Following the death of William James in 1910 interest in life after death among parapsychological researchers pretty much ended and was not resumed for eighty years. Two major factors accounted for this. Interest in mediumship and Spiritualism significantly declined. More importantly, researchers began focusing their activities on laboratory research in ESP where much more control could be exercised to yield more reliable results.
Two significant areas of recent afterlife research include the Scole investigation and Schwartz studies of mediums.
One of the best known and carefully investigated instances of mediumship in the last 20 years, carried out by David Fontana, involved a small group of mediums and sitters that met in Scole, a small town in Norfolk England. The Scole group was quite unique in modern mediumship insofar as the mediums produced what is known as physical phenomena.
As noted in a previous post, the term “physical phenomena” refers not only to the independent voices from supposed deceased entities, but to apparently paranormal lights, movement of objects, raps on the walls and tables, levitations of objects, apports (inexplicable arrival of objects such as flowers and jewelry), ringing of bells, and materializations (sometimes visible, sometimes purely tactile) of what were said to be spirit forms.
Seances of this type were particularly problematic for the investigators because, with the occasional exception of a very few individuals the mediums involved with physical phenomena insisted on working in complete darkness. This was necessary, it was claimed, because the medium, while in trance, released from her body a semi-physical material called ectoplasm that was used by the spirits to build up their materialized forms and enable them to interact with physical matter. If light were suddenly introduced, the ectoplasm would recoil violently back into the medium’s body, causing serious injury. The materialized objects, including the ectoplasm and spirit forms, often gave off a kind of dim glow, allowing them to be perceived as well as sometimes heard and felt by the sitters.
Not surprisingly, critics pointed out that the claimed need for darkness was highly suspicious, allowing a cover for the medium to engage in all kinds of fraudulent activity. In fact, early investigators caught a number of them doing such things as using cheesecloth to mimic ectoplasm, substituting dolls for spirits, levitating tables by rods produced from their sleeves, and using finger and toe joints to produce realistic sounding raps. Even when investigators held the hands of the mediums or tied them to their chairs, phenomena sometimes continued that was then traced to the activity of accomplices hiding in the darkness. If no evidence of fraud was actually discovered, skeptics pointed out that the mediums were just too clever and the investigators too naïve to catch them.
In spite of the many possibilities for fraudulent behavior, Fontana points out that there are a number of reasons for modern researchers to investigate those few mediums associated with physical phenomena. If they could be established as genuine, this would provide a powerful alternative to the super ESP explanation of paranormal activity in séances (to be discussed later), and clearly support the view that some unknown agency is involved. Of course, the question as to whether this is actually spirits of the departed would still remain.
The phenomena in these séances, unlike the communication between mediums and supposed spirits, involve manifested material objects. Everyone present sees the same things. They are not filtered through the unconscious mind of the medium. Whether or not the independent “spirit” voices heard in physical séances involve the medium’s mind and vocal cords would remain unclear.
If physical phenomena in séances can be proved to be genuine they offer the sitter what seems to be much closer actual contact with the deceased. Rather than listening to messages from that individual relayed by the medium, the sitter can actually see what are claimed to be visual manifestations of the deceased, can actually be physically touched by what are claimed to be spirit hands, can sometimes even actually embrace the deceased. This is likely to offer a very profound emotional experience of reassurance for the sitter.
In 1995 Fontana became involved with the Scole investigation at the invitation of Montague Keen, an agrarian scientist and Secretary of the Survival Research Committee of the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Professor Arthur Ellison was also involved. The Scole group consisted of Robin Foy, who had spent some 30 years investigating physical phenomena, his wife Sandra, and a husband and wife team of mediums, Diana and Alan Bylett. The group appeared to have no intention of profiting monetarily or gaining prestige from their work, even within the field of psychical research. Their intent was to obtain physical phenomena that would support the concept of survival. What originally attracted the attention of the investigators were reports that the entranced mediums in the group were not only able to communicate with a spirit team on the other side, but were also able to produce independent voice phenomena, spirit lights, and many other phenomena including photographic impressions on unexposed film left on the table around which the group sat.
Prior to the start of the investigation the Scole group had been meeting regularly several times a week for a number of months. It was only after a large number of these sittings that two of the group, Diana and Alan Bylett, began to develop deep trance mediumship and that physical phenomena began to manifest. The communicators claimed that they were members of a spirit team, and implied certain deceased members of the SPR were involved. As the phenomena rapidly increased, the group founded the Spiritual Science Foundation to share their work, some of which involved new developments in physical mediumship. A major departure from physical mediumship in the past was that no ectoplasm was involved, which the group believed was unnecessary because a new form of energy was being used, that was contributed mostly by the spirits themselves, but also drawn from the sitters and from the energy of the earth itself
The sittings of the Scole group attended by the investigators including Fontana took place in a windowless cellar in the Foy’s house converted into a séance room. The walls, floor and roof were of solid brick, were in excellent condition, and had been painted blue, thus making any attempt to loosen bricks to hide something readily observable. There was only one entrance to the room down a stairway with a lockable door at the top. There had been a small opening in one wall that had been a coal shoot, but it was securely blocked up. The investigators were able to search the room before and after each séance. The room only contained a small wooden table with legs in the form of screens to prevent any secret movement, plastic stackable chairs, and a trolley holding two audio tape recorders, one to record the communications delivered by the mediums, any independent voices, and verbal descriptions offered by the investigators and the Foy’s of the phenomena as they occurred, and the other to play music.
The three investigators and the four members of the group sat on the plastic chairs around the table. To make their positions known at all times, the members of the group each wore luminous armbands fastened with powerful and extensive Velcro strips that could not be removed without making an audible sound.
Prior to a séance the room and its contents were carefully searched in full electric light. Then the door at the top of the stairs was locked and the seven people present took seats around the table. The lights would be extinguished and Robin Foy would begin the proceedings with a simple prayer for protection. A tape of soft music was started on one tape recorder and a blank tape on the other. Soon the sound of deep breathing from the two mediums would indicate they had entered a trance state. Voices of two or three communicators would then come through one of the mediums, welcoming the group.
What then typically occurred was the appearance of small lights, usually about the size of a pea, that would land on the table and roll about before moving swiftly back into the air. Sometimes upon request they would land on the palms of the investigators exerting a gentle pressure as of weight, and could be examined at close quarters. A number of times the lights hit the surface of the table with an audible sound, only to appear instantaneously under the table, as if they had passed right through it. On one occasion an investigator closed his hand over one of the lights to satisfy himself that it wasn’t connected to any wires, although, given the fact that they could be seen travelling rapidly in the far corners of the room, this seemed extremely unlikely.
Fontana reported that one time he had a glass of water, and a light entered it and vigorously moved around, illuminating the water. He brought the glass close to his mouth to make sure it wasn’t connected to anything, and the light left the glass. Another time he invited a light to enter his body, and it struck his chest and disappeared. A moment later, to his surprise, he felt pressure in the middle of his palm as if something was pushing out from within, and the light reappeared. Fontana acknowledged that this seems quite incredible, and he expressed some reluctance to report such incidents for fear of ridicule. However, this would be a form of dishonesty. “I know what I experienced, and my account of it is accurate in each detail, and my description of the incident, made at the time, is captured on tape.” (p. 333)
On the instructions of the spirit team the investigators placed crystals and a Pyrex bowl turned upside down on the table. During a sitting one of the lights apparently entered the bowl and illuminated it from within creating an effect much like a low powered light bulb. At one point a dark hand appeared to materialize just above the bowl, turned it right side up, placed a crystal, also illuminated from within, inside it, then withdrew. The light from the bowl was sufficiently bright for Fontana to see the faces of his fellow investigators as they peered at the bowl only inches away. A spirit communicator then asked the investigators to feel the crystal, and they did so, noting that it was solid. They were then asked to remove their hands from the shining crystal, then to again feel it. This time their fingers passed through it as though it had no substance. Once again they were asked to feel it, and this time it felt as solid as normal.
