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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Afterlife Evidence
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Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), according to some, the greatest psychic-sensitive of all time.
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Editor's prefatory comment:
“Home”, pronounced Hume.
Not only were his abilities seemingly unrivaled, but he lived a dutiful life, never accepting payment for his services.
His work was investigated and exonerated by notable intelligentsia of his day, a large number of scientists and academics; including Nobel laureates. Nonetheless, the materialistic British press and jealous Big Religion joined forces to vilify Home, calling him a fraud and “humbug” (their favorite pejorative). The gratuitous caviling continues to our era, but all without evidence of wrongdoing.
D.D. Home’s life and abilities are discussed in:
A History Of Spiritualism, Vol. I (1926) by the great afterlife researcher (for nearly 40 years), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:
Below you'll find excerpts from Sir Arthur's book. The entire work can be accessed on the internet for free.
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Daniel Dunglas ("D.D.") Home (1833-1886)
When he was thirteen he began to show signs of the psychic
faculties he had inherited, for his mother, who was
descended from an old Highland family, had the
characteristic second-sight of her race. His mystical
trend had shown itself in a conversation with his boy
friend, Edwin, about a short story where, as the result
of a compact, a lover, after his death, manifested his
presence to his lady-love. The two boys pledged
themselves that whoever died first would come and
show himself to the other.
Home removed to another district some hundreds of miles distant, and about a month later, just after going to bed one night,
he saw a vision of Edwin and announced to his aunt
his death, news of which was received a day or two
after. A second vision in 1850 concerned the death
of his mother, who with her husband had gone to live
in America. The boy was ill in bed at the time, and
his mother away on a visit to friends at a distance.
One evening he called loudly for help, and when his
aunt came she found him in great distress. He said
that his mother had died that day at twelve o'clock;
that she had appeared to him and told him so. The
vision proved to be only too true. Soon loud raps
began to disturb the quiet household, and furniture
to be moved by invisible agency. His aunt, a woman
of a narrow religious type, declared the boy had
brought the Devil into her house, and turned him out
of doors.
He took refuge with friends, and in the next few
years moved among them from town to town. His
mediumship had become strongly developed, and at
the houses where he stopped he gave frequent seances,
sometimes as many as six or seven a day, for the
limitations of power and the reactions between physical
and psychic were little understood at that time. These
proved a great drain on his strength, and he was fre-
quently laid up with illness.
People flocked from all directions to witness the marvels which occurred in Home's presence. Among those who investigated
with him at this time was the American poet Bryant,
who was accompanied by Professor Wells, of Harvard
University. In New York he met many distinguished
Americans, and three Professor Hare, Professor
Mapes, and Judge Edmonds, of the New York
Supreme Court had sittings with him. All three
became, as already stated, convinced Spiritualists.
His position at that moment was a very singular
one. He had hardly a relation in the world. His
left lung was partly gone. His income was modest,
though sufficient. He had no trade or profession, his
education having been interrupted by his illness. In
character he was shy, gentle, sentimental, artistic,
affectionate, and deeply religious. He had a strong
tendency both to Art and the Drama, so that his
powers of sculpture were considerable, and as a reciter
he proved in later life that he had few living equals.
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handling hot coals with impunity
It is acknowledged from various sources that Home had the ability to handle hot coals without injury to himself.
For example, in Sir William Barrett’s “On The Threshold of the Unseen” it is reported that on several occasions Home would take glowing coals into his hands but with impunity. Moreover, he instructed others to also take the coals, and they too, under this protective mantle, suffered no ill effect.
But, this display derived from no innate power on the part of Home as he himself recounted how invisible agencies spoke to him, advising him just how far he might go with this as the energy to perform such was not unlimited.
The ability to touch or walk on hot coals is not unknown in history, indeed there are many accounts, and even today there are those who claim as much. For example, the Native medicine men it is said can do this.
In all of these cases, it would appear, we are looking at not some innate super-power but a lending of abilities from unseen forces. Handling hot coals needs to be put into a category of psychic phenomena, and receipt of such does not make one a “saint” – hardly, as rogues, too, have been able to perform this sensationalism – but only that one exhibiting such ability, with little doubt, is a psychic sensitive, enjoying capabilities of tapping invisible energy sources.
