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 ,1 I r 1 1 Lii\ Tiwr ,
 
 THE EVIDENCE FOR 
 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD
 
 Demy 8vo. Cloth 8/6 net. 
 
 THE NEWER SPIRITUALISM 
 
 By Frank Podmore. 
 
 " Sums up the results of his prolonged inquires on the 
 subject of spiritualism. . . . Mr. Podmore, at any rate, 
 seems to have summed up the existing evidence in 
 the most critical, and at the same time, open-handed 
 manner." — Daily News. 
 
 "Here Mr. Podmore is at his best: sane, clear, and 
 wonderfully acute." — Morning Leader. 
 
 " We are greatly indebted to Mr. Podmore for this 
 clear, critical, and dispassionate survey of the whole 
 question. " — Inquirer. 
 
 LONDON : 
 T. FISHER UNWIN
 
 THE EVIDENCE FOR 
 
 COMMUNICATION 
 
 WITH THE DEAD 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. ANNA HUDE, PH.D. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE 
 LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
 
 First published in 1 9 1 3 . 
 
 [All rights reserved.]
 
 BF 
 
 The quotations in this book from the Proceedings of 
 the Society for Psychical Research are made by permission, 
 but it is of course to be understood that for all interpre- 
 tations and discussion of matter borrowed from the 
 Proceedings — that is, for everything beyond the actual 
 quotations — the author alone is responsible. 
 
 To the above statement I want to add my warmest 
 thanks to the leaders of the Society. If I have been 
 obliged to disagree with some of their opinions, this fact 
 has not diminished my deep esteem for their great and 
 noble work. 
 
 No less do I desire to thank the leader of the American 
 Society for Psychical Research, Professor James Hyslop, 
 who is indeed, as he has been called, the apostolic 
 successor of that prominent researcher and untiring 
 worker. Dr. Richard Hodgson, whose name will appear 
 very often in the following pages. 
 
 A. H.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION I 
 The Supernormal Powers of Man 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY . . I 
 
 II. TELEPATHY ........ l6 
 
 III. CLAIRVOYANCE ....... 30 
 
 SECTION II 
 
 The Automatic Writing of Mrs. Verrall 
 
 IV, introduction, dr. verrall's experiment . 46 
 V. the symposium incident ..... 59 
 
 VI. cross-correspondences with MRS. FORBES . . 74 
 
 VII. PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION .... 85 
 
 VIII. CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES WITH MRS. PIPER . . 95 
 
 SECTION III 
 
 The Automatic Writing of Mrs. Holland 
 
 ix. spontaneous writing. ..... loi 
 
 x. the beginning of experiments . . . . i24 
 
 xi, cross-correspondences ..... i46 
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 The Mediumism of Mrs. Piper, I. The Phinuit 
 
 Period 
 
 y 
 
 XII. PHINUIT . . . . . . . .172 
 
 XIII. GEORGE PELHAM ....... I99
 
 • • • 
 
 HI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 SECTION V 
 
 
 
 
 The Mediumism of Mrs. Piper. 
 
 II. The New 
 
 
 
 Regime 
 
 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIV. 
 
 the hyslop sittings , 
 
 . 
 
 223 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS . 
 
 \ 
 
 . 
 
 251 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE HODGSON-CONTROL 
 
 • • • 
 
 267 
 
 SECTION VI 
 The Mediumism of Mrs. Piper. III. Experiments 
 XVII. cross-correspondences ..... 
 
 XVIII. OTHER EXPERIMENTS ...... 
 
 274 
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 Conclusion. New Mediums 
 
 XIX. conclusion 
 
 XX. NEW MEDIUMS 
 
 333 
 
 341 
 
 
 INDEX 
 
 349
 
 N 
 
 The Evidence for 
 Communication with the Dead. 
 
 SECTION I 
 The Supernormal Powers of Man 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 
 
 With regard to the problem which is the subject of the 
 present book, the world of to-day stands divided into two 
 sharply defined factions. There are those who feel 
 convinced that a communication with the dead exists, 
 and those who — if they have given a thought to the matter 
 at all — consider it all but insane to assume such a com- 
 munication. The former group consists of the believing 
 spiritualists, who without much criticism accept most 
 things that purport to be messages from the departed ; 
 but it includes withal men and women who regard 
 psychical research as a science, and cultivate it in a 
 scientific manner. Of the latter and much larger group, 
 it may on the whole be said that its members know little 
 or nothing about the question ; as a rule, those who have 
 occupied themselves with it have left the standpoint 
 described above. After a thorough and honest study of 
 the subject, only a very few have maintained their 
 original opinion. 
 
 Among these few is M. Theodore Flournoy, Professor of 
 Psychology at the University of Geneva, perhaps the 
 
 CD. B
 
 2 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 most important adversary of the spiritistic conclusion. 
 His scientific training, his eloquent language, and his 
 conspicuous fairness in discussion, combine to make his 
 treatment of the problem very valuable ; his works have 
 justly gained a world-wide reputation, and no psychical 
 student can omit pa3ang attention to them. I propose, 
 therefore, to commence my investigation of the question 
 with a revieV of his results. 
 
