How Kilner’s screens were meant to reveal an aura
In 1911, British physician Walter John Kilner described a way to see what he called the “human atmosphere”: colored bands or halos surrounding a person. His apparatus used glass screens treated with dicyanin, a coal-tar dye. Observers looked at a person through the screens, usually in carefully controlled lighting, and reported seeing outlines that they interpreted as an aura.
The dye’s role was to change the light reaching the eye. A colored filter can make some wavelengths less visible than others, shifting the contrast between a body, its background, and nearby light. Kilner treated the resulting visual impression as evidence of an atmosphere around the body. The screens did not photograph or measure that proposed field; the observation depended on what a viewer perceived.
A hazardous route to a striking claim
Dicyanin was not an ordinary household tint: it was a toxic chemical dye. That made the method more than an unusual viewing trick—handling the material posed a real safety concern. The goggles and screens are remembered today as an attempt to give a mystical idea a physical instrument, but the instrument’s vivid effect came with a practical cost.
Kilner’s experiment sits at an intriguing boundary: a filter can genuinely alter what someone sees, while the meaning assigned to that altered view remains a separate question. His claim made the body’s supposed invisible surroundings seem observable—but the “aura” appeared only through a method built around a hazardous dye and a human observer’s eyes.
