-author of the PSI Encyclopedia entry on Mina Crandon, aka Margery, the editor at the time combined my entry with his own ideas and those of another while editing out some of the best evidence for Margery. I’ve made attempts to get the material cut from my original paper back in to the published article on her, but without success. I don’t know if it is ignorance, indifference, or intentional. They don’t think it is important enough, even though the whole field changed directions. I wonder if they are concerned about disparaging the reputation of J. B. Rhine. I probably should have mentioned the difference between psychical research and parapsychology. The latter did away with the study of mediumship and anything having to with spirits of the dead or consciousness surviving death. It was simply too controversial. The mediumships of George Valiantine and the Schneider Brothers of Austria added to the controversy and were also factors in the change to parapsychology, in which the focus was on telepathy and psychokinesis and away from the idea of consciousness surviving death.
Your work is impeccable as usual and its the same old story in that people who have little experience in these matters are quick to condemn without actual evidence.
Thanks, Tricia. It’s a Catch 22 situation. One has to give some consideration to the spirit hypothesis to rule out fraud, but the scientific method permits no such consideration.
The examiners of Mrs. Crandon were tenaciously tentative, timorous, tendentious, tergiversating traditionalists unable to take a definitive stand with respect to the evidence before their eyes. Gifted storyteller David Jaher gives an entertaining account of this episode in his book The Witch of Limestreet, which is cleverly told in an even handed way such that sceptic and believer will come away satisfied.
By itself, Mina Crandon is a curious mystery, but in the context of numerous other physical mediums she added to the weight of evidence in support of the afterlife hypothesis. Any case taken in isolation is a freak occurrence, an inexplicable oddity, but it takes its place in the arsenal of fact that is arrayed against the assumption that we are merely human.
David, I read the Jaher book when it first came out and exchanged a few email with him. However, I got the impression that while he had all the history relating to Margery, he knew very little about similar research with other mediums and especially didn’t know about the research by Gruber, Crawford, and others relating to the synchronistic movements of the medium. As I see it, that research is key to understanding the Margery mediumship and her “movements.” Jaher was talking about a possible movie about Margery, but I assume that fell through. Thanks for the comment.
Michael,
I might contribute a small article entitled “The Crisis in Parapsychology
Sir, — Allow me to reply to Mr Zorab’s review of my English
book The Crisis in Parapsychology: Stagnation or Progress?
(Journal, Sept. 1965).
3. Mr Zorab’s suggestion that I have never heard of ‘fraudulent physical mediums’ is surely a joke ! My experiences, over the past
thirty-four years, with about seventeen mediums, twelve of whom were physical-biological ones, were always positive, because I very soon made the necessary inner contact with them, and thus obtained their confidence; which resulted in the production of excellent phenomena. My aim was methodical experimentation upon the anatomical, physiological, and psychological-mental constitution of materialized phantoms, and upon their floating, materialization, de- and re-materialization before our very eyes.
In these experiments I was assisted by several physicians and other
academicians, and we took photographs (partly infrared) and tape-recordings. I heartily wish that Dr Dingwall and Mr Zorab had the good luck to have only a part of my experiences.
4. Margery’s thumb-print ‘fraud’: both Dr Dingwall and Mr Zorab are completely mistaken. This excellent medium who was able to produce, with the help of the phantom of her brother, Walter, the fingerprints of the living Sir Oliver Lodge in England, in the seance room at Boston, was also able to produce the finger-prints of her dental surgeon (whether he was present or not) and
these ideoplastically contaminated other prints. One must study
the classical investigation of Brackett Thorogood, in the Proceedings
of the A.S.P.R., Vol. 22, and the supplement about Sir Oliver
Lodge’s fingerprints.
Hans Gerloff ”
There is a paper that I have from a recent DOPs researcher saying that researchers should investigate mediums more than in the past. I fully agree that investigators such as Hans should be better recognised.
