CW: Everything. Everything traditionally regarded as ‘triggering’ is in this. Please be mindful.
What do dr*g mules and mediums have in common? No, it’s not a poorly-conceived joke, and the answer might surprise you. It’s that good ol’ tradition of stuffing things up their bums.
So with that in mind, let me introduce you to Ladislaus Lasslo, also known as Ladislaus Lazlo or Laszlo Laszlo, a man at the centre of one of the largest controversies in German and Hungarian parapsychology. Today, he’s often a footnote in the career of the medium Eva Carriere, but in reality, he was so much more.
In 1923, German psychical researcher Albert von Schrenck-Notzing published his work ‘Phenomena of Materialisation’. The work focused on a series of seances conducted between 1909 and 1913 with the French materialisation medium, Eva Carriere. So far, so normal. However, Eva was notorious for her bizarre and aggressively sexual seances. While her spirit materialisations were little more than newspaper cut outs, and her ectoplasm made from cheesecloth and chewed-up newspaper, they faded in comparison to her terrestrial behaviour. She would conduct many seances naked, ‘interact’ with her female lover and reportedly occasionally end seances with the insistence of a full gynaecological examination. Despite this bizarre behaviour, Schrenck-Notzing’s work focused on the legitimacy of Eva’s phenomena, substantiating his beliefs with dense pages of reasoning and reports of sittings with the medium.
Eva Carriere
Schrenck-Notzing proposed that Eva produced ectoplasm naturally, and that the white, swirling material emoting from her body was a form of ‘ideoplastic’. He proposed that ideoplastics (a term and theory developed by Notzing) were produced through a form of psychic projection – ectoplasm was therefore a thought-form, a physical manifestation of the medium’s thoughts produced by will and paranormal powers.
To substantiate his theory of ideoplastics and his belief in Eva Carriere’s psychic powers, he cited studies conducted with the medium ‘Ladislaus Laszlo’. The Hungarian medium was born in 1898 and had a very troubled upbringing. The son of a locksmith, he began an apprenticeship with a (reportedly) cruel electrician at age 13[1], and by age 16, he had attacked his master and – after several failed attempts – finally fled. After a few years of independent work as an electrician, he joined the Polish Legion in a campaign against Russia. He fought for a year at the front where he sustained wounds, as a result of which, he deserted. Life didn’t get any easier as he was court-martialled, fled, re-enlisted, deserted, turned to house-breaking and lived to support his sex-worker girlfriend. After several years of living in crime, destitution and alcohol dependency, he became embroiled in an anti-Communist plot, was caught once more and sentenced to death by firing squad.
Yet Laszlo was as wily and unfortunate as always. After escaping with the help of fellow anti-Communists, he joined the military once more and was soon captured and taken to a camp where he was starved and tortured for months before finally escaping. Life post-war led to a patchwork of jobs, including (according to his own record) a painter, electrician, variety act and actor. The latter two introduced the career-criminal into the world of theatre and performance at a time where mesmerism, hypnotism and spiritualism was at its last great peak of popularity.
Laszlo was soon operating his own séances, but was by this time, a severely erratic and disturbed man. According to the now-archived website PsychicTruth, ‘Influenced by Laszlo’s seances, several young men committed suicide in order to journey to the “Great Beyond”.’
1920s Budapest
Laszlo’s path to spiritualism was a rocky and harmful one, and his early days commanding séance rooms were more corruptive than ever before. Following an accident in which he fell from a tram, he spent time in hospital recuperating and became obsessed with a woman he met there. When discharged, he called the unfortunate woman, demanding that they marry. When she understandably refused his proposal, he immediately shot himself while stood in the telephone booth. His attempt failed, and back in hospital, history repeated itself and he became besotted with another woman. For reasons unclear, the pair formed a suicide pact which resulted in Laszlo’s injury and her death.
While Laszlo was arrested for murder, the story gets stranger still. When in police custody, he was permitted to hold a séance where he revealed that he was the focus of an ancient evil; a malevolent entity who desired to kill people through his psychic force. So, of course, he was released without charge.
Laszlo went on to increase his foothold in the world of spiritualism and esoteric matters with a brief sojourn into journalism. Through these publications, his network grew and he was soon introduced to big names in the world of Hungarian occultism and metaphysics, including William Torday (President of the Hungarian Metaphysical Society) for whom Laszlo signed an exclusive contract, whereby his seances would be exclusively conducted for the society. Never a shrinking violet, the power and fame afforded by a mediumship role only increased Laszlo’s wild performances, and he was soon manifesting all manner of spiritual phenomena.