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But on the top of all this, and of an unflinching honesty
which was so uncompromising that he often offended
his own allies, there was one gift so remarkable that it
threw everything else into insignificance. This lay in
those powers, quite independent of his own volition,
coming and going with disconcerting suddenness, but
proving to all who would examine the proof, that
there was something in this man's atmosphere which
enabled forces outside himself and outside our ordinary
apprehension to manifest themselves upon this plane of
matter. In other words, he was a medium the
greatest in a physical sense that the modern world has
ever seen.
A lesser man might have used his extraordinary
powers to found some special sect of which he would
have been the undisputed high priest, or to surround
himself with a glamour of power and mystery. Cer-
tainly most people in his position would have been
tempted to use it for the making of money. As to
this latter point, let it be said at once that never in the
course of the thirty years of his strange ministry did
he touch one shilling as payment for his gifts. It is
on sure record that as much as two thousand pounds
was offered to him by the Union Club in Paris in the
year 1857 for a single seance, and that he, a poor man
and an invalid, utterly refused it. "I have been sent
on a mission," he said. "That mission is to demon-
strate immortality. I have never taken money for it
and I never will." There were certain presents from
Royalty which cannot be refused without boorishness:
rings, scarf-pins, and the like tokens of friendship
rather than recompense; for before his premature
death there were few monarchs in Europe with whom
this shy youth from the Liverpool landing-stage was
not upon terms of affectionate intimacy…
In 1868 Lord Adare, Lord Lindsay, Captain
Wynne, and Mr. Smith Barry saw Home levitate upon
many occasions. A very minute account has been
left by the first three witnesses of the occurrence of
December 16th of this year, when at Ashley House
Home, in a state of trance, floated out of the bedroom
and into the sitting-room window, passing seventy feet
above the street. After his arrival in the sitting-room
he went back into the bedroom with Lord Adare, and
upon the latter remarking that he could not under-
stand how Home could have fitted through the win-
dow which was only partially raised, "he told me to
stand a little distance off. He then went through the
open space head first quite rapidly, his body being
nearly horizontal and apparently rigid. He came in
again feet foremost." Such was the account given by
Lords Adare and Lindsay…
Captain Wynne at once wrote corroborating the others
and adding: "If you are not to believe the corrobora-
tive evidence of three unimpeached witnesses, there
would be an end to all justice and courts of law." …
So many are the other instances of Home's levita-
tions that a long article might easily be written upon
this single phase of his mediumship. Professor
Crookes was again and again a witness to the pheno-
menon, and refers to fifty instances which had come
within his knowledge. But is there any fair-minded
person who has read the incident here recorded who
will not say, with Professor Challis: "Either the facts
must be admitted to be such as are reported, or the
possibility of certifying facts by human testimony must
be given up." …
The powers of Home have been attested by so
many famous observers, and were shown under such
frank conditions, that no reasonable man can possibly
doubt them. Crookes's evidence alone is conclusive.
There is also the remarkable book, reprinted at a
recent date, in which Lord Dunraven gives the story
of his youthful connexion with Home. But apart
from these, among those in England who investi-
gated in the first few years and whose public
testimony or letters to Home show they were not
only convinced of the genuineness of the phenomena,
but also of their spiritual origin, may be mentioned
the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Shelley, Lady
Gomm, Dr. Robert Chambers, Lady Otway, Miss
Catherine Sinclair, Mrs. Milner Gibson, Mr. and
Mrs. William Howitt, Mrs. De Burgh, Dr. Gully
(of Malvern), Sir Charles Nicholson, Lady Dunsany,
Sir Daniel Cooper, Mrs. Adelaide Senior, Mr. and
Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mrs. Makdougall Gregory, Mr.
Pickersgill, R.A., Mr. E. L. Blanchard, and Mr.
Robert Bell.
Others who went so far as to admit that the theory
of imposture was insufficient to account for the pheno-
mena were: Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Thackeray (then editor
of the Cornhill Magazine), Mr. John Bright, Lord
DufFerin, Sir Edwin Arnold, Mr. Heaphy, Mr.
Durham (sculptor), Mr. Nassau Senior, Lord Lynd-
hurst, Mr. J. Hutchinson (ex-Chairman of the Stock
Exchange), and Dr. Lockhart Robertson.
Such were his witnesses and such his works. And
yet, when his most useful and unselfish life had come
to an end, it must be recorded to the eternal disgrace
of our British Press that there was hardly a paper
which did not allude to him as an impostor and a
charlatan. The time is coming, however, when he
will be recognized for what he was, one of the pioneers
in the slow and arduous advance of Humanity into
that jungle of ignorance which has encompassed it
so long.
