Florence Cook and Katie King:

[year2027]

God first

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Psychics and Mediums

Florence Cook and Katie King: The Story of a Spiritualist Medium

The story of 19th century physical medium Florence Cook and her 'spirit control' Katie King is a controversial one to say the least. Allegedly the possessor of psychic abilities from a young age, Cook was to become famous in Victorian Spiritualist circles and beyond for producing the full materialisation of the spirit 'Katie King' in front of numerous witnesses and for undergoing methodical testing of her alleged psychic abilities by the eminent scientist Sir William Crookes. However, the genuineness of Cook's mediumistic abilities and the objectivity of Crookes investigations have been called into question by some researchers who view the behaviour of both the medium and the scientist as highly questionable.

Early 'Psychic Abilities'

Born on 3 June, 1856, Florence Cook came from a respectable working class home in Hackney, east London. In poor health since childhood, she had apparently always possessed psychic abilities, and was able to see spirits and hear the disembodied voices of angels, though little notice was taken of this within the Cook family. After the age of fourteen Florence began going into trances in front of the family and soon began to develop her own peculiar psychic gift, initially at informal séances held in the family house and in the house of a friend. According to Florence Cook's own account published in The Spiritualist in May 1872, an array of incredible psychic phenomena occurred at these table turning sessions. Objects flew around the room, loud rappings were heard, tables were levitated and flung against the wall, and Florence herself was lifted up to the ceiling and carried over the sitters. We do only have Florence's description of these psychic wonders, but the similarity of the phenomena to poltergeist activity is interesting.

During one of these séances Florence received a 'spirit message' which she proceed to note down in mirror writing, which explained that she should make contact with a nearby Spiritualist group called the Dalston Association of Enquirers into Spiritualism. Florence's psychic abilities and mediumship developed as she gave impressive séances for the Dalton Society and she acquired some fame as a medium when Thomas Blyton, secretary of the Dalton Spiritualists, wrote an account of her mediumistic and psychic powers which was published in the June 1871 issue of The Spiritualist. According to Cook, her health improved noticeably as she learnt to control he psychic abilities, interestingly enough a fact also noted by Brazilian psychic surgeon José Arigó

In January 1872, Florence became the focus for unexplained happenings in the school where she worked as an assistant teacher. It seems probable that the fifteen-year-old Florence had become the focus of a poltergeist, like psychics Matthew Manning and Nina Kulagina prior to their developing and controlling psychic abilities. Unfortunately for Florence, the school owner Miss Eliza Cliff was reluctantly obliged to terminate her employment due to the effect the strange phenomena were having on the pupils.

One of Florence Cook's alleged psychic specialities at her séances was to produce 'spirit faces'. Making use of a substantial cupboard in the breakfast room of the family house as her 'spirit cabinet' (a name among Victorian Spiritualists for the medium's workspace), Florence would enter into a trance state to build up her psychic energies, and then produce her ghostly faces through a hole cut towards the top of cupboard door. These faces, clad in white linen, would peer through the aperture despite the medium being bound securely to a chair with ropes around her neck, waist and wrists.

The Appearance of Katie King

It was at one of these séances, in summer 1872, that the floating spirit face of Katie King first appeared. The 'entity' or 'spirit' known as Katie King was somewhat of a spiritual world celebrity, first making herself known at the very beginnings of American Spiritualism in the early 1850s, at séances with mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Koons family, among others. Katie was allegedly the spirit of Annie Owen Morgan, the daughter of an historical 17th century Welsh pirate called Henry Owen Morgan (1635-1688), known in the spirit world as John King. In her earthly incarnation she had apparently died young, around 22 or 23 years old, after committing a series of crimes which included murder. She had, she claimed, returned to convince the world of the truth of Spiritualism in an attempt to expiate her earthly sins.

Katie King promised to remain with Florence Cook for a period of three years, during which many extraordinary things would be shown to the world. It took approximately a year after the first appearance of the death-like face of Katie King for Florence the develop her mediumship enough for King to manifest her full spirit form in front of the sitters, but after this was achieved, Katie allegedly appeared almost daily, walking casually around the house of the Cook family.

