The Creationist at the Séance Table: A Young Earther Visits Koons' Spirit Room

Work continues on the big talking tables book. For the last few months, the wheels have been spinning in the sand of 1853. It really is amazing just how much this year changed the entire dialogue of Spiritualism. 1848 will always, of course, get all the credit as Spiritualism's birthday, but it is 1853 when things truly start happening. The Year Ghosts Broke, as it were. 

The tables tournantes phenomenon hits Germany in March, then France by the summer, making tipping tables a bonafide worldwide phenomenon. The bandwagoneer mediums without the talents for rapping start finding mechanical means to circumvent their shortcomings.  For the tech-junkies, it's also the first year we have real cooperative-communication apparatus: Wagner's Psychograph, Hornung's Emanulector, and Pease's Spiritual Telegraph Dial. Dr. Robert Hare starts to make his turn toward Spiritualism. The planchette is born. John Murray Spear tries to spark the Second Coming with his New Motive Power. And, of course, Jonathan Koons and John Tippie construct their spirit rooms, which birthed entirely new species of phenomenon--dark séances, physical manifestation and spirit-speaking through trumpets--as well as their "Spiritual Machines" in the spirit-designed tables used as conduits for John King and his tribe of discarnate entities (King himself being another enduring "first" to be put to use by subsequent generations of mediums. The remaining phenomena were also liberally borrowed by the Davenports).

While trying to figure out a good narrative flow for a smorgasbord of events that all pretty much happen at once, I ran across an interesting snippet from the Ohio Spirit Rooms' waning days. Found in the November 19, 1855 Cleveland Leader, the account provides an interesting paradox, and is particularly fitting given the recent and widely-viewed evolution vs. creationism debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. In this case, the correspondent is only designated as "G," and while in Athens County on private business, sought out the Tippie spirit room to experience the reported phenomenon for himself.

He wasn't impressed. In fact, he found the Tippies wholly unprepared to host his party, being told that "the spirits had left" to the extent that no manifestations would be forthcoming that night. Something did manifest in G's quarters on the Tippie farm that evening, however. Fleas. And bedbugs. Armies of them. So, the following day, after a "breakfast fully in keeping with their lodgings," off to Koons went G, intent on seeing his manifestations at one farm or another.

Koons was able to deliver. But the agitated party of Mr. G. came prepared with skepticism, though he claimed he was not previously "prejudiced toward Spiritualism." After a thorough criticism of Koon's fiddle "hoe down" and the other presented phenomenon--Mr. G. keenly compares the distances most physical manifestations involved, measured against the length of outstretched arms of mediums perched on a centrally-located table in the room's small confines--Mr. G. turned his ire toward the spirit guide John King himself. His skepticism was either voiced in mid-seance or merely palpable: his party was not allowed to touch the manifest spirit-limbs, and one or more may had been hit on the head with a floating tambourine. Once the tin "dinner-horn" began issuing the "sharp, shrill" voice of John King, the spirit informed the party of his usual biography--that he was 14,500 years old--and became somewhat hostile toward the sitters themselves:

Koons: "Why King, you have a band of very mischievous spirits with you tonight, have you not?"

King: "Yes, mischievous spirits for mischievous folks."

Spectator: "That's right! You've hit it, you're some!"

King: "Yes, we're some, and here's at it."

And it's here that the focused retort to King's posturing reveals an interesting Creationist in the midst of the Spiritualists.

Mr. G: "Grave conversation for an individual who professes to have existed 8,500 years before an account given of the creation of the world in an old, attenuated, dilapidated, and superannuated book called the Bible..."

It is striking, I think, in its specificity. By the numbers, Mr. G believes in an Earth only 6,000 years old, putting him firmly in the Earth-Age-Calculation-by-Genesis-Generations camp. Given the current state of American news media, the exposure of such Creationist views these days are fairly well-known. But in 1855, Young Earth theories have largely disappeared with the onslaught of the scientific revolution, which among Protestants largely pushed the theories toward more reasonable Old Earth Creationism that relied on Biblical metaphorical interpretations. We still have around 60 years before George McReady Price's The New Geology shows up on the landscape, 45 years before the early 20th-century rise of Christian Fundamentalism marked by the opening of Riley's Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School, and over 100 years before Morris' current-zeitgeist-shaping The Genesis Flood and subsequent Institute for Creation Research rose to cultivate the current generation of fundamentalists' thinking. 