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D.D. Home: possibly the greatest direct-materialization medium of all time
The following was written by Michael Tymn:
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Was D. D. Home like Babe Ruth, David Thompson like Nick Swisher?
Posted on 19 March 2012
Daniel Dunglas Home (1833 –1886), a Scottish American, has gone down in the history books as perhaps the best physical medium ever.
His feats included phantom forms, levitations, floating objects, luminous hands, materializations, strange luminous vapors, beautiful music from an accordion with no physical hands touching it, and voices talking and singing.
And while in the trance state, he delivered a number of philosophical discourses. Home (pronounced Hoom in Scotland, Hume in England), was the subject of a thorough investigation by Sir William Crookes, a distinguished British scientist. Although Crookes apparently set out to debunk Home, he became convinced, over some 30 sittings with him, that Home was no charlatan and that some form of “psychic force” was taking place through him. Crookes took every possible precaution in ruling out trickery, even picking Home up at his apartment and watching him dress. “I am, therefore, enabled to state positively, that no machinery, apparatus, or contrivance or any sort was secreted about his person,” Crookes stated, stressing the fact that most of the séances were held in his (Crookes’) home under lighted conditions and that Home had no opportunity to rig anything in the séance room or smuggle anything into it.
“If Home was for real, why don’t we see that type of mediumship today?” the modern day skeptic asks. Applying the same type of reasoning, we might ask why, excluding steroids and a longer season, nobody has topped Babe Ruth’s 60 home run record of 85 years ago.
There have been a number of baseball players who have approached Ruth’s record and there have been many physical mediums nearly as good as D. D. Home. Although the quality of physical mediumship today does not seem to approach the quality of physical mediumship 100-150 years ago, for reasons too involved to go into here, there clearly are a number of genuine physical mediums around today. The evidence strongly suggests that David Thompson, an Englishman living in Australia, is one of them.
Thompson has been criticized by a number of observers, including some who believe in mediumship, because his séances are conducted in complete darkness.They point to the fact that D.D. Home produced phenomena in subdued light and could be seen by everyone in the room. They further point to the fact that other physical mediums have been able to operate under red light. They say that if Thompson is a genuine medium, he should be able to give séances in the light, like Home, or at least in red light, like Alec Harris and Minnie Harrison, two other famous mediums.
But let’s apply the baseball analogy here. If Ruth was to baseball what Home was to mediumship, both daylight “power” guys, then Willie Mays, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and Ken Griffey, Jr. – ballplayers who hit 50 or more homers in a season and approached Ruth’s 60 homers in 154 games – might be likened to mediums who produced phenomena under red light. The great majority of baseball players, however, don’t hit even 30 homers a season, so we might liken them to mediums who require darkness. Those players simply don’t have the power that Ruth, Maris, Mantle, Mays and Griffey, Jr. had and no amount of physical training is going to help them achieve Ruthian numbers. But they are major league baseball players nonetheless. Players who make the majors, even those who hit only a few home runs a year, are gifted athletes. They are nearly as rare as people who are capable of producing ectoplasm, the key element in physical mediumship.
Nick Swisher, the man who now plays Ruth’s position for the New York Yankees, is a good, solid, journeyman ballplayer, even an all-star two years ago. He averages around 25 homers a year, but no one says he is a fake ballplayer because he can’t hit the ball as far or as often as Ruth. As I see it, David Thompson is to physical mediumship what Swisher is to baseball – gifted, but lacking the power of D. D. Home.
I have never seen Thompson, but I have never seen many things that scientists claim is true, and yet I accept them based on the credibility of the researchers. There are simply too many reports by credible people to believe that Thompson isn’t the real thing.
One of those credible people is Dr. Jan Vandersande, a retired physics professor who had the opportunity to observe Thompson on three occasions during a recent visit by Thompson to the Los Angeles area. Vandersande witnessed various materializations, objects flying around the small darkened garage, some of them stopping in mid air, felt the hands of a child spirit, and listened to various spirit entities speak in different voices. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that David is a legitimate medium” Vandersande told me by phone recently. “Fraud is not a possibility, even though we had a few people there who simply refused to believe that the phenomena were real. They claimed that David must somehow have smuggled in night vision goggles, and they came up with other far-fetched theories as to how he might have done it. Their minds were made up beforehand and they simply refuse to believe.”
