59-417: Nightmare Alley may refer to: Nightmare Alley (novel) , a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham Nightmare Alley (1947 film) , a film noir, based on the novel Nightmare Alley (2021 film) , a drama thriller film, a new adaptation of the novel Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
118-402: A Ten-in-One where he has recently begun working. He later asks the carnival's talker Clem Hoately where geeks come from. Clem explains that geeks are "made": a sideshow owner finds an alcoholic bum and offers him a temporary job with a steady supply of liquor. Initially, the bum is only asked to pretend to be a geek, using a razor blade to slice chickens' necks and then faking the drinking of
177-460: A psychologist named Lilith Ritter, who seduces and then begins controlling him. Stan pleads constantly for them to go away together, and Lilith eventually agrees, suggesting the Rev. Carlisle swindle a rich man for the getaway money. They settle on Ezra Grindle, a ruthless auto tycoon with a skeptical interest in the occult . Stan manages to convince Grindle of his powers, and the businessman becomes
236-527: A "spirit-hand" was a false limb attached on the end of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home 's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room. The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers. During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy. Browning seized
295-449: A 2010 review, American critic Michael Dirda proclaimed, "I was utterly unprepared for its raw, Dostoevskian power... It's not often that a novel leaves a weathered and jaded reviewer like myself utterly flattened, but this one did....it's more than just a steamy noir classic. As a portrait of the human condition, Nightmare Alley is a creepy, all-too-harrowing masterpiece." Author and creative writing professor Dwight V. Swain described
354-436: A 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight featuring prominent purported mediums including Theresa Caputo , John Edward , Tyler Henry , and Sylvia Browne , John Oliver criticized the media for promoting mediums because this exposure convinces viewers that such powers are real, and so enable neighborhood mediums to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens
413-464: A connecting ledge between two iron balconies. The psychologist and psychical researcher Stanley LeFevre Krebs had exposed the Bangs Sisters as frauds. During a séance he employed a hidden mirror and caught them tampering with a letter in an envelope and writing a reply in it under the table which they would pretend a spirit had written. The British materialization medium Rosina Mary Showers
472-492: A devoted spiritualist. Stan keeps Grindle hooked by promising to reunite him with his deceased college sweetheart Dorrie, who died in a botched back-alley abortion Grindle convinced her to seek. A reluctant Molly plays "Dorrie" in a series of sessions but eventually breaks character, destroying the illusion. In a rage Stan punches Molly and Grindle and flees the scene. At Lilith's suggestion he decides to go into hiding with Grindle's money but later discovers that Lilith has stolen
531-423: A fascinating application of psychology and not the existence of paranormal abilities. In a series of experiments holding fake séances, (Wiseman et al . 2003) paranormal believers and disbelievers were suggested by an actor that a table was levitating when, in fact, it remained stationary. After the seance, approximately one third of the participants incorrectly reported that the table had moved. The results showed
590-440: A gambler reminiscent of her father, and gives birth to a son. Eventually Stan becomes a hobo, staying afloat by giving Tarot readings and selling horoscopes , but ends up murdering a police officer who attacks him while he sells his merchandise. A final reconnection with Zeena provides him an opportunity to again make living in the carnival, but he breaks completely and descends into alcoholism and depression when he discovers through
649-477: A greater percentage of believers reporting that the table had moved. In another experiment the believers had also reported that a handbell had moved when it had remained stationary and expressed their belief that the fake séances contained genuine paranormal phenomena. The experiments strongly supported the notion that in the séance room, believers are more suggestible than disbelievers for suggestions that are consistent with their belief in paranormal phenomena. In
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#1732794395380708-407: A majority of it by replacing the five-hundred-dollar bills with singles. When he confronts her, she tells him that he is deluded and attempts to have him committed to a mental institution, and he narrowly escapes. He flees and resorts to performing as a mentalist at increasingly shoddy venues, trying to evade the men he falsely believes Grindle is sending after him. During this time, Molly takes up with
767-503: A medium is doing a "reading" for a particular person, that person is known as the "sitter". In the 1860s and 1870s, trance mediums, also known as trance speakers, were very popular; this allowed female adherents, many who had strong interests in social justice, to speak in public in an era where doing so went against existing social norms. Many trance mediums delivered passionate speeches on abolitionism , temperance , and women's suffrage . Scholars have described Leonora Piper as one of
826-417: A newspaper article that Lilith has wed Grindle. His life in shambles, a drunk Stan finds a carnival owner and asks to join the sideshow as a palm reader. The owner gives Stan some whiskey but refuses his proposal, saying the show is full. But as Stan begins to stumble out, the owner changes his tune and invites Stan back in with a job offer: "Of course, it's only temporary – just until we get a real geek." In
885-463: A trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison. In 1876, William Eglinton was exposed as a fraud when the psychical researcher Thomas Colley seized a "spirit" materialization in his séance and cut off a portion of its cloak. It was discovered that the cut piece matched a cloth found in Eglinton's suitcase . Colley also pulled the beard off
944-477: A vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services." From its earliest beginnings to contemporary times, mediumship practices have had many instances of fraud and trickery. Séances take place in darkness so the poor lighting conditions can become an easy opportunity for fraud. Physical mediumship that has been investigated by scientists has been discovered to be
1003-483: A very serious scientific interest in the work of medium Eusapia Palladino . Other prominent adherents included journalist and pacifist William T. Stead (1849–1912) and physician and author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930). After the exposure of the fraudulent use of stage magic tricks by physical mediums such as the Davenport Brothers and the Bangs Sisters , mediumship fell into disrepute. However,
1062-436: Is a novel by American writer William Lindsay Gresham , published in 1946. It is a study of the depths of show business and its immoral inhabitants—the dark, shadowy world of a second-rate carnival filled with hustlers, scheming grifters , and Machiavellian femmes fatales . Gresham attributed the origin of Nightmare Alley to conversations he had with a former carnival worker while they were both serving as volunteers with
1121-421: Is associated with spiritualism and spiritism . A similar New Age practice is known as channeling . Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of empirical evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship for more than one hundred years and have consistently failed to confirm them. As late as 2005, an experiment undertaken by
1180-545: Is played by fraud in spiritualistic practices, both in the physical and psychical, or automatic, phenomena, but especially in the former. The frequency with which mediums have been convicted of fraud has, indeed, induced many people to abandon the study of psychical research, judging the whole bulk of the phenomena to be fraudulently produced. In Britain, the Society for Psychical Research has investigated mediumship phenomena. Critical SPR investigations into purported mediums and
1239-415: Is still rife in the medium or psychic industry, with cases of deception and trickery being discovered to this day. Several different variants of mediumship have been described; arguably the best-known forms involve a spirit purportedly taking control of a medium's voice and using it to relay a message, or where the medium simply "hears" the message and passes it on. Other forms involve materializations of
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#17327943953801298-523: The British Psychological Society reaffirmed that test subjects who self-identified as mediums demonstrated no mediumistic ability. Mediumship gained popularity during the nineteenth century when ouija boards were used as a source of entertainment. Investigations during this period revealed widespread fraud —with some practitioners employing techniques used by stage magicians —and the practice began to lose credibility. Fraud
1357-404: The "materialization" and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. Browning's son Robert in a letter to The Times , December 5, 1902, referred to the incident "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud." The researchers Joseph McCabe and Trevor H. Hall exposed the " levitation " of Home as nothing more than his moving across
1416-638: The "products of the medium's own psychological dynamics." A fraudulent medium may obtain information about their sitters by secretly eavesdropping on sitter's conversations or searching telephone directories, the internet and newspapers before the sittings. A technique called cold reading can also be used to obtain information from the sitter's behavior, clothing, posture, and jewellery. The psychologist Richard Wiseman has written: Cold reading also explains why psychics have consistently failed scientific tests of their powers. By isolating them from their clients, psychics are unable to pick up information from
1475-585: The 1920s, was among the most prominent debunkers of psychic fraud during the mid-20th century. Many 19th century mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud . While advocates of mediumship claim that their experiences are genuine, the Encyclopædia Britannica article on spiritualism notes in reference to a case in the 19th century that "...one by one, the Spiritualist mediums were discovered to be engaged in fraud, sometimes employing
