Here is presented a catalogue of selected photographs from the recently uncovered archive of the now debunked Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation. Upon its conception the society was charged with the scientific investigation of incidents of spirit visitation, trance mediumship, psychic communication, ghost photography, and so on, as well as all other matters of the occult.

Founded by Dr. Arturo Clarkson-Wales at the Larkspire Lunatic Asylum at Cambridge, New York in 1873, the society gained notoriety for exposing many fraud mediums and spirit photographers beginning in the 1880’s and continuing until the turn of the century. During this time the goal of the Society was the application of the rigors of the scientific method upon the claims of paranormal and supernatural events. Because of this, few if any cases were declared genuine manifestations and tensions quickly grew between the true spiritualist believers and the highly disciplined doctors and scientists. After the mysterious death of Dr. Clarkson-Wales, the Society waned in both its influence and effectiveness and in 1905 fell under the leadership of Edgar Easterhouse, spiritualist guru and trance medium. Easterhouse transformed the Larkspire Society into a haven for spiritualist fanatics, as well as a school for the teaching of profitable mediumship and spirit photography.

After many lucrative years following the First World War as a spirit photographer, Easterhouse was forced, by the stock market crash of 1929, to return to Germany. The Society was left in virtual ruins until Dr. J. B. Rhine developed the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in the 1930’s, rekindling the scientific community’s interest in psychic phenomena. The Larkspire Society was revived by one of Professor Rhine’s graduate assistant, Marcus Kuchner, who organized the Society as a correspondence school for fledgling researchers.

After serving as president of the Larkspire Society for eight years, Kuchner was called to service during World War Two to train psychically sensitive soldiers in the art of remote viewing. Even though only twelve percent of Kuchner’s team’s observations were correct, what is remarkable is that this psychic reconnaissance, which captured details of the German Western Front, took place in several small bungalows on the island of Rakahanga, in the South Pacific. In 1944, twenty-two year old, Captain John Cole watched Kuchner suffer an psychic attack while in a deep trance. Kuchner had just identified the location of a top secret German heavy water plant, essential for the production of nuclear weapons, when he suffered a chocking fit and, after a brief struggle, fell dead to the floor. Captain Cole rushed to his aid, but, realizing that there was nothing to do, he turned to Kuchner’s notes and inspected the last passage, which read, “Easterhouse why? No, please…stop! It pains!”

Post-war McCarthyism prompted a serious decline in interest in the occult, and psychic research had become militarized. Only in mid-1960 did spiritualist beliefs begin to resurface, ushered on by the radicalism that encompassed that turbulent decade. On October 13, 1968, the Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation met as a group for the first time in forty years. Membership quickly grew, and, by 1971, the first Larkspire Symposium was held in Troy, New York. Throughout the seventies and eighties, the Society enjoyed a feverish revival, with membership topping five thousand. Unfortunately, the prosperity in America in the nineties turned many followers into materialists, and the events of September 11, 2006 may have put spiritualism to rest. The resurgence of Christian membership and leadership in key positions is indicative of the turning away from spiritualistic matters.

Although the Society is now dissolved, I hope that the presentation of this archive will activate true believers, inspire discussion, and promote research into yet uncharted fields of psychic phenomena.

Plate #1: Larkspire Founder and First President, Dr. Arturo Clarkson-Wales

Born August 6, 1842 the only son of Welsh-Irish immigrants, Dr. Arturo Clarkson-Wales graduated Harvard Medical School at age seventeen and, after serving at the New York Lunatic Asylum, became the youngest Head Resident of the Larkspire Asylum at Cambridge, New York. He founded the Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation in 1873 and was its president until his death in 1905.

Plate #2: The Case of Rufus Yoder

The Larkspire Society formally began after Dr. Clarkson-Wales consulted with several colleges about the strange occurrences surrounding a quiet Larkspire inmate, Rufus Yoder. A Union soldier at Gettysburg; he was wounded during the heat of the battle. Rufus complained that the Confederacy would visit him at night, and even though the walls of his room at the asylum became riddled with pits and fractures, as if shot by gunmen, no person, bullet, or cause was ever found within.