Vandersande, the author of “Life After Death: Some of the Best Evidence,” observed much physical mediumship in South Africa when he was teaching at the University of Witwatersrand, so this was not a new experience for him. Under red light, he saw ectoplasm flowing from the nose of a South African medium named Kitty Gordon. He saw it stretch some four to six feet across the room while still attached to the medium’s nose. He noticed that it was slightly transparent and he saw it reabsorbed by the medium within a few seconds. Scientists have never been able to completely analyze ectoplasm because it must be reabsorbed by the medium, and attempts to capture it can result in serious injury to the medium. A few scientists were able to capture small amounts but it disappeared in their containers before they could analyze it. Observers are warned not to touch it, because of the possibility of injury to the medium.
“Ectoplasm can be very sensitive to unexpected touching or being exposed to white light,” Vandersande said, recalling the cases of Alec Harris and Helen Duncan, both mediums who were seriously injured – Harris when a person grabbed him and Duncan when the lights were turned on unexpectedly. Duncan died shortly thereafter and Harris never completely regained his strength. In fact, Home suffered from ill health most of his life and died of TB at age 53, but it has been speculated that his condition might have been exacerbated by having his ectoplasm exposed to too much light. (Coincidentally, Babe Ruth also died at age 53)
Vandersande completely agrees with the baseball analogy, saying that the ability to produce ectoplasm is greater with some than with others and that some mediums never reach the point where they are strong enough for red light. Some can develop over time, just as a baseball player can get stronger over time. He adds, however, that Thompson has occasionally produced ectoplasm in red light and photographs have been taken showing sheets of ectoplasm stretching from his face across his chest down to his lap or even lower.” And Nick Swisher occasionally hits 400-foot home runs, but not nearly as often as Ruth and certainly not on demand. The conditions have to be just right in baseball and just right in mediumship.
As early researchers came to understand, ectoplasm is used by the spirits to materialize. The spirits project an image of themselves into the ectoplasm and that thought image then takes form. They also use the ectoplasm to form an artificial voice box so that they can speak. At one of the three Los Angeles sittings, the grandfather of Vandersande’s wife, Marlene, materialized and spoke with her. Her mother then attempted to speak but the power was low at that point and the voice was very weak. “It appeared that there just wasn’t enough energy for her to materialize,” Vandersande explained, mentioning that the energy or power, whatever it is called, was low in the first sitting but much stronger in the second and third sittings.
The usual controls against fraud were taken. Thompson was searched by Vandersande and another man, and his arms and legs were secured to a chair with leather straps, while plastic zip ties were pulled through the holes of the straps to ensure that the straps could not be undone. Additionally, zip ties were put through his cardigan sweater to ensure that he could not get out of the sweater. “There is no way that he could have freed himself from those binds,” Vandersande said, “but then you get people who say that Houdini would have been able to get out of it, so why not Thompson. You get all kinds of wild theories from people who just refuse to believe it is real.”
After the lights were turned off and the garage sealed up from the inside, a short prayer was said and music turned on to increase the harmony and vibrations. All sitters were told to hold hands to increase the energy and ensure that no one tried to touch the ectoplasm without permission. After three songs, William, Thompson’s primary spirit control, started talking to the sitters while walking around. “He spoke quite loud, in a distinctive British accent that I found difficult to understand at time,” Vandersande said. “He then started to answer questions about the spirit world.” William’s full name was said to have been William Cadwell and he is said to have died in 1897. Vandersande asked William if his materialized body had a pulse. “He came over to me, took two of my fingers with his hand and put them up against what I assumed was the carotid artery in his jaw area,” Vandersande said. “It felt like rough skin I was touching and I could feel a very, very vague pulse.”
Other spirits communicated, one a young cockney youth named Timmy, who walked around among the sitters, allowing them to grasp his small hands. During each of the three sittings, a friend or relative of one of the sitters materialized and spoke briefly. During the third séance, a man materialized and called out to his mother and father, who recognized him as Jay-Jay, their deceased son. “He walked to them, touched them both and kissed them, then after saying a few words he left. During all three séances, Louis Armstrong, the famous musician, who died in 1971, materialized. “His voice sounded exactly like the very characteristic voice so often heard when alive on earth,” Vandersande said. “He played a harmonica for a few minutes and you could hear him take deep breaths occasionally while playing. After that he left. I always get nervous when famous people materialize but I now have a better understanding why they do it. To prove survival after death, it makes more sense that someone who has a characteristic voice and mannerisms that just about everyone can recognize materializes rather than a no name regular person.”
