Here's my last post on debunking Wu's (anonymous) and Open Mind's (OM) nonsense. Sorry but I am having to keep this brief. To understand Price and his psychical research you have to have spent years reading about him and his works, neither WU or OM have done this. I will try and keep as brief as I can.
Open Mind commenting on Richard Wiseman and Harry Price wrote:
It would be to Wiseman's credit if his skepticism worked in both directions ... there is evidence against Wiseman doing this .... such as Wiseman claiming in past the magician debunker Harry Price was of his 'heroes'. Either Wiseman (who is supposed to be the best informed 'skeptic') is ignorant of the history of his hero or he is aware his hero Price was caught lying as well courting Hitler and the 3rd Reich prior to WW2.
The whole investigation of psi would be better served if we could remove poltical CSIcop mentalities and leave it to the real open minded skeptics who will investigate without an agenda.
There's no evidence that Harry Price was
caught lying about anything related to psychic matters. There were allegations but they were never proven. It's true that Price lied about his original background (uncovered by Trevor H. Hall) and his parents because he was ashamed that he did not come from a wealthy up-bringing but there's not a single piece of solid evidence he lied about anything else.
Now let's look at this argument that the spiritualists usually use to discredit Price. Anonymous (Wu) on his website page "Skeptical Misdirection" has written:
Harry Price was a well known debunker and skeptics cite his work frequently when they dismiss many of the mediums he investigated. There are two things the skeptics usually don't mention about Price. 1) Price concluded some of the paranormal phenomena he investigated were genuine. 2) There is ample evidence that Price was not a reliable investigator. If the skeptics accept that Price was a reliable investigator, they ought to accept his conclusions that some paranormal phenomena are real. If they disregard those conclusions because Price was not a reliable investigator, then they cannot rely on the results of his investigations debunking paranormal phenomena. Either way, skeptics would be better off ignoring his work rather citing it because his work does little to support their position while citing it demonstrates the skeptics' hypocrisy.
Harry Price was not a debunker. He was a psychical researcher and investigator. He didn’t deliberately set out to debunk anything. He followed the evidence where it went. He was never a friend of the spiritualists because when he investigated most mediums he found them cheating.
It's true Price believed some paranormal phenomena was genuine, skeptical books admit this. So Wu's comment is wrong. If you read Harry Price's book
Fifty years of Psychical Research he admits there's no scientific evidence for the paranormal. Of course he believed in poltergeists, ghosts, ESP and claimed to have experienced these things but in the end he came to the conclusion they could not be proven by the scientific method. Similar to others like the magician Henry R. Evans he believed the phenomena was spontaneous and not repeatable in scientific conditions.
There's no
solid evidence Price was
not a reliable researcher.
The only neutral book on Harry Price, is his biography
Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghosthunter by Paul Tabori. I also suggest Peter Underwood's stuff. The spiritualists have hated Price ever since he unmasked William Hope, Helen Duncan and Rudi Schneider. So over the years they have spread deliberate lies to smear his reputation as a psychic researcher. The Tabori books makes an interesting read because Price was not hated by psychic researchers of the time like the spiritualists claim. Parapsychologists like Rene Sudre, SPR member Renee Haynes and magicians like Henry R. Evans had friendships with Price and considered him an honest researcher.
So let’s look at the comment by Open Mind that Harry Price was a Nazi. I can’t do any better than quote what psychical researcher John L. Randall wrote in a review:
Of the numerous attacks on Price's reputation in this book, perhaps the nastiest is the assertion that he was involved with the Nazis and approved of their practices (p.183 et seq.). It is true that Price had many friends and acquaintances in Germany in the pre-war years, and Morris quotes a letter from Price to Dingwall, dated 29th July 1939, in which Price says he has drafted a letter to Hitler asking for permission to attend the Nuremburg Rally in August, adding "I should very much like to see this spectacle" (p.190). But there is no evidence that the Hitler letter was ever sent, or that Price ever met the dictator. Morris also reproduces a rather sentimental letter from Price to Gerda Walther, which he says he "discovered while researching this book" (p.191). In fact, the same letter was printed in toto by Paul Tabori as long ago as 1950 (Tabori, 1974, p.169), and he evidently saw nothing sinister in it. Tabori made the eminently sensible comment: "Price was no politician, and in the autumn of 1938 millions of Englishmen felt as he did."