It isn't that Young Earthers were extinct during the period, or that adherents had yet to evolve toward that belief. But they were exceedingly rare, and Mr. G's appearance there in Ohio is noteworthy and deserves observation. It isn't particularly telling of anything in particular, but it is interesting, at least, and so we put it here, tiny web-based bookmark in place, to let you do with the information as you will.

Stay tuned for much, much more on the Koons and Tippie spirit rooms. I've initiated an ambitious  project to seek out the original locations in order to visit and document the sites, and have been blessed with the kind assistance of two branches of Koons descendants to aid me in the search, with some startling revelations along the way. The dialogue--and the credit that Koons and Tippie deserve--is shifting back to their favor, and I intend to cement it there, the best I can, in the pages of my book. Eyes ever open, dear readers. 

The Man Who Knows: Alexander's Luminous Ouiji

Readers will recognize the "Man Who Knows" byline as a reference to the famous magician Claude Alexander Conlin, better known as just "Alexander" or "the Crystal Seer."  My website has a page dedicated to him, and I've long been on the search for his publishing company's long-lost product, the "Alexander's Original Luminous Ouiji Divining Board."

Alexander produced a number of spirit-related items, including spirit trumpets, spirit slates, a rapping hand, and his aforementioned "ouiji" board. We knew about the item from contemporary advertisements--predominantly a sales sheet--and from it, we knew we actually weren't looking for a true talking board per se: we were looking for a writing planchette, with a talking board accessory.

We looked. And looked. I even remember how collectors' hearts jumped when a poorly-considered fake once popped up at auction. That sparked me to post a more reasonable facsimile to try to get the right kind of exposure to the item, which, in the end, helped significantly.  Because now--finally--we have it! I am the man who knows. That is, I know what Alexander's lost product, the rare and elusive Luminous Ouiji, looks like. And now, so will you.

The family that owns this incredible device recently contacted me to share it. It has been a treasured heirloom for 3 generations, and it has an amazing story to tell. For matters of privacy and at the request of the family, I've changed all their names, but they know who they are, and I want to take the opportunity to thank them publicly for all of their help and kind assistance--without people like them willing to share their history, that history becomes lost, and I'm so glad this story was entrusted to me. A thousand times "Thank you."

Given the mythological implications, I think it fitting that we owe the planchette's survival to three sisters. The trio lived in Nampa, Idaho--a religious community called "New Jerusalem" by its early settlers, who were mostly farmers. Nampa wasn't a metropolis by any stretch of the imagination, but it became an important railroad town when multiple lines converged in the area beginning in the 1880s. With the railroad came money--particularly from the gold and silver mining boom of nearby Silver City, Idaho--and the influx justified the building of Nampa's famously-fancy train depot as well as the extravagant Dewey Palace Hotel, built in 1902.

The family homestead, built around the turn of the century, which hosted decades of talking board séances.

Newly prosperous communities attract new settlers, of course, and as the clock turned on a new century, a young woman--Anya--traveled to Nampa, where her family wintered their sheep herd. There, she met her soon-to-be husband, a young farm laborer named Roy, recently transplanted from Iowa. They married and settled in what would become the family's multi-generational homestead, with Roy building the house with the help of his father and 2 brothers. Nan, their eldest sister, was born first in 1904. She was followed by Margaret two years later and, finally, the youngest, Gran, in 1912. Anya left Roy when little Gran was only 3 weeks old, and from then on would have only an intermittent presence in the young girls' lives. With their father working as a carpenter and mail carrier for the US government, the trio largely raised themselves, with 6-year-old Margaret calling little Gran her "baby." The resulting bonds that grew between the sisters were understandably strong.

The Sisters: Nan, Margaret, and Gran.