 Professor Floumoy's great merit is above all to have, 
 with respect to a large category of mediumistic communi- 
 cations, made out in a clear and convincing manner that 
 the source from which they proceed is to be found in the 
 medium's own self. Imagination, that power to create 
 figures and make up stories which all of us possess in a 
 degree, and which in the partially or entirely entranced 
 medium may assume vast proportions, is one factor ; 
 cryptomnesia, that emergence of forgotten memories 
 which we know from our dream-life, the other. In the 
 opinion of Professor Flournoy, they together explain so 
 completely the mediumistic utterances, that at any rate 
 with regard to those mediums whom he has himself 
 studied, nothing remains in support of other theories. 
 
 For this assertion, Professor Flournoy has produced 
 interesting evidence in his famous book From India to the 
 Planet Mars ; afterwards he has in the work Spirits and 
 Mediums ^ in divers ways strengthened the proof. What 
 the subconscious imagination of the medium Helen Smith 
 (pseudonym) was capable of inventing is already shown 
 in the title of the former book, which is consecrated solely 
 to her. It made her believe herself to be a reincarnation, 
 now of the queen of France, Marie Antoinette, now of an 
 Indian princess from the fifteenth century ; it transported 
 her to the planet Mars, and made her give detailed 
 descriptions, nay drawings, of the wonderful things she 
 saw there, and the human beings she met with. For the 
 planetarians resembled, strange to tell, the inhabitants of 
 
 ' Esprits et Mediums, translated into English by Hereward Car- 
 rington under the title of Spiritism and Psychology.
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 3 
 
 this earth, and their language, of which she furnished 
 many examples, certainly consisted of odd words, but its 
 construction corresponded most accurately to the con- 
 struction of her own mother-tongue, French. The 
 Martian vocables translated one by one the French words. 
 Monsieur, Madame and Mademoiselle, were called metiche, 
 medachc, and metaganiche, and so on. The similitude 
 was so great that even the connecting t had its equivalent 
 — also when it was quite superfluous. 
 
 In a romance like this, it was not very difficult to 
 recognize a purely subliminal product, even if it required 
 a scientific mind like Professor Flournoy's to trace it back 
 to its source, and make clear the process that had produced 
 it. In Spirits and Mediums, however, the author has got 
 to deal with communications of a more ordinary type, 
 and in no wise does he disregard the difficulty of furnishing 
 an absolutely satisfactory proof of their origin. It is, in 
 fact, not only necessary to show that their contents may 
 have been derived from the medium, but that they cannot 
 have come from any other source. It is true that their 
 banality is often so great that all doubt must disappear. 
 For instance, on the occasion of the coming to Geneva of 
 a famous spiritualist, the great reformer Calvin introduced 
 himself with the following tirade : 
 
 " Yes, it is indeed the reformer of Geneva who is here. I am 
 pierced with pain at seeing what has become of the Huguenot 
 faith among the greater portion of my fellow-citizens. But 
 I see help coming, and I beseech you to seize it. It is cleri- 
 calism that has corrupted the masses, it is for the spiritualists 
 to repair the evil ! It is no easy thing, I know, to transform 
 suddenly the foundations of moral and religious life ; but even 
 if one's whole Hfe must be devoted to it, and all dreamed of 
 happiness must be sacrificed, it is the duty of all believers to 
 make the light penetrate as far as possible." 
 
 In the same manner it fared with the contemporary 
 celebrities of Geneva, when they departed this life. They 
 invariably came into new existence through the trance- 
 performances of one or more mediums, but always, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Professor Floiirnoy states, these manifestations corre- 
 sponded to the medium's idea of the deceased persons, 
 and not to the image which he himself had of their 
 personahty. With crude colours was depicted the famous 
 corypheus of materialism, Carl Vogt, arriving to tell of 
 his death and his surprise at being still alive. 
 
 (( 
 
 What ! Vogt, the sceptic who had believed himself to be 
 brain and nerves only ! And he lives, he thinks, he acts, 
 without the instrumentaUty of these things ! Woe, woe to 
 me ! To believe oneself competent in such a matter and to 
 have deceived oneself so grossly ! My poor head will jump 
 off ! " 
 
 And when shortly afterwards the old physiologist 
 Schiff, who when Professor Flournoy saw him in his 
 laboratory was always original, piquant, and full of 
 philosophical ideas, manifested through the same medium, 
 his speech consisted only of platitudes, after the style of 
 Vogt. 
 
 Here, then, the contents of the communications speak 
 for themselves, because the incongruity between the 
 alleged communicators and the utterances ascribed to 
 them is too evident. But of course there are cases where 
 this criterion fails. Professor Flournoy, however, con- 
 tends that when, with regard to a number of typical 
 " messages," he can show the impossibility of their 
 emanating from any other source than the medium, he 
 must be right in maintaining this simple explanation also 
 where their origin is less clear. He reproduces, therefore, 
 with special satisfaction, a series of messages which cannot 
 be assigned to the apparent communicator because this 
 person is still alive. A most characteristic case is that 
 of Mme. Dupond, a learned and highly educated lady, 
 who at the age of forty-five became interested in spiritism. 
 She read Allan Kardec, etc., and tried automatic writing 
 with some success. She had a friend, M. Rodolphe, a 
 young Frenchman, who to her great regret had recently 
 entered into a religious order in Italy. A few days after
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 5 
 
 she had obtained her first script, on April 24th, 1881, her 
 hand wrote as follows : 
 
