Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume; 20 March 1833 – 21 June 1886) was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will.

[14][15] Sometime between 1838 and 1841, Home's aunt and uncle decided to emigrate to the United States with their adopted son, sailing in the cheapest class of steerage as they could not afford a cabin.

His aunt was a Presbyterian, and held the Calvinist view that one's fate has been decided, so Home embraced the Wesleyan faith, which believed that every soul can be saved.

[28][29] After the newspaper report, Home became well known in New England, travelling around healing the sick and communicating with the dead, although he wrote that he was not prepared for this sudden change in his life because of his supposed shyness.

[31][32] In 1852, Home was a guest at the house of Rufus Elmer in Springfield, Massachusetts, giving séances six or seven times a day, which were visited by crowds of people, including a Harvard professor, David Wells, and the poet and editor of the New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant.

They were all convinced of Home's credibility and wrote to the Springfield Republican newspaper stating that the room was well lit, full inspections were allowed, and said, "We know that we were not imposed upon nor deceived".

[33] It was also reported that at one of Home's demonstrations five men of heavy build (with a combined weight of 850 pounds) sat on a table, but it still moved, and others saw "a tremulous phosphorescent light gleam over the walls".

[34][35] In his book, Incidents in My Life, Home claims that in August 1852, in South Manchester, Connecticut, at the house of Ward Cheney, a successful silk manufacturer, he was reportedly seen to levitate twice and then rise to up to the ceiling, with louder rappings and knocking than ever before, more aggressive table movements and the sounds of a ship at sea in a storm, although persons present said that the room was badly lit so as to see the spirit lights.

I am so glad I have seen it..."[55] In 1866, Mrs Jane Lyon, a wealthy widow, adopted Home as her son, giving him £60,000[56] in an attempt to gain introduction into high society.

Home's high society acquaintances thought that he behaved like a complete gentleman throughout the ordeal, and he did not lose a single important friend.

[71][72][73][74] Science historian Sherrie Lynne Lyons has stated that a possible explanation for Home's alleged levitation phenomena was revealed in the twentieth century by Clarence E. Willard (1882–1962).

[75] Author Donald Serrell Thomas has asserted that Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, the French stage magician was refused admission to Home's séances.

"[80] At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing in July 1855, a sitter (Frederick Merrifield) observed that a "spirit-hand" was in fact a false limb attached on the end of Home's arm.

[76] In 1895, after the deaths of Robert and Elizabeth, the journalist Frederick Greenwood alleged that Browning had told him that during the séance he had taken hold of a luminous object that appeared above the edge of the table, which turned out to be Home's naked foot.

[83] Writing in the journal for the Society for Psychical Research, Count Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo described a letter by Dr. Barthez, a physician in the court of Empress Eugenie, which claimed a sitter Morio de l'lle caught Home using his foot to fake supposed spirit effects during a séance in Biarritz in 1857.

[90] The researchers Frank Podmore (1910), Milbourne Christopher (1970), Trevor H. Hall (1984) and Gordon Stein (1993) were convinced that Home was a fraud and have provided a source of speculation on the ways in which he could have duped his séance sitters.

[99] Hereward Carrington described Evans hypothesis as "certainly ingenious" but pointed out William Crookes an experienced chemist was present at a séance whilst Home performed the feat and would have known how to distinguish the difference between coal and platinum.

[100] Frank Podmore wrote that most of the fire feats could have easily be performed by conjuring tricks and sleight of hand but hallucination and sense-deception may have explained Crookes' claim about observing flames from Home's fingers.

[71] Between 1870 and 1873, chemist and physicist William Crookes conducted experiments to determine the validity of the phenomena produced by three mediums: Florence Cook, Kate Fox, and Home.

However, the experiment could be easily dismissed as the result of vibrations caused by the passage of Euston trains in the large railway cutting near his house in London.

[107] In 1871, Balfour Stewart in an article for Nature noted that the experiments were not conducted in broad daylight before a large unbiased audience and the results were inconclusive.

Wiley suspected Home used resin on his finger tips to tamper with the apparatus which managed to fool Crookes into believing a psychic force was being displayed.

[113] Regarding Crookes, the magician Harry Houdini wrote: There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this brainy man was hoodwinked, and that his confidence was betrayed by the so-called mediums that he tested.

[115] However, Barry Wiley has written that when Crookes published his report on the experiments in the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1871 he did not mention all the names of the observers present in the room.

"[120] The physicist Victor Stenger commented that the experiments were poorly controlled; he gave the example of Home requesting all hands to be removed from the table whilst all those present complied.

Stenger noted that "Crookes gullibly swallowed ploys such as this and allowed Home to call the shots... his desire to believe blinded him to the chicanery of his psychic subjects.

One of Home's hands was placed on the top of the table, and the other inside the cage which held an accordion on the non-key side, so the keyed end was hanging downwards.

Carpenter wrote that although Crookes, his assistant and Sergeant Cox claimed to have observed the accordion float in the cage; Dr. Huggins did not testify to this, and no information was given to whether the keys and bellows were seen to move.

According to Carpenter no solid explanation could be given until the experiment is repeated, however, he suggested that the accordion feat that Home performed may have been a conjuring trick achieved with one hand.

[126] The psychical researcher Hereward Carrington and spiritualism expert Herbert Thurston have claimed the accordion experiment was not the result of deliberate fraud.