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 Bangs Sisters  

Chicago, Illinois. USA

It is August, the year is 1911. A large audience has filled to capacity the auditorium at the world famous Chesterfield Spiritualist Camp in the State of Indiana, America. They have come to witness a demonstration of psychic power, one of the most unique and marvelous in the entire world. A select committee has arranged beforehand that upon entering the building, all have been given a numbered ticket, the stub of which is torn off and put into a large vat to be thoroughly mixed up; later on, one stub will be randomly drawn from the collection. Now, after a close examination by the committee to see that there are no markings or paint of any kind, or signs of chemical treatment, a large plain canvas is placed on an easel in the centre of the stage. The Spirit Mediums who will demonstrate the phenomena now enter the auditorium, they are sisters and appear to be about 35 to 40 years of age. Both take their seats on the rostrum, one situated on each side of the easel and clearly four to five feet from it; they will never touch the canvas throughout the entire demonstration. In other words Direct Spirit Paintings.


A member of the committee now reaches in and selects from the vat one ticket stub and reads the number aloud to the audience; it belongs to a Mrs. Alice Alford. Mrs. Alford and her husband are now invited to come up and take a seat on the stage; they will be sitting for a portrait but in this particular instance the painting will not be of the Alford’s; the artist and the subject of this session are from another dimension; the World of Spirits. When all is ready, the Mediums slowly bow their heads and close their eyes as if in prayer and deep concentration; the silence in the auditorium for five straight minutes is so absolute that the air itself seems to stand still. Suddenly, many in the audience lead forward in their chairs, sitting rigidly, their eyes tense and fixed on the canvas, from which a thin, vapour-like cloud, or shadow it seems, sweeps across it, pulsates, and then flickers out. After a few more tense moments, shades of definite colour begin to appear, as if successive layers of fine dust have been thrown, or precipitated on to the canvas to form a cloudy background and this also seems to pulsate and flicker and then quickly disappear. On and on it goes for several minutes; the other-worldly artist it seems, is making preliminary sketches, and trying out different colour schemes. Suddenly, all at once, the background slowly and steadily now precipitates into view; clearer and clearer it comes, only this time with it there is an astounding addition; three pairs of eyes have suddenly appeared on different parts of the canvas; two pairs of which are open and the last, situated directly in the centre of the canvas, are closed. The two open pairs immediately disappear and the closed eyes remain only to also instantaneously disappear; the audience gasps in astonishment. With each successive phase of the unfolding phenomena, the background becomes clearer and clearer and now, a faint outline of a face and bust slowly precipitates itself into view, disappearing and reappearing several times before remaining in focus on the canvas. It is the unmistakable likeness of a young girl, perhaps 14 to 15 years old: many in the audience are now standing, some pointing in wonderment. Gradually, the appearance becomes more clearer and more distinguishable; she is transcendently beautiful and her hair, clearly auburn brown, falls luxuriously to her bare shoulders, revealed by the white dress she is wearing having been pulled down. Around her neck she is wearing a black onyx teardrop necklace, and pink roses surround the top of her dress as embroidery. Her eyes are closed.


With the portrait now having been completely precipitated on to the canvas, to the utter and absolute astonishment of all, the eyes suddenly open, and the audience thunders in applause. To the front of the stage now steps the Alford’s, clearly shaken by the experience, and Mr. Alford announces to the gathering that the portrait is an exact likeness of their deceased daughter, Audrey. The Alford’s, as it turns out, are a prominent family of Marion, Indiana, are not Spiritualists in belief, and this was their first visit to Camp Chesterfield. Mrs. Alford wore around her neck, hid from sight, a locket containing a photograph of her daughter almost duplicate in likeness of the Spirit picture obtained, but different in poise and position. The Mediums had not seen the locket picture or any photo of the child, nor had they ever made the acquaintance of the Alford’s. The finished Spirit portrait was precipitated on to the canvas in twenty-two minutes. The Spirit Mediums of this extraordinary event, The Bang Sisters.

Within the vast and marvelous records of American physical mediumship, one of the most outstanding chapters belongs indeed, to the turn of the century Mediums, the Misses Elizabeth S and May E Bangs, of Chicago, Illinois. Their gifts included above board, independent writing in broad daylight (mostly slates), and independent drawing and painting; all forms of fully developed clairvoyance, materialisations, and direct voices, but their most wondrous and spectacular phenomena was that of precipitated Spirit portraits in full colour. In researching these Mediums, three things initially and not surprisingly, stand out. First, like the majority of the most powerful and famous Physical Mediums from this country, many of whom were the highest ranking in Spiritualism, they too lived and developed their many gifts within the Great Lakes region of the North-eastern United States (see The Spirit Zone Newsletter, Aug 1994), a mystery zone of electrical energy in this section of the country said by the Spirits themselves to be perfect for the manifestation of physical phenomena due to the great bodies of water and the dry, crisp atmosphere; the Bangs sisters' hometown of Chicago, Illinois is situated right on Lake Michigan, secondly that they were in fact, siblings, giving us yet another outstanding example of a genetically connected powerhouse of mediumistic force. *Other examples of this type of 'industrial strength' mediumship which comes to mind is of course the Fox sisters, the brothers Davenport, the Misses Moore, the Eddy brothers and family, the Berry sisters, the Jonathan Koons family, the Misses Dunsmore and the list goes on, and thirdly, in the case of May and Lizzie Bangs, there is not one single definitive and complete book as far as I know, in existence about these sister mediums and I find this to be absolutely unbelievable considering the nature of their phenomena and the vast amount of years put in for the cause of Spiritualism and physical mediumship by these wonder workers.

Research material that I found had to be collected piece by piece and page by page over a long period of time. This in itself is very good research practice as it involves extreme patience like everything connected with physical mediumship does. I have had to work very, very hard for every bit of research material I have ever uncovered, some has involved years; make no mistake though, it is always a labour of love and I attribute all I know of this wonderful subject to perseverance and persistence; a continuing unfolding process, the education which automatically comes when one is patient while following the trails of truth.
With most of our most famous Physical Mediums there is nothing recorded of their early, childhood lives; the very beginnings of their visions, sights and sounds, an area I find to be one of the most blessed and wonderful, in many cases, has simply been lost to the ages. With the Bangs Sisters I was fortunate to find one source containing information on their early days.

'Transcendence In Oil (The Bangs Sisters)', The National Spiritualist, July 1, 1940. Who were these miracle-working women? Born of a typical American family named Bangs, they were reared in average American surroundings. These sisters, Lizzie and May, were scarcely past toddling age when they began astonishing the neighbourhood with phenomena of a very unusual sort. Pieces of coal falling seemingly from the ceiling to the floor of their home - coal that bore no similarity whatsoever to any ever seen in the surrounding country - was one of the first visible instances of the girls' strange power. By their fourth of fifth year’s Spirit Rapping’s, voices from the world beyond, and the moving of heavy pieces of furniture by invisible forces were within their grasp. Strange, indeed, for girls scarcely past babyhood, and certainly beyond comprehension of childish minds. They must have suffered more than their share of qualms at their difference from girls of the same age. Physical manifestations, such as materialisations of hands, automatic writing, independent slate writing, full-form etherialisation, clairvoyance and clairaudience were by now almost daily occurrences. Within the next few years an even more remarkable ability was demonstrated by the sisters. Something no Medium had ever achieved before - Spirit communication by typewriter. Later, when word of the Spirit Paintings got out, Lizzie and May Bangs were now famous indeed. This new power baffled the keenest intellects. The portraits reproduced were work of high order as well as excellent likenesses. The conditions under which the paintings were made precluded all possibility of deception. When one considers that an artist would require at least five hours to produce even a poor portrait, the fact that the Bangs portraits only required from twenty minutes to three hours becomes more astounding. (Less and less time was required as the mediumship developed - NRH)


The story of the paintings and the history of the Bangs girls were headlined in papers and magazines throughout the country. Fakirs and magicians tried to imitate the performance. They came, were unmasked, and passed in steady procession. Sceptics reversed their opinions and wrote favourable notices. Meanwhile the sisters carried on quietly and serenely, unmoved by the storm raging around them. Such headlines as: 'The Facts of Immortality Verified' left them unmoved. They had a job to do and they did it. Caring nothing for the pomp’s and vanities of this world, they wasted no precious time on shams. They lived comfortably but simply. Their lives were dedicated to helping others: the needy, the sick in body and soul. With only a strand of hair, or perhaps a message locked tight between slates - mute pleas of supplication from aching hearts - to help them, the sisters were able to bring what had seemed forever gone into the light of day. Countless were the thousands who received comfort and happiness in this way. Many famous men and women who travelled to their doors to criticise, left singing hymns of praise.

The Bangs Sisters, according to themselves, and from what I have gathered were mediums from the time they were born: the phenomena revealed itself throughout their entire childhood and, thanks to the sympathetic and understanding nature (obviously) of their parents, friends and the Spiritualists, they were not 'burned at the stake' and their glorious gifts were able to be fully developed and thousands were helped because of it.

There would be no exaggeration in saying that Elizabeth and May Bangs were two of the finest mediums in the world for independent writing, done above-board and in full light. Slates were used and served, more or less, as a tiny 'cabinet' for the spirit operators. Rarely was both of the sisters needed for this phenomena unless extra power was required. Sitters would usually bring their own slates and blank sheets of paper; these would be put into an envelope or simply folded and put between the slates and in ways inscrutable to mortal man - as is all spiritual phenomena until he enters the world of Spirit himself - words would be precipitated on to the blank pages of paper, usually in ink, a small bottle of which would usually be placed on the table near the slates.

Without a moment more of hesitation, let us now move to the files my friends and examine some of the outstanding moments of the Bangs and their independent writing. Included also is a brief 'spirit telegraph' experience in the first excerpt. From 'Neither Dead Nor Sleeping' by May Wright Sewall, 1921, comes the following testimony which I have taken up after the authors arrival in Chicago: 'The second day after my arrival I separated myself from my friend, and presenting the letter of introduction furnished by Mr. G arranged for a professional interview with its recipient at four thirty pm the next day. When the hour arrived rain was falling heavily and the wind was violent. Miss Bangs (May) said that the conditions were unfavourable. To my inquiry how the storm could affect the conditions, her reply was that she did not know how, but that as a fact 'the electrical conditions of the atmosphere do modify the vibrations, and they say everything depends on vibrations'. In assertions of fact, Miss Bangs was as positive as other psychics I had questioned, apparently vaguer in explanation, and even more ignorant of the causes of phenomena. She said she had always from her childhood 'been accompanied by phenomena, 'but that of its causes she knew nothing; had never thought about cause; it did not interest her. I gained no new knowledge of principles, but I added two new facts to my accumulation of material for reflection. For the first time I received independent writing on paper, and also carried on a long coherent, satisfactory conversation by means of a private telegraphic code. As this was my first experience of them I shall describe both processes.

Miss Bangs and myself sat on opposite sides of a small table which with our two chairs, a carpet, a few framed photographs on the wall, and a few trifles on the mantel above a small fireplace, constituted the sole furniture of a small back parlour. I think its dimensions were not more than eight by ten. On top of the table were two slates and a bottle of ink. As the process mentioned last was the first employed I describe it first. I propounded questions to my husband exactly as if he had been present in the flesh, and his replies were made as if by telegraph; the tick, tick coming to the ear exactly as if clicked on the machine at the telegraphic office, was read by Miss Bangs as an arriving telegram would be read by a telegraph operator. The answers and comments, like my questions, pertained to subjects, persons, places and events which in the nature of things, must have been utterly unknown to the operator; but there was not an instant's hesitation nor was there an irrelevant word; and, as events proved, where the conduct of persons in relation to matters not yet matured was involved there was not one mistaken opinion uttered. My husband told me that he had never before used this method of communication: I next wrote a letter containing numerous questions, folded it with several sheets of blank paper and sealed it in an envelope addressed to my husband; Having washed off two slates, I placed the sealed letter between them, tied them fast with my own handkerchief, and held them firmly in my hands. Miss Bangs then dropped some ordinary black ink on a small bit of ordinary blotting paper, and placed it on the upper surface of the top slate, I holding the slates firmly all the time, and I alone touching them. In a few minutes Miss Bangs said that my letter was answered. I thereupon untied the slates and on opening the envelope I found that the paper which I had put in blank was covered with clear script in black ink in a writing resembling but not duplicating that of my husband. There were six pages, which when read proved to be an orderly, coherent, categorical reply to my letter. The answers were numbered to correspond with numbered questions. I was too astonished to have any wish but to withdraw to reread this novel communication'.

