Mina Stinson   or   Mina Rand

 Mina Crandon.   Canada

 Margery

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 Mina Crandon

1888 - 1941

Mina Stinson Crandon

1888 - 1941

Mina Stinson Crandon, wife of the surgeon L.R.G. Crandon (Harvard professor), better known as Margery, is undoubtedly one of the most reliable medium and commonly recognized. Came to be known in order to take part in a competition for non-professional medium held in 1924 by Scientific American: those who had managed to produce paranormal phenomena considered reliable by strict Committee would receive 2,500 U.S. dollars prize.
Margery could not pass the tests of the committee, supposedly because of the presence of Houdini, always against the existence of paranormal phenomena and determined to show the falsity, even resorting to cheating. The Houdini's tricks were exposed by the control (the one who controlled the Medium) during a session: Walter. Walter, Walter Stewart Stinson or rather, was the brother of Margery, who died in 1911 in a railway accident. Events in direct voice was a joyful person, willing to work and full of practical sense. Walter first manifested through raps, automatic writing, telekinesis, paranormal music and finally to direct voice.
Towards the end of 1923 he went to Paris with her husband where she gave demonstrations to the doctor and metapsychics Geley and physiologist Richet, who were convinced, as is the meticulous parapsychologist Harry Price in London.
Among the others are also worth remembering episodes xenoglossy, cross correspondences and fingerprints paranormal. During a session with Carrington and Hyslop, to exclude the possibility of ventriloquism, the two Margery forced to have a mouth full of water for the duration of the session: yet the words of Walter were heard clearly.
Following Dr. Mark Richardson devised a machine to control his voice: he put a table in the center of a glass tube filled with water on top of which there was a piece of cork phosphorescent, at which the glass tube were attached to various tubes that connected to the mouth of everyone present, who were keeping them plugged in tongue, so that no water came out: if the level of the cork did not change course, that meant no one had spoken. Even with this control Walter spoke and the craft remained completely motionless.
Finally Thorogood performed a decisive experiment: put a microphone inside a soundproof box and closed with a padlock attached to a speaker in another room. Although the room with the Medium, there was utter silence in the other room of Walter's voice was heard clearly. Further certainty was due to another experiment the same scholar: closed one block of wax inside a sealed box and asked the Spirit to make a mark. This attempt was completely successful. But later the police verified that these were the fingerprints of the Crandon dentist: this fact greatly diminished the credibility of events.
As for the xenoglossy, March 17, 1928, Margery in a state of deep trance began to write with great rapidity nine columns of Chinese characters submitted to sinologist Whymant and two Chinese literati turned out to be moral judgments in archaic Chinese language, some of which from ancient texts.

Oscar Mondadori, Ugo Dettore, Paranormal - Encyclopedic Dictionary
 

In a low red light seance Physical Medium Mina Crandon in a trance state collapsed on the table while the sitters hold her and and the Spirit World use her to produce the ectoplasm seen forming over her head, which in turn produced other physical phenomena during the seance.

In another seance with the Physical Medium Mina Crandon the Spirit World is producing Ectoplasm, again the sitters are seen holding hands to build up and hold the energy within the Circle.

No account of physical mediumship would be complete which did not allude to the remarkable results obtained by "Margery," the name adopted for public purposes by Mrs. Crandon, the beautiful and gifted wife of one of the first surgeons in Boston. This lady showed psychic powers some years ago, and the author was instrumental in calling the attention of the Scientific American Committee to her case. By doing so he most unwillingly exposed her to much trouble and worry, which were borne with extraordinary patience by her husband and herself. It was difficult to say which was the more annoying: Houdini the conjurer, with his preposterous and ignorant theories of fraud, or such "scientific" sitters as Professor McDougall, of Harvard, who, after fifty sittings and signing as many papers at the end of each sitting to endorse the wonders recorded, was still unable to give any definite judgment, and contented himself with vague innuendoes. The matter was not mended by the interposition of Mr. E. J. Dingwall of the London S.P.R., who proclaimed the truth of the mediumship in enthusiastic private letters, but denied his conviction at public meetings. These so-called "experts" cache out of the matter with little credit, but more than two hundred common-sense sitters had wit enough and honesty enough to testify truly as to that which occurred before their eyes. The author may add that he has himself sat with Mrs. Crandon and has satisfied himself, so far as one sitting could do so, as to the truth and range of her powers.

Walter Stewart Stinson

1893 - 1911

The control in this instance professes to be Walter, [Walter Stewart Stinson 1893 - 1911], the lady's dead brother, and he exhibits a very marked individuality with a strong sense of humour and considerable command of racy vernacular. The voice production is direct, in a male voice, which seems to operate some few inches in front of the Medium's forehead. The powers have been progressive, their range continually widening, until now they have reached almost the full compass of mediumship. The ringing of electric bells without contact has been done ad nauseam, until one would imagine that no one, save a stone-deaf man or a scientific expert, could have any doubt about it. Movement of objects at a distance, Spirit lights, raising of tables, apports, and finally the clear production of ectoplasm in a good red light, have succeeded each other. The patient work of Dr. and Mrs. Crandon will surely be rewarded, and their names will live in the history of psychic science, and so in a very different category will those of their traducers.

 

Mina grew up on a farm in Canada but moved to Boston as a young woman. While working as a secretary of a local church in Boston, she met and married Earl Rand, a grocer. They had one son.[1] She later met Dr. Crandon when she entered a Dorchester, Massachusetts, hospital for an unspecified operation,[2] possibly appendicitis.[3] Dr. Crandon was her surgeon. She and Dr. Crandon crossed paths again later that year when Dr. Crandon served as a lieutenant commander and head of surgical staff in a New England Naval hospital during the First World War and Mina served as a civilian volunteer ambulance driver who transported casualties to the hospital. Mina sued for divorce from Earl P. Rand on January 1918 and became Dr. Crandon's 3rd wife a few months later. She moved to Dr. Crandon's house at 10 Lime Street, with her son.[4] Dr. Crandon later adopted her son and changed his name to Mike Hawk.[5]

Scientific American
Mina first began experimenting with seances as a hobby, possibly to distract her older husband from a morbid obsession with mortality.[6] On July 23, 1924 her name was submitted as a candidate for a prize offered by Scientific American magazine to any medium who could demonstrate telekinetic ability under scientific controls. With a doctor as husband, Mina was well prepared for the challenge, and her charm and lack of interest in personal monetary reward made her seem honest to the public eye. Her seance circles included members of the middle class as well as luminary members of the Boston upper class and Ivy League elite. Famous supporters such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave her significant credibility.[7] She became so popular that her prayers were read by the US Army. The Scientific American prize committee consisted of William McDougall, professor of psychology at Harvard; Harry Houdini, the famous professional magician and escape artist, who later would debunk her as a fraud; Walter Franklin Prince, American psychical researcher; Dr. Daniel Frost Comstock, who introduced technicolor to film; and Hereward Carrington, amateur magician, author, and manager for the Italian Medium Eusapia Palladino.[8]

Conjuring
There was much disagreement among the committee, and, in the end, only Carrington voted in favor of Mina. Carrington is now thought to have been romantically involved with Mina.[9] However, Committee Secretary Malcom Bird leaked to the press that the Committee was leaning toward a positive vote. Incensed, Committee Member Harry Houdini returned from abroad to submit his dissenting vote. His pursuit to discredit Mina became a part of his stage act, and he reproduced her effects to audiences as well as published a pamphlet that described how she achieved some of her more basic effects.[10][11]

A later review by Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine lent further insight into Mina's performances. Dr. Rhine was able to observe some of Mina's trickery in the dark when she used luminous objects. He refused to test her further, and postulated that she may have been subject to a personality disorder.[12] However, Mina continued to conduct seances and improve upon the production of effects. An English teacher, Grant Code, became a frequent visitor to the Crandon home and was enthralled by Mina's later astonishing performances. Ultimately, he too was able to duplicate them. Code's exchange of letters with psychic investigator Walter Franklin Prince regarding Margery are currently held in the archives of the ASPR.[13]

An elaborate investigation was held by a committee of Harvard scholars. Finally, the Harvard committee also pronounced Mina as being fraudulent. On 30 June 1925 one of the Harvard investigators saw Mina draw three objects from her lap. One object was shaped like a glove or flat hand, one resembled a baby's hand, and the third was not described.[14]

