Tom and Will Thomas (born c. 1881) most well known as the Thomas brothers were two early twentieth century spiritualist

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 ...

from

Penylan Penylan is a district and Community (Wales), community in the east of Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, known for its Edwardian era period houses and spacious tree lined roads and avenue (landscape), avenues. Situated to both the north and s ...

, a village in the south of Wales. The brothers claimed to communicate with a

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 ...

called "White Eagle". They were tied up in their

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 and when the lights were turned off, objects would move around the room. Polidoro, Massimo. (2001). ''Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle''. Prometheus Books. p. 123.

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

had attended a séance with the brothers in 1919, and declared the phenomena to be genuine. This was disputed by the magician

Harry Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...

who found their mediumship act suspicious, noting there were methods of how they could have freed themselves from control. Houdini, Harry. (1924). ''A Magician Among the Spirits''. Harper & Brothers. pp. 147-148 The mentalist

Stuart Cumberland Stuart Cumberland (1857–1922) was an English mentalist known for his demonstrations of "thought reading". Cumberland was famous for performing blindfolded feats such as identifying a hidden object in a room that a person had picked out or ...

, whom the brothers refused to their séances, told Houdini "there wasn't a chance of the Thomas brothers being genuine".

References

{{Spiritism and Spiritualism 1880s births People from Cardiff Welsh spiritual mediums Year of death missing

See also

References