In a section dealing with
nineteenth-century Spiritualism in Chasing
the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural (2025), Ben Machell makes the
startling claim about the medium Daniel Dunglas Home that “among other things
he faced accusations of being a werewolf” (p. 30). He does not elaborate, and as there are no
references in the book he does not indicate where he obtained this information.
However, the section detailing which books
and online resources he found useful cites Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters: William James and
the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (2006) as a
major source for his information on the early years of the Society for
Psychical Research. In it, Blum refers
to “a proposal by an anthropologist that Home was actually a werewolf ‘with the
power of acting on the minds of sensitive spectators’” (p. 46).
Like Machell, she does not name the source
or the anthropologist, but she was referring to an 1872 article in Nature by Edward Burnett Tylor,
‘Ethnology and Spiritualism. Tylor, who
had sat with a number of mediums, including Home (see Stocking, 1971; Kalvig,
2017), was not someone likely to suggest that a human could literally transform
into a werewolf. So, what did he
actually say?
‘Ethnology and Spiritualism’ was a tart
reply to Alfred Russel Wallace’s review in The
Academy (15 February 1872) of Tylor’s two-volume Primitive Culture (1871).
Wallace had taken issue with Tylor’s discussion of werewolves. In Primitive
Culture, Tylor argued that what we would call paranormal beliefs – such as
magic, witchcraft, animism, sorcery and mediumship – were not genuine
supernatural events but misinterpretations of natural experiences. He addressed the belief that humans could
transform into creatures such as werewolves and suggested two explanations: it
was consistent with notions of the transmigration of souls; alternatively, it
was a delusion, individuals erroneously believing they had transformed into
one:
“It may be noticed, however, that such a
notion [i.e. of werewolves] is quite consistent with the animistic theory that
a man's soul may go out of his body and enter that of a beast or bird, and also
with the opinion that men may be transformed into animals; both these ideas
having an important place in the belief of mankind, from savagery onward. The
doctrine of werewolves is substantially that of a temporary metempsychosis or
metamorphosis. Now it really occurs that, in various forms of mental disease,
patients prowl shyly, long to bite and destroy mankind, and even fancy
themselves transformed into wild beasts. Belief in the possibility of such
transformation may have been the very suggesting cause which led the patient to
imagine it taking place in his own person.” (Primitive Culture, vol. 1, p. 279)
Among other criticisms of the book,
Wallace’s review argued that Tylor had overlooked the possibility of mesmerism,
with mesmerists implanting the idea in susceptible individuals’ minds that they
had seen werewolves. Wallace wrote in The Academy:
“We find at times great looseness of
statement when Mr. Tylor attempts to account off-hand for superstitions … A
recognition of the now well-established phenomena of mesmerism would have
enabled Mr. Tylor to give a far more rational explanation of were-wolves and
analogous beliefs than that which he offers us. Were-wolves were probably men
who had exceptional power of acting upon certain sensitive individuals, and
could make them, when so acted upon, believe they saw what the mesmeriser
pleased; and who used this power for bad purposes. This will explain most of
the alleged facts without resorting to the short and easy method of rejecting
them as the results of mere morbid imagination and gross credulity.” (p. 70)
In his reply, perhaps stung by the charge
that his method was “short and easy” and insufficiently rational, Tylor
dismissed Wallace’s suggestion as inadequate to meet his twin explanations,
though he added that Wallace had helpfully addressed an aspect not dealt with
in the book, in which Wallace was “possibly on the track of explaining much of
the power belonging to sorcerers, savage and other.” Tylor added that he had never disputed the
role of mesmerism in medical practice; thus, he was not dismissing the reality
of mesmerism per se. He continued:
“Now, without committing myself to Mr.
Wallace's idea, beyond saying that it is plausible and worth pursuing, I
proceed to apply it somewhat farther. Granting that a were-wolf, in virtue of
being a person capable of exerting mesmeric influence, can delude people, and
even assemblies of people, into fancying that they perceive monstrous
unrealities, the question arises, Was any one with this were-wolf-faculty
present in the room when Mrs. Guppy made her celebrated aerostatic entrance? Is
Mr. D. D. Home a were-wolf? Is a professional ‘medium’ usually or ever a person
who has the power of acting on the minds of sensitive spectators, so as to make
them believe they see what he pleases?”
Further on, he fairly jeers at Wallace’s
contention:
“Mr. Wallace, as the most eminent
scientific man who has taken up what are known as modern ‘spiritualistic
doctrines,’ no doubt has the ear of all who hold these doctrines. I think it
may bring about investigations leading to valuable results if Mr. Wallace will
inform spiritualists with the weight of his authority that he believes in the
existence of a class of men who, in his words, have exceptional power of acting
upon certain sensitive individuals, and can make them, when so acted upon,
believe they see what the mesmeriser pleases, and who use this power for bad
purposes.”
