The Mediumship of Mrs. Piper

 4The Swedenborg Case

Here is another European story from two centuries later, involving the famous scientist and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg.

In 1761 the Countess de Marteville came to Swedenborg to explain that her husband, who had been ambassador to the Netherlands, had given her a valuable silver [necklace] before his death. The silversmith was now demanding an exorbitant payment, even though she was sure that her husband had paid for it already; but the receipt was nowhere to be found. The countess asked Swedenborg to contact her husband to ask about the receipt. Three days later he told her that he had spoken to her husband, who had informed him that the vital document was in a bureau upstairs. The woman replied that the bureau had already been searched, but Swedenborg insisted that she should remove a certain drawer and pull off its false back. The papers were duly found in the secret place, whose existence was only known to the dead count. The story is related by eleven different sources and vouched for by Swedenborg himself when he was later questioned about it. 5It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that a large-scale effort was mounted to gather and critically assess reports of communication from the dead. This effort began with the founding of the British Society for Psychical Research in 1882, and with its American counterpart in 1884.

There can be little doubt that some of the founding members of the British and American Society for Psychical Research (SPR) hoped to find impartial evidence in support of survival. The 1870s had been a decade that witnessed the rapid rise of materialism. Inspired by the ongoing success of Newtonian physics and by Darwin’s new theory of evolution, writers such as Huxley and Tyndall popularized a version of “scientific” materialism that had shaken the faith of Victorian society. Many of the founders of the SPR, disillusioned with the simple faith of their fathers, longed to take on the materialists at their own game. Using the methods of empirical science, these dissident thinkers hoped to discover sound scientific evidence that would refute the doctrine of materialism. However, by no means did the early members all share the same outlook and attitude. Several of the early investigators were extremely skeptical of survival, and some were even dedicated to demolishing the evidence. But regardless of the hopes of individual members, the SPR was formally committed to investigating the phenomena “without prejudice or prepossession, and in a scientific spirit.”

The first president of the SPR, the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick, expressed the sentiments of several of his cofounders with the following words in his inaugural presidential address:

We believed unreservedly in the methods of modern science, and were prepared to accept submissively her reasoned conclusions, when sustained by the agreement of experts; but we were not prepared to submit with equal docility to the mere prejudices of scientific men. And it appeared to us that there was an important body of evidence—tending prima facie to establish the independence of soul or spirit—which modern science had simply left on one side with ignorant contempt; and that in so leaving it she had been untrue to her professed method and had arrived prematurely at her negative conclusions. Observe that we did not affirm that these negative conclusions were scientifically erroneous. To have said that would have been to fall into the very error we were trying to avoid. We only said that they had been arrived at prematurely. 6Clearly, the work of the SPR filled a large contemporary need. Many of the most capable individuals of the period devoted an enormous amount of time, effort, and money to carrying out the very extensive investigations that were reported in its publications. Some of the early members who were particularly devoted to investigating the survival issue were Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney, physicists Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes, and philosopher Richard Hodgson and writer Frank Podmore. Myers and Gurney seemed favorably disposed toward the idea of survival from early on; Lodge and Crookes were cautious but open-minded; Hodgson and Podmore shared the reputation of being ruthlessly skeptical.

ELEVEN

The SPR Investigates

A medium is a person—usually a woman—who apparently acts as a transmitter between our world and the world of the deceased. The early investigators began by examining mediums that fall into two broad categories: physical and mental mediums.

In physical mediumship, communication with the deceased is alleged to occur through various forms of physical phenomena that occur near the body of the medium. These phenomena would include raps, object movements, and even materializations of deceased individuals. The medium Daniel Douglas Home provided some such evidence for communication with the deceased, and was never exposed as a fraud. But unlike Home, many physical mediums insisted on performing their feats in complete darkness, which, of course, offered endless possibilities for fraud. Seeking to exploit the vulnerability of the grieving, many unscrupulous individuals were to be found among the ranks of professional physical mediums. Several of these were duly exposed as frauds, sometimes by members of the SPR. As a result, the quasireligious movement known as Spiritualism—based in part on physical mediumship—acquired a reputation for being riddled with malpractice. Even Home himself complained bitterly that fraudulent practitioners had brought the entire movement into disrepute and made a mockery of its mission. 1This scandalous aspect of physical mediumship persuaded the founders of the SPR to concentrate instead on the phenomena of mental mediumship. This generally takes two forms. The most frequently seen is that of clairvoyant mediumship. The medium may be in a slightly dissociated state, but is usually not in a trance. He or she claims to “hear” or “see” deceased friends and relatives of people present, and to transmit messages from them. Sometimes the information is presented in the form of symbolic images, which the medium must learn to interpret.