Your comment “In the September 1928 issue of Psychic Research, Dr. Richardson wrote: “… there comes a point at which this hypothesis of universal confederacy must stop; or if not this, that the entire present report may be dismissed off-hand as a deliberate fabrication in the interests of false mediumship. I respectfully submit that no critic who hesitates at this logical climax may by any means escape the hypothesis of validity.” should be well remembered,
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks for that, Bruce. The thumbprint by the dentist has been the major argument against Margery, but here again we have something that is beyond current scientific understanding. Incidentally, the dentist, whose name now escapes me, was the person that a table chased down the stairs at the Crandon home and pinned him to the wall. Dr. Mark Richardson was one of those who helped free him. I was going to include that in the blog, but I was already over my usual word limit and couldn’t find the exact reference for that. Clearly, earthbound spirits were involved with Margery, but it still adds to the evidence that “spirits” exist. It makes more sense than the religious belief that they are all singing in an eternal choir, burning in hell, or sleeping in the grave while waiting for Judgment Day.
Michael,
The issue of PSYCHIC RESEARCH (The Journal of the
AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, Inc.)
The responsibility for statements, whether of fact or opinion in the Journal, rests entirely with the writers thereof. Where for good reason, the writer’s name is withheld, it is preserved on file, and is that of a person apparently trustworthy.
Vol. XXIII. No. 11; November, 1929
TELEPLASMIC THUMBPRINTS
Series 2, Part I: An Account of Further Experiments with the Medium Margery between September, 192 7, and October, 1929
By E. E. Dudley and Malcolm Bird carries the thumprint article. Not sure if it has the table chasing story. I wonder if we can locate this table to convince skeptics.
Thanks,
Bruce
Michael,
Does this name ring a bell? Shortly before the first sitting (30 July 1926) when “ Walter ”thumbprints were produced, Mrs Crandon visited her dentist(“ Kerwin ”, pseudonym) who made for her impressions of his own thumbs in “ Kerr ” wax, and gave these impressions to her, together with spare pieces of wax.
Proceeding of the Society for Psychical Research Vol XLIII 1935 page 15.
Thanks,
Bruce
Bruce, that name doesn’t ring a bell and I forget the details of the dentist’s finger impression, except that it was supposed to be Walter’s and it turned out to be the dentist’s. It was something like that.
I think the logical implication, drawn by the SPR at the time, is that she obtained a thumbprint in wax from the dentist and then tried to pass it off as Walter’s. It’s hard to find any physical medium who didn’t engage in fraud at least some of the time. Daniel Home is the only one who comes to mind.
Michael, thanks for the clarification. As I now recall that was the case. However, the argument there is that Margery was in trance and didn’t try to pass it off as Walter’s thumb print. It was “Walter” who tried to pass it off as his print. Of course, that goes to the basic issue, i.e., whether it was Margery or Walter speaking. Again, Dr. Richardson’s tests seemingly proved the voice was not coming from Margery. Then again…………
This comment is off-point, and I apologize, but I just came across a short video (10 min.) that may be of interest to other members of Michael’s “congregation.” I’m not sure whether links in comments work any more like in the old days, so I won’t try to provide a link but instead merely indicate that the video can be found by searching YouTube for a channel called Spiritual-Quest and then searching that channel for a segment called “You Were Made To See God.” What you’ll find is a most refreshing view of the afterlife put forward by a famous 4th Century church father–not the insipid harp-playing heaven some spiritualists accuse the church of envisioning, but rather a radically progressive view entailing a never-ending journey upward toward truth, beauty, and goodness. Here is a description of the afterlife. given while the Jesus movement was still in the process of becoming the church, that is fully in accord with 19th and 20th century descriptions found in classic spiritualist literature like “Spirit Teachings” and “The Road to Immortality.”
Now is that not a wonder to rival the machinations of Margery and her brother?
