"PSYCHIC LIGHTS" COMEDY

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17810, 9 July 1923, Page 11

"PSYCHIC LIGHTS" COMEDY

♦ ELECTRIC TRAP FOR MEDIUM. NEW YORK, May 29. New York is smiling broadly to-day at the results of an investigation into psychic phenomena conducted by the "Scientific American," which on the occasion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's recent lecturing tour, offered prizes amounting to £IOOO to mediums able to satisfy certain tests. The chief candidate for the prizes was George Valentine, of Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, who has frequently produced" the "psychic lights" described by fciir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the request of the medium tests were made amid darkness so intense that it wsa impossible for the judges even to sea their own hands. Unknown to Valentine, however, the chair he occupied rested upon an electrical contrivance which ignited a bulb in the adjoining room the moment it was vacated. By means of a dictaphone and a stop-watch an observer posted thero was able to record the exact time and the text of every utterance by the "spirits" evoked by Valentine.

Tho record shows that, concealed by darkness, Valentine vacated the chair 15 times in tho course of the seance. His chair was always vacant when the "psychic lights" appeared, when voices wove heard in different parts of the darkened room, or when those present felt on their faces and heads tho uncanny touch of ghostly hands.