alan MURDIE welcomes the return of old-fashioned techniques to modern ghost hunting.
turning the tables
With 2017 underway, many opportunities exist for ghost hunting, but in recent columns I have looked askance at the addiction of many modern ghost hunters for deploying gadgets of no proven value on nocturnal investigations into haunted premises.
It therefore comes as a refreshing change to find a ghost hunting group resorting to some old-fashioned, spiritualist-style table turning that requires just open-minded participants and one piece of household furniture. This was the commendably experimental approach taken by the group Paranormal Friends at their vigil held in the antique Guildhall at Much Wenlock, Shropshire, on 21 January 2017. According to comments by organiser Christopher Morris to the Shropshire Star of 24 January, the results of this experiment were “mindblowing”.
Paranormal Friends use a variety of techniques, arriving at the 16th century building with a collection of equipment, and also allowed members of the public to participate for a fee. But after hearing what they describe as “banging sounds”, they decided to revert back to the traditional approach of table turning to try and contact the ghosts believed to haunt the former courthouse and council chamber.
Table turning requires no skill and removes at a stroke the tricky business of monitoring readings and output from complex equipment. The most popular method is for a group of people (traditionally not 13 in number) to sit around a polished table with their hands lying flat, face down on the surface. The sitters’ fingers touch those of their neighbours, and each person’s thumbs also touch each other, to create a circle. Alternatively, sitters may present their hands palms uppermost, for some believe that this position will both generate and receive power. Often it is felt that the lights in the room should be dimmed.
The method of establishing communication, if no known medium is present, is to wait a few minutes in silence and hope that something will happen – the table move or rocks, or raps may be heard. It is recommended that all participants try and think of nothing, keeping their minds blank. This may be difficult, and one recommended method is to “think of a blank cinema screen or a white sheet” (Andrew Green in Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide, 1973, 2016). If the group is fortunate, it will be rewarded by dramatic movements of the table and raps and creaks emanating from it. To participants witnessing these strange movements and gyrations, it often appears the table is moving with a force exceeding what the sitters can physically contribute with their hands, either individually or collectively.
The physical reactions observed with the table may seem to be in response to questions put by the sitters, whether verbally or simply formed in their minds, giving the impression that a communicating entity is responsible. There can be no doubt that tables do move in such circumstances, although the question of what exactly is causing the motion and acoustic effects is contested.
On their night at the Guildhall, Paranormal Friends were swiftly rewarded by movements from their table. “We were dumbfounded – it’s something we had never seen before,” said Mr Morris, who described how they believe they made contact with the spirit of a young girl who “wanted to play a game”. A ball was duly concealed within the building, whereupon the table tipped in the direction it was hidden. “The table was literally running around the room to find the ball”. Table movements succeeded in locating the ball four times, even though “the guests didn’t know where the ball was hidden, only one of the team leaders.” Several names were also obtained through séance questioning, including one supposedly from a deceased
local councillor who gave an age at death that the group plans to follow up with historical research.
I welcome this excursion by a ghost hunting group into table turning, not least as an active acknowledgement that if you really believe you are trying to contact spirits, then you may as well adopt a long-practised method from years gone by rather than use electronic devices which patently do not register ghosts.
Whether one thinks that spirits are responsible or the unconscious mind of the sitters acting collectively, there is certainly an enormous and challenging set of observations recording table turning effects to be found in the archives of psychical research organisations, spiritualist bodies, private diaries and obscure pamphlets. Over the generations much anecdotal evidence suggests that more than human muscular forces are at work, particularly when levitations of tables occur in good light and the absence of human contact.
Although claims have been made that table turning was first practised by mediæval Jews, the technique really came into its own with the beginnings of spiritualism at the home of the Fox sisters at hydesville, new york State, in 1848. Initially rapping noises and object movements seemed like a poltergeist disturbance, but these sounds proved responsive to questioning and were contagious, following the sisters from the house and into the homes of relatives and neighbours. Soon the Fox sisters were giving public performances and spiritualism was born with the realisation that people could duplicate many of their effects by invoking the spirits for themselves at home. Initially confined to raps, the repertoire of manifestations rapidly expanded and tables were used to facilitate the sounds, often with a tilted table leg being used for rapping out letters of the alphabet and numbers.
Partly because this was such a laborious method of obtaining messages, participants began engaging in a voluntary form of spirit possession by consent, typically inviting the visiting spirits to take over their bodies and minds in order to speak or write through them. however, one didn’t need a medium to try table turning and because spiritualism never carried a ‘don’t try this at home’ warning it became wildly popular and spread internationally. Many disbelievers who witnessed the phenomenon became converts to spiritualism. Others who confronted it were appalled, seeing such experiments as an attack on reason or a threat to established religion.
Many mocked from a distance without trying it, such as Baron Alexander von humboldt (1769-1859), who admitted having “a holy horror of pinewood spirits” and referring to the “insane infatuation which has seized the fashionable world of london for animating bits of wood by spiritualism and making oracles of table legs”. (In Life of Alexander Von Humboldt: Compiled in Commemoration of the Centenary of his Birth (1873) by Julius löwenberg, robert Avé-lallemant and Alfred Dove). Another famed opponent was Michael Faraday (17911867), the discoverer of electromagnetic induction. he was repelled by spiritualist manifestations and sought to explain table movements as unconscious muscular action by the sitters. Of course, Faraday was no biologist (he even disliked the term physicist) but his conjectures have been oft cited and uncritically accepted by sceptics in the century and half since. however, Faraday’s prejudice against spiritualism may have been motivated by his own religious faith and membership of the strict Sandemanian sect, an offshoot of Scottish Presbyterianism. But the ease with which table turning could be organised meant it easily survived Faraday’s denunciation. In the 21st century it ought to be possible to design a more sophisticated type of table to test and record physical contacts in such experiments.