From family accounts and the historical record, the sisters seem both fiercely independent for the age, and unswervingly devoted to their larger family demesne. It was a different age, and the close-knit sisters did not ever stray long or far from the homestead, which through the decades remained the epicenter of the sister's lives. The house was conveniently-located, after all. Except for Gran's stint as a clerk at a dry-goods store, the trio even worked together just a few blocks from the home at the local telephone exchange beginning in the late 1920s, which was notably housed in the Dewey Palace Hotel. In burgeoning Nampa, the sisters walked everywhere from that house, so much so that Nan wouldn't even bother with a driver's license until 1957! When Gran married in the 1930s, her husband moved in with her into the home, though they eventually relocated to begin their own family. Around the same time, the middle sister, Margaret, married briefly, and while she lived with her husband's family for a short time on their nearby farm, she eventually returned to the family homestead with her daughter. Like Margaret, Nan married only briefly but had no children, and she would herself live in the house until she passed away in the 1980s.

And at some point between those walls, intermingled with life's trials and tribulations, an interest in communicating with the other side took hold.

The sisters had a knack for communications of all kinds--here they are among the crew of the telephone exchange housed in the Dewey Palace Hotel, just a few blocks from their home, about 1929 or 1930. That's Nan standing far left, Margaret standing center, and Gran seated second from left. The family claimed two of those chairs when the exchange disposed of them, and, like Alexander's Ouiji, they became treasured heirlooms and the favored bar seats in the family home!

It is unknown exactly when the three sisters turned toward Spiritualism, though according to family lore, their interest in séances began in the 1920s, and it is thought they were attending a group or circle that sparked their home explorations into conversations with the other side. The sisters were all coming of age then--Nan and Margaret were teenagers in 1920--and were likely were swept up by the national upsurge of interest in fortune-telling and the supernatural (Nan also owned tarot, for example) following the Great War. The period marked a spike in the popularity of Ouija boards, most famously manifested by Rockwell's zeitgeist-capturing moment featured on the May 1, 1920 cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It certainly follows a regional pattern--in nearby Boise, in particular, the newspaper record shows séances became quite popular in the early 1890s with the Ouija's first craze, and interest in the supernatural in the area seems to conform to national ebb-and-flow right up through the 1960s.

It is similarly unknown where the sisters acquired their distinctive (and now quite rare) Alexander Luminous Ouiji Divining Board. At the very least, it seems an obscure choice. But if the sisters' interest in séances waxed in the 1920s, it was during the height of Alexander's touring career, and the family speculates that one sister or another may have even attended one of his shows, though it is unknown if the board might have been acquired there or if they were even offered for sale as part of his touring set. But it is known that beginning in 1919, Alexander had his C. Alexander Publishing Company in Los Angeles, which sold all manner of Spiritualist, New Thought, astrological, and esoteric texts through both his storefront and mail order. His offerings included, of course, his "Luminous Ouiji Divining Board," and the sisters are equally as likely to have purchased the device through mail order.

Alexander's ad for his "Original Luminous Ouiji Divining Board"
Image courtesy http://vintagemagician.blogspot.com

However the sisters acquired the set, it was a cherished item, and the three took up its enthusiastic use. The planchette was said to have responded best to the youngest sister, Gran, who appears to also have been the most enthusiastic user. Her older sister Nan kept "5-year" journals that included accounts of séances and the messages they received, which unfortunately have not survived. The board's use was not equated with diabolism in any way, but rather spiritualism, and family members recall the communicators identifying themselves as deceased ancestors.Then as now, the family had an ease and matter-of-factness with use of the board very hard to find in post-Exorcist days when the Ouija has taken on a more complicated persona.

The talking board was no passing fad, either. The sisters continued using the board enthusiastically for decades, and even the next generation took on the board's use, with its current owner (Gran's daughter) and her cousins fondly recalling talking board sessions under her mother's watchful eye, where it was "around their whole lives." Gran's daughter was the most talented user of the new generation, and shared with me that her very unique name was even given to her mother when she asked the ouiji board what her new daughter should be named! And when she was older--particularly in her high school years--she sat with Gran to consult the Ouiji on matters of life and love. As the family grew larger and more spread out, the board stayed with Nan in the family home, and when she passed away 40 years ago, the board was inherited by her niece--Gran's daughter--who occasionally indulged in its use with her own family, and says her eldest daughter works it well herself. Of course, such generational details are a rare treat for us talking board historians, and I appreciate the family sharing their family's history with the device so openly.