From Glimpses of the Next State, one of the great classics of Spiritualism and physical mediumship, by Admiral W Usborne Moore, comes the following letter he received from a gentleman of considerable influence and position in Canada. It was dated October 19, 1908, and its contents influenced Admiral Moore to go to America and investigate the Bangs Sisters. I quote the letter in its entirety: 'Our next experience was at Chicago, with the Bangs Sisters, of whom we had heard both good and evil reports. We were, in consequence, specially alert. I will leave you to judge of what we obtained there. We were told by friends who had visited them to write our questions before going to the house, and place them, with a number of blank sheets of stamped or initialed paper, inside an envelope gummed and sealed. This we did, using paper from a Toledo hotel that was decorated with a gilt monogram. We reached Chicago early on the following morning. At nine o'clock we had found the Bangs' residence, and secured an immediate seance, before the arrival of their numerous clients. We sat with Miss May Bangs. To this day she is ignorant of our names or where we came from; nor had she any inkling of our visit or its purpose. We accompanied her, each in turn, into a comfortable little boudoir on the sunny side of the house, looking out on a bit of lawn; the only window remained open. In the centre of the room was a table, four feet square, covered with a woolen cloth. The Medium sat opposite to me, about a foot or more from the table; the only object on the table was an open inkstand. I said I had brought with me some questions in a sealed envelope, and hoped to obtain replies through her mediumship. She said, "We will try". She then fetched a pair of hinged slates, the frames of which were covered with dark cloth, gave them to me, and resumed her seat, saying: 'Place your letter between the slates, close them, and secure them with these stout rubber bands; lay the slates on the table, in front of you, and place both hands flat on top of them'.

The Medium's instructions having been carried out, we engaged in general conversation. Three times she interrupted the talk to ask: "Is the name or place correctly spelt?" (Foreign names mentioned in my questions), showing that some knowledge of what I had written was reaching her. If I assented, or made a slight correction, she would write on a pad resting on her knee; then resumed our conversation where it had dropped. About half-an-hour was thus spent, when three distinct raps were heard and felt by me, proceeding, apparently, from the centre of the table. Miss Bangs then said: "The seance is over; you have obtained what you are to get; you may open your envelope now or later". I opened the hinged slates, found the envelope as I had placed it, untouched and still sealed, thanked the lady, and left the room, when my brother passed in for his turn. While waiting for my brother, in the adjoining room, I slit open the end of my envelope with my penknife, and found, besides my questions, nine and a half pages of the blank paper covered with writing in ink, as if with a steel pen, duly numbered, and written at the instance of the spirit friend to whom I had addressed four out of five questions, and signed in full. The replies were categorical, giving or confirming information of great value to me personally; referring to facts and happenings of forty years ago, which the Spirit and I alone were aware of; and adding the names of individuals whom I had not named in my questions, but whom we both knew in the past, and who had participated in the events referred to by me. The reply to the fifth and last question was in the form of greetings from spirit friends who were known to me when they were in earth life, and now come to me as so-called 'guides'.

When one writes rapidly a blotter is necessary at the turnover to a new page; this, apparently, was not required by the spirit writer, for the ink is the same depth of black at the foot as at the top of the pages. The handwriting of the last message (and each signature at the bottom of it) differs from that which contained replies to my first four questions. It is not claimed that this writing is done by Spirit Friends themselves, but, at their dictation, by the Medium's control, who has become expert in this form of manifestation. Can telepathy account for these replies? Can it explain the transfer of the ink from the bottle on the table to the folded blank pages within the sealed envelope between the slates under my hands? It would take a very fast writer at least an hour and a quarter to write what the spirit performed in half-an-hour, and this is leaving out of consideration the deliberation required for penning the involved replies to my questions. I regret that they are of such a personal nature that I cannot even send you the extracts. My brother's replies covered about thirteen pages; among them were three signed notes from three different Spirit Friends who had come to him in my house here, or at Detroit, and at the Jonsons' in Toledo'. (Direct-Voice with Mrs Etta Wriedt in Detroit, and Materialisation séances with Mr. and Mrs. Ben Jonson, Orchard St, Toledo, Ohio).

Report by Admiral W. Usborne Moore:

'10 to 12 (noon). 19 January 1909. Atmospheric conditions good. I took to the Bangs Sisters a letter containing two sheets (four pages) of questions. In the envelope I put in four blank sheets of hotel paper marked with a private mark. The envelope which contained these six sheets was gummed and sealed with my signet-ring. I had written twenty-three questions to my guide. I was received by May Bangs in the same small room, and, as before, the room was flooded with light. I put the letter between her two slates, which are covered with wool at the edges to exclude the faintest ray of light. She took hold of the double slate ends with one hand while I put four rubber bands round the slates, as I had done two days previously. The slates were then put on the table, the same little vessel of ink was placed on top, and over all, was placed Bristol-board. From this moment May Bangs had nothing to do with the slates; they were in my own possession under my hands. The psychic and I sat opposite to one another, she leaning back in her chair, writing on a pad of paper. After we had been sitting, talking for a quarter of an hour, May Bangs began telling me what my questions were, and answering some of them. Presently she said: "Tear off the corner of one your visiting cards, so that you can identify it again; put it on the slates, and we will see what happens to it". About fifteen minutes later she said: "Why do you write to your relative in such a formal style? Write a postscript on a piece of paper, naming your wife in the same familiar way as you would if writing to this spirit in life". This I did without her seeing what I had written, and put the piece of paper, doubled up, also on the slates. She then went on as before, repeating my questions within the sealed envelope. At 11.10 the psychic said: "Your card has gone into the letter". When an hour and three-quarters had elapsed from the time we began the sitting, three knocks on the table announced that the writing was finished. I now opened the slates. Inside I found my packet intact, with seal untouched. On the outside of the envelope was written: 'The little slip [my postscript] has been arranged to your hat in the other room'. This was signed by an initial (-) the Christian name of my guide. I slit open the envelope at the top, and found inside it (a) my questions, contained in four pages; (b) eight pages of reply from the spirit, in ink, as if written with a steel pen; (c) my visiting card. I then went into the drawing room, where I had left my hat, found that it had been moved, and that inside the lining was my postscript. Before I left, May Bangs read out to me the questions in my letter, which she had written on her pad as she saw them in the astral light. They were all correct in sense, though not in actual phrasing; and the curious thing was that she read them out in precisely the proper consecutive order - (1), (2) up to (23). With some reluctance, she later eventually surrendered the pages of the pad to me; it is one of the most curious documents in my possession. (One that I would trade my car for to have in my personal archives. - NRH).


Testing The Ink. Sir William Crookes and Lithium Citrate:

To test whether the ink brought to the sittings by W Usborne Moore with the Bangs Sisters was the same ink that was precipitated on to the blank pages by the spirits, Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), one of the greatest physicists of that century, suggested to Moore that he add the chemical lithium citrate to his ink beforehand, go through with two or three sittings with May Bangs for independent writing, and then send to him the pages containing the spirit writing; Crookes could then, under spectrum analysis, prove whether or not this was the ink used by the spirit writers. Under these exact conditions of control; the sitter bringing blank pages of paper sealed into an envelope, the envelope tightly secured by him between two slates, the ink pot, filled with his own ink, placed on top of the slates, and the medium, for the duration of the sitting, not even touching the slates or the table, there is no human being on the face of this earth who could accomplish the feat of having replies, let alone ones of a personal nature, precipitated through the envelope and on to the blank pages without the aid of the Spirit World.


By later spectrum analysis, lithium citrate was discovered in the ink used by the Spirits. This conclusively proved that in some extraordinary and mysterious way, Moore's own ink was used to write the messages in the sealed envelope between his own slates. Moore had also laid his visiting card on top of the slates and tore off one corner for identification; he also had written a postscript to his questions on a separate piece of paper and placed it alongside the visiting card. The former found its way into the envelope, while the latter, in accordance with a message on the outside of the envelope, was discovered in the other room in Admiral Moore's hat. I will leave it up to the readers to decide what they believe. This is testimony based on the observations of Admiral W Usborne Moore, who was a distinguished Naval Officer for Great Britain, in command of warships specially fitted out for scientific research, and Sir William Crookes, one of the most famous physicists of that age. (We will be hearing more from Usborne Moore in this article - NRH).


The gift of precipitated Spirit portraits by the Bangs Sisters did not begin until the autumn of 1894. During the early periods of their development, it was necessary to curtain the canvas, or place it in a dark chamber, and several sittings were required to complete the picture. As the gift developed, Elizabeth and May were able to demonstrate the phenomena in full light’ Initially, the portraits were produced as follows: two identical paper mounted canvases in wooden frames were placed together, face to face, and then leaned up against a window with the lower half resting upon a table. Each sister would sit on one side of the table and pinch the canvases together with one hand. The window curtains would be drawn up close to the frames on either side and an opaque blind drawn over the canvases. This procedure was arranged so that the only light coming into the room itself was through the canvases, which were translucent. The sitter(s), in most cases, would sit right at the end of the table, directly facing the canvases, and by doing so, watch the entire process unfold right before their very eyes. After a quarter of an hour the outline of shadows would begin to appear and disappear, the artist usually making his preliminary sketches, and then, at a rapid pace the portrait would come into full view. When the frames were separated, the spirit portrait would be found on the surface of one of the canvases, usually the one closest to the sitter. In the earlier days, though the paint was greasy to the touch, it left no stain whatsoever on the other paper which covered closely the other canvas. Later on, the portraits were precipitated as if by an airbrush, and only one canvas was needed; some took as little as five minutes to complete, and some were precipitated in full sunlight right on the front porch of the Bangs Sisters' house.


Art experts have examined the portraits and they cannot explain the media used by the spirit artists; the pictures are not charcoal, oils, crayon, pastels, ink, water colours, or any other known substance. The material has been compared to the fine dust on a butterfly's wings. Admiral Moore, in Glimpses of The Next State said about the material, 'The stuff of which the picture is composed is damp, and rubs off at the slightest touch, like soot, it comes off on the finger, a smutty, oily substance'.


Miss May Bangs wrote in a letter to Mr. James Coates, 17 September, 1910:

'The room is shaded sufficiently to cause all the light from the window to pass through the canvas, thus enabling the sitter to witness the development and detect the least change in the shadows. No two sittings are exactly alike. Usually in the development of a portrait the outer edges of the canvas becomes shadowed, showing different delicately coloured lines, until the full outline of the head and shoulders is seen. When the likeness is sufficiently distinct to be recognised, the hair, drapery and other decorations appear. In many cases, after the entire portrait is finished, the eyes gradually open, giving a life-like appearance to the whole face'. People who sat with the Bangs for portraits were requested to bring a photograph of the departed if one existed, but were never requested to produce it. The spirit portraits were not copies of the concealed photograph. When completed, the subject would have a different facial expression, clothes, or even the age of the person would be slightly altered; the colour tones of the face always rich, deep and lifelike. Many of the portraits changed when taken home. The hair on some would be altered or changed to look as it had when the subject was on the earth. Blouses and dresses for instance, would change to seem more familiar, and in several wondrous cases, the eyes would open and then close.


Mr. John W Payne, Director of The Citizens Bank in New Castle, Indiana, speaking in September, 1905, of the portrait he obtained of his father who had died 14 years previously: 'It was made in the daytime in an ordinary room that was not darkened. The frame containing the canvas set on a stand before the window. Mrs. Charles Payne and Mrs. John Weesner, who do not believe in Spiritualism, were with me, and we sat within five feet of the picture. The two Bangs Sisters, the mediums through whom the likeness was produced, sat on either side of the table and supported the frame, each with one hand. No brushes, paint, crayon, or other substance of any kind was used as far as we could tell, and it was light enough to have seen a pin on the table. The sisters had never seen or heard of my father, nor a photograph or likeness of him. All they asked was that I fix his features in my mind. The picture was not made in spots or a little at a time. At first it was a faint shadow, then a wave appeared to sweep across the canvas, and the likeness became plainer. It was a good deal like a sunrise D got brighter until it was perfectly plain and every feature visible. Until the picture was completed, the eyes were closed and then they opened all at once, like a person awakening. It did not take more than half an hour and is the best picture of my father we ever had'.


