From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe. Now I'm going to level with you guys. I had to research and write the script all in the same week that the Elden Ring DLC came out, so I haven't been outside in a long time. We are your hosts, Taylor and Chelsea. Here today, Chelsea, I need to tell you the thought process to how I came to this episode. Before I tell you, I can tell you the episode, it's about Daniel Humes.
Okay, I don't know who that is. I had a great idea for an episode. Famous people who believed in psychics or had psychic friends that they relied on. I ended up getting 20 pages on one guy, so we had to do him. And that is Daniel Humes. There might be an episode sometime in the future about celebrity psychics, but at this time, it is just Daniel Humes that we're going to be talking about. Hold on, do I know this? You might know him.
I might switch also between calling him Daniel Humes and Daniel Holmes because it's spelt H-O-M-E, but it's pronounced Humes. No, I've never seen this guy in my life. Well, prepare for a ride. He is a very interesting character. He has a real interesting family dynamic that we're just going to get right into from the start. It's the like long Jim Morrison hair, right? Yeah, for some of the pictures. Oh, there's one of someone levitating. Yeah, we're going to get to that.
Daniel Humes' mother is Elizabeth Betsy Hume. She is a seer born in Scotland, as were many of her predecessors. Apparently, it's a family trait that they are just seers in Scotland here. And apparently in the family, the gift of second sight, as they called it, was often seen as a curse as it foretold instances of tragedy and death. Humes' father, William Hume, was the illegitimate son of Alexander, the 10th Earl of Hume.
And William was described as a bitter, morose, and unhappy man who drank and was often aggressive towards his wife. Hold on, I have an important question. Why are we pronouncing this Hume? That's how it's pronounced. It says who? The Scottish. Oh, the Scottish. Of course they're pronouncing that it's not home. Okay. Yeah, I know. Now, Elizabeth and William end up having eight kids, six sons, two daughters.
The eldest, John, later worked in the Ballerno mill and eventually managed a paper mill in Philadelphia. I don't know why this is important for the story, but apparently it is. Mary drowned in a stream at the age of 12 in 1846, and Adam died at sea at the age of 17 while en route to Greenland, which Hume says he saw in a vision reportedly confirmed five months later. Not written down anywhere, just something that he said when he was a kid.
Quite the family dynamics going on, but this is the weird part. Daniel Hume was Elizabeth's third child and was born March 20th, 1833. The one year old Hume was deemed a delicate child having quote, a nervous temperament and quote, and was passed to Elizabeth's childless sister, Mary Cook. She lived with her husband in the coastal town of Portobello outside of Edinburgh.
According to Hume, his cradle rocked by itself at the Cook's house and he had visions of a cousin's death who lived in Linlithgau to the west of Edinburgh. Hume's a nervous temperament so they gave him to the childless aunt. As you do I guess back in the day, but not so much anymore. Oh we don't? I don't think so. Maybe we still do. I don't know, I didn't have eight kids.
At some point between 1838 and 1841, this family that has adopted Daniel immigrated to the US, sailing in the cheapest class of steerage as they could not afford a cabin. After landing in New York, the Cook's, which is the family's last name, traveled to Greenville near Norwich, Connecticut. Hume attended school in Greenville where he was known as Scotchy. I wonder why they named him that by the other students. Is that funny or mean? I think it's mean.
Like it's the 1830s so I think that's the only thing they know is meanness. Oh sure. And dysentery. No it's funny and mean as well as dysentery. And maybe a little bit infectious. Yeah. At this time Daniel makes a friend named Edwin. Apparently these two like to read the Bible together. You know the fun stuff going on in the day. They made a pact. Daniel's leaving town like they're moving and they make this pact and this isn't a normal one like hey we'll meet up when we're 18.
No it's if one of us dies we have to try to contact the other after we die. As you do. Why haven't I made a pact like that yet? I don't know. You do it with someone. Maybe I'll do it this weekend. Hume moves to Troy, New York which is about 155 miles away from Greenville and Hume lost contact with Edwin until one night when Hume saw a brightly lit version of him standing at the foot of the bed which gave Hume the feeling that his friend was dead.
Edwin made three circles in the air before disappearing and a few days later a letter arrived stating that Edwin had died of malignant dysentery and yes I did know that she was coming so I made sure that we talked about it earlier. Three days before Hume's mission. Percent of the letter. I would assume family. I don't know. Do they have a list in case someone dies of dysentery? You gotta write a letter to you to tell them? Don't you have your dysentery death list for people?
