{"id":1911,"date":"2024-06-12T18:25:07","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T18:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.umbc.edu\/specialcollections\/garrett\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2024\/06\/FODOR_Album009-1.jpg"},"modified":"2024-06-26T15:47:54","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T15:47:54","slug":"fodor-article-margery","status":"inherit","type":"attachment","link":"https:\/\/library.umbc.edu\/garrett\/mediumship\/margery-crandon\/fodor-article-margery\/","title":{"rendered":"Nandor Fodor Article About Margery Crandon"},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"class_list":["post-1911","attachment","type-attachment","status-inherit","hentry"],"description":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

This clipping from the March 28, 1934, edition of the Bristol Evening World<\/em> is in Nandor Fodor’s personal scrapbook. The article, “The Fingerprints of Ghosts,” is about Margery Crandon and was written by Fodor. It concerns the controversy over the fingerprints allegedly produced by “Walter” as well as the origin of “Walter’s” voice and an incident where Crandon miraculously wrote a message in Chinese. Throughout the article, Fodor generally supports the legitimacy of Crandon’s abilities. The entire text reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\n

THE woman who can register the finger-prints of the spirits of the dead. That is Margery Crandon.<\/p>\n

It is a statement that might cause the great Bertillon, inventor of identification by finger-prints, some uneasiness in his grave. <\/p>\n

Scotland Yard opening a finger-print department in heaven is, perhaps, the farcically fantastic thought prompted by that statement.<\/p>\n

It is almost certain that you regard the statement as preposterous. Perhaps you do not believe in survival at all. “In any case,” you say, “if there is survival of the spirit after death, one thing seems pretty certain. The physical body dies. And even if the surviving ego — or whatever it is survives — knew something about the creases, sweatpores, and papillary ridges of his finger-tips, how could he reproduce them?<\/p>\n

Spiritualists echo that question. How? But those who have studied the case of Margery Crandon regard the fact itself as incontestable.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps the most amazing true story of the century.<\/p>\n

The Thumb of Judge Hill<\/strong><\/p>\n

Through Mrs. Margery Crandon, of Boston, at least in one instance, a dead man claimed to prove his survival by impressing his \u201cectoplasmically\u201d reborn digit into dental wax.<\/p>\n

His name was Charles Stanton Hill, a judge of the United States Court in Boston, a member of the Margery Circle.<\/p>\n

He died [on] September 2, 1930. Previous to his death, a register was made of the finger-prints of all the sitters.<\/p>\n

During the sittings, they were obtaining supernormal imprints in wax from \u201cWalter,\u201d an entity which purported to be the deceased brother of Margery. And it occurred to them that by the same manifestation in the event of the death of a member of the circle his survival could be proved.<\/p>\n

Judge Hill was the first to go.<\/p>\n

Six weeks after his death he claimed to communicate.<\/p>\n

While the medium\u2019s hands were held under strict control a phantom thumb was seen making three imprints. Captain Fyfe, the Boston finger-print expert, examined the prints carefully. He found them perfectly identical with the prints made by Judge Hill during his life.<\/p>\n

The facts have never been challenged. The evidence was perfect. But seance room happening are so strange and so much at variance with accepted scientific beliefs that no amount of proof could awake[n] the world to their significance.<\/p>\n

Since 1926 \u201cWalter\u201d has been delivering hundreds of prints of his ghostly fingers. Among those who testified to the supernormal reception of these imprints was Dr. Robin J. Tillyard, Chief Entomologist to the Commonwealth of Australia. He obtained them in a solus sitting with Margery under conditions that could not be bettered.<\/p>\n

Moreover, from human fingers only negative imprints can be made. But \u201cWalter,\u201d the ghost, could produce, by twisting about in his hypothetical fourth dimension, positive, mirror-negative and mirror-positive imprints as well.<\/p>\n

He could also enlarge them so that they suggested a giant\u2019s thumb. His ingenuity in devising these experiments was simply inexhaustible.<\/p>\n

On February 16, 1932, in the presence of Mr. William H. Button, president of the American Society for Psychical Research, he made a thum[b]-print inside a heavily locked box which could not be opened without the fact immediately becoming apparent.<\/p>\n

Before two scientists and a finger-print expert he demonstrated the feat again and again.<\/p>\n

That the prints were his own rests solely on \u201cWalter\u2019s\u201d testimony.<\/p>\n

Sir Olive[r] Lodge’s Fingerprints<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some time after the Judge Hill incident it was discovered that a finger-print alone may not be [a] foolproof identity of a ghost.<\/p>\n

\u201dWalter\u201d produced thumb-prints in July, 1931, which he declared to be those of Sir Oliver Lodge, who was, at the time, in England, 3,000 miles away. The prints were sent over to England. Mr. Bell, of Scotland Yard, subjected them to a thorough examination and pronounced them identical with the prints of Sir Oliver.<\/p>\n

