Light as a Feather - The Art of Levitation by Deborah Swift

'This is the art of Levitation...

levitation...

levitation...'

Do these words seem familiar? This is the beginning of the chant for the old parlour game I played when I was a child. Some of you may know it as 'Light as a feather, stiff as a board'. I first came across this at my primary school cloakroom when I was about eight years old. Amid the stink of old gym shoes and wet gabardine coats, a group of girls would gather around another girl, lying with arms crossed on the floor (the supposed corpse), chant a few words and then try to raise her off the ground by only one finger.

The leader would chant; 'She looks pale', to which we would all reply in ghostly tones, 'She is pale!' Leader: 'She looks dead.'
Us: 'She is dead!'

After this somewhat morbid chant we would count backwards from three to one and...oh cripes! The person would actually lift off the ground. Half-terrified, half-amazed, we would scream in horror and the person would fall in a tangled heap back to the ground. Where on earth did this 'game' come from? Do children still do it today? Thinking back on this now, it seems a completely creepy and bizarre activity.

Samuel Pepys

Or it did, until I was reading Pepys's Diary last week.  As part of my research for my next book, I was astonished to come across a report of precisely this activity. Three hundred and fifty years ago schoolgirls were apparently doing exactly this. Now whether the activity came from Pepys's Diary and subsequent girls copied that, or whether it was already existent, piqued my interest. Here is Pepys's version, told to him by a friend on 31st July 1665:

"This evening with Mr. Brisband, speaking of enchantments and spells; I telling him some of my charms; he told me this of his owne knowledge, at Bourdeaux, in France. 
The words these:

Voyci un Corps mort,
Royde come un Baston, 

Froid comme Marbre, 

Leger come un esprit, 

Levons to au nom de Jesus Christ.

He saw four little girles, very young ones, all kneeling, each of them, upon one knee; and one begun the first line, whispering in the eare of the next, and the second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and she to the first. Then the first begun the second line, and so round quite through, and, putting each one finger only to a boy that lay flat upon his back on the ground, as if he was dead; at the end of the words, they did with their four fingers raise this boy as high as they could reach, and he [Mr. Brisband] being there, and wondering at it, as also being afeard to see it, for they would have had him to have bore a part in saying the words, in the roome of one of the little girles that was so young that they could hardly make her learn to repeat the words, did, for feare there might be some sleight used in it by the boy, or that the boy might be light, call the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as Sir G. Carteret’s cook, who is very big, and they did raise him in just the same manner. This is one of the strangest things I ever heard, but he tells it me of his owne knowledge, and I do heartily believe it to be true. I enquired of him whether they were Protestant or Catholique girles; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me."

St Joseph of Cupertino

I have found no earlier reference to schoolgirls attempting to levitate, but perhaps the idea came from St. Joseph of Cupertino (1603–1663) who was an Italian saint who flew high in the air or hovered just above the ground whilst in mystical ecstasy. His life being just before Pepys's time, perhaps these girls could have heard of him, and the craze started then.

Of course St Joseph of Cupertino was nothing new; in the first century a man named Simon Magnus levitated in full view of St. Peter in a challenge to prove he was endowed with supernatural powers. But Cupertino would have been much talked of in Pepys's period, as his 'floatings' were apparently witnessed by hundreds of people, many of whom testified, as part of his canonization process, to seeing the phenomenon. There are written records in the Vatican from many eminent churchmen, along with ordinary people, giving copious details about Cupertino’s levitations. 

Of course in England there was suspicion at that time of anything Catholic. This would explain Pepys's comment "I enquired of [Mr. Brisband] whether they were Protestant or Catholique girles; and he told me they were Protestant, which made it the more strange to me."

I find it surprising that young girls should do it at all, in an age where to float would be tantamount to witchcraft. In fact one of the tests of witchcraft was whether the woman would float in water, and whether she was light enough to fly. 'Weighing' witches was common in this era. 

The floating, light and ethereal body is an idea found in most religions, and the wish to levitate akin to a desire to rise above the physical, whilst still inhabiting an earthly body. The idea of levitation was particularly prominent in the Victorian era when it became conflated with Spiritualism and psychic phenomena such as poltergeists. In the Victorian era is nearly always a woman floating, mysteriously under the control of a man, so it is rather nice that this weird ritual has been (as far as I can tell)  mostly the province of girls.

In our popular imagination, to be able to fly and defy gravity is the stuff of dreams. Of course as an eight year old girl, I knew none of this. The unexplained is always thrilling whether you live now or in 1665, and children's games are often much older (and darker) than we suspect. Do any of you remember other versions of this 'game?'

ECTOPLASM by Mary Hooper

Following publication of Velvet, set in a medium's house in Edwardian London, I recently wrote a piece on Ectoplasm for the children’s book blog in the Guardian. This is an unexpurgated version.

Ectoplasm was purported to be a substance that exuded from a medium whilst in trance: a substance which, it was said, formed itself into the manifestation of whatever spirit the medium was in touch with at the time. It was said to flow from one or more of the medium’s orifices. Yes, even from there.