The most advanced form of mental mediumship is what is known as trance mediumship. In this form the normal personality seems to be completely dispossessed by an intruding intelligence, which assumes a varying degree of control over the speech, writing, and behavior of the medium. Usually there is just one entity (the “control”) that appears to communicate directly through the medium, and serves to relay messages from deceased acquaintances (the “communicators”) to those present at the séance (the “sitters”). Sometimes, however, it appears that a succession of deceased individuals will “drop in” and communicate directly through the medium. In the most extreme cases, known as possession mediumship, the medium’s body appears to be completely possessed by the intruding agent, and the medium’s personality seems to be replaced entirely by that of a deceased individual.

Trance mediumship—especially in its most extreme form of possession—is by far the rarest form of mental mediumship. But it is this form that received the most attention from members of the SPR. The investigators realized early on that evidence obtained from physical mediumship is notoriously unreliable, and can be easily dismissed on grounds of fraud or mistaken eyewitness testimony. But with trance mediumship, the situation is very different. In these cases, we usually have complete contemporary records of what the mediums say or write, so the question of mistaken eyewitness testimony usually does not arise.

Let us now consider some of the evidence gathered from two of the most impressive trance mediums ever studied by the SPR.

The Mediumship of Mrs. Piper

One of the very first trance mediums to be studied in great depth by members of the SPR was Mrs. Leonora Piper of Boston. Her career as a medium began in 1884 when she consulted a healing medium named J. R. Cocke. During her second visit, she passed into a trance and wrote down a message for one of the other sitters, Judge Frost of Cambridge. The message purported to come from Frost’s deceased son, and its evidential value impressed him more than any other he had received during his extensive investigation into mediumship.

Mrs. Piper then set up her own circle, and a series of spirit guides took turns acting as her control. These soon retired from the scene with the arrival of a new control who gave the name “Dr. Phinuit,” and claimed to be a deceased French physician. However, no trace of him could be found in French medical records, and his knowledge of French was very scanty. As such, researchers came to believe he was merely a fictitious character invented by Mrs. Piper’s subconscious mind. But whatever his ultimate status, Mrs. Piper’s trance state certainly did seem genuine. She could be cut, pricked, and even have a bottle of ammonia held under her nose without being disturbed. Within a few minutes of entering a trance, Mrs. Piper would begin to speak with the voice of Phinuit, which was gruff and masculine. When Phinuit was in top form, he would give sitters accounts of the appearances of deceased friends and relatives and would transmit messages from them, often with the appropriate gestures. Copious communications from deceased friends and relatives of sitters would be relayed, and the information would often turn out to be accurate in even the tiniest of details.

On off days, Phinuit would ramble and fish for information, providing valuable ammunition for hostile critics. But even at his most banal, he was capable of springing a surprise. At a sitting on June 3, 1889, Mr. J. Rich gave Phinuit a dog collar. Shortly after, Phinuit said he saw the dog coming, and exclaimed: “Here he comes! Oh, how he jumps! There he is now, jumping upon and around you. So glad to see you! Rover! Rover! No—G-rover, Grover! That’s his name!” The dog had once been called Rover, but his name was changed to Grover in 1884, in honor of the election of the U.S. president Grover Cleveland. 2Mrs. Piper was discovered for the SPR by William James, who first attended one of her séances with his wife back in 1885. James and his wife gave no information about themselves and said nothing while Mrs. Piper was in trance. Nevertheless, Phinuit spoke to them about matters that James and his wife felt certain nobody but they could have known. James was so impressed that he subsequently sent twenty-five other persons to sit with her under pseudonyms. In a report on her medium-ship, written in the spring of 1886, James wrote, “I am persuaded of the medium’s honesty, and of the genuineness of her trance; and although at first disposed to think that the ‘hits’ she made were either lucky coincidence, or the result of knowledge on her part of who the sitter was, and of his or her family affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a power as yet unexplained.” 3As a result of James’s report, the leaders of the SPR in London engaged Mrs. Piper on a permanent basis by paying her a retaining fee, in order that she would devote herself exclusively to research. In 1887, Richard Hodgson was sent to Boston by the SPR in London to take charge of the investigation. As mentioned earlier, he had the reputation of being a ruthless skeptic, and was also considered an expert in the unmasking of fraud.