1534-721: The Biblical account of the Witch of Endor . Mediumship became quite popular in the 19th-century United States and the United Kingdom after the rise of Spiritualism as a religious movement. Modern Spiritualism is said to date from practices and lectures of the Fox sisters in New York State in 1848. The trance mediums Paschal Beverly Randolph and Emma Hardinge Britten were among the most celebrated lecturers and authors on
1593-591: The Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War . Gresham wrote the novel, his first, while working as an editor for a " true crime ", pulp magazine in New York City during the 1940s. He outlined the plot and wrote the first six chapters over a period of two years, then finished the book in four months. Each chapter is represented by a different Tarot card . Stanton Carlisle watches the geek show at
1652-705: The United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, over 340 Spiritualist churches and centres open their doors to the public and free demonstrations of mediumship are regularly performed. In 1958, American Spiritualist C. Dorreen Phillips wrote of her experiences with a medium at Camp Chesterfield , Indiana : "In Rev. James Laughton's séances there are many Indians . They are very noisy and appear to have great power. [...] The little guides, or doorkeepers, are usually Indian boys and girls [who act] as messengers who help to locate
1711-576: The arts of the séance" by Herne and was repeatedly exposed as a fraudulent medium. The medium Henry Slade was caught in fraud many times throughout his career. In a séance in 1876 in London Ray Lankester and Bryan Donkin snatched his slate before the "spirit" message was supposed to be written, and found the writing already there. Slade also played an accordion with one hand under the table and claimed spirits would play it. The magician Chung Ling Soo revealed how Slade had performed
1770-560: The blood. After a few weeks, the owner threatens to end the job and replace the bum with a "real" geek, and the fear of sobering up terrifies the bum into actually biting the chickens. Thus, a geek is made. Stan performs sleight of hand tricks in the sideshow but studies under the carnival's mentalist Zeena to learn a refined "code" act, where performers memorize verbal cues that allow them to appear psychic by accurately answering written audience questions. Stan also begins to pick up Zeena's talent for cold reading . He eventually leaves
1829-409: The brain. Physical mediumship is defined as manipulation of energies and energy systems by spirits. This type of mediumship is said to involve perceptible manifestations, such as loud raps and noises, voices, materialized objects, apports, materialized spirit bodies, or body parts such as hands, legs and feet. The medium is used as a source of power for such spirit manifestations. By some accounts, this
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1888-399: The carnival with the beautiful and naïve electric girl Molly Cahill to perform a team code act. Their act becomes very successful, but Stan grows bored and transforms himself into Reverend Carlisle, an upstanding spiritualist preacher offering séance sessions with the help of his medium . Stan gains a devoted following, but the stress of leading a false life leads him to seek the help of
1947-534: The conclusion of Nightmare Alley as an exemplar of a novel with an unhappy ending that was nonetheless a "fitting ending," where the protagonist brought misfortune on himself. Mediumship Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling , including séance tables , trance , and ouija . The practice
2006-489: The exposure of fake mediums has led to a number of resignations by Spiritualist members. On the subject of fraud in mediumship Paul Kurtz wrote: No doubt a great importance in the paranormal field is the problem of fraud. The field of psychic research and spiritualism has been so notoriously full of charlatans, such as the Fox sisters and Eusapia Palladino –individuals who claim to have special power and gifts but who are actually conjurers who have hoodwinked scientists and
2065-429: The hypothesis that spirits speak independently of the medium, who facilitates the phenomenon rather than produces it. The role of the medium is to make the connection between the physical and spirit worlds. Trumpets are often utilised to amplify the signal, and directed voice mediums are sometimes known as "trumpet mediums". This form of mediumship also permits the medium to participate in the discourse during séances, since
2124-460: The materialization and it was revealed to be a fake, the same as another one found in the suitcase of Eglinton. In 1880 in a séance a spirit named "Yohlande" materialized, a sitter grabbed it and was revealed to be the medium Mme. d'Esperance herself. In September 1878 the British medium Charles Williams and his fellow-medium at the time, A. Rita, were detected in trickery at Amsterdam. During
