Real-Life X-Files (44 page)

Figure 43.2. Two paper panels are placed together before a window (or in this case a light box), with a hand showing that nothing is interjected.

In some accounts, the picture behind the screen seemed to be manipulated in and out of focus. For example, one witness described how the developing image “disappeared, but came back very soon clearer than before” (“Bangs Sisters” n.d.). One case featured an illusion involving “three pairs of eyes” that “showed on the canvas at once in different poses and places” (an effect that could easily have been accomplished with a separate sheet of paper on which the sets of eyes were rendered).

Many times the spirit-picture production ended with a very interesting effect: the portrait’s eyes—which up to that point had been closed—suddenly (or sometimes gradually) opened, “like a person awakening” (Payne 1905; Coates 294’331). Now, the same effect was actually a popular parlor diversion of the Bangses’ time (the late nineteenth to early twentieth century) with advertising cards being specially printed for the purpose. One for Stafford's Ink, for instance, depicted a little girl with closed eyes, behind which—printed on the reverse with good registration—were a pair of heavily outlined, open eyes. In ordinary viewing (
reflected
light) the child slept, but when the card was held up to a window or lamp (i.e., viewed in
transmitted
light), the open eyes became dominant and she suddenly awoke. This effect may have been copied by the Bangs sisters, although it would have been accomplished differently, since the portrait-side of the finished picture would have required open eyes. Having closed eyes behind (as on an overlay) would not seem to work, since the open eyes (with their dark irises and pupils) would still dominate from the beginning. There may be several ways to solve the problem: the effect might simply have been produced by tipping the picture forward so that the eyes were brought into focus, coupled with the power of suggestion; or the finished, open eyes might actually have been drawn in, in a final stage, under some pretext of pulling down the opaque blind; or by some other method. (For example, it is possible to have a removable, opaque material applied on the back to the area behind the eyes so that in transmitted light there appear deep, shaded sockets, but when the material is peeled off the eyes open.) In any event, one sitter did report that before opening, the eyes of the spirit portrait were “
indistinct
and
apparently
closed” (emphasis added; Holland 1909).

Figures 43.3 (top left), 43.4 (top right ), and 43.5 (right). In the transmitted light, a “cloudiness” forms (not shown), then colors and shapes gradually come into view. A face begins to be recognizable and eventually becomes even sharper. Finally, finished portrait on one panel (shown here in reflected light) is presented to the sitter. (Photos by Joe Nickell)

Although, as indicated earlier, the Bangs sisters may not always have received a photograph of the deceased subject in advance of the séance, they could nevertheless proceed once they gained access (by some subterfuge) to the photo. One sister could then go off to produce the portrait while the other kept the patron distracted. For example, one wrote, “Entering the séance-room, and finding only three canvases, I selected two of them, took them out in the sunlight, in company with one of the Miss Bangs, exposed them for fifteen minutes to the strong rays of the noonday sun, examined the surface thoroughly to fully assure myself that they were not chemically prepared, at the same time to secretly mark them for identification.” Subsequently, the identification marks would show that the “canvas” had not been switched (Thurston 1910). (If the panel was not marked—most accounts omit that detail—the procedure
is simplified, since the portrait can be prepared on a panel that is switched for one of the selected ones, eliminating the need to surreptitiously affix the picture to a panel during the séance.)

One incident is particularly revealing: a couple who had sought a picture of their deceased son concluded that the resulting image resembled him only “in a general way” and “was not even a fairly good portrait.” In rationalizing the failure, one writer pointed out (perhaps more wisely than he knew) that the couple “had no photograph of their departed son with them” (Coates 1911, 325). Thus the Bangs sisters were apparently left with few options. They could fish for a description (in the manner of a police artist eliciting an eyewitness's recollection) or opt to produce a generalized child's portrait that the credulous couple might accept. In contrast, when a photograph had been brought to the sitting, the “spirit” painting might be pronounced “a perfect enlargement of the original” (“Bangs Sisters” n.d.). Whatever techniques the sisters actually employed—and May Bangs (1910) acknowledged that “No two sittings” were “exactly alike” —they were obviously effective, given the many testimonials they elicited. Significantly, as
physical
mediumship has largely given way to
mental
phenomena (witness the rise of mediums like James Van Praagh, who limit themselves to readings [Nickell 1998]), “spirit” paintings have all but disappeared. A few historic examples remain as reminders of an earlier, though not necessarily more credulous, time.