Nineteen such prints were delivered in Boston by \u201cWalter\u201d without Sir Oliver Lodge having the least idea how his finger-prints were \u201cborrowed\u201d by this ingenious ghost. No mould can be made from a two-dimensional finger-print. An expert would have no difficulty in recognizing a finger-print from a mould.<\/p>\n

If then the finger-prints of a living man could be \u201cstolen,\u201d survival cannot be proved by finger-prints alone.<\/p>\n

On March 9, 1932, \u201cWalter\u201d made a print \u201cof an infant not yet born, but expected in a certain family.\u201d It was the imprint of a baby\u2019s foot. Walter gave the names of \u201cMary Jane[\u201d] and \u201cMary and Jane.\u201d The baby was born, but unhappily family reasons made it impossible to obtain verification.<\/p>\n

Soon after that incident a bomb exploded, the tremors of which were registered throughout the psychic world.<\/p>\n

Mr. E. E. Dudley, the major-domo of the Crandon seances, announced that the \u201cWalter\u201d thumb-prints produced in dental wax were found to be identical with those of \u201cDr. X,\u201d of Boston, Margery\u2019s dentist.<\/p>\n

To back up this startling charge, he appealed to finger-print experts of both the Massachusetts State Police and the Bureau of Criminal Identification of New York City. The experts agreed that the right thumb-prints of \u201cWalter\u201d and those of the dentist, as submitted to them, were one and the same. The left thumb differed.<\/p>\n

The inference which Mr. Dudley drew was that ass no two men\u2019s finger-prints are identical, the finger-prints registered at Mrs. Crandon\u2019s seances could not be those of the spirit \u201cWalter.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not question their supernormal delivery though. He hardly could have done so, because to that fact he had been testifying for years.<\/p>\n

But as the investigation ordered by Mr. W. H. Button was drawing out over a long period, Dr. Walter Franklin Price, the director of the rival Society for Psychical Research in Boston, rushed into print with the charge that they had been produced by fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201dNo Evidence of Fraud\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The commitment was proved to be over-hasty.<\/p>\n

The long-awaited report of the American Society for Psychical Research, with 300 photographic plates, had just been published. It is a monument of patient and painstaking scientific skill.<\/p>\n

It was drawn up by Mr. Brackett K. Thorogood, former instructor in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Harvard University, Director of the Franklin Union and Research Consultant of the American Society for Psychical Research.<\/p>\n

He scrapped the work of many years and, beginning at the beginning, he claims to have established without a shadow of a doubt that:<\/p>\n

1. There is no evidence of fraud, trickery or the use of any normal mechanism in connection with the seance production of the \u201cWalter\u201d finger-print phenomena.<\/p>\n

2. These \u201cWalter\u201d phenomena are definitely proved by the evidence to be supernormal.<\/p>\n

3. Neither of the \u201cWalter\u201d hands as a whole, nor as to any of the component parts, is identical with that of any known person or persons.<\/p>\n

The photographs which accompany the report are most impressive.<\/p>\n

The medium is shown with both hands held, while another hand issues from her body around her waist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was a living human hand, for it gave a vigorous handshake to Dr. Richardson.<\/p>\n

Instead of fingers, as before, it made impressions in huge slabs of dental wax of the whole palm and fingers, so that it was possible to co-ordinate all the prints which were previously obtained.<\/p>\n

The authenticity of the left thumb-print could not be questioned because of a definite scar cutting across the thumb at an angle of 30 degrees with the joint line.<\/p>\n

This scar \u201cWalter\u201d claimed to have received as a boy while whittling. Of the right thumb-prints micro-photographs are in evidence between the delta of \u201cWalter\u2019s\u201d right thumb and the delta of \u201cDr. X\u2019s\u201d right thumb.<\/p>\n

Except by accusing people of renown and reputation with the greatest and most brazen fraud of the century it is hardly possible to get away from the fact that the mediumship of Margery has withstood the most rigorous tests that scientific ingenuity could devise.<\/p>\n

Yet the Great Finger-print Mystery is but a sidelight of Mrs. Margery Crandon\u2019s amazing personality.<\/p>\n

The Microphone in the Box<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, Margery is not a professional medium. She is the wife of Dr. L. R. G. Crandon, who was Professor in Surgery at the Harvard Medical School for 16 years, and is the author of a standard textbook on surgical after-treatment.<\/p>\n

Mediumship came to her in experiments undertaken at home, partly as a joke, partly out of curiosity.<\/p>\n

The phenomena which developed were beyond the Crandons\u2019 power and control. They brought them proof of human survival and filled them with missionary zeal to prove that truth to a sceptical world of science.<\/p>\n