Spiritualist Séances

There are numerous eye-witness accounts of what happened at Florence Cook's séances. Generally, after the medium was positioned inside her spirit cabinet, the sitters would wait, occasionally for as long as 30 or 40 minutes, for the appearance of Katie, ashen faced and clad in flowing white robes, from behind the curtain. She would walk freely among the sitters, even allowing them to touch her, as her medium apparently lay unconscious in the cabinet. An important detail noted by sitters at some of these séances is that while Katie King was walking around the room, sounds variously described as sobbing, moaning (heard by renowned chemist Sir William Crookes) and even scratching (heard by British medium and religious teacher Stainton Moses) were heard coming from behind the curtain. This of course suggests that Florence had a well-concealed confederate inside the spirit cabinet, though this was never proven.

Russian aristocrat and psychical researcher A.N. Aksakoff (1832-1903) reported on a séance he attended at the Cook family home on 22 October 1873 (see G. Zorab in sources below). Before the séance began Florence Cook, who was sitting in a chair behind a curtain in a corner of the room, had her hands bound individually with twined tape and the knots sealed by a Mr. J.C. Luxmoore, J.P., who was in charge of the séance. Her hands were then drawn behind her back and tied together with the ends of the same piece of rope, the knots once again being sealed. Finally Luxmoore bound Florence again using 'a long piece of tape which was drawn outside the cabinet curtains and then under and through a copper staple nailed to the floor and finally fastened to the table, beside which Mr. Luxmoore was sitting.' Consequently if Florence got up from her chair there would be an obvious tug on the tape fastened to the table.

After 15 minutes the figure of Katie King appeared close to the curtain, clad as usual entirely in white, and with hands and arms bare. She held short conversations with Mr. Luxmoore and various other sitters, including Aksakoff, who summoned up enough courage to ask 'Can't you show me your medium?' to which Katie replied: "Yes, certainly, come here very quickly and have a look!' Aksakoff rose immediately from his chair, took five steps and reached the curtain. But the white figure had completely disappeared, and as he looked inside the curtain he saw a figure sitting in a dark corner wearing a black silk dress. The moment he returned to his seat Katie King appeared standing next to the curtain and asked if he was satisfied. But Aksakoff was not convinced that it was indeed Florence Cook he had seen and asked to examine the medium in better light.

His request granted, the Russian aristocrat grabbed a lamp and within seconds was behind the curtain. Again the white-clad figure had instantly disappeared and Aksakoff found himself alone with Florence Cook who:

' . . . in a deep trance, was sitting on a chair, with both her hands bound fast behind her back. The light, shining on the medium's face started to produce its usual effect, i.e. the medium began to sigh and to awake. Behind the curtain an interesting dialogue started between the medium, becoming more and more awake, and Katie who wanted to put her medium to sleep again. But Katie had to give way, she said Goodbye, and then silence followed.'

At the end of the séance Aksakoff checked that all the bindings, knots and seals were still intact, and in fact had some difficulty in cutting Florence free with scissors which barely fitted underneath the tape, so tightly had it been wrapped around her hands. Aksakoff attended a second séance with Florence Cook on 28 October, this time at the house of Luxmoore, and again witnessed the appearance of Katie King. Once more, if the account of Count Aksakoff can be trusted, and if Cook did not have an accomplice hidden away somewhere, then it is very difficult to escape the conclusion that a genuine phenomenon occurred at these two séances.

As word of Florence's physical mediumship spread and prominent members of society witnessed the manifestations she received the patronage of a Manchester businessman called Charles Blackburn. As Florence never asked money for her séances she was glad of Blackburn's financial backing, which allowed her to demonstrate her mediumship whenever required.

The Volckman 'Exposure'

With the Katie King manifestations Florence Cook had become the first British medium to allegedly materialize a spirit form in good light. However, on the night of 9 December, 1873, her reputation as a physical medium received a blow from which it never fully recovered. One of the sitters at this particular Hackney session was a Spiritualist and investigator named William Volckman.

According to Volckman, after he had carefully observed the spirit of Katie King, dressed completely in ghostly white as she paraded around the room, he noted the startling resemblance between the medium and the so-called spirit. Hoping to prove his theory correct in dramatic fashion Volckman sprang up from his chair and 'grasped the spirit'. In the confusion which followed three of the other sitters took hold of Volckman, who received a scratched nose and lost part of his beard in the struggle, while the 'spirit' escaped back into the cabinet. When everything had calmed down, apparently after a period of about five minutes, the curtain was pulled back. There the sitters found Florence in a considerably agitated condition, but still clad in the black dress and boots which she had been wearing at the beginning of the séance, and bound to the chair with the same tape which had been used to confine her. The knot in the tape, which had been sealed with the signet ring of the Earl of Caithness, one of the sitters, was still intact. A subsequent search of Florence Cook revealed no trace of the white robes Katie King had been seen wearing.