References

“Bangs Sisters.” n.d., Album, Lily Dale Museum (business card, clippings, photos, etc.)

Doerflinger, William. 1977.
The Magic Catalog
New York: E.P. Dutton, 196. Krebs, Rev. Stanley L. 1901. A description of some trick methods used by Miss Bangs, of Chicago.
Journal of Society for Psychical Research
10.175 (Jan.): 5–16.

Moore, W. Usborne. 1910. Letter, quoted in Coates 1911.

Chapter 44

Of reputed miraculous powers, perhaps none is more popularly equated with saintliness than stigmata, the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion allegedly duplicated spontaneously upon the body of a Christian. Indeed one historical survey indicated that about a fifth of all stigmatics are eventually beatified or canonized (Biot 1962, 23). The year 1999 brought renewed interest in the alleged phenomenon. Among the offerings were the movie
Stigmata
(which even contained a brief shot of my book,
Looking for a Miracle
[Radford 1999]); a Fox television pseudodocumentary,
Signs from God,
which featured a major segment on stigmata (Willesee 1999); and the Vatican’s beatification of the Italian stigmatic Padre Pio (
CNN & Time
1999). For a BBC documentary produced for the Discovery Channel, I took a new look at the subject.

Evolving Phenomenon

From the death of Jesus, about A.D. 29 or 30, nearly twelve centuries would pass before stigmata began to appear—unless one counts a cryptic reference by St. Paul. In Galatians 6:17 he wrote, “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Many scholars believe Paul was speaking figuratively, but in any case the statement may have been sufficient to prompt imitation.

St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is credited with being the first stigmatic—or at least the first “true” one, his affliction occurring just two years after that of a man from Oxford who had exhibited the five crucifixion wounds in 1222. That man claimed to be the son of God and the
redeemer of mankind, but he was arrested for imposture, his wounds presumed to have been self-inflicted. In 1224, St. Francis went with some of his “disciples” up Mount Alverno in the Apennines. After forty days of fasting and prayer, he had a vision of Christ on the cross, whereafter he received the four nail wounds and a pierced side. Francis appears to have sparked a copycat phenomenon, since publication of his reputed miracle was followed by occurrences of stigmata “even among people who were much lower than St. Francis in religious stature, and have continued to occur without intermission ever since, ” according to Catholic scholar Herbert Thurston (1952, 122–23). He continues: “What I infer is that the example of St. Francis created what I have called the ‘crucifixion complex.’ Once it had been brought home to contemplatives that it was possible to be physically conformed to the sufferings of Christ by bearing His wound-marks in the hands, feet and side, then the idea of this form of union with their Divine Master took shape in the minds of many. It became in fact a pious obsession; so much so that in a few exceptionally sensitive individuals the idea conceived in the mind was realized in the flesh.” Thurston believed stigmatization was due to the effects of suggestion, but experimental attempts to duplicate the phenomenon, for example by using hypnosis, have been unsuccessful—except for one case which appears to have been a hoax. (The psychiatrist reported that bloody tears welled inside the subject’s eyelids, but a photograph shows rivulets
originating outside
the eyes [see Wilson 1988].)

As the thirteenth century advanced, exhibitions of stigmata began to proliferate, one authority regarding it as “a sort of explosion” (Biot 1962, 18). Within a hundred years of St. Francis’s death, over twenty cases had occurred. The trend continued in successive centuries, with no fewer than 321 stigmatics being recorded by 1908. Not only were they invariably Catholic, but more than a third had come from Italy and the rest mostly from France, Spain, and Portugal, demonstrating that “the Roman Catholic countries, mostly with a Latin and Mediterranean influence have dominated the history of stigmata” (Harrison 1994, 9; Wilson 1988, 10). The twentieth-century record of stigmata, however, “shows a change in pattern.” Italy dominated somewhat less, and cases were reported from Great Britain, Australia, and the United States (Harrison 1994, 9). The latter included (in 1972) a ten-year-old African American girl named Cloretta Robinson, a Baptist and thus one of a very few non-Catholic Christians to have exhibited the stigmata (including at least three Anglicans) (Harrison 1994, 9, 87).