Firstly even if he was a believer in national socialism what difference does it make? This is ad-hominem attack that has nothing to do with his psychical research. Political/religious beliefs of the man are irrelevant.
Secondly the allegations that Price was a Nazi come from the book
Harry Price: The Psychic Detective a crackpot book by "journalist" Richard Morris (who has a reputation for trying to smear the Wikipedia page of Harry Price with abuse) who claims in his book that Harry Price was behind the Piltdown Man forgery, was a serial womaniser and sexual affairs with countless women. Of course no evidence given for these allegations.
But spiritualists quoting the book by Richard Morris is cherry picking and
demonstrates hypocrisy (Wu's words), this is something Wu says he does not do but he does practice it! Morris is a skeptic of all paranormal phenomena so when the spiritualists such as Wu or OM quote this guy they are contradicting themselves.
http://www.harrypricewebsite.co.uk/BooksabtHP/psychic-detective-review-randall.htm
Wu on his website writes:
The case that made Price famous was his investigation of the hauntings at the Borley rectory in Essex, England. According to the Wikipedia article on Borley Rectory, two of Price's close associates contributed to a report on Price's investigation of the Borley rectory which found Price guilty of deceptive behavior.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection
Quoting Wikipedia? But you have previously denounced this website as being run by "skeptics" who dismiss paranormal phenomena. But you are happy to quote it when you need to?
Anyway the report is
The Haunting of Borley Rectory by Eric J. Dingwall, Kathleen M. Goldney & Trevor H. Hall (1956) which was published into a full book.
The first thing that needs to be said about the report, is that it was deliberately written and published after the death of Price, so he had no chance to defend himself against the allegations inside it. Both Eric Dingwall and Harry Price published some books together, they were friends. But Price and Dingwall fell out over a personal issue. Interestingly Trevor H. Hall later fell out with Dingwall.
Trevor H. Hall was the man who discredited absolutely every medium. Even documenting evidence that Florence Cook was in a sexual relationship with William Crookes, and that the entire Society of Psychical Research near it's foundations was riddled with prostitution and sexual affairs between it's researchers and it's mediums it investigated. I.e. by Frederic Myers, and even Frank Podmore and Edmund Gurney sleeping with young boys in Brighton. Read his books if you don't believe me. It seems back in the day or the big names of "psychic research" were sleeping around with various mediums. But Wu is happy to quote Trevor H. Hall. More cherry picking. If you are going to quote him, then quote all his research that exposed mediumistic frauds as well.
Contrary to what OM has written, Dingwall did not stay a member of CSIcop. He resigned, and Trevor H. Hall was never a member of CSIcop but was a brief former member of the SPR.
The report written by Dingwall, Goldney and Hall contains much speculation and false allegations against Price. One of these that Wu mentions is that he throwing stones allegation. But this allegation completely falls down when you read the paper published by SPR member Robert J. Hastings found online here entitled
Examination of the Borley Report:
http://www.harrypricewebsite.co.uk/Borley/PriceatBorley/Hastings/hastings-chapter1.htm
It was Charles Sutton (a journalist) who accused Price of throwing stones at Borley, but he did not personally observe Price throwing the stones and did not personally recover the supposed stones that he claimed had been thrown. He claimed this 20 years after it had happened. And oddly two years after it happened there were friendly letters sent between Price and Sutton and no mention of the stone incident. Both Price and Sutton remained friends until Price's death. Is this not suspect?
Futhermore, Sutton waited to publish the stone incident
after the death of Price. Is this not suspect? As a journalist he sold his information and Price had no chance of defending himself.
Obviously spiritualists such as Wu and OM hate Price because he uncovered the fraud of some of their mediums, so they have no interest in really looking into the allegations. If you honestly spend time looking into the allegations they break down, and they don't have a leg to stand on.
Wu writes:
Price was also deceptive about the evidence he used to denounce the medium Rudi Schneider. During his investigation of Schneider, Price used a system of stereo cameras with flashes to take pictures of movements made by the medium during seances. One picture, Price alleged, showed Schneider cheating during a seance. However, when viewed in stereo, the picture actually shows the medium couldn't have done what Price accused him of doing.
It's well known that Rudi Schneider was a fraud. The physicists Stefan Meyer and Karl Przibram caught Rudi freeing his arm in a series of séances, as did other researchers. That's what Rudi would do, he was an expert at freeing his hands and would then move objects in the dark séance room. His act would be complete when the lights were turned on and some gullible researchers were lead to believe that he had performed psychokinesis.