 " I am Rodolphe ; I died at 11 o'clock last night, on 
 April 23rd. You must believe what I tell you. I am happ}', 
 I have ended my troubles. I have been sick for some days, 
 and I could not write. I had a haemorrhage of the lungs, 
 caused by a cold, which came suddenly. I died without 
 suffering, and I have thought much of you. I have left orders 
 as to your letters. I died at X., far from dom Bruno . . . 
 Your father brought me to you ; I did not know we could 
 communicate thus ; it makes me very happy ... A httle 
 before my death I called the director of the Oratory to me ; 
 gave him your letters, begging him to return them to you ; 
 he wil] do so. After communion I begged to see my colleagues, 
 and said good-bye to them ; I was peaceful ; I did not suffer ; 
 but hfe gradually became extinct. The passage of death 
 resembled that of sleep. I awakened near God, near parents 
 and friends ; it was beautiful, wonderful ; I was happy and 
 free. I have thought at once of those who loved me, and I 
 should have hked to speak to them, but I can only com- 
 municate with you. I remain with you, and I see you, but I 
 only notice your spirit ... I am devoted to you. Do not 
 fear that I love you less because I am no longer on earth ; it 
 is the reverse. I am in space, I see your parents, and I love 
 them also. Adieu ; I am going to pray for you ... I am no 
 longer Catholic ; I am Christian." 
 
 This first message was followed by others — until Mme. 
 Dupond, on April 30th, received a letter from Rodolphe 
 who, far from being dead, was in perfect health. 
 
 Professor Flournoy has with much fineness unravelled 
 the causes of Mme. Dupond's subliminal romance about 
 her young friend. She had met him in Italy, where he 
 was passing the winter on account of his health. They 
 had talked together about spiritual subjects, and Mme. 
 Dupond, who was a Protestant, nad wanted to convert 
 him to her own faith ; but instead of this she found that 
 the influence exercised over him by an Italian preacher, 
 the Father dom Bruno, prevailed over her own, and that 
 he became associated with a religious order under the 
 direction of this father. Now she expected a letter from 
 him ; it did not arrive, and a sudden fall in the tempera- 
 ture that followed a warm spell of spring might well make
 
 6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 her fear for him whose health was so delicate. Such is 
 the background of her n^mancc about his death ; perhaps, 
 in the depth of her soul she would have preferred to know 
 him dead rather than living with dom Bruno ; the remark 
 that he died far from this prelate suggests such a feeling. 
 His death made everything right ; he was happy and loved 
 her even more; than before ; he was no longer Catholic, 
 he was Christian. There is, in fact, as regards the sub- 
 stance, not much difference between Mme. Dupond's 
 automatic production and those day-dreams which many 
 people dream awake, though of course the process is more 
 alike to real dreaming. ^ 
 
 Two other cases were communicated to Professor 
 Flournoy by the medium Mme. Zora. One referred to a 
 very old lady, Adrienne B., whom she had known in the 
 small town of Delemont, where she had resided at the time 
 before her marriage, and celebrated her wedding. Mme. 
 Zora's husband had gone to live in the tropics, and the 
 anxious wife had received, through another psychic, a 
 message which stated that he was dead. Probably, then, 
 her thoughts often went back to Delemont, and to that 
 period when she used to see Adrienne B. ; this lady was 
 at that time, sixteen years before, eighty years of age ; 
 thus it was natural that Mme. Zora more or less consciously 
 believed her to be no longer among the living. 
 
 Under these circumstances she one day automatically 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " My very dear friend, for the first time I come to visit you ; 
 I shall be glad to talk with you if you will permit me to do so. 
 You have not yet recognized me, which surprises me ; it is 
 not so many years since I saw you, and you were very amiable 
 and full of reminiscences. It is eleven years since you paid 
 me a visit, and you have not been at Delemont since, so I have 
 not had the pleasure of speaking to you for a long time. It is 
 already some time since I pas^:ed away, and it is only to-day 
 that I learn that you are permitted to keep up the relationship 
 with this side of the grave ; I am very glad that you enjoy 
 this privilege, you deserve it, and I am also glad for my own 
 sake. You will tell me if you too have kept the memory of our 
 good little moments in the Rue du Midi, and of the last visit
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 7 
 
 I paid you at Moutiers ; it is already long ago, it was in 1871. 
 I believe that I remember rightly though it is not easy here, 
 
 nor yet on account of my great age ^ Good-bye, my dear 
 
 friend, it will be a pleasure to me to return some time. Your 
 old friend — Adrienne B." 
 
 Though Mme. Adrienne B. was at this time ninety-six 
 years of age, she did not die until two months after the 
 production of Mme. Zora's script. The latter was at 
 Delemont the day after her death and was told about it. 
 Without this coincidence she would have continued to 
 regard the old lady as the author of the script. This being 
 impossible, she believed that a deceiving spirit had made 
 use of her hand. That such a one should be cognizant of 
 the petty details upon which the message is based, and 
 which were all to be found in her own memory, does not 
 seem to have caused her any astonishment. 
 
