Researcher Hamilton Thomas Glendenning

Interesting Bio

http://www.islandnet.com/~sric/Hamilton_Thomas_Glendenning.pdf

plus Film about Ectoplasm pictures he took

The books by Hamilton and his daughter are very interesting. Pity though that the film doesn't have a commentary explaining the various photographs.

Z

Hi Jim,

Thanks for that very interesting clip. I found the link to the University of Manitoba, collection of Hamilton's pictures with details (there are 753 images).
http://imgserver.lib.umanitoba.ca/BrowserInsight/BrowserInsight?cmd=start&cid=34&ig=&gwisp=&iia=0&gwia=1&ir=-1&id=-1&d=0&iwas=2&gc=0&isl=1&ss=0

Take care,
Lynn

Thank you very much Lynn

Interesting.

Hi Jim,

You're welcome, the interesting film clip you posted got me interested in looking for more information.

Take care,
Lynn

Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1873-1935) Conan Doyle's Return (enlarged detail) Gelatin-silver print of unknown date from negative taken June 27, 1932
The great writer's spirit returns through the mediumship of Mrs. Mary Marshall--in a two-dimensional materialization. Doyle is seen in the upper portion of the "ectoplasm" shown exuding from the medium's nose.
The photographer, Dr. T. Glen Hamilton, was a prominent physician and political leader from Winnipeg who conducted research into psychic phenomena between 1918 and 1934. During this period, Dr. Hamilton was elected to the Manitoba legislature, became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and served for a time as President of the Manitoba Medical Association.

Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 1873-1935) F. C. E. Dimmick (England)“Mrs. Dorothy Henderson. Head bent forward, hands controlled and Ectoplasm covering her lap.” Gelatin-silver print, 3.5 x 5 inches October 2, 1928

Mrs. Henderson and her Ectoplasmic Manifestations.
The Phenomena in a Clear Red Light.
By Frank Hawken, Honorary Secretary of the M.S.A.