Despite the fact that Florence was discovered still bound to her chair, Volckman's evidence for imposture still seems rather suggestive, and to Trevor Hall and many subsequent researchers it is conclusive proof that her claims to psychic and mediumistic abilities were based on fraud. However, there is much more to this incident than Hall et al ever realised or bothered to research. The Volckman exposure needs to be seen against the background of the violent jealousy of another medium called Mrs. Guppy, a woman with an unnatural hatred of young mediums in general, but of Florence Cook in particular.

Working from unpublished contemporary documents R.G. Medhurst and K.M. Goldney (see sources below) have found evidence of what may be termed a 'Guppy Plot'. In essence this consisted of a startling plan which involved a group of sitters, including William Volckman, who were to be hired to attend one of Florence Cook's séances. When a favourable moment arose during the psychic manifestations, one of the group was to throw vitriol (acid) into the face of the supposed spirit, and thus, they assumed, destroy forever the pretty features of Mrs. Guppy's bitterest rival Florence Cook.

Another interesting fact relating to the exposure, and supporting the idea of some kind of plot, is that after Mr. Guppy passed away, William Volckman married Mrs. Guppy. However, despite the motives of Volckman, it is still a fact that he grabbed hold of Florence posing as the spirit Katie King. Or is it? We only have Volckman's word that what he grasped was indeed the flesh and blood Florence Cook rather than the ethereal Katie King. After the exposure Volckman stated that 'no third parties had any knowledge of my invitation to, or presence at, the séance in question.' As we have already seen this was an outright lie. In contrast to Volckman's statement that Katie had to be forcibly removed from his grasp, other sitters attested that Katie glided out of Mr. Volckman's grip, and subsequently seemed to dematerialize. One witness described her movement as being akin to that of 'a seal in water'.

So, while for many the so-called Volckman exposure does cast a huge shadow over the mediumship of Florence Cook, it is clear that Volckman was far from the disinterested witness he claimed to be. If the motive for his actions was to show Florence to be a fraud by whatever means necessary, which seems to have been the case, this alone should put his testimony in serious doubt.

William Crookes and Florence Cook

One of the most illustrious scientists to investigate the phenomenon of Spiritualism was William (later Sir William) Crookes (1832-1919), an English chemist and physicist, and discoverer of the element thallium. Previous to attending some of Florence Cook's séances in September 1873, and undertaking a detailed scientific study of her mediumship, Crookes had investigated Kate Fox (one of the sisters involved in the infamous Hydesville case) and the remarkable English medium Daniel Dunglas Home. It was largely due his witnessing remarkable psychic phenomena at numerous sittings with Home that Crookes became convinced of the existence of an 'outside intelligence' which would sometimes manifest during séances.

One particular Florence Cook sitting attended by Crookes is described in his 1874 book Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism, and also in The Spiritualist for 19 December 1873. It was at this séance, held at the residence of J.C. Luxmoore, that Crookes claimed that he heard moaning and sobbing coming from behind the curtain while the spirit Katie was standing in the room. Crookes subsequently held a long series of test sittings with Florence Cook, who agreed to undergo any test of her psychic abilities Crookes could devise, at his own house in Mornington Road, Camden Town, London, where he could be in complete control of the situation. Florence often stayed at the house, where Crookes lived with his wife Ellen, and was sometimes accompanied by her mother and sister Kate.

In these experiments Crookes claimed to have witnessed the medium and the spirit together on more than one occasion. At one particular sitting held on 29 March 1874, Crookes records that after going behind the medium's curtain, using the light of a phosphorus lamp he witnessed Florence Cook 'dressed in black velvet as she had been in the early part of the evening, and to all appearances perfectly senseless'. He goes on to say that Cook did not move when he took her hand or when he held the lamp close to her face, but continued breathing quietly. He then shone the lamp around and saw the figure of Katie, 'robed in flowing white drapery' standing directly behind Florence. Still holding Florence's hand Crookes then 'passed the lamp up and down so as to illuminate Katie's whole figure, and satisfy myself thoroughly that I was really looking at the veritable Katie.'

Crookes and other witnesses, including the novelist Florence Marryat, noted physical differences between Florence Cook and Katie. According to these witnesses Katie was taller and heavier than Florence, had a larger face, longer fingers, different colour hair, and unpierced ears, while those of Florence were pierced. At one sitting Florence was found to have a blister on her neck which was not found on Katie when she materialized. On another occasion Crookes covered Katie's hands in dye, no trace of which was found on Florence when she was later examined.

