Fomenko’s Fiction

Anatoly Fomenko
Anatoly Fomenko is a Russian Mathematician who over the last 20 years or so has been putting forward a rather far out theory regarding History it is his belief that ‘History” began c. 800 C.E., and that the Middle ages never happened.

Among many things Fomenko and his disciples believe that English history before the Normans is nothing more than a fiction and that some of Byzantine history is the same. That various dynasties and lists of rulers are nothing more than fictionalizations based on a few models.

That much history of the Ancient world is a creation of fabricators and falsifiers between 1400-1700 C.E. That various methods of dating like dendrochronology (tree rings) and radiocarbon dating are erroneous and useless.

It is of interest that in his new chronology Russia is the center of world history up too seventeen hundred; real Russian history having been falsified by Germans. The obvious hyper nationalism of Fomenko’s ideas is readily apparent.

This approach must of course toss out the astronomical data supplied from ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets and the record of eclipses by the Chinese.

Further all those Greek and Roman statutes are frauds created during the Renaissance.

Ivan the terrible was actually four rulers is another Fomenko “discovery” along with Jesus being a 60 year old Pope, (Gregory VII) and or a Byzantine Emperor (Andronikos I Komnenos).

The Peloponnesian War described by Thucydides occurred in 1384-1387, between the Kingdom of Navarre and the Catalans. And Columbus was a Cossack.1

History is divided into 4 periods. The pre-Christian period is 11th century and earlier; “bacchic” Christianity 11th-12th century, Christianity 12th-16th century and 16th century onwards the modern age.2

Fomenko’s English History, which is supposedly a duplication of Byzantine history, is described as follows:

His [Fomenko] other parallels, even after a double reordering of Byzantine monarchs (they were themselves duplicated twice, you see), are still not very accurate. Beorhtric (ruled 16 years) is equated to Justin I (ruled 9 years), an error of almost 78%. Fomenko links Aethelbert (6 years) to Justin II (13 years), an error of over 113%. He has to combine Zeno's two reigns (over a period of, but not totaling, 17 years) to match the English Cuthread (17 years).

Fomenko does manage, however, a couple of good "hits." He links Egbert, the uniter of England (ruled 38 years), to Justinian the Great, restorer of the Roman Empire (ruled 38 years). But then he combines King Edgar (16 years) with King Edward the Martyr (3 years) and claims they both represent Leo III the Isaurian (24 years). He concludes that the names Edgar and Edward are "similar and consequently their union is natural." (5) Of course, the eleven Emperors Constantine (and the additional Emperors named Constans and Constantius) were apparently readily distinguished by the barbarians.3

To quote another examination of Fomenko’s nonsense:

Fomenko assumes that the researcher can and should distinguish between history and fiction. On the other hand, his methods would not meet with approval from conservative theorists of history such as Keith Windschuttle who maintains that the professional training of historians and peer review of their work pushes history closer to the goal of establishing the truth of the past and of distinguishing what most probably happenned from what could not have happenned. Fomenko is not a historian in this sense. He provides no fair-minded view of the historical literature about a topic with which he deals, quotes only those sources that serve his purpose, uses evidence in ways that seem strange to professionally-trained historians and asserts the wildest speculation as if it has the same status as the information common to conventional historical literature.4

That is enough for now, since simply listing the conjectures of Fomenko is enough to refute him, there is much more than the above all of it fantastic and quite outrageous. Fomenko has earned some quite well deserved ridicule for his absurd ideas, but has managed to turn the issue into one of proving him wrong. Which is of course a typical pseudoscience method.

Even some people who should know better are publishing books taking this nonsense seriously.5

Sorry but when you are proposing an outlandish idea the onus is on you to prove your idea not on the doubters to prove their doubts and you wrong.

It is impossible to go into detail about what is wrong with Fomenko’s absurd ideas, however a few points are worth looking at.

1, Fomenko deliberately selects data in proving his “statistical” correlation that ‘proves” his theory and ignores data that does not.