Where in this dispute about werewolves did
Home come in, not to mention Mrs Guppy’s famous “aerial transit”? Wallace wanted
mesmerism to be taken seriously when explaining extraordinary phenomena such as
werewolves, crediting it with extensive capabilities. Tylor was not describing the werewolf as
someone undergoing a literal transformation, but rather as someone possessing
the ability to exercise a massive mesmeric influence of the kind Wallace had indicated. Could it, Tylor asked, be applied to the
dramatic accounts of mediums like Home and Mrs Guppy to explain their alleged
achievements? Given he chose to publish
his response in Nature, he would have
been confident of his readers’ sceptical assessment of the proposition.
Tylor pushed Wallace’s approach to the
point of absurdity: if one accepted the idea that mesmerism could account for
extreme tales of werewolves, by the same logic one could treat the remarkable
modern stories told about Home and Mrs. Guppy in the same way. Obviously, he wasn’t accusing Home of being
a werewolf, he was posing a rhetorical question and expecting the answer to be negative. This would have included Wallace’s, as
someone who considered mediums to be genuinely communicating with spirits, not making
sensitive individuals believe they saw what the medium, or someone else
present, pleased. In Tylor’s view, Home could
not possess the degree of mesmeric power necessary to account for the werewolf,
therefore the explanation had to be found elsewhere.
Tylor’s Nature response defended his interpretation of werewolf beliefs
having developed from ideas about soul-body transformations and delusions due
to mental illness. His analysis was
based on individual psychology and cultural traditions that reflected a
pre-scientific attempt to understand the world, rather than on mesmerism’s
insufficient power to explain the phenomenon.
If mesmerism could not explain physical mediumship, it could not explain
the werewolf.
If Tylor thought this was the end of the
matter, he was mistaken, because Wallace replied in the 7 March 1872 issue of Nature (pp. 363-4). He disputed the association of mesmerism and
mediumship, distinguishing them in two respects. Firstly, the person in a mesmeric trance was
completely unaware of the physical surroundings and did not doubt the
suggestions made by the mesmerist. Unlike
the “mesmerised patient,” however, “the assistants at the séances of Mr.
Home or Mrs. Guppy are not in this state … they do not lose memory of the
immediately preceding events; they criticise, they examine, they take notes,
they suggest tests – none of which the mesmerised patient ever does.” Secondly, the mesmerist could influence
“certain sensitive individuals” (not “assemblies”), and these were few in
number; but there was no such limit to those who could witness mediumistic
phenomena: “The visitors to Mr. Home or Mrs. Guppy all see whatever occurs of a
physical nature, as the records of hundreds of sittings demonstrate.”
The inference could be drawn that it was
illegitimate to suggest, as Tylor had, that for mesmerism to account for the
werewolf, it should be used as an explanation for the reported achievements of
Home and Mrs Guppy, and that if it was not suitable in one case, the other could
be dismissed. Wallace could still argue
that mesmerism explained the werewolf without having to concede that it had to
account for the events reported to have occurred in the presence of Home and
Mrs Guppy.
For some reason, Blum misunderstood what
Tylor was saying when he referred to Home, and Machell followed suit without
checking the original articles (which would have been easy to do), despite the
assertion being bizarre. Machell relied
heavily on secondary sources and perhaps placed too much reliance on Blum for
the nineteenth-century background, which led him to reproduce her error. Home was credited with some remarkable feats,
but was not accused of being a werewolf.
References
Blum, D. (2006) Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of
Life After Death. New York: Penguin Press.
Kalvig, A. (2017) ‘“Necromancy Is a
Religion”: Tylor’s Discussion of Spiritualism in Primitive Culture and in His Diary’, in Tremlett, P-F., Harvey, G.
and Sutherland, L.T. (eds.) Edward
Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 49–64.
Machell, B. (2025) Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the Supernatural. London: Abacus
Books.
Stocking, G.W. (1971) ‘Animism in Theory
and Practice: E. B. Tylor’s Unpublished “Notes on Spiritualism”’, Man, 6(1), pp. 88–104.
Tylor, E.B. (1871) Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology,
Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. 2 vols. London: John Murray.
Tylor, E.B. (1872) ‘Ethnology and
Spiritualism’, Nature, 5(116), pp.
242–244.
Wallace, A.R. (1872) ‘[Review of Primitive Culture: Researches into the
Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, by Edward
Burnett Tylor]’, The Academy, 15
February, pp. 69–70.
Wallace, A.R. (1872) ‘Ethnology and
Spiritualism’, Nature, 5(121), pp. 363–364.