Mrs. Gertrude Breslan Hunt, Economic and Social Lecturer from Norwood Park, Illinois, said in 1909: 'I did not remove my eyes from the canvas, and would stake everything I possess that no hand touched the canvas after I placed it in the bright light of the window, until the picture was finished. The background appeared first then in a few moments the whole face appeared, with the colours of life. I criticised the pose, and asked for a full face view. The whole face faded out and was rapidly sketched again; I remarked that the hair was too light, and there, where I sat, I saw the shadows creep into the waves of hair and it darkened. I asked that more colour be put into the cheeks and the canvas blushed to the tint it now bears; the sleeves of the robe were corrected also, and in a few hours the picture was completed, and a competent artist has stated that he could not finish such a picture in less than three days, working eight hours each'.

Dr Daughtery who attended the Science Church of Spiritualism in Richmond, Indiana in the early 1920s, sat for a portrait of his deceased wife, Lizzie, and she then precipitated on to the canvas. He then asked the spirit operators why the twins, Mary and Christina, their little daughters in spirit, could not come, and they then appeared on to the canvas in front of their mother. Dr Daughtery himself, then appeared on to the canvas standing behind them all. A family group portrait; he, in earth-life, his wife and daughters in Spirit.


A few of the testimonies given regarding the Bang Sisters:

Edward G Pierce, a Chicago Business Man, said of the Bang Sisters' mediumship: 'In less than half-an-hour I recognised the picture of my nephew, in life-like colours. There was no picture of the child present. The only picture ever taken of him was about three years before he passed away, and this was in possession of his folks, ten miles from the psychic’s home. His mother readily recognised the Spirit-picture as a true likeness of her boy as he appeared just before he passed out. It proves to us that our boy still lives and is with us the same as when in earthly form'.


Lyman C Howe, the noted American writer and lecturer said of his experience: 'There were two photographs of Maude enclosed in a sealed envelope and placed against the lower backside of the canvas. These had not been opened or in any way exposed to view until the sitting was closed. The sisters had never seen her, and so far as I know and believe, they had never seen her photo. The picture is unlike either photo, and is more perfect and life-like than any photograph she ever had. I mentally asked her to have a yellow rose in her hair, and to write her name "Maude" on the lower margin, and when the picture came out, the rose appeared in the hair, and "Maude" is written on the lower margin, as I mentally requested. I did not tell anyone of the request until the picture was finished. It is the most beautiful and satisfactory phenomenon I ever witnessed'.


A letter to the Bangs Sisters from Syracuse, New York, dated 21 May, 1910, said concerning the arrival of their Spirit portrait by mail: 'Our Dear Friends: For such we must call you. The painting arrived safely, and to say that we are both well pleased with it does not half express our sentiment. Our little darling (their child, who had passed away two years previous to the portrait - NRH), looks just as though he was ready to step down and out of the frame, he is so natural. We fully realise no earthly artist could possibly produce such wonderful work. One cannot see where the picture is started or finished, so perfect is the blending of colours. We notice the appearance of a certain little ring on the third finger of his left hand, the partial request of his mamma's. This marvelous work has been a great revelation to us; one year ago we would hardly have thought this manifestation possible, and we feel very grateful to you for your efforts in securing for us such a wonderfully satisfactory likeness. May you have grand success in all the coming years of your life, that we trust the Over-Ruling Intelligence may prolong to a ripe old age, that others may have similar blessings that we are in possession of through your instrumentality. Very Sincerely Your Friends, Mr. and Mrs. Milford Badgero. (The Spirit portrait done for the Badgeros' was precipitated as a result of their mental request only; there was no photograph).


A letter from Dr Carpenter, Olin, Iowa, dated Saturday, June 20, 1896, to The Light of Truth.BR> 'On April 25, 1896, I wrote a letter to the Bang Sisters, of No 3 South Elizabeth Street, Chicago, Ill, to have them ask their guide, Capt W Stevens, to ascertain through my wife in spirit life if she could and would give me her picture. On the morning of May 9th I received an answer saying if I would go there the week of May 10th, she would do so. Accordingly, on the 12th I went to the above named mediums in Chicago, Ill. The 13th I spent in having canvas prepared and had a box made 24/30 inches in which I put the prepared canvas. Not, however, before I carefully examined and marked same so I could fully identify it. I then nailed it securely shut. The box was then placed under a table leaning against the wall in which position it remained, the medium sitting at one end of the table and myself at the other. After sitting from 10 minutes past 10 o'clock am until 10 minutes past one pm the medium held the slate under the table and received this message, "we have exhausted your patience, open the box". We accordingly opened the box and to my great surprise and joy beheld a complete life sized picture of my wife and child in the spirit world. The picture is so natural and life-like that many of my neighbours and friends fully recognise it although they have been in spirit life for 33 years'.


Seance Report by Admiral W Usborne Moore.

'On Monday, March 1, 1909, I went to the Bangs Sisters' house, and found that they had sent to the town for two panel canvases, and there was considerable delay. At last they arrived, covered with paper that was wet, and I exposed them in the sun for about twenty-five minutes to dry. We sat for the full length-picture of Iola at 11.40. At 11.46 the figure appeared on the further side of the canvas next to me. It was roughly finished by 11.51, and placed on a chair at the side of the room, still developing. At 12.10 we were told to cover it and leave it, and return a 3pm. The mediums were not disengaged till 3.30, when we sat opposite the picture again for twenty minutes. Some changes had occurred in the interval, improving the picture much. When I left at 12.10 I had expressed the opinion that the figure - then with bare arms - was too girlish, and I had also wished for a locket and chain to be put on the neck. I left a locket, similar to the one worn by Iola in earth life, close to the picture. On my return the arms were covered with sleeves, and the chain and locket were around the neck; the dress also had been finished with embroidery, etc., and other improvements had taken place. At 7.30pm I returned to the house, and found the picture had undergone further improvements, especially in the sky and background. I mentally desired that the locket should be made larger, and that the monogram should be impressed upon it. No-body was present when I inspected the locket on this occasion; the mediums were not at home; I removed the locket at the foot of the picture, and took it away with me. My next visit was at 10.20 the following morning, March 2, 1909. I then found that the monogram had been imprinted on the locket, not exactly a copy of the raised letters as on the real locket in my possession, but the three correct letters were there; one line was omitted, and the locket itself, as I had requested, was enlarged. Shadows had been added, improving the picture.


'Conjurers, Fraud and The Bangs Sisters', by Admiral W Usborne Moore:

'The efforts of bona-fide conjurers should never be despised by investigators into Spiritualism. If they can pick up a fraudulent medium, so much the better for us. Provided they relate truthfully what they have seen and how they account for it, they cannot possibly do any injury to genuine psychics. Unhappily, they cannot all confine their mystifications to the stage, but carry their legitimate deceptions into private life, where they are not legitimate; and they often weaken their influence by committing themselves at the first start to theories of fraud before they have witnessed the phenomena which are the basis of discussion. In recent times no psychics have been so long and so constantly under fire of criticism as the Bangs Sisters. I record the fact, but entirely without surprise. The manifestations which appear through their mediumship are of such a startling nature as to render it in the highest degree improbable that anyone, however experienced he may be as an investigator, can credit the accounts of what takes place, unless he has actually seen the various phenomena that occur. Many have been the efforts to show that what happens in their presence is the effect of pure conjuring on their own part. All have failed'.


After Admiral Moore had met with Dr Isaac K Funk, the noted author and chief proprietor of Funk and Wagnall’s Publishing, in March, 1909, and had told him about the phenomena taking place in the presence of the Bangs Sisters, Dr Funk paid the expenses of Mr. Hereward Carrington, the clever psychical investigator and conjurer, to go to Chicago, investigate the Bangs, and report to him the phenomena. Dr Funk, who himself had investigated the Bangs, had an extremely high opinion of their genuine mediumship. Carrington, who was unaware of the fact that Admiral Moore had sat extensively with the Bangs in January and March, 1909, published a scathing, negative report about the Bangs in the Annals of Psychic Science, an English journal of which he was the American agent. The Admiral goes on to say: 'After waiting one year and a quarter after his investigation, Mr Carrington published a long article in the journal (mentioned above), accusing the Bangs Sisters of fraud. I do not know if this article was verbatim the same as his report to Dr Funk, but the latter did not see it till April, 1911, and disapproved of its publication. As it was published in an English journal, the Bangs Sisters knew nothing of this scurrilous production; I was the first to inform them of it, in January, 1911'.


The plan of the room layout given by Carrington in his article was so wrong and blatantly false it was as if he was describing another house altogether. When Admiral Moore returned to Chicago in January of 1911, his sole mission was to put to rest the accusations of the conjurers and prove, once again the genuineness of the Bangs Sisters. The following are excerpts of the conversation between the Admiral and the Bangs: Admiral Moore: 'Certain Medium-hunters in this country, and a first rate conjurer in England (who is quite sincere in believing you to be conjurers like himself), have spread reports about you very much to your detriment - one of the Americans I mention (Carrington), has written an article in an English magazine, saying that in June, 1909, you cheated him, quoting extensively from another person'. This is the exact quote Carrington referred to Journal of the SPR, Vol. X: 'The writer', he said 'claims to have seen the tricks by means of a small hand mirror which he held beneath the table. He found that, under cover of the writing pad placed against the edges of the slate resting on the table the slates were wedged open by means of a small rubber wedge, the letter, when abstracted, was dropped on to a sort of 'gridiron' arrangement which lay on the carpet. It was promptly drawn backwards under a slip of the door into the next room where Miss Lizzie Bangs, the other sister, steamed the envelope open, answered all the questions, sealed the envelope back shut, and then conveyed it back into the room. In the meantime in the ink in the cup had time to evaporate so that it appeared to have been used'.


Admiral Moore then said to the Bangs: 'I do not suppose that either of these persons had the courage to send you a copy of their charges. You know me, and are quite aware that I have entered this room having full confidence in the genuineness of what I saw with you in 1909'. Admiral Moore then added that he wanted to test them completely again for a portrait and a letter, but he would 'upset' their usual conditions and direct the proceedings himself. To this, Lizzie Bangs replied: "Mr. Moore, we trust you, and will submit to your wishes; but we warn you that the very knowledge of what the man has said in the English magazine will upset conditions to such an extent that I doubt if you will be successful. The man you mention was never in this house. We know his description, and should sense hostility if anybody came in that way". No arrangements were made for him or anyone else by Dr Funk in 1909, as he describes; nor have we ever sat three times for one person, for a picture, in one day. Do what you like, and tell us what to do'. Admiral Moore stated in his record: 'Imagine the conditions: Table shifted to a part of the room to which it was a stranger; the psychic who functions alone in the phenomena of writing within sealed envelopes at the usual sittings for this purpose (May), placed with her face towards the southern light streaming into the room; both women seething with indignation at cowardly attacks published in England; the suspected door wide open; the door into the hall wide open; and Lizzie, the person who, it is alleged, hides behind the suspected door and writes replies, in the room'. Lizzie Bangs said: (condensed) 'You have no idea how this sudden and complete upset of our usual conditions affects us. We have no objection to a gradual altering of our accustomed habits, but to come suddenly upon us and change all our conditions in one day is more than any sensitive can stand - the strain is too great. If you had not told me of these slanders, I assure you we would never have consented to your demands. We will never do it again for anyone'.

Admiral Moore tested the Bangs for a grueling five days, January 28th to February 1st, 1911, and the ordeal, according to Moore 'left both sisters much exhausted'. May Bangs could hardly walk, and Lizzie, though calm, had evidently reached the limits of endurance. After his series of tests, which were a complete and total success for a precipitated portrait and independent writing - the researching aspect of which even left me totally exhausted - the Bangs Sisters triumphed, and Admiral Moore proved his case again. He conclusively stated:' Either the author of that article has never been inside the Bangs' house, or he is incapable of making ordinary observations with accuracy. The attack on these psychics, without sending them a copy, and in an English magazine which he knew they would not see, is an act that requires no comment from me'.