When I was researching Velvet I found a selection of rather odd photographs showing materials which purported to be this mystical stuff. Accounts of the day describing it say that it was a slimy substance, a fine muslin-like material, something like smoke, or of a rubbery dough-like consistency. Members of the audience, kept at a distance and literally in the dark, were warned against touching any ectoplasm which appeared. It depleted the medium’s own body, they were told. If it was touched, it could kill her. Have a look at these photographs and see if they convince you...

Some mediums didn’t bother exuding anything, but merely pulled the curtains tightly shut across the cabinets they used for going into trances, and appeared through a secret doorway dressed in heavenly white robes. There was a sexual element to all this; sitting in almost-darkness with an attractive lady medium, holding hands around the table, those Victorian gentlemen were getting a lot closer to a lady than they usually did. One evening, Pocky, a small “Indian girl spirit” materialised by Miss Florence Wood, kissed a Mr Gurney two or three times through her drapery and then went on to embrace a corn-merchant “repeatedly”. At a later séance, Pocky was actually exposed as Miss Wood, on her knees and swathed in white muslin. She pleaded that she had been “an unconscious instrument temporarily in the hands of an evil power”.

Another famous medium, Miss Katie Cook, materialised a shapely and attractive spirit who was frequently jumped on by sceptics anxious to prove (after touching her all over) that she was flesh. On one appearance she proved not very ethereal by struggling violently with a gentleman, scratching his face and pulling out his whiskers.

In 1882, The Society for Psychical Research was formed, and as a consequence mediums would sometimes be asked to submit to an examination before and after a séance to show they weren’t hiding anything. Discoveries made included a pump hidden under a carpet ready to inflate a swath of gauze-like material, a medium found with yards of muslin folded into a cube in her cheek, yet another with an assistant in the basement ready to blow up smoke through the floorboards. Mediums could also secrete materials under their voluminous skirts, and sometimes had their arms and legs bound up to prevent them producing anything when the lights went out.

The formation of the Society resulted in the numbers of mediums producing ectoplasm going down, and the numbers being prosecuted for fraud going up. If a Society member was present and the medium was canny, she would say that the dead were being uncooperative that evening and not even attempt to make contact with them. Nevertheless, all the leading mediums were, at one time, caught in wrong-doing and accused of fraud.

MEDIUMS - then and now Mary Hooper

“When the dead talk, the living must listen” – or so the strap line says of my new historical novel, VELVET, published 5th September. VELVET is a story about a medium – or, more precisely, about a girl who goes to work for a medium - and of course I had to do research for this which involved going to see “real” mediums on stage in small local theatres.

As the curtain opened on the first of these, the medium came forward to ask if anyone in the audience was a confirmed sceptic. I put up my hand (I was the only one) and she fixed me with a glowering eye and said, “Yes. I see.” After that, far from trying to change me to a believer, she didn’t look my way for the rest of the evening.

I was really hoping for more: the way one would quite like to see a nice ghost. I had very much hoped to be selected by the medium and receive an inspiring and uplifting message. Perhaps the spirits would know that I was planning to write a book about them and turn up to give a good performance?

Unfortunately, they did not. What happened in all three events I attended was, after passing on several messages that seemed to mean something to certain members of the audience (had they been planted there, I wondered?) the medium resorted to asking basic questions: had anyone in the audience someone in spirit called – say - Fred, or John, or Anne. Of course, most people did know someone deceased who had these not-very-unusual names, and it wasn’t difficult to fabricate stories around them. The medium would say, “I’m getting some disconnected messages here, tell me if some of them mean anything to you”, then throw in a few suggestions: Uncle Fred had had a great sense of humour/enjoyed gardening/liked to travel abroad/watched a lot of TV, and the audience member would seize on any that were relevant to him or her.

The medium would then go on to employ the type of “cold reading” used by Derren Brown, analysing the audience member’s body language, speech patterns, level of education, clothing, hairstyle, etc. and making high probability guesses – messages which were purported to have come from Uncle Fred.

Never did anyone receive a message which stunned and amazed them, a communication which could only have come from “beyond the grave”.

At the second event I attended, the medium resorted to asking the audience (rather desperately, for lots of spirits had come through but no one knew who they were) if there was someone in there tonight with a black handbag. About three quarters of the audience raised their hands, and then looked round at each other and laughed nervously. And this was the event at which the medium and her assistant were waiting in the foyer of the theatre to greet, talk with and “put the audience at their ease”. Hmmm...

Oh, and dates. Sometimes these were thrown in with random messages, the medium saying they were birth/anniversary/marriage or death dates. If no one claimed them as a date they recognised, the medium said they would “make sense later” when we got home and realised this was the date on which Auntie Rose/Grandma died. Or was born. Or....yes, you get the picture. I think that, given half a dozen different dates, most people would be able to make one of them mean something.

My book is set in 1900, and perhaps one of the most interesting things I discovered when researching it was that every single “big name” Victorian/Edwardian medium was accused of fraud, and only one of these was not convicted of any wrongdoing. I am not saying that speaking to spirits is impossible – just that I never found any clear evidence of it, now or way back then. I will let you know if I do.