Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/222

 Fake Messages from the Spirit World

How mediums read "messages" sent them to be answered By Hereward Carrington

��SCENE: — The rooms of a professional spiritualist. The medium asks a number of persons to write out ques- tions on a piece of paper and to fold up the papers. After the papers are gathered up, they are placed on the small table or "altar" in front of the medium. The eyes of the medium are bandaged. She cannot see anything — apparently. The investigators take their seats, and the "readings" begin.

One by one, the medium picks up the papers, places them to her forehead and proceeds to tell what question each con- tains. Miraculously enough they are the very questions asked by the writers. But the medium does more than read the writing on a folded paper. She proceeds to give advice, or more often mere impressions, which are taken as par- tial or com- ple te an- swers to the que stions by emotional and imagina- tive listen- ers. With the answers, then, we need not con- cern our- selves. They consist only of vague advice and guesses.

How, then, does the medium find out what is

��written on the carefully folded papers? There are various ways. The illustra- tions disclose some of them.

Under cover of a pile of folded papers, or perhaps of some small ornament on the "altar" the medium quietly unfolds the pellets, one at a time, and reads them under the bandage. Folding them up again, she places them to her forehead and pretends that she is only then making out their contents with the greatest diffi- culty. The spectators are impressed!

But suppose the medium's head is covered up by a thick sack. Surely she can't see. What then?

In this case, the trick is rendered pos- sible by the very means which seem to make it impossible — as so often happens! Under cover of the sack, the me- dium has taken from under her skirt an electric flash lamp, and by its aid she reads the contents of a number of questions she has concealed. In this case, a number of dummy (blank) pellets are left upon the table, to take the places of those sur-

���How can she read with a sack over her head? It's easy — with a flashlight. At riftht, a medium's pad with its reveal- ing carbon paper

��200

�� �