Eldred, Charles (ca. 1906)
Notorious false materialization medium of Nottingham,
England, during the early years of the twentieth century. He
came into public notice when the journal Light (September 2,
1905) published a description of one of his early séances. The
following year Eldred was unmasked at a séance in London by
Abraham Wallace. A cavity was found in the back part of the
chair on which he was sitting and in it was discovered, after the
séance, a collapsible dummy head of stockinette with a fleshcolored
mask, six pieces of white Chinese silk measuring 13
yards in all, and other properties of fake mediumship. ElEncyclopedia
of Occultism & Parapsychology 5th Ed. Eldred, Charles
487
dred had claimed that this chair was highly magnetized, enabling
spirit entities to manifest readily.
According to a friend of Eldreds, the unmasked medium asserted
that the first phenomena of materialization that he produced
were quite authentic but that afterward he could not satisfy
the demands made upon him but by simulation. Even if this
was true, the carefully premeditated fraud of Eldreds magnetized
traveling chair completely negated any claim to genuine
mediumship on his part.
Sources:
Exposure of Mr. Eldred. Journal of the Society for Psychical
Research 12: 24252.
Letort, Ellen. The Frauds of Mediums. Annals of Psychic
Science 3, no. 6 (1906).
