When you hear the word ‘Ectoplasm,’ your first thought might be that one scene from
Ghostbusters.
What happened?
He slimed me.
But the history of ectoplasm dates back to the 19th and early 20th century, rising out
of the fascinating and often bizarre world of séances.
Attempts to communicate with the dead have a long history, but the classic seance—with
the darkened room, the circle of people, and the dead speaking through a medium—rose
to prominence in the mid-nineteenth century.
Interest died down, but then, in the 1920s, after the First World War and 1918 flu outbreak,
séances spiked like never before as survivors tried to make sense of a world shattered by
mass death and conflict.
Struggling to process the loss of loved ones, people increasingly turned to the world of
the paranormal as a source of comfort, hoping to speak to deceased family members as a way
of processing their grief.
But many weren’t content with just sitting in a circle and having a medium claim they
could hear voices of the dead.
Notable figures like British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes
stories and lost his son in the flu outbreak, became increasingly interested in proving
the existence of spirits through physical evidence.
And so began a widespread fixation on scientifically verifying a substance known as ectoplasm.
Coming from the Greek ektos, meaning "outside", and plasma, meaning "something formed or molded"
— ectoplasm was a gelatinous substance that mediums claimed emerged from their mouth,
nose (or other places) during seances.
Some said it was a kind of connective tissue between the world of the living and the dead.
A nimble substance, it could (supposedly) form into the body of the deceased, tapping
shoulders and playing musical instruments and even, in the “spirit photography craze,”
popping into photos.
Today, most of these photos appear… obviously fraudulent, and in the early 20th century
researchers were already questioning the validity of the images.
They found many mediums used methods of swallowing and regurgitating cloth or other textiles
to create the illusion of otherworldly substances leaving their body.
Pretty gross.
Some photos of ectoplasm also depicted human faces emerging from the ‘supposedly otherworldly’
substance.
Once again, some were fooled.
Looking closely at the photographs, however, investigators discovered the so-called faces
within the ectoplasm displayed the marks of paper magazine cut-outs around their edges
— exposing the mediums as fake.
Helen Duncan was perhaps the most famous medium who claimed to produce ectoplasm — and the
last person to be imprisoned under the British ‘Witchcraft Act’ interestingly enough.
She claimed spirits of the deceased materialized from her mouth, which as you can tell by the
photographs were fraudulent.
Investigators discovered she made these so-called specters from paper masks placed on sheets
draped over coat hangers.
Beyond spirits, Duncan also made claims of a ghostly hand which emerged from her nose,
which psychic researcher Harry Price concluded was made of A: a woven cloth, and B: a rubber
glove.
Researchers exposing ectoplasm as fraudulent went beyond Duncan, however.
Indeed, the exposure of fake ectoplasm became so widespread it resulted in a serious decline
in physical mediums — and the acceptance of mediums in general.
But people like Conan Doyle didn’t dupe themselves en mass for no reason.
Although it’s hard to deny these claims of ectoplasm were fraudulent, they were responding
to a very real sense of pain and loss which gripped the society.
In suggesting the recently dead could still be contacted, and indeed remained physically
present in some form, ectoplasm was, ultimately a strange — yet important — stage in the
grieving process for many.
Today, It’s easy to look at these photos and laugh, or hear stories of people regurgitating
cloths and feel a little sick, but it’s important to remember that in the wake of
a world-wide tragedy, people need something tangible to hold on to.
And strange though it might seem, in some cases that was ghostly slime.
And that’s the end of our tour of the mysterious, tragic, and slightly disgusting history of
ectoplasm.
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