Hello there!

We’re back to scientific séances! Specifically how British scientist William Crookes used a galvanometer to “test” Anna Eva Fay’s “powers” as a medium in 1875.

My previous post got into the details of one of Fay’s four séances at Crookes’s house. That night while by herself in the library, she made a violin float, unlocked a desk, and tossed books through the curtain separating the library from the room where the men were watching the galvanometer. (Fay and the men couldn’t be in the same room, you see, because the spirits were shy.)

Crookes believed that the galvanometer, a device that measures electric current, would reveal if Fay removed her hands from the two handles next to her seat. When she held those handles, her body completed an electric circuit, resulting in a specific reading on the galvanometer in the adjoining room. If she let go of those handles, that reading went to zero.

During most of her séance tests, the galvanometer’s readings were relatively steady, which Crookes said proved that Fay had kept her hands on the two nailed-down handles while violins floated and books were thrown.

Fay obviously found a way to beat the system. And while she was coy about how exactly she did it for the rest of her life, she did reportedly tell Houdini over 45 years later (as reported in the 1996 book, Houdini!!!) that she did so by holding one of the handles underneath her knee, which gave her a free hand to wiggle and  “attract attention,” as a witness described.

But while this is indeed a way to beat the galvanometer, it can’t be the method —  or at least the only method — Fay used. Several items she moved were out of arm’s reach of the chair she sat in; she had to be able to get up and move around freely, or someone else had to have been in the room working with her.

Barry H. Wiley in his book on Anna Eva Fay, The Indescribable Phenomenon, lays out a plausible method. Since this involves some secrets, this explanation will only be available to newsletter subscribers so the magic police don’t come after me.  

Fay was prepared when she sat down for Crookes’s séances. She met with him more than once beforehand, as he wanted to make sure she felt at ease in his house before any séance business. The scientist had also tested mediums before her, which meant that she and those in the Spiritualist community already knew the setup of the galvanometer.  She was also more than deft enough to gather details on the guests who would be attending her scientific séances (the “spirit” often threw books through the curtain written by the men in the room), either from Crookes or his assistant, Charles H. Gimingham.

Wiley thought Gimingham was —  knowingly or unknowingly — Fay’s accomplice. Crookes’s assistant had access to the scientist’s galvanometer and lab, and he could easily have shown Fay the device under the pretext of making her comfortable with it before she first sat down for the official séances.

As for completing the circuit, Wiley suggests that Fay did so with a coiled wire. She or her husband at the time (who was purposefully not around for the testing) could have bought the wire in London, and then Fay could have calibrated it to give the same reading as her body during one of her probable preview sessions. Once the coil was properly wrapped around the two handles, Fay could move around the library, removing pictures from walls, picking a locked desk (or using a key provided by Gimingham), and sliding violins across the room at will.

Whatever the method, it’s clear she still needed practice before her first scientific séance with Crookes. She had some drastic initial readings on the galvanometer in her first session, and “supernatural” things didn’t happen for 13 minutes. The remaining three (the account in my previous post was her third one) had readings that barely wobbled and the “spirit” was gallivanting around the library in a minute or less, suggesting she had mastered her technique.

Fay never publicly stated she didn’t have powers, though she also veered away from explicitly saying she did have powers as well. She was a renowned vaudeville performer who shifted her act to mentalism when Spiritualism went out of style. She died on May 12, 1927. “To the day of her death, Miss Fay maintained that her powers were inexplicable even to herself,” her obituary in The New York Times read. “She kept her secret, if secret there was.”

If you’re into this topic, here are some additional resources to look into.

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