Many others confronted by personal evidence of movement accepted the phenomenon as genuine, including Alfred russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-founder with Darwin of the theory of natural selection. On 22 July 1855 Wallace conducted experiments in table turning with his wife and friends in the privacy of his home and was rewarded with movements and raps he could not explain. Wallace became a convinced spiritualist, as ardent as Arthur Conan Doyle at a later date.
An example of how both intellectual and banal communications could emerge within one tightly organised domestic circle was illustrated by novelist Victor hugo, who with his family began experimenting with table séances as an after dinner recreation following exile to Jersey in 1858. hugo believed he had contacted spirits of the dead and also intellectual abstractions such as “the Spirit of Criticism”. Séance communications reflected his complex personality and his literary output at the time; few in the audience of the world’s longest-running stage musical Les Miserables know its title was purportedly revealed to hugo by a discarnate spirit. however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that it was the great author’s own unconscious being tapped; but events going on at his home made them believe an objective psychic presence was at work.
hugo experimented out of curiosity and a desire to fill in time, but in many other cases the driving force was personal bereavement. even the most intellectual and ordered of minds might attempt table séances when afflicted by grief. An example was Brogdan hasdeu, a romanian polymath who authored the first national dictionary in the language. his involvement in spiritualism followed the death of his gifted daughter Julia, who had died tragically at the age of 18, less than two months into her studies at Sorbonne university in Paris. hasdeu began a lengthy series of spiritualist experiments and investigations, eventually setting up a temple or ‘castle’ built with guidance from the spirits. The tables he used are still preserved – along with a chair specially designed for spirit beings (deemed to need a sit-down after their long journeys from the other side!).
In Britain, the Pre-raphaelite artists William and evelyn de Morgan, who spent many years pursuing spiritualism after employing
SPIRITUALISM AND TABLE TURNING BECAME WILDLY POPULAR
a servant girl in 1854, known as ‘Jane’. She acted as a medium, with table movements and rappings surrounding her. ‘Jane’ was generally successful when in the company of her mistress, but her powers proved unpredictable and with most persons she failed altogether. After two years her abilities disappeared completely, but the de Morgans spent many more years in their own personal spirit research. ‘Jane’ remained a serving girl throughout, a counter to views that such phenomena were manufactured by conniving women wanting to advance themselves.
not all experiences with table turning were positive. rudyard Kipling blamed the mental illness suffered by his sister Alice (or ‘Trix’) on her involvement in spiritualism, originally begun by their mother and her sisters who experimented with table turning. (See ‘Tableturning: A Brief historical note mainly of the period 1847-1853’ by Brian nisbet in Journal of the SPR, 1973, v.47, 96-106; Victor Hugo (1956) by André Maurois; Natural and Supernatural, 1977, by Brian Inglis).
Atmosphere and temperament appear very important to success. For the safety of the individuals concerned it is desirable, so far as possible, to omit all persons of a nervous disposition, those endowed with vivid imaginations, and people who are argumentative or antagonistic. Séances arranged by religious groups usually commence with hymn singing, and a crucifix sometimes prominently displayed. The significance of these precautions has been described an “ensuring that evil entities are not contacted”. But these preliminary rituals – often derided by cynical observers – may actually play an important part in psychologically priming the participants and lowering the barriers for paranormal effects to occur.
Kenneth Batcheldor, a psychologist in england, embarked on a long-running series of experiments from the 1960s to the mid1980s, with groups re-creating the conditions of table turning practised in the 19th century. his different groups succeeded in producing dramatic phenomena in the form of rapping sounds and the violent rocking and levitation of tables. Some of his films and recordings can be seen on youTube videos but, unfortunately, most of the film footage has been lost (reportedly destroyed by a family member who disapproved). however, notebooks and records survive and are part of an ongoing research project. Batcheldor found there was a psychological component to events in that instances of PK could be triggered by a staged incident that sitters believed was genuine. Once sitters saw what they thought was a genuine paranormal incident, actual examples could follow, as though a psychological block or barrier had been removed. To achieve physical effects it seemed necessary to suspend the scepticism and resistance of the conscious mind to the occurrence of PK events (just the idea of which a number of people found disturbing). Once this threshold was crossed, it seemed the powers of the unconscious mind were released. Thus, whilst certain researchers have proposed discarnate spirits as an explanation, such experimental evidence as exists might point in the direction of the communications being the product of the unconscious mind – or a collection of minds. This seems to me a plausible interpretation at this stage of our knowledge, although difficult areas remain, as Batcheldor admitted. (See ‘Some experiments in Psychokinesis’ by Kenneth Batcheldor and DW hunt in Journal of the SPR v.43, 1966).
The relationship with the unconscious mind was also demonstrated by researchers in Toronto during the 1970s with the so-called ‘Philip’ Group organised by the new horizons Foundation [ FT61:41, 64:61]. Members succeeded in creating psychokinetic (PK) effects that they attributed to a fictional discarnate personality. They imagined a ghost with a fictional back-story and were rewarded with unexplained raps and a moving table that performed for the camera, and even managed an appearance on a local television station ( Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis, 1976, by Iris Owen & Margaret Sparrow).
Of course, sceptics will argue unconscious muscular action and the power of autosuggestion (however that works) explain all. yet identical effects are reported across the generations, from genteel Victorian ladies through to the awestruck psychic investigators and members of the public at Much Wenlock Guildhall in January. If the movement of their table was the product of unconscious PK, in choosing the Guildhall Paranormal Friends may have found a perfect theatrical setting to stimulate the unconscious mind into generating psychokinetic effects. Or could it be that individuals are connecting with some higher, transformative force as Batcheldor began to believe in his final years?