Jesper is for many years interested and involved into the arts of professional stage illusion and magic.
Although he was experiencing something during the experiment he considered “highly persuasive” the next morning:
When in the 30ies Thomas Mann, the well known German Lyricist, was invited by the German Researcher Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing to join a sitting with the famous physical medium “Rudi Schneider” he did not know, that the report he was going to write afterwards still count to the most quoted observations in regard of genuine Physical Mediumship.
Thomas Mann was experiencing how a handkerchief was taken out of his hands by unknown means and in a quite peculiar way.
Since “Rudi Schneider” had joined the FEG Spirit Team the experiment is repeated in nearly every seance.
Please read, what the Danish Lawyer and Hobby Magician Jesper N. Nielsen did observe the 1rst of May 2011 during a Seance for the First Swedish Spiritualist Church:
Independent witness account
By Jesper N. Nielsen, LL.M. (lawyer)
On the 1st of May 2011 I had the pleasure of attending a seance held in Sweden with Kai Muegge as spiritualist medium. Present were – other than Kai – his “on the road” circle leader, Julia Huebner, and a group of approximately 15 attendees from mainly Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and UK. The latter were not associated with Kai nor his experimental circle, FEG, but were all in one way or another practitioners of physical mediumship.
During the seance a variety of phenomena could be witnessed by the group. This account focuses on the evidentiary value of one of these phenomena. As a lawyer I have a natural skepticism towards alleged evidence. Lawyers use many types of evidence in various situations, but unlike other academic practitioners lawyers never produce evidence; we merely evaluate, scrutinize, and interpret, all to determine the evidentiary value of a given factual circumstance or piece of information.
Keeping in mind the extraordinary illusions performed by some magicians, I was looking for things that could not be produced or manipulated by human beings or any kind of tool. I had the opportunity to check the entire seance room and search the attendees before entering, and I was satisfied that there was nothing out of the order. As a youngster I was an amateur magician, so I have a good understanding of what to look for. I should mention that I have no reason to suspect Kai Muegge nor the attendees of any fraud, but if evidence is the goal, one must have a stringent attitude towards the procurement of it.
With all settled in and the medium entranced, a wind chime attached in the ceiling began chiming. Kai Muegges spirit control took over and led the seance ahead.
Amongst the phenomena witnessed, I found the following, so called “handkerchief experiment”, to be the most interesting.
This was a very convincing phenomenon. A handkerchief with pieces of luminescent tape was held by sitters towards the middle of the room until an entity had a sufficiently tight grip on it to take it out of the sitter’s hand after which the handkerchief flew across the room in a varied movement and landed on or near another sitter. I had the opportunity to hold the handkerchief twice as I let go too soon the first time and was prompted to pick it up and try again. But at both times the handkerchief was being gripped and pulled. Once in the air I was left with only the visual sense. But while holding it I could see the entire handkerchief as well as feel the gripping and pulling. And this was the most interesting part: The handkerchief was being gripped and pulled in every part of it. When a piece of fabric is being gripped or pulled at, the one holding the other end will sense it and it will be isolated to the part of the fabric that is being gripped or pulled. I.e. if two corners are being held the other to corners will hang loose. And if all corners are pulled one will feel the etches stretch accordingly while the middle will sway. The same is of course the case whether the fabric is being pulled by a hand, strings, or some type of gripping device.
But this was different. I could feel the handkerchief being gripped at every part. Much like if I had been holding something stiff like a piece of wood or metal where no part will sway or hang. If you hold out a piece of metal or wood and someone grabs around it you will feel the grip, but the item will remain solid, quite unlike the case of a handkerchief. In this case the handkerchief somehow felt solid. But at the same time it fluttered in the air (the part of it not in my hand).
The only similar sensation I can think of is the feeling you have when the wind is pulling hard on a kite that you are holding in your hand, or if you shake your towel at the beach on a very windy day and the wind pulls at it and blows air underneath and above it. The power of the wind gets to every part of the kite or the towel at the same time which can clearly be felt when holding it in the hand. But in this situation there was no wind, yet the movement and force felt when holding the handkerchief would correspond to being in a wind tunnel.
In terms of evidentiary value I found this phenomenon to triumph many of the other phenomena witnessed. It was possible to use both the senses of vision and feeling and the combination of seeing a handkerchief dangling/fluttering quite naturally whilst feeling a very forceful grip and pull on every part of it with no directional orientation was, to me, very defiant of any “natural” causes.
– Jesper N. Nielsen