I've been engaging in a bit of self-debate of the device's classification. Alexander's ads emphasize the automatic-writing properties of the planchette, with the main focus being on that part of the device, and the included alphabet card being the secondary or backup use of the item. Even a casual reading of original advertisements shows that the device referred to as the "luminous ouiji divining board" or just "board" is always the planchette itself. The planchette holds the luminous component (earlier assumptions were that the alphabet sheet held the dot), the planchette does the divining, and, well, it is a board, after all, but not in the sense that we've come to assume with the focus of ouija and talking boards being the alphabet component itself, and not the index or pointer. The talking board component is only referred to as the "diagram" in the ads, which downplays its significance. In that sense, Alexander's product is more akin to the British planchettes like Weyers Bros, Two Worlds, and Glevum Games' "Mysterious Planchette," all of which were marketed and sold as planchettes, but included fold-out alphabet or message sheets and removable indexes to replace the pencil when pointing was preferred.

Semantics? Only slightly, and I think in this case, Alexander's plain intention and the focus of the planchette over the alphabet board, not to mention its assumed use, put it fairly in both talking board and planchette camps, but inarguably tilted toward the side of automatic writing. However, whatever the manufacturer's intention as to their product's main mode of use, the sisters' use was quite the opposite, and no family members recall any sort of automatic writing attempts with the board. So there's that.

All that remains: the complete Alexander set.

Which goes a long way toward explaining the set's current condition. Even well-used talking boards tend to stay in relatively fair shape throughout the years, suffering, at most, warping or wood separation from humidity or lacquer wear.  But despite the board's wooden tray, the overlaid card itself is only heavy paper, and the years have understandably not been kind. Many of the letters--and all of the numbers--have worn away with the passing of the planchette for decades, and tape was added over the years to repair tears and other damage, and now obscures much of the board.

Even in its heavily-damaged state, the alphabet card reveals its secrets. Its layout is typical of most talking boards: a double rowed of arched letters (plus an ampersand), with a straight line of numerals beneath. Below that, there's the misspelled "Good-By" just above the board's full name in small font. The upper left corner has Alexander's famous turbaned headshot, while the upper right has a nice crescent moon. And the lower corners contain some unique messages: "Lucky Star" and "Misfortune Brewing." All in all, a fairly typical talking board design.

The tray's backside

The tray is an interesting inclusion. The ads do not directly describe it, and its mentions of the "board" refer instead to the luminous planchette which was Alexander's focus with the set. Alexander calling the alphabet component a "diagram" in the ads didn't seem to indicate the inclusion of a "hard" item like the frame. We surmised at first that the tray might have been built by the sister's father to frame the diagram card, though the family was quick to say that was an impossibility--Roy was very superstitious of the board and did not approve of its use, so was unlikely to have built such a tray. In addition, the advertisements do show a similar tray in the illustrations as a bed for sheets of automatic writing, so it seems more likely that the tray was part of the original set, which could have come with interchangeable blank sheets and the alphabet card.

The core of the set--the planchette itself--is full of surprises. The lithographed top is pretty much what was expected from the ad's description and illustration. It turns out the luminous dot is not on the alphabet diagram as had been previously assumed, but instead right there where Alexander's turban's crystal is, though the family reports it has not glowed in quite a number of years. This is a characteristic of long-faded radium paint, of which this dot is most likely painted. The same substance shows up on many of the luminous bands of period spirit trumpets, and was popular for the characteristic glow that helped illuminate the objects in darkened seance chambers. The care and storage of such devices with our modern knowledge of radioactive substances is something we should take seriously in these cases (and reflect precautions we've taken here in the Mysterious Planchette archives with some of our luminous bands), though there are no reports of any of the sisters glowing like the famed Radium Girls, so that's good to hear. Be careful around that stuff, folks.