2. Fomenko spectacularily massages his data to get his correlations, shifting dates and reign lengths and even the number of monarchs all to fit his theory. To quote Wikipedia:

Another point raised by critics is that Fomenko does not explain his altering the data (changing the order of rulers, dropping rulers, combining rulers, treating interregna as rulers, switching between theologians and emperors, etc.) preventing a duplication of the effort and therefore hinting that his results may have a pathological Science aspect to them akin to N-rays over a century ago and effectively making this whole theory an Ad hoc hypothesis.6

3. Fomenko’s rejection of radio-carbon dating, numsiatics, (coin study), dendrochronology, (tree rings), etc., is tenditious and frequently ignorant. For example with dendrochronology he argues from alleged gaps that it can’t be trusted. In fact secure dendrochronological dates go back more than 10,000 years. Fomenko must exercise a disciplined ignorance for his opinions.7

4. Further Fomenko’s dismissal of retrocalculation of astrnomical dating based on the Babylonioan tablets and Chinese recording of eclipses does not contrary to Fomenko’s assertions get dates all over the place in fact multiple analysis to these multiple recorded observations agrees with the conventional dates. For example the whole sequence of Babylonian observations, of which there are literally dozens, found on Babylonian cuniform tablets agrees with the “conventional” dating, to say nothing of other dating methods like denrochronology and radio-carbon etc.8

5. Further this is frankly an over the top conspiracy theory for which Fomenko just wildly speculates about why anyone would do it and assumes the fabrication of masses of documents, accounts etc., along with masses of inscriptions coins etc. It is frankly incredible. All those allegedly mythical Medieval kings with coins are treated with cries of forgery and fraud including the coins that are to this day being dug up.9 To quote:

For that matter, how can we expect to believe Fomenko's arguments since Imperial coinage that documents the succession of the emperors can be gathered from virtually every year from 27 BCE to 1453 CE? How do we discount written Roman history and the great reigns of the past? Further, if Fomenko is correct, we must ignore the Magna Carta of 1215, since England's King John would have been nothing more than a Byzantine fantasy.10

That Fomenko is motivated by a crude form of nationalism is obvious from his writings as one reviewer of his work has said:

The enemy for Fomenko is always the West and their corrupt Russian minions, most notably the Romanovs and the Yeltsin-era reformers. For Fomenko, World War two lives on in the war against the Germans. Not that other western Europeans are much better. Italians composed false chronicles from antiquity in order to make the Romans appear older and wiser than the rest of Europe, the French sent their mercenaries along with other European powers to protect the first Romanovs, the English and Americans always acted against Russia out odf envy that it was in reality Russia who once ruled the greatest empire the world has ever seen. For Fomenko, the Russians need Asia if they are to maintain their existence in the face of the challenge posed by the West.

...

Fomenkoism is an amalgam of disillusionment with and rediscovery of Soviet ideals, mixed with feelings of lost grandeur, hope, vengence and envy. For Fomenko, the story of Russian greatness has to be told a different way to the version favoured by Romanovs and Communists. The latter ignored the greatness of the Russian horde. All those who lived in the steppe and forests of Eurasia are automatically incorperated into Russia, according to Fomenko’s fantasy. The Russian Horde was, and remains, entitled to demand their loyalty.11

I will now briefly go into a examination of just one small part of Fomenko’s nonsense. Fomenko has the the eruption of Vesuvius occur 1631 C.E. Which faces the problem of having Pliny the Younger's account, which was printed before 1631 in Western Europe. Copies of said editions still exist with the dates. So this eruption was described before it happened!? No doubt this little problem is handeled by saying "forgery" and "fraud" over and over again.12


Vesuvius Erupting
Vesuvius has erupted on numerous occasions frequently with great destructiveness. Fromeko's idea is that the destructive eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Heracleum occurred 1631. Which of course means that Pliny's account must have been written after that eruption. Second if you read Pliny's account you would realize that the eruption described was extrodinarily destructive. It appears to have been a, (what is now called) a "Plinean" eruption. In which large sections of the mountain were destroyed and repeated "Nuee Ardente's" (burning clouds) devastated the surounding area and covered the area under many feet (more than 20 feet in places) of ash and volcanic rubble. There was of course the "Nuee Ardente" that swept across the bay of naples to Miseum and nearly killed Pliny the younger's entire family. This eruption has left massive and abundant traces including in places more than 20+ feet of ash etc. The 1631 eruption has also left traces and in comparison it was minor. One is easily distinguished from the other.13

Pompei was long buried by 1631. In fact it was so well buried that people had only a very poor idea of were it was.