Some critics, including Peter Brookesmith (see sources below) believe that on the occasions when both Florence and Katie King were witnessed together, the medium must have had a collaborator, probably her sister Kate, to accomplish the deception. However, it is difficult to believe that when carrying out his experiments Crookes did not bother to make sure that Kate Cook was not in a position to masquerade as a spirit. And surely, as both sisters were often guests at his house, Crookes could tell the difference between them.

The Varley Experiments

In late February 1874 Crookes arranged to test Florence Cook's mediumship using electrical equipment devised by Cromwell Varley, an electrical engineer, and Fellow of the Royal Society. There were at least two such tests, the first held at J.C. Luxmoore's house, and conducted by Varley in the presence of Crookes, the second at Crookes's house, and conducted by him. Similar results were obtained on both occasions. It was the object of these experiments to discover whether the medium was still in her original seated position within the cabinet, while an alleged materialization was taking place.

In the first of these tests Florence Cook was placed on a chair in the cabinet, and made part of an electric circuit connected with a resistance coil and a galvanometer. To allow the current to pass through the medium's body, two sovereigns (gold coins) to which platinum wires had been soldered, were attached to her arms slightly above the wrist.

The galvanometer was outside the cabinet and visible to the sitters during the séance, so if the medium made any movement or broke the circuit, fluctuations in the galvanometer readings would be immediately obvious.

After Florence had fallen into a trance, Katie King duly appeared, waving her arms and opening and closing her fingers as instructed (to see whether the galvanometer would be affected), speaking to people, and even writing on paper provided by one of the sitters. During the séance Varley was allowed to grasp the hand of King, and stated that is was a long one, and very cold and clammy. A minute or so after this Varley entered the cabinet to wake Florence from her trance, as he did so he took the opportunity to feel her hand, and noted that it was 'small and dry, and not long, cold, and clammy like Katie's.' This is another significant detail to consider if one is persuaded that the medium and the spirit were the same person. Whilst the sitting was taking place, there were no significant fluctuations in the galvanometer readings, the electric current had not been interrupted, and when Florence regained consciousness Varley found the wires exactly as he had left them. Consequently, it must be assumed that Florence had not moved from her seat during the materialization of Katie.

However, Trevor Hall has maintained that Crookes helped Florence Cook to deceive Varley in the experiments. Hall suggests that Crookes instructed Cook on how she could substitute a resistance coil of about the same resistance as her own body into the electric circuit, thus enabling her to assume her role as Katie King. But Professor C.D. Broad's analysis of the Varley experiments (see sources below) has shown that such a substitution could not account for the galvanometer readings recorded by Varley.

Spirit Photographs?

During May 1874, as a visual record of his experiments with Florence Cook, Crookes took a series of 44 'spirit' photographs by artificial light using five different cameras. He described some of these photographs as 'excellent'. Unfortunately the handful of photographs of Katie King and Florence Cook that survive today are, in the words of R.G. Medhurst and K.M. Goldney, 'poor quality prints of obscure origin.' They also look extremely unconvincing, and, though charming Victorian period pieces, rather silly. Due to the resemblance between medium and spirit on these 'poor quality prints', the photographs are not taken seriously by most psychical researchers today. Indeed they have been enough to convince many researchers that Florence Cook and Katie King were indeed the same person, and the whole thing was a fraud.

Crookes never published his photographs during his lifetime, and the original plates were destroyed on his death in 1919. However, he did send copies out to close friends and associates, some of whom had attended Florence Cook's séances, though it is doubtful if these are the same photos that remain today. One would assume that if Crookes's original spirit photos had been faked, those who had been sitters at Cook's sessions and had seen Florence Cook and the materialized Katie King would immediately have noticed that the 'spirit' depicted was merely the medium dressed in white sheets. That is unless the desire to believe was so strong that their critical facility deserted them. The Russian aristocrat Count Aksakoff made the intriguing statement that on the photographs of Katie King / Florence Cook which Crookes had shown him, Katie looked exactly like the phantom he had witnessed at the two sittings he attended.