The Society for Psychical Research wanted further investigation. A committee of three Professors: Knight Dunlap, Henry C. McComas and Robert Williams Wood were sent to Boston. Mina had a luminous star attached to her forehead, identifying the location of her face in the dark. After a few minutes a narrow dark rod appeared over a luminous checkerboard which had been placed on the table opposite Mina. It moved from side to side and picked up an object. As it passed in front of Wood he lightly touched it with the tip of his finger and followed it back to a point very near Mina's mouth. Wood thought it probable she was holding the rod by her teeth. He took hold of the tip and very quietly pinched it. It felt like a knitting needle covered with one or two layers of soft leather. Though the committee had been warned that touching the ectoplasm could result in the illness or death of the Medium, neither Mina nor the "ectoplasm" rod gave any evidence of Wood's actions. At the end of the sitting Wood dictated his actions to the stenographer. Upon hearing this Mina gave a shriek and fainted. She was carried out of the room and the committee was asked to depart. Wood was never invited again.[15]

Mina's amazing production of the astonishing teleplasmic hand that appeared in photographs has never been fully explained. Yet it was touched and recognized, as being without life or movement, and resembling sewn tracheae. Allegations were made by some conjuring historians of Houdini and mediumship that Mina's surgeon husband had altered her genitalia and this was where she concealed her teleplasmic hand. The "hand" did not move after its appearance on the table before Mina. It lay still as if it were dead and then vanished. She refused to wear tights, and refused to be internally searched. However, proof that Mina had been surgically altered has never been found. The 'hand' only appeared when Dr. Crandon sat next to his wife, Mina, and held or controlled, her right hand.[16] [17] There are photos of the alleged teleplasmic hand and its position on page 237.[18] It appears to be coming from Mina's groin.

Mina reputation was damaged when a fingerprint left on wax ostensibly by her channelled spirit, her deceased brother, Walter, was discovered to belong to Mina's dentist. Her dentist divulged that he had taught Mina how to make these prints.[19] However, Mina continued to perform until her early death in 1941, at the age of 50.[20]

References
"Houdini" by Kenneth Silverman, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1996
Mediums, Mystics, & the Occult by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1975
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Super Hero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Atria Books, 2006
Mediums, Mystics & the Occult by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell Co, 1975
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Super Hero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Atria Books, 2006
"Houdini" by Kenneth Silverman, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1996
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Super Hero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Atria Books, 2006
Mediums, Mystics & the Occult by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell Co, 1975
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Super Hero by William Kalush and Larry Sloman, Atria Books, 2006
Houdini's prototype Margery bell box resides in the magic collection of Ken Klosterman Sr.http://www.illusionata.com/mpt/view.php?id=190&type=articles
Houdini on Magic by Harry Houdini, Dover Publications, 1953. Contains a reprint of the Margery pamphlet
Margery by Thomas Tietze, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1973
Ibid
Ibid
Doctor Wood by William Seabrook, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1941. Chapter 17, Wood as a Debunker of Scientic Cranks and Frauds-and His War with the Mediums
Mystics, & the Occult by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1975
The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Ruth Brandon, Albert A. Knope, Inc, 1983, page 188
Mystics, & the Occult by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1975
Margery by Thomas R. Tietze, Harper & Row, New York, 1973
The Secret Life of Houdini, by Kalush and Sloman, Atria Books, New York, 2006

 Mina Crandon in cabinet, with the help of the Spirit World, levitation of trumpet to the upper left of her head. Ectoplasm is invisible to the photographic film.

Mina "Margery" Stinson Crandon ranks as one of the most thoroughly investigated and controversial Mediums of the twentieth century. Psychical researchers put the ever-cooperative woman in uncomfortable situations, encased her in awkward contraptions, and sometimes wound her in enough adhesive tape to make her look like a mummy. In spite of such laborious efforts to disprove the validity of her phenomena, Margery Crandon again and again materialized Spirits and performed astounding feats of psychokinesis, or mind over matter.

Mina Stinson was born in Canada in 1888 and moved to Boston when she was quite young.


Mrs. Mina "Margery" Crandon (1888–1941). (FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY) young. In 1918, after an unsuccessful marriage, she became the wife of a senior Boston surgeon, Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon, whose family dated back to the Mayflower. They bought the house at Number 11 Lime Street on Beacon Hill, and became popular in Boston society. Crandon was a highly respected instructor at Harvard Medical School, and Mina was known as a lady with a sharp and lively wit.