In fact appears that although Vesuvius has in fact erupted on numerous occasions eruptions of the 79 C.E., variety seem to be mercifully rare occurring every few thousand years.

The other common sense problem with Fomenko is the huge difference in culture between the remains of those two cities and what we have from the 17th century. Oh and what about the virtually compete abscence of Christianity from both sites.

Oh and by the way the Laocoon after being lost for over a millenium created quite a stir when it was re-discoverd in 1506 and the result was a series of write ups by the media of the day. Now why is the Laocoon important in the context of Fomenko’s absurdities? It is because Pliny the Elder describes the statute in his massive Natural History. Now since Pliny the younger describes his uncle’s death in the eruption of Vesuvius this must mean that the Natural History was composed before the eruption.

The Laocoon
To quote Wikpedia:

Various dates have been suggested for the statue, ranging from about 160 to about 20 BC. Inscriptions found at Lindos in Rhodes date Agesander and Athenedoros to a period after 42 BC, making the years 42 to 20 the most likely date for the Laocoön statue's creation. The statue, which was probably originally commissioned for the home of a wealthy Roman, was unearthed in 1506 near the site of the Golden House of the Emperor Nero (who reigned from 54 to 68 AD), and it is possible that the statue belonged to Nero himself. It was acquired by Pope Julius II, an enthusiastic classicist, soon after its discovery and was placed in the Belvedere Garden at the Vatican, now part of the Vatican Museums.14

Now if Pompeii and Herculaneum had been destroyed in 1631 C.E. that definetly creates a problem. The other one is Pliny the Elder mentions the Laocoön in the palace of the Emperor Titus,Emperor 79 - 81 C.E.

To quote:

Beyond these, there are not many sculptors of high repute; for, in the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoön, for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the serpents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. 15

So in other words someone before the alleged eruption (1631 C.E.) mentions the laocoon being lost, then Pliny mentions it being in the palace of the Emperor Titus at the time of the eruption, which creates a problem if the eruption was in 1631 C.E. And we have copies of Pliny's Natural History which contain the above passage. Oh and we have complete manuscripts of the Natural History, from the 11th century to say nothing of collections of excerpts that are earlier. Opps!16

As mentioned above Pliny the Younger letters which describe the eruption of Vesuvius and were published before 1631 C.E.

From Wikipedia:

In France Giovanni Giocondo discovered a manuscript of Pliny the Younger's letters containing his correspondence with Trajan. He published it in Paris dedicating the work to Louis XII. Two Italian editions of Pliny's Epistles were published by Giocondo, one printed in Bologna in 1498 and one from the press of Aldus Manutius in 1508.17

Isn't amazing that they were able to write a description of the eruption of 1631 C.E. before it happenned!! Yeah, right!

Fomenko is a total joke. His desperate efforts to escape the inescapable accuracy of the “conventional” history against the serpent of fact and truth are in the end as unavailing as Laocoon and his son’s unavailing struggle against their serpent.

1. New Chronology of the World History, Here. See also the multi volumed, History: Fiction or Science?, Delamere Resources LLC, 2007, Konstantin, Sheiko, Lomonosov's Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, pseudo-history and Russia's search for a post-communist identity, Phd Dissertation, University of Wollongong, Australia, 2004, pp. 66, 208-226. Copy of Thesis at Here

2. See Wikepedia, New Chronology, Here, See also Fomenko, A. T., Nosovskij, G. V., New Chronology and new concept of the English History, Here.

3. Colavito, Jason, Who Lost the Middle Ages?, Here.

4. Konstantin, p. 21..

5. Diacu, Florin,The Lost Millennium, Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2005.

6. New Chronology.

7. Colavito, New Chronolgy, Dutch, Steven, Is a Chunk of History Missing?, Here.

8. New Chronology, Rawlins, Dennis, Recovering Hipparchos' Last Lost Lustrous Star, in Dio, V. 4. No. 3, December 1994, p. 119, Here. Espenak, Fred, Eclipse Predictions and the Earths Rotation, NASA, Here.