Finally, in Crookes' Researches he describes one of his pictures thus:

'One of the most interesting of the pictures is one in which I am standing by the side of Katie; she has her bare foot upon a particular part of the floor. Afterwards I dressed Miss Cook like Katie, placed her and myself in exactly the same position, and we were photographed by the same cameras, placed exactly as in the other experiment, and illuminated by the same light. When these two pictures are placed over each other, the two photographs of myself coincide exactly as regards stature, etc., but Katie is half a head taller than Miss Cook, and looks a big woman in comparison with her.'

At a sitting in May 1874, Katie King announced that her time as Florence's spirit guide would be soon over. In his Researches published the same year, Crookes described her final appearance at a séance in late May at which he had been present. Just before this final series of Katie King séances, on 29 April 1874, Florence had married Edward Elgie Corner, and although Crookes and his wife remained friends with both her and her husband, he undertook no more experiments with Florence Corner. Crookes went on to investigate the American psychic and medium Eva Annie Fay, using Varley's equipment, and published his results as 'A Scientific Examination of Mrs. Fay's Mediumship' in The Spiritualist for 12 March, 1875.

Despite the loss of Katie King, Florence Cook continued her controversial career as a medium with varying degrees of success. On one occasion in January 1880, she was caught out apparently impersonating 'Marie', her spirit guide, though it was posited that she may have been sleepwalking at the time. In contrast to this apparent fraud, there are testimonies by various witnesses who claimed to have seen Mrs. Corner and Marie at the same time (see Medhurst, R.G. and Goldney, K.M., p80 ff in sources below). Florence Corner remained friends with the Crookes until her death of pneumonia in April 1904, at a house in Battersea Rise, London.

As for Katie King, she allegedly appeared again at various séances, including one in Winnipeg, Canada, in October 1930. This particular sitting was conducted by a Dr. Glen Hamilton, and Katie was photographed, Dr. Hamilton stating that there were 'some points of similarity to be traced between Katie as photographed by Crookes and Katie as photographed in the Winnipeg experiments'. King also allegedly appeared at a séance in Rome in 1974, and was again photographed.

The Spiritualists

What are we to make of this extraordinarily complex case? Numerous investigators, sceptics and psychical researchers alike, have dismissed it out of hand as fraud, which it must be admitted looks like the best explanation. Many sceptical researchers have been influenced by Trevor Hall's The Spiritualists, originally published in 1962 and republished as The Medium and the Scientist: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes in 1985. Hall's position was one of complete scepticism about the case, he believed the whole affair to have been a complete imposture and set about finding out how it was achieved. Some of his arguments have been mentioned here as untenable. As for Hall's contention that Crookes was involved in a torrid sexual relationship with Florence, a girl 24 years his junior, and thus allowed himself to be duped into accepting her phenomena as real, though there is no reliable evidence to support it, it does remain a possibility.

However, there is evidence against such an affair. For instance, Florence was married during her experiments with Crookes and both Crookes and his wife stayed in contact with Mr. and Mrs. Corner long after the supposed affair. Besides, when he declared his belief in Spiritualism, Crookes lost the support of many of his colleagues, and was ridiculed in the press, would he have risked his reputation even further by having an affair with a 16 year-old girl under the nose of his (then pregnant) wife?. And what of the extraordinary psychic phenomena he recorded witnessing in the presence of Daniel Dunglas Home? Are we to believe Crookes was having an affair with him too?

All this brings us no closer to establishing the genuineness or otherwise of Florence Cook's mediumship, her psychic 'powers', or the identity of 'Katie King'. The available evidence suggests that Cook reverted to fraud on more than one occassion, though if eyewitness testimony from the period is to be trusted then something was manifesting in the séance room, whether it was a spirit called 'Katie King' is doubtful. Until it can be proved beyond doubt that Florence Cook did not have a confederate hidden away during her séances, the whole case must remain in doubt. Unfortunately Crookes's reports of his experiments are often frustratingly inadequate, he seems to have taken it for granted that his word should have been enough to convince people of the genuineness of the phenomena he claimed to have witnessed.

The opinion of most researchers into the Florence Cook case is that Crookes, the other investigators and the sitters at her séances, were being hoodwinked by a clever illusionist. In fact that is the prevailing belief about the entire 'Spiritualist' phenomenon of the period. There is of course a strong possibility of this, but the situation is not so clear, as the following quote from Medhurst and Goldney about psychic phenomena from the 1860s onwards, sums up succinctly

'Remarkable things were happening in the second half of the nineteenth century, on one level or another. Either they constitute an extension, having far-reaching implications, of the field of phenomena recognised by physical science, or they represent an astonishing failure of human testimony.'