In 1923, Crandon became extremely interested in psychical research, and he convinced Mina and a number of their friends to begin to explore the possibilities of contacting the dead. The group began with the customary attempts at table-tipping and Spirit raps, and Crandon was astonished when it became evident that Mina was a powerful Medium. After a few sessions Mina's deceased brother Walter, who had died in a train crash in 1911, announced his presence as her Spirit Control and within a brief period of time he began speaking through Mina and demonstrating a wide variety of Spirit phenomena. Walter, speaking in down-to-earth language, often colored with profanity, stated that it was his mission to perform the process of mind over matter, rather than delivering flowery inspirational messages from the other side.

Although Mina was regularly producing dramatic phenomena, attendance to the seances were by invitation only in order to protect Crandon's standing at Harvard. Within a few months after they had begun the private seances, the Crandons submitted to the first formal investigation of Mina's mediumship under the auspices of Professor William McDougall, head of Harvard's Department of Psychology, and a committee from the university. After five months of observation, the committee declared its opinion that the spiritistic mind over matter phenomena were produced through fraudulent means.

In November of 1923, J. Malcolm Bird (1886–1964) of Scientific American magazine attended one of the Crandons' seances and was impressed with the spiritistic manifestations he witnessed. At that time, Scientific American was offering a prize of $2,500 to anyone who could provide conclusive proof that psychic phenomena truly existed, and Bird asked Mina to submit to a series of their tests. The investigating committee for the magazine included Harry Houdini (1874–1926), Hereward Carrington (1880–1958), Dr. Walter Franklin Prince (1863–1934), Dr. D. F. Comstock, Dr. William McDougall (1871–1938), and J. Malcolm Bird, secretary of the committee. To protect Mina Crandon's social standing as the wife of a prominent Boston surgeon and Harvard professor, Bird gave her the pseudonym of "Margery," which is how she shall always be remembered in the annals of psychical research.

The tests began in January 1924 under the general supervision of Crandon. The strictest of control conditions were enforced to ensure that fraud of any kind, conscious or unconscious, on the part of the Medium could not go undetected. The most controversial aspect of the tests has to do with the role of the famous magician Harry Houdini in the experiments. Houdini was outspoken in his declarations that he had exposed Margery as a fraud. The Medium's defenders proclaim that the greatest myth in the history of psychical research is that Houdini caught Margery cheating and exposed her. On one point there is agreement: Houdini seemed determined to expose Margery as a fake by whatever means necessary.

During one night of tests, Houdini brought an electric doorbell into the seance room and said that he would challenge the spirit to ring it for the Circle. Once Margery was in a trance state, a low voice, that of Walter, the Medium's deceased brother and her Spirit Control, bemoaned the presence of Houdini. "Still trying to get some publicity by haunting seance rooms, eh?" the Spirit Voice taunted the magician.

Walter then directed Malcolm Bird, secretary of the committee, to take Houdini's doorbell out of the room so that he might examine it and see what kind of trickery the magician had planned. Bird hesitated for a moment, then picked up the apparatus and left the room. When he returned a few moments later, Bird frowned in displeasure at the magician, accusing him of having placed pieces of rubber on the contact points of the bell so that it could not possibly ring. Houdini offered no defense of his actions, and he was admonished that dishonesty would do the committee no service.

The words of admonishment were scarcely out of Bird's mouth when the electric bell began to ring in vigorous spurts of clanging sound, and Walter's booming voice filled the seance room. "How does that suit you, Mr. Houdini?" the Spirit Control mocked.

Houdini's tricks to confuse Margery were methodically uncovered by the all-seeing Spirit Guide Walter, and the magician's attendance at the sessions in the Medium's seance room became more and more infrequent. When the committee demanded that the magician make good his boast that he could duplicate all the effects that the Medium had manifested during her seances, Houdini found that he had suddenly been called away on business.

The investigating committee from the Scientific American never seemed to exhaust their list of inventive tests by which they might challenge the abilities of the patient Margery. For one experiment, the Medium allowed herself to be encased in a wooden compartment which would permit only her arms and legs to protrude. With her limbs grasped firmly by the researchers, Margery was still able to ring bells, snuff out candles, and set in motion rocking chairs on the opposite side of the room.

