Ectoplasm

To researchers into the paranormal, ectoplasm is a substance that allows ghosts to materialize in the natural world. This substance is said to explain why people sometimes report seeing ghosts as a white, filmy haze, and why this haze often appears in photographs purported to be of ghosts. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ectoplasm was primarily associated with spirit communicators, or mediums, because the substance would sometimes appear to come out of a medium’s eyes, nose, ears, or mouth during a séance. This ectoplasm had various forms—semisolid, vaporous, or liquid, from small, gauzy tendrils to large, solid, humanlike shapes—and the affected medium would typically claim to have brought it from the spirit world to the natural world, along with the spirit’s mental and/or verbal communications. Many witnesses to such events were astonished by what they saw, and some developed theories regarding why ectoplasm extruded from the medium’s body. Among these theories, perhaps the most common was that spirits had to use some of the medium’s essence in order to manifest themselves in the séance room. Consequently, many people believed that if they touched the ectoplasm during a séance, the medium would die. Skeptics say that ectoplasm was a form of trickery used by charlatans to create the impression that they were in touch with the spirit world. One such medium eventually confessed to using fabric, most often chiffon, to create a gauzelike ectoplasm, and he claimed that some of his peers treated their fabric with phosphorescent substances to make it glow. Other mediums were discovered to be hiding pieces of cheesecloth or containers of liquid on their bodies, and others were caught swallowing materials that they would later vomit to produce the ectoplasm. In addition, those who investigated mediums sometimes found mechanical contraptions hidden in the séance room that could be used to manipulate ectoplasmic materials. Because of such discoveries, the idea that a medium can act as a conduit for ectoplasm has largely been discredited.

SEE ALSO:

• Physical and mental mediums
• Photographic evidence of paranormal phenomena

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning