Daniel Dunglas Home
(March 20, 1833 - June 21, 1886) was a
Scottish spiritualist, famous during
his lifetime for his claimed powers as
a medium and his reported ability to
levitate to a variety of heights,
elongate and to handle fire and hot
coals without injury. He conducted
hundreds of seances over a period of 35
years — at which were present many of
the best-known names of the Victorian
period — without being conclusively, or
publicly, exposed as a
fraud.
According
to Arthur Conan Doyle, Home was unusual
in that he had powers in four different
types of mediumship: direct voice (the
ability to let spirits audibly speak);
trance speaker (the ability to let
spirits speak through oneself);
clairvoyant (ability to see things that
are out of view); and physical medium
(moving objects at a distance,
levitation, etc.--the type of
mediumship in which Home had no
equals).
Home was
suspicious of any medium who claimed
powers he himself did not possess,
particularly the materializing mediums
(such as the Eddy Brothers), who
claimed the ability to produce solid
spirit forms, and he marked these as
faudulent. Since materializing mediums
always work in darkened places, Home
urged that all séances be held in the
light (Doyle 1926: volume 1, 204-205).
Home, in his 1877 book Lights and
Shadows of Spiritualism, detailed the
conjuring tricks employed by false
mediums Home himself, of course, was
widely suspected of fraud, but it was
never proved (Doyle 1926: volume 1,
207). Frank Podmore (1910, 31-86 and
1902, 223-269) and Milbourne
Christopher (1970, 174-187) provide a
particularly rich source of speculation
on the ways in which Home could have
duped his sitters.
Some
testimony suggests that Home often
conducted his demonstrations in dim
light.[2] The light conditions during
Home's most famous feat of levitation
were disputed, but some witnesses
recorded that it was quite dark.[3]
Podmore (1910, p. 45) records that Home
had a constant companion that sat
opposite of him during his
séances.