Plate #3: The Tower of the Larkspire Lunatic Asylumn

This photograph of the south-view of the Administrative Residence of the Larkspire Asylum was made in 1906 showing the tower built during the 1888 expansion. The Institution was closed permanently in 1937 and remained abandoned until beatniks, draft dodgers, and hippies set up a small commune on Larkspire’s grounds. The squatters were chased off and the main building was demolished in 1967, soon after the bodies of two young lovers were discovered in the tower.

Plate #5: Successful Spirit Photograph:

Jonathan Joshua Harridan and His Brother Henry, Deceased

The parents of the late Henry R. Harridan solicited Donald Spangler, Philadelphia’s most noted spirit photographer, to produce a family portrait that could never be. Upon hearing of the death of Henry in 1892, they had a second son, Jonathan Joshua Harridan, shown here at age 4. Wishing that the two could have met, the then elderly couple turned to Spangler for his expertise as a medium and the manifestation reportedly fulfilled them both. Unfortunately, Spangler was soon after exposed as a fraud by a few skeptical members of the Larkspire Society for Psychical Investigation.

Plate #6: Unsuccessful Spirit Photograph

This portrait of Miss Adela Ingraham, niece of Larkspire skeptic John Ingraham, was one of many produced by Donald Spangler during experimental tests conducted by the Larkspire Society. Placing Spangler under the strictest scientific controls appears to have weakened his powers as a medium because, of all the photos of Miss Ingraham, not a single one shows a spirit or manifestation. Note the composition: especially, how the photographer frames Miss Ingraham, leaving ample space for a manifestation to appear.

Plate #7: The Prophet Faiver as Manifested by Edgar Easterhouse

Jacques Faiver, a eighteenth century visionary and prophet, who was guillotined for his heretical (yet true) prophecies about the French royalty, foretold several events which occurred during the turn of the twentieth century. When Edgar Easterhouse began to perform acts of mediumship, he wisely attached himself to Faiver’s legend and purposefully fulfilled several of Faiver’s predictions. Easterhouse (born in Germany, 1881) was an immigrant who became Larkspire’s youngest member. Reported to have fantastic natural abilities and much charisma, Easterhouse became successor to Clarkson-Wales as president of the Larkspire Society.

Plate #8: The Spirit of Roger Asks for Help

In September 1907, Harold W. Feldt, while conjuring the spirit of the late Roger Baineer, manifested this plead for help reportedly made by Roger. The deceased’s crossing over had been hindered by the inability of his wife to forgive herself for stabbing him six times. Harold Feldt, a disciple of Easterhouse, was exposed as a fraud during the Great War, when several ghost photographs that he made were compared and similarities between the apparitions in his photographs and his assistance became apparent.

Plate #9: Evidence of Ida Anna Mae’s Ability to Bend Dinner Forks

Telekinetic powers are often possessed by people who are sensitive to psychic transmissions. The Ladies Auxiliary in the time-forgotten, Victorian village and spiritualist enclave, Lily Dale, New York, gathers for silverware bending sessions, much like other ladies associations might meet for quilting bees. The most prolific telekinetic medium was Miss Ida Anna Mae Valentine. Her most amazing feat took place during the annual All Saints Eve celebration in 1927, when she bent her entire place setting of salad, fish, and meat forks, knives, and her soup, pasta, and dessert spoons.

Plate #10: The Manacles of the Forty Year Prisoner

Housed in the Black Museum of Occult History, the manacles of John Fountainstone show the marks of his forty-one year imprisonment in a French prison. Even though his intermittent efforts nearly wore through his chains, John died before he was able to set himself free. The Black Museum acquired the items from a collector who reported, “Sometimes at night and if it is very quiet, and if one holds these manacles in one’s hand, a creaking and moaning can be heard, the sound of Fountainstone laboring his chains.”

Plate #11: F is for Fuld

The Mystical Oracle Talking Board Set first appeared in 1901, and, although inventor William Fuld claimed to have originated the Ouija name from the French and German words for ‘yes’, the name more likely came from the fabled Moroccan city, Oujida. Some sources report that the triangular indicator was created by a French medium, M. Planchette; although, this too is unlikely considering that, in French, the word ‘planchette’ means ‘little plank of wood’.

