Experimental Apparatus
Sparing no effort, I built a table similar in design to the one shown in the photographs of Miss Goligher. Cosmetic differences aside, this is a reasonable approximation of the table lifted and tilted by the medium studied by Crawford and should allow for some reasonable comparisons to be made.
An ordinary bathroom scale was used to determine how much the table weighs and how many kilograms it registers when used to lift the table at the edge. Multiplying by the gravitational constant of 9.81 gives the force in Newtons for either lifting or tilting the table.
Weighing the table shows that its mass is 6.44 kilograms. That means a force of about 63.2 Newtons would be needed to lift the table from the floor.
To lift the
table directly, as shown here, would take a force of precisely
the same magnitude as the weight. The experiment bore out
my calculation. The scale registers exactly the weight of
the table.
To simply
tilt the table, however, requires 28 Newtons, as measured
with the scale. (My calculations indicated that it should
take 26 Newtons to tilt the table, but the observed figure is
close enough to make me happy with my methods.)
For control
purposes, I waited for the table to lift or tilt due to
spirit-controlled forces, even going so far as to request that
any spirits present make themselves known by lifting the table.
Rather sadly, nothing of the sort happened. (Not at all
surprising, but still disappointing.) In the absence of an
ectoplasm-producing spirit medium, I seem to be unable to
reproduce the purported phenomena of the Goligher séances.
A picture was
deemed anticlimactic.
Lack of photo by Patrick Woolery