American medium Mary Marshall with ectoplasm
Laszlo’s early manifestations of spirit hands brought him many plaudits, yet it was his ectoplasm that brought investigators and admirers from all over the world. However, Laszlo had read Baron von Schrenck-Notzing’s work on materialisation and approached it as a how-to manual of deception, planning his seances around a desire to dupe Notzing and the other psychical researchers that would keenly seek his company.
Laszlo’s ectoplasm was a soft and pliable material, mainly concocted from a loose-weave gauze or rolls of cotton wool soaked in goose fat. This soft, spectral material was easily secreted within the séance room, whether in his own pockets, in furniture or in the pockets of friends and sitters alike. As conditions became stricter, his history of pick-pocketing came to the fore as he was able to retrieve his ectoplasm from the pockets of sitters without detection. Mediums who entered cabinet seances and materialised objects were thoroughly searched before spirit contact was permitted to begin, as was their wider environment. With options for storage limited, it is believed that Laszlo chose to keep his ectoplasm a little closer to home. In his rectum. The pliability of the fatted ectoplasm made for a smooth, quiet and relatively (hell, it’s got to be relative) storage and retrieval process, so no seances were ever truly unremarkable.
It was later revealed that at least two prominent members of the Hungarian Metaphysical society were in cahoots with Laszlo, hiding props from investigators before surreptitiously retrieving them for the medium. Similarly, during seances, Laszlo’s hands were not always held or secured in place, allowing him full range of movement. It’s little wonder that researchers such as Eric Dingwall (famed anthropologist, psychical researcher and author of ‘The Plasma Theory’) referenced the ‘enormous importance of the hand-control’ in Laszlo’s seances.
“Laszlo’s hands were sometimes held and sometimes not. Often the hands were free behind the curtains between the appearance of different phenomena.”[2]
If he could move unimpeded in a darkened room, there’s a certain degree of certainly that deception will be easy and swift.
Examples of Ectoplasm found within the Library of Congress photo archives
He enjoyed several years of successful mediumship before exposures came thick and fast. At first, a renowned music hall hypnotist recognised Laszlo’s fraudulent methods and exposed him publicly, but Laszlo quickly jumped on the wagon of his own downfall and revealed his own fraudulent methodologies in a public theatre – much like the Fox Sisters’ own theatre confessions of 1888.
The fallout of the exposure was enormous in Hungary. Reputations were decimated, 67 of the 70 members of the Hungarian Metaphysical Society resigned and newspapers ran stories of the credulity that decimated the country’s interest – and status – within the world of parapsychology and psi research.
Following this exposure, Laszlo’s time with spiritualism and mediumship came to an end and – following a brief period of working as an electrician – slipped back into his criminal lifestyle. Eventually he was arrested and held for burglary, but died of a lung haemorrhage in 1936 before ever being formally charged.[3]
Despite the past being a distant country, Laszlo’s methods of ectoplasmic storage have been replicated down the decades. Rectal ectoplasm has been documented as recently as 2005, when it was speculated that German medium Kai Mügge may have stored ectoplasm in his ‘back passage’. [4] Unlike Laszlo, it’s believed that Kai developed the idea through his involvement in documentaries about the illegal drugs trade.
Either way, please, for the love of all that’s hole-y, don’t try this at home.
***
Liked this post? Then why not join the Patreon clubhouse? From as little as £1 a month, you’ll get access to tonnes of exclusive content and a huge archive of articles, videos and podcasts!
Pop on over, support my work, have a chat and let me show you my skulls…www.patreon.com/burialsandbeyond
Liked this and want to buy me a coffee?
To tip me £3 and help me out with hosting, click the link below!
https://ko-fi.com/burialsandbeyond
***
[1]https://psychiccosts.com/archive/medium-ladislaus-laszlo/
[2] Dingwall (1924), 332, (italics added). – https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/felix-experimental-group#footnote6_whk3t56
[4] Braude, Stephen. “Investigations of the Felix Experimental Group: 2010-2013.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 28 (2): 285-343, 2014.
Burials & Beyond 
Leave a comment