9. Colavito, New Chronolgy, Dutch.

10. Colavito.

11. Konstantin, p. 231 & 232.

12. Pliny, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, Penguin Books, London, 1963. The description can be found in Book Six, letters 16 and 20, pp. 166-168, 170-173.

13. IBID, and Winchester, Simon, Krakatoa, HarperCollins Pub., New York, 2003, p. 11-12, Wikipedia, Mount Vesuvius, Here.

14. Wikipedia, Laocoon and His Sons, Here.

15. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, at Perseus, Here. See Also Pliny the Elder, Natural History A Selection, Penguin Books, London, 1991, Book 36, Ch. 4, s. 37, at p. 347.

16. Wikipedia, Natural History, Here.

17. Wikipedia, Pliny the Younger, Here.

Pierre Cloutier

X-Lies

The show the The X-Files, (1993-2002)1 gives more than the usual feelings of ambivalence about something that is excellent in execution but at its core is fundamentally rotten.

I was never a great fan of the show although I watched many episodes of the show I never got hooked and was frankly non-plussed by the show.

For reasons that I will go into later I wanted to dismiss the show as garbage and leave it at that but I am unable to do so simply because of the overall excellence of the program. Before I go into my critique I would like to go through the excellent features of the program.

The acting on the show was almost uniformly very good. Both of the leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson play their roles with accomplished skill and the acting of the supporting players and guest stars is quite good also. Although the acting did slip when David Duchovny left a regular character, (only to return intermittently until the final episode), it remained at a ,( certainly for a T.V. show) high level through out its run.

The writing varied through out the show. Not surprisingly it is very hard to maintain a high level of skill and craftsmanship for scripts through out at 9 season run of a T.V. show but the writers did over all a very superior job in maintaining a very creative and standard high level. If only all T.V. shows were written this well. Of course there were the occasional clunkers but they remained occasional right to the end.

Finally the aspect of the show that certainly for its time and even today elevates the show to a high standard is its almost uniformly excellent filming and cinematography. The show looked and still looks quite good. The editing, occasional multiple camera shots and some multi screen images are high quality T.V. filming. The various directors and producers did a sterling job in making the show look very good indeed.

It was also a very nice even brilliant decision to make the sceptical, rational investigator Scully a women and go against the stereotype of women being emotional, intuitive and irrational. Mulder the intuitive, irrational investigator was a man and that too was a nice change of pace.

The show had the occasional episode which poked fun at its own premises and sometimes did not take itself seriously, (or at least appeared to not take itself seriously). That does however lead itself into the problems with the show.

The main reason I never became a fan was because the show although it sometimes made fun of the “New Age” paranoia it portrayed in the end pandered to it quite outrageously. Like the character Mulder it validated over and over again his mindless whine “I want to believe!” It validated again and again Mulder’s paranoia and “New Age” stupidities. It stated over and over again that rationality, reason and logic where bad that feelings and imagination and fantasy were valid ways of knowing that reality was a construction to large extent in our heads. The show the great majority of the time said ‘Mulder was right!’. So that doubting Mulder’s fantasies was akin to doubting the revealed truth. Mulder was cast as a later day Galileo persecuted for his courageous advancement of truth.

Scully meanwhile being a woman is of course wrong. Virtually all the time she was wrong. She was the doubting Thomas to Mulder’s Christ, who dared doubt the revealed truth. She dared to use such things as reason, logic and gasp! demand evidence. What is all that against the real truth as revealed by feelings! Scully dared to doubt and doubt is well bad; it hides the truth. A truth revealed as said above by feelings and of course intuition and fantasy. So again and again it is rubbed in that Scully was wrong, way wrong, totally wrong!

So in this way the show pandered to irrational fantasies of all kinds. Alien abductions, cattle mutilations, perfect governmental conspiracies, crop circles and so on and so forth ad infinitum.2 Why was this so? Quite simply the viewers were pandered to because one would not want upset the fans by calling their delusions and fantasies just that delusions and fantasies. After all if you do that the fans might get upset and watch other shows instead of this one. Those people cannot accept that the world is not populated by fairies and goblins and want, no demand, that the fantasy world of T.V. validate their 5 year old perceptions of the world.