Carrington had also claimed that David P Abbott had succeeded in duplicating the Bangs Sisters portraits by trickery exactly. The Admiral replied that he made a number of tests, and that he read carefully the expose by Dr Krebs, which was furnished to him by Dr Hodgson, that he knew the method employed by Abbott, Marriott and Dr Wilmar, that it surpassed in skill almost every conjuring trick he had ever witnessed, but that their conditions were as different from those at the séances of the Bangs Sisters as 'a locomotive is different from a teapot'. It was the conjuring performance of these clowns as a matter of fact which convinced him even more of the genuineness of the Bangs Sisters.


Examining the Portraits of the Bangs Sisters: Lily Dale, New York, May and September, 1996.

Luckily for me, I live right in the middle of this 'Spirit Zone' I have referred to in my research, for it affords me many opportunities to unearth many facts concerning the awesome physical mediums from this geographical area who have blessed our movement. Where raw physical power is concerned, especially in these dual power-sibling situations, the Davenport Brothers will always be, to me, unequalled in this regard - no fastenings or pinioning ever devised in the entire history of their mediumistic lives in which the spirits could not relieve them from, usually in seconds; the more perilous and demanding the situation even life threatening at times, the more their power would increase, their guides more aggressive. But the Bangs Sisters, Lizzie and May, and their stupendous precipitated Spirit portraits; objective physical phenomena which can be seen, felt, and absorbed by all of the senses in this modern day still; the story of their lives and their extraordinary manifestations including words written in ink, precipitated right through the slates and sealed envelopes and on to folded blank pages: this, to me, is almost as glorious as it gets.


To see and closely examine the actual spirit portraits of the Bang Sisters, for me, was a form of enlightenment. Although almost a century old, the portraits are as fresh looking as the dew glistening in the sun on the rose petals in my yard this morning. The wooden frames that hold the portraits have aged but the paintings have not. Some of the pictures, especially that of William Mervin and the young girl, Pat Murphy, look as though they are about to speak; another, that of a young woman, seemed to change her very expression and the direction she was looking when I was there. The portraits seem more like windows, the spirit looking through from the outside. The beautiful portrait of Pat Murphy, with her long golden curls, represents the earlier period of the spirit portraits; brush strokes, or whatever they are, can be seen on the canvas. There is no glass on this portrait and I was given permission to touch it with my finger. It looks as though someone simply stood in front of the canvas and painted the figure with paint and brushes an invisible artist and his subject. The rest of the paintings I examined were all of the later periods, representing the actual precipitation phenomena by the Bangs. These magnificent pieces of spirit art were precipitated in full light right in front of the sitters' eyes and, in most cases, under test conditions. They are so different, wondrous and unlike anything I have ever seen that it is hard to actually put it into words. The colouring and fleshy tones of the faces, where one texture ends and one begins, not a brush stroke is to be seen; the entire portrait looks as though, like a cloud of smoke, or dust, simply drifted into the room and situated itself, or landed itself, bit by bit, on to the canvas. Although the figures appear life-like, and almost moving, there is, without question, a transcendent countenance on their faces which gives the impression that the observer is indeed in the presence of something not of this world. The blues, reds, whites, gold’s and flesh tones are nothing like the hues with which we are familiar. The fine dust of the butterfly's wings is a perfect description of the other worldly material on the canvas. Is it not one of the most wonderful things that we could ever have the opportunity to see and understand, that spirits, in their mysterious and glorious ways use the pigment and scent of flowers, sounds and musical notes, vibrations on every level, minerals of every kind, textures, hues - on and on it goes with their non-stop relationship with Nature, even perhaps, the dusty wings of the silent harbinger of peace itself' the butterfly' how utterly wonderful.


Although I am trying to describe the indescribable, what I can say of them is absolutely unlike any of the others; no two are alike. The facial colours are different, even with the two Indian’s faces, one being more of a copper colour and one being olive coloured and lighter. Hair, clothes, background, everything is different on each portrait. The portrait of Leolyn Pettingill is a bust and face portrait only, she is shrouded in a mist with a white rose in her hair, the light golden colour of which is impossible to describe. The Indian, Smart Weed, is an almost full length portrait, more than five feet high; she appears to be standing in a grove in front of marble steps; a heavenly mist slightly shrouds the background of trees and wild roses which are everywhere. The figure is so life-like that she looks as though she is about to actually step out of the frame. Her gorgeous jet black hair is pulled forward in two ponytails, braided in the middle of each and almost waist length. She has a gold band around her head and bracelets on each wrist of the same; there are numerous strands of pearls around her neck and in her left hand she holds a bunch of light pink roses. The unnamed portrait is the young woman who seemed to change her expression and the direction in which she was looking. Her eyes, that of an indescribable realm of stunning blue only add to the penetrating gaze of hers which seems to look right through you. Her bright golden hair is pulled up into a bun on top and there appears to be one gold earring on her right ear; the dress of pure white she wears is bowed at the shoulders and a thin necklace of gold graces her bare neck. In ways that can hardly be described, I felt that his young woman was watching me; following me with her gaze the entire time I was there. The feeling I had was one of irritation on her part for she was the only one without a name and as this was, on my part, a mission of love and honour for the spirits, I have named her Emily, in honour of Emily French, the Direct Voice medium. The younger Indian, Blossom wears a yellow canvas-like gown of some kind with the collar pulled high up to the neck; the skin is more of a fleshy colour, and pink strands of beads or pearls fall about her; her eyes, set deep within her face are piercing brown. William Mervin, mentioned earlier, wears a dark black suit and vest; a pin of some kind is situated on the top section of his tie; he sports a handlebar style moustache. This portrait, to me is the most life-like I have ever seen. The young girl, Pat Murphy, wears a nightgown and adds to the absolutely heavenly countenance of this angel; her brownish-golden hair, in waves and ringlets flowing down; once again, the eyes, the ever present eyes of these magnificent works of art looking through you from the other life in which they dwell.


The portrait of Leolyn Pettingill was precipitated, under test conditions in the lounge of the hotel (the hotel was named after her, Leolyn), and the rest were precipitated in the home of the Bangs Sisters on Library Street in Lily Dale. I had the opportunity to examine their house and as you can well imagine, to say it was a thrill is putting it lightly my friends.



Bibliography

Time is Kind, by Mariam B Pond, 1947.

The Heyday of Modern Spiritualism, by Slater Brown, 1970.

The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism, by Leah Fox Underhill
 

Source with minor alterations By N. Riley Heagerty and medium and spirit guides

By Todd Karr

      An excerpt from House of Mystery: The Magic Science of David P. Abbott Edited by Teller and Todd Karr. To order, visit The Miracle Factory

The Bangs Sisters materialize a spirit painting

David P. Abbott’s articles on Spirit mediums in The Open Court magazine in 1905 and 1906 made him into an expert in the minds of many readers, who began writing him for advice, often concerned about relatives being bilked by fraudulent mediums. Several of these correspondents were particularly worried about a Chicago duo known as the Bangs Sisters commanding top dollar for their supposed materializations of portraits of loved ones painted by the spirits. A typical letter, dated January 26, 1907, begged Abbott to lend his expertise and expose these swindling siblings:

My Dear Mr. Abbott:
      I am enclosing a letter from my uncle…You see by the letter he has faith in the Bangs Sisters, Chicago.... They sport autos, numerous diamonds, and are in clover generally; get three dollars per sitting and big prices for pictures and materializations….
      Uncle A.W.F., however, is convinced there is no fraud in the spirit photo which he obtained of his little girl, as he and other members of his family saw the pictures gradually appear on a large canvas (picture is a large wall picture) which was placed in the window. “No possible chance for fraud,” he avers.
      Although Father has been shown conclusively that his own pet mediums are completely fraudulent, he still thinks there are some genuine phenomena and that the Bangs Sisters are OK.
      It would be such a revelation to so many people if you would write up the Bangs Sisters’ methods, giving details. I think they would be readily entrapped. Can you not do this, Mr. Abbott?
      Most sincerely yours,
      B. H. Foreman

      

David P. Abbott, magician and spiritualistic investigator

The sisters who had duped Foreman’s father, Lizzie and May Bangs, had honed their craft over several decades, offering an array of spirit-related services before eventually focusing on their novel, high-paying ghostly portraits.
      Abbott’s moral side wanted to help these victims by exposing the secret of the Bangs’ spirit portraits. But he was probably just as intrigued with uncovering the method for what sounded like an almost perfect magic effect: the miraculous materialization of paintings in full view. Visual effects were rare enough in that age of cones, covers, and curtained cabinets, but a gradual unconcealed appearance was almost unheard of.
      In their usual procedure, the Bangs Sisters began by sealing a photo of the client’s loved one between two slates, then sending the customer away until the next day when conditions would be better. When the victim returned, he climbed to an upstairs room in the sisters’ home and was seated facing a window. The sisters displayed two large canvases stretched onto wooden frames, placed them face to face, and positioned them vertically in front of the window. The bottom edges of the frames sat on a table just beneath the window.
      The sunlight from the window glowed through the white fabric of the canvases. To block any stray light, the Mediums draped curtains on the sides and top of the frames. The sisters then sat at the table on either side of the window, each with a hand on one side of the canvases.
After a dramatic wait of perhaps twenty minutes, the sitter began to see patches of darkness and color gradually materialize between the translucent canvases. The shapes gradually became sharper and more vivid until they formed a fully defined portrait of the sitter’s deceased beloved. The mediums then separated the canvases and displayed the result: an impressive painting the client could hang on his wall...once he had paid the Bangs’ hefty fee, of course.
      The Bangs’ secret was a unique advance in magic. It sounded so astounding that magicians doubted the reports could be accurate. The effect, though, was indeed so magical that — once Abbott had unraveled the technique — inventive genius P. T. Selbit was able to tour Europe and America with just the Spirit Paintings as a stand-alone act, followed by several competing versions presented by various vaudeville performers. Later, Howard Thurston — then America’s top touring magician — arranged with Abbott to secure performance rights for his show.

The Bangs Family
      The Bangs family moved to Chicago in 1861 from Atchison, Kansas (interestingly, also the hometown of another of Abbott’s fascinations, Wonder Girl psychic Gene Dennis). Their father Edward (born in Massachusetts around 1828) was a tinsmith and stove repairman; their mother Meroe was a Medium herself and recruited her young children into the act. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth Snow Bangs — known as Lizzie — was born around 1860. Her sister Mary — later known as May — was born about 1864. They had two brothers, W. B. and Edward.
      By 1872, the children could perform a variety of seance effects, as described in “An Evening with the Bangs Children” by Steven Sanborn Jones in the Religio-Philosophical Journal (August 3, 1872). Messages from the dead appeared on slates; chairs and furniture moved; when the children were tied with ropes and placed in a cabinet, a guitar inside was strummed and hands waved from within. At the conclusion, young May brought forth a “Spirit kitten,” a hairless cat supposedly born in the afterworld.
      The reporter, like countless other trusting believers of Mediums, felt the children could not possibly be part of a swindle:

      It must be remembered that these Mediums are young children. There is not a particle of deception in their nature. Their hearts are free from guile, and in all their actions they exhibit the innocence of their nature. No one would accuse them of deception.