Do you keep it at or do you keep it on behalf of someone else? Oh no, your parents can't keep it definitely because they're more apt to die of dysentery before the war ends. Okay and this is my favorite part. This just shows how ridiculous this family is. Few years later Hume and his aunt returned to Greenville and Elizabeth, Hume, emigrated from Scotland to the US with the surviving members of the family to live in Waterford, Connecticut which was 12 miles away from Cook's house.
Hume and his mother's reunion however was short lived as Elizabeth foretold that she's going to die in 1850. So Hume said he saw his mother in a vision saying Dan 12 o'clock which was the time of her death. So she shows up she's like yeah I'm dying I'm gonna die foretold just how it goes. And kind of around this time when they move into this house apparently there's reports of wrappings and knocking similar to those that occur in the Fox sister story two years earlier.
You never hear of wrappings anymore? No you don't. Pretty much never. Ministers were called to the Cook's house, a Baptist, a Congregationalist, and even a Westleyan minister who all believed that Hume was possessed by the devil although Hume believed it was a gift from God. According to Hume the knocking did not stop and a table started to move by itself even though Hume's aunt put a Bible on it and then placed her full body weight on it.
And the noises did not stop and were attracting the unwanted attention of Cook's neighbor so Hume was told to leave the house. It happens a lot during this time period. He got kicked out because the house was possessed. That happened with the few of them actually. It happened with that one in Nova Scotia too. They kicked her out because she was possessed. Man what a time. I know to be alive. Here's this Daniel Hume character.
He's 18 years old and he's staying with a friend in Willamantic, Connecticut and later Lebanon. I don't love Connecticut. The place that has way too many silent letters. And by that I mean I think one. Way too many. Way too many. From here he decides he's going to hold his own seances. So he has his first one in March of 1851 which was reported in a Hartford newspaper
managed by W.R. Hayden who wrote that the table moved without anyone touching it and kept moving when Hayden physically tried to stop it. After the newspaper report Hume became well known in New England and traveling around healing the sick and communicating with the dead although he wrote that he was not prepared for his sudden change in his life because of his supposed shyness. I actually found what appears to be an affidavit of people who saw one of his seances.
So I'm going to read it for you. Please do. The undersigned bear testimony to the occurrence of the following facts which we separately witnessed at the house of Rufus Elmer in Springfield. 1. The table was moved in every possible direction and with great force when we could not perceive any cause of motion. 2. It's the table was forced against each one of us so powerfully as to move us from our positions together with the chair we occupied in all several feet.
3. Mr. Wells and Mr. Edwards took hold of the table in such a manner as to exert their strength to the best advantage but found the invisible power exercised in an opposite direction to be quite equal to their utmost efforts.
4. In two instances at least while the hands of all the members of the circle were placed on top of the table and while no visible powers was employed to raise the table or otherwise move it from its position it was seen to rise clear of the floor and to float in the atmosphere for several seconds as if sustained by some denser medium of an air. 5. Mr. Wells seated himself on the table which was rocked for some time with great violence and at length.
The table poised itself on the two legs and remained in this position for some 30 seconds when no other person was in contact with it. 6. Three persons, Mr. Wells, Mr. Edwards assumed positions on the table at the same time and while thus seated the table was moved in various directions. How many more points can they make on this table? They're all saying the same thing.
Yeah. Essentially. 7. Occasionally we were made conscious of occurrences of a powerful shock which produced a vibratory motion of the floor of the apartment in which we were seated. It seemed like the motion occasioned by distant thunder or the firing of ordinances far away, causing the table, chairs, and other inanimate objects and all of us to tremble in such a manner that the effects were both seen and felt.
8. In the whole exhibition which was far more diversified than the foregoing specifications would indicate, we were constrained to admit that there was an almost constant manifestation of some intelligence which seemed at least to be independent of the circle. 9. In conclusion we may observe that Mr. D.D. Hume frequently urged us to hold his hands and feet during these occurrences.
The room was well lighted, the lamp was frequently placed on and under the table, and every possible opportunity was afforded us for the closest inspection if we admit this one emphatic declaration. We know that we were not imposed upon nor deceived. It is signed by a W.M. Bryant, B.K. Bliss, W.M. Edwards, David A. Wells. So we're talking about seances then, okay.
Cause I wasn't sure if you meant seances or being so impressed with something that you and your friends need to go get a lawyer right after David's read a sign about it. You know what never occurred to me before, I should start writing them more often. Have you ever done that? No, nor have I been to a seance. So you think it's only applicable for seance type purposes? It almost feels like it's a marketing gimmick, does it not? Now that you say that, yes.