A trumpet and some drum sticks sometimes flew around the garage, as high as the roof of the garage, nine feet up. They would stop in mid air at times and resume flight. “I am a physicist, but I have no idea how all that happens,” Vandersande concluded. “But I know it happened and there were no tricks involved.”
If Thompson were a charlatan, he would have to be:
1. an expert escape artist, able to free himself in a very short period of time and then secure himself with the same binds before the lights are turned on;
2. an expert at doing different voices, to the extent of imitating the voices of deceased relatives and friends among the sitters;
3. an expert investigator, able to dig up the names of deceased relatives and friends in another country, even when it is unknown who those people will be;
4. an expert magician, able to make objects fly around the room and stop in mid air, even when seated in the corner of the garage against the walls, as Thompson was (skeptics have suggested that he uses a whirly bird of some kind on a stick, which would require him to be in the center of the room);
5. a very stealthy athlete, able to move around a dark, crowded room without tripping over someone and without being heard and to somehow smuggle things into the room after being strip searched, and then hide them before the lights are turned on;
6. able to somehow make sitters think they are holding the small hands of a child rather than adult hands.
7. Although apparently not experienced at Vandersande’s sittings, publisher Jon Beecher reported that when he sat with Thompson in New York a few years ago, his partner’s deceased grandfather materialized. Tatyana, Beecher’s partner, began speaking in English, but was encouraged by Timmy or Timothy, the spirit controlling things at the time, to speak in her native language. She then changed to Russian, after which the materialized spirit answered in Russian. So Thompson must also be a linguist.
Beecher also reported that he and others regularly checked the medium’s ties during the séance and he was always in his chair, appearing to be asleep. He and the others present also observed a trumpet, with luminous tape on it, fly across the room at great speed, stopping at the end of Tatyana’s nose, then touching her five times on her head without harming her. They further observed a harmonica flying around the room, sometimes 10 feet in the air while playing a tune. When it fell to the floor, it continued to play. So add an eighth ability to the seven above. Thompson must be able to play the harmonica in impossible positions.
As a last resort, the skeptic might claim that the medium is doing a mass hypnosis of all the sitters, suggesting that they believe things happened that didn’t really happen. There seems to be no end to the “could have” or “might have” theories for the person whose mind is made up that it is all fraud. As for me, I believe the evidence, if not absolute proof, at least meets the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.
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Editor's last word:
Let us take special note of certain implications of Home’s abilities. He could, at times, transport himself, instantly, over large distances; he could facilitate the appearance of the so-called dead; he could levitate, make himself lighter than air.
These were also the abilities of the highly developed psychic man, Jesus, who, at times, instantly transported himself to safe haven, facilitated the appearance of long-dead Old Testament personages, and walked on water, making himself lighter than air.
There are books on this subject. Every so-called miracle of Jesus has been exhibited by ones in our time endowed with advanced psychic abilities.
In Jesus’ day, and in ours, the powers-that-be -- government, education, corporations, religion -- will be greatly threatened by a display of these abilities. Political and press leadership fear for their top-standing in the world, and religion fears any competition to their toll-keeper efforts concerning the afterlife. Then as now, deemed rivals will be vilified with all vehemence; and, if they could manage it without creating a general uprising, they would kill any usurper to their thrones.
But let's revisit two quotations above:
Professor Challis: "Either the facts must be admitted to be such as are reported, or the possibility of certifying facts by human testimony must be given up."
Captain Wynne: "If you are not to believe the corroborative evidence of three unimpeached witnesses, there would be an end to all justice and courts of law."
Consider the implicit skewed logic, violations of clear thinking, offered by the press and religion:
If we cannot accept the corroborating evidential testimony of “unimpeached” witnesses, by the scores and hundreds, some with world-class professional skills to judge competently; if all this deposition of affirmation is but “humbug” and “twaddle”, “fraud” and “imposture”, then why should we believe a word that you say? In other words, they would set aside the validity of time-honored jurisprudence concerning rules of evidence when others speak, but then expect to be taken seriously in their rebuttals just because it’s from them. This scheme works well in a totalitarian state but not among those who honor best methods of ascertaining the truth.
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