Trumpet

A funnel-shaped device of cardboard, aluminum, or other lightweight material used at Spiritualist séances for the manifestation of direct voice communication from spirits. Jonathan Koons, the nineteenth-century American farmer medium, appears to have been the first to use a trumpet.

Spiritualists have suggested the trumpet serves as a condenser of psychic energy and increases the volume of the spirit voice. Reportedly, weak or inexperienced spirits often have to use the trumpet. It is seldom necessary for a spirit guide. Some mediums also wet the trumpet with water, in the belief this facilitates the phenomena.

The trumpet is usually coated with a marking of luminous paint. Supposedly at séances in dark rooms the trumpet is seen levitating when there is sufficient psychic force and moving around the circle, conveying personal messages to individual sitters.

Reportedly as a safeguard against fraud, psychical researchers have devised techniques and apparatus to attempt to exclude the possibility of a medium employing ventriloquism in producing voices ostensibly from the trumpet. One method is to fill the medium's mouth with water. During the investigation of the medium Mina Crandon (better known as "Margery"), Mark Richardson of Boston invented a "Voice Control Machine."

The American direct voice medium Elizabeth Blake used a double trumpet with a saucer-shaped extension at the small end to be placed on the ear of the sitter and on her own. Another trumpet, the "Shastaphone," was developed through a psychic communication in Australia, but does not appear to have been widely used.