I thought it was just someone being blown away. Maybe they're a lawyer. Maybe they deal with affidavits every day so they just like, that's what they're like doing, or to work the next day they're like, I'm just going to do one up for myself. I should make note here that Hume does not have a law degree so he did not write this affidavit for them. You're impressed by that, right? Here sign this affidavit. Yeah, but the writer probably writes a lot of affidavits in his life.
I would say, I would venture to say that he is probably a chronic affidavit writer. He's putting on these seances. He's impressing people so much they're going to the lawyers, but apparently Hume never actually charges people to go to his seances. There's no payment there. I've seen it explained, it felt like he was an employee to people and then he was using his powers incorrectly if he was seeking payment, but he also accepts gifts and donations. I don't really see a difference.
He apparently did, I don't. Well, I will say because I have my Reiki training, you are supposed to, oh never mind, you can take payment for Reiki. Oh good. You're supposed to have an exchange of something, whether it be money or dinner or something like that for Reiki. I was thinking about it wrong. Okay. He felt that he was on, quote, a mission to demonstrate immortality and, quote, and wished to interact with his clients as one gentleman to another rather than as an employee.
I don't think he quite understands what the word employee means, but maybe it meant something different in the 1850s. In 1852. So where does he make his money? He gets gifts and donations. That's how he lives. Fancy people really like him as he kind of probably could have guessed from how I came to find this guy. Okay. In 1852, Hume was a guest at the house of Rufus Elmer. That's the story we just told. We can skip that one.
All convinced of Hume's credibility and wrote to Springfield Republican newspaper stating that the room was well lit, full inspection. It was also reported that one of Hume's demonstrations had five men of heavy build and Chelsea, I just, is going to tell you a real difference between nowadays and the 1850s. Five men of heavy build with a combined weight of 850 pounds sat on the table, but it's still moved. So each of those men weighed on average 170 pounds.
Okay. Well, that would make it more difficult to stop it. Yeah. But heavy built men are 170 pounds in the 1850s. Is 1850 supposed to make a difference to me? Well, I just feel like a heavy built man is far more than 170 pounds. Oh, no, that's true. Yep. No, you're right. So you could make that number probably with three people in a random audience now. Oh, yeah, that's true. Okay. Now I get what you're getting at. Yeah. Okay. They are like quite obese by 1850s. They're heavy gentlemen.
Hume was investigated by numerous people such as Professor Robert Hare and John W. Edmonds, a trial court judge. Maybe he was right in affidavits. Who knows? They were skeptical, but later said they believed Hume was not fraudulent. Hume's did write a book later in life. It was called Incidents in My Life.
And he claims that in August of 1852 in South Manchester, Connecticut at the house of a Ward Cheney, a successful silk manufacturer of the day, he was reportedly seen to levitate twice and then rise up to the ceiling with louder wrappings and knockings than ever before. More aggressive table movements and the sound of a ship at sea in the storm, although persons present said that the room was badly lit so as to see the spirit lights.
Hume then moved to an apartment in New York at Bryant Park on 42nd Street and his most verbal critic in New York was a man by the name of William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair. Thackeray dismissed Hume's abilities as dire humbug and dreary and foolish superstitions. I should say those are both direct quotes. Although Thackeray had been impressed when he saw a table turning.
Hume thought that Thackeray was quote the most skeptical inquirer he had ever met and quote and as Thackeray made his thoughts public, Hume faced public skepticism and further scrutiny. In 1853 he resided at the Theological Institute as he wanted to take a course in medicine. And Dr. Hall funded Hume's studies and offered to pay Hume $5 a day for his seances but Hume's refused due to that whole opinion he has on betting paid for seances.
His idea was to fund his work with a legitimate salary by practicing medicine but he became ill in 1854. You know as they said earlier, he had that disposition which made him have to be given to his aunt. And it turns out he gets diagnosed with tuberculosis or consumption as it's also called. Do you know what the doctors recommend for him? Bloodletting. Not a bad guess for how the conversations have gone today. But move to Europe. Like a super weird diagnosis. Yeah, why? What was the reasoning?
Does it say? I don't know. All I know is from here he sets off in March of 1855 and moves to Europe. Now up to this point I should let you know these are all the things that people say that he's done in his seances. The raps and knocking sounds, object levitation and movements including complete levitation of pianos and tables. Tables tilted or moved sharply. Alteration in the weight of objects. I don't understand that one but it does come up and we're going to talk about that one later on.