The Anita Gregory book that defends Scheider is a complete biased account of the facts. Gregory was a known gullible researcher, even claiming that that there may be some genuine paranormal phenomena at the Enfield Poltergeist incident. The entire Enfield Poltergeist was a fraud. See the article by investigator Joe Nickell:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/enfield_poltergeist
Back to Price and Rudi Schneider. The photograph was not a fraud. Admittedly it's not the best of photographs but it shows Rudi with his hand free.
After the photograph had been published scientists like Karl Przibram wrote to Price and said he had done good work, and that is what Schneider has done previously, escaping his hand from control.
There's also a photograph online which reveals a piece of cloth stuck to a wall that Rudi's brother Willi Schneider claimed was a spirit. Honestly search for it and you will laugh. You are defending complete frauds.
Even if the Price photograph did not exist, there's plenty of other negative evidence for the mediumship of Rudi. I suggest the paper
Further Tests of the Medium Rudi Schneider published by SPR members Theodore Besterman and Oliver Gatty.
Here's the abstract:
In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for October is published a further report on the alleged psychic phenomena occurring in the presence of the medium Rudi Schneider. Under the joint authorship of Mr. T. Besterman and Mr. O. Gatty, the paper describes an attempt to look for confirmation of the infra-red phenomena previously reported, and generally to conduct tests by instrumental means. As an example of the kind of methods to be used in experimental work with the so-called physical phenomena, the report seems to be a step in advance, and the results suggest that through such instrumental means a better idea of the nature of the phenomena may be obtained. Generally speaking, the present results were negative. The interruption of the infra-red rays as previously reported by Dr. Osty in Paris and by others in Great Britain received no confirmation, in spite of a series of careful observations; and through the help of of Dr. C. G. Douglas it was ascertained that the medium’s breathing, which was considered of sufficient interest to reproduce in a recent series of talks broadcast by the B.B.C., had nothing supernormal about it, being merely somewhat shallow and quite normal considering the muscular movements made by the medium during the trance. Thus the report as a whole contains no good evidence that Rudi Schneider possesses supernormal powers; and further controversy concerning the case can therefore be postponed until positive evidence is adduced based upon the kind of instrumental methods outlined in the present report.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v134/n3399/abs/134965c0.html
Yet OM and Wu ignore such papers as this. Anything negative for mediums and they will ignore it. That is not open minded. Both these spiritualists have written absurd comments defending the fraudulent medium Helen Duncan.
OM has written:
Harry Price who dodged the 1940s court case against Duncan to avoid being questioned about photographs.
But that is not true. Harry Price did not dodge the 1940s court case against Helen Duncan. He was there.
Please see the trial which was recorded in Helena Normanton The Trial of Mrs. Duncan Edited with a Foreward by C. E. Bechhofer Roberts, Jarrolds Publishers, 1945. The book can be found online. OM has ignored the book. In the trial a MR. ELAM was asked questions:
Q. Do you know anything about anybody called Harry Price, described as the honorary director of the National Laboratory of Psychic Research?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know him? A. I have met him. Q. Have you seen him anywhere in the vicinity of this court this morning?
A. Yes, he is right in front of me this morning, sitting right facing me.
OM writes:
The most authoritative book on the Duncan case is Maurice Cassier's "Medium On Trial".
In short NO it isn't! Manfred Cassier (1920-2003) was the author's name who was a spiritualist crackpot who believed UFOs and psychokinesis are related and the old testament had psychic revelations in it. See amazon for some of his crazy books on aliens. He was a spiritualist fundamentalist. There is a biography of Cassier here which described him as an animal abuser and "psychologically disturbed".
http://metastudies.net/genealogy/PS04/PS04_172.HTM
The only entirely "neutral" and most detailed book on Duncan is
Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches by the historian Malcolm Gaskill. You can personally contact Gaskill and he will tell you that the spiritualist conspiracy theories regarding Duncan have no leg to stand on.
OM has written regarding the puppet ectoplasm photographs of Helen Duncan;
These pseudoskeptics are using a photograph of unproven origin.
They are not from an unproven origin. The mask-like faces are obviously not spirits but made of cloth and other materials. A coat-hanger is visible on the shoulders of the right puppet. So the puppets in the photographs are fraudulent but the photograph itself is not fake. If OM had done some real research he would have discovered the origin of the photographs. They were not taken by Esson Maule or Harry Price.
