Kathleen Goligher

Kathleen Goligher (born 1898) was an Irish spiritualist medium. Goligher was endosed by engineer William Jackson Crawford who wrote three books about her mediumship but was exposed as a fraud by physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe in 1921.

Goligher was born in Belfast. She held séances in her own home with seven of her family members. The psychical researcher and engineer William Jackson Crawford (1881–1920) investigated the mediumship of Goligher and claimed she had levitated the table and produced ectoplasm.

Crawford in his books developed the "Cantilever Theory of Levitation" due to his experiments with Goligher. According to his theory the table was levitated by "psychic rods" of ectoplasm which came out of the body of the medium to operate as an invisible cantilever. Crawford took flashlight photographs of the ectoplasm, and described the substance as "plasma". Crawford investigated Goligher's mediumship at her house for six years. He committed suicide on 30 July 1920 for unknown reasons. Crawford's photographs of Goligher showed that the ectoplasm, frequently issued from her vagina.

There were no scientific controls in the Crawford's séances with Goligher as she and her family members had their hands and legs free at all times. After Crawford's death the physicist Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe investigated the medium Goligher at twenty sittings and arrived at the opposite conclusion to Crawford. According to d'Albe no ectoplasm or levitation had occurred with Goligher and stated he had found evidence of fraud. On 22 July 1921 he observed Goligher holding the table with her foot. He also discovered that the "ectoplasm" substance in the photographs of Crawford was muslin. During a séance d'Albe had observed white muslin between Goligher's feet.

In a letter to Harry Houdini, d'Albe wrote "I must say I was greatly surprised at Crawford's blindness." The conclusion from d'Albe was that the Goligher family were involved in the mediumship trickery and had duped Crawford. D'Albe published The Goligher Circle in 1922 which exposed the fraudulent mediumship of Goligher and because of the exposure she retired from mediumship in the same year.

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