Thus grown-up Scully is the party pooper who demands the unacceptable, that children grow up and face reality. Mulder is the wide-eyed 5 year old his mind full of engaging fantasies who knows that Santa Claus exists and who clings to his fantasy by hook or by crook. The world is a much more exciting place if it is full of childish fantasies of UFO’s, alien abductions, crop circles, alien / human hybrids, vast perfect conspiracies etc., etc. Much of the audience like Mulder has the same plaintive cry ‘I want to believe!’

The result was quite absurd. The web became full of websites taking The X-Files seriously. Many people took it with complete seriousness. It was referred to in student essays as a source!3

The numbers of people who took The X-Files seriously was disheartening in the extreme what was further disheartening was that the creator, Chris Carter, of The X-Files, didn’t care. As to why the show was so relentlessly pandering to paranormal, paranoid, conspiracy clap trap he quite candidly said:

My intention, when I first set out to do the show, was to do a more balanced kind of storytelling. I wanted to expose hoaxes. I wanted Agent Scully to be right as much as Agent Mulder. Lo and behold, those stories were really boring. The suggestion that there was a rather plausible and rational and ultimately mundane answer for those things turned out to be a disappointing kind of story telling, to be honest. And I think that’s maybe where people have the most problems with my show…But it’s just the kind of storytelling we do, and because we have to entertain… That’s really the job they pay me for, and that’s the thing I’m supposed to do.4

Those stories are of course boring to those who live in the fantasy world of a 5 year old and don’t want their fantasy disturbed by, oh so “mundane” reality. It is especially boring to those who do not want to see anything even on a fictional T.V. show that says ‘you believe fantasies and delusions!’ What they want is validation of their fantasies and delusions even on a fictional T.V. show. What Mr. Carter does not say is that stories that provided “mundane” explanations upset many of the fans of the show who wanted validation of their delusional nonsense. So rather than alienate this fan base Mr. Carter and his associates decided to quite deliberately pander to it in the interests of prolonging the T.V. life of the show and their pocket books.

As Richard Dawkin’s said:

Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar?

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: “But it’s only fiction, only entertainment.”5

In the end as the title of this post indicates The X-Files lies.

1. See Wikipedia, The X-Files Here

2. For a review of those and other bits of pseudoscience see The Skeptic Encyclopaedia of Pseudoscience, (two volumes), ABC-CLIO Inc., Santa Barbara Ca., 2002.

3. Wheen, Francis, How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, Public Affairs, New York, 2004, p. 133-134.

4. IBID. p. 135.

5. IBID. p. 135.

Pierre Cloutier

"Chariots of the Silly"

Book Cover

Chariots of the Gods,1 is one of the funniest "Science" books ever published. The ranker in it against "scientists" is only matched by the author's incredible ignorance about Archaeology. But what I found amazing was reading all the reviews at Amazon.com2 by so many people who cry out about the virtues about having an "open" mind but who don't seem to know the first thing about any of what Von Daniken writes about. Well what about reading the copious work done about say Twianku in Bolivia, or Tula in Mexico or Cuzco in Peru!

When I was twelve I read Chariots of the Gods and was a believer for about a year. Then I read a few basic texts about the Maya, Incas, etc., and discovered that Von Daniken was in error so much that well it's a joke.

A lot of the appeal of the book is the old our "ancestors were idiots" belief and if they did anything that was outstanding they must have cheated. For example I found this particular comment at a UFO website:

Von Daniken’s hypothesis may seem outrageous, to be sure, but what is even more outrageous is the idea that the profound achievements that took place in ancient cultures were merely the natural process of unassisted human development.3

Perhaps the writer of this drivel could read a few basic texts of Archaeology and human history before uttering his absurdities. I am always amazed how many people find it so hard to believe that our ancestors could have invented or done those amazing things.

But then it is clear from counting the examples that von Daniken gives that he finds more mysteries to explain in the people are non-European. For example out of the 51 examples that von Daniken gives only 2 are from Europe, 16 are from Africa, 12 from Asia, 11 from North America and 10 from South America.4 Yep those non-Europeans could not have done it themselves they must have cheated!