So it can make things heavier or lighter. The appearance of lights or luminous phenomenon. The appearance of partially or fully materialized forms. Touches, poles, pinches and other tactile phenomena occurring while the hands of all present were visible above the table. Auditory phenomena. Odors produced at the absence of any visible object. Earthquake effects. The shaking. This is a weird one. Hands. Supple, solid, mobile and warm of different sizes, shapes and colors.
While the hands were animated and solid to the touch, they would often end at or near the wrist and eventually dissolve or melt. Sometimes the hands were said to be disfigured exactly as the hands of a deceased ostensible communicator had been. And he would play musical instruments, either totally not touching them or while handling them while they were unable to actually be played. Was he good? I didn't think. It didn't come up. It was too bad.
He would handle hot coals, elongations in which the medium grew from several inches to more than a foot and levitation. So that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about in his seance is they sound like a good time. Absolutely. And I'm sad that I can't go to one, I think. Well, you just wait and see what happens at the end of this. Okay, I'm excited for that.
Hume's when he moves there, I don't understand why it seems weird that it was included in the Wikipedia article, but I'm just going to keep it here anyways, because it is his full name. He stretches his name out from Daniel Hume to Daniel Dungless Hume. Like, I thought it was Douglas for a long time, but no, it's Douglas. Is this the elongation that they were talking about? Yeah, it's like I elongated my name to D. And you'll see D.D. Hume written a lot when you're referring to him.
And everyone's like, oh my God, he didn't like people are creating fucking like Afed Davids or like he elongated. And they are really impressed by very simple legalese back in the day. You better go get a lawyer to confirm our astoundingness. When he gets to London, Hume found a believer in spiritualism, William Cox, who owned a large hotel. He gets to stay with him for free. There's also another guy that lives there named Robert Owen. He's an 83 year old social reformer.
I don't know what that meant, but it was included. It was also staying at the hotel and introduced Hume to many of his friends in London society. So he gets connected quick. He's not living a bad life for someone who's not charging anything for him. I know. He's doing quite well for himself. Very. So at the time, Hume was described as a tall and thin with blue eyes and auburn hair, fastidiously dressed, but seriously ill with consumption.
Nevertheless, he had held sittings for notable people in full daylight, moving objects that were some distance away. Some early guests at Hume's sittings included the scientist Sir David Brewster, who remained unconvinced that he was doing anything fancy. The novelists are Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Thomas Adolphus Trollope and the Sweden-Borgen James John Garth Wilkinson. I don't know any of those names. No, neither do I. Not one ring a bell.
As well as Brewster, fellow scientists Michael Faraday and Thomas Huxley were prominent contemporary critics of Hume's claims, and it was the poet Robert Browning, however, who proved to be one of Hume's most adamant critics. After tending a seance of Hume's, Browning wrote in a letter to The Times that quote, the whole display of hands, spirit, utterances, etc. was a cheat and imposter.
Browning gave his unflattering impression of Hume in the poem Sludge the Medium, like he specifically wrote a poem putting him in bad light. And his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was convinced that the phenomena she witnesses were genuine and loved Hume's. There was dysentery. I really like the fact that he moved to America, got consumption, and then got told to go back. And it will save him. He does live for a while after, so that's good.
Yeah, I mean, you're up for it as far as I'm concerned. So Hume's fame continued to grow, fueled by his ostensible feat of levitation. There's a band by the name of William Crooks. He claimed Hume could levitate five to seven feet above the floor and wrote, we all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a height of about six inches, remain there for about 10 seconds and then slowly descend. William Crooks is going to come up later because there's some fun stuff with him.
In the following years, Hume traveled across continental Europe and always as a guest of wealthy patrons. In Paris, he was summoned to the Thulieres. My French is pretty terrible. To perform a seance for Napoleon the Third. So the shittier one. But there is a behind the bastard's episode on him. Is it good Napoleon? The Napoleon the first one was at least fairly famous. Napoleon the Third is very different. Oh, I think I only know the bad one.
Okay. I performed for Queen Sophia of the Netherlands who wrote, I saw him four times. I felt a hand tipping my finger. I saw a heavy golden bell moving alone from one person to another. I saw my handkerchief move alone and returned to me with a knot. He himself is pale, sickly, rather handsome young man, but without a look or anything which would either fascinate or frighten you. It is wonderful. I am so glad I have seen it. It wasn't fancy enough though for her to go see her lawyer.
