Author: Joseph F. Rinn
Born: 1868
Bio: Searchlight on psychical research by Joseph F. Rinn

I read this book in 1958-9 while I was resident in then, Northern Rhodesia now Zambia.

Through a friend of mine, Arnold Wise who used to travel for a music distributor out of Salisbury in Soouthern Rhodesia, I  wasintroduced to 'the Searchlight'.

Up to this time I was a member of the Spiritualist church in Johannesburg South Africa, but had been transfered by my employer to Ndola Northern Rhodesia.

Soon after arriving in Northern Rhodesia I uncovered by Rinn took place in New York joined the local spiritualist church. Soon after joining Arnold, on one of his trips came with me to a Saturday night service.

He then suggested that I read 'Searchlight on psychical research' and then loaned the book to me.

To say the least it CHANGED MY LIFE.

The anecdotes that I will recount are from memory, unblurred by the intervening half-centuary.
     The earlist cited case of psychic deception in Rinn's book was perportrated by a femal 'psychic that would have her subject sit in an upright chair with her back to a wall. The chair was positioned under a window.

After an interview with the subject the medium would aks the subject to wrie her question she wished to address to the 'other side' on the slate. The subject was encouraged to verbalise her question.

She was then told to lift the slate above her head!

The slate was then snatched from her hands and an identical slate slid into her hands in stead, the answer to the question asked could then be found on the second slate.

Because of the hightened sense of excitement, expectation and the entire atmosphere, small details were not noticed.
kett
The subject would be most impressed to find a fairly detailed answer to her question.

The subject had to be alone in the room with the medium to 'establish the  right rapport'.

   In a quiet, dimmly lit room the subject was given a copper kettle and told to speak into the spout, after waiting for some minutes for the one on the otherside to respond, the subject was told to hold the kettle in both hands and put the spout to her ear and the answer would come from the other side through the kettle.

At the turn of the centuary, early 1900, people wore leather shoes with steel nails in the soles. The medium would select the spot that the subject would sit and made sure that they were comfortable with their feet on the carpet.

Unbeknown to the subject the carpet was interlaced with copper wire. From the carpet copper wire leads were taken through the wall into the adjoining room where they were connected to a rudimentary speaker. The base of the kettle  had a suspended copper plate on the inside, which vibrated and transmitted the message from the subject to the accomplice in the other room. ( Just imagine if they were scamming with this primative equipment in the early 1900's what they are capable of today.

The most sophisticated illusion tyhat they used to produce real live or should I say deceased spirits was basicallas follows:

In a room draped with black curtains that covered the entire room a chair was set up in one corner, for the medium to sit in. This corner was seperated off by another two black curtains , that together with the walls formed a four sided mini-room with 4 black walls.

A dull red light was mounted on the ceiling pointed down towards the medium's seat.
Because of the black walls and the dull light it was a severe strain to try and see.

The audience attending the seance were then seated in the form of a two side compliment to the black hollow square.

After the singing of a few hymns to get into the right mood the medium make his appearance through the audience dressed in black, baggy cloths and tak-up his seat in the corner facing the audience sitting in their seats arranged in a right angle, completing the square made by the walls behind the medium's chair.

After the hymns were completed and some basic rules of behaviour had been established the 'stage' was set. These instructions included such things as "Never touch the medium whilst in trance, don't shout out or cause any disturbance that  may stress the medium."

Once this hightened state of excitement had been reached the curtains were closed effectively secluding the medium from the audience.

After much grunting, talking in foreign accents and making animal sounds the curtains were withdrawn revealing an empty closet, whilst still trying to focus in the dim red light the curtains were closed.

After a pause the curtains opened and there revealed the medium in his chair with his head back and his hands on the arms of the chair. In conjunction with some commentary the medium in his trance state, proceeded to materialise spirits which he built out of "ectoplasm." A substance purported to having been excreted through his navel. 

To the utter amazement and sometimes terror of the audience there appears a whisp of smoke in the room which takes on the shape of a human suspended about three foot from the floor.This apparition then bends down and whispers in the  ear of the medium.

This developes into a three-way discourse between the 'spirit', the medium and the member of the audience.

All very impressive!

To put all of theses happenings into perspective any one who applys to attend is told to leave their details and as soon as a vacancy at one of the seances comes available they will contact them. This can be any thing upto 1 to 3 months. Giving the medium's team ample time to investigat the subject before the scheduled visit.

The questions that are asked in the seance are all pertinent and depending on the financial, matrimonial and social status the subject is manipulated.

No appointment, no visit to the seance.

Now let us disclose how this most impressive display is achieved,

The medium, after entering the black enclosure, pulls a hood over his head and puts black gloves on his hands. Effectively making himself invisible against the black background.
To create the illusion of himself still seated in the chair, he drapes some white muslin
over the chair in the position of his hands on the armrests and his head on the back of the chair.

In the dim light it looks as if he is still in the chair, in the mean time he has moved to the back of the chair and proceds to pull out white muslin cloth from his wide sleeves, which he drapes over his hand to simulate a head, which he explains is his young sister who died at an early age.

When the show comes to an end he reverses the procedure and returns to the chair, having once again secreted the muslin up his sleeves.

After much twitching and squirming he comes too. He leaves almost immediately as he is overwrought by his ordeal.

All that now remains is to count the loot, made up of booking fees, generous  donations and fees for those who had direct contact with their departed loveones.

Roy L. Jackson 

Harry Houdini, a close friend of Joseph F. Rinn jointly put a up challenge, to any spirituist  who could move a simple school eraser one inch off a desk by purely psychic means could claim 10 000.00 dollars from the Houdini estate. Rinn not having the same financial clout as Houdini, offered to push a peanut over the Brooklyn Bridge with his nose.

To date no-one has ever even attempted the test.


Some of the information in this synopsis may have been tainted by the passage of time. There may have been some degree of carry-over from my personal experiences and the time spent in seances since reading the book in the late ninteen fifties.