A Word on 'Ectoplasm'

Ectoplasm is an as yet mysterious substance that is exuded from the body’s orifices. It presents itself as a vapor or liquid that quickly solidifies and is molded into various shapes or forms. These range from clouds in which images may appear, to disembodied limbs, to phantoms that walk among and converse with observers. It is also subject to the psychological idiosyncrasies of individual personalities, and may at times be influenced by what Jung called the “trickster” aspect of our psyches.

The medium Helen Duncan’s was said to form as a clear material and, very much like egg albumin when cooked, become opaque. An analysis of a sample was said to contain albumin.

In a letter to the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR) a member, Denise Iredell, described Duncan’s ectoplasm as a “milky substance spilled from her nostrils” that would ebb and flow “to and from the floor” and would “snake out across the floor to the ankle level” of the sitter who had been called. She compared it with “the movement and solidification of egg white which spills from a broken egg in a pot of boiling water.”

She reported that it concentrated and intensified into a “blob” between four and six feet above the ground but with a “misty substance swirling around the lower levels,” and smaller putty-like blobs, which formed on the head of the emerging figure and then refined into features....<<<Read More>>>...