Sir William Crookes and Home
Robert Bruce Baird
3b0f You may have heard about the media coverage of the Wright Brother's flight and how it took three years before Scientific American stopped trying to debunk it. You may already know about the early 20th Century Patent Office Official who declared 'everything that could be discovered was discovered'. You may even know about the Paris Academy of Sciences official who throttled the presenter of the phonograph claiming he was a ventriloquist. These things are funny in a way, but they are not unusual. Unfortunately you are going to have to think if you read this book. You will have to ask yourself how stupid we have been to allow a lot of lies to pass for truth.

Sir William Crookes – Generalist Deemed Weird:

“The Chemist Sir William Crookes Proved Survival With Repeatable Experiments Under Laboratory Conditions - by Michael Roll

Adrian Berry, the science correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, says that few subjects more infuriate scientists than claims of paranormal phenomena, because if confirmed, the whole fabric of science would be threatened.

This statement is not correct because nothing can threaten science - the Latin name for seeking after knowledge. The only thing that is threatened by uncomfortable discoveries in physics are pseudo-scientists. Their reputations will be destroyed immediately ordinary people find out that Sir William Crookes proved that we all survive the death of our physical bodies with repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions.

Following this revolutionary discovery in 1874 this outstanding British scientist was knighted, made President of the Royal Society, and King Edward VII gave him the highest decoration in the land - The Order of Merit.

Sir William Crookes was able to wipe the floor with contemporary professional wreckers who dared to attack him. The following is how he dealt with Professor W.B. Carpenter, a biologist from London University, who made a very unfair and anonymous attack upon him in the 'Quarterly Review'. Carpenter had been unfortunate enough to describe Crookes as a specialist of specialists.

'My greatest crime (he wrote in his reply to Carpenter's diatribe in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science') seems to be that I am a 'specialist of specialists'. It is indeed news to me that I have confined my attention only to one special subject. Will my reviewer kindly say what that subject is? Is it General Chemistry, whose chronicler I have been since the commencement of the Chemical News in 1859? Is it Thallium, about which the public have probably heard as much as they care for? Is it Chemical Analysis, in which my recently published Select Methods are the result of twelve years work?

Is it disinfection and the 'Prevention and Cure of Cattle Plague', my published report on which may be said to have popularized Carbolic Acid?

Is it Photography, on the theory and practice of which my papers have been very numerous? Is it Metallurgy of Gold and Silver, in which my discovery of the value of Sodium in the amalgamation process in now largely used in Australia, California and South America?

Is it Physical Optics, in which department I have space only to refer to papers of some Phenomena of Polarized Light, published before I was twenty one; to my detailed description of the Spectroscope and labours with this instrument, when it was almost unknown in England; to my papers on the Solar and Terrestrial Spectra; to my examination of the Optical Phenomena of Opals, and construction of the Spectrum Microscope; to my papers on the Luminous Intensity of Light; and my description of my Polarization Photometer?

Or is it my speciality Astronomy and Meteorology, in as much as I was for twelve months at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, where, in addition to my principal employment of arranging the meteorological department, I divided my leisure between Homer and Mathematics at Magdelen Hall, Planet-hunting and transit tracking with Mr. Pogson, now Principal of the Madras Observatory, and celestial photography with the magnificent heliometer attached to the Observatory? My photographs of the Moon, taken in 1855, at Mr. Hartnup's Observatory, Liverpool, were for years the best extant, and I was honoured by a money grant from the Royal Society to carry out further work in connection with them. These facts, together with my trip to Oran last year, as one of the Government Eclipse Expedition, and the invitation recently received to visit Ceylon for the same purpose, would almost seem to show that Astronomy was my speciality. In truth, few scientific people are less open to the charge of being a 'specialist of specialists'.'

There is a vast conspiracy to make sure exciting scientific discoveries never come to the attention of the general public. Genuine scientists are banned from supporting the work of Sir William Crookes in the press and on every radio and television programme that is made on the so-called paranormal. People are only allowed access to the views of experts who can be relied upon to play the Establishment game - suppress anything that could embarrass the orthodox scientists who hold the reins of power.

Nobody is allowed to balance the opinions and conclusions of these self-styled experts on the paranormal. These professional wreckers have unrestricted access to all media outlets, while my colleagues and I have been refused permission to write and broadcast by almost every editor and producer that we have approached. The British people are not allowed to hear the secular scientific case for survival after death in this free country of ours!

Recent discoveries in subatomic physics confirm that Sir William Crookes was correct in his conclusions, and that he was not a liar, cheat, crank, a fraud or a sex maniac as we have been criminally led to believe. His only crime was to tell the truth.” (1)

Do we need to allow the matter in our bodies dictate the relationship we have with the air around us as well as the earth that this matter sends photonic pulses of energy from to effect what we call gravity? Needless to say 'levitation' and 'people who can fly' or walk through walls like the book Marcus Bach's son Richard wrote (called 'Illusions') do document many fantastic 'possibilities' in fiction; aren't normal. Does this ability entitle one to be named a saint? Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross are interesting studies in how to become a saint. Let's read a little about a man who was able to do this in front of scientist/investigators who knew the ways of 'mind-fogging' or projected hallucinations, from Reader's Digest:

Home in the AIR

The medium Daniel Dunglas Home was observed to levitate numerous times over a period of 40 years and was never discovered in any fraud. The first account of his unusual ability was given F. L. Burr, editor of the 'Hartford Times':

'Suddenly, without any expectation on the part of the company (or on Home's part - he was 19 years old, and this was his first, involuntary experience of levitation) Home was taken up in the air. I had hold of his hand at the time and I felt his feet - they were lifted a foot from the floor! He palpitated from head to foot with the contending emotions of joy and fear which choked his utterances. Again and again he was taken from the floor, and the third time he was taken to the ceiling of the apartment (the Connecticut home of Ward Cheney, a silk manufacturer), with which his hands and feet came into gentle contact.'

