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Thomas Edison, paranormalist
Skeptical Inquirer, July-August, 1996 by Martin Gardner
In later interviews that produced newspaper headlines around the world, Edison conjectured that the human mind was composed of billions of infinitesimal particles that are responsible for intelligence and memory. He thought they came from outer space, bringing wisdom from other inhabited planets. After we die, they may disperse, or they may swarm like bees and enter other human skulls, he said. Edison liked to call his particles "little people." Occasionally, he said, they get into conflict with one another. Here is how he put it in his diary:
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They fight out their differences, and then the stronger group takes charge. If the minority is willing to be disciplined and to conform there is harmony. But minorities sometimes say: "To hell with this place; let's get out of it." They refuse to do their appointed work in the man's body, he sickens and dies, and the minority gets out, as does too, of course, the majority. They are all set free to seek new experience somewhere else.
Edison was fascinated throughout his long life with the occult. In his thirties he became intrigued by the writings of that amusing mountebank Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the great guru of theosophy. Edison attended meetings in New York of the theosophical society and was awarded some sort of diploma. A firm believer in PK (psychokinesis), he tried to start pendulums swinging by mind control, but the results were negative. He also attempted to confirm telepathy by experiments with electric coils around the heads of human receivers and transmitters. Ebon quotes from Edison's diary: "Four among us first stayed in different rooms, joined by the electric system. . . . Afterwards we sat in the four corners of the same room, gradually bringing our chairs closer together toward the center of the room, until our knees touched, and for all of that, we observed no results."
It was Edison's good friend Henry Ford who introduced Edison to the magician Berthold Reese (1841-1926), better known as Bert Reese. He was a fat, bald-headed little man with pop eyes and a round face like a cherub. Born in what is now Poland, "Dr." Reese, as he liked to call himself, traveled widely around Europe performing what magicians call "mental magic" for celebrities and royalty. He liked to wear on his tie a huge diamond pin given to him by the King of Spain, and an even larger diamond on a finger ring. Many leading parapsychologists believed he had extraordinary psi powers.
Reese specialized in what is called "billet reading." He would ask someone to write something on a piece of paper, which he would fold and either hide or destroy. Reese would then pretend to read the message by ESP. His methods were well known to honest magicians of the time. There are scores of ways to accomplish billet reading.
Houdini was so impressed by Reese's skill that in a letter to Conan Doyle (April 3, 1920) he said that Reese "is without doubt the cleverest reader of messages that ever lived." Houdini urged Doyle to have a "seance" with Reese if he ever visited New York City where Reese was then living, to see if "you can fathom his work."
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