The Eddy Brothers were William and Horatio Eddy, two American

mediums Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spir ...

best known in the 1870s for their alleged

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

powers. Magicians and skeptics dismissed the Eddy brothers "spirit" materializations as blatant frauds.

Biography

The brothers were sons of Zephaniah Eddy and his wife Julia Maccombs, natives of

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

. It was alleged that their family could be traced back to the

Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom w ...

, and that they had a long history of

ability. Growing up on a small farm in

Chittenden, Vermont Chittenden () is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, Rutland County, Vermont, United States. The population was 1,237 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. History By area the largest town in the state, Chittenden was named after Thomas ...

, both brothers claimed to have exhibited strong psychic abilities from an early age. Both the sons took up mediumship and held séances, in which it was alleged that they produced ectoplasm materializations and communicated with

spirit guide A spirit guide, in Western spiritualism, is an entity that remains as a discarnate spirit to act as a guide or protector to a living incarnation, incarnated human being. Description In traditional African belief systems, well before the spre ...

s. William would work in a séance cabinet on occasion and his brother Horatio would sit outside a cloth screen where it was alleged that spirits would play musical instruments behind the screen. In 1870, William and Horatio were living with their widowed mother Julia in Chittenden. There, the Eddy family opened a small

inn Inns are generally establishments or buildings where travelers can seek lodging, and usually, food and drink. Inns are typically located in the country or along a highway; before the advent of motorized transportation they also provided accommo ...

, called the Green Tavern. In addition to lodging travelers, the Green Tavern was also the spot of regularly scheduled

séance A séance or seance (; ) is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word ''séance'' comes from the French word for "session", from the Old French ''seoir'', "to sit". In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, spe ...

s that the brothers put on for visitors from around the

world In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

. A typical séance of the Eddy Brothers would have the audience gathered in the "circle" room at the tavern. One of the brothers would enter a special spirit box at the front of the room (essentially just a small room with a chair in it) and lapse into a deep

trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...

, at which point the show would start. It was alleged that instruments would start playing music on their own, various noises could be heard and strange lights would be seen. The Eddy brothers convinced theosophists

Henry Steel Olcott Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (2 August 1832 – 17 February 1907) was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer, Freemason and the co-founder and first president of the Theosophical Society. Olcott was the first well-known American of Euro ...

Helena Blavatsky Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, uk, Олена Петрівна Блаватська, Olena Petrivna Blavatska (; – 8 May 1891), often known as Madame Blavatsky, was a Russian mystic and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 187 ...

and hydrotherapist E. P. Miller that their materializations were genuine, although neurologist George M. Beard dismissed all their phenomena as fraudulent. Beard stated that with a few dollars worth of drapery he could replicate the costumes of all the alleged materializations. In 1874, Olcott met Blavatsky at Eddy's family farm in Chittenden. Blavatsky defended the Eddy brothers against accusations of fraud from Beard.

Tricks

The Eddy brothers séance trick was exposed by the magician

Chung Ling Soo William Ellsworth Robinson (April 2, 1861 – March 24, 1918) was an American magician who went by the stage name Chung Ling Soo (). He is mostly remembered today for his accidental death due to a failed bullet catch trick. Early years Robinson ...

. The trick involved a

curtain A curtain is a piece of cloth or other material intended to block or obscure light, air drafts, or (in the case of a shower curtain), water. A curtain is also the movable screen or drape in a theatre that separates the stage from the auditorium ...

that was put across the room, with

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

s placed on a table inside the curtain space. Two members of the audience would be selected and enter the curtain. Horatio would grasp the audience sitter's left arm and the other sitter would grasp his right arm. To the audience outside the curtain, various musical instruments would be seen floating in the air above the top of the curtain and tapping the trio on the head. A hand would also come through the curtain and write a message on a slate held by William who was sitting outside the curtain.

. (1898)
''Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena''
Munn & Company. pp.101–104. The trick was performed by Horatio evading control and releasing his hand. He would do this by various methods such as using a fake hand made from a piece of heavy sheet

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

which he would place in his left hand and grasp the audience sitter's arm. Horatio would quietly remove his real hand with the leaden hand remaining behind, giving the sense of touch that an actual hand was there. With his hands free Horatio would manipulate the instruments and perform the alleged supernatural phenomena. The psychical researcher

Hereward Carrington Hereward Carrington (17 October 1880 – 26 December 1958) was a well-known British-born American investigator of psychic phenomena and author. His subjects included several of the most high-profile cases of apparent psychic ability of his times, ...

also revealed the

sleight of hand Sleight of hand (also known as prestidigitation or ''legerdemain'' ()) refers to fine motor skills when used by performing artists in different art forms to entertain or manipulate. It is closely associated with close-up magic, card magic, card ...

tricks the Eddy brothers had used. Carrington described their tricks as "absurdly simple" and was surprised that people had been fooled by them. Carrington, Hereward. (1907)
''The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism''
Herbert B. Turner & Co. pp.193–195.

References

External links

* {{Spiritism and Spiritualism American fraudsters American spiritual mediums People from Chittenden, Vermont Psychokineticists Sibling duos Sideshow performers Year of birth missing Year of death missing

Biography

Tricks

See also

References

External links