That was in 1852. Later Home learned to control his flights and demonstrated them before audiences including such notables as the emperor Napoleon III and Mark Twain. His popularity was enormous, and he habitually moved in the aristocratic circles of society, especially in England, where he gave one of his most celebrated performances. Those present were Lord Adare, his cousin Capt. Charles Wynne, and the master of Lindsay, later earl of Crawford and Balcarres. Lindsay told the story:

'I was sitting on December 16, 1868, in Lord Adare's rooms in Ashley Place, London, S.W., with Mr. Home and Lord Adare and a cousin of his. During the sitting, Mr. Home went into a trance, and in that state was carried out of the window in the room next to where we were, and was brought in at our window. The distance between the windows was about seven feet six inches, and there was not the slightest foothold between them, nor was there more than a 12 inch projection to each window, which served as a ledge to put flowers on. We heard the window in the next room lifted up, and almost immediately after we saw Home floating in the air outside our window. The moon was shining full into the room; my back was to the light, and I saw the shadow on the wall of the windowsill, and Home's feet about six inches above it. He remained in this position for a few seconds, then raised the window and glided into the room feet foremost and sat down.

Lord Adare then went into the next room to look at the window from which he had been carried. It was raised about 18 inches; and he expressed his wonder how Mr. Home had been taken through so narrow an aperture. Home said (still in trance) 'I will show you', and then with his back to the window he leaned back and was shot out of the aperture head first, with the body rigid, and then returned quietly. The window is about 70 feet from the ground.'

{Do you think if there is some intelligence in the cosmos who was trying to open our eyes that they find it funny how dense and unwilling to even believe our own eyes the 'normal' people of this earth can be, when they try to think they know it all?}

The hypothesis of a mechanical arrangement of ropes or supports outside has been suggested, but does not cover the facts as described.

Some researchers have considered this event suspect for a number of reasons. In the first place, there are several discrepancies between the accounts given by Adare and Lindsay. Some of these concern the dimensions and configuration of the windows and their height above the ground and whether the night was dark or moonlit. {How about whether the coffee was spiked with hallucinogens or why the force didn't tell them how it was done?} Lord Adare, moreover, gave inconsistent accounts of the event at different times. Captain Wynne's statement was simple and straightforward: 'The fact of Mr. Home having gone out of one window and in at another I can swear to: anyone who knows me would not for a moment say I was a victim of hallucination or any other kind of humbug.'

But the omission of any reference to flight or levitation is regarded by some as significant--perhaps Captain Wynne was not convinced that Home had levitated and confined his statement to the simplest fact of the exit and entry. Finally, an examination of what seems likely, though not certain, to have been the house in question has shown that a tightrope could have been stretched between the two balconies.

Researchers have therefore questioned whether or not Lindsay and Adare were too bemused on the evening of December 16 to know what Home was really up to or whether he had resorted to trickery.

But although their versions of the event differed, Adare and Lindsay clearly agreed on the most important feature--that Home 'flew', and was seen to fly in through the window and, later, to fly both out and in. They may have been bemused and imagined the whole thing, but at least they agreed on what they imagined.

As for Captain Wynne's terse statement and its omission of any direct reference to flight, it seems clear that he understood himself to be describing something quite out of the ordinary--for he denied being the victim of a hallucination or of humbug.

The suspicion that a mechanical device such as a tightrope {Remember he was doing this for decades and other things like holding his hand in flames.} might have been used was dismissed by Lindsay at the time: it 'does not cover the facts as described.' In particular, such an explanation does not answer the assertion that Home floated through the window feet first or that he later leaned backward and shot out of the window head first.

This leaves us with the more usual objections to reports of levitation: that the witnesses were lying or were bewitched, hysterical, too imaginative, or not really observant.

And since it can never be proved that a hallucination has not taken place, this objection can never be fully answered. But when numerous people of good faith and good reputation testify to having seen a certain thing, and when no certain proof is found that what they saw was achieved by trickery, we must suppose--according to the hallucination theory--that all these people were weak-minded or that the subject of the reports possessed a supernatural gift {The court of what I call 'easy' answers.} for inducing mass hallucinations or a talent for persuading large numbers of people to lie on his behalf with no gain to them.

{Meanwhile the paradigm has much to gain by keeping people in the darkness like mushrooms while feeding them appropriate excrement to make them edible or malleable to their purpose.}

In 1871, the year in which Lindsay wrote his account of the Ashley Place levitation, Home was observed to levitate by Sir William Crookes, an eminent scientist who later became president of the prestigious British Association for the Advancement of Science. His statement, printed in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science', concisely describes the dilemma into which honest people were put by Daniel Dunglas Home:

'The phenomena I am prepared to attest are so extraordinary, and (so) directly oppose the most firmly-rooted articles of scientific belief--- amongst others, the ubiquity and invariable action of the force of gravitation--that, even now, on recalling the details of what I witnessed, there is an antagonism in my mind between 'reason', which pronounces it to be scientifically impossible, and the consciousness that my senses, both of touch and sight, are not lying witnesses. (Jean Burton, 'Heyday of a Wizard', pp.36-38,213-30; 'The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind Space & Time, 'Vol. 2, Issue 20).” (2)

About the Author

World-Mysteries.com guest expert
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine
Author of Diverse Druids