 In the second case sent by Mme. Zora the cause of the 
 " message " was very evident. The automatist knew 
 that the alleged communicator, Mme. Leblanc, was dying, 
 and it was a lady whom she had very earnestly tried to 
 convert to spiritism, without success. While her mind 
 was filled with sad thoughts about her, one morning she 
 was seized with a strong desire to write. She took a 
 pencil, which immediately wrote the following lines : 
 
 " Yes, I am she of whom you thought. You were right. 
 You spoke truly. I did not dare to believe it, and behold, I am 
 here ! Glory be to our Father whom you love and whom you 
 glorify in your soul and in these pages . . . Yes, I am here, 
 happy to be so, to tell you that in spite of my great desire to 
 believe it, I had to experience it myself — to touch with the 
 finger, to put my hand in the side. I have not forgotten our 
 first meeting, and I have come to say ' Amen ' with you to all 
 the desires of your hearts, to all your experiences ... A. L." 
 
 Evidently the script represents the feelings which the 
 medium must imagine to be those of her sceptical friend 
 when she learned after death that spiritism had told the 
 truth, and no particle more. And yet Mme. Zora, when it 
 
 ^ Omissions by the present author are indicated by dashes ; otherwise 
 by dots.
 
 8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 was ascertained that Mme. Leblanc had Hved forty-eight 
 hours after the production of the message, could not be per- 
 suaded to accept the theory of Professor Flournoy ; she 
 does not in this case seem to have felt certain that a 
 deceiving spirit had amused itself at her cost, but she 
 preferred to remain without explanation rather than 
 believe that she herself had been the unconscious author 
 of the communication. 
 
 In spite of their triteness I have given these " messages " 
 all but unabridged, because longwindedness is one of 
 their chief characteristics. In all of them, however, the 
 subconscious mind had shown a faculty of composing 
 which had at least imposed upon the waking sensitive. 
 And yet we have only reached the first stage of its 
 capability. We have as yet encountered nothing but 
 pure construction, founded upon details which the 
 mediums knew normally ; we have found no knowledge 
 which they could not recognize, and, therefore, with some 
 reason must ascribe to external beings. The next stage 
 is the one where such a knowledge supervenes ; a know- 
 ledge, however, which on closer examination turns out to 
 be, nevertheless,- that of the mediums themselves, though 
 it has been so completely lost by their waking conscious- 
 ness that they generally do not even recollect it when 
 reminded of it. We meet here the phenomenon called 
 cryptomnesia, hidden memory — that is, a memory which 
 exists only in the subconsciousness, and can only through 
 automatic speech or script, and the like, be made accessible 
 for other people and for the normal medium. 
 
 It is, as accentuated by Professor Flournoy, of course 
 extremely difficult to prove this purely subjective origin 
 of the mediumistic communications when they refer to 
 matters whose connection with the medium is hidden or 
 improbable. It is necessary to know the individuality of 
 the mediums, their past, their family, their acquaintances, 
 their reading and other occupations, in order to be able to 
 judge in some measure of " the contents of their bag."
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 9 
 
 Therefore Professor Flournoy has himself preferred to 
 confine his studies to the psycliics hving in Geneva, whose 
 relations he might have some hope of unravelling. And 
 here, as with regard to pure fabrication, he insists on his 
 right to apply the results of a few thoroughly analyzed 
 cases to the many similar ones which, on account of the 
 circumstances, it is less easy to dissect. 
 
 It is more specially in the book From India to the Planet 
 Mars that he has given us the result of a few analyses of 
 this kind. An interesting instance is his demonstration 
 of the origin of Helen Smith's statements about certain 
 deceased members of his own family. The medium was 
 in a semi-trance, communicating what she saw or heard 
 partly orally, partly by means of table-tippings. As a 
 typical case Professor Flournoy reports his very first 
 sitting with her, in 1894 ; at the time it caused him great 
 astonishment, as it was inconceivable to him how she 
 could be cognizant of things which had occurred even 
 before his own birth. His record is, slightly abridged, as 
 follows : 
 
 The medium describes that she sees two women, rather 
 handsome, dark, both of them in wedding-dress. " This 
 refers to you, M. Flournoy," she exclaims. They wear white 
 flowers in their hair, which is black ; they have dark eyes. 
 There is a certain resemblance between them. One of them 
 appears in two forms, in one she is young, about twenty-five 
 years of age, and dressed as described ; in the other radiant, 
 far away [i.e., dead], surrounded by a number of handsome 
 children, happy. The two women are going to be married. 
 The medium hears a name : "An . . An . . Dan . . Ran . . 
 Dandi . . Dandiran ! " Professor Flournoy asks to whom of 
 the two women the name refers. Answer : To her who had 
 two forms. The medium does not see the other so clearly, but 
 suddenly discerns a big man by her side. And the table 
 dictates : "I am her sister. We will return." 
 
