Say "ectoplasm" to most people today and they will think: Ghostbusters! In Victorian times, however, ectoplasm meant a mysterious substance that was thought to be exuded from a medium while in a trance: a substance said to formulate itself into the shape of whatever spirit the medium was in touch with at the time. This was called a manifestation.
When I was researching my new book, Velvet, I discovered lots about ectoplasm and saw a selection of rather ludicrous photographs showing something which purported to be it, coming from a medium's nose or mouth. One makes allowances, of course, because the art of photography was in its infancy, but some of these photographs can be seen to be blatant fakes: someone standing draped in a white sheet with a cut-out face stuck on the front of it, another showing a medium with what looks like a couple of tea-towels coming out of her nose.
But people believed in mediums. They believed in them enough to part with hundreds of thousands of pounds in order to hear from those in their families who had died, or were, as they put it, on the Other Side. They were so desperate to believe these messages that on the medium's instructions they sometimes parted with their jewels, gave away their houses and remade their wills. I discovered details of these and similar cases in the Old Bailey records, now online.
Each medium vied with her rivals as to who could produce the most genuine-looking ectoplasm. Accounts of the day say, variously, that it was a slimy substance, a fine muslin-like material, something like smoke or of a rubbery dough-like consistency, all coming from the body of the medium. Members of her audience, kept in the dark and at a distance, were told that if they touched the ectoplasm it might kill the medium. Some women (they were usually women) didn't bother exuding anything, but merely dressed up their young lady assistants in white robes and had them appear in a cloud of smoke.
Sometimes they used various accessories: one used a long kid evening glove stuffed with wool to reach over and touch her sitters, another had a black glove painted with luminous paint, yet another concealed a "spirit baby" beneath her skirts (a stuffed shape attached to a stick and worked by her foot) who came up and peered over the table when called from the netherworld. The medium and her assistants were greatly helped by the séance room being in almost complete darkness.
In 1882, The Society for Psychical Research was formed. This resulted in the numbers of mediums producing ectoplasm going down, and the numbers being prosecuted for fraud going up! All the leading mediums were, at one time, accused of fraud, and only one of them escaped a prison sentence.
Despite all the research I did, I have yet to find proof of it being possible for anyone to be contacted from the "Other Side".