NOTES Of * FRINGE-WATCHER MARTIN GARDNER Thomas Edison, Paranormalist homas Alva Edison (1847-1931) Alva Edison: An American Myth only had come to believe in an afterlife, was the world's most famous, (1981)—and the chapter on Edison in but was actually working on an electri- Tmost prolific, inventor. I will Martin Ebon's They Knew the Unknown cal device for communicating with the spend little time on biographical details (1981). dead! (Sec also Austin Lescarboura's because they are easily found in encyclo- In his youth Edison was an outspo- "Edison's Views on Life after Death," in pedias or in the more than sixty books ken freethinker. He greatly admired Scientific American, October 30, 1920.) about Edison. Nor will I be concerned Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, but Nothing is known about the kind of with whether his 1,093 patents are ail to unlike deist Paine, Edison did not machine Edison had in mind, although be credited to his undisputed genius or believe in God, the soul, or an afterlife. it is known that he conducted experi- to the work of many assistants. It has At that time Edison was a pantheist who ments with it. It was probably some sort been said that his greatest invention was liked to call nature the "Supreme of telephone using greatly amplified the invention factory, or research team. Intelligence," indifferent and merciless electromagnetic waves. Many of his inventions were improve- toward humanity. His friend Edward Martin Ebon quotes the following ments on earlier work by others. (Most Marshall interviewed him for the New remarks made by Edison to the inventions are.) The incandescent light York Times (October 2, 1910). "There is Scientific American interviewer: bulb, for example, had a long history no more reason to believe that any before Edison found better filaments. human brain will be immortal," Edison If our personality survives, then it is His one great, indisputably original, declared, "than there is to think tli.it one strictly logical and scientific to assume that it retains memory, intel- invention was the phonograph. of my phonograph cylinders will be lect, and other faculties and knowl- This also is not the place to discuss immortal No, the brain is a piece of edge that we acquire on [his earth. Edison's foibles: his temper tantrums, meat mechanism—nothing more than a Therefore, if personality exists after his lust for money, his efforts to purloin wonderful meat mechanism." what we call death, it's reasonable to conclude that those who leave this ideas, his boasts about war weapons that Edison's words, occasioned by the earth would like to communicate never existed, or his disastrous relations death of William James, generated an with those they have left here. with his two wives and his children. uproar of opposition from Christians of ... I am inclined to believe that These are aspects of Edison's character I all stripes. He was soundly trounced by our personality hereafter will be able did not know about when forty years Cardinal Gibbons. Columbian Maga- to affect matter. If this reasoning be ago I wrote an adulatory article about zine, a Catholic periodical, devoted an correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be him for Children's Digest (November enure issue to attacking what it called affected, or moved, or manipulated 1954). "Edison's materialism." by our personality as it survives in My intent here is to focus on Then something happened to Edison the next life, such an instrument, Edison's changing religious opinions, his o n the way to his laboratory. In an inter- when made available, ought to record lifelong interest in psychic phenomena, view tided "Edison Working on How to something. Certain of the methods now in use and his gullibility. My main sources are Communicate with the Next World," in arc so crude, so childish, so unscien- two biographies—Robert Conor's American Magazine (October 1920), tific, that it is amazing how so many Thomas A. Edison: A Streak of Luck B. C. Forbes—he later founded Forbes rational human beings can take any (1979) and Wyn Wachorst's Thomas magazine—revealed that Edison not stock in them. If we ever do succeed SKEPTICAL INQUIRER July/August 1996 9 in establishing communication with newspaper headlines around the world, magician Berthold Reese (1841-1926), personalities which have left this pre- Edison conjectured that the human better known as Bert Reese. He was a sent life, it certainly won't be through mind was composed of billions of infin- fat, bald-headed little man with pop any of the childish contraptions which itesimal particles that are responsible for eyes and a round face like a cherub. seem so silly to the scientist. intelligence and memory. He thought Born in what is now Poland, "Dr." diey came from outer space, bringing Reese, as he liked to call himself, trav- Christian leaders here and abroad eled widely around Europe performing welcomed Edison into dieir ranks as a wisdom from other inhabited planets. what magicians call "mental magic" for theist who now believed in immortality. After we die, they may disperse, or they Scientific American, in the article cited earlier, ran a photograph of Edison "A firm believer in PK (psychokinesis), he tried to pouring liquid from a flask into a start pendulums swinging with mind control." beaker. The caption read: "Thomas A. Edison—the world's foremost inven- may swarm like bees and enter other celebrities and royalty. He liked to wear tor—who is now at work on an appara- human skulls, he said. Edison liked to o n his tie a huge diamond pin given to tus designed to place psychical research call his particles "little people." him by the King of Spain, and an even on a scientific basis." Occasionally, he said, they get into con- larger diamond on a finger ring. Many flict with one another. Here is how he leading parapsychologists believed he Although Edison never became a had extraordinary psi powers. Christian, Mina Miller, his young and put it in his diary: Reese specialized in what is called pretty second wife (she was eighteen They fight out their differences, and "billet reading." He would ask someone years his junior), never wavered from then the stronger group takes charge. to write something on a piece of paper, her devout Methodist upbringing. If die minority is willing to be disci- Conot (page 427) calls her "an unrecon- plined and to conform there is har- which he would fold and either hide or structed fundamentalist who . mony. But minorities sometimes say: destroy. Reese would then pretend to thought evolution a plot of Satan." I "To hell with this place; let's get out read the message by ESP His methods of it." They refuse to do their had the pleasure of meeting her when I were well known to honest magicians of appointed work in the man's body, he was a small boy. My parents had taken sickens and dies, and the minority the time. There are scores of ways to me to Chautauqua, New York, where gets out, as does too, of course, the accomplish billet reading. die Edisons maintained a summer cot- majority. They are all set free to seek Houdini was so impressed by Reese's tage. I rang their doorbell to ask for the new experience somewhere else. skill that in a letter to Conan Doyle great man's autograph. He was not at (April 3, 1920) he said that Reese "is home, but Mrs. Edison graciously Edison was fascinated throughout his! without doubt the cleverest reader of promised to have him send it to me, long life with the occult. In his thirties; messages that ever lived." Houdini which he did. he became intrigued by the writings of urged Doyle to have a "seance" with that amusing mountebank Madame: Reese if he ever visited New York City "Has Man an Immortal Soul?," t where Reese was dien living, to see if another interview by Marshall, appeared Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the great I "you can fathom his work." in the Forum's November 1926 issue. guru of theosophy. Edison attended Edison now speaks of the "soul," and meetings in New York of the theosophi- In his book Paper Magic (page 91) refers to God as both a "Great Power" cal society and was awarded some sort of Houdini refers to Reese in a footnote as and a "Creator." "Today the preponder- diploma. A firm believer in PK (psy- "in my estimation, the greatest pellet ance of probability gready favors belief chokinesis), he tried to start pendulums reader that ever lived. (A pellet is a bil- in the immortality of die intelligence, or swinging by mind control, but theE let rolled into a ball.) I had a stance soul, of man," Edison said. He praises results were negative. He also attemptedi with Dr. Reese, and if it had not been Christianity as the wisest and most to confirm telepathy by experiments for my many years of experience as an beautiful of world religions, seeing it as with electric coils around die heads of expert, I might have been mystified by evolving toward a faith with less empha- human receivers and transmitters. Eboni his adroit manipulations and uncanny sis on doctrines and more on the moral quotes from Edison's diary: "Four deductions." code of Jesus. Theologians should stop among us first stayed in different rooms;,, Edison was the most famous person debating creeds, Edison emphasized, joined by the electric system. to be totally bamboozled by Reese.