 All this. Professor Flournoy says, is founded on the 
 fact that his mother and her sister were married on the 
 same day, in 1853, and that the latter, Mme. Dandiran, 
 died young and childless. The description " a big man " 
 fits his father. In five more sittings with Professor
 
 10 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Flournoy, Helen Smith produced information concerning 
 his mother's family ; beyond that, however, her know- 
 ledge did not seem to reach. This for one thing is a proof 
 of her honesty ; she might easily have informed herself 
 of his father's or his wife's family relations. Moreover, 
 the case presented the pecuHarity that the medium, after 
 the first six sittings, never once in the course of five years 
 during whigh Professor Flournoy attended her seances 
 reverted to these circumstances. It was as if her first 
 contact with the new sitter had called latent memories to 
 the surface, and the subHminal " bag " had at once 
 exhausted its supply. Everything suggested that the 
 medium had at some time learned something about his 
 mother's family, the Claparedes, and at last he succeeded 
 in elucidating the matter. On apphcation to the former 
 husband of his long since departed aunt, Professor 
 Dandiran, at Lausanne, who was the one living member 
 of that generation of Professor Flournoy's family, he 
 obtained the following information : 
 
 " I recollect that my mother and aunt, especially the latter, 
 were much interested in a young woman of that name [Smith] 
 whom they had already known and employed as a seamstress 
 
 before her marriage I also believe that their interest 
 
 in the young woman made them introduce her to the 
 ClaparMes ." 
 
 Not until he had received this answer, Professor 
 Flournoy addressed himself to Helen Smith's mother, 
 who was most willing to reply to his questions about her 
 relation to his mother and aunt. Helen herself did not 
 remember to have ever heard anything about them. All 
 her statements, however, referred to two separate periods 
 in which the intercourse had taken place, before and after 
 the marriage of Mme. Smith, and were of a nature to make 
 it easily conceivable that they belonged to stories which 
 the mother might have told her child. It must, therefore, 
 be admitted that Professor Flournoy has proved that this 
 was the source of the medium's knowledge. That she 
 did not recollect anything about it is only one of many
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY ii 
 
 instances of the subconsciously remembered things being 
 often those that are most thoroughly forgotten by the 
 normal self. 
 
 Likewise, Professor Flournoy found invariably that the 
 information given about deceased persons in Helen 
 Smith's trance referred to external things which might 
 easily be reported ; in a small town like Geneva, she must 
 doubtless have been told many stories about people 
 without consciously remembering them. Moreover, in 
 at least two cases besides his own, Helen's mother was 
 proved to be the source. 
 
 Under these circumstances, Professor Flournoy feels 
 justified in asserting that cryptomnesia alone suffices to 
 explain the knowledge of this medium. But of course it 
 was not always possible to obtain the proof of such being 
 the case. In the Indian romance, for instance, the 
 source seemed certain, but the medium's connection with 
 it was unprovable. Mile. Smith purported to be the 
 reincarnation of the princess Simandini, the wife of the 
 jealous prince Sivrouka Nayaka, living in the palace 
 Tchandraguiri in Kanara in India, in the year 1401. 
 Professor Flournoy — who, moreover, was alleged to be 
 the reincarnation of Sivrouka Nayaka — was of course 
 very eager to learn whether this prince had really existed, 
 and what was on the whole the foundation of Helen's 
 story. But he appUed in vain to various historians for a 
 confirmation of her statements ; they did not know 
 Sivrouka Nayaka. Great, therefore, was his excitement 
 when one day in the library of Geneva on turning over the 
 leaves of M. de Maries' voluminous Histoire de I'Inde, a 
 work published in 1828, he found the following passage : 
 
 " Kanara and the adjoining provinces next to Delhi may be 
 regarded as the Georgia of Hindostan. There the most 
 beautiful women are said to dwell ; also the inhabitants are 
 very jealous ; they scarcely permit them to be seen by 
 strangers. 
 
 " Tchandraguiri, whose name means Mountain of the Moon, 
 is a vast fortress constructed in 1401 by the Rajah Sivrouka- 
 Nayaca."
 
 12 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 It turned out, however, that this discovery did not 
 secure the existence of the prince. The historians agreed 
 in declaring that the work of Maries was worthless, and 
 the statement about Sivrouka and his fortress pure fiction. 
 Nay, Maries himself only mentioned them in his geo- 
 graphical description of India ; in a later volume where 
 he deals with the history of the period 1200 — 1600, they 
 do not figi\re. 
 
 Such being the case, it seems impossible to doubt that 
 Helen Smith has made their acquaintance direct or 
 indirect through Maries' work ; the naming of a precise 
 year within the Christian era is in itself indicative of 
 literary origin ; and that the whole of it is incorrect, not 
 in accordance with fact, of course points decisively to 
 this very book. But Helen Smith's connection with the 
 old and rare work was in itself most improbable, and not 
 even a sagacity like Professor Flournoy's was capable of 
 discovering it. 
 
 Where Professor Flournoy sums up his estimation of 
 mediumistic performances, he strongly accentuates their 
 silliness or, as he more often prefers to call it, their 
 puerility. " The most striking thing in all these 
 mediumistic imaginings," he writes, " is their childish and 
 terribly fooHsh character. The medium no longer seems 
 to be the mature and serious person whom we knew in 
 normal life, but an inferior, degenerate personality, as if 
 the mediumistic state involved a spiritual deterioration, 
 a sort of relapse to a former level." " Everything forces 
 us to assume that the mind of the medium when pro- 
 ducing the messages is in a state of infantile regression." 
 As an illustration hereof, he mentions that Mile. X., the 
 medium through whom Calvin manifested, was a lady of 
 high culture, the authoress of philosophical and moral 
 writings ; if in her normal state she had proposed to 
 compose an essay on the ideas of the reformer, she doubt- 
 less would not have made him express himself in the 
 trivial and insipid manner that characterizes her auto-
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 13 
 
 matic product. Helen Smith, too, is described by Pro- 
 fessor Flournoy as a most intelligent woman. That her 
 romances are childish will be clear to all readers of From 
 India to the Planet Mars. Very infantile also is her 
 fabrication of the Martian language ; to make a new 
 language is in itself a feat which probably many people 
 will own to have tried to accomplish in their childhood. 
 A special want of intelligence was displayed by the 
 entranced Mile. Smith when Professor Flournoy had 
 pointed out to her normal self that the equivalent for the 
 connecting t in the sentence reviendra-t-il was quite 
 superfluous in the Martian translation herimir m hed ; a 
 week later the French words trouve-t-on were rendered by 
 bindie ide — without the connecting consonant, though in 
 this case it would have been anything but superfluous. 
 Her subconscious mind had entirely missed the point of 
 the professor's criticism. 
 
 Until now we have only discussed the mediums whom 
 Professor Flournoy had made the objects of his personal 
 study. With regard to those who constitute the chief 
 material for the research of the Psychical Society in 
 England, his views are different. Their performances he 
 does not think can be explained as a mixture of imagina- 
 tion and cryptomnesia only ; he sets up as a third cause, 
 telepathy, which furnishes the mediums with a knowledge 
 that is not to be found in their own mind. 
 
 With telepathy we have reached the supernormal 
 powers of man ; the faculty of speaking or writing auto- 
 matically, cryptomnesia, etc., no doubt are not normal 
 qualities, but they do not rank as supernormal. Professor 
 Flournoy, however, accentuates that he does not use the 
 term telepathy as an explanatory hypothesis, but simply 
 to design " the fact that a great many automatic com- 
 munications which are astonishing as coming from the 
 medium cease to be so when the sitters are reckoned with 
 as factors." There are mediums who draw not only from 
 their own forgotten memories, but from the knowledge of
 
 14 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 the persons present. How it is done, Professor Flournoy 
 will not attempt to investigate ; he contents himself with 
 stating as an " empirical law " that telepathy takes place. 
 The group of memories which a sitter carries with him of a 
 dead person may emerge through the medium who did not 
 know that person ; " they are telepathically reflected in 
 the subconsciousness of the medium as in a living mirror, 
 and he immediately translates into words and gestures 
 this borrowed image, no doubt striking in its resemblance, 
 but one in which the defunct has not the slightest 
 share." 
 
 In the case, however, of the most famous among the 
 English-speaking mediums,^ Mrs. Piper, the theory of 
 telepathy from the present persons became insufficient. 
 " Doubtless," Professor Flournoy writes, " many of these 
 striking cases can be explamed by mental transmission, 
 the medium having only sent back to the sitters the 
 picture of the discarnate which they themselves carried in 
 their thoughts. But there are more complex facts, in 
 which it is necessary to admit an active and selective 
 telepathy, by the aid of which the hypnoid imagination 
 of Mrs. Piper can choose from the minds of many living — 
 present or absent — memories concerning only the dead 
 person in question, and reunite them in such a way as to 
 reconstruct a completer image than any of the partial 
 images which were left in any of the various persons of his 
 acquaintance." 
 
 Professor Flournoy admits that it is difficult to explain 
 this power of choice. He points at the possibility that 
 " the incomplete image of the defunct which one of the 
 sitters has transmitted telepathically to Mrs. Piper may 
 attract to itself, by some obscure psychological affinity, 
 other fragmentary images dispersed among other persons," 
 and that all these by becoming fused in her subconscious- 
 ness may " give birth to reconstructions of an exact and 
 recognizable nature." 
 
 It is, then, through a wide-ranging assumption of super- 
 normal human powers that Professor Flournoy arrives at
 
 ARGUMENT OF PROFESSOR FLOURNOY 15 
 
 his final conclusion which he lays down in his preface to 
 Spirits and Mediums when he writes : 
 
 " As for the supernormal incidents which are so often inter- 
 mixed with mediumistic phenomena, and which spiritism 
 interprets as implying the intervention of extra-terrestrial 
 
 intelligences, they denote, in truth, a veritable realm of 
 
 forces or of laws still mysterious, but a realm in which the 
 participation of the discarnate has not as yet been adequately 
 proved. Certainly it would be rash, a priori, to exclude its 
 possibility. But as there are a number of cases where super- 
 normal phenomena (telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.) occur which 
 obviously are not due to the departed, but to spontaneous and 
 natural faculties of the living in certain special states of their 
 personality, it is logical to suppose — provisionally, at least, 
 and until proof to the contrary be forthcoming — that it is the 
 same in cases where the circumstances are more obscure."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 TELEPATHY 
 
 In the preceding chapter we have heard Professor 
 Flournoy assert that imagination and cryptomnesia were 
 the sole sources of a large number of mediumistic com- 
 munications. With regard to the remaining part, he 
 referred to the supernormal powers of man as a fact 
 which seemed to make superfluous the assumption of the 
 participation of the dead. 
 
 With a certain force the same opinion has been set forth 
 by the German philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann/ 
 whose name is often mentioned by psychical researchers. 
 It is by means of telepathy, psychometry, and clair- 
 voyance, he argues, that the contents of the spiritistic 
 messages are obtained, which give them the appearance 
 of originating from the departed. Where the line is to be 
 drawn between the said phenomena is less certain, but 
 relatively of small importance ; clairvoyance exists at any 
 rate in the shape of prevision, as the perception of what 
 has not yet occurred cannot be due to the reading of other 
 people's thoughts. 
 
 Hartmann has made his argument against spiritism 
 famous by connecting it with his doctrine of a world-soul, 
 or central mind, in which all individual minds have their 
 root. Through it they can get into communication with 
 each other as over the telephone ^ — a simile he has no 
 hesitation in using — and from it they can draw, not only 
 the particulars of the present world-state in distant 
 
 1 See his two books : Spiritism (Der Spiritismus) and The Spirit 
 Theory (Die Geisterhypothese). 
 
 2 This explanation, however, is only applied to telepathy in its true 
 sense of mental intercourse at a distance ; thought-transference at close 
 quarters Hartmann ascribes to ether vibrations.
 
 TELEPATHY 17 
 
 places, but also the particulars of future events. For in 
 the central or absolute mind the threads of all casual 
 series meet in one single all-seeing ; its omniscience 
 embraces implicitly in the present world-state the future 
 as well as the past. 
 
 By this theory, Hartmann believes himself to have 
 explained not only supernormal intercommunication 
 between human beings, or telepathy, but clairvoyance 
 and prevision. But, he adds, his argument against 
 spiritism is not dependent on the truth of his theory. It 
 depends solely on the existence of the said powers, not on 
 their explanation. Against one thing only he protests — 
 explaining them by means of spirits. That would not be 
 to solve the problem, but to push it one step back and 
 leave it there just as unsolved as before. For, he asks, 
 why should the discamate any more than the living be 
 able to look into the future ? 
 
 According to Hartmann, the question is solved if the 
 supernormal faculties of the living be acknowledged. 
 
 To ascertain with what right Professor Flournoy and 
 Hartmann appeal to the existence of such faculties, must, 
 therefore, be our next step, and the starting-point for the 
 discussion of the main problem. But it is clear that the 
 investigation must take place within another territory 
 than the disputed one. The statements which a medium 
 adduces in the name of a dead person in proof of his 
 identity cannot be evidence for telepathy or clairvoyance, 
 as the question at issue is just whether they are due to 
 these faculties or are what they purport to be. 
 
 As regards telepathy, a valuable material is given in 
 the Proceedings of the Enghsh Society for Psychical 
 Research,^ through the publication of a number of experi- 
 ments between the two sensitives. Miss Clarissa Miles 
 and Miss Hermione Ramsden. The intelligent working 
 method of the two ladies, the contemporaneous recording 
 
 » Vol. XXI., pp. 60—93. 
 CD. C
 
 i8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 of the experiments, and their careful annotation, combine 
 to make the results due to their psychical faculties a 
 golden mine for its research. 
 
 In the following review of the phenomena, I shall make 
 use of Hartmann's classification, which is very systematic. 
 He divides telepathy into four categories, according to 
 the part played by the will, or intention, respectively of 
 the agent \and the percipient. It will be seen that the 
 two of them constitute thought-transference, and the 
 others so-called thought- or mind-rea ing. To the first 
 belong the ordinary experiments in thought-transmission, 
 while the second comprises the more uncommon cases 
 where an agent tries to influence a percipient without the 
 will or knowledge of the latter. 
 
 I. Intentional Perception by Intentional 
 
 Transmission. 
 
 Illustrations of this category may be taken from the 
 first series of experiments between Miss Miles and Miss 
 Ramsden, which took place in the autumn of 1905. Miss 
 Miles was staying in London, Miss Ramsden twenty miles 
 from that city ; the two ladies had not met since the 
 14th of June. ,The arrangement was that the experiments 
 should be tried at 7 p.m. ; Miss Miles was agent, and made 
 at the time of the experiment a note of the word or image 
 which she wished to convey, while Miss Ramsden wrote 
 down her impressions, and sent the record to Miss Miles 
 before knowing what she had attempted on her side. 
 
 Experiment I. 
 Miss Miles's note : 
 
 " I sat with my feet on the fender, I thought of Sphinx, I 
 tried to visualize it. Spoke the word out loud. I could only 
 picture it to myself quite small as seen from a distance. — 
 C. M." 
 
 Miss Ramsden 's record : 
 
 " I could not visualize, but seemed to feel that you were
 
 <( 
 << 
 
 TELEPATHY 19 
 
 sitting with your feet on the fender in an arm-chair, in a loose 
 black sort of tea-gown. The following words occurred to me : 
 " Peter Evan or 'Eaven (Heaven). 
 " Hour-glass (this seemed the chief idea). 
 " Worcester deal box. 
 " Daisy Millar. 
 
 " X ^ arm socket or some word like it. 
 X suspension bridge. 
 X Sophia Ridley. 
 
 X soupirer (in French), which I felt inclined to spell 
 souspirer. There is some word with the letter S. I don't 
 seem quite to have caught it. — H. R." 
 
 Experiment II. 
 Miss Miles's note : 
 " I tried to visualize Sphinx again. — C. M." 
 