      Not yet, anyhow. Nine years later, on August 23, 1881, the Atchison Little Globe stated that May Bangs and her mother, now reportedly living in Chicago, had been arrested “for doing business without a license.” The pair argued that they were evangelists and that such a charge could not be made against a minister.
      By 1888, the sisters had become prominent Chicago mediums, performing lucrative cabinet séances, still assisted by their mother. The Washington Post (April 17, 1888) reported that “Lizzie and May Bangs, under the firm name of the Bangs Sisters, conduct the leading spiritualistic establishment in Chicago…. Their elegant parlors have been crowded by day as well as by night and money flowed into their coffers in large streams.”
      One of their clients was Henry Jestram, a wealthy Chicago photographer. Shortly after Jestram became a regular attendee at their séances and spent much of his fortune paying vast sums to the sisters, he went insane and was committed to an asylum. Many newspapers blamed the Mediums for Jestram’s death (see the Hornellsville [New York] Weekly Tribune, April 20, 1888).
      In a spectacular arrest on April 2, 1888, two plainclothes detectives attended a Bangs séance and witnessed a series of spirit entities emerging from a cabinet. When a ghostly Russian princess in a regal gown made her appearance, the detectives seized her; she resisted furiously, throwing punches madly. One of the lawmen announced, “I have a warrant for you, May Bangs,” whereupon the princess’ mask fell off, revealing the medium. The sisters and their male attendants put up such a struggle that the policemen finally drew their guns to clear the room.
      The Washington Post reported that “a search revealed a satchel filled with white muslin shrouds and the like, three sets of whiskers of various hues, five wigs, moustaches, and a great variety of make-up material….” The article concluded: “The cabinet, satchel, and the sisters were then loaded into a patrol wagon and taken to the station and locked up.”
      Sadly, shortly after the arrest on charges of obtaining money under false pretenses, Lizzie Bangs’ seven-year-old daughter died. Newspapers reported that during the funeral service, the mother went into a trance and delivered a bizarre speech that blamed the child’s death “on account of the persecution I have received.” By now, newspapers were referring to the pair as “the notorious Bangs Sisters.”
      Editors had a field day with the sisters’ marital dramas. Lizzie was married and divorced once; May married four times. In November 1890, May – already divorced from a first marriage – was granted a divorce from wealthy chemical manufacturer Henry H. Graham. Their brief, drama-filled liaison had begun during an 1887 seance in which Bangs told the newly widowed Graham that his dead wife had contacted her and said he should marry the Medium, adding that his deceased infant had also sent a message: “Dear papa: I would like this lady for my new mamma” (Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1890).
      In 1907, May Bangs again married, this time to Jacob Lesher, a millionaire leather manufacturer. According to the New York Times (July 1, 1915), the medium “proposed to him three times before he was finally won over by the assurance that the Spirit of Lesher’s mother was urging the match and that he himself would become 25 years younger and would never again be ill.”
      Within two years, Lesher was penniless. “Business tips from the Spirit World are blamed for the failure of Jacob H. Lesher, formerly rated a millionaire, and the husband of May Bangs, a ‘Spirit painter,’” the Chicago Daily Tribune reported on July 16, 1909.

Notoriety in Chicago
      In the early 1890s, a Chicago grand jury attempted to indict the Bangs Sisters but failed due to technicalities, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune (March 7, 1890). In 1891, a bill was passed by the Illinois Senate “prohibiting anyone from personating the Spirits of the dead, commonly known as Spirit-medium seances, on penalty of fine and imprisonment” (Chicago Daily Tribune, May 16, 1891). At least one Chicago spiritualist blamed the Bangs Sisters for this new law, saying that although “they were gifted with unearthly powers, their greed for gold had led them to abuse it” (“Spooks Go on a Strike,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1891).
      In 1893, the pair produced spirit typewriting in sittings with G. W. N. Yost, the inventor of a typewriter, bringing forth typed spirit messages pecked out by the spirits of celebrities ranging from Moses to assassinated U.S. President James Garfield. The inventor sought more such messages from another medium, who soon left Yost broke (“A Ruined Man: Inventor Yost the Prey of Mediums,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1895).
      Venturing out of Chicago to Massachusetts, the sisters again made headlines in 1894 by conducting a bizarre wedding in which they married a wealthy woman to the departed spirit of her dead fiance (Fort Wayne Sentinel, September 10, 1894).

The Slate-Writing Exposure
      From 1895 to 1899, the sisters continued to produce slate writing for their Chicago customers and conducted twice-weekly séances on Sundays and Wednesdays at their home, advertising their services in the Chicago Daily Tribune.
      In 1900, an English investigator of psychic phenomena, Reverend Stanley L. Krebs, scheduled a sitting with the sisters, secretly intent on determining the method of their slate writing. His extraordinary exposé, “A Description of Some Trick Methods Used by Miss Bangs of Chicago,” was published in January 1901 in the British Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
      Following their standard procedure, the Bangs Sisters asked Krebs to bring with him a sealed envelope containing a letter he had written to a deceased friend, along with blank paper for a reply. To better detect any deception, Krebs brought a small mirror, which he positioned in his lap once he was seated at the séance table, giving him an excellent view of any trickery occurring below the tabletop.
      Lizzie Bangs sandwiched Krebs’ letter between two slates and tied them with twine. But when she briefly turned her back, Krebs slyly examined the slates and found that the Medium had quietly slid a small wedge between them, opening a slight gap between the slates. Moments later, Bangs turned back and Krebs, thanks to his mirror, saw her pick up the slates and allow his letter to drop into her lap.
      As Bangs attempted to distract Krebs by making wild guesses about his dead friend’s name, he saw her bend down and place the letter onto a sort of small, dark-colored tray on a long handle, which was then drawn backward under the door behind the Medium. Krebs later surmised that May Bangs was on the other side of the door, unsealing his envelope and reading the letter.
      About ten minutes later, Krebs saw a piece of paper being slid back into the room from under the door. Under the pretense of shifting her position in the chair, Lizzie Bangs bent down, picked up the slip, placed it on her lap, and quickly read it. She immediately began reciting names which she said came from the spirit world, though obviously all this information was mentioned in Krebs’ letter and had been jotted down by May.
After several more minutes, he spied his envelope being secretly slid back into the room. The Medium stooped to pick it up and, under cover of more distractions, secretly slipped it back between the slates and removed the wedge. She then allowed Krebs to untie the slates, open his sealed letter, and read the spirit messages on the papers, which of course had been written by the very alive May Bangs.
      Unfortunately, the Chicago media seems to have paid no attention to Krebs’ essay and sitters continued to flock to the Bangs home.
      Krebs concluded his article by mentioning that “…after the whole was over, I arose and thanked Miss Bangs for the most interesting exhibition she had given me, whereupon she kindly offered still more, namely, to take me into her sister’s house and show me the ‘Spirit portraits’ there.”
      Unfortunately, Krebs did not accept Lizzie Bangs’ offer, leaving the Spirit paintings a mystery for several more years.

Early Spirit Paintings
      The \Spirit portraits brought the Bangs Sisters more renown and income than any of their previous spirit specialties like slate writing. Spirit photographs had been popular items for years with many Spiritualist mediums, who could make a good living selling these double-exposed photographs, but as the Bangs Sisters discovered, they could charge truly exorbitant fees if they gave the sitter a large artwork he could display in his home as a treasured memento.
      The Mediums told their clients the paintings were created by the Spirits through a mysterious process known as “precipitation.” Displays of “precipitated spirit portraits” created by the Bangs Sisters can still be seen on display at Spiritualist centers like Camp Chesterfield and Lily Dale.
      Despite the notoriety of their Spirit paintings, the Bangs Sisters were not the first to put phantom artists to work. In the 1870s, Scottish Medium David Duguid (1832-1907) made Spirit paintings appear during his darkened seances, as described by Nandor Fodor in These Mysterious People (1934): “In total darkness, on little cards which the sitters brought along and marked, while the Medium was held or tightly bound, invisible entities executed small oil paintings, sometimes in as short a time as 35 seconds.” In 1876, a story supposedly dictated to Duguid by the Spirits, illustrated with 45 of his spirit paintings, was published under the title Hafed, Prince of Persia: Being Spirit Communications Received Through Mr. David Duguid, The Glasgow Trance-Painting Medium.       After a long career, Duguid’s method – simple substitution – was finally exposed. As Fodor reported:

      In 1905, at the age of 73, after nearly 2000 séances, he was caught in deliberate fraud in Manchester. He brought the spirit paintings ready-made to the seance room and attempted to exchange them for the blank cards which the sitters provided. On being forcibly searched, the original cards were discovered in his trousers.

      Around 1888, a corpulent female Medium and frequently jailed con artist known as Ann O’Delia Dis Debar (among many other pseudonyms and spellings) made headlines in New York when she was tried and imprisoned for swindling wealthy lawyer Luther Marsh. Dis Debar had sold Marsh dozens of paintings supposedly created by the Spirits of prominent artists, including one work called “The Circumcision” that she attributed to Rembrandt.
Dis Debar’s method was nothing like the Bangs’ later gradual visible appearances. In one account, she or her accomplice switched a blank canvas for a painting as she led her sitter out of the room; another visitor said he witnessed the switch when he happened to glance in a mirror in the séance room (New York Times, March 31, 1888).
      Harry Kellar used the Dis Debar case as an opportunity for newspaper coverage in the Los Angeles Times, suggesting several possible methods (“Spiritualistic Fraud,” May 16, 1888). One of his outlandish proposals was that the Medium used a trick easel with a painting on one side and a blank canvas on the other; a slide projector would gradually form the picture on the white canvas, then the real picture would pivot into view.
      Kellar also suggested that an invisible picture could be painted with certain chemicals which would develop when brought into a hot room or wiped with a damp sponge. These farfetched theories are surprising given Kellar’s knowledge of magic methods, though in his defense his farfetched theories sound no more outlandish than some of those David P. Abbott proposed during his later search for the Bangs Sisters’ secret technique.
      Alexander Herrmann chimed in a few weeks later during a benefit at New York’s Academy of Music, where he presented an expose of Dis Debar that may have been the first onstage performance of a spirit-painting effect, though his version was a pretty crude forerunner. As the New York Times (May 28, 1888) reported: “The spook picture act of Mme. Dis Debar was performed in a way which deceived the whole audience until the method was shown. It was very simple. A prepared picture was covered with a thin and pliable sheet of paper, which was simply pulled off and palmed.”
      Buatier de Kolta also inserted a painting materialization into his show around this period. At the Eden Musée in New York on December 22, 1891, De Kolta included “a very pretty drawing trick, the climax of which was the sudden appearance of a portrait of [New York congressman and governor] Roswell P. Flower in true Dis Debar style,” the New York Times review noted (“A New Magician,” December 23, 1891).
      Another possible method used by Dis Debar was proposed years later at a sale of her paintings from the estate of bilked lawyer Luther Marsh. The auctioneer stated that Dis Debar had obtained over 100 paintings from an art collector to use in her swindle. “…powdering the pictures over with chalk, (she) would slowly erase it in a darkened room and tell Mr. Marsh that her hands were being guided by the great masters of painting, and had as her proof the works exposed to view when the lights were turned on” (“‘Spirit Paintings’ Sold,” New York Times, October 30, 1903).
      This messy method of concealing the painting by covering the canvas with a white substance — such as whitewash or zinc oxide — has since been suggested many times in magic literature; this article on Dis Debar, may indicate that this seemingly impractical technique was actually put into practice.

The Bangs Sisters’ Spirit Portraits
      As early as 1894, the Bangs Sisters were producing spirit paintings, according to a letter from May Bangs quoted in James Coates, Photographing the Invisible (1911). At that time, however, they were not yet using their visually astounding rear-lit technique. Instead, they sealed the blank canvas in a box; when opened a few days later, the painting had appeared on the canvas. In the sitter’s absence, of course, the Mediums just unsealed the box, switched canvases, and resealed the case.
      In Coates’ book, May Bangs herself admitted that this method was less than convincing:

      It was necessary to curtain the canvas, and several sittings were required to finish one picture. Then locked boxes were used, but all these processes, where the canvases were out of the sight and control…of the visitors suggested the possibilities of fraudulent procedure and of changes made to that effect. Latterly, the pictures have been obtained in broad daylight and are finished in one sitting lasting about twenty to forty minutes.

      Around 1898, another duo of mediums, known as the Campbell Brothers – actually two companions, Allan B. Campbell and Charles Shourds – made paintings appear in a style similar to the Bangs Sisters’ later backlighting method (cited in Joe Nickell’s article “Spirit Paintings” on csicop.org). The Campbells stood a large canvas on a table in front of a window in a dimmed room, the medium and a spectator sat at the table, and a silken curtain was drawn in front of the canvas. The veils were parted periodically to allow glimpses of the gradual materialization of the painting.
      The Campbells’ presentation sounds so remarkably close to that used by the Bangs Sisters that it seems likely that the sisters learned of their colleagues’ method and adapted it for their own home séances, though perhaps both duos procured the same secret from some other source.

Increasing Notoriety
      Whatever the origin of the sisters’ improved technique, their new version of the spirit paintings helped increase both their business and their notoriety. By 1905, a reporter from the Stevens Point (Indiana) Journal commented:

      It has just come to general notice that two women, the Bangs Sisters, carry on a thriving trade in Spiritualism among people of high commercial and social standing; that “people you wouldn’t have believed it of” consult them as oracles, believe in their utterances, in the pictures they bestow upon those favored by the spirit artists….
      Who buys them, or rather who pleads for them and, incidentally, pays for these medium’s troubles? Well, such as these: doctors, lawyers, and women, of course. What do they pay for these works of art? Anywhere from $15 to $150.

      One prominent paying customer was the Reverend Dr. Isaac K. Funk of the dictionary publishers Funk and Wagnalls. Funk reportedly paid $1500 to the sisters for a number of paintings, as the Chicago Daily Tribune reported on February 25, 1905:

      There he sat before a bare canvas in a darkened room...On one side was Mary Bangs and on the other, Elizabeth. Softly they communed with the spirits of “departed artists” until one consented to paint the picture, through the mediums, for the wealthy publisher. Slowly, a beautifully tinted portrait of a deceased relative of the minister was thrown upon the canvas.

      The newspaper also noted that a Chicago judge, Joseph E. Gary, was a Bangs patron.
      A group called the Chicago Spiritualist League complained that the sisters were harming the reputation of believers who followed Spiritualism as a religion. At one meeting, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported (February 27, 1905), its leader asked, “Are the ‘spirit paintings’ of the Bangs sisters frauds? Most emphatically yes. There is no such thing as a ‘spirit painting.’ These paintings are the work of human hands. Do you suppose a spirit is going to return to this earth…to paint pictures for the pecuniary gain of some medium?”
      In 1905, the Illinois State Attorney stated in an article (“Bangs Sisters Interest Police,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 28, 1905) that fraudulent mediums could be prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretenses. The Bangs Sisters somehow managed to escape prosecution, except for a minor case years later in 1908, when the police arrested May for violating the city’s fortune-telling law; she was released after paying a $25 fine (Chicago Daily Tribune, July 30, 1909).

Early Explanations
      The mediums’ success provoked explanations of how they made their portraits appear. As with the Dis Debar paintings, the suggestions were based almost exclusively on speculation, since no skeptic seems to have been willing to pay the fee to actually witness the painting process in person. In “How Ghosts Paint Spirit Portraits” (Chicago Daily Tribune, February 26, 1905), for example, a local printer proposed that the blank canvas was switched under one of the sisters’ skirts for a prepared painting wrapped in several layers of tissue that could be progressively removed to make the portrait gradually appear.
      The article “Bangs Sisters Interest Police” (Chicago Daily Tribune, February 28, 1905) included a quote from one reader, who wisely pointed out that the sisters

      …can’t produce a picture of a relative of the sitter without a photograph, no matter what they may say to the contrary. They have to obtain these photos either in an underhand manner or with the consent of the sitter. If they have no photo — well, it’s a case of “unfavorable conditions.”

      The anonymous and apparently well-informed reader also stated that the finished paintings were actually enlargements of the sitter’s photograph that had been airbrushed over by an artist named Day.
      This newspaper report is also significant since it quotes Philip H. Meyers, the inventor of the early Talking Teakettle, which he sent to Abbott as a gift in 1909; see the first section of Abbott’s Book of Mysteries for more about Meyers. The Daily Tribune article describes Meyers as a manufacturer of equipment for spiritualists. He claimed to possess the Bangs’ method for the spirit portraits but “would want several hundred dollars for the secret.”
      The reader’s observations were the basic method for half of the Bangs’ procedure. The sitter had to bring along a photograph of the relative they wished to have painted. The sliding-letter switch under the séance-room door, described by Reverend Krebs in his 1901 slate-writing exposé, was used to smuggle the sitter’s photo out of the room, though other visitors reported being instructed to leave their photo in their coat in the hallway, where of course it could be easily pilfered.
      The Bangs Sisters next insisted on continuing the séance another day, giving them time to take the photograph to an artist to prepare a larger version on canvas in time for the sitter’s next appointment. As a result, the portraits invariably mirrored whatever image the sitter brought along. If for some reason the sitter had no photograph, the mediums used a stock portrait with loved one’s basic age and gender, explaining away any inaccuracies with the excuse that the image showed how the relative now looked in the spirit world.
      The sisters added two other convincing details that astounded the sitter even more. First, the customer could feel that the finished painting was apparently still wet, giving the impression that the work had been freshly painted by the spirits. Later investigators like Hereward Carrington suggested the effect could have been created simply by smearing linseed oil over the painting’s surface prior to the sitting. Carrington’s idea is supported by one report noting that the mediums placed two thin sheets of paper between the canvases before the painting appeared; if linseed oil was used, this paper would have prevented the oil and any potentially dampened paint from smudging onto the blank canvas; see W. Usborne Moore, Glimpses of the Next State (1911).
      The second convincing nuance was that after the front canvas had been removed and the finished painting was revealed, the mediums used the power of suggestion to convince the sitter that the portrait was still being painted by the spirits before their very eyes, excitedly shouting that the face’s eyes were opening or that details were appearing on a locket or ring in the picture.
      On other occasions, if a sitter commented on an inaccuracy in the painting, the mediums asked the client to allow the painting to develop while they took a break in another room. This would give the artist (or perhaps the mediums themselves) time to make minor changes to the painting.       Upon resumption of the session, the alterations would be jubilantly pointed out to the sitter. With typically excited but fuzzy recollection, sitters would often claim that the changes had occurred right before their eyes or that they had merely mentally requested the alterations.       One Bangs client reported:

      At 7:30 p.m., I returned to the house and found the picture had undergone further improvements, especially in the sky and background. I mentally desired that the locket should be made larger, and that the monogram should be impressed upon it. My next visit was at 10:20 the following morning…I then found that the monogram had been imprinted on the locket…and the locket itself had been enlarged.
      The likeness is not very good. The interest in this picture does not lie in its fidelity as a portrait, but in the various alterations that were made after it was taken away from the window, and especially in the monogram precipitated at my mental request when nobody was present. (W. Usborne Moore, Glimpses of the Next State)

      All these fine points challenged the ingenuity of would-be exposers of the Bangs’ spirit paintings. The publisher of The Progressive Thinker even offered a $100 reward for an expose of the Bangs Sisters’ method.
      A Kansas City minister, A. T. Osborn, told the New York Times that an explanation for the Bangs’ portraits had come to him in a dream (“Solves ‘Spirit Paintings,’” July 9, 1908). Osborn’s theory was that “They made a magic-lantern slide…the portrait was thrown on a blank canvas by means of a stereopticon. A dissolving-view device caused the picture to fade from the blank. The painted enlargement was slipped on the trick table and a cover whisked off the moment the magic lantern view vanished.”
      Confident that Osborn’s method was wrong, the Bangs Sisters promptly telegrammed the minister and offered him $1000 if he could correctly demonstrate the secret of their portraits. When Osborn accepted, they sent another telegram demanding that the reverend wager $1000 as well. The Washington Post (“Girls Seek Pastor’s Coin,” July 11, 1908) reported Osborn’s reaction: “Of course I can’t have anything to do with such a proposal. I can’t do any betting, and whoever heard of a minister with $1000?”

On the Road
      One of the sisters’ devotees was Dr. Charles H. Carson, the wealthy Kansas City head of the Temple of Health, the Magnetic Mineral Springs, and the College of Psychic-Sarcology. In 1908, Carson included over a dozen Bangs Sisters paintings in a self-published book of writings supposedly composed by the Spirit of his dead wife, entitled Through the Valley of the Shadow and Beyond.
      “Dr. Carson was a believer in the Bangs Sisters and brought them to Kansas City at his own expense, renting apartments and furnishing them....” Abbott wrote to Paul Carus on July 18, 1908. “He is said to have parted with ten thousand dollars for spirit paintings, and one evening gave a reception to exhibit his Spirit gallery.”
      As their renown grew, the Bangs Sisters occasionally took their painting act to Spiritualist collectives like Lily Dale, materializing a sample portrait onstage to promote private sittings after the show. The controlled conditions of their Chicago home, however, proved elusive onstage. In a 1910 demonstration for the Kansas City Society of Spiritualists, the Washington Post reported, “something was the matter with the lights in the building, which situation prevented this part of the performance.” At another appearance, the lamp used to illuminate the canvases set fire to the sisters’ equipment.
      On another occasion, a curious audience member asked the sisters, “Are you worth a million dollars?”
      May snapped back, “If we are, it’s none of your business.”
      The mediums mercifully took less time onstage to make their paintings appear than they did at their home, where the process could take almost an hour. During a 1909 Camp Chesterfield show, for example, they required only eight minutes to produce a painting (James Coates, Photographing the Invisible, 1911).

Abbott on the Trail
      David P. Abbott pondered the secret of the Bangs Sisters’ paintings in correspondence with Open Court magazine readers, eventually collected in the journal as a series of letters on “Spirit Portraiture” and later in the appendix of Behind the Scenes with the Mediums in 1907.
      To explain the paintings, Abbott needed to solve several major puzzles. How did the mediums obtain a photo of the sitter’s loved one? (Abbott had apparently missed Krebs’ account published in England.) How did the image gradually appear on the canvas? How was the blank canvas switched for the finished painting? And how did all this occur in the simplest of settings in a small room on an upper story of a neighborhood house?
      In his first attempts to resolve these questions, Abbott proposed a variety of improbable methods that widely missed the Bangs’ simple procedure. Abbott suggested that the mediums could have copied the sitter’s photograph by having a hidden assistant in the room taking pictures through a telephoto lens. For the gradual development of the paintings, Abbott thought mechanisms hidden in the window sill might somehow spray invisible chemicals onto the canvas.
      Abbott discussed the problem in his letters to his publisher Paul Carus, typing page after page as he considered complicated methods like concealed slide projectors and mechanical switching tables.
At one point, Abbott found out that one of his correspondents, C. F. Eldredge of Kansas City, editor of The Health Reporter, had actually witnessed the Bangs Sisters produce a painting. Eldredge, unfortunately, could still not fathom their method, but his detailed report helped Abbott narrow the possibilities of what the actual procedure could be. On July 18, 1908, for example, Abbott wrote to Carus that Eldredge wondered “why picture seemed between canvases when a lantern would unmistakably project it on back of rear canvas.”
      Abbott was also exchanging letters with Dr. Isaac Funk, who, as mentioned earlier, had reportedly paid dearly for several Bangs portraits. In an April 1, 1907, letter, Funk offered to pay for a Bangs Sisters séance if Abbott could make a trip to Chicago:

      I wish to tell you something wholly on the quiet: I have had a number of sittings with the famous Bangs Sisters of Chicago. I know, I think, all of the explanations that have been given by various persons…. I have made a large number of experiments with them and, notwithstanding all the exposures that have been made, I would like to have you — when in Chicago — to call upon them and make a test, that is, providing they have no means of recognizing you….
      Have some wee mark on the frame facing you that you know of but nobody else knows of, and see to it that there is no substitution of frames. It would be absolutely necessary that you do not exhibit the slightest suspicion. Of course, let it be understood that you are investigating, perfectly willing to accept the truth, whatever the truth is. Do not mention — directly or indirectly — my name to them.
      Now, if some time you are in Chicago and do this, I will bear the expense of getting the picture from the mediums, which was $30 or so when I saw them last.

      The time and expense of the trip undoubtedly deterred Abbott, who was in the midst of proofreading Behind the Scenes with the Mediums in addition to running his loan business. Abbott wrote Carus in 1908 that he was trying to convince Funk to take a magician with him on his next visit, perhaps Joseffy.
      Dr. Funk eventually sent Abbott’s friend Hereward Carrington to visit the Bangs Sisters. Carrington — a prolific writer, psychic investigator, and one-time magician — detected the mediums cheating in their slate demonstrations and reported their fraudulent methods in the British Annals of Psychical Science (July-September 1910). The sisters, however, refused to demonstrate their paintings for Carrington.

Abbott’s Eureka Moment
      In 1908, through an intermediary, Abbott contacted Philip H. Meyers, the inventor of the original Talking Teakettle who back in 1905 had claimed in the Chicago Daily Tribune to knew the secret of the Bangs portraits. Abbott had his Chicago friend Ralph W. Read try to negotiate a purchase. Meyers’ price for the secret of the paintings was too high for the men, but he sold them what he said was the Bangs’ slate-writing secret. To Abbott’s disappointment, it turned out to be just a common technique that Abbott already knew.
      True to his financially prudent ways, Abbott decided to forego any further expense and instead experiment on his own. This money-saving move began a hands-on experimentation process that soon led Abbott to the long-sought secret.
      On February 18, 1909, Abbott excitedly wrote Carus: “I really believe I have solved this secret by reason alone.” His joy was premature. His latest incorrect solution seems to have been a mechanism that would wind up layers of silk covering the painting, gradually allowing more light to penetrate the canvases as if the painting was gradually developing.
      But this wrong turn was in fact the key that led Abbott to his “Eureka” moment when the correct answer suddenly came to him. Abbott wrote Carus on February 22, 1909:

      I decided yesterday that while theories are all right and should precede experiment, that I should try out my theory in actual practice.
      I built a quarter-sized model of a screen. I designed one that would roll up or unreel the silk rapidly or slowly. It was but 1/8-inch thick. I made three frames and tacked canvas on them. One was a picture, size nine by fourteen inches. I placed a table and the canvases in position, lowered the blinds, and pinned on the side blinds as per directions.
Now, all of this brought about an unexpected result. First, I arrived at the conclusion that no screen is used in actual practice, notwithstanding what Read says, or my own theories; and second, I made the discovery of a new principle which surely is the correct one.
      It is so absurdly simple that at first sight one would give it little credence, but after two hours of actual experiment I cannot help but believe it is the right thing.
      Simplicity is really in its favor. Mediums seldom use much paraphernalia, as they must always be prepared to “make a quick getaway.” So whatever is used, we must expect it to be something simple. In fact, the simple things have always produced the greatest effects.
      Now, what I discovered is this: If two canvases be faced together and in position, and if there be upon the rear canvas a portrait in transparent colors (pastel, crayon, airbrush work, etc.), this — to be plainly visible — must be in actual contact with the surface of the front canvas. At a distance of 1/8-inch, the outlines begin to be indefinite — not sharp; at a quarter of inch, much more so, while at a half-inch (the) image is very confused in appearance and looks like a view from a lantern out of focus, a cloud of color, etc. At a distance of one inch, the image appears to be some confused shadows, and at two inches’ distance, all trace of the portrait has disappeared.
      Now it is only necessary for the rear canvas to be slowly moved toward (or from) the front canvas to cause the picture to materialize or to fade out precisely as described. The motion must be slow and uniform, and is very difficult to control by hand….
      I can best compare the effect produced to what one witnesses when viewing a lantern slide wholly out of focus, and then see it slowly brought into focus. First there is not even a shadow; finally some indistinct shadows appear; these soon seem to be an indistinct cloud consisting of some colors mingled together. These gradually change into the image but with quite indistinct outlines which become more and more sharp until the picture appears quite plain and sharply defined, yet it shows a slight smoky effect caused by looking at it through a canvas and viewing it by transmitted light.
      All of this corresponds exactly with the descriptions I have received of the effect. It would appear just like a lantern image, only it would not be this, and the picture would really be in the window as is claimed.

Final Details
      Carus wanted to publish Abbott’s explanation in The Open Court. But before publishing his findings, Abbott wanted to understand the Bangs’ entire procedure. Despite discovering the simple methods that produced the paintings, Abbott continued proposing complicated ideas to explain the remaining details of the Bangs’ technique.
      In letters to Carus, Abbott suggested that the blank canvas was initially switched for the painted one using an elevator device built into the walls of the Bangs’ home, with a secret assistant below exchanging the paintings. To explain the post-appearance alterations — which the Bangs Sisters created through mere suggestion or by adding changes in the sitter’s absence — Abbott envisioned a complex systems of colored patches controlled by threads, or else areas on the canvas that could be individually developed with chemicals.
      Carus was as fascinated by the quest as Abbott was, and in one 1909 letter, the dignified publisher made the astonishing suggestion that Abbott should determine matters definitively by arranging a séance and trying to catch the mediums red-handed, perhaps even breaking into the house:

      I do not know how far you would go in testing your hypothesis, but assuming your solution to be the correct one, you could at the moment when everything is ready for a séance pounce on them, and have the artist as well as the Bangs Sisters arrested on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses.
      It would be necessary for you to have some friend go to the sisters and make arrangements for a sitting. He has to spy out where the window sill with the trap is, which window is used, so you can locate the place where the artists work underground.
      You must make sure of the several accesses to that place, whether it is in the basement, and whether you could enter without breaking through doors, perhaps through the windows by breaking the window panes. You ought to speak with the sheriff through whose authority you could make an entrance, and take a search warrant out against the Bangs Sisters and their accomplice so as to be able to pounce on them at the moment when a séance is going on.
      The arrest need not even be made, but only the utensils seized, the trap inspected, and the gauze material and whatever else there may be taken away. There is not even any necessity for carrying the matter before the court. You can drop proceedings as soon as they are at bay. It would certainly be a proof that your theory is right, which could not be contradicted by any believer.

Abbott’s Solution Escapes
As Abbott recounted in his story of the Spirit Portraits in The Book of Mysteries, English spiritualistic investigator William S. Marriott contacted Abbott in August 1909 to inquire about the Bangs Sisters’ paintings. Abbott innocently shared his findings, whereupon Marriott not only built the necessary equipment but also went on tour in England presenting the appearance of the paintings as a vaudeville act.
      In England, Marriott became acquainted with one of the Bangs Sisters’ most devoted clients, the decorated but self-deceiving British Vice-Admiral W. Usborne Moore, mentioned earlier as the author of Glimpses of the Next State. In 1909 and 1910, Moore had visited the mediums to contact his spirit guides Iola, Hypatia, and Cleopatra and had purchased several portraits.
      Typical of true believers, Moore discounted any reasonable explanations of the Bangs Sisters’ phenomena. Although Marriott showed him Abbott’s method for materializing the paintings, Moore steadfastly maintained that the sisters would never rely on such trickery and that their conditions at home were different from those of a stage performance.
      Moore had recently read Hereward Carrington’s exposé of the Bangs Sisters in the Annals of Psychical Science and denounced him in an issue of the spiritualist magazine Light in 1911.       Carrington (with whom Abbott had already shared the correct secret) responded in Light (May 13, 1911): “…Mr. David P. Abbott and myself worked together over this problem; but I was forced to stop at the time, owing to press of other matters, and Mr. Abbott continued his experiments alone. I think I am safe in saying that he has now succeeded in duplicating the Bangs Sisters’ portraits exactly — and by trickery.”
      Admiral Moore responded in Light: “The Abbott-Marriott trick is well known in England. I have seen it often, and it surpasses in skill almost every conjuring trick I have ever witnessed. When my friends ask me how the Bangs’ pictures appear to come, I say, ‘Go and see Dr. Wilmar’s spirit paintings.’”
      Moore also said that his friend Dr. Wilmar had taught him the secret of the paintings and claiming that Abbott was not the only discoverer of this method.“The method is known to me, and was known to me before I met Dr. Wilmar. It was found out by an exhibition of my own models, and by one of our best trance mediums…about the time it was discovered by Mr. David Abbott. I respect Mr. Abbott. He candidly owns that all his theories about the Bangs Sisters’ pictures previous to 1909 were entirely erroneous. I ask myself this plain question: Why has not this diligent conjurer been to sit with the Bangs Sisters? He lives within a reasonable distance. If he does sit with them, he will find his latest theory as rotten as his previous ones.”
      By this time, Marriott had licensed P. T. Selbit to perform the Spirit Paintings act and in 1911, Abbott saw his own solution being presented by Selbit, billed as the creation of Dr. Wilmar. The gentlemanly Abbott accepted Selbit’s explanation gracefully.
      That year, while Abbott was still attempting to clarify the final details of the mystery, two books were published discussing the Bangs Sisters: Moore’s 642-page Glimpses of the Next State and James Coates’ book Photographing the Invisible: Practical Studies in Spirit Photography, Spirit Portraiture, and other Rare but Allied Arts, which devoted an entire chapter to the Bangs Sisters. These works, which described the mediums’ séances in detail, may have supplied the pieces of the puzzle that Abbott needed.
      A few years later, Abbott completed his long essay on the Spirit Portraits, which The Open Court magazine published in April 1913. Later in 1913, Carus also released the article as a separate booklet, The Spirit Portrait Mystery: Its Final Solution.

Popularity and Fade
      Selbit’s tour allowed many magicians to see the effect, and because its secret was not overly difficult to unravel when seen in person, a number of performers began to present their own versions. Vaudeville magician William J. Nixon performed his Spirit Paintings in his stage shows. An Australian painter named Henry Clive, who later became a renowned illustrator, toured with his rendition in the 1920s.
      Abbott’s hard-earned secret was soon common knowledge in the magic world. Nixon published the technique in his 1916 booklet, The Spirit Paintings. Will Goldston exposed the secret in his Annual of Magic 1915-1916. Alexander included the effect in his book The Life and Mysteries of the Celebrated Dr. Q in 1921. By the 1930s, Thayer’s Magic Company was selling a ready-made version in their catalogs.
Nonetheless, this very visual effect is today rarely seen. Like many magic effects, the Spirit Paintings can today be all too easily explained away by audiences as the result of electronics.
      As for the Bangs Sisters, by the time The Open Court published Abbott’s expose, the Mediums had largely dropped from sight. The 1920 U.S. Census showed May still living in Chicago but does not mention Lizzie. My research has so far revealed no further record of either sister.
      We do not know if Abbott’s revelations prevented the Bangs Sisters from duping more victims like A. W. Foreman, Charles Carson, or W. Usborne Moore. At the very least, however, it seems likely that once the Spirit Portraits hit the vaudeville stage, it would have been more difficult for any Mediums, even the experienced Bangs Sisters, to convince a customer that their paintings came from the hands of Spirits and not from their own.

Spirit drawn portrait product of a Bangs.seance.

 

The "Bangs Sisters", Mary "May" E. Bangs and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Snow Bangs were Mediums out of Chicago, who made a career out of painting the dead or "Spirit Portraits," without ever have met the fallen.^[1][2]

Early Years (1860-1895)

 

The Bangs Sisters

Elizabeth was born around 1860 to mother Meroe and father Edward Bangs while they were living in Atchison, Kansas. They moved to Chicago in 1861, and Mary was born there in 1864. Their father Edward was a tinsmith and stove repairman, who was originally from Massachusetts. Their mother was a Medium herself, and soon got her four children (sons Edward and W.B.) into the act.

By the early 1870's the Bangs family were performing seances as described in the August 3rd, 1872, Religio-Philosophical Journal article by Steven Sanborn Jones called, "An Evening with the Bangs Children". People would pay to be entertained at the Bangs home. Messages from the dead would appear on slabs of slate as chairs and furniture would move about the room. The children were tied up in a cabinet, then a guitar inside would strum and hands would wave from within. For the finale, Mary would bring forward a shaved cat that was said to be a "Spirit cat" from the afterworld. In the summer of 1881, May and her mother were arrested for "doing business without a license.", but this was dismissed because they claimed to be evangelists, and such charges could not be brought against ministers.

On April 2, 1888, two plainclothes police arrested May and Lizzie during a seance and confiscated all of their props. Sadly, Lizzie's seven year old daughter died while she was being held. A few weeks later, an April 17th, 1888 Washington Post article reported that Lizzie and May Bangs created the very lucrative firm the "Bangs Sisters" which operated spiritualistic parlors in the Chicago area. The same year, one of their wealthy clients, photographer Henry Jestram, reportedly paid vast amounts of his fortune for their seances. When Mr. Jestram died after being committed to an insane asylum, many blamed the Bangs Sisters. By now, all the media was having a field day with the "Notorious Bangs Sisters", with five failed marriages between the two sisters, and Lizzie's bizarre speech during her daughter's funeral service.

By November of 1890, May was on her second divorce from wealthy chemical manufacturer Henry H. Graham. They had been married under the pretense that his dead wife told him to do so. And, according to the Chicago Daily Tribune, in March of 1890, a Chicago grand jury dismissed the charges against the Bangs Sisters, but in May of 1891, the Illinois Senate passed a bill

"...prohibiting anyone from personating the spirits of the dead, commonly known as spirit-medium séances, on penalty of fine and imprisonment."

With the new law in place, and having upset their peers by ruining the seance business, the Bangs Sisters re-invented their act to include portraits, writings, and even typing from the dead. According to a Los Angeles Times article, the two sisters even fooled one of the main investors in the typewriter, G.W.N. Yost, with their "Spirit Typewriter" which produced messages from everyone from Moses to James Garfield. In late 1894, Lizzie and May began "Spirit Painting", with "Life Sized Spirit Portraits a Specialty" printed on their business cards.^[9] It was not long before they ventured out of Chicago. As reported in the September 10th, 1894 Fort Wayne Sentinel, the Bangs conducted a Massachusetts wedding ceremony between a wealthy woman and her dead fiance.