In order to better investigate the Spirit Voices that seemed to be under Margery's control, the committee carefully measured an amount of colored water that would easily fill her mouth. With her mouth full of the colored water, the voices of Walter and other entities were still able to speak freely and to answer all questions put to them. After the experiment's completion, the water was removed from the medium's mouth and re-measured. The colour remained the same and the amount of water withdrawn varied not more than a teaspoonful.

The water test had not adequately impressed all the investigators, however, so they devised a balloon which could be placed in the Medium's mouth and inflated while the seance was in progress. Once again, the voices were able to engage in free discourse, even though Margery's larynx was completely blocked off. A number of the Spirit Voices expressed their scorn with the feeble attempts that the investigators were making in an attempt to mute them.

Although Margery was always remarkably patient and good-humored regarding the tests that the committee devised, there were some overeager members among the researchers who did not return her good will. Before the research seances had begun, each of the investigators had signed an affidavit stating that none of them would touch the ectoplasm that streamed forth from the Medium's body, but on one occasion, a committee member seized the substance as it moved over his wrist. Margery emitted a terrible shriek of pain, and later she became ill and hemorraged for several days. Another time when she was in deep trance, a researcher drove a thick needle into her flesh. Although the Medium did not flinch while entranced, she suffered greatly from the wound when she awakened. On still another occasion, Margery was badly burned by corrosive chemicals which a zealous investigator had designed for an experiment.

After six weeks of tests, the committee remained undecided as to the validity of the phenomena produced by Margery, but an enthusiastic J. Malcolm Bird began writing positive articles concerning the authenticity of the Medium's abilities. When it seemed apparent that there was no general consensus accepting or rejecting Margery's mediumship as providing proof of survival, Houdini became furious, fearing that they were about to hand over the prize money of $2,500 to the Crandons. Because of his open and much publicized skepticism of Spirit Mediums and Spiritualists, Houdini felt that his very reputation as a master magician was being challenged and insulted, so he wrote his own report, Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by the Boston Medium Margery, and had it published as a booklet in 1924. As should be obvious from the title, Houdini presented his own explanations of how each of the phenomena manifested by Margery had been accomplished through trickery. The angry magician even went so far as to accuse two of his fellow committee members, Hereward Carrington and J. Malcolm Bird, of having assisted Margery in perpetrating her fraudulent mediumship.

In spite of crude and careless acts on the part of certain members of the committee throughout the grueling tests, Margery Crandon retained her goodwill toward the persistent investigators and produced a remarkable variety of phenomena, ranging from breezes, raps, Spirit Writing in several languages, independent voice manifestations, apports, and the imprint of spirit fingerprints in paraffin. Many members of the committee made public declarations that Margery Crandon had control of forces beyond the present knowledge of twentieth-century science. Hereward Carrington went on record as stating that after attending more than 40 sittings with Margery he had arrived at the "…definite conclusion that genuine supernormal would frequently occur. Many of the observed manifestations might well have been produced fraudulently…however, there remains a number of instances when phenomena were produced and observed under practically perfect control."

Unfortunately for Margery and her many friends and supporters, it was discovered that a fingerprint that had been allegedly left in wax by Walter was found to be that of a Boston dentist, Dr. Frederick Caldwell, who admitted that he had given Margery a bit of wax in which his own print had been pressed. One such exposure of fraud could not prove that all of Margery's spirit phenomena had been produced as products of clever deception, as Houdini had declared, but the falsification of her Spirit Control's fingerprint caused the majority of researchers who had examined and tested her mediumship to decide that perhaps she had, after all, been too good to be true.

Mina Crandon herself remains a mystery. The most famous Medium of the 1920s has become a martyr in the minds of Spiritualists, a courageous woman who submitted to test after complex test for the sake of demonstrating the truth of survival after death. For psychical researchers, she stands as a classic example of a talented Medium who, though capable of occasionally producing genuine phenomena, from time to time resorted to trickery. For the skeptics, she is simply another clever fraud who deceived the gullible until she was exposed by the harsh light of scientific investigation.

Mina Stinson Crandon died in her sleep on November 1, 1941. Although she was said to have spent her final years unhappy and disillusioned, tending to her husband during a long convalescence, then succumbing herself to illness, her supporters never ceased to remind her that her fame as a Medium was known throughout the world.

Source with slight alterations from unexplained stuff

Margery 'Mina' Crandon producing ectoplasm whilst being observed by Scientists.