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Richard Boursnell
Richard Boursnell (1832 – 1909) was a British medium and spirit photographer. Boursnell worked in a partnership with a professional photographer in Fleet Street, London. According to the psychical researcher Simeon Edmunds, the spirit photographs of Boursnell "proved fraudulent on a number of occasions." In 1902, Boursnell took a photograph of the spiritualist William Thomas Stead and a "spirit" extra appeared which was identified as Piet Botha, a Boer commandant killed in the South African War. Stead claimed Botha was unknown in England and stated that the photograph was of supernatural origin, however, magician John Nevil Maskelyne and Andrew Wilson discovered that Botha's death had been reported in London newspapers in 1899 with a photograph of Botha. Boursnell was exposed when F. C. Barnes from Brisbane, Australia visited him in London in 1908. The "spirit" extra from the photograph was identified as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, taken from a book. Researcher Ronald ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediumship
Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of objective evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship. An experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society led to the conclusion that the test subjects demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century, when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud—with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians—and the practice began to lose credibility.Ruth Brandon. (1983). ''The Spiritualists: The Passi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spirit Photography
Spirit photography (also called ghost photography) is a type of photography whose primary goal is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting. It dates back to the late 19th century. The end of the American Civil War and the mid-19th Century Spiritualism movement contributed greatly to the popularity of spirit photography. Photographers such as William Mumler and William Hope ran thriving businesses taking photos of people with their supposed dead relatives. Both were shown to be frauds, but "true believers", such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, refused to accept the evidence as proof of a hoax. As cameras became available to the general public, ghost photographs became common due to natural camera artifacts such as flash reflecting off dust particles, a camera strap or hair close to the lens, lens flare, pareidolia, or in modern times, deceptions using smart phone applications that add ghosts images to existing photographs. History The firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was named. The street has been an important through route since Roman times. During the Middle Ages, businesses were established and senior clergy lived there; several churches remain from this time including Temple Church and St Bride's. The street became known for printing and publishing at the start of the 16th century, and it became the dominant trade so that by the 20th century most British national newspapers operated from here. Much of that industry moved out in the 1980s after News International set up cheaper manufacturing premises in Wapping, but some former newspaper buildings are listed and have been preserved. The term ''Fleet Street'' remains a metonym for the British national press, and pubs on the street once frequented b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Thomas Stead
William Thomas Stead (5 July 184915 April 1912) was a British newspaper editor who, as a pioneer of investigative journalism, became a controversial figure of the Victorian era. Stead published a series of hugely influential campaigns whilst editor of ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', including his 1885 series of articles, '' The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon''. These were written in support of a bill, later dubbed the " Stead Act", that raised the age of consent from 13 to 16. Stead's "new journalism" paved the way for the modern tabloid in Great Britain. He has been described as "the most famous journalist in the British Empire". He is considered to have influenced how the press could be used to influence public opinion and government policy, and advocated " Government by Journalism".Joseph O. Baylen"Stead, William Thomas (1849–1912)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., September 2010. Retrieved 3 May 2011. He was known for his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boer
Boers ( ; af, Boere ()) are the descendants of the Dutch-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled this area, but the United Kingdom incorporated it into the British Empire in 1806. The name of the group is derived from "boer", which means "farmer" in Dutch and Afrikaans. In addition, the term also applied to those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to colonise in the Orange Free State, Transvaal (together known as the Boer Republics), and to a lesser extent Natal. They emigrated from the Cape to live beyond the reach of the British colonial administration, with their reasons for doing so primarily being the new Anglophone common law system being introduced into the Cape and the British abolition of slavery in 1833. The term '' Afrikaners'' or ''Afrikaans people'' is generally used in modern-day South Africa for the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supernatural
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world. The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods, and spirits. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including magic, telekinesis, levitation, precognition, and extrasensory perception. The philosophy of naturalism contends that nothing exists beyond the natural world, and as such approaches supernatural claims with skepticism. Etymology and history of the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Nevil Maskelyne