 Miss Ramsden's record : 
 
 " I received a letter from Miss Miles, saying, ' Letter S quite 
 correct, the hour-glass shape extraordinarily correct, also SS 
 at the end or something like it. I shall try again to-morrow 
 at seven. It will come all right.' After this I found it very 
 difficult not to try and guess the word instead of making my 
 mind a blank. 
 
 " Cossack. 
 
 " Cross. 
 
 " Compass (?). 
 
 " Luzac (the publisher). 
 
 " Luxor in Egypt. 
 
 " Here I gave up in despair, then suddenly came the word : 
 Whistle ! This I beheved to be correct. — H. R." 
 
 As may be seen, the percipient received impressions 
 partly of the sound, and partly of the idea. Whether 
 " hour-glass " was due to an impression of the shape of 
 the sphinx seems doubtful. But the s^'es in " suspen- 
 sion," and " souspirer," and the Sph in " Sophia," show 
 a similar approach to the word as that which will be 
 understood from one's own attempts to recall a forgotten 
 name. The idea the percipient is approaching when she 
 writes " Luxor in Egypt," which she gets hold of during 
 the second experiment in spite of her tendency to guess a 
 
 * A cross indicates that the impression was especially vivid. 
 
 C2
 
 20 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 word with ss. Perhaps " Ridley " in the first experiment, 
 was ah'eady due to an impression of the idea,— Sphinx 
 being almost synonymous for riddle. 
 
 What Miss Ramsden did not get was, however, the 
 word itself. In spite of her remarkable faculties as a 
 percipient, she almost never received exactly what was 
 sent. To " hit the central mark," is, to employ an 
 expression ^which is often used when thought-transfer- 
 ence is discussed, doubtless very difficult. 
 
 Experiment III. 
 
 Miss Miles's note : 
 
 "I sat before the fire in my sitting-room and visualized a 
 lamp. One of those very old-fashioned lamps with a large 
 globe, which seemed to me to be a round ball of fire. — C. M." 
 
 Miss Ramsden's record : 
 
 " Scissors, X orangery, shaloop ? shawl, jalousie (blinds), 
 fretwork or sort of trellis in a garden, echantillon (pattern), 
 sleepers, x gum plant or pot ? verisimilitude, Paternoster, 
 tabloids, x orangery, x orange flower, x orange pips, horse- 
 whip, housewife (needlecase), verdigris, purple hedgerow, 
 beech, beatitudes, tea cosy, Burnham Beeches, heather in 
 flower, crown, small box, short deal ? infanticide, x maltese 
 oranges growing in a pot, Chinese slippers, x Cape goose- 
 berries, these look like oranges. 
 
 " The most probable seems to be a small Maltese orange 
 tree, such as I have seen in London houses. — H. R." 
 
 In this experiment, contrary to the preceding ones, the 
 vision evidently played the chief part. Between the 
 percipient's own ideas, which seem more or less explicable 
 by assonance or association, always and with increasing 
 strength the image of an orange or an orange-tree intrudes 
 itself, — no doubt Miss Miles's lamp with the globe like a 
 " round ball of fire." 
 
 Experiment VII. 
 Miss Miles's note : 
 •'Spectacles. — C. M."
 
 TELEPATHY 21 
 
 Miss Ramsden's record : 
 
 " ' Spectacles.' This was the only idea that came to me 
 after waiting a long time, I thought of ' sense perception,' 
 but that only confirms the above. My mind was such a 
 complete blank that I fell asleep. — H. R." 
 
 Later on Miss Ramsden added : "I did not visualize 
 the spectacles, the word came to me as a sudden idea." 
 She had at this point determined to try to visualize, being 
 unsatisfied with her attempts to " hear." Miss Miles, 
 again, had on this occasion for the first time tried another 
 method which afterwards became the usual one. Having 
 found that it was easier to impress an idea when it was 
 something that she had seen, and thought of later in the 
 day, she resolved that in future she would make her choice 
 accordingly, and think of some object in connection with 
 Miss Ramsden, without specially sitting down to do so 
 at 7 p.m. On the day of the seventh experiment, she 
 attended a meeting, and had for her neighbour a gentle- 
 man who wore a curious pair of spectacles which attracted 
 her attention. These she fixed on as her subject. 
 
 The success that attended the first application of the 
 new method was not continued. This was the only time 
 that Miss Ramsden received the very word which her co- 
 experimenter had tried to transfer to her. 
 
 2. Non-intentional Perception by Inten- 
 tional Transmission. 
 
 This category does not, probably, number many 
 instances. For the present, I shall confine myself to refer 
 to a case which will be discussed later — Dr. Verrall's 
 attempt co impress his wife to produce automatically 
 some Greek words, while she did not in the least suspect 
 that he was trying to influence her. It bears a close 
 resemblance to the cases given above, where both the 
 transmission and the perception were intentional. There 
 was the same fragmentariness, the same unconscious 
 struggle to grasp now the sound, and now the sense,
 
 22- COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 which we saw, for instance, in the Sphinx-experiment. 
 And as was often the case with Miss Ramsden, the result 
 was only approximative. Nay, Dr. Verrall's success was 
 inferior to that of the two ladies ; if his experiment had 
 not been continued for a length of time, it might have 
 been difficult to discover that he had succeeded in trans- 
 ferring anything whatever. 
 
 3. Intentional Perception without Inten- 
 tional