Only came upon this site today,check out these photos of materialisations.....For you sceptics remember that all these photo's were taken under strict laboratory conditions and in the prescence of the best scientific minds of the early 1900's.
Also remember that they come from all round the world and show extraordinary similarities in method and form.

This is the best site i've ever seen on this subject...enjoy..!

http://pennyforum.netfirms.com/phy/phy_menu.html

It was Crookes, wasn't it, who not only had an affair with the medium he was supposed to be investigating, but also borrowed money from her husband?

Some say this was said to discredit his work....but say it's true what about the rest from around the world...also Crookes never worked alone and always had other scientists there to verify his work..........

Am I alone in thinking that the "ectoplasm" looks like cheesecloth and the photos look horribly fake?

I'll say, it looks very bad, but however they were taken with old cameras in which never did have much detail, nor color, so who knows. I kinda dont beleive alot of older pictures due to the fact that the cameras failed easier and had alot less details than nowdays.

Have a read of the stories that go with the pictures......when i started looking at these i also said they look really really fake.....but all these well known scientists got involved to disprove the whole thing and ended up being more convinced than anyone.......and even though it was the black and white era and science was still young this didn't make them any less stupid or sceptical....
If you do any kind of research on this you will see that these scientists were the big boys or the Stepehen Hawkings of their day.
I do believe that a lot if not most of these "mediums" were fake but when you look at the conditions under which these ones were tested you have to think ....mebbe theres something to this.

No, you are not the only one Fluffy. Why are they all wearing a sheet ? They didn't have clothes ? I think they are fake. I do belive in ghost but those are fake.

If they were the real deal, then why aren't mediums still doing this today, when we have the photographic equipment to get better records of their feats? I think if you want to look to the early twentieth century for convincing evidence of the paranormal, you'd do better to read the Cross Correspondences.

I did read the stories to go along with each of the photos, but it still was not enough to convince me that these are anything but frauds. Just as a magician can shackle himself and do incredible things while apparenly handcuffed, so can these folks.

The fact that the photos look faked with cheesecloth and white sheets aside; it appears to me that the assumption is that the medium being restrained would help to prevent any trickery. Who says that the mediums were working alone?

Mediums made a great deal of money at the time of the spiritulism movement in the late 19th and early 20th century, as they do today(i.e. John edwards). Considering the huge sums of money at stake there seems to be more than enough motive to trick people into believing their skills.

Having not been around at the time of the photos, I can only go by what I see; and that is what appears to be people in white sheets and mediums with cheesecloth coming out of different orifices.(The reason I say cheesecloth is that many mediums that were caught faking "ectoplasm" were found to be using it.)

It looks fake. ectoplasm was all the rage in that period of time until it was debunked as being faked and then the frauds moved on to other tricks. People of the time had not seen anything like it, so they were stunned and amazed. As the crowds became more sophisticated, so did the mediums. It still goes on today.

Lonecat here,

I think the website is interesting enough but the photographs look too dubious for me to pass a definite opinion. I must say the "apparitions" DO look as if they are dressed in cheese cloth or "butter muslin" as we used to call it. All the "ghosts" seem to wear the same costume. The "ectoplasm" looks like cotton-wool to me. I am also surprised that an apparition needs to push the curtain aside in order to enter the séance room. I'm not saying the pictures are fake but in order to be convinced of their reality I'd have to have been present at the séance. A movie of the event would be a good substitute but I don't think there were many movie cameras around at the time. Lonecat

Havent checked for sure yet but I vaguely recall that Margery Mina Crandon, a.k.a. Mina Stinson was exposed as a fake by Harry Houdini and as a result died in poverty.

Teddy.

Thanks for the laugh .

Those photo's are ever worse than the photoshopped ones. Strict laboratory conditions doesn't mean squat. All it means is that esteemed minds decided to make a great hoax, and could get away with it.

There has been many hoaxs put on by the Soviet scientiffic community. Look them up. Some of them are hilarios!

These are fakes and there is much evidence to prove this including the people involved admitting it.

Mediums during this period regurgitated muslin and used other tricks. All the photos look fake to me.


http://www.prairieghosts.com/ectoplasm.html