Daniel Dunglas Home: the medium who levitated before hundreds of witnesses

Three people are looking out of a third-floor window. December night. A thick, acrid London fog floats down the street. And outside the window, in the air, a man is floating. Without ropes. Without hidden mechanisms. He simply floats out of one window, hovers above the street at a height of seventy feet, and then glides into another window. That night in 1868, Lord Adare, Captain Wynne, and Master Lindsay were paralyzed with horror.

These are not the sets of a modern mystical thriller. This is a documented fact. The man outside the window was named Daniel Dunglas Home. And in all his life, he was never - not once - caught in fraud.

The Boy Who Heard Knocking

He was born in Scotland in 1833. An illegitimate son, as the neighbors whispered, of some aristocrat. A pale, sickly child, coughing up blood from early childhood. Tuberculosis - the "white plague" of the nineteenth century - would become his eternal companion and, ultimately, his killer.

The strangeness began early. In the family of his aunt, where the boy was sent to be raised (and with whom he later moved to America), the furniture was constantly moving. On its own. At night, a distinct, rhythmic knock was heard in the walls. The aunt, being a woman of strict Presbyterian rules, decided that the guy had brought the devil into the house. And simply threw the seventeen-year-old sick teenager out into the street.

Perhaps this was the best thing that could have happened to him. Because it was the 1850s. The world was going crazy for spiritualism. People desperately wanted to believe that death was not the end. And then Daniel appears. Elegant, with delicate features, a piercing gaze, and the manners of a prince.

He was not like fairground magicians. He refused to take money for his sessions at all. This is a crucial point. Home considered himself a conductor, not an artist. However, he willingly accepted "gifts." Emerald rings, diamond tie pins, custom-made suits, and suites paid for years in advance in the best hotels in Europe. A convenient position, isn't it?

Conquering Emperors and the Wrath of Poets

His tour of Europe resembled a rock star tour. He made heavy oak tables fly to the ceiling in the presence of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. He held sessions for the Russian Tsar Alexander II in the Winter Palace. In St. Petersburg, by the way, he married the Tsar's goddaughter, the noblewoman Sasha Kroll.

Do you know how other mediums' sessions usually went? In complete darkness. Home, on the other hand, insisted on good lighting. Bright gas burners, candles, fireplaces. No dark closets.

He took red-hot coals from the fireplace with his bare hands. Moreover, he put these coals into the hands of the audience. And no one got burned. No smell of burnt flesh. Only reverent whispers. During the sessions, ghostly hands materialized in the air, which shook hands with those present. The hands were warm.

"I touched this hand. It dissolved into my fingers like a cloud of steam, but a second before it was as hard as a human bone," wrote one witness.

But not everyone loved him. The famous poet Robert Browning hated Home from the very first second. Partly because Browning's wife, the poet Elizabeth Barrett, was absolutely fascinated by the medium. Browning, after one of the sessions, wrote a poisonous poem, "Mr. Sludge, 'The Medium'," where he exposed Home as a pathetic charlatan. But even the bilious Browning could not explain exactly how Home moved the furniture in front of his eyes.

Science Raises its Paws

In 1871, science took on Home. Sir William Crookes - an outstanding physicist, chemist, the discoverer of thallium (a man whose name is forever inscribed in textbooks) - decided once and for all to expose this Scottish upstart.

Crookes dragged Home into his laboratory. No exalted ladies, no dark living rooms. Only instruments, scales, dynamometers, and strict control.

One of the tests was this: Crookes bought a new accordion, placed it in a cage made of copper wire, and ran a weak electric current through it (to eliminate invisible threads). Home sat at a distance, holding one hand on the table and the other under the table, but outside the cage.

The accordion began to play. Melody after melody. Crookes watched it, recorded the readings of the instruments and... gave up. He published a report in which he stated directly: the phenomena produced by Home are genuine. They violate the known laws of physics, but they are real.

The scientific community of Britain almost burned Crookes at the stake of public opinion. He was accused of madness, of being hypnotized by Home. But Crookes stood his ground until the end of his life.

Illusion or a Glitch in the Matrix?

There was one major scandal in his life. The wealthy and mad widow Jane Lyon adopted the 33-year-old Home and bequeathed him a colossal sum of 60 thousand pounds. She claimed that the spirit of her deceased husband ordered her to do so. And then she changed her mind and sued, accusing Home of extortion.

Home lost the lawsuit - Victorian justice had no sympathy for people who talked to spirits. He had to return the money. But even in court, they could not prove that he was showing tricks. He was convicted of "undue spiritual influence."

Daniel Dunglas Home died in France at the age of 53. From the same tuberculosis that had gnawed at him since childhood. And do you know what the most amazing thing is in this whole story?

A century and a half has passed. Illusionists have learned to saw women, disappear from the stage, and walk through the Great Wall of China. We know how Copperfield's levitation works - it's a complex system of invisible ropes. But still, no magician, no historian of magic has been able to convincingly and thoroughly explain how a consumptive Scotsman flew out of a third-floor window in 1868. And how he made an accordion play in a wire cage.

Perhaps he was the greatest genius of deception in human history. A man whose sleight of hand surpassed the limits of human anatomy. Or maybe... However, sometimes it's useful to leave room in the world for things we just can't explain.