Hodgson first had several sittings himself with Mrs. Piper, at which much intimate knowledge, some of it very personal, was shown of deceased friends and relatives of Hodgson. He then arranged for sittings with at least fifty people whom he believed to be complete strangers to Mrs. Piper, and the utmost precautions were taken to prevent her from obtaining any information on the sitters beforehand. Sitters were introduced anonymously or under a pseudonym; they often entered the room only after Mrs. Piper had gone into a trance, and then sat behind rather that facing her. In most of these cases, the results were the same as with Hodgson: most sitters were given facts that they were sure Mrs. Piper could not have known about through ordinary means. For several weeks, Hodgson even had her trailed by detectives, to ascertain whether there were any indications that Mrs. Piper or her husband, or others connected with her, tried to ascertain facts about possible sitters, or employed confederates to do so. But as Hodgson tells us, “not the smallest indication of any such procedure was discovered.” 4 William James concurred:

Dr Hodgson considers that the hypothesis of fraud cannot be seriously maintained. I agree with him absolutely. The medium has been under observation, much of the time under close observation, as to most of the conditions of her life, by a large number of persons, eager, many of them, to pounce upon any suspicious circumstances for [nearly] fifteen years. During that time, not only has there not been one single suspicious circumstance remarked, but not one suggestion has ever been made, from any quarter which might tend positively to explain how the medium, living the apparent life she leads, could possibly collect information about so many sitters by natural means. 5Mrs. Piper was even brought to England to be tested, where she knew no one and could have no agents. As in America, sitters were usually introduced anonymously; and Mrs. Piper continued to get impressive results. However, the investigators could not decide if Mrs. Piper was really in touch with deceased individuals or if she were merely gaining the information telepathically from the minds of the sitters.

What proved the turning point for Hodgson were the so-called GP communications. George “Pelham” (a pseudonym for Pellew) was a young Boston lawyer, intensely interested in literature and philosophy. As a friend of Hodgson, the two had discussed the possibility of an afterlife; although GP (Pellew) was extremely skeptical of even the possibility, he did promise Hodgson that if he should die first and find himself still living, he would try his best to communicate.

Two years later, GP met his death accidentally at the age of thirty-two, by a fall in New York in February 1892. About four weeks later, Hodgson accompanied a close friend of GP’s to a sitting with Mrs. Piper, with the friend sitting under the assumed name of “John Hart.” With Phinuit acting as an intermediary, messages purporting to come from GP were relayed to Hart. It should be remembered that GP had attended a sitting with Mrs. Piper about five years earlier, also under an assumed name, and that Hodgson did not think that Mrs. Piper ever remembered seeing him. But, at any rate, at the sitting George Pellew’s name was given in full, the sitter was recognized by his real name, and the communications referred to incidents that were unknown to both the sitter and Hodgson.

One of these unknown incidents concerned James and Mary Howard, who were mentioned by name, along with that of their daughter, Katherine. The message was “Tell her, she’ll know. I will solve the problems, Katharine.” These words meant nothing to Hodgson or the sitter, but when “Hart” gave James Howard an account of the sitting the next day, these words impressed him more than anything else. GP, when he had last stayed with the Howards, had talked frequently with Katherine (a girl of fifteen) about certain philosophical problems. It turned out that GP had told the girl that he would solve the problems and let her know, using almost the exact same words communicated at the sitting.

Three weeks later a sitting was arranged with the Howards, without their names being given. Phinuit first said a few words; then, suddenly, GP appeared to control Mrs. Piper’s voice directly. This new control lasted almost the duration of the séance, the nature of which Hodgson describes.

The statements made were intimately personal and characteristic. Common friends were referred to by name, inquiries were made about private matters, and the Howards, who were not predisposed to take any interest in psychical research, but who had been induced by the account of Mr. Hart to have a sitting with Mrs. Piper, were profoundly impressed with the feeling that they were in truth holding a conversation with the personality of the friend whom they had known so many years. 6

The following passages are from notes taken during that séance, and may serve to suggest the freedom with which the conversation was carried on. The remarks in parentheses are those made during the séance by James Howard.