Fontana pointed out that the investigators found no normal explanation for this. Although there is a trick apparatus on the market that produces the illusion that an object, placed within a bowl, is floating solidly just above it, this didn’t in any way resemble what they observed. Professor Ellison, with his 50 years of experience of electrical devices and with his international reputation in this subject, couldn’t explain how such a phenomenon could be produced by normal means.
The communicators explained that they had indeed dematerialized the crystal, leaving only its ‘essence’ in the bowl. Fontana noted that “to this day no one has advanced ideas on how this effect might be produced normally — or better still demonstrated how it could be done — and the experience remains one of the most baffling of those we encountered at Scole.” (Fontana, p. 334)
Hands often materialized that were sometimes visible as dark silhouettes in the spirit lights and at other times invisible, but they were felt touching the investigators on the arms or the legs which were under the table and inaccessible to members of the group.
Fontana reported that one time the hands caught both of his, lifting them high in the air, and pulled hard at his sweater. He described one memorable occasion when he was addressed by what seemed to be an independent voice, speaking firmly and clearly from just in front and above him. When questioned, the voice told him it was a scientist involved in helping produce the phenomena. Fontana asked if he could shake the owner’s hand and held his out in the darkness. Immediately and unerringly his hand was firmly clasped and shaken, then the spirit hand was effortlessly withdrawn. The hands that touched him and the other investigators were invariably gentle, and the three of them remarked on the unexpected, but seemingly objective feeling of tenderness that they conveyed. Robin Foy described this as an expression of spiritual love.
Sometimes the investigators asked the hands to place certain objects taken from the table, such as crystals and tubs of film, onto their palms, and this also was unerringly done in the darkness. He noted that the hands never had to fumble or grope to do this.
Other examples of physical phenomena that the investigators witnessed involved the table and a tape recorder. The table had four luminous tabs secured to its top at cardinal compass points, so that any movement could be detected. On several occasions it could be heard and felt beginning to vibrate rapidly. It then would swivel around, passing through some 20 degrees as indicated by the tabs.
The tape recorder was used in some investigations from which the microphone had been removed by the investigators so that it could not receive or produce sound. Only audio tapes secretly marked by Fontana were used, and he kept the recorder immediately controlled on the table in front of him. On one occasion an entranced medium announced that the recorder would play music as a special treat for one investigator. Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto then was heard which, for him, held deep and meaningful boyhood associations that he had not divulged to anyone present. At the end of the séance the investigators found that Fontana’s recorder with the marked tape had recorded the Rachmaninoff music but none of the comments made by those present while the music played. However, another tape recorder used to record all that happened during the seance had recorded both the music and the comments, which confirmed Fontana’s recorder could not record sound by normal means.
The Scole investigators were particularly interested in reports that during séances the group had obtained photographic impressions on unexposed film. It was obvious that the possibility of obtaining paranormal images on films, in fraud-proof conditions, would provide a major breakthrough in psychical research. The investigators developed a four-step protocol that involved using their own film secured in a special container they provided. They controlled it throughout the séance and then developed it. On seven occasions they obtained positive results with this procedure. One involved a German co-investigator, Walter Schnittger, who secured his own secretly marked film in a box locked with his own padlock. He held the box throughout the séance. When developed the film contained a poem in German by an unidentified author.
Fontana, ever the thoughtful investigator, on the alert for any possible explanation for the phenomena observed, apart from the paranormal, explained how extremely unlikely it was that the Sole Group members could have managed to produce the observed results through deception. To have taken the investigators’ films and replaced them with exposed films of their own would have been extremely difficult. To accomplish this they would have had to conceal their armbands.