What's underneath is even more revealing. There is no pencil aperture, but rather an ingenious design that incorporated a pencil in the hollow of the leading leg. Like the alphabet card, the planchette has suffered significant damage. Years of use on the papered top have worn the lithograph significantly, and the luminous dot glob is held on by tape. An unfortunate chew-toy session by the family puppy in the 1970s destroyed one leg and damaged the others, though the family recalls an important facet of the device now lost to too much puppy-love: there was a removable "foot" that plugged into the front leg to even it up with the others when the pencil was removed, and that plug, along with the rear feet, once had those all-important felt coverings.

So that solved the mystery of the illustration's lack of pencil aperture protruding from the planchette's top, and the only notable inaccuracy of the facsimile I'd posted on my page a few years ago--though it turned out to be an important facet in confirming the planchette's identity and bringing the family to me. 

Castor leg detail

Overall, it's an amazing--and amazingly rare--find. As of right now, and until other discoveries come to light, it's the sole survivor. The fact that it has such an incredible and treasured provenance makes its rediscovery all the more satisfying, and I wish I could reach back through the ages to ask those three vivacious sisters all about what the items said to them, even as I thank their daughter and grandson for all of their help in telling their story. It's a fantastic find, and I'm glad to hear it's treasured status as an heirloom. It couldn't be a more special or loved device, and that's rare for a talking board these days. Thank you, thank you.

1854: Dickens & the Psychograph

From Charles Dickens, writing to Rev. James White from the Tavistock House on March 7, 1854:

Mrs._________ has gone stark mad—and stark naked—on the spirit-rapping imposition. She was found t'other day in the street, clothed only in her chastity, a pocket-handkerchief, and a visiting-card. She had been informed, it appeared, by the spirits, that if she went out in that trim she would be invisible. She is now in a madhouse, and, I fear, hopelessly insane. One of the curious manifestations of her disorder is that she can bear nothing black. There is a terrific business to be done, even when they are obliged to put coals on her fire. 

_________  has a thing called a Psycho-grapher, which writes at the dictation of spirits. It delivered itself, a few nights ago, of this extraordinarily lucid message : 

"x., y., z!"

upon which it was gravely explained by the true believers that "the spirits were out of temper about something." Said _________ [MP: don't you just LOVE those Victorian privacy parameters???] had a great party on Sunday, when it was rumoured "a count was going to raise the dead." I stayed till the ghostly hour, but the rumour was unfounded, for neither count nor plebeian came up to the spiritual scratch. It is really inexplicable to me that a man of his calibre can be run away with by such small deer.

A propos of spiritual messages comes in Georgina, and, hearing that I am writing to you, delivers the following enigma to be conveyed to Mrs. White : —

"Wyon of the Mint lives at the Mint."

Feeling my brain going after this, I only trust it with loves from all to all."

Wagner is, of course, in London around this time, attempting to gain footing with Psychograph sales where it seems he failed in Berlin:

Psychograph ad, Morning Post, February 7, 1854, exactly 1 month prior to Dickens' letter.

 

1868: A Planchette Miscellany

E. Stuart Phelps, writing in the November, 1868 Indiana School Journal:

"In the winter of '67-8 the uncanny looking word sprang into very black advertisements in our American cities; and to-day a counter without Planchette is a fossil. They trundle in the windows of the tract-house and tobacco stores, dance among opera scores and Sunday school books—heart-shaped Planchettes, square Planchettes, Planchettes for eight dollars and Planchettes for fifty cents, Planchettes of walnut, ash, mahogany, gutta percha, tin, glass,—Planchettes on pegs, coils and pentagraph wheels.

Planchette confront you at dancing parties and in the minister's study, in the drawing room and in the "settin' room"—is a substitute fur the weather and Charles Dickens in the "social circle"—and the end thereof who can tell?

Like most, discoveries, in is eminently simple. Why did nobody ever think to stick a pencil through a little board before?"

If it's a checklist, we've a ways to go. Still on the lookout for a square planchette, and one of tin. To date, a pegged planchette from the era has remained elusive, as has one on coils. 

New & Improved: The Lost Tuttle Psychograph

A trio of Tuttles--the Hodge, Orlando, and MacNeil specimens.