The photographs can be traced to Dundee press photographer W. M. Scott who showed the photographs to Esson Maule at the Edinburgh Psychic College. Esson Maule later showed the pictures to J. B. McIndoe who borrowed the photographs from Scott. This is when the pictures became more wider known. This can be confirmed if you read page 153 in Hellish Nell by Malcolm Gaskill. But that isn't the full story.
The photographs were taken by a spiritualist called Harvey Metcalfe and they were taken in 1928 at the house of Duncan. The photographs
ARE Duncan.
Malcolm Gaskill in his book Hellish Nell (2001) states:
A great task lay ahead. Every Thursday, and sometimes twice a week, Helen laboured for many months to shape the diaphanous ectoplasm around otherwise invisible spirits, so that their sprawling and wobbling forms gradually grew in size and definition, thereby perfecting a performance which had been merely impressive but now became absolutely startling. Invitations were extended to selected guests. On numerous occasions in 1928, amateur photographer Harvey Metcalfe visited and, convinced by what he saw, arranged with the spirit guide Albert to take the earliest known flash photographs of the materialized spirits. As Walter had done. Albert gave directions and would not allow pictures to be taken until the medium was ready. Of about fifty glass positives taken by Metcalfe, a handful survive showing Helen sturdily seated, wearing a velour dress and a protective blindfold.
In his book,
The Story of Helen Duncan (1975), spiritualist Alan Crossley gives us more information on the photographs from Metcalfe with whom he was in contact with:
Mr Harvey Metcalfe, F.C.I.S., took a personal interest in Mrs Duncan’s mediumship and its development from the beginning and I am grateful to him for providing the four plates depicting some of the very first experimental materializations to manifest. It should be stressed, however, that these ectoplasmic formations do not represent deceased persons but are produced primarily as an exercise in manipulating and controlling the flow of ectoplasm from the medium
You can read it all here in this spiritualist journal
http://www.woodlandway.org/PDF/PP9.5May2013.pdf
This is hilarious. The spiritualists know that the ectoplasm photographs look so stupid and silly, so to try and get round it they say that they do not represent deceased person but were a practice exercise. Lol!
But the fact remains, OM is presenting an entirely different conspiracy theory that not even other spiritualists support. He's claiming the photographs are not Duncan at all!
OM futher writes that he believes seance sitter Esson Maule was in the puppet like photographs! And she was working with the British Intelligence or CIA to frame Duncan. His reasons seems to be because there were some reconstruction photographs. This is entirely false.
The reconstruction photographs did exist, but they were not taken of Duncan or during any "live" séance. They were taken to show the room location and layout of the events that took place
in January 1933 where Duncan was convicted of fraud in Edinburgh.
Esson Maule during the séance seized Duncan's "spirit guide" peggy and it was revealed to be a vest. This evidence was used against Duncan. Countless séance sitters witnessed it. There is no conspiracy here at all, the police used the vest as evidence. The reconstruction photographs that Maule took of the room have nothing to do with the photographs taken in a séance that depict the puppet like faces which were taken in 1928 by a different person. That is an entirely different series of events. Once again OM you have been mislead. There are 30 odd photographs taken by Harry Price that show Duncan with cheesecloth in his lab, Duncan's maid confessed about helping Duncan make her ectoplasm from cheesecloth and her husband confirmed he had hidden the ectoplasm. No conspiracy. Duncan was a fraud. End of story.
Wu writes:
In fact, Crookes knew of those accusations before he investigated the mediums and took measures to prevent fraud in his own investigations. In the case of Rosina Showers he exposed the medium as a fraud. In the case of Florence Cook he proved the medium genuine. Cook was accused of impersonating the spirit Katie King, but Cook differed from the materialized spirit in, height, age, weight, Florence Cook has a blister Katie lacked, Florence had pierced ears while Katie didn't and in fact both were seen together at the same time by numerous people.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection
Rosina Showers was exposed several times as a fraud, but not by Crookes. She was unmasked by in 1874 during a séance with Edward William Cox when a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit, the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers.
Rosina Showers, Florence Cook had both learnt their mediumship tricks from Frank Herne and Charles William (two other mediums who were caught in fraud). Both Florence Cook and Katie King were the same person, but she did use an accomplice on the last occasion.
The fact is, Florence Cook was repeatedly exposed as a fraud, before and after Crookes had investigated her. If you honestly believe that a spirit called "Katie King" existed then you have some sort of mental illness. It is delusion.
