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This photograph taken by the eminent physicist and chemist Sir
William Crookes, using
magnesium light, is
perhaps the most crucial.
Critics
often attempt to explain away materialisations by claiming the medium
and the materialised form are the same person, i.e. the medium
impersonates different individuals
by using an array of costumes, accents, etc. This photograph suggests
otherwise. Both the medium and the materialised figure can be seen at
the same time - demonstrating they were two separate entities.
Crookes said in his book Researches into the Phenomena of
Modern Spiritualism "... it was a common thing for the seven
or eight of us in the laboratory to see Miss Cook and Katie at the same
time, under the full blaze of the electric light".
Having entered into a
trance state, the medium Florence Cook (left) has slumped from
the couch over the arm of the chair. The towering ectoplasm shape behind
her is just beginning to compress into a fully materialised form. She
called herself "Katie King". |
