A cast from the ghost's hand

In the book "The History of Spiritualism" Arthur Conan Doyle (by the way, Doctor of Law, medicine and president of the British College of Psychiatry) testified about the receipt of such a cast by the medium William Denton. The experiments of other mediums who made casts and plaster castings on them are also mentioned.

William Okeli from Manchester received a cast of hands with wrists so narrow that "it was obvious: it was possible to leave wax shackles only with dematerialization." This session was held for scientists, and it was attended by such distinguished scientific figures as Maxwell, Lombroso, Flammarion. On it, Dr. Crooks (who earned a gold medal for his scientific work) took forty-three photographs.

Similar experiments are described in other books. For example, Reina Owela's "Life on the other side of the curtain", K. Crowe's "The Hidden Side of Nature".

The castings were also received by Epes Sargent, who nevertheless expressed such doubt to the columnist of the weekly "Star":

"...I am burdened with a problem… What turned out contrary to reason - does it represent the basis of deep scientific research?"

The observer, being an extreme materialist, certainly did not burden the mind with such a problem.

"If a materialized hand would take a hat off the hanger so that I wouldn't have to go far for it!.. If," he wrote sarcastically, "the rotation of the table could turn the coffee grinder, and not just click!.. If a medium, instead of seemingly shaking hands with someone invisible — "may I ask, sir, how are you?" -would find out how the exchange rate of the pound would change on the stock exchange… Then, gentlemen mediums, it would not be like clicking your knee joints under the table without any sense."

The scientist Gustav Geley (with the help of the medium Kluski) conducted a series of experiments to create casts from materialized hands, and the sessions were very well prepared. The doctor recalled in his monograph that even special chairs-scales were made, and they showed that each of those present "with some particle of his own" took part in the materializing forms of "living matter". The monograph was called "How was it done?». And it was done this way.

"A bath with melted wax. We added cholesterol to it to eliminate fraud… We were afraid to miss the moment when the emerging hand would sink… A slight splash in the semi-darkness — the hand plunged into molten wax. "Surfaced", covered with wax... disappeared, leaving a "glove" that preserves the forms of living matter that has not yet been studied. The thin "wax gloves" were smaller than a normal hand this time."

Dr. Geley showed these casts and plaster castings made - to sculptors, molders, and fillers. He sent out one hundred and twenty-three photos. And no one has indicated a way in which the same casts obtained at the sessions can be made.

This new form of matter was taken to study by the French doctor Richet, known for his extraordinary mindset, and he called it "ectoplasm". But neither he nor Geley have progressed beyond the summary - that this is a decentralized energy, an education capable of changing with effort, taking different forms, and the effort that forms them is an "unknown spiritual force."

In 1922, they managed (with the medium Kluski) to make "paraffin gloves— - so narrow at the wrists that only a child's hand could put them on, and at the same time the results of their experiments were demonstrated in London, the Museum on Victoria Street, Ebbihaus, as well as at the college in Holland Park. The experiments were repeated.

Professor Bottaji:

"... Something misty formed by itself, then a semblance of milky-white steam and - physicality: a palm of natural flesh color appeared! I waved my cane around. Having mobility itself, this "materialized substance" came into contact with the usual forms of the matter surrounding it, acting on it, was of such density that casts were obtained, and I, shaking my palm, felt her fingers."

From the book "Secrets of Nature" by A. Denton:

"Materialism implies that thought and spiritual power are derived from matter. But a hypothesis arises whether matter is not the result of the work of spiritual force, thought. Of course, with this hypothesis about the disembodied mind, we seem to be looking at the end of a book that has not yet been read. However, the Russian scientist Mendeleev also said that without a hypothesis, you can't even notice a fact."

Twenty-seven French academicians, who were very skeptical at first, assured after the session that they rejected any falsification: "wax gloves" not only could not be forged, made in advance, but they could not be made without the evidence of forgery. In addition, if soft clay was laid out on a tray in the corner of the room, then prints sometimes turned out to be on it by themselves, and this was no less surprising.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle agreed that he had exhausted the evidence for those who were skeptical about getting a cast from the hand - which he shook with surprise, a faithful subject of Her Majesty of Science. But after all, the Fa-radey also claimed:

"There is nothing more amazing than the truth."

Tissot's most famous engraving "Apparition Medianimique" ("Mediumistic ghost") captured a session of materialization. And this is not a hallucination or a disorder of the mind, and the engraving reveals the old truth that beyond all the representations of our mind there were manifestations of a kind of intelligent entity that could not be scientifically explained, and since then they have not only not been explained, but they must not have realized the full scope of such manifestations.

The human mind is not Universal in any way. However, Berdyaev once said:

"... The book may not claim to be scientific, but it claims to be true."