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SI M-A 2009 pgs 1/27/09 11:40 AM Page 22 NOTES ON A STRANGE WORLD MASSIMO POLIDORO Ghostly Molds How to make a plaster cast of your hand, even if you are not a spirit ince the early days of Spiritualism, public became aware of their existence porters of this method agree that it is when mediums began producing thanks also to articles in popular maga- possible to reproduce hands of different S physical phenomena, paraffin-wax zines such as Scientific American. sizes and shapes and that the glove molds supposedly modeled around mate- Some of the plaster casts of these might be easily hidden on the medium’s rialized “spirit hands” during séances were molds are still preserved at the Institut body. To obtain such a glove showing considered some of the best pieces of evi- Mètapsychique International in Paris the hand’s fingerprints and its distinc- dence of the paranormal. (www.metapsychique.org), a fact that in tive lines, one should first impress a real Some of these molds, in fact, seem- part explains why the interest in the hand on dental wax, which allows a ed to possess the characteristics of phenomena periodically resurfaces. much sharper outline of the skin’s tex- “permanent paranormal objects.” The ture than plaster. This imprinting will at Alternatives to the Paranormal empty paraffin molds found at the con- once be used as a mold for making a clusion of séances, it was thought, Many (e.g., Coleman 1994a; 1995a) rubber glove showing all the typical could still be intact only because the have pointed out various possible nat- marks of a real hand. This hypothesis, hands around which the wax solidified ural explanations accounting for the however, appears weak. had dematerialized. “ghostly mold” phenomena. Dr Robin It is generally recognized that the Molds have not always possessed these Tillyard (1926), for example, suggested paraffin molds are “first generation” Along with my friend and colleague Luigi Garlaschelli, I decided to put my hands to the problem. Literally. characteristics, and even the celebrated the following: a tourniquet is fastened to imprints; instead, following this tech- medium D.D. Home warned against one arm, and the hand is allowed to nique, they would be “third generation” fraudulent mediums who produced these swell; after this, the swollen hand is imprints: first a negative in dental wax, phenomena by casting molds of their immersed into the paraffin and then then the rubber glove from this mold and own hands or smuggling prepared ones into cold water. The tourniquet is then finally the mold of paraffin over the glove. into the séance room. After a period in removed and the arm is lifted upward, The end result would probably show sur- which interest in these phenomena faded in order to allow the blood to flow, until face defects accumulated along the way. away, they made a comeback in the the swelling has gone down. The hand, Tests of this hypothesis, carried out Roaring Twenties with Polish medium having recovered its original size, will by Gustave Geley (1923) with thin rub- Franek Kluski and others, and the general allow the paraffin glove to slip off easily ber gloves inflated or filled with water (especially if the hand had previously and then suspended in a basin contain- Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the been smeared with glycerol). ing paraffin, produced imprints showing paranormal, author, lecturer, and co- A different procedure for casting the typical sausage-shaped fingers, founder and head of CICAP, the Italian spirit molds using normal means clearly revealing that they were made skeptics group. His Web site is at www. requires only one rubber glove perfectly with an inflated rubber glove. massimopolidoro.com. imitating the hand’s features. The sup- Geley’s test doesn’t rule out the possi- 22 Volume 33, Issue 2 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER SI M-A 2009 pgs 1/21/09 4:54 PM Page 23 bility of obtaining convincing spirit molds by using gloves made with elastic and thicker materials, carefully crafted and not overly filled with water or air. However, in any case, the entire proce- dure appears unnecessarily complicated. Here is an example of how certain books encouraging the belief in spiritu- alism claim the impossibility of obtain- ing molds by natural means: The molds were shown to Gabrielli, a professional modeler, who stated that they could never have been forged with an ordinary process, as a human hand would have broken a paraffin glove when slipping out of it. A real hand coming out of a paraffin glove just one millimeter in thickness, like the gloves obtained at the IMI, is not possible, nor would