As far as my records show, there are six known surviving Tuttle Psychographs. First invented by Hudson Tuttle around 1880, his Tuttle Publishing Company produced his "dial planchette" in an extraordinarily long run, as it was still advertised as late as 1915--five years after Tuttle's passing. And we know that the Psychic Observer offered Tuttle Psychographs for sale as late as 1949, though whether these were leftover/NOS at the time or newly-made replicas still remains to be seen.

The most unusual thing about the six specimens is the tremendous amount of variation between them. I've spent months staring at the pictured Psychographs and the other three known survivors, and rely on a set of distinguishing markers in an attempt to trace the device's evolution. There's the font, which differs wildly from the smaller, more precise font of the Hodge specimen to the wide, bold font of the Orlando specimen with its unique sweeping tail on the "A." There are variations of the circle on which the letters sit: either one line or two lines, but at least two specimens with breaks in the printing that might serve to assign them similar dates. Some specimens have other weird print variations--the Psychic Observer ad, for example, shows unusual spacing between "W  XYZ," and the "Don't Know" is italicized and misaligned--properties which show up on at least one recently-discovered surviving specimen. There's an inverse-printed model with dark paper and light letters, and variations in the wood and shape used for the wheel. And the comparative starting point of the "A" relatively to the board's bottom is always different between models--9-o'-clock on one, 10-o'-clock on another. Such variations are easily picked out in the pictures above, and there are many.

And don't even get me started on the instructions printed on the boards' backs. They differ way more wildly than the front print, and present a whole new set of clues and comparisons to analyze.

Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1889

There's more forensic analysis to take place there, for sure, particularly cross-referencing the advertised prices, which fluctuated almost as much as the design: from $1.00 post paid, to $1.00 plus .12 cents postage, to $1.25, to $2.50, with the prices printed on the back of each Psychograph. And the price doesn't necessarily increase over time, and can be demonstrated to actually be the opposite. So we should be able to correlate ads with specimens given enough data. A recent ad discovery, for example, containing the same base price and shipping printed on the board, along with the same endorsements printed in both the ad and the board's back, may place the Psychograph in the Mysterious Planchette collection, pictured far left in the trio pic above, at 1887, when it looks the more modern of the three and was even once suspected to be a 1949 model due to the general clean condition, modern-ish font, and lack of wear. And, of course, any of these could be the 1949 model, and depending on how closely the replica hewed to the original, or whether or not it was new-old-stock, we'd never really know without further evidence.

The Psychograph in use.

We'll keep on the trail and report back in. Lots of variations, and too many holes in the data to be sure right now. At least I have one good-looking spreadsheet.

But forensics on the surviving Tuttles aren't exactly what inspired today's post. It's the forensics of the non-surviving Psychograph that has my attention this morning.   

Thanks to the IAPSOP, we've known about the "new attachment" to the Psychograph for some years now, and without a surviving model to compare, the descriptions have been difficult to decipher. Take, for instance, the December 3, 1887 Religio-Philosophical Journal's letter from Tuttle himself explaining the new addition to the Psychograph:

So, we've got "an extra alphabet be placed on one half of the revolving table [the top disk]," and a "stationary index placed so as to mark the letters passing under it." So, two indexes now--one on the wheel pointing to letters on the board, and one on the board pointing to letters on the wheel. Geez.  The Psychograph already being a very expedient means of alphabetic communication--dare I say faster than the Ouija--it seems strange to add an additional alphabet on top of the disk, with a second index to point to that alphabet. Or how that alphabet offers any more expediency that the primary one on the board's base.

Pondering other configurations, it seems the only way to imagine this description really is to have another arc of letters pasted on top of the disk, and a stationary index attached to the base of the board that hovers over the revolving disk in order to point out the second set of letters. While I don't know if each index pointed to the same letter at the same time--this seems likely to avoid confusion--I suppose I just don't understand the purpose. As it is, there's only a 180° arc of movement to arrive at any given letter of the alphabet in either case, which is hardly inexpedient. But it is a curiosity, and might be worth an unobtrusive mockup on a surviving board to see how it might have been a favorable variation. 

Despite the stated shortcomings of the secondary index possibly becoming bent in the mail, we know the improved Psychograph was still in circulation at least two years later, as Marc recently discovered in the April 13, 1889 Religio-Philosophical Journal, which details the improved version being given as a gift to William Emmette Coleman. It is likely this variation, like every other configuration of the Tuttle Pschograph, eventually gave way to a new design, and that the improved version was either sold concurrently with the original version or eventually proved too troublesome and was abandoned. Given the unlikelyhood of every known surviving specimen pre-dating an 1887 addition that persisted until 1915, one or the other scenario seems likely.

I look forward to seeing a surviving specimen with the attached improvement, so check your attics, folks, and report in!

Vermont, 1869: The Blanchard Contrivance

Working with enthusiastic and knowledgeable collaborators is incredibly rewarding. From the threads Marc and I chase down in tandem, to Pat Deveny's heads-up on illustrations of the Emanulector, from my burgeoning friendship with Joe Citro over spirit trumpets and spirit-rapping machines in Vermont, to Bob Murch and I's constant unraveling of talking board history, there's always a certain assurance knowing that while you're always looking out for them, they're looking out for you, too.

Bob recently forwarded an interesting snippet of planchette history as he plumbed the depths of new newspaper archives that arrived online. As is so often the case, it was preceded with "I know you've probably already seen this buuuut," which these days always makes my ears perk up, because I know that when I hear this, someone's found something obscure enough that they think is noteworthy, and they know my research well enough to know when something's really noteworthy. And that's comforting, in and of itself.

That's the case here, a little snippet Murch ran across in the January 9, 1869 edition of the Weekly Journal Miner of Prescott, Arizona. The skeptical article is titled "Planchette--What Is It?" and has some interesting acknowledgements and footnotes of planchettes' history: the automatic writing experiments of Dr. Patton, mentions of Kirby's penultimate planchette models in the India rubber and glass models, and even an account of a wire planchette made by "bending wire into the shape of a triangle, with spiral twists of the same for the two legs." But it's the account of the "test planchette" of Dr. Virgil W. Blanchard of Bradford, Vermont, that caught Bob's attention, and subsequently mine:

Luckily, Bob's right up the street from the Boston Public Library, which houses a microfilm collection of the Watchman, so he's graciously going to chase this thread down for me and see if we can't get a better description. What we have is intriguing, though. It is a little hard to quite imagine what they are describing, but breaking it down, we have:

• A balanced fingerboard that tilts between to upright supports
• An attached cord mechanism that drives a wheel, and its pointer, around a dial
• An alphabet dial with a "hundred divisions"
• Tipping the fingerboard causes the wheel to revolve around the dial
• The operator cannot see the dial, the account later mentions.

It is clear that we have, at least partially, a wheel-and-dial alphabet board in the same manner as, say, a Tuttle Psychograph. But then there's the whole balanced fingerboard and wheel-and-cord bit that makes the driving mechanism's description somewhat obscure and hard to reconstruct, even imaginatively. We await the original description in hopes of a better depiction or, dare we hope, and illustration?

The point of the device was to debunk the planchette as a method of spirit communication, and, according to the account, it was successful in that regard since the operator could not see the dial, in a test reminiscent, obviously, of Dr. Robert Hare. Dr. Blanchard himself was an interesting fellow, and worth following up, given the number of patent applications his name is attached to. It is also interesting to note that Blanchard wasn't the first to experiment with these so-called lever boards--we've seen them before, as well--again with Dr. Hare.

Dr. Hare's "Spiritoscope" 'lever-boards.'

Stay tuned! For now, we'll add Dr. Blanchard's contrivance to our list of lost test mechanisms, and graft yet another evolutionary branch on the tree of talking board history. Thanks, Murch! And head's up, Joe--we've got another mysterious device to track down in the wilds of Vermont!