Later Years (1895-1920's)

1906 Newspaper Ad-The Bangs Sisters

For the next five years, they regularly held seances and performed the Cirlce at their home in Chicago. Even though Reverend Stanely L. Krebs meticulously described how the "Spirit Writings" were carried out after publishing his investigation in the January 1901 issue of the British Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, droves of people still flocked to the Bangs Sisters for their services.

The Spirit paintings were the most commanding of price, with people paying anywhere between $15 to $150 per portrait. Even, Dr. Isaac Funk of Funk and Wagnalls paid $1,500 for a number of departed portraits.^[10] In 1907 came the next victim of May's marriages. Millionaire leather manufacture, Jacob H. Lesher who was told to marry May by his dead Mother, and according to the July 16th, 1909 Chicago Daily Tribune was divorced and penniless in less than 24 months.

They headed to Kansas City with this advertisement listed in the June 14th, 1908 Kansas City Journal^[11];

The Bangs Sisters of Chicago produce portraits of departed men, women or children for friends while they wait. These wonderful artists are located in the New York apartment house, northwest corner of Twelfth street and Paseo. They have been spending a few weeks away from home on a vacation. They are making many beautiful portraits in Kansas City and do not expect to remain in Kansas City very long. Anyone wishing to see them should make arrangements to do so as soon as possible.

Never without controversy, the local Kansas City Minister, three weeks later, in the Newspaper on July 10th, accepted the Bangs challenge of $1,000 to try to expose their method.

It all came through the well known Bangs sisters, lately of Kansas City. These sisters, who trafficked in the life and sayings of the "other world," made quite an impression upon the spiritualistic sect in Kansas City. Their chief means of revenue was in painting pictures "by angel hands" of people in the spirit world. These sisters amassed a fortune by causing to be painted, through "supernatural means," the likeness of the dead upon a canvas which was stretched across a window. Rev. Mr. Osborn, after some study and praying hit upon a scheme of "angel painting." To a select circle of friends he demonstrated his ability along such lines, and then declared the Bangs sisters to be frauds and fakirs. These pictures, according to Rev. Mr. Osborn, are drawn by mental suggestion. Just how the mental suggestion is worked in he has not yet explained, but at the same time he charged the Bangs sisters with having deceived the people of Kansas City. that he himself is able to cause these "angel pictures" to appear at will is declared to be a fact by many people who have seen him do it.

 

THEY CHALLENGE HIM.

Soon after the minister made his charges they were carried to the Bangs sisters by their many friends and followers in Kansas City. The result was that the minister received a telegram yesterday from the Chicago Inter Ocean, the Bangs sisters, being now in Chicago, setting forth the following: "The Bangs sisters will give you $1,000 if you can prove your charges. Wire if you accept." Rev. Mr. Osborn did accept, and so wired the Inter Ocean. It was in calling these Bangs sisters fakirs that the spirit antagonism was aroused among the spiritualists present last night. Before Rev. Mr. Osborn began his expose he read the telegram which has been quoted, asking that at least a dozen of his audience remain after the performance in order to give him moral support for his undertaking in Chicago. A dozen of the audience did stay, more than a dozen, fifty of them in fact, spiritualists in a big majority. "It's easy and perfectly simple," said the minister in his talk to them, concerning the "angel painting. It is done by the influence of mind and by that niche. There is absolutely nothing supernatural about the work. The picture which is handed to you is not the picture of the person who is dead. That is not an exact likeness. The painter is usually criticized for his work in details and so he finds it easy to correct the picture. "For example: The Bang sisters painted a picture of a young lady who has been dead for some time. The eyes and other details were left very indistinct. The person who had applied for the picture objected, saying that her sister had darker and more distinct eyes than that. Of course the picture was immediately caused to disappear and other one which better suited to the gullible sister was painted in its place."

HAD TO TAKE A PICTURE.

"That is not so," said Mrs. F. Cushman, who had secured a picture of her dead sister from the Bangs sisters. "They do not make the changes. They didn't in mine, and I never heard of them doing it before. The Bangs sisters never knew my sister. They did not even know her first name. They had never seen a picture of her, for I have the only one in existence." "Ah, there it is," broke in the minister. "You were told that it would be necessary for you to bring a picture to the seance, weren't you?" "Yes, but it was sealed in an envelope when I went into the room. The Bangs Sisters did not see it before the picture was drawn." The minister smiled condescendingly, but he did not ask Mrs. Cushman any more questions. It developed that there were very few who would come out openly and side with the minister, while there were many who had absolute faith in the work and ability of the Bangs sisters. "If he can do all that he says he can; if he can make pictures appear and stay like the Bangs sisters could, he wouldn't be in the ministry," remarked Mrs. Cushman to a gathering of her sympathisers. "There's too much money in the other business for that."

After years of demonstrations and noted exposures by professionals, such as, David Abbott, the Bangs Sisters had faded out by the early 1920's.

References

1. "Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology" 1920 (page 93) By Lewis Spence
2. Photographing the invisible: practical studies in spirit photography, spirit" By James Coates
3. http://www.miraclefactory.net/mpt/view.php?id=195&type=articles
4. http://www.miraclefactory.net/mpt/view.php?id=195&type=articles
5. "Atchison Little Globe", August 23,1881
6. Hornellsville Weekly Tribune, April 20, 1888
7. http://www.miraclefactory.net/mpt/view.php?id=195&type=articles
8. Chicago Daily Tribune, April 17, 1890
9. http://www.iprfinc.com/brian2.html
10. "Chicago Daily Tribune" February 25, 1905
11. http://www.vintagekansascity.com/100yearsago/2008/06/fine-art-work-bangs-sisters-of-chicago.html

• "House of Mystery: The Magic Science of David P. Abbott" Edited by Teller and Todd Karr, article "David P. Abbott and the Notorious Bangs Sisters" By Todd Karr

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangs_Sisters"

Chicago mediums who specialized in direct writing and direct drawing and painting. In sealed envelopes that were brought by the sitters and enclosed between two slates, messages in ink were produced in bright daylight. The sitter placed the envelopes between a pair of slates and held them under his or her hand while the medium sat on the opposite side of the table. After waiting from a few minutes to an hour, raps signaled that the message was ready.

On behalf of Dr. I. K. Funk, who investigated the mediums several times himself and had a high opinion of their powers, Hereward Carrington went to Chicago in 1909 and, as narrated in the Annals of Psychic Science (July-September 1910), found fraud. He addressed a letter in a sealed envelope to "Dearest mother, Jane Thompson" (who never existed) and received a reply addressed to "Dearly loved son Harold," signed by his "devoted mother, Jane Thompson." Admiral W. Usborne Moore, who had many sittings with the Bangs sisters in 1909 and later in 1911, defended the sisters.

In the course of the controversy that ensued Carrington told in a letter to Light (May 13, 1911) that David P. Abbott had succeeded in duplicating the Bangs sisters' phenomena exactly by trickery. Moore replied that he made a number of tests, that he read carefully an exposé by a Dr. Krebs, that he knew the method employed by Abbott and that it surpassed in skill almost every conjuring trick he had witnessed but that the conditions were as different from those at the séances of the Bangs sisters as a locomotive is different from a teapot. In fact, it was the conjuring performance that finally convinced him that the Bangs sisters must be genuine, he said.

In telling the story of his investigations in Glimpses of the Next State (1911) Moore narrates how he took his own slates and inkpot to the sitting. On the advice of Sir William Crookes he added lithium citrate to the ink. He obtained a message of eight pages, signed by his Spirit Guide, "Iola." By later spectrum analysis the presence of lithium was in fact discovered in the ink. This proved to his satisfaction that in some mysterious way his own ink was instrumental in preparing the message in the sealed envelope between his own slates.

Furthermore, he laid his visiting card on top of the slates and tore off one corner for identification. He also wrote a postscript to his questions on a separate piece of paper and placed it alongside the visiting card. The former found its way into the envelope, while the card, in accordance with a message on the outside of the envelope, was discovered in another room in Moore's hat.

The "direct spirit portraits" that the Bangs sisters produced as early as 1894 in colour, before the sitters' eyes, and in daylight was an even more mysterious phenomenon. At first a locked box or curtained-off space was used and several sittings were required. Later they were openly precipitated, as if by an air-brush, as quickly as within eight minutes. The arrangement was as follows:

Two identical, paper-mounted canvases in wooden frames were held up, face to face, against the window, the lower edges resting on a table and the sides gripped by each medium with one hand. A short curtain was hung on either side and an opaque blind was drawn over the canvases. With the light streaming from behind, the canvases were translucent.

After a quarter of an hour, the outlines of shadows began to appear and disappear as if the invisible artist were making a preliminary sketch, then the picture began to grow at a feverish rate. When the frames were separated the portrait was found on the paper surface of the canvas next to the sitter. Although the paint was greasy and stuck to the finger on being touched, it left no stain on the paper surface of the other canvas, which closely covered it. The sitters were requested to bring a photograph of their departed friends, but they were not asked to produce it. The portraits were not copies of the concealed photographs, but the facial resemblance was apparently an imitation. Reportedly the tone often grew richer and deeper afterward.

Moore noticed in his experiments that details were added if he did not look, and when once he mentally desired that a gold locket should be enlarged and decorated with a monogram, the thing was done as requested. He often brought his own frames, sealed the window, searched the premises, and closely watched every movement in the room, yet the picture was obtained as before.

The Bangs sisters also produced these phenomena in public halls before great audiences. Apports of flowers were a frequent occurrence; objects disappeared incomprehensibly; and chemical effects, like ink changing into dirty water, were witnessed.

An early slate-writing séance with Lizzie Bangs is described by A. B. Richmond in What I Saw at Cassadaga Lake (1888): "Soon I heard a faint noise between the slates. It did not sound like writing, but more like the crawling of an insect imprisoned between them, in a few moments there came three distinct raps. I opened the slates and found two messages written in the Morse alphabet, one of them signed by the one to whom the interrogatory was directed, and who could not in this life read or write telegraphy, the other by a prominent jurist who died a number of years ago."

After a trial of many days Richmond obtained three communications between two screwed-together slates. One was signed by Henry Seybert, and the handwriting was the same as that he had obtained a year before in a séance with Pierre Keeler.

The most spectacular direct-writing demonstration by Lizzie Bangs was the direct operation of a typewriter. As described by Quaestor Vitae in Light (January 25, 1896), the machine kept on working when held up in the air by four of the men present. The hand alleged to have done the work also materialized.

In his investigation of the sisters' phenomena, Hereward Carrington refers to an exposé regarding the letter writing inside a sealed enveolope (Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 10). The writer claims to have seen the tricks by means of a small hand mirror that he held beneath the table. He found that, under cover of the writing pad placed against the edges of the slate resting on the table, May Bangs, one of the sisters, wedged open the slate by means of a small rubber wedge; the letter, when abstracted, was dropped on to a sort of "gridiron" arrangement that lay on the carpet. It was promptly drawn backward under a slit in the door into the next room, where Lizzie Bangs, the other sister, steamed the envelope. In the meantime the ink in the cup had time to evaporate so that it appeared to have been used.

A number of testimonies vouching for the Bangs sisters are printed in James Coates 's Photographing the Invisible. But there is no doubt that some of the charges of fraud brought against them in their early career were well borne out. In 1880 and in 1891 they were seized as masquerading materialized spirits under very damaging circumstances, and in 1890 a Colonel Bundy charged them in the Religio-Philosophical Journal with fraud in slate writing. Dr. Richard Hodgson made a thorough investigation of the respective documents. His findings were against the mediums (Light, 1899).

A collection of portraits produced by the Bangs sisters has been preserved in the gallery at the Spiritualist Camp at Chesterfield, Indiana.

Sources:

Abbott, David P. Behind the Scenes With the Mediums. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1909.

——. Spirit Portrait Mystery; Its Final Solution. Chicago, 1913.

[Bangs Sisters]. The Bangs Sisters' Manifesto to the World. Chicago, 1909.

Moore, W. Usborne. Glimpses of the Next State (The Education of an Agnostic). London: Watts, 1911.

With slight alterations from answers.com