(w. whately smith)
to the last sentence of the preceding section someone will probably retort, “if only critics would stop talking about fraud and examine the phenomena at first hand, they would be convinced and we should have a chance of getting on with the war and finding out all sorts of interesting things.” it is not really a fair retort, because it is always perfectly legitimate to point out sources of error in any experimental work without being called upon to repeat the faulty experiments oneself. but although all the evidence seems to me to point one way, i freely admit that i may be wrong and that genuine spirit photographs may be produced. if so, i should very much like to be able to convince myself of the fact and to give the utmost publicity in my power to any positive results i might obtain. but it is no use my attempting to do so under the conditions which normally obtain at a
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photographic séance. i know, to be sure, a certain amount about fraudulent methods, and might, perhaps, be not quite so easy a prey as others who know less. but i am not so conceited as to flatter myself for a moment that i am a match for a really competent trickster. i know just enough to realise how very great an advantage the latter always has and how hopeless it is for any but the very elect to pit themselves against him. i do not imagine, as apparently do many worthy spiritualists who do not even know the first word about fraud, that my not extraordinary powers of observation are a match for the adroit and experienced medium, and i would no more back myself to spot fraud every time it was tried than i would back myself to win money off a cardsharper!
if one were allowed real test conditions, it would be quite another matter. but one is not. one is allowed to watch—when one’s attention is not distracted by some natural-seeming incident; one is allowed to perform for oneself all kinds of operations which are quite irrelevant to the modus operandi of the trick; one is allowed to bring, if not always to use, one’s own plates. but as already pointed out, the loopholes left for fraud are so numerous that it is vain to hope to guard against them all. in fact, the most suspicious feature about the whole of psychic photography is the fact that a procedure is insisted on which must give these innumerable loopholes and the obvious “safe” procedure is never, so far as i know, allowed at all.
if the account of fraudulent methods given above is referred to again, it will be seen that of the twenty-two varieties there noted, no less than eighteen depend on either (a) the use of the medium’s faked camera or slides, or (b) the fact that the plates are loaded into slides, the slides placed in the camera, the plates removed from the slides and also developed “on the premises.” the only methods to which this does not apply are the first of all and those involving preparation of the studio or dark-room and noted in group ii., section a, to which might possibly be added the x-ray method. these three last can easily be eliminated by working in one’s own or a “neutral” studio, while the former eighteen could all be prevented by using the investigator’s own magazine or roll-film camera, loading it before the séance, taking it away immediately afterwards, and developing the plates in private without the medium.
i may very well be wrong, there may very well be methods which i do not know and cannot imagine which would get round even this degree of control, but i am inclined to think that this procedure would be “fraud-proof.” nothing less rigorous can be so, at any rate for a single-handed investigator, and even if several were present no confidence could be felt in the results unless (a) they were well versed in fraud, (b) they had planned and rehearsed everything in advance, (c) the medium were completely docile and willing to keep right away from
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the plates at the critical moments, and (d) the studio were known to be unprepared.
i shall probably be told that the conditions mentioned above as being apparently fraud-proof would automatically inhibit the phenomena as would insistence on full light in the case of telekinesis. i am well aware that many attempts to lay down test conditions in the past have rightly met with this retort; but apart from the fact that if the phenomena are such that real test conditions can never be applied then their genuineness can obviously never be established, i honestly cannot see that there is any essential difference between the conditions i suggest and those under which photographic phenomena ostensibly take place.
if and when these simple conditions are allowed (the plates being bought, of course, under circumstances which prevent collaboration by the vendor), i shall be prepared to admit that the scent is getting warm and that there may be something in spirit photographs after all. until then i must reluctantly maintain my view that they are the most obviously fraudulent of all spiritualistic phenomena.
in conclusion we must confess that we have little hope of influencing convinced believers by the preceding discussion. it is just possible that here and there someone may realise that there is more scope for trickery than there appeared to be at first sight, may scrutinise procedure more carefully, may have the courage to distrust his own powers of observation, may even—if he is lucky—catch a swindler out. but this is unlikely. “once convinced always convinced” seems to be the rule. “what matter if all appearances and all reasoning are against our beliefs? did not satan put marine fossils on the tops of hills to shake our faith in genesis? did not stupid spirits carelessly leave false beards and dirty muslin in the pockets of williams and rita—those wonderful materialising mediums? do not even the greatest psychics resort to fraud when the power fails?”
no! some people’s faith could never be shaken, not though we gave them two hundred methods of fraud instead of twenty and not though a medium were exposed a hundred times instead of but twice or thrice.
but it may be that there are some who still have doubts and still halt between two opinions. we hope that to these this paper may be of some service as a contribution to the evidence available for their study. it is also possible that it may in some measure act as an antidote to the unreliable matter which is now so freely disseminated and which does so much to bring psychical research and the better aspects of spiritualism into undeserved disrepute.