2183-634: The medium and that there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis. The idea of mediumship being explained by telepathy was later merged into the " super-ESP " hypothesis of mediumship which is currently advocated by some parapsychologists . In their book How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age , authors Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn have noted that the spiritualist and ESP hypothesis of mediumship "has yielded no novel predictions, assumes unknown entities or forces, and conflicts with available scientific evidence." Scientists who study anomalistic psychology consider mediumship to be
2242-420: The medium's voice is not required by the spirit to communicate. Leslie Flint was one of the best known exponents of this form of mediumship. Senses used by mental mediums are sometimes defined differently from in other paranormal fields. A medium is said to have psychic abilities but not all psychics function as mediums. The term clairvoyance , for instance, may include seeing spirit and visions instilled by
2301-427: The modern form of the old mediumship, where the "channel" (or channeller) purportedly receives messages from "teaching-spirit", an " Ascended master ", from God , or from an angelic entity , but essentially through the filter of his own waking consciousness (or " Higher Self "). Attempts to communicate with the dead and other living human beings, aka spirits, have been documented back to early human history, such as
2360-566: The most famous trance mediums in the history of Spiritualism. Trance speakers believed that entering a trance gave them access to the spirits and, through them, to knowledge inaccessible in the waking world. Sometimes an assistant would write down the medium's words, such as in the early 20th century collaboration between the trance medium Mrs. Cecil M. Cook of the William T. Stead Memorial Center in Chicago (a religious body incorporated under
2419-405: The precepts of Prophecy and Healing are Divine attributes proven through Mediumship." "Mental mediumship" is communication of spirits with a medium by telepathy . The medium mentally "hears" (clairaudience), "sees" (clairvoyance), and/or feels (clairsentience) messages from spirits. Directly or with the help of a spirit guide, the medium passes the information on to the message's recipient(s). When
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2478-423: The public as well–that we have to be especially cautious about claims made on their behalf. Magicians have a long history of exposing the fraudulent methods of mediumship. Early debunkers included Chung Ling Soo , Henry Evans and Julien Proskauer . Later magicians to reveal fraud were Joseph Dunninger , Harry Houdini and Joseph Rinn . Rose Mackenberg , a private investigator who worked with Houdini during
2537-560: The religion and its beliefs continue in spite of this, with physical mediumship and seances falling out of practice and platform mediumship coming to the fore. In the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around one quarter of a million practising Spiritualists and some two thousand Spiritualist societies in the UK in addition to flourishing microcultures of platform mediumship and 'home circles'. Spiritualism continues to be practised, primarily through various denominational Spiritualist churches in
2596-451: The result of deception and trickery. Ectoplasm, a supposed paranormal substance, was revealed to have been made from cheesecloth, butter, muslin, and cloth. Mediums would also stick cut-out faces from magazines and newspapers onto cloth or on other props and use plastic dolls in their séances to pretend to their audiences spirits were contacting them. Lewis Spence in his book An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1960) wrote: A very large part
2655-486: The result of fraud and psychological factors. Research from psychology for over a hundred years suggests that where there is not fraud, mediumship and Spiritualist practices can be explained by hypnotism , magical thinking and suggestion . Trance mediumship, which according to Spiritualists is caused by discarnate spirits speaking through the medium, can be explained by dissociative identity disorder . Illusionists, such as Joseph Rinn have staged fake séances in which
2714-560: The sitters have claimed to have observed genuine supernatural phenomena. Albert Moll studied the psychology of séance sitters. According to (Wolffram, 2012) "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena." The psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones in their book Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking (1989) wrote that spirits controls are
2773-458: The spirit friends who wish to speak with you." A spirit who uses a medium to manipulate psychic "energy" or "energy systems." In old-line Spiritualism, a portion of the services, generally toward the end, is given over to demonstrations of mediumship through purported contact with the spirits of the dead. A typical example of this way of describing a mediumistic church service is found in the 1958 autobiography of C. Dorreen Phillips. She writes of
