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Ectoplasm
What is ectoplasm?
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| A strange visage appears on a piece of cloth next to the head of medium Marthe Beraud (aka Eva C) during a seance, circa 1910. Ectoplasm got its start in such seances. |
Ectoplasm emerged as a nifty way for mediums to
"show" people that those spirits really did exist and could
physically manifest. Usually, this ectoplasm would kind of ooze from the body
-- the mouth, an ear or any other orifice you could imagine. This ectoplasm
sometimes looked like gauzy, cloth-like material or mysteriously took the form
of faces of the spirit that was being invited to talk. Some of the most famous "physical"
mediums were later found to be cutting out pictures from newspapers and using
the cover of darkness to "manifest" the stuff
BY
KATE KERSHNER
To most of us, the definition of ectoplasm is
"a slime in 'Ghostbusters.'"
To a more select group of people, it is the
outer layer of cytoplasm that helps make up an amoeba.
And to an even smaller subset of the
population, ectoplasm is a substance that secretes off spirits -- or their
earthbound medium -- and might just help that medium produce spooky,
otherworldly feats for awed witnesses.
Now. Guess which explanation for ectoplasm is
actually rooted in reality?
It doesn't exactly take a biologist to figure
out that we should probably go for the amoeba one, as it does sound vaguely
familiar -- in that high school science class kind of way. Also, ghosts aren't
real.
But don't tell that to the small, yet vocal,
part of our audience who chose the latter definition.
Because for a long time, ectoplasm was
absolutely something mysterious but not altogether insane -- if you were
hanging out at séances, that is.
In a séance, a medium supposedly communicates
(or helps others communicate with) a spirit.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries,
séances were a popular fad. People were quite into the idea that souls or
spirits were floating around us, waiting to be nudged with a question.
Ectoplasm emerged as a nifty way for mediums
to "show" people that those spirits really did exist and could
physically manifest.
Usually, this ectoplasm would kind of ooze
from the body -- the mouth, an ear or (let's just be polite) any other orifice
you could imagine.
This ectoplasm sometimes looked like gauzy,
cloth-like material or mysteriously took the form of faces of the spirit that
was being invited to talk.
Still others would just swallow some cloth or
paper and spit it up for effect. A kind of gross trick, but not really from
another dimension, after all.
It's pretty easy to find lots of photographic
"evidence" of the kind of spooky ectoplasm mediums were into.
And it probably isn't a huge surprise that
people took these pictures as proof; in the burgeoning days of photography, it
was easy to assume that white splotches on a badly rendered picture were ghosts
or that the carefully staged pictures were candid.
Lesson being, for those asking you for a
definition of ectoplasm at a party, you can really judge what kinds of people
they are by which definition they cleave to.
Kate
Kershner,
Contributing Writer
Kate Kershner has a degree in creative writing from Western Washington University.
Kate Kershner has a degree in creative writing from Western Washington University.
