Show sham spiritualism spirits and quack mediums shown up BLEDSOE ghosts shooks spooks and remarkable phenomenon jurod by Oun nine frauds after the repeated attempts to expose the devices of mediums in this country the question may be asked la the game worth the daudie has it done anything to dampen the faith of the large number of believers in spiritualism and has it hurt materially the business of tb professional mediums who coin money out of the credulity of their dupes these queries are prompted by the recent attempt of some investigators in san jose which turned out disastrously the medium was not caught and as the was held in a private house he has brought suit against the persons who broke up his communion with the alleged spirits the outcome of the suit will be watched with interest as it will bring out a nice distinction between stances in public places and in private rooms the business of exposing tho professional spiritualist mediums has been lively at times in this city and the exposures haye frequently been thorough and conclusive clu sive but they seemed to have no effect whatever on the true believers these people refused to credit the evidences of their senses and as in many trails of leaders ous doctrines the effort to convict merely served tomako more stalwart the faith and loyalty of the disciples perhaps the most notorious cause in this country in re cent years was the kattie king exposure in philadelphia this differed in no essentials from many similar cases in other cities save that the chief dupe was robert dale owen a man eminent as A thinker and writer one of the pur est minded and most unselfish of philanthropists when it was clearly demonstrated to him that the spirit about whose neck he had hung a gold chain and to whose words he had ascribed more than mortal truth and affection was merely an ordinary young woman the old man fell into a state of extreme melancholy which ended soon after in his death recently in kansas city a trial was conducted which throws much light on the difficulty of proving fraud even in the devices of the professional spiritualist and which also shows how large a body of be lievers may be raised up by a single medium provided he be a man of ability the kansas city spiritualist who was on trial was named mott he carried on the business of receiving communications from the spirit land and he charged a head for the privilege of attending his se ances he drove a good trade nd his meetings were made very interesting by a certain general bledsoe the ghost of a confederate brigadier choso whoso duty it was to bring up the spirits and introduce them to the audience one kansas city skeptic thought he saw the features of mott the medium in the countenance of the general and ho devised a scheme to make suspicion a certainty he provided himself with a syringe filled with red aniline dyo in solution of alcohol so that it would stick to any object then he got out a warrant for motts arrest and had a police manin waiting ready to rush in at ft given signal the eventful night arrived mott entered the cabinet the festive brigadier bledsoe appeared mr laws rence waa called to the window to talk with the of a departed friend while he was only about three feet away from the general he pulled his syringe and let fly at the spiritual roaster of ceremonies mr lawrence m bis testimony in courts eaid 1 I heard the aniline swash in hia face the door of the cabinet was held the police called in and the medium waa found lying on a sofa in an apparent stupor with one side of his face covered with the red dye the police and others who found tho medi the cabinet testified that he was badly broken up and one official naively declared that he called for whisky just like a little child a statement which throws new light on the tastes of the juvenile missourian the prosecution cution strengthened its case by the testimony of skeptics who had failed to get any satisfactory glimpses of dead relatives or who had seen the alleged spirits of more sisters churins and aunts than they ever possessed in the flesh what made the case most extra i ordinary however i was the course taken by the defenso def enao they explained the coloring of tho mediums face by the hypothesis that general bledsoe de materialized when be saw the syrino pulled and that tho consents intended for him struck the rear of the cabinet were deflected and thus hit the medium this WM ingenious ingen iou but it violated all known physical laws as badly as does spiritualism itself then they produced more than a score of witnesses who gave the strongest testimony in support of the mediums wonderful powers declaring that aby had conversed with tho shades of many dead friends that these spirits related incidents which could never have come to the knowledge of the medium and chaj they were thorough ly convinced of hia honesty as well as of the genuine value of spiritual ism some of the witnesses were illiterate but tho majority were very intelligent people and one was a judge in good standing wh ogave many facts of hia own experience to show that his belief was not founded on mere illusion when the evidence waa all in the judge dismissed the charge frankly admitting that he was unable to reconcile the testimony and did not feel like taking the responsibility lity of convicting under such circumstance so the case ended as most of these inquiries have ended with no substantial gain on either side and no advance made in the direction of clearing up one of the greatest mysteries which human mind recently a case of alleged spiritual manifestations which called for systematic investigation ha come to light near the town of mill ville in shasta county A farm house there has been the scene of remarkable phenomena stones have been thrown into the rooms furniture moved the hats of vist tors twitched off their heads and cast outdoors out doors in a word all the old stock tricks have been used to mystify the neighbors and prove unseen influence is at work no investigation worthy of the name was made for some time or the au thor of these tricks would have been discovered the fact that one of the small girls of the family has been selected as the special subject of the man infestations ife led the skeptic to the conclusion that she had been well trained for the work As it was the ghost or afook created a great sensation among the country folks and the stories of the strange happenings were exaggerated by every narrator finally the little girl was detected throwing stones and sticks and performing other tricks which had amazed the visitors to the house so ends the latest spiritualistic sensa tion which promised to add another chapter to the many well authentic bated cases of haunted houses with phenomena which have puzzled experts in the occult sciences S F chronicle |