Fred P. Evans Explained

Fred P. Evans (born 1862) was a British spiritualist medium.

He was born in Liverpool on 9 June 1862. His great-grandfather was the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen. As a young man, Evans worked as a sailor and claimed to have experienced strange psychical events.^[1] In 1884 he moved to San Francisco where he gave séances to the public. Evans was an early proponent of slate-writing mediumship.^[2]

British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace who attended a séance with Evans in 1887 was convinced the slate-writing phenomena was genuine evidence for spirit communication and reported that there were five different coloured messages.^[3]

Slate-writing was popular in the late-nineteenth century but was discredited as fraudulent after investigations from magicians and psychical researchers.^[2] In 1898, the magician Chung Ling Soo revealed the fraudulent slate-writing methods that Evans, Henry Slade and others had utilized.^[4]

Further reading

• David P. Abbott. (1912). Behind the Scenes with the Mediums Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company. Reveals fraudulent methods of producing slate-writing.
• J. J. Owen. (1893). Psychography: Marvelous Manifestations of Psychic Power Given Through the Mediumship of Fred P. Evans, Known as the "Independent Slate-Writer". San Francisco, Hicks-Judd Company.

Notes and References

1. Owen, J. J. (1893). Psychography: Marvelous Manifestations of Psychic Power Given Through the Mediumship of Fred P. Evans, Known as the "Independent Slate-Writer". San Francisco, Hicks-Judd Company.
2. [J. Gordon Melton|Melton, J. Gordon]
3. [Alfred Russel Wallace|Wallace, Alfred Russel]
4. [Chung Ling Soo|Soo, Chung Ling]