MEDIUMS ARRESTED.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 10 November 1925, Page 9

MEDIUMS ARRESTED.

FRAUDS EXPOSED BY A WOMAN. NEW YORK, Sept. 18. Fourten mediums have been arrested on charges of fraud and will be brought for trial before the Indiana Circuit Court iu consequence of investigations of Miss Virginia Swain, a woman journalist, into the methods ol Camp Chester Held, the largest psychic community m America. . . , Two- thousand believers m spiritualism tried to attack Miss Swain, ciying, “Lynch her,” while the arrests were being made. The news that she had revealed suspicious methods or tne mediums leaked out among the spiritualist leaders a few days before the arrests were made, and her room at Chesterfield was searched. She had, however, previously sent lieu evidence, in the form of notes and photographs, out of the camp. WIDESPREAD. The spiritualist cult in the United States is widespread in certain classes of the community. So-called “camps are held in many parts of the country, at which the Spiritualists gather to hear reports from mediums. Spiritualist “camps’’ have been held for thirty-five years at Chesterfield, Indiana, "the mediums living in tents or other portable coverings and producing phenomena for certain fiexibe charges. Miss Swain -attended the camp, announcing herself to be a school-teacher desiring to- meet the spirit of her dead brother, a fictitious person. She found her make-believe brother’s spirit, and in addition she encountered the spirit of her dead grandmother, who is not dead, discovered a voodoo witch doctor who offered to sell her the soul s of dead Indians, to protect her from cancer, bought photographs of spirits of men, dogs and cats and as her culminating experience was allowed to communicate directly with heaven by a medium versed in ventriloquism, who held a tin horn as the transmitter of a celestial wireless telephone. NO SUBIxETY. Miss Swain, according to her story, was much disappointed at finding no sublety in the methods of the mediums. They engaged only in common trickery, she asserts, and of such a nature that a. child of ten ought to have been able to detect it. She found that male spirits seldom materialised at the spiritualistic seances, although female ones came quite often. Thi s maybe due, she thinks, to the possibility that trousers are hard to put on in the narrow space of the cabinet used by the mediums. Miss Swain’s fictitious brother appeared at a seance in a long black robe with a white shirt front and tie. He asked whether “sister” saw his tie, the medium apparently believing that this article of masculine adornment would have a convincing effect. “Brother” told “sister” to “tell mother I’ll be there”; “brother” answered: “In the home to comfort her.” Then, with a final query whether “sister” saw his tie, “brother” vanished, touching “sister’s” head with “his” hands in parting blessing. SONG AND SOUNDS. To the spiritnalistis believer s present it seemed as if “brother” had melted into the air, but Miss Swain says she heard a creaking within the cabinet, suggesting that someone was hastily changing apparel. Sunflower, th© child spirit guide of the medium, cried out for the circle to sing a hymn, and the spiritualists sang “Tiff we’meet again,” thereby, says Miss Swain, covering the commotion in the cabinet. After several weeks of similar experiences, Miss Swain considered that she possessed sufficient evidence of deception, and the arrests followed. The trial will carry before the American court s the question of commercialising spiritualism, and' the result may cause a reform among spirtualists themselves, wherebv licenses may be granted only to mediums who do not seek to make money out of their trances.