eight was recorded only when Home placed his
fingers on the mahogany board. It is true, that he placed them on the
end furthest from the balance, and the evidence seems sufficient that he
did not cause the pointer to move by exerting a downward pressure. But
as one critic, Mr. Frank Podmore, has suggested there is no proof that
he did not find opportunity to tamper with the pointer itself or with
some other part of the apparatus by attaching thereto a looped thread or
hair. To quote Mr. Podmore:

"It is by the use of such a thread, I venture to suggest, that the
watchful observation of Mr. Crookes and his colleagues was evaded. Given
a subdued light and opportunity to move about the room--and from
detailed notes of later seances it seems probable that Home could do as
he liked in both respects--the loop could be attached without much risk
of detection to some part of the apparatus, preferably the hook from
which the distal end of the board was suspended, the ends [of the
thread] being fastened to some part of Home's dress, _e.g._, the knees
of his trousers, if his feet and hands were under effectual
observation."[O]

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that, barring the Crookes
investigation, Home's manifestations for the most part occurred in the
presence of men and women who, if not spiritists themselves, had
implicit confidence in his good faith and could by no stretch of the
imagination be called trained investigators. Indeed, it seems safe to
say that had present day methods of inquiry been employed, as they are
employed by the experts of the Society for Psychical Research, Home, so
far at any rate as concerned the great bulk of his phenomena, would
quickly have been placed in the same gallery as Madam Blavatsky, Eusapia
Paladino, and those other wonder workers whom the society has
discredited.

In the matter of the levitations and elongations, however, it is not so
easy to raise the cry of sheer fraud. Here the only rational
explanation, short of supposing that Home availed himself if not of the
aid of "spirits" at least of the aid of some unknown physical force,
seems to be, as was said, the exercise of hypnotic power. The accounts
given by Lord Dunraven, Lord Crawford, and Sir William Crookes show that
he had ample scope for the employment of suggestion as a means of
inducing those about him to imagine they had seen things which they
actually had not seen. In this connection, it seems to me, considerable
sign