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| From: Reanimation Library |
"It was during the time of Freud that the concept of ectoplasm as ghost residue gained popularity. Studies of the time suggested ectoplasm was a yellow-green ooze around a ghost body. Residue was thought to be left behind and often spotted on a photograph or with special lights or goggles. Contact with ectoplasm was thought to have the potential to harm. One of the key properties of ectoplasm is that some of its forms are extremely sensitive to light, so much so that even flashing a torch drives the substance back into the medium's body with the force of snapped elastic. Bruises, open wounds and hemorrhage may result. In a seance at the British College of Psychic Science one of the sitters made a violent movement when touched by ectoplasm; the medium, Mr. Evan Powell, immediately suffered a severe injury to his chest. Breathing it or moving through it was supposed to be the cause of illness or possession, although many times the supposed ectoplasm was found to be fabricated.
Other samples of ectoplasm have been proven to be a composition of egg white, cheesecloth or wood pulp created by or for the medium. The distinctive texture and smell of ectoplasm can be created using various ingredients, such as a mixture of soap, gelatin and egg white. In the late nineteenth century many fraudulent mediums used muslin. In the twentieth-century divining rooms that sprung up during the Spiritualist movement, seances were often held for members of the public. During these rituals, webs and pieces of gauzy fabric were covered with fluorescent paint and glowing materials to create fake ectoplasm. Sometimes liquid was released in an effort to create tears or rain by spirits, often dropped from the ceiling, and pulled back up before the end of the seance. Visitors would be warned not to touch the 'spirit residue,' lest they come to grave harm."
— Robin Bellamy, PSICAN
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| Francis Bacon by John Deakin for Vogue 1962 (Anamas à Miami) |
"Baron Schrenck Notzing was able to get a fragment of ectoplasm into a tube. The moment he wanted to trap it it vanished with lightning-like speed. Occasionally, however, with the medium's consent, specimens were amputated for chemical and microscopical analysis. Of the result Baron Schrenck Notzing writes: 'Very probably the formation of the substance which appears in the sitting as liquid material, and also as amorphous material, or filmy net-like and veil-like material, in the form of shreads, wisps, threads and cords, in large or small packets, is an organized tissue which easily decomposes-a sort of transitory matter which originates in the organism in a manner unknown to us, possesses unknown biological functions, and formative possibilities and is evidently peculiarly dependent on the psychic influence of the medium. As regards the structure of the teleplasm, we only know this: that within it, or about it, we find conglomerates of bodies resembling epithelium, real plate epithelium with nuclei, veil-like filmy structures, coherent lamellar bodies without structure, as well as flat globules and mucus. If we abstain from any detailed indications concerning the composition and function of teleplasm we may yet assert two definite facts: 1. In teleplasm, or associated with it, we find substances of organic origin, various cell-forms, which leave behind cell detritus. 2. The mobile material observed, which seems to represent the fundamental substance of the phenomena, does not consist of india-rubber or any other artificial product, by which its existence could be fraudulently represented. For substances of this kind can never decompose into cell detritus, or leave a residue of such.'"
— New Age Village
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