Sources and Further Reading

with love and a holy kiss Roy

[year2027]

God first

thanks everybody

Edgar Cayce - Prophet & Healer?

Heralded by his supporters as a clairvoyant healer, psychic, medium and prophet, Edgar Cayce was born in 1877 on a farm in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. According to one story, at the age of nine Edgar found himself unable to spell the word 'cabin' which brought a reprimand from the teacher Lucian, his uncle. At home that evening Edgar's father tried to teach him the basics of spelling, but the boy was unable to learn. Losing all patience his father then lashed out at Edgar knocking him off his chair. Edgar later said that lying on the floor he clearly heard a voice that said 'If you sleep a little, we can help you.' He then slept with his spelling book under his head. When he awoke he found that he apparently knew every lesson in the book and could repeat each one word for word.

This amazing 'talent' was to remain with Edgar for the rest of his life; it was claimed that he only had to sleep with a book under his head and he would awake knowing everything it contained.

At sixteen, Edgar was injured by a blow on the head while playing baseball at school. He returned home in a dazed condition, and was put to bed where he suddenly and authoritatively instructed his mother to apply a specific type of poultice to the wound. The next morning Edgar had no memory of the events after being struck by the baseball, and could not explain why he had ordered the poultice. Nevertheless, he was feeling quite normal again.

Clairvoyant Healing

In 1900 Cayce was working as a salesman for an insurance company when he contracted laryngitis. He was unable to work because of this and the doctors told him he would never completely recover his voice. In desperation he turned to local amateur hypnotist Al Layne for advice. In a trance it is alleged that Edgar was able to describe the conditions which had caused a partial paralysis of his vocal cords, and was also able to prescribe a cure which involved restoring increased circulation to the inoperative muscles and nerves. During the next twenty minutes his upper chest and throat became a fiery red. Edgar instructed Layne to order his circulation to return to normal, and when he came out of the trance a few minutes later, his voice was completely restored.

Without any medical training whatsoever Cayce went on to perfect this 'healing' ability to help others, though it is important to remember that he claimed not to heal, but to diagnose and then offer a course of treatment that might lead to a cure.

Cayce's diagnoses would involve him going into a self-induced hypnotic trance, after which the patient's condition would be described to him. A diagnosis expressed in medical terminology would follow and then a recommendation for treatment. From the very beginning Cayce and his associates insisted that the treatments be administered by local doctors with access to the patients. Many of Cayce's prescriptions were extremely simple: massage, relaxation, tonics, diet, poultices, exercises, plasters, and home-made teas and tonics. Cayce's philosophy behind his trance healing work was a holistic one, meaning that he saw the body a 'system', an interconnected network of organs and tissue and if one part was not functioning properly then it would affect the rest. In essence, Cayce would treat the cause and not the effect, helping the health of the entire system in order to defeat the disorder, though suggestion must surely have played a part in the successful treatment of patients.

Among those who came to Cayce him for help was Madison B. Wyrick, a plant superintendent for Western Union in Chicago, who suffered from diabetes. The treatment prescribed by Cayce proved helpful to the man's condition and interestingly enough the tonic he was given contained Jerusalem artichokes, a rich natural source of insulin.Another case involved a young woman who was confined to bed with arthritis. Doctors were giving her standard pain-killers while her condition steadily deteriorated. Cayce prescribed a combination of special diets, massages and exercises, after which there was a noticeable improvement and eventual recovery from the illness.

It was said that for Cayce to discern a person's condition it was not actually necessary for him to see them; when their problems were explained to him he could apparently prescribe treatment over a distance. There are thousands of confirmed 'readings' over the period of more than forty years that Cayce practiced, accepting no fees, to avoid prosecution. But because he took no fees for his service, Cayce found it difficult to make a living. He had married and found a job as a photographer's assistant, but was still unable to make ends meet. Cayce's unorthodox practice naturally attracted the hostility of many medical doctors and the attention of many sceptics. One such was scientist, Dr. Hugo of Harvard, who came to ridicule the healer and went away in amazement, as he was unable to fault Cayce on any level.

Dr. Wesley Ketchum, a homeopath and a sceptic of Cayce and his methods, decided to test the great healer. He came to Cayce to see if he was able to diagnose a disorder which he had already established for himself as appendicitis. During his trance Edgar told Ketchum that the he did not in fact have appendicitis, but simply a strained nerve in the lower spine, which could be healed by an osteopath. Pleased to be able to prove the famous Edgar Cayce wrong the doctor went and had the osteopathic treatment. To his astonishment all he needed was to have a couple of misplaced vertebrae pushed back into position to restore him to perfect health - there had been no 'appendicitis'.

