Science: Ghost-Hunter

Harry Price is England’s foremost investigator of psychic phenomena. For 30 years he has tracked down alleged miracles at home and abroad, slept in “haunted” houses, uncovered the frauds of tricksters. Having inherited money from his family, he spends about $5,000 yearly on his researches. He has acquired 14,000 volumes, some of them rare, on every phase of his hobby from talking animals to stage wizardry. He started doing magic tricks at the age of 8, published a psychic play called The Sceptic at 17. In 1925 he founded and became director of the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, which he later turned over to the London Council for Psychical Investigation. He would like to see London University institute a chair of psychic research with himself as professor, has offered the university his library and equipment plus a yearly endowment of $2,500. A heavyset, quietly dressed man of 55 who smokes Players cigarets from a silver case and has false teeth, Mr. Price works in his South Kensington laboratory every week day until 5 o’clock unless he is”out on a case,” commutes to his home in Sussex 50 mi. out of London. Last week Mr. Price:

¶ Tried to duplicate the experiments in telepathy and clairvoyance of Duke University’s Psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine, who in a great number of carefully controlled laboratory tests has apparently demonstrated that ordinary people can learn to “read” an unseen pack of cards much better than could be explained by chance (TIME, Dec. 10, 1934). In this endeavor Mr. Price reported no success.

¶ Agreed to visit a house in Canonbury, through which the ghost of a murdered man was said to be stalking nightly.

¶ Cabled to a professor in Riga urging him to attend a meeting in Cologne next week to discuss the mind-reading performances of a prodigy named Ilga Kirps.

¶ Planned for November a hotel exhibition of 10,000 rare books on psychic marvels.

Mr. Price’s newest book is Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter.* Published in the U. S. last month, this is an omnibus memoir of his experiences, theories, accomplishments. The author follows the terminology of both spiritualists and scientific investigators by not calling anything”supernatural.” For those phenomena which cannot be explained by the known laws of Nature he reserves the term supernormal. He considers that at least 999 out of 1,000 of the wonders produced at spiritualistic seances are tricks. What will surprise many a reader is that, with his almost endless experience of frauds, Mr. Price is willing to accept one phenomenon out of 1,000 as genuine. He believes that a psychic investigator who maintains a blind and stubborn skepticism under all circumstances gets nowhere. He states that he has never encountered scientific proof of the survival of the “soul, ego or personality” after death, but that occasionally an extraordinary medium seems to get in touch with a sort of dissociated psychic remnant of the deceased. For example:

“The most striking incident was where the alleged spirit of Lieutenant Irwin came back within 48 hours of the crashing of the R-101 airship and gave a circumstantial, detailed, and highly technical account of the disaster. The psychic was Mrs. Garrett, the British trance medium, who does not know one end of an airship from another. The sitters present at the seance were also quite ignorant of such a highly specialized business as navigating an airship; yet ‘Lieutenant Irwin’ gave particulars of the R-101 which were semi-official secrets, and which afterwards were confirmed at the public inquiry. Where did the information come from?”

In an interview with a remarkable French clairvoyant named Mlle Jeanne LaPlace, Mr. Price drew a snapshot of a young girl from his pocket, handed it to Mlle LaPlace without saying a word. The clairvoyant made 34 detailed statements about the girl, many of which were correct, including her first name and age. The possibility of telepathy was ruled out because Mlle LaPlace gave the girl’s name as Mary, whereas Mr. Price had always heard her called Mollie, did not discover until later that her baptismal name was Mary. This performance was pronounced by the investigator a genuine and brilliant example of “clairvoyance, lucidity, or cryptesthesia—call it what you will.”

It was Harry Price who brought the famed Austrian medium, Rudi Schneider, to England in 1929. As an improvement on the ordinary method of “controlling” a medium who works in the dark (the sitters on each side holding on to the performer’s arms and legs), Mr. Price developed an electrical control system. The medium and all the sitters, sitting hand to hand and foot to foot, wore electrically conducting gloves and socks connected in series with a red light indicator.

If the circuit was broken the signal was flashed instantly. Under these conditions Rudi produced “floating, levitation, and other movements of a coffee table, wastepaper basket, handbell, handkerchief, etc.; the tying of knots in handkerchiefs; writing on paper by pseudopod or psychic terminal; shaking of cabinet curtains as if by a violent wind; playing of toy zither in midair; raps, knocks, etc.; the production of pseudopods resembling arms, hands, ‘childlike form.’ ‘snow man,’ etc., all showing volition and, sometimes, intelligence; cold breezes. . . .” Investigator Price had such faith in his electrical control that he was constrained to consider all these phenomena genuine.* Later, though, he had reason to believe that Rudi had lost his powers, started faking. So the investigator rigged up a device by which a slight change of weight on the table around which the seance was held made an electrical contact and snapped an infra-red photograph of the proceedings. One such photograph showed Rudi’s arm sticking straight out behind him. He had obviously snatched a handkerchief from the table and dropped it on the floor. When he showed this picture to Rudi the medium had nothing to say.

Spiritualism is so thoroughly honeycombed with flummery, according to Mr. Price, that a medium cannot be searched too carefully before the performance. “Spirit lights” have been known to proceed from ferrocerium or other chemicals concealed in the teeth.”Have two medical men in attendance as searchers,” Mr. Price advises, “and let them strip and thoroughly search the medium, removing all clothes to another apartment. Women are no good for this job as they are too sympathetic and emotional, more easily deceived; and have less knowledge of deceptive methods. The medium should now be thoroughly medically examined, all body orifices being explored.” Mrs. Helen Duncan was an especially tough problem for the investigators. Even a “severe gynecological examination” failed to reveal where she kept the material for her manifestations. Mr. Price finally solved the mystery by x-raying her stomach. She had swallowed wads of cheesecloth which she regurgitated for spook production.

One of the investigator’s most entertaining performers was a medium who claimed to be in touch with Oomaruru, Pawleenoos and other inhabitants of the planet Mars. She scribbled curious marks which purported to be the Martian alphabet, sang a Martian song which she wrote down in a code resembling ordinary musical notation. Mr. Price was not taken in by this nonsense. He himself has laid plans to get in touch with Mars by physical means, i. e. a powerful beam of light. He approached the lighthouse engineering firm of Chance Brothers Co., who said they could furnish a special high-intensity arc lamp operating through three lenses to give a single beam of 15,000,000,000 candlepower. Mr. Price then picked out a suitable site on Switzerland’s Jungfrau, arranged with the inclined railway to carry up his equipment, furnish electric power. All he needs now is a philanthropist who is willing to part with $47,500.

* Putnam ($3.50).

* A thoroughgoing skeptic like Psychologist Henry Clay McComas of Johns Hopkins (TIME, Oct. 28) might have pointed out to Mr. Price that Rudi Schneider might have contrived to join the hands and feet of the sitters on each side of him, thus free his own without breaking the circuit.