Observations placeholder

Rudi Schneider – A scientific examination of his mediumship, compiled by Harry Price (Honorary Director, National Laboratory of Psychical Research)

CONCLUSION

Speaking of the colour or whiteness of the pseudopods, or limbs, which emerge from the cabinet, it must be remembered that really we cannot determine the colour, as all we see is a more or less bright surface from which are reflected the rays of the red lamp. For all we know the 'limbs' may be a pale yellow or some other light colour. But in comparison with a known tint, such as a person's hand or a sheet of white paper, it is not difficult to determine the relative brightness.

The pseudopods may even be pink, as of course the red rays would make this tint appear much lighter, just as light green (the complementary colour) would appear darker under the same conditions. If the reader will take a number of pieces of paper, of various tints, and examine them under a dark-room lamp, he will see how deceptive colours can be in a red light.

Is it possible to simulate even the trance into which Rudi falls during the, production of phenomena?

No one, as yet, has had the temerity to try. I have tried to reproduce that stertorous breathing which accompanies Rudi's trance paroxysms, but in six and a quarter minutes I was exhausted. Yet Rudi will maintain this gruelling trance state, with the perspiration pouring off him, for hours at a stretch. Dr. William Brown, the eminent psychotherapist, has expressed the opinion-which would be confirmed by any layman who had seen Rudi-that the medium's trance is a 'genuine self-induced hypnotic trance'; and we have seen how his pulse-rate accelerated during the time the boy was unconscious.

Does our greatest antagonist, the biggest sceptic, or the most hyper-critical materialist seriously suggest that Rudi can, in the exhausting trance state, conversing all the time, held by two persons and controlled by four electrical circuits, fraudulently tie knots in handkerchiefs, float the curtains over our heads, or produce, in a good light, limbs which have volition and are intelligently directed?

And produce these same manifestations with a constantly changing circle and with different controllers?

And not only in London, but in various parts of Europe with many different investigators?

Not only was it physically impossible for the boy to have produced one single phenomenon fraudulently under our severe conditions, but it would have been difficult for him to have simulated some of the phenomena if all his limbs were free and if he were totally uncontrolled.