John Nevil Maskelyne (22 December 183918 May 1917) was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet, along with other Victorian-era devices. He worked with magicians George Alfred Cooke and David Devant, and many of his illusions are still performed today. His book ''Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill'' is considered a classic overview of card sharp practices.In 1914 he founded the Occult Committee, a group to "investigate claims to supernatural power and to expose fraud". Early life Maskelyne was born on 22 December 1839 at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England to John Nevil Maskelyne (1800–1875), a saddler, and his wife Harriet née Brunsdon (1812–1871). He trained as a watchmaker. Career Maskelyne became interested in conjuring after watching a stage performance at his local Town Hall by the fraudulent American spiritualists the Davenport brothers. He saw how the Davenports' spirit cabinet illus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruth Brandon
Ruth Brandon (born 1943) is a British journalist, historian and author. Biography Brandon began her career as a trainee producer for the BBC, working in radio and television. She moved to work in freelance journalism and as an author. She is the author of many works of both fiction and non-fiction. Brandon's popular book ''The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries'' (1983) was republished by Prometheus Books. The book has been an influence on skeptics as it debunked spiritualism by documenting the absurdity and fraud in mediumship. Martin Gardner wrote "Thousands of books about spiritualism have been written by believers, skeptics, and fence-sitters, but none demonstrates as convincingly as ''The Spiritualists'' the unbelievable ease with which persons of the highest intelligence can be flimflammed by the crudest of psychic frauds." In the early 1980s Brandon was involved in a dispute with the paranormal author Brian Inglis B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gordon Stein
Gordon Stein (April 30, 1941 – August 27, 1996) was an American author, physiologist, and activist for atheism and religious skepticism. Biography Stein was born in New York to Jewish parents, and from an early age took an interest in science. He earned degrees in psychology and zoology, a doctorate in physiology from Ohio State University and master's degrees in Management and Library Science from University of Rochester, Adelphi College, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He was an author of books for secular humanist and rationalist publications, he also was a critic of claims of paranormal phenomena. Stein was an outspoken atheist and publicly debated Christian apologists such as Greg Bahnsen. He served as editor of the ''American Rationalist'' and was the librarian of the Center for Inquiry, which houses both the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). Stein died of lung ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South East Queensland metropolitan region, which encompasses a population of around 3.8 million. The Brisbane central business district is situated within a peninsula of the Brisbane River about from its mouth at Moreton Bay, a bay of the Coral Sea. Brisbane is located in the hilly floodplain of the Brisbane River Valley between Moreton Bay and the Taylor Range, Taylor and D'Aguilar Range, D'Aguilar mountain ranges. It sprawls across several local government in Australia, local government areas, most centrally the City of Brisbane, Australia's most populous local government area. The demonym of Brisbane is ''Brisbanite''. The Traditional Owners of the Brisbane a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Empress Elisabeth Of Austria
Duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie in Bavaria (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898) was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary from her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I on 24 April 1854 until her assassination in 1898. Elisabeth was born into the royal Bavarian House of Wittelsbach. Nicknamed Sisi (also Sissi), she enjoyed an informal upbringing before marrying Emperor Franz Joseph I at the age of sixteen. The marriage thrust her into the much more formal Habsburg court life, for which she was unprepared and which she found uncongenial. Early in the marriage, she was at odds with her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, who took over the rearing of Elisabeth's daughters, one of whom, Sophie, died in infancy. The birth of a son to the imperial couple, Crown Prince Rudolf, improved Elisabeth's standing at court, but her health suffered under the strain. As a result, she would often visit Hungary for its more relaxed environment. She came to develop a deep kinsh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronald Pearsall
Ronald Joseph Pearsall (20 October 1927 – 27 September 2005) was an English writer whose scope included children's stories, pornography and fishing. His most famous book ''The Worm in the Bud'' (1969) was about Victorian sexuality, including orgies, prostitution and fetishism. A prolific writer, his other books included three on popular music between 1837 and 1929, several on the history of sexuality and many on antiques. He held other jobs as a shoe shop assistant, cinema manager and store detective. His book ''The Table Rappers'' (1972) was an exposure of fraud mediums, tricksters and charlatans in Spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) .... The Telegraph. (2005)Ronald Pearsall Obituary. Bibliography *1966: ''Is That My Hook in Your Ear? a light-hearted l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
