Modern spiritism; its science and religion - SpiritArchive.org

DANGERS OF SPIRITISM 193
For a most interesting expose of frauds of inconceivable
skill by which sealed letters are opened and
read, pendulums locked in glass cases moved at
will, rappings produced anywhere, writing on closed
and locked and untouched slates, flowers and toys
materialised and scattered everywhere, the materialisation
of the dead, the production of lights, of music,
and of voices, let me strongly recommend "Behind
the Scenes with the Medium" (330 pages), by
David P. Abbott (Kegan Paul & Co., Ltd.), as a
book from which the reader will rise a sadder, a
disillusioned, and a wiser man.
Dr. Funk, a well-known figure in New York, and
a foremost man in all psychological problems, and
in Spiritism, says: "People are being fooled by
thousands by the shallowest tricks at Spiritist
seances."
Mediums, indeed,
are mostly consciously fraudulent;
a reliable one is an untold and very rare
treasure to the investigator.
As I have shown, this is not so much because they
love fraud, as because the power they possess is so
capricious, and so often fails them at the critical
moment, that they have no alternative but to resort
to fraud to produce the phenomena for which the
audience have paid and are impatiently waiting.
Eusapia Palladino, who is, I belive, a chief source
of the belief in Spiritism of Sir Oliver Lodge, Myers,
Professors Schiaparelli and Lombroso, is known, as
already stated, frequently to have practised fraud
of a glaring kind. Miss Florence Cook, the medium
who produced Katie King for Sir William Crookes,
was convicted of fraud in producing a lady of Queen
M.S. 13