MAGIC LANTERN THEORY OF KNOCK VISION IN 1879 - WHY IT IS MORE THAN GOSSIP!
On the night of the 21st of August 1879 the Virgin Mary flanked by St Joseph and
a bishop thought to be St John the Evangelist and an altar with a lamb and cross
on it allegedly appeared on the gable wall of the Parish Church of Knock for a
few hours. Fifteen people witnessed the vision including a child of five (page
60, The Evidence for Visions of the Virgin Mary). Witness statements were
published in a highly altered and edited form that differed hugely from the real
ones the witnesses made. That witnesses didn't do the slightest thing about the
lies speaks strongly against them as honest people. There was a lot they
left out - did they see what they thought was a projection and just
not say?
Eoghan Harris on Knock vision
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Journalist-challenges-original-1879-vision-of-Virgin-Mary-at-Knock-68300352.html?page=2
Eoghan Harris was a journalist who wrote in the Irish Newspaper, The Sunday
Independent. He stated that his grandfather was a farmer from near Knock. He
with many other Knock locals believed that at the time of the 1870 vision that
the vision was a hoax engineered by two policemen in the area. They used a magic
lantern. It had a small lightbox that could throw a glowing image on the gable
wall. It was surmised by many as well that the magic lantern was brought from
America by an Irish American. Magic lantern shows were popular in the British
Isles at the time. For that reason, I think the Knock vision had to be set up to
look different from them. That is why I think the lantern was used to make
shapes made of light while images of the faces and the lamb and the altar were
stuck to the wall and illuminated. This was necessary in case a visionary would
see a magic lantern show and realise what had went on. The vision needed to have
features that did not seem to tally with a magic lantern projection.
And the policemen could never tell what they did! That a gullible miracle eating
community would accept a rational explanation speaks volumes.
The image could have been very crude and the shape of Joseph and Mary and the
Bishop and the Altar and the Lamb could have been mere shapes. The crudeness
would explain why the witnesses stood at a distance from it - the reports about
a few going up close are dubious. It looked better from afar. Patrick Beirne
stated in the 1930's that the images were like the reflection of the moon on a
wall. Most of the witnesses were evasive in relation to detail. The human mind
sees bodies and faces in clouds and on toast to give a couple of examples. They
are not really there but it is just the way the mind tries to make sense of mess.
Crude images could then have been projected from the schoolhouse.
Transparent?
A magic lantern on a rough gable wall would make transparent images.
Nobody was apparently asked if the images were transparent or not or if they
were no record was kept. This may suggest that references to transparency might
have been left out or avoided thanks to leading questions as the priests didn't
want people to think a magic lantern was used to make the vision.
The light around the vision flickered!
The light flickered - it was no miracle!
Source
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/new_hibernia_review/v015/15.2.carpenter.html
From a booklet refuting the vision
An unknown witness to the apparition put his fingers on
the image of the Virgin at the gable - two dark spots appeared as if his fingers
were obstructing a light source...
Dominick Beirne Snr saw such an unclear vision that apart from Mary he didn't
really know who the figures were supposed to be
The McConnell Letter
Before we read about this letter there is a curious fact to consider:
“Canon Bourke directed the curious not to the villagers who witnessed the 21
August visions but to subconstables Fraher and Collins of the RIC, who saw
lights on the gable on 5 January 1880, and to the national school teacher Miss
Anderson, who saw an eighteen-inch high Virgin that same evening. Canon
Bourke characterised one of the policemen as a ‘witness worth hearing’, thus
reinforcing the power, prestige, and authority of these figures of cultural
change.”
It seems we have an explanation for the interest in the
policemen and why the latter were so involved.