The scientists usually quarrelled with each other before they could reach a verdict. But many of them discovered the horizons of a new world with immense vistas of knowledge.<\/p>\n

None of them has ever brought forward the slightest proof against the Crandons\u2019 integrity.<\/p>\n

B. K. Thorogood constructed a cubical box of layers of seven different materials, sheathed in copper and soft iron, weighing over a hundred pounds, completely sound-proof, closed and padlocked, containing a large and very sensitive microphone, which was connected by two wires emerging from the box to a loudspeaker in a distant room.<\/p>\n

The voice in space, which \u201cWalter\u201d claimed to be his own, was asked to speak into the microphone within the box. He agreed.<\/p>\n

While the sitters in the seance room heard nothing, the voice of \u201cWalter\u201d issued from the loudspeaker in another room, proving that it had its origin through the microphone in the box.<\/p>\n

This was a conclusive and final proof of the independence of \u201cWalter\u2019s\u201d voice from Margery\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The voice is full, resonant and masculine. It approximates in range, quality and volume to an ordinary human voice. It talks intelligently, shows a great sense of humour, answers questions and carries on argument in a way as any clever mortal would.<\/p>\n

Broadcast of \u201cSpirit\u201d Voice<\/strong><\/p>\n

The personality of \u201cWalter\u201d is just as human as that of the sitters. He claims to manifest through the forces provided by the organism of his sister, Margery.<\/p>\n

He shows no pretence of saintliness, and on occasions swears and curses in justified indignation.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago his voice was broadcast from a Boston studio from a gramophone record which was made in the seance room. It began:<\/p>\n

\u201dThis is the voice of Walter speaking.\u201d There followed a hodge-podge of whistling, of amiable nonsense and of threadbare homilies in verse and prose. He parodied Longfellow\u2019s poem in this manner:<\/p>\n

Lives of great men all remind us<\/p>\n

That we all can be a bore<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ll can this deathly chatter<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ll whistle something more<\/em><\/p>\n

Then he went on in earnest.<\/p>\n

\u201dMy friends, I come to you at the request of some of our group to let you hear the sound of a dead man\u2019s voice. Years ago the agency through which I speak would have been thought of as the works of the devil. The medium would have been burned. You are progressing.<\/p>\n

\u201dRemember the first chapter of Jeremiah, 19th verse: \u2018And they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee.<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201dMany of our sitters have criticised the fact that we from the other side do not bring you facts more necessary to your lives. As a matter of fact, you know all things that \u2013 pause \u2013 that you ought to know \u2013 things to make life better and bigger. The simplest things of life are best \u2013 love honour, all the things that go to unite mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proofs of \u201cWalter\u2019s\u201d supernormal power are so varied that it is difficult to choose from a great number of startling demonstrations.<\/p>\n

A Message in Chinese<\/strong><\/p>\n

On March 17, 1928, in red light and with closed eyes, Margery began to write in Chinese. She did not know Chinese, nor did the sitters. The purpose, as \u201cWalter\u201d explained, was to demonstrate that minds other than the sitters and the medium were at work.<\/p>\n

\u201dWalter\u201d announced an experiment in \u201ccross-correspondence\u201d with Dr. Henry Hardwicke, a medium of Niagara Falls, a distance of 450 miles from Boston.<\/p>\n

He asked Malcolm Bird, then Research Officer of the American Society for Psychical Research, to pick out a sentence which should be given in Chinese through Hardwicke.<\/p>\n

Malcolm Bird chose \u201cA rolling stone gathers no moss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardly was the sitting over when a telegram arrived from Niagara Falls. A few days later it was followed by the original witnessed copy of Dr. Hardwicke\u2019s script. It showed a Maltese cross within the circle, a rectangle enclosing the name Kung-fu-tze, the symbols for Bird and Hill, and the Chinese sentence, the general meaning of which is \u201cA travelling agitator gathers no gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

A further analysis revealed on the left-hand column the words in Chinese: \u201cI am not dead, Confucius.\u201d The duplicate of this is in the right-hand column of the Margery script.<\/p>\n

These cross-correspondence experiments were repeated through other mediums who knew not a word of Chinese.<\/p>\n

Do they leave any way of escape from the conclusion that, as claimed, intelligences out of the flesh have been devising them? To say that there is another solution is to set up the greatest puzzle which men have ever been called to unravel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nandor Fodor, “The Fingerprints of Ghosts” article, March 28, 1934, originally published in Bristol Evening World<\/em>, Nandor Fodor’s scrapbook, pg. 12, Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection, Collection 331, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD).<\/p>\n

\u2190 Back to “Margery Crandon”<\/a><\/p>\n"},"caption":{"rendered":"

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