it have been pos- sible with a thicker glove, in that the palm of a hand is much larger than the wrist. The hand therefore would have had to break the glove to be able to slip it off the wrist. Contrariwise, the paraffin gloves are not damaged or The author making “spirit molds” broken at all. The only acceptable explanation was that “the hand must have materialized into the glove itself” (Giovetti 1988). Or, again: “This double-handed mould is perhaps the clearest evidence for the impossibility of a normal removal of the genuine mould obtained from the paraffin” (Geley 1923). In reading these observations and comparing them with all the possible solutions suggested by both skeptics and believers in Spiritualism, it turns out that only one solution gives a convinc- ing, rational explanation for the molds created by Kluski: it is simply the pro- duction of wax-molds directly from one’s hand, as also pointed out by Coleman (1995a). Even with his finger pointed, the author was able to remove his hand from the mold without breaking it. Experimenting with Ghostly Hands in which we poured a layer of molten one open hand, one fist, another with Along with my friend and colleague paraffin (approximately 1 kg, previously two fingers shaped like a V, one with a Luigi Garlaschelli, I decided to put my melted in a pan with boiling water on a finger pointing out (a form which, hands to the problem. Literally. We kitchen stove) and the other with cold according to Geley, should be consid- decided to make molds of our own water (5 liters), which we later used to ered “perhaps the clearest evidence for hands to test how difficult this really immerse our hands and allow the paraf- the impossibility of a normal removal of was. Strictly following Geley’s instruc- fin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our the genuine mould obtained from the tions, we prepared two basins (each with hands first in the basin filled with paraf- paraffin”), and one with two hands a diameter of ten inches): one with hot fin and then in the one containing water. clasped. Regarding this shape, support- water (approximately 5 liters at 55° C), We gave our hands different shapes: ers of Spiritualism were categorical: “By SKEPTICAL INQUIRER March / April 2009 23 SI M-A 2009 pgs 1/21/09 4:55 PM Page 24 no means could one have made only one In fact, a real hand is even more effective mold without breaking it has once again paraffin mould of the two hands of a liv- than any other artifice dreamed up to been disproved; and ing person clasped in such a way” substitute for it. First, the paraffin does- 2) the claim of the impossibility of (Dettore 1981). n’t stick to the skin, only to quite long removing a hand from a mold given In all of these cases, we were easily hair. Nonetheless, if one moves the fin- strange shapes (e.g., clasped fingers, a fist able to make some fairly thin molds (a gers very slowly, one will realize that hand, V-shaped fingers, etc.), has also couple of millimeters thick) just by every small bit one pulls out gradually been refuted; and immersing the hands one or two times allows the rest of the hand to be 3) the hypothesis claiming the impossibil- in the basin with the paraffin. But our removed; it’s almost what happens when ity of removing a hand from a mold nar- most significant result was that in every one pulls off a tight glove. rower at the wrist has been disproved. instance we managed to remove our Later, when we had poured some Our little experiment, then, just hap- hands from the solidified paraffin glove plaster into a few molds, it turned out pened to confirm Occam’s Razor once without breaking it. In fact, it can be that we had made exactly the same more: the simplest hypothesis turned noted from the photos that the wrist in copies as Kluski’s, which are kept at the out to be the one capable of explaining IMI (photo at left). The hands we the phenomenon most completely. obtained feature all of the hands’ typical lines and also a few hairs stuck here and Acknowledgements there. To convert a mold into a plaster Thanks to my good friend and colleague Luigi cast, one has only to pour liquid plaster Garlaschelli, with whom this experiment was slowly into the mold. When the plaster conducted (an article about it was written and published in the July 1997 issue [Vol. 62, N. is dry, the outer paraffin glove can be 848] of the Journal of the Society for Psychical removed, either by scraping it off with Research). I also wish to thank Michael H. the fingers or by melting it in hot water; Coleman and Lewis Jones for their useful sug- we preferred to melt it by placing it on a gestions and help.

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