Plate #12: (Colored) ESP Cards for Testing Extra-Sensory Perception

Joseph Banks Rhine, Professor of Psychology, created the Parapsychology laboratory at Duke University in the early 1930’s. Soon after, testing for Extra-Sensory Perception began in earnest and Dr. Rhine’s efforts in the systemization of his experiments led him to produce a deck of ESP cards. Five symbols in five colors give each participant a one in five chance of guessing correctly. With ten passes through the deck, twenty correct guesses is suggestive of psychic power, while thirty correct is remarkable.

Plate #13: An Expectant Glimpse of Summerland

This glimpse of Summerland, the spiritualist term for the afterlife, is much different than the Christian vision of Heaven. Some mediums’ descriptions of the inhabitants of Summerland report that they enjoy all sorts of earthly delights such as whiskey drinking, cigar smoking, and sexual relations. Critics scoff at the notion, but, for Spiritualists, the crossing over from this world to the next is a mere hiccup on the road of existence.

Plate #15: Thoughtographic Impressions, The Trumpet

The well documented abilities of Ted Serios may be the most famous case of thoughtographic manipulations of unexposed film, but it is certainly not the most compelling. Two decades before Serios, Angela Langden performed incredible acts of psychic photography. A ten pack of peel-apart Polaroid film was placed into a Land camera, purposely not exposed, and then pulled individually through the rollers and pulled apart. The first image was blank, but when the rest of the images were assembled the image became perfectly clear.

Plate #16: Thoughtographic Impressions, The Accordion

During the production of this photograph, as with the preceding image, Angela Langden was reportedly focused on the members of the Schaghticoke Vaudeville Revue Band who died tragically when a land slide crushed the Millerston Dance Hall in 1912. Five of the twelve members of the band were killed instantly when the back stage wall crumbled under the weight of tons of rock and dirt.

Plate #17: The Abbeyville Blackboard, Message in Chalk

When messages began to be found on the blackboard of room 12 of the Abbeville Primary School in late autumn of 1967, they were dismissed as a prank perpetrated by an older student. But when the messages began appearing just minutes after the last one was erased and began taking on a more ominous tone, professionals were called in. Eventually, the police located the body of a young boy near a weather worn mile marker just off the Old Philadelphia Pike. The body was never identified and no one has ever been arrested for this crime.

Plate #18: The Haunting of the Tonto Ramada

A team of psychic researchers photograph the famed southwestern medium Erika Edwards while in a trance state. The location is a campground pavilion deep within Tonto National Forest, Arizona, where three young girls were murdered in 1984. Miss Edwards’ involvement in the case led to the eventual capture of the Superstition Mountain Serial Killer, Juan Diego, who was suspected of the rape and murder of twenty-three young women and girls.

Plate #19: The Ghost Hunter's Kit

In the early days of psychical research, independent investigators armed themselves with scientific and spiritual objects to detect spirit phenomena and protect the investigator from harm. Included in this kit used by Henrietta Ricketts, the ghost hunter made famous by the Elliot Shannon novels, are garlic cloves, a Polaroid camera with special thermal chromic film, and Howard’s Pocket Guide to Hauntings, Apparitions, and Demonic Possessions.

Plate #20: Thoughtographic Projections in the Greenwood Cemetery

The psychic abilities known as remote viewing and psychic thoughtography are both possessed by a janitor named Ajay Washington. His amazing gifts stunned the parapsychologists who attended the Larkspire Symposium in 1975 when these images solved the biggest mystery in Larkspire history. The location of the lost grave of Arturo Clarkson-Wales was unknown until Mr. Washington produced these images onto unexposed Polaroid Time-Zero® film during a demonstration at the Symposium.

Plate #22: Thermal Record of Psychic Phenomena

Thermal register receipt paper, which blackens when heated to a temperature of 140 degrees Fahrenheit, is often used by psychic investigators to record psychic phenomena. The effect was discovered when evidence of hot spots and intensely localized thermal spikes were being recorded onto the surface of cash register receipts which just happened to be in the participants’ pockets. In this example, the image of a ghoulish face appears on a grocery receipt.

Plate #25: Larkspire Curator, J. S. Moser

A Message From the Larkspire Curator