I was just going to say, was this written on an affidavit or are we taking her word for it then? Yeah, so that's how it is. Well known liar. In 1866, Mrs. Jane Lyon or Leon, I don't know, a wealthy widow. I love this story. She adopts him and gives him 60,000 pounds because she wants to see. He's in his mid 30s at this point. Okay. I'm looking for people to ask that he adopted me and adopted me. And yeah, moms are just the thing that get you get lent out to. If it is his mind.
So it's because she wants him to introduce her into high society. She found that this didn't do anything for her. So she changes her mind and brought a lawsuit for the return of her money from him on the grounds that he had been obtained by spiritual influence. And I need to find this lawsuit because she ends up winning. The money was returned. Wow. That's incredible.
And certainly Hume's high society acquaintances thought that he behaved like a complete gentleman throughout the ordeal and he did not lose a single important friend. Also, it should be noted though that generally if he lost the case and generally you don't immediately sue, you just ask for the money back. And then after some time, you have to go to a lawsuit. So he didn't just return the money. I mean, maybe that's what was so gentlemanly. There's no affidavit about this.
They're lying, obviously. Yeah. So the first person I ended up finding this guy through, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, he was a big fan of Hume's. He stated that Hume's was an unusual seer in that he had four different types of mediumships, direct voice, the ability to let spirits audibly speak, transpeaker, the ability to let spirits speak through oneself, a clairvoyant ability to see the things that are out of view, and physical medium moving objects at a distance.
So he was a big fan of all that. Now of course, like the biggest thing, this guy is known as like the levitating guy. So his biggest one happened in 1860. Yeah, I have a picture here of him levitating. A young Lord Adair, who his name will come up later, was fascinated by Hume's and began documenting the seances that he held.
The following year, Hume was said to have levitated out of a third story window of one room and back in through the window of the adjoining room in front of three witnesses. Adair, Captain Wynn, and Lord Lindsay. Lord Adair stated that Hume, quote, swung out and in, and quote, of a window in a horizontal position. It should be noted, everybody remembers the story completely differently of these three people who saw it.
The incident took place at number five Buckingham Gate Kensington says Adair at Ashley Place, Westminster says Adair at Victoria Street, Westminster says Lindsay. Adair was a ledge four inches wide below the window says Adair, a ledge one and a half inches wide says Lindsay and no footholds at all says Lindsay at a different time. Adair at different times said the balconies were seven feet apart and that there were no balconies at all.
The windows were eight feet from the street, Lindsay, 70 feet, Lindsay, 80 feet, Hume on the third floor, Adair on the first floor, Adair. It was dark, Adair, there was a bright moonlight, Lindsay. Hume was asleep in one room and the witnesses went into the next adair. Hume left the witnesses in one room and went himself into the next adair. So I don't know how great that story is. That is like the most insane I've ever heard like eyewitness accounts.
Yeah. It's just they've constantly changed the story over the years and like nobody, it's hard to really tell what happened from it. Well, no, not just based on that.
Yeah. Trevor H. Hall, who researched the case in detail, established that the levitation likely took place at Ashley Place in Westminster, which is one of the places they said it could have happened at, at a height of 35 feet and suggested rather than levitating, Hume had stepped across a gap of four feet between two iron balconies. So that doesn't seem unreasonable. That's the width of a sheep squat shoulders right there. Yeah. You could step over that. Yeah. Okay. Now this part.
So he's made a name for himself. There's this guy named William Crooks. He's a very well known scientist of his day and he wants to study to see if the paranormal is real. So he's going to conduct experiments on Hume and there's kind of two that we're going to be talking about that he's done. He does during this time. Crooks tested Hume's apparent ability to alter an object's weight.
It consisted of a mahogany board 36 by 9.5 by one inch onto whose ends had been screwed mahogany strips 1.5 inches wide, one of these feet rested on a firm table and the other was supported by a spring balance hanging on a sturdy tripod. This apparatus was rigged so that the mahogany board lay horizontally between the table and the tripod. As in the case of the accordion, Hume had never seen the device. I'm sorry and the accordion is going to come up later. I thought it was the other way around.
Apparently it's not. Hume sat at the table where one end of the board rested and placed his finger tips lightly on that end of the board. Crooks and Huggins sat on either side of the board. Almost immediately the board and spring balance began to oscillate up and down. Hume then placed a nearby handbell and matchbox on one end of the board, one under each hand and in order to demonstrate he said that he was not producing the downward pressure.