Newton, thanks for the comment and reference. As I remain computer-challenged, I could not find the segment you mentioned. I got about 40 hits for “You were made to see God.” I’m not sure if I fully understand what you are saying, but I take it that you feel more emphasis should be placed on the advanced teachings involving the afterlife, such as those from Stainton Moses. However, while those teachings are much more appealing for those of us who are already convinced that consciousness survives death, they are not as evidential. They are more or less “preaching to the choir.” I’m not a “preacher,” just a historian trying to touch all bases in making sense out of all the “revelations” we’ve received since the New Testament with focus on the people who don’t have the conviction you and I have. I’m guilty of sometimes attempting to be a philosopher rather than a historian, but in my attempts to crank out a blog every two weeks for 16-17 years, I sometimes stray beyond history. I think I am approaching 450 blogs now. If I were to limit the scope of my blogs to the advanced teachings of Moses, Cummins, etc., I’d probably be at closer to 50 and would have thrown in the towel by now. A weakness of my character is that I have to be consistent. If I lose consistency, I lose interest. To put it another way, the only way I can be consistent is to touch all bases and that includes a better understanding of the old physical mediumship, which was intended for the more hard-headed non-believers. Imperator said that the spirit world had to cut back on the physical mediumship because so many low-level spirits were distorting the messages and hurting good people, but I don’t think that necessarily means we shouldn’t attempt to better understand what was happening. Whether low-level, medium-level, or advanced spirits, they all point to realms beyond the one we are living in. So many people are not aware of the many realms or “many mansions” and spirits like Walter can make them aware of the fact that it is not eternal bliss for everyone, at least in the beginning. I guess I could have said that better, but my fingers still go at 70 words per minute, just as they did in high school, and I sometimes think that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or someone from his group soul, is making them work, not me.
Here’s a link to the video Newton Finn recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2jDMY0r8D0
For a hypothetical reader of the future when the Youtube link might have ceased working, it’s about Gregory of Nyssa (the fourth-century mystic theologian).
As for the case of Mina Crandon: I regularly review the photos of her. Why? First impression counts, but latter impressions count more. And when I first became interested in her thanks to you, and saw her pictures, I was appalled: she has just about the most blatantly dishonest face I’ve ever seen.
I review it time and again, because there is no learning without revision. So far, every time my ‘reading’ is the same.
Thanks, Dorian, but I just can’t see her “dishonest” face as being a valid factor in judging her. She looks pretty normal to me, hardly the “fetching blonde” that some described her. I gather the social aspect of her many sittings or experiments and seems to not have cared if some people, like Houdini, called her fraud. I put more value on Dr. Richardson’s views than on anything. He knew Dr. and Mrs. Crandon well and was in a better position than anyone to make judgements relative to honesty, integrity, and validity.
Video referred to by NewtonYou were made to see God. Michael, you might appreciate the running metaphor in the video.
Michael,
I came across this quote, which was in a 1914 book by Hereward Carrington. There is a story behind this particular book. I quoted this from the 1914 book and needed a citation for another project. My AI friend was given the 1921 version to cite from and replied “not in this version”. I then found that the 1921 book had omitted much about William James and Mrs Piper in its reprint. Carrington wrote:
“To quote an admirable passage from Prof. William James (Memories and Studies, pp. 175-76), where he says :—” For twenty-five years I have been in touch with the literature of psychical research, and have had acquaintance with numerous researchers.’ I have also spent a good many hours (though far fewer than I should have spent) in witnessing (or trying to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoretically no ‘further’ than I was at the beginning; and I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain bajling,—to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration. . . . It is hard to believe, however, that the Creator has really put any big array of phenomena into the world merely to defy and mock our scientific tendencies ; so my deeper belief is that we psychical researchers have been too precipitate in our hopes, and that we must expect to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but by half-centuries or whole centuries.”
I thought it was appropriate to cover our discussions about mediums and psychical research, which takes a long time. The Margery case is one such case – a classic.
Thanks
Bruce