Talking Tables, March 1853: Pack's "Medium Table"

Marc and I have undergone the same tactic we recently used in mapping out the evolution of spirit trumpet mediums and mediumship, and decided to take all of the accumulated evidence on the earliest years of table-turning (in this case 1849-1853) from our respective blog posts and other evidence since gathered, and created a chronological timeline of accounts. It has shaped up nicely and, I think, verifies our working theory: that the "physical phenomenon" of mysteriously moving tables begins with the Fox Sisters as early as 1849, and, as news spreads, cooperative, non-mediumistic table-tipping morphs into a popular parlor entertainment. In America, at least, it is near-synonymous with, yet still distinct from, spirit rappings, and is more often than not attributed to some spiritual agency. By 1852, communications are being received through the tables' tappings and tiltings. We know table-turning enters Europe the following year, most likely via Bremen, Germany, in March of 1853, and from their spreads over the Continent and to the UK by the summer, where it is viewed somewhat more pragmatically, and assigned an animal magnetic cause for a time before some sects settle on the explanation of spirit manifestation already long-adopted by Americans. We can see clearly now. The rain is gone.

During all of our digging, I ran across a fantastic account of a great mechanism. I've long been on the hunt for some manufactured, specialized tipping-table appearing this early in the record. It just seemed to make sense that among the Wagners and Peases and Hornungs, some burgeoning entrepreneur would take advantage of table-tipping's popularity and market something to ride that wave. This thought seemed confirmed after glimpsing an interesting snippet in Ronald Pearsall's Table Rappers that a manufacturer in Florence produced a table specifically for turning, sold under the advertising byline "It Moves!" Unfortunately, as we often find in his study, Mr. Pearsall failed to provide documentation of any sort on this claim, and while I have little doubt that he found something, somewhere, we can't confirm the discovery without knowing his source.

But now we have something. One of the earliest spirit-rapping-and-table-turning expose texts--and now by far my favorite for its detailed descriptions--is Reverend H. Mattinson's Spirit Rapping Unveiled! I'm really taken with Reverend Mattinson's enthusiastic efforts to debunk the spirit rapping and table-turning fervor that has swept the nation as he's writing. In particular, I enjoy his plain, pragmatic language and efforts to shed light on a subject that he doesn't see as being all that mysterious. I particularly like his real-time breakdown of alphabet calling, as he and a friend indulge in some experimentation, spelling out simple sentences to one another as they call through the alphabet again and again, to not only show the ruthless inefficiency of the method, but also the improbability of the veracity of massive blocks of alphabet-called spirit communications that are being published at the time, given that even their expedited, rapid process produced only 240 characters per hour. That's less than two tweets, folks.

But on to the mechanism: Hiram Pack's "Medium's Table." Mattinson's account is a personal one, gathered when he was approached after a lecture in Hartford, Connecticut, by a man who claimed that a cabinet-maker friend of his had been approached about creating a fraudulent table for a rapping medium, with the caveat that the craftsman would be oath-bound not to reveal the method. Which he didn't accept, leaving him free to divulge the inquiry:

This set Mattinson on the hunt, and, as chance would have it, directly to the cabinetmaker Hiram Pack, who not only admitted to the manufacture of at least two such tables, but penned a lovely detailed affidavit for Mattinson, dated March 25, 1853, which the Reverend subsequently published:

I think it's lovely, particularly for its details--the internal hammer, the wires, the routed recess and hollow resonating chamber. It reminds me, of course, of how Houdini and Dunninger often resorted to complicated descriptions of possibly non-existent mechanisms to describe mediumistic phenomenon when, more often than not, a good medium just needed a dark room and a believing audience. But then again, in the absence of the biological propensity for repeated, resonating knuckle-cracking, maybe some mediums felt the need for a mechanical means to ply their trade.

The tables are now, no doubt, in some stodgy old estate or Manhattan skyrise, with the owner nary-aware that a subtle nudge with their foot or hand on a concealed trigger could set the spirits a'knocking. I'm sure my wife would be thrilled each night at dinner with the retinue of bad jokes I'd have at my disposal if only I had spirits to answer. When I shared the account with Marc, he wanted to make sure the account wasn't too convenient on the part of the author, so he quickly confirmed Mr. Pack's identity and NYC residency in the 1850 census (no occupation listed), found is occupation as "cabinetmaker" in Brooklyn in 1869, and spotted him again in the New Canaan, CT census of 1870, where he's listed as a chairmaker. We have a winner, folks.