Mrs. Dorothy Henderson, one of the highly-gifted mediums of the Marylebone Spiritualist Association, is a native of Plymouth. She was born in 1896, and has two bonny daughters, aged eleven and thirteen. She first became interested in Spiritualism some five years ago. It was whilst attending the developing circle of the local Spiritualist society that she first experienced trance. These circles were held in the dark, and shortly afterwards physical phenomena commenced to take place. There was some doubt at first as to who was the medium, but this question was soon settled when it was discovered that nothing happened on the occasions when Mrs. Henderson was absent.
After a few months, a private circle was formed for her development, in which she remained until circumstances forced her to remove to London. The necessity of providing for her mother and two children brought about the professional use of her remarkable gifts. A tour of some of the North Country Spiritualist societies followed. It was on her return from this trip that, with Mrs. Hawken, I attended one of her séances, having seen it announced in the psychic press.
I shall never forget that séance. In a small room some twenty-two people were present, necessitating some sitting against the door. After this was closed, one lady fainted and had to be removed, just as the séance commenced, and later another went into hysterics. It was only on my insistence that the door was not re-opened, while the phenomena were taking place, in order to let this last disturber out. There were hymns and more hymns sung; no one was apparently in charge, and yet phenomena were taking place all the while, which, if genuine, placed Mrs. Henderson in the front rank as a powerful medium.
Shortly afterwards, a series of test séances took place at the M.S.A. rooms, which resulted in her eventually joining the staff of the Association.
In those days, dark séances were the rule; everyone held hands, and hymns were sung. The medium, however, was not contacted. She sat outside a cabinet, formed of curtains across a corner of the room, and a light table was placed inside, upon which were placed a two-piece tin trumpet, mouth organ, zither, fairy bells, and other small toys. Also face downwards on the table were two phosphorescent slates.
The medium was seated in a heavy arm-chair; a rope, placed round her waist, was tied at the back, passed round the centre rung of the chair, again tied, and the ends brought round and held by the sitters on either side. Separate bands of tape were fastened round each wrist, elbow, and upper arm, and her ankles were fastened to the legs of the chair.
Some excellent results were secured under these stringent conditions. There was levitation of various objects, the mouth organ was played very nicely, and the table was usually quickly brought into the centre of the circle. The phosphorescent slates were sometimes lifted, and by their light masses of ectoplasm could be seen. I have seen one of these slates surround a small materialised head, within eight inches of my eyes. Again masses of ectoplasm would gather over one of the slates, luminous side turned up on the table, and gradually condense into a semi-transparent mass, which would then form into hands before our eyes. Concurrently with this phenomenon the direct voice of one of her guides would be heard.
We decided to endeavour to get these séances gradually stabilized on a more scientific plan, so, slowly but surely, conditions were changed, all with the sanction and co-operation of the controls, among whom the outstanding personality was a Cornish fisherman of the name of Bill Turner, who is a great friend of mine! First of all the musical instruments were removed from the séance room, as they used up valuable power, which might be more usefully employed. Then personal contact with the medium was commenced, her right hand always being held by the official in charge of the séance. This for some little time reduced the strength of the phenomena produced, but gradually as the controls became accustomed to this condition the same excellent results were secured.
The next step was to endeavour to secure results in the light, and at the first séance held with a dim red light results were secured. A small piece of ectoplasm was then shown for about one second. It was soon found that the best results were obtained when the medium sat half in the cabinet. Then in a state of trance she would pull the two curtains together in front of her, thus shielding her body from the effects of the light. When sufficient ectoplasm had been produced the curtains would be opened and inspection of the phenomena would take place. Rapid progress was made, the medium was covered less and less by the curtains, and the period at which one could view the ectoplasm produced has increased from the few seconds at first to as long as two or three minutes at the present time. Several very good attempts have been made towards the formation of faces, on two occasions a large hand was distinctly seen, and on another occasion a miniature figure.
A special one-piece dress is kept in the séance room for the use of Mrs. Henderson, and she is always examined when changing into it by two of the ladies who may be sitting. She then goes straight to the séance chair, and her hands are held by the sitter on either side before the light is reduced to the good red light that is normally used. This is done as it takes some little time, as in a picture house, for one’s eyes to get accustomed to the reduced light. The lighting now used is from a 60-volt lamp, which is passed through a yellow and a purple panchromatic screen, with the result that we have a perfect spectrum red. The light is sufficiently powerful to enable one to read the time from one’s watch at a distance of eight feet.
When trance has been induced, Mrs. Henderson’s hands are freed, and shortly afterwards the control will tuck her thumbs into the edge of the curtain on either side. Then with the other fingers of each hand remaining distinctly in view she will draw the curtains in front of her body. Often in recent séances only one curtain has been used, and the fortunate sitter who is in the right position may see the gradual formation of the ectoplasm on the medium’s person. Before the close of the séance, the medium’s hands are again held by the official in charge, and thus all opportunity for any fraudulent manoeuvres on the part of the medium are practically eliminated. But a greater test of the genuineness of Mrs. Henderson’s work is the fact that for eighteen months, twice a week, she has been under the close observation of the officials of the Society.
Obviously the next step was to endeavour to secure records of what was happening. With the hearty co-operation of the controls, and making the first attempt only when they authorized that being done, flashlight photographic records have been taken. The shock to the medium’s system is very great, and a matter of six weeks elapsed between the first and second photograph, a month between the second and third, and now as she is being accustomed to these shocks photographs can be taken fortnightly.
A very good specimen, that of the second taken, is the one used to illustrate this article. I have no doubt, if we are able to continue these séances, that very useful work will be accomplished, and it should be possible by the aid of this medium to check the work of Baron Schrenck-Notzing, Madame Lusson, and verify the work of Dr. Crawford in the Goligher Circle, as well as reproduce some of the wonderful results being secured by Mrs. Crandon in New York at the present time.
I must here express how much I admire the wonderful pluck and fortitude of Mrs. Henderson, as the life of a materialising medium is indeed a very hard one. To secure the best results it is necessary that she should abstain entirely from food on the day that she holds her séances, and then turn up bright and well before the séance. It is usually an hour and a half to two hours after the séance is over before she is fit to travel under escort to her home, and during her connection with the Marylebone Association, in spite of ill-health at various periods, she has never failed to keep her engagements.
Source: The International Psychic Gazette (London), December 1928, pp. 37-38. Research and transcription by John Buescher.

The article on Mrs Henderson was published in the March/April 2004 edition of the Ark Review. The MSA (Marylebone Spiritualist Association) eventually became the SAGB (Spiritualist Association of Great Britain).

I attempted to trace the records of Mrs Henderson's seances but without success as the current office holders have little knowledge of physical mediumship and, I am sad to say, little interest.

The SAGB is now a shadow of its former self. It had well-known Spiritualists serving on its committee including Tom Johansson (husband of Coral Polge) when I used to attend back in the 1970's.

It has one of the most prestigious addresses in London being in the heart of Belgrave Square but how long this will last is difficult to say as its lease must be running out soon.

This is very interesting thanks Jim. I always find it difficult to square the testimony of people with such repute with the nature of the phenomena reported. It is hard to understand why such phenomena have disappeared. Do you know if anyway has ever asked a communicator why this appears to be so?