In 1936, Michael McConnell, Knock villager residing in
Belfast, went to talk to a priest, Father Clenaghan. The priest took what he had
to say very seriously. The priest wrote down his direct speech as part of a
letter that he sent to Archbishop Gilmartin, of the Archdiocese of Tuam of which
Knock is a part. The letter recorded that McConnell was repeating what he
learned from a man who had been a policeman in Knock at the time of the alleged
apparition. The Constable stated that knew a Protestant policeman at Knock in
1879 who worked a magic lantern to make the apparition. McConnell claimed that
he had been told that the policeman had been projecting images from the Barracks
in Knock on to the wall of the Church and some people saw the images and took
them for visions. The priest sent another letter in 1936 this time to Father
Fergus the Archbishop's secretary. However, in 1947 McConnell put pen to paper
and wrote his own letter to the Archbishop. This letter is still in the archives
of the archdiocese. He claimed that his informant was McDermott. This time he
did not mention that the policeman said the image was projected from the
Barracks. McDermott apparently said that a Protestant policeman who was good at
making projector images trained religious images on the gable for practice. Some
people saw them and thought it was an apparition. He said that this picture
making was done more than once. The policeman realised that what he had done was
being taken very seriously and he could lose his job. So he urged his comrades
to tell nobody and he asked for a quiet transfer from Knock to somewhere else.
The latest edition of the book, The Apparition at Knock by Father Walsh
dismisses this claim for there is no corroboration and mainly because an image
cannot be projected to the gable wall from the Barracks. The Catholics agree
that this claim is mere hearsay. They say Mc Connell waited decades before
revealing this. But that cannot be proven. He may have chatted about it for
years before talking to a priest and writing the letter. He was serious enough
to write a letter about it. He would only have done this if he had felt it was
the truth and that hard evidence could have come up. Plus we know now that the
policeman would have had a motive. The motive was to protect the priest and
pacify a turbulent parish and thus make his own job easier. McConnell and
McDermott's story would have been less accurate over time. But the main thing is
the claim that a policeman had been making the vision.
The letter was not written to cause trouble. At that time it was doubtful that
Knock was going to become a major shrine.
The claim was written a long time after the event. Mr McConnell may have
confused the information he received. He may have been told that a policeman had
been projecting images from the Barracks with a magic lantern and that he
projected them unto the gable. He may have taken it to mean the images were
projected from the Barracks. He misunderstood or misremembered. The error
certainly does not make him a liar for he knew being a Knock resident that
experiments had been done in attempts to see if the vision was the product of a
magic lantern or not. He said he thought he was told the images were projected
from the Barracks because he really did think that. How else could you explain
him saying the image was projected on the church from the Barracks when he must
have known it was impossible? Michael McConnell was known as a decent man. He
was not a liar.
There is a report of lights being seen on January 5 and 6 1880 on the gable at
11.00 pm. Mrs Kileen from Knock, Miss Anderson and Miss Kennedy saw the lights.
They saw lights on the gable of the Church that were not too bright and then
dimmed and moved around. At one stage, Anderson thought she could make out the
shape of the Virgin (page 100, The Apparition at Knock). Two policemen at
midnight also saw the lights on the gable later on at midnight. This sounds like
attempts were being made to reproduce the 1879 vision. The lights show that
somebody had a magic lantern somewhere and that though the police ruled it out
they were a very ingenious somebody. The police only checked the schoolhouse and
the wall behind the church and that made them confident but the user might have
put his instrument elsewhere.
Archdeacon Cavanagh at the time of the apparition was not very popular in his
parish. If people were going to speculatively gossip that someone performed the
apparition hoax then why didn't they blame the Archdeacon? Why pick a policeman
of all people? Did somebody know it really was a policeman?
The Daily Telegraph claimed shortly after the apparition that a projector could
not have been used for it would have got the attention of the "observant
policemen" (page 65, The Apparition at Knock). It never occurred to them that if
the apparition light had been as bright as some of the witnesses said the police
would have been there quicker. The policemen were suspiciously and conspicuously
absent from all that happened. They did not go to the gable. They did not do
foot patrols to protect the Archdeacon from those unsavouries who wanted to cut
off his ears that night. They did not notice the fire like light that Patrick
Walsh spoke about. What is more - the barrack was only 400 yards away from the
Church (page 66, The Apparition at Knock). What is worse - there was a clear
view of the gable from the barrack! Either the police were involved in the hoax
or a lot of lies were being told by the visionaries.
