“PSYCHIC LIGHTS” COMEDY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18822, 12 July 1923, Page 9

“PSYCHIC LIGHTS” COMEDY

ELECTRIC TRAP FOR MEDIUM NEW YORK, June 1. New York is smiling broadly today at the results of an investigation into psychic phenomena conducted by the Scientific American, which on the occasion of Sir Arhtur Conan Doyle’s recent lecturing tour, offered prizes amounting to £l,OOO to mediums able to satisfy certain tests. The chief candidate for the prizes was George Valentine, of Wilkes, barre, Pennsylvania, who has frequently produced the “psychic lights” described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the request of the medium, tests were made amid darkness so intense that it. was impossible for the judges even to see their own hands. Unknown to Valentine, however, the chair occupied rested upon an electrical contrivance which ignited a bulb in the adjourning room the moment it was vacated. By means of a dictaphone and a stop-watch an observer posted there was able ‘to record the exact time and the text of every utterance by the “spirits” evoked by Valentine. The record shows that, concealed by darkness, Valentine vacated the chair 15 times in the course of the seance. His chair was always vacant when the “psychic lights” appeared, when voices were heard in different parts of the darkened room, or when those present felt on their faces and heads the uncanny touch of ghostly hands.