Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... Preface As a further contribution to psychic science I have written this work, which represents some of the results of my inquiries and personal research. In a former book, Seeing the Invisible, which his late Majesty King Edward was pleased to accept, I touched --among other studies--upon thought and spirit photography. Sir William Crookes, O.M., F.R.S., the distinguished savant, commended the book most favourably: -- It is written in a fair spirit which invites unbiassed criticism. The incidents related in it and the arguments put forward are such as to demand the careful attention of thoughtful men, and the author impartially points out some difficulties and discrepancies. In the present work I give a fuller and more complete record of spirit photography than was at all possible in the pages of Seeing the Invisible--I trust also in a fair spirit which invites careful reading before criticism. Spirit photographs, spirit portraiture, and spirit writings belong to the rarer phases of psycho-physics. They are either produced by the operations of Intelligences in the Invisible--through appropriate media-- or man possesses psychic faculties and powers which have not yet received the attention they demand. Spiritualists believe that spirits can be photographed. Experts--many of whom have never investigated--declare all spirit photographs fraudulent. To both my answer is: "The evidence does not support either hypothesis, but for the fact of spirit photography it is most conclusive." Many problems, puzzles, and difficulties met with in the course of investigation are clearly stated. I have, however, omitted all reference to the experiments of Dr Baraduc and the photographing of invisible radiations from radio-active bodies, and matters already...