On the night of 5 January 1880 a number of people including two policemen says
that lights that went dim and got bright again appeared on the gable. The
policemen stated that they checked the area for lights and decided there was no
trickery. This information was got from www.theotokos.org.uk
"There's the light," and then both I and my comrade saw the end of the church
covered with a rosy sort of brightness, through which what seemed to be stars
appeared. I saw no figures, nor did my comrade ; but some women, who were
praying there, declared that they beheld the Blessed Virgin, and one went nearly
frantic in consequence. We stood and watched the light for some time before
starting again on our rounds." "How do you explain the light ?" " I can't
explain it." " Did you look around to see where it came from ?" "I did ; but
everything was dark. There was no light anywhere, except on the gable." Thus the
policeman, who offered to produce his comrade in corroboration.
The police endangered their professional credibility with this claim and they
were not even Catholics. Not all the people standing together at the gable saw
lights - only some did. That is indicating imagination. Could this have been an
attempt by the policemen to mislead people to think that there had been no magic
lantern used at the previous year's apparition? Were the police trying to hide
the fact that they faked the 21 August apparition? It shows the policemen were
open to encouraging belief in the miraculous. It backs up the possibility that
one of them may have engineering the apparition of 1879. If you cause a fake
vision, you may need people to imagine they see visions too so that people will
think, "Sure how could a magic lantern have been used for the first apparition
when we know apparitions are still happening when there is no lantern?" Or was
the policeman who allegedly made the original apparition with a magic lantern up
to his old tricks again?
Also people imagining visions in the light makes us wonder if some of the
official witnesses might have experienced that too.
The Archdeacon
The Archdeacon could have seen the vision from the back windows of his cottage
but when he was told about it he pretended to think it was nonsense. He was
taken to be a gullible man and it would be too out of character for him to
disbelieve the vision.
A hearsay report was made to researcher David Berman. A top member of the Irish
judiciary said that he had a solicitor friend who maintained that during the
week the apparition happened, Archdeacon Cavanagh hired a magic lantern from his
grandfather (page 96, Why Statues Weep). I believe this for Berman never noticed
how shifty the Archdeacon had behaved on the night of the apparition. And a liar
would be more likely to say that the policeman had been involved not the
Archdeacon so there is something to this story. The policeman report was known
then and also to accuse the beloved Archdeacon was risky and people didn't want
to believe he was that devious. How do we reconcile the Archdeacon being
involved and the policeman? I think the policeman projected the image for the
Archdeacon and then pretended to his comrades that it was only an experiment to
hide the Archdeacon's role. The Archdeacon might have given him the projector.
The apparition appeared on the south gable of the Church. The sacristy in those
days was in the south end of the Church. The Archdeacon could have had a hole
made in wall. The magic lantern could have been operated inside the sacristy and
mirrors used to project the image through the hole and down the wall. The hole
could have been filled in the next day or that night even. The gable wall was
soon damaged by people stealing the cement and pulling stones out. The evidence
of the hole would soon have vanished. The perfect cover! No wonder the
Archdeacon was incredibly liberal about letting people do that to the Church!
"The magic lantern theory was again revived in a British television program, "Is
There Anybody There?" produced by Karl Sabbagh and telecast on October 31, 1987.
In this production Nicholas Humphrey demonstrated how a passable magic lantern
image could be projected from within the gable of a Cambridge church, using a
right-angled shaving mirror. Humphrey suggested fraud by Archdeacon Cavanagh,
parish priest of Knock one of the three commissioners. In support of the theory,
a document from the State Papers in Dublin Castle was cited in which Cavanagh
was reported by a spy as criticizing rebels and consequently endangering his
prestige in the area by championing landlords and attacking local Fenians or
Land League leaders. The idea that Cavanagh, widely respected in his parish,
might resort to fraud was not well received."
FINALLY
The evidence points to a projection on the wall. The lies show that something was being kept from the pilgrims. The Archdeacon acted oddly and had a motive for a hoax.
