Ordeals belong to times and communities of rudeness, violence, materialism, ignorance, gross superstition and blind faith. The theory of ordeals is, that God will miraculously deci...
In the year 1842, a new style of advertising appeared in the newspapers and in handbills which arrested public attention at once on account of its novelty. The thing advertised was...
The most stupendous scientific imposition upon the public that the generation with which we are numbered has known, was the so-called "Moon-Hoax," published in the columns of the "...
Other "spiritual" facts have come to my hand, some of them furnishing additional details about persons to whom I have already alluded, and others being important to illustrate some...
In answer to numerous inquiries and several threats of prosecution for libel in consequence of what I have written in regard to impostors who (for money) perform tricks of legerdem...
Superior to Cagliostro, even in accomplishments, and second to him in notoriety only, was that human nondescript, the so-called Count de St. Germain, whom Fredrick the Great called...
Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs. And it is not a dead humbug either; it is alive, busily exercised by knaves and believed by...
Every sham, as has often been said, proves some reality. Petroleum exists, no doubt, and is an important addition to our national wealth. But the Petroleum humbug or mania or super...
In my sketch of Joseph Balsamo, alias the Count Alessandro de Cagliostro, I referred to the affair of the diamond necklace, known in French history as the Collier de la Reine, or Q...
Every visitor to Florence during the last twenty years must have noticed on the grand piazza before the Ducal Palace, the strange genius known as Monsignore Creso, or, in plain Eng...
The most gorgeous, and with one sole exception the most glorious reign that France has known, so far as military success is concerned, was that of Louis XIV, the Grand Monarque. Hi...
The domain of humbug reaches back to the Garden of Eden, where the Father of lies practised it upon our poor, innocent first grandmother, Eve. This was the first and worst of all h...
An aptitude for deception is all the capital that a person requires in order to become a "spirit-medium;" or, at least, to gain the reputation of being one. Backing up the pretence...
Alboni, the singer, had an exquisitely sweet voice, but was a very big fat woman. Somebody accordingly remarked that she was an elephant that had swallowed a nightingale. About as...
Not many years ago, a dignified and reverend man, whose name is well known to me, was walking sedately down Broadway. He was dressed in clerical garb of black garments and white ne...
Bristol was, in 1812, the second commercial city of Great Britain, having in particular an extensive East India trade. Among its inhabitants were merchants, reckoned remarkably shr...
I hear from spiritualists sometimes. These gentry are much exercised in their minds by my letters about them, and some of them fly out at me very much as bumble-bees do at one who...
In classing the ghost excitement that agitated our good people to such an extent some two years ago among the "humbugs" of the age, I must, at the outset, remind my readers that th...
Upon a careful consideration of my undertaking to give an account of the "Humbugs of the World," I find myself somewhat puzzled in regard to the true definition of that word. To be...
A little reflection will show that humbug is an astonishingly wide-spread phenomenon--in fact almost universal. And this is true, although we exclude crimes and arrant swindles fro...