The oscillation of the spring balance became more pronounced and Huggins who was watching the index saw it descend to 6.5 pounds and later to 9 pounds. The normal weight of the board as registered by the balance had been 3.5 pounds prior to the experiment. I just don't know what about that you'd be like, ooh spooky like paranormal. Wow. Yeah. He's just added six pounds to it somehow. I don't know how I would still be like, wow, that's so uninteresting. Like made it idiot.
Yeah. Well, and if he was alive today, he would clearly be making his name in diet fortunes. True. Like that's probably about it though. Yeah. I don't know what he's just going to pay for it. Oh yeah, influencers do that still. Yeah. No more, no affidavits though. No affidavits. Crooks was particularly impressed by Hume's accordion phenomenon. So this is the other thing. He could play music through instruments that he was just touching, not playing them, touching them.
So he's like, I'm going to see how he does this. So you guys have a, you can do that with the piano. Just touch the piano. Touch it and it plays music. Oh play it. But this is a hundred years before that automatic piano that we have. You're just going to give away your fucking secrets. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I don't know if I can get behind that. This is really, I find this super suspicious.
Hume's customary procedure for like playing these instruments was to hold the accordion at the end away from the keys, just under a table. So it had to be under a table for him to play it this way. With his other hand supporting him resting on top of the table. His explanation for this was that the power was greatest under table. They let him do this. So basically they set him up.
They're going to explain it, but they set it up with the accordion under the table where he can't reach the keys to play it. Crooks ends up like sitting right beside him with a foot on his foot so he can't move his foot. And that's how he's like, he's not doing anything with his foot or his hand. We can see it and he can't reach in. It's so nice of him though to sit there with him. Yeah. With your foot on his foot.
Yeah. So this is a new accordion for the occasion and Hume saw it for the first time when the experiment began. Crooks went to Hume's apartment and watched him change clothes and that enabled him to determine that Hume hadn't concealed some device that would allow him to manipulate the accordion circuitously. Oh, he watched him. That's nice. And then Crooks then brought Hume's to his house where he had prepared a wooden cage wound with insulated copper wire and netted together with string.
The cage fit under Crooks's table and the accordion was placed inside it. There was enough space between the cage and the table for Hume to reach in and hold the accordion at the end away from the keys, but there wasn't enough space for Hume to reach in further and touch or manipulate the keys. Furthermore, Hume couldn't operate the accordion with his feet because the cage rested on the floor besides Hume had boots on and there were observers who were keeping an eye on him.
So Crooks describes it this way, the cage begins being drawn from under the table so as to just allow the accordion to be pushed with its keys downwards. It was pushed back as close as Mr. Hume's arms would permit, but without hiding his hands from those next to him, very soon the accordion was seen by those on each side to be waving around in a somewhat curious manner. Then sound came from it, and finally several notes were played in succession.
While this was going on, my assistant went under the table and reported that the accordion was expanding and contracting at the same time, and it was seen that the hand of Mr. Hume by which it was held was quite still. His other hand resting on the table. So those are the experiments that Crooks designs and uses on Hume, and he concludes that this guy is totally legit and paranormal stuff's real. Chelsea, I need it to be known now.
There's three people he's done experiments on that he fully believes at this point, legit in their paranormal powers. Hume, Florence Cook, and Kate Fox. It isn't Hume himself? Crooks is doing the investigations, and he's concluding this. He's found three mediums he fully believes are real. Okay, I thought he found three people that fully believed that what he was doing was... No, he did experiments on these three individuals and concluded that they were all real. Well, the Fox sisters.
Yes. Okay, that took me a long time to process. I apologize. Yes. Yeah, so, yeah. So Fox sisters legit according to this. Yeah, okay. You haven't listened to our Fox sister episodes, go listen, they are not legit. They even admit it. Yeah, okay. They're not up to speed on that point of the Fox sisters. So he wrote this paper in 1874 and concluded that the phenomenons produced by all three of these mediums were genuine.
That's pretty much the life I wanted to talk about and his notoriety where it comes from. Very interesting things. It doesn't end the same way the Fox sisters do and that they come out and say like, that this is real. He never comes out and says that. He's never actually had like a full public issue come out where it's like, yeah, this guy's a fraud. Is it? It never happens. Yeah. What? There's more to this story.
It should be noted though that while the statements that Hume was never caught in a fraud has been made many times, it's not that true. It's simply that Hume was never publicly exposed for his frauds. Privately he was caught in fraud several times and in addition, there are natural explanations for a lot of things that he has says that he did. Interesting. Joseph McCabe wrote regarding the alleged levitation. No one professes to have seen Hume carried from window to window.
