Belfast, Northern Ireland
Incident period: Experiments published in 1916; later investigation in 1921
An engineering lecturer takes an Edison phonograph into a Belfast séance room, then puts the medium on a weighing machine. W. J. Crawford wanted to do more than describe moving tables: he wanted to measure where their weight went. His Goligher Circle research left a detailed experimental record and a controversy which continued after his death.
A family circle and an engineering investigator
Crawford’s 1916 book, The Reality of Psychic Phenomena, identifies seven regular sitters: Mr and Mrs Morrison, Kathleen, Lily and Anna Goligher, Mr Goligher and Samuel Goligher. He describes the circle as a family arrangement of father, four daughters, son and son-in-law. Kathleen was the principal medium for the work he reported.
His preface identifies him as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at Belfast’s Municipal Technical Institute and an extra-mural lecturer at Queen’s University. The experiments were carried out during portions of 1915 and 1916. Some had appeared in Light, while other material was being published for the first time.
The family’s spiritual purpose and Crawford’s mechanical questions coexisted. He believed the invisible operators were deceased human beings, but separated that conviction from the book’s main experimental programme. The tests were directed towards sounds, movement, pressure and weight, rather than establishing the personal identities of the supposed communicators.
The room and the red light
The usual setting was an attic room with a bare wooden floor, chairs and a table. A gas lantern fitted with red glass supplied illumination. Crawford brought apparatus as required and used a small lamp with red covering when he needed to inspect instruments.
The reported phenomena included knocks ranging from light taps to heavy blows, a bell ringing and tables moving or rising. Crawford describes the table pitching like a boat as well as remaining approximately level. His experiments repeatedly distinguish a steady levitation from an object rocking or shifting while a reading is being taken.
Preparing a cylinder before the sitting
For the phonograph experiment, Crawford sought help from T. Edens Osborne, who had experience with the machines. They first practised in an uncarpeted room at Osborne’s premises. A penknife handle supplied imitation raps so that they could test the distance between sound and recording trumpet.
An Edison Standard phonograph was used. Crawford recorded a spoken introduction naming the medium and the date, 11 June 1915, leaving the rest of the cylinder blank. At the eight o’clock sitting he placed the instrument on folded newspapers to reduce unwanted vibration from the floor.
The intended recording time was about ninety seconds. Crawford describes explaining the machine, arranging a rehearsal and waiting for the knocks which signalled readiness. In his account the participants treated the sound-making presence as capable of understanding instructions and cooperating with the recording.
What the phonograph captured
Once the machine started, Crawford heard heavy blows, double and triple knocks and a scraping or shuffling sound. A handbell was brought near the trumpet and eventually knocked it aside. The account records three satisfactory cylinders and one partly spoiled result.
The sounds were subsequently played away from the séance room. Crawford reproduces Light’s notice of a London demonstration involving Horace Leaf in July 1915. The recording experiment was intended to show that the noises could be registered by a machine, rather than existing only in the sitters’ impressions.
That purpose is narrower than identifying their cause. A cylinder can preserve an audible knock without showing the hand, foot, object or other agency which made it. Nor does the published description establish that a playable copy is available online today. The surviving material checked for this file is Crawford’s account of making and demonstrating the records.
Putting Kathleen on the weighing machine
The next investigation asked where the reaction to a raised table would appear. Crawford used an Avery platform weighing machine, a wooden drawing board and a chair. The platform measured twenty-two by seventeen inches; the larger board gave Kathleen enough space to sit with her feet supported on the same weighed assembly.
After an initial period holding hands, the sitters separated and placed their hands on their knees. Crawford says he arranged Kathleen’s hands himself and stood close to her right side. He balanced the combined medium, chair and board before asking for a steady rise of the table.
The ordinary rectangular deal table weighed ten pounds six ounces. In experiment 2 he recorded an increase of nine pounds twelve ounces in the weighed assembly while the table was raised, ten ounces short of the table’s weight. In experiment 3 the increase was ten pounds eight ounces, two ounces more. These are the book’s reported readings, including their differences, rather than one perfect equality substituted for several trials.
From measurements to a cantilever theory
Crawford developed a model in which an invisible structure extended from the medium and supported the table like a cantilever: a beam fixed at one end and free at the other. He compared changes in weight, horizontal resistance, downward force on balances and the medium’s bodily tension with what that model would predict.
He proposed that most of the reaction was borne by Kathleen, with a smaller contribution from the other sitters. The diagrams represent his explanation of the measurements. They should not be mistaken for photographs of an ordinary visible beam which he had uncovered beneath the table.
The distinction between observation and model is one of the record’s useful features. Readers can follow what Crawford says the machine did, then examine the additional structure he proposed to account for it. His own confidence was strong, but the sequence is still available for others to inspect.
The later challenge and the Belfast reference point
A later inquiry brought a different assessment. The Psi Encyclopedia summarises E. E. Fournier d’Albe’s twenty sittings in 1921, including his allegations of foot-assisted movement and his conclusion that the phenomena were produced by trickery. It also describes Eric Dingwall’s objections to treating that report as a complete explanation of every earlier observation. Those later positions are cited here through the checked overview, separately from Crawford’s directly read book.
The map uses a broad Belfast reference rather than publishing an inferred private residential address. The case belongs to the city’s history of Spiritualism and psychical research. Its detail lies in a small room filled with very tangible apparatus: cylinders, boards, tables and balances, brought together in an effort to measure something the investigator believed was invisible.
Timeline
1915–1916 — experiments described in Crawford’s first book.
11 June 1915 — phonograph recording experiment.
July–August 1915 — London playback and Light notice reproduced by Crawford.
September 1916 — Crawford dates his preface in Belfast.
1916 — The Reality of Psychic Phenomena published.
1921 — Fournier d’Albe conducts the later inquiry summarised in the linked overview.
Sources & further reading
W. J. Crawford, The Reality of Psychic Phenomena, 1916, chapters 1–3 and 9 — Public-domain primary experimental account: family, conditions, phonograph, weighing tests and cantilever model read directly.
Psi Encyclopedia, Goligher Circle, criticism and controversy section — Modern overview checked for the 1921 inquiry and Dingwall’s response; distinguished from direct reading of Crawford.
Related case files
Crookes and D. D. Home, 1871: the accordion cage and the moving balance
The Scole Experiment: the Norfolk cellar, moving lights and the surviving séance archive
Location note: Broad Belfast reference for the research history; not an identified or publicly accessible séance room.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.