GP: Jim, is that you? Speak to me quick. I am not dead. Don’t think me dead. I’m awfully glad to see you. Can’t you see me? Don’t you hear me? Give my love to my father and tell him I want to see him. I am happy here, and more so since I find I can communicate with you. I pity those people who can’t speak …

(What do you do, George? Where are you?)

I am scarcely able to do anything yet. I am just awakened to the reality of life after death. It was like darkness, I could not distinguish anything at first. Darkest hours just before dawn, you know that, Jim. I was puzzled, confused. Shall have an occupation soon. Now I can see you, my friends. I can hear you speak. Your voice, Jim, I can distinguish with your accent and articulation, but it sounds like a big bass drum. Mine would sound to you like the faintest whisper.

(Our conversation then is something like telephoning?)

Yes.

(By long distance telephone.)

[GP laughs.]

(Were you not surprised to find yourself living?)

Perfectly so. Greatly surprised. I did not believe in a future life. 7

In séances from this time on, GP sometimes communicated directly through Mrs. Piper’s voice, and sometimes through automatic writing, with the latter becoming more common as time passed. GP’s career as a “drop-in” communicator persisted until 1897, and out of 150 sitters who were introduced to GP during that time, he recognized by name twenty-nine of the thirty that George Pellew had known in life (the sole exception was a young woman who had been a child when the living Pellew had last seen her). He conversed with each of these individuals in the appropriate manner, and showed an intimate knowledge of his supposed past relationships with them. As Hodgson writes, in each case “the recognition was clear and full, and accompanied by an appreciation of the relations which subsisted between GP living and the sitters.” 8 And there was not a single case of false recognition; that is, GP never once greeted anyone of the 120 that the living Pellew had not known.

Hodgson adds:

The continual manifestation of this personality—so different from Phinuit or other communicators—with its own reservoir of memories, with its swift appreciation of any reference to friends of GP, with its “give and take” in little incidental conversations with myself, has helped largely in producing a conviction of the actual presence of the GP personality, which it would be quite impossible to impart by any mere enumeration of verifiable statements. 9By 1898, when he published his report on Mrs. Piper’s medium-ship for the SPR, Hodgson had become a firm believer in survival. In large part, his conversion seems to be due to the clear expression of the personality and memories of the deceased George Pellew. Hodgson was convinced that Mrs. Piper had no knowledge of the living Pellew. So how could she have succeeded in dramatically impersonating somebody she had barely met more than four years earlier in a way that convinced thirty people who were intimate with Pellew before he died? Near the end of his report, Hodgson states that, although further experimental evidence may lead him to change his mind, “at the present I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the chief ‘communicators’ to whom I have referred in the foregoing pages are veritably the personalities that they claim to be, that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper’s entranced organism.” 10In December 1905, Hodgson died unexpectedly, at the age of fifty, following a game of handball at his club. A week later, messages purporting to come from the deceased Hodgson began to be relayed by Mrs. Piper. Reports of the messages from Hodgson reached his old friend William James. Intrigued, James once again investigated Mrs. Piper’s mediumship. His report to the SPR in 1909 covered some seventy-five sittings in which Hodgson was said to be in control. James found much of the material impressive as evidence of supernormal knowledge; and everyone admitted that the Hodgson control showed many of the personal traits of Hodgson. However, James stopped short of committing himself to the view that the messages were indeed from his deceased friend. After all, Mrs. Piper had known the living Hodgson very well, so James felt that Mrs. Piper could be subconsciously dramatizing his personality and furnishing it with information acquired by ESP. At any rate, James’s reservations were shared by Mrs. Sidgwick, Sir Oliver Lodge, and J. G. Piddington, all of whom were to go further than James in their commitment to the survival hypothesis.

Comments on the Mediumship of Mrs. Piper

Mrs. Piper’s trance mediumship continued until 1911, and she was to play a part in the famous “cross correspondences,” which are discussed in chapter 14. The discovery of Mrs. Piper inaugurated an era in which several outstanding mediums—many of them amateurs—put their services at the disposal of researchers, often instead of cultivating a clientele. During this period, most of the leading figures of the SPR, both in America and in England, gave high priority to survival as a research problem.

From: Chris Carter. Science and the Afterlife Experience