Interesting Article on Hamilton in the British Journal of Photography 3rd June 2009

Title: Spirit level
Feature: On view
Date: 3 June 2009

TG Hamilton recorded all kinds of weird spirit phenomena at his seances, but he's best known for his photos of ectoplasmic materialisations. Diane Smyth asks artist Susan MacWilliam about her fascination with his archive


Much has been written about the use of photography as evidence in the age of digital manipulation. But the question of veracity has haunted the medium since the very earliest days of its inception, particularly with the rise of spirit photography, otherwise known as the art of photographing - well what exactly?

Its inventor, William H Mumler, rose to fame in the 1860s with photographs supposedly depicting ghosts, but these images were quickly exposed as frauds - double-exposure images of living, breathing Bostonians. Spirit photography has been viewed with suspicion ever since, capturing mediums regurgitating fake ectoplasm or using wires to simulate telekinesis.

But it's flourished nevertheless, and for Northern Ireland artist Susan MacWilliam, who uses paranormal archives to create video artworks, the fact they exist at all is more interesting than what they do - or do not - depict. 'To some people these images may appear faked, but to me the idea of veracity isn't so important,' she says. 'The point is that these photographs document something. Mediums were often accused of swallowing cheesecloth and regurgitating it to produce ectoplasm - even if that were the case, I would consider it an amazing feat in itself.'

MacWilliam is showing three video installations at this year's Venice Biennale: Dermo Optics (the ability to 'see' colours through the power of touch alone), which was filmed at the Dermo Optical Laboratory of Dr Yvonne Duplessis in Paris; Eileen, which explores the social world of Irish medium and co-founder of the Parapsychology Foundation in New York; and F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N, which draws on the TG Hamilton Spirit Photograph Archive in Winnipeg.

'Some people's only response when they look at the images is "It's faked", but I'm more interested in looking at them on other levels,' says MacWilliam. 'Seances were very popular during the War, when people wanted some kind of memorial to the loved ones they had lost. It made them feel better. Seances were social events, a way of bringing people together. The darkened seance rooms were very intimate, and even now there is a genuine sense of community among the families and researchers.'


Camera tricks
Thomas Glendenning Hamilton was a Canadian doctor of medicine who to used his scientific training to investigate paranormal activity. From 1918 on he took hundreds of photographs of seances conducted at his house, recording everything from table rapping and tiltings to clairvoyance, trance states, automatic writing, bell ringing and materialisations. From 1928 also he recorded ectoplasm, or 'teleplasm' as he preferred to call it, which was considered to be materialisation from the spirit world.

After his untimely death in 1935 his family carried on his work, building up a huge collection of images, audio recordings, newspaper clippings and talks. This collection, the Hamilton Family fonds, is now housed at the University of Manitoba Archives and Special Collections.

MacWilliam researched the archive for a month last summer, recording the experience of working in the library and trawling through 40 boxes of images and records. What interested her most, she says, was the interaction between the seance and the camera, and the seeming collusion between the two. For example, she says, people in the shots are often shown bending over to give the camera a better view - disrupting the seance for the image, and not the other way around.

Hamilton insisted seances were conducted in a room specially designated for the task, kept locked the rest of the time to minimise potential for interference, and used a bank of about a dozen cameras to record the action. Lighting the room with a red bulb, he positioned the cameras with their shutters open, triggering them all to go off at the same time with a flash.

'Some mediums said the flash lighting could be dangerous for them,' says MacWilliam. 'Helen Duncan (the Scottish spiritualist who became the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act in 1944) said the shock of the flash could send the ectoplasm back into her body with such force that it would cause her bodily harm.'

'Spiritualism and photography developed at around the same time, and recording the sessions became a very important part of the work,' she says. 'I'm fascinated by that relationship. There was an expectation that an image would arise, and disappointment if it didn't. Some mediums might say, "OK, some images are fraudulent, but it's not because what we do is fraudulent, it's because there's this desire for an image".'


Artistic medium
Hamilton also used two stereoscopic cameras to create 3D images, and for MacWilliam their eerie there/not there illusion is an apt metaphor for the mediums' work. One image in TG Hamilton's collection particularly excited her, and lent its name to her whole project - a 1931 shot of teleplasm spelling out the name of French astronomer and psychical researcher Flammarion. 'Ectoplasm, or teleplasm, is regarded as a materialisation of the dead,' says MacWilliam. 'This is the only documented evidence of teleplasm that appeared as a word.' The caption written for the archive by Hamilton's wife, Lillian, gives a slightly more credulous reading: 'Flammarion, the French astronomer and pioneer psychic researcher, gave much mental evidence through Elizabeth M'.