Here is what Joseph McCabe has written:
[William Crookes] ''accidentally" destroyed all the negatives and photographs he had taken of Katie King. He forbid friends, to whom he had given copies, ever to publish them. The three short letters he wrote to the Spiritualist (February 6, April 3, and June 5, 1874. I have, of course, read them) are now rare. He wrote them out of chivalry, because a rival Spiritualist, Volckmann (who married Mrs. Guppy), got admission to the Hackney sanctuary (by a present of jewellery) and exposed Florence (December 9, 1873). He saw at once that she was impersonating the spirit, and he seized it. Other Spiritualists present, supporters of Florrie, told him off, and turned out the lamp ; and five minutes later Florence was found, bound and peacefully entranced, in her cabinet... Spiritualists generally accepted her version, and she continued to make ghosts until 1880, when Sir George Sitwell and Baron von Buch exposed her in precisely the same way.
What can be said for Sir W. Crookes ? He alleges that the medium and the ghost were unmistakably different persons. Katie King was taller than Florrie. But Florence Cook, like her contemporary, Miss Showers, was seen to walk on tip-toe, and alter her stature, when she was the ghost. Sir W. Crookes nowhere says that he took the elementary precaution of measuring ghost and medium with their dresses drawn up to their knees.
Mr. F. Podmore saw the photographs which Professor Crookes took. He says that ghost and medium are the same person. Crookes himself was nervous, in spite of Florrie's charms, and he begged to be allowed to see ghost and medium plainly together. The artful Florence could not manage that in his house. Once she let him look at her, lying on the ground, but he saw no face or hands ; and a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots are not quite clearly a living person. He pressed again. Florence he tells us this very naively borrowed his lamp (a bottle of phosphorized oil) and tested its penetrating power, and then told him he should see both ghost and medium in her house. He went, and we are not surprised that he saw them.
On the last occasion Florence did use an accomplice. This is hilarious stuff.
If any Spiritualist of our time really doubts that on this occasion there were two girls, I invite him to read carefully Sir W. Crookes' s account of the famous farewell scene. Katie proclaimed that her mission was over (she had converted a scientific man), and this was to be her last appearance. Florrie (who was in a trance, of course) wept, vainly implored her to visit this earth again, and sank, broken-hearted, to the floor. Katie directed Crookes who stood, mute, with his phosphorus lamp in the middle of this pretty comedy to see to Florrie, and, when he turned round again, Katie King had vanished for ever. That is to say, she had not been re-absorbed in the medium's body, as Spiritualist theory demands, but had gone in the opposite direction while his back was turned!
Now there you have the most wonderful, classic, historic materialization in the whole Spiritualist history. It is attested by a distinguished man of science. It is endorsed by all the Spiritualist leaders of our time. And it is piffle from beginning to end.
The control was ridiculously inadequate. The imposture was palpable. If Sir W. Crookes had taken the scientific precaution of spreading a few tacks on the carpet, or waxing a bent pin in the ghost's chair, he would have heard the Hackney dialect at its richest. It was reserved for two Oxford undergraduates to show Sir W. Crookes how to investigate ghosts. They seized '' Marie," Florrie's next spirit, in 1880; and they found they had in their arms the charming Florence, in her lingerie. Crookes had never searched the ample black velvet dress she used to wear
None of this is mentioned by Wu or OM. It amazes me how people become duped into believing such nonsense.
Wu also fails to mention that William Crookes had been fooled by the stage mentalist/medium Ana Eva Fay. Fay revealed later confessed to fraud and revealed the tricks she had used. Crookes was very gullible and had been hoodwinked by many fraudulent mediums. Quoting Crookes, is not scientific evidence for anything paranormal. It is a worthless appeal to authority.
There are countless books out there which expose the tricks of the fraudulent mediums of that era written by scientists or researchers who were there, but unfortunately Wu and OM choose to ignore them, so they are promoting a biased view of the subject.
This is my last post on this thread and this forum, this thread will probably end up being buried. I have nothing against the Skeptiko forum or Open Mind. I merely have debunked some of the lies that they have spread. I am not a "skeptic" similar to my "heroes" Harry Price, Henry R. Evans or Hereward Carrington I believe some paranormal phenomena is genuine, just not physical mediumship which is clearly fraudulent. I doubt others will respond on this thread and they don't need to, not many people know about these matters. I have am finished here. Thanks all for your interest.
James.
More to follow.