For example the traditional Andean accounts attribute the colossal stone construction at Cuzco and elsewhere in Peru to the Inca Emperors. For example the site of Machu Picchu, which is used for all sorts of Alien and New Age fantasies, was apparently built by the Inca Emperor Pachacuti as a summer retreat. Further such monumental construction was continuing when the Spanish came.5

As for the Maya Von Daniken's explanation for the Mayan collapse has been exploded and so has his explanation for the Sarcophagus lid from the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, which we know from being able to read the Mayan Hieroglyphs depicts thee Mayan King Pacal falling into the maw of death down the cosmic tree. Von Daniken's comment about an inscription about a hot wind describing the death of the man in the Sarcophagus is total invention.6

Sacophagus of Pacal

Then his book is peppered with absurd comments like stating that a jade necklace found in a Mayan tomb is fantastic because we all know jade only comes from China!7 Well that is not true as even the smallest amount of research would indicate.

As for Von Daniken's research by going to various sites; well if you go and are unwilling to listen to what the researchers who have devoted their time to unravelling these sites have said you will of course view them as "mysterious".

Of course there is a lot more one could go into like von Daniken's ideas about Easter Island8, but it would be a waste of time. Instead simply checkout the more reliable sources of information on Easter Island.9

Von Daniken is a very funny joke and even funnier are those who don't see the joke.

1.von Daniken, Erich, Chariots of the Gods?, Bantam Books, 1970.

2. See Amazon.com reviews at Here

3. See Nelson, Adam K, Von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods - Documentary film review, at Here.

4. Feder, Kenneth L, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, 3rd Edition, Mayfield Publishing Co., Toronto, 1999, pp. 212-213.

5. See McEwan, Gordon F, The Incas: New Perspectives, W. W. Norton and Company, New York, 2006, pp. 109-110.

6. von Daniken, pp. 99-103, The hot wind comment comes from Ferris Timothy, Playboy Interview: Erich von Daniken, Playboy, v. 212, no. 8, August, pp. 51-52 56-58, 60, 64, 151, for an analysis of the Sarcophagus lid see Schele, Linda & Freidel, David, A Forest of Kings, William Morrow and Company Inc, New York, 1990, pp. 216-261.

7. For this particular howler see von Daniken, p. 93.

8. IBID. pp. 88-92.

9. Flenley, John & Bahn, Paul, The Enigmas of Easter Island, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002.

Bibliography:

Omohundro, John T., Von Daniken's Chariots: A Primer in the Art of Crooked Science, in Paranormal Borderlands of Science, Ed. Frazier, Kendrick, Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY, 1981, pp. 307-317.

Stiebing, William H., Ancient Astronauts, Cosmic Collisions, Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY., 1984, pp. 81-106.

Bainbridge, William Sims, Chariots of the Gullible, in Frazier, pp. 332-347. For an examination of why people believe this sort of stuff.

Story, Ronald, The Space Gods Revealed, Barnes and Nobles Books, New York, 1976.

Randi, James, Flim-Flam, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY., 1982, pp. 109-130.

Pierre Cloutier

Daniel Dunglas Home Con-Artist.

D. D. Home

One of the most amusing truisms is that it is never really possible to underestimate the intelligence of people, especially of people who think that they are really bright. A classic example is the life and career of Daniel Dunglas Home, (1833-1886). Called often D. D. Home.

Now D. D. Home was a psychic medium who too this day many consider to be genuine.1 Supposedly he could levitate off the ground and up to ceilings, supposedly he could elongate his body, levitate tables and all sorts of interesting phenomena, such as spirit hands appear and unearthly music echo.2

All of which is very fascinating but what does it prove? Basically D. D. Home sold himself as a Psychic, and not has a clever magician. He apparently was charming and rather convincing. Many people thought he was too charming and artless to be a con artist. Such people seemed to have forgotten that a con-artist who comes across has a con-artist will not be terribly successful at it. However a con-artist who appears to be charming and artless will be a stunning success as a con-artist.

A great deal as been made of eyewitness testimony of his miraculous feats. Well twentieth century experience of eyewitness testimony of the feats of psychics has revealed one thing in stunning detail. People, especially true believers, tend to spectacularly misremember such events. They forget key details. This is why the supposed eyewitness, (or witless) testimony of his alleged feats in such places as that house in Springfield Massachusetts, and his levitation in Ward Cheney's house are almost completely worthless.3 Despite what the Wikipedia article implies the fact that intelligent people, including Judges and inventors thought he was for real proves nothing.