Prophecies & Atlantis

From giving medical readings Cayce went on to evaluate individual fate and past lives by means of 'life readings', and also made prophecy readings, something he was far from successful at. Through the latter he became known as the 'Sleeping Prophet'. His prophecies included the beginning and end of both World Wars, the fact that World War II battlefields would be 'ocean, seas and bays', and the possibility of a third World War.

Some prophecies he made appear vague to say the least, and others way off the mark. Examples of the latter include prophesized calamitous earth changes between 1958 and 1998, including Californian superquakes and the submersal of New York and Japan, and a catastrophic pole shift in 1998. Cayce's also gave readings on astrology, reincarnation, the lost years of Jesus, ancient Egypt, and the mysterious kingdom of Atlantis. In fact Cayce had a keen interest in Atlantis and believed that the Atlantean civilization was based on the utilization of 'Terrible Crystals' which harnessed the rays of the Sun when triggered by psychic concentration. He thought that an extreme concentration of energy from these crystals had led to the cataclysm in which Atlantis was destroyed. Cayce believed Atlantis would begin to rise again in 1968 or 1969, in the area of Bimini, near the Bahamas.

In 1968 and 1969 strange underwater structures were discovered exactly where Cayce had predicted. Zoologist Dr. Manson Valentine and underwater cinematographer Dimitri Rebikoff located and explored the 'Bimini Road' - long, regular walls of cyclopean blocks (some weighing over 80 tons) in shallow water north-west of Bimini Island. However, in 1980, Eugene Shinn of the U.S. Geological Survey, published the conclusions of his close examination of the underwater stones. He stated that the results of all his tests indicated that the stones must have been laid there by natural means. Further radiocarbon tests on the shells embedded in the stones gave a date of around two or three thousand years ago for the laying down of the so-called road. So much for lost Atlantis off the Bahamas.

Final Prophecies

By 1944 Cayce was overrun and exhausted by the thousands of requests for help he was now receiving, though he felt he could not refuse mothers requesting news of their sons out on World War II battlefields. The last reading Cayce ever made, on 17 September 1944, was for himself, and explained that it was time to stop working and rest. On New Year's Day, 1945, Cayce foretold that he would be buried on the fifth of January. He was right. He died on 3rd January, at the age of sixty-seven.

At his death in 1945 there were over 14,000 stenographic records of trance readings for over 8,000 people. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., founded in 1931 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is now the international headquarters for the work of Edgar Cayce, and holds copies of over 14,000 of Edgar Cayce's readings all of which are available to the public. Whatever else we may think about Cayce and his various prophecies and past life readings, it is an undeniable fact that through his influence, whether real or imagined, many thousands of people seem to have been restored to health by following his prescribed courses of treatment, very often when conventional medicine could do nothing for them, though again, suggestion may have played a considerable role in their recovery. However, as Colin Wilson has noted, it seems that Cayce, like all many well known psychics and clairvoyants, was successful enough to prove he had some kind of special gift, but made enough mistakes to show he that this gift was often extremely unreliable.

Born Natalya Nikolayevna Demkina in Saransk, western Russia, in 1987, this paranormal talent claims to be able to make medical diagnoses by using ‘special vision’. It is reported that the ‘X-ray Girl’, as she was nicknamed by the Russian tabloid newspaper Pravda, is able to see organs and tissues inside human bodies and discover medical ailments the person may be suffering from. Since the age of ten, after an operation to have her appendix removed, Natalya (also known as Natasha) has been making accurate medical readings in Russia, in her own words “for a fraction of a second, I see a colorful picture inside the person and then I start to analyze it.” Natalya’s abilities were tested by doctors at a children’s hospital in her home town, where she was reported to have correctly diagnosed the illnesses of several patients, including one of the doctors.

After using her special vision to examine the patients, sometimes down to molecular level, Natalya is said to have drawn pictures of what she saw inside their bodies. She also apparently corrected a misdiagnosis made by a doctor at the hospital on a female patient who was told she had cancer. When Natalya examined the woman she only saw a “small cyst”. Secondary examination revealed that Natasha had been right and the woman did not have cancer.