2832-656: The spirit or the presence of a voice, and telekinetic activity. In Spiritism and Spiritualism the medium has the role of an intermediary between the world of the living and the world of spirit. Mediums say that they can listen to and relay messages from spirits, or that they can allow a spirit to control their body and speak through it directly or by using automatic writing or drawing . Spiritualists classify types of mediumship into two main categories: "mental" and "physical": During seances, mediums are said to go into trances , varying from light to deep, that permit spirits to control their minds. Channeling can be seen as
2891-586: The spirit world. The Parapsychological Association defines "clairvoyance" as information derived directly from an external physical source. Spiritualists believe that phenomena produced by mediums (both mental and physical mediumship) are the result of external spirit agencies. The psychical researcher Thomson Jay Hudson in The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1892) and Théodore Flournoy in his book Spiritism and Psychology (1911) wrote that all kinds of mediumship could be explained by suggestion and telepathy from
2950-550: The statutes of the State of Illinois) and the journalist Lloyd Kenyon Jones . The latter was a non-medium Spiritualist who transcribed Cook's messages in shorthand . He edited them for publication in book and pamphlet form. Castillo (1995) states, Trance phenomena result from the behavior of intense focusing of attention, which is the key psychological mechanism of trance induction. Adaptive responses, including institutionalized forms of trance, are 'tuned' into neural networks in
3009-526: The subject in the mid-19th century. Allan Kardec coined the term Spiritism around 1860. Kardec wrote that conversations with spirits by selected mediums were the basis of his The Spirits' Book and later, his five-book collection, Spiritist Codification . Some scientists of the period who investigated Spiritualism also became converts. They included chemist Robert Hare , physicist William Crookes (1832–1919) and evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). Nobel laureate Pierre Curie took
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#17327943953803068-528: The techniques of stage magicians in their attempts to convince people of their clairvoyant powers." The article also notes that "the exposure of widespread fraud within the spiritualist movement severely damaged its reputation and pushed it to the fringes of society in the United States." At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter Frederick Merrifield observed that
3127-490: The title Nightmare Alley . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nightmare_Alley&oldid=1061007509 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Nightmare Alley (novel) Nightmare Alley
3186-429: The trick. The British medium Francis Ward Monck was investigated by psychical researchers and discovered to be a fraud. On November 3, 1876, during the séance a sitter demanded that Monck be searched. Monck ran from the room, locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window. A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room, as well as cheesecloth, reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage. After
3245-471: The tricks she had used. Frank Herne a British medium who formed a partnership with the medium Charles Williams was repeatedly exposed in fraudulent materialization séances. In 1875, he was caught pretending to be a spirit during a séance in Liverpool and was found "clothed in about two yards of stiffened muslin, wound round his head and hanging down as far as his thigh." Florence Cook had been "trained in
3304-408: The way those clients dress or behave. By presenting all of the volunteers involved in the test with all of the readings, they are prevented from attributing meaning to their own reading, and therefore can't identify it from readings made for others. As a result, the type of highly successful hit rate that psychics enjoy on a daily basis comes crashing down and the truth emerges – their success depends on
3363-781: The worship services at the Spiritualist Camp Chesterfield in Chesterfield, Indiana : "Services are held each afternoon, consisting of hymns, a lecture on philosophy, and demonstrations of mediumship." Today "demonstration of mediumship" is part of the church service at all churches affiliated with the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) and the Spiritualists' National Union (SNU). Demonstration links to NSAC's Declaration of Principal #9. "We affirm that
3422-467: Was achieved by using the energy or ectoplasm released by a medium, see spirit photography . The last physical medium to be tested by a committee from Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924. Most physical mediumship is presented in a darkened or dimly lit room. Most physical mediums make use of a traditional array of tools and appurtenances, including spirit trumpets, spirit cabinets, and levitation tables. Direct voice communication refers to
3481-571: Was caught in many fraudulent séances throughout her career. In 1874 during a séance with Edward William Cox a sitter looked into the cabinet and seized the spirit, the headdress fell off and was revealed to be Showers. In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers. Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed
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