The reason is simple. A Magician is skilled in deception, he / she is in effect a liar and deceiver. The pleasure is in knowing that you are being deceived and how clever the Magician is in doing his / her deception. The fact of the matter is that ordinary people are not trained to be Magicians so that they have absolutely no idea what to look for. It is further a truism among Magicians that adults are easier to deceive than children. Children have the habit of looking where their not supposed to look. Adults especially smart adults who think that they cannot be tricked are much easier to deceive.4

What is required is the presence of someone skilled / knowledgeable in conjuring to be present and of course for the subject being tested not to be in control of the experiment. Interestingly D. D. Home very carefully screened who would be present at his séances and was always very uncooperative if a Magician was present. That alone should set bells whistling. But of course the mouse was allowed to control the experiment least he get “upset”.5

What is also of interest is that D. D. Home’s levitations where performed, along with his other manifestations, apparently in the dark! Well it seems that D.D. Home would often start his séances in the light and then the lights would be dimmed and then the real miracles would happen! Today many writers about D.D. Home argue that it is a matter for debate about whether or not some of his feats were done in the dark.6 This is nothing but special pleading it is a verified fact that over and over again believers in D. D. Home’s miraculous feats describe this that or the other feat but neglect to say that the room was so dark you could barely see your hand in front of your face as mentioned by other witnesses. This occurs so often with D. D. Home as be a virtual cliché. Of course since people knowledgeable about magic were rigorously excluded, along with the feats happening mainly in the dark, there is no reason to take D. D. Home’s magic tricks seriously.

Like Geller, Home would not perform in the presence of magicians or even skeptics unless he sized up the skeptic as simple-minded. If a sitter in one of Home’s séances so much as hinted doubts, the spirits would ask the skeptic to leave. Would not such negative thoughts dampen the spirits’ spirits?7

Homes was tested by the scientist William Crookes, who concluded that Homes was for real. However it appears that Crookes tests are worthless as coming from a true believer whose “precautions” were ludicrous.8

Home had a knack for making friends who he could use. Believers made much of the fact that Home’s never asked for payment for his services. However they showered him with gifts, money etc., and made him a very wealthy man. It appears all he had to do was hint that he needed something and it would be given to him without him “asking”.9

D.D. Home also required during his séances that participants not take their hands off the table. How convenient! This of course greatly increased his ability to deceive, especially in the dark. It was also another example of the mouse controlling the experiment. Of course why the spirits would require this is not clear.10

Later in his life (1866) D. D. Home meet a Mrs. Jane Lyon and convinced her to adopt him as her son and give him 24,000 pounds, not including a Birthday gift of 6,800 pounds. Which in those days was a sizable fortune. Mrs. Lyon sued to get it back and a judge ruled in her favour.8 Interestingly Wikipedia relies on Conan Doyle’s very apologetic version of these events, ignoring what the trial judge actually said and the evidence of sleaze. For example the judge accepted as a fact that D. D. Home used alleged spirit messages from Mrs. Lyon’s deceased husband to induce her to adopt him has her son give the above mentioned sums of money and give him the arms of Lyon in her will. The alleged fact that D. D. Home did not lose any friends over this says less about D. D. Home than the boundless gullibility of his marks; opps! I mean friends.11

It is remarkable that so many of D.D. Home’s true believers took his alleged levitations seriously. A description from 1860 describes one of these miracle flights which took place in near pitch darkness. How did the sitters know D.D. Home floated up to the ceiling? Well he left a mark! Just how can anyone take that seriously?! Has for the white glowing hands. Well glow in the dark white rubber gloves were common among 19th century magicians and fraudulent mediums.12


D.D. Home takes a trip
Among the tricks that D. D. Home performed was the unearthly music. It is interesting to note that the music was one octave pieces like Home Sweet Home and The Last Rose of Summer, both easily played on mouth organs that can be easily concealed in the mouth.13

It is said Home was never caught this is debatable. Several incidents such has a viewer seeing that a spirit hand was continuous with Home’s body. Or that on one particular incident a viewer saw D.D. Home handle a bottle that proved to have phosphorescent oil in it. Or an incident were the viewer felt warm human fingers. Another incident involved someone seeing D. D. Home’s foot slip back into his shoe after someone near D.D. Home claimed to have been touched by the spirits.14