Inspired by the textual turn, MacWilliam invited a friend, poet and writer Ciaran Carson, to sit in the seance cabinet she had reconstructed, based on that used by Hamilton, and to recite a list of film making terms. In an inverse reflection of the textual teleplasm, he speaks words that describe image-making. Her video work F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N also features Atlanta-based poltergeist investigator Dr William Roll, a faculty-member of the Psychology Department of the University of West Georgia, whose work focuses on scientific explanations of the paranormal.

'In one sense I'm acting as a medium, bringing people from around the world together,' she says. 'The people in this community remind me of the art scene. They're on the periphery of mainstream society, with jobs that aren't so permanent, and they research and investigate in pursuit of the enquiry.'

And, as with artists' work, being on the periphery means that the community's work and its legacy is not always completely assured. TG Hamilton's archive is, for the moment, safely housed, but other collections have suffered - Winnipeg-based Howard Reed was forced to break up his 3000-strong library of books, while Eileen J Garrett's family has had to move its archive out of its Manhattan brownstone to a less accessible location in Long Island.

'What happens to these archives is very interesting,' says MacWilliam. 'The Parapsychology Foundation's Eileen J Garrett library is now in financial difficulties and Garrett's granddaughter, Lisette Coly, is anxious about its survival.'


On show
Susan MacWilliam's show, Remote Viewing, will represent Northern Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale from 07 June until 22 November. Visit www.labiennale.org. Remote Viewing is also a book published by Black Dog (ISBN: 978-906155-78-0). For more on the artist visit susanmacwilliam.com.


Source:

Incisive Media Ltd. 2009
Incisive Media Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, is a company registered in the United Kingdom with company registration number 04038503

Another interesting article here

http://www.islandnet.com/~sric/Problem_of_Human_Survival_(2002_ARPR).pdf

Admin wrote:Another interesting article here

http://www.islandnet.com/~sric/Problem_of_Human_Survival_(2002_ARPR).pdf

This link could not be found.

PDF] THE ACADEMY OF RELIGION AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH* Annual Conference ...File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
The photographic equipment was installed at one end of the seance ..... Without the financial assistance received from the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton ...
www.islandnet.com/.../Problem_of_Human_Survival

Very odd I get this on Google that goes direct to that web address but can't get to it when I paste the URL for the web address here. I have printed the paper but do not wish to breach their copyright

It is a paper produced by the Survival Research Institute of Canada
http://www.islandnet.com/~sric/

Thanks Jim,

The SRIC are usually happy to give permission if they are asked.

Z

Thanks I will ask them Z

Admin wrote:Thanks I will ask them Z

Please respect our copyright! W e encourage you to view and print this document FOR
PERSONAL USE, also to link to it directly from your website. Copying for any reason other than
personal use requires the express written consent of the copyright holder:
Survival Research Institute of Canada, PO Box 8697, Victoria, BC V8W 3S3 Canada

Another Interesting piece on him
http://wwwofparanormal.blogspot.com/2009/12/thomas-glendenning-hamilton.html

I will update this because the University of Manitoba has added to its site.

You can now read Hamilton's own book about the Research, intention and Survival, downloadable here http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/media/Hamilton_Intention_and_Survival.pdf

His wife's book about his work, after his death Is Survival a Fact http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/media/Hamilton_Is_Survival_A_Fact.pdf

The photographs can be found here http://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3Ahamilton_family

More general material is here http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/digital/hamilton/index.html

Then as a bit of fun there is a link to this (I have given this before somewhere)

Wow! This thread is nearly six years old! I can't recall if I've seen it before or even if I was a member when it started!

There are so many lying gathering dust Mac. The sudden availability of the two books made it worth resurrecting because as we know there is no death (especially when it comes to threads on this forum).

Admin wrote:There are so many lying gathering dust Mac. The sudden availability of the two books made it worth resurrecting because as we know there is no death (especially when it comes to threads on this forum).

Is this the reason you need an index, Jim? It must be hard work keeping tabs on old threads I'd guess....

Its the reason I need an index Mac, sometimes I search on Google and get directed back to a thread on here I had forgotten about.

God bless Google - at times!!

Seriously though it can search brilliantly well in situations such as you've mentioned and Google Earth has allowed me to take a look at the homes of folk I know online, something impossible before unless they sent me a photo. How quickly we learn to take these things for granted....

Admin wrote:I will update this because the University of Manitoba has added to its site.

You can now read Hamilton's own book about the Research, intention and Survival, downloadable here http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/media/Hamilton_Intention_and_Survival.pdf

His wife's book about his work, after his death Is Survival a Fact http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/media/Hamilton_Is_Survival_A_Fact.pdf

The photographs can be found here http://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3Ahamilton_family

More general material is here http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/digital/hamilton/index.html

Then as a bit of fun there  is a link to this (I have given this before somewhere)

Thanks Jim!!