After the news of Natalya’s incredible ability spread, the story was picked up in 2003 by a local newspaper and TV station, and eventually by British tabloid newspaper The Sun. This newspaper brought Natalya to England in January 2004, where she allegedly demonstrated her diagnostic powers successfully on Sun reporter Briony Warden, who had received multiple injuries after being hit by a car the previous October. While in England Natalya also examined resident medic of the This Morning T.V. show Doctor Chris, initially making correct identifications of previous medical operations he had undergone, and then stating that the Doctor was suffering from various ailments including "gall stones, kidney stones, and enlarged liver and an enlarged pancreas". Somewhat shaken, Dr Chris underwent a scan at a local hospital to discover how accurate Natalya’s diagnosis had been. He discovered that although the scan did show a possible tumour in his intestines there were no serious health problems.

The best known and most controversial test performed on the X-Ray Girl’s paranormal powers was that organized by the Discovery Channel in New York in May 2004. The test, which was part of a Discovery Channel documentary entitled The Girl with X-Ray Eyes, was carried out by researchers Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and Andrew Skolnick of the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH). The 4-hour long investigation involved seven test persons, one of whom was a ‘normal’ control subject. Natalya was given seven diagnoses written by doctors and was required to match at least five of these to the corresponding patient in order to prove that her abilities were unusual enough to warrant further testing. In the event Demkina was able to match only four of the seven correctly and thus the researchers concluded that she had failed the test and left it at that.

But matters were not to be so straight forward. Acrimonious disputes arose between Natalya’s supporters, who believed she had been unfairly dealt with, and the investigators. Demkina herself was extremely critical of the conditions under which she had been tested and the way in which she was treated. The research team responded by asking why Demkina had been unable to detect a metal plate inside one subject's head, especially as its outline was visible beneath the person's skull. However, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the director of University of Cambridge's Mind-Matter Unification project, Brian Josephson, has also added his voice to the criticism of the tests carried out in New York. Josephson is of the opinion that the tests were set up to discredit Demkina, and that the odds of Demkina managing four matches from seven by chance alone would be 1 in 50. He believes that the results from the Demkina experiment should have been classed as "inconclusive".

Demkina’s New York experiment remains controversial to this day and is still the subject of heated debate on internet science and paranormal forums. But there are two points which are worth bearing in mind, the first of which is that before the New York test Demkina had claimed that she would be “100% correct” in her diagnoses, which was obviously not the case. Secondly, she had also agreed to rules which stated that to pass the test she would have to correctly match at least five of the diagnoses with the corresponding patients. For her complaints to have any validity, they should have been made before the tests not after.

After the inconclusive nature of the U.K and New York tests Natalya travelled to Tokyo, Japan, where she underwent experiments with Professor Yoshio Machi, of the Department of Electronics at Tokyo Denki University, who studies claims of unusual human abilities. Demkina stipulated beforehand that she would only be tested under certain conditions, which included that each patient brought with them a medical certificate stating the condition of their health, and that her diagnoses were to be limited to a single specific part of the body - the head, the trunk, or extremities. The teenager also insisted that she was to be told in advance which part of the body she was to examine. According to the website Pravda.ru the tests were successful, with Natasha able to ‘see’ that one of the patients had a prosthetic knee, and another had asymmetrically placed internal organs. She was even able to diagnose the early stages of pregnancy in a female patient.

However, practically all the information for the Tokyo tests comes either from Demkina’s own website or from the Pravda.ru website, the latter hardly a reliable source. Critics point out that, as with Demkina’s tests in England, the Tokyo experiments were not performed under strict conditions nor were they subject to independent review. Sceptics have also noted that during the Tokyo tests Demkina was claiming to possess a completely different kind of ability to X-Ray vision, in the words of Professor Machi, she was able to “use her abilities . . . even on tiny passport photos . . . look at them and apparently see what the problem was. Her ability is not x-ray vision, but she definitely has some kind of talent that we can't explain yet."

Natalya Demkina still remains an extremely controversial subject, not least because she has reportedly begun to charge around $13 for her medical readings, describing the money as ‘donations’. Natalya performs between ten and twenty diagnoses per night each weekday, which gives her a salary far above the average monthly income of government workers in her home town of Saransk. In 2005, Natalya opened the ‘Center of Special Diagnostics of the Person’ (TSSD), a diagnostic and treatment center for patients in Moscow, where she is in charge of the ‘Office of Energy-Information Diagnostics’.

Demkina’s role in this office is to diagnose illnesses and supervise their treatment by other healers with unusual abilities. Not bad for someone who still hasn’t obtained a medical degree.

with love and a holy kiss Roy