D. D. Home having made his bundle and married into wealth retired from the medium trade. However he wrote a book Lights and Shadows, which detailed the fraudulent means used by other psychics, although the book is very careful not to describe how to produce phenomena similar to the phenomena that D.D. Homes produced. I guess D. D. Home’s had to protect his trade secrets.15

It is of interest that one of the most inveterate boosters of the alleged psychic powers of D.D. Home’s was Conan Doyle and to this day people take his writings on spiritualist matters seriously. Why? The evidence is overwhelming that when it came to spiritualist stuff Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Homes, was incredibly gullible. Two examples should suffice. One was Doyle’s insistence, despite Houdini’s persistent denials, that Houdini had genuine psychic powers and that Houdini could dematerialize and pass through solid walls and rematerialize!14 This piece of foolishness wreaked their friendship. Then there is the Cottingley Fairies fiasco. Basically it involved two young ladies producing some, rather crude, photos of Fairies and claiming that they were of the real thing. Incredibly Doyle took this all seriously saying over and over again that the two young ladies could not possibly fool him; he was too bright to be fooled by them! Well in both those cases Doyle was spectacularly wrong. Those are just some indications about just how gullible Doyle was when it came to any thing spiritualist.16

It is fascinating to record that the age of great physical mediums, who could float, conjure ectoplasm, call for music, white hands, and physical spirits is past. They have become an extinct species. One wonders why? If the psychic phenomena was real why did it dry up? The answer is rather obvious; the invention of the flashlight makes it much harder to cheat and trick even in total darkness. So the age in which people like D.D. Home, (only the most prominent among many) who could pull off their tricks in the dark came to a crashing end. Sometimes modern technology makes life so much duller. We are reduced to psychics channelling empty headed bromides in the light.

As for séances to contact the dead T. H. Huxley said it all:

The only good I can see in the demonstration of the ‘Truth of Spiritualism’ is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a séance.17

D. D. Home being thoughtful
1. See A very favourable piece about him in Wikipedia, Here and Beloff, John, What is your Counter-Explanation?, in Kurtz, Paul, Editor, A Skeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY,1985, pp. 359-377.

2. See Wikipedia, Footnote 1, Gardner, Martin, The New Age, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1988, pp. 79-92, pp. 175-178.

3, See Randi, James, The Truth about Uri Geller, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1975, pp. 191-216, and Flim Flam, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1987, pp. 252-326, Gardner. Martin, Science Good, Bad and Bogus, Prometheus Books, Buffalo,1981, pp. 91-112, Gardner, 1988, pp. 25-31.

4, IBID.

5, See Footnote 2.

6, See Wikipedia, Footnote 1, It appears that D. D. Home’s table levitations and spirit rappings would often occur in the light. But since those psychic feats are easy to pull off fraudulently they cannot be taken seriously.

7. Gardner, 1988, p. 83.

8, Hall, Trevor H., The Enigma of Daniel Home, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, 1984, The Spiritualists, Duckworth, London, 1962, New Light on Old Ghosts, Duckworth, 1965.

9, Wikipedia, Footnote 1, Gardner, 1988, pp. 88-92, 178.

10. Gardner, 1988, p. 82.

11. See Gardner, 1988 pp. 177-178, and Coover, John E., Metapsychics and the Incredulity of Psychologists: Psychical Research before 1927, in Kurtz, Paul, A Skeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1985, pp. 241-273, at 255.

12. Gardner, 1988, p. 82.

13, Gardner, 1988, p. 177.

14, Coover, pp. 254-255, Gardner, 1988, p. 82.

15 The book can be downloaded at Google Books, Here

16 See Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Edge of the Unknown, Echo press, New York, 2006 (Original 1930), see Chapter 1, The Riddle of Houdini, See also Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Coming of the Fairies, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1921, See Also Gardner, 1981, pp. 113-122, Randi, 1987, pp. 12-41. An over all look at this historical phenomena including a detailed look at D.D. Home is provided in Brandon, Ruth, The Spiritualists, Knopf, New York, 1983.

17. Gardner, 1988, quoting Brandon quoting T. S. Huxley, p. 178.

Pierre Cloutier