This is that one window thing that was talked about. I think it's already been fairly well debunked at that point, but Hume told the three men who were present that he was going to be wafted and he thus set up a state of very nervous expectations.
Both Lord Crawford and Lord Adair say that they were warned and then Lord Crawford says that he saw the shadow on the wall of Hume entering the room horizontally and as the moon by whose light he professes to have seen the shadow was at most only three days old. His testimony is absolutely worthless. Lord Adair claims only that he saw Hume in the dark standing upright outside our window. In the dark it was almost moonless December night.
One could not as a matter of fact say very possibly whether Hume was outside or inside but in any case he acknowledges that there was a 19 inch window sill outside the window and Hume could stand on it. I think that was fairly obvious from the story though.
Yeah. Arthur Conan Doyle even says at points that there were many cases on record of Hume levitating but skeptics assert the alleged levitations occurred in darkened conditions susceptible to trickery and pretty much all of his seances are done in very dark lighting so if you're going to be doing trickery it's a lot easier to get it done. Yeah. Now those fancy magicians that are in Vegas like do levitation. Yeah they do it all the time. It's easy to do. Yeah levitation that is.
Yes. At a seance in the house of the solicitor John S. Nathan Reimer in Ealing in July of 1855 a sitter observed that quote a spirit hand unquote was in fact a false limb attached to the end of Hume's arm. Yeah what's up with those spirit hands. Yeah I don't know.
Merrifield also claimed to have observed Hume uses foot in the seance room so there are allegations nothing was ever proven and then our friend Robert Browning who hated this guy attended the seance on July 23 1855 in 1895 after the death of Robert and Elizabeth the journalist Frederick Greenwood alleged that Browning had told him that during seances he had taken hold of a luminous object that appeared above the edge of the table which turned out to be Hume's naked foot. You. You imagine.
I know. Later Browning's son Robert in a letter to the London Times December 5 1902 also referred to the incident saying that Browning had caught hold of Hume's foot under the table. The allegation was repeated by Harry Houdini and later writers.
But detailed descriptions of the seance written soon afterwards by Robert and Elizabeth make no mention of any such incident and Browning's account states that although he was promised that he would be allowed to hold a spirit hand the promise was never kept. Those men these guys in these spirit hands. Yeah. You can't say I've ever heard of that before but there was like all types of spirit hands. They're just all over the place. But this guy's known for levitation which is the funny thing.
Spirit hands. In the society of psychical research there was a letter by Dr. Barthes a physician in the court of Empress Eugenie. He wrote this home more thin shoes easy to take off and draw on and also cut socks that left the toes free at the appropriate moments he takes off one of his shoes and with this foot pulls a dress here and a dress there and rings a bell knocks one way and another and things done quickly puts his shoes back on again.
Hume positioned himself between the Empress and Napoleon III one of the seance sitters known as General Fleury also suspected that Hume was utilizing trickery and asked to leave but returned unobserved to watch from another door behind Hume. He saw Hume slip his foot from his shoe and touch the arm of the Empress who believed it to be one of her dead children.
The observer stepped forward and revealed the fraud and Hume was conducted out of the country quote the order was to keep the incident secret end quote. The allegations described by Dr. Barthes and General Fleury are second hand and have caused disputes between psychical researchers and skeptics. They've came up before I can't remember where though. Yeah I can't either. I assume for that time it's probably it wouldn't be Edelure and Warren it's probably something like Blavatsky or something.
That would make sense because that's right around the right time. And then let's just talk a bit about William Crook's investigation. He says that it was all done and controlled and secured in his laboratory. That's method of foot control that we talked about that was super important.
Yeah. Wasn't great because he used the exact same foot control on a Yusapia Paladino who was able to get around it as she just slipped her foot out of the shoe because it was a thick shoe and he didn't know what it is. How did it stay put? I can't imagine if someone's foot is on mine no matter the thickness of shoe getting it off. Yeah I know but she got around it. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think other people would have done it as well.
Well yeah I guess if your crew is depending on it I just can't imagine myself. And in addition Crook's motive method and conclusion with regards to Florence Cook were called into question both at the time and subsequently casting doubt on his conclusion with Humes and that's one of the three mediums that he confirmed in 1874 were real.
In a series of experiments in London at the House of Crooks in February of 1875 the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crook into believing she had genuine psychic powers and Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed the tricks she had used. Same with the Fox sisters. And same with the Fox sisters. No good track.
I feel like this happens again and again with these spiritualists at this time that they find someone that conducts research on them and they're like oh it's totally real because they just want to believe in it. And this guy absolutely has the believability behind him and he ends up being like very well known scientist in his day. So fabulous mustache. Fabulous mustache. This is named Cook. Crooks. C-R-O-O-K-E-S. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Wow. This is incredible.
They don't make mustaches like that anymore. They do not. No. That is someone that takes some pride in their mustache. Yeah. So in 1871 Belford Stewart in an article in Nature noted that the experiments that Crooks had conducted were not conducted in broad daylight before a large unbiased audience and the results were inconclusive. Stewart suspected the phenomena observed were subjective rather than objective occurring in the imaginations of those present rather than the outward physical world.
In the same year JP Earwaker wrote a science review that heavily criticized Crooks experiments for their poor design including they were pseudoscientific and according to Earwaker for in truth they are the very opposite of scientific even to call them unscientific is not strong enough. Plumsy and futile are much nearer the truth.
Some people brought into question the actual weight of the wood he used in that mahogany doesn't weight what he says it does which is weird and it should also be noted Crooks was a huge believer in psychic powers before he started doing these experiments. It just said that. So he might have just fallen into his own bias. He just wants to know he just wants to confirm it. Yeah. I mean that's obvious just given that two of them came out as for sure frauds themselves. They're like yep we're frauds.
It's probably like probably just don't just say that just like let other people say that don't just don't they were like I'm a fraud. Is that just totally discredits my work?
Perry Houdini wrote this about crooks there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this brainy man was hoodwinked and that his confidence was betrayed by the so-called mediums that he tested his powers of observation were blinded and his reasoning faculties so blunted by his prejudice in favor of anything psychic or a cult that he could not or would not resist the influence. One of the experiments is making something heavier. That's just not possible. Spiritualism is very spooky.
It wouldn't be impressed if someone made something heavier. I wouldn't. I do want to end off too with the accordion. A skeptic by the name of James Randy stated that Humes was caught cheating on a few occasions but the episodes were never made public and that the accordion feat you know where he made an accordion play without touching it he thinks it was a one-octave mouth organ which is basically a really small harmonica that Hume concealed under his large mustache.
Randy writes that one octave mouth organs were found in Hume's belongings after his death and according to Randy around 1960 William Lindsay Gresham told Randy that these mouth organs in Hume's collection at the Society of Psychical Research. Oh man, I mean that's as good as being found a fraud. Yeah, I can't confirm that's true though this guy's just saying it's there so I don't know for sure. And also a really weird turn that I got near the end of when I was doing this research.
For some reason his name triggers a wiki for LGBTQIA. I don't know why like he has his own LGBTQ Wikipedia page and I was really confused what was going on with that. It turns out that Lord Adair that guy who saw him levitate, he wrote a diary and apparently there's it's titled the experiences in spiritualism with DD Homes. He says in it that he slept in the same bed with him and many of the diary entries contain erotic homosexual overtones between Adair and Hume. So for them.
Yeah. And lastly Hume retired due to ill health and tuberculosis from which he had suffered for much of his life. He dies on June 21st 1886 at the age of 53 and was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint Germain-en-Laye in Paris. So that's the story. Actually I wasn't disappointed by this guy. It's an interesting one. Yeah, I was a little disappointed that we didn't find out in the end that he was an asshole. He was Scottish so I didn't think I had to state it.
Also, anybody who forces people that enjoyed their show to sign affidavits, they're assholes. They are. Or lawyers and he's not a lawyer. Maybe. No, he wasn't both. No, he was just an asshole. He was only one of those at a time. Yeah, that was good and I never even, I think he did come up before though. Yeah, he's right around this time like just after the Fox sisters but before Houdini shows up on the scene to like counteract them all. This was the time that that was what you did.
It was like the popular influencer type thing to do, I think. Yeah, it was the movie theater. It was the mall of its time. Yeah, the movie theater, the arcade. It was the YouTube of its era. But yeah, that's Daniel Dungless Humes. Chelsea, anything you want to know more? I don't think so. I think that was it. I quite enjoyed that. I was like a good spiritualist. This one probably he was alright. He was okay. Really into hands and feet and floating. As we all are.
At least he didn't have a here list tail. Yeah, and with that, I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, subscribe, or follow depending on what venue you are listening to us through. Also please, if possible, leave a five star review as that really helps us in the algorithms.
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