Daniel
Dunglas Home
Daniel Dunglas Home (March 20, 1833 - June 21, 1886)
was a Scottish spiritualist, famous during his lifetime
for his claimed powers as a medium and his reported
ability to levitate to a variety of heights, elongate
and to handle fire and hot coals without injury. He
conducted hundreds of seances over a period of 35
years — at which were present many of the best-known
names of the Victorian period — without being conclusively,
or publicly, exposed as a fraud.
According to Arthur Conan Doyle, Home was unusual
in that he had powers in four different types of mediumship:
direct voice (the ability to let spirits audibly speak);
trance speaker (the ability to let spirits speak through
oneself); clairvoyant (ability to see things that
are out of view); and physical medium (moving objects
at a distance, levitation, etc.--the type of mediumship
in which Home had no equals).
Home was suspicious of any medium who claimed powers
he himself did not possess, particularly the materializing
mediums (such as the Eddy Brothers), who claimed the
ability to produce solid spirit forms, and he marked
these as faudulent. Since materializing mediums always
work in darkened places, Home urged that all séances
be held in the light (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 204-205).
Home, in his 1877 book Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism,
detailed the conjuring tricks employed by false mediums
Home himself, of course, was widely suspected of fraud,
but it was never proved (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 207).
Frank Podmore (1910, 31-86 and 1902, 223-269) and
Milbourne Christopher (1970, 174-187) provide a particularly
rich source of speculation on the ways in which Home
could have duped his sitters.
Some testimony suggests that Home often conducted
his demonstrations in dim light.[2] The light conditions
during Home's most famous feat of levitation were
disputed, but some witnesses recorded that it was
quite dark.[3] Podmore (1910, p. 45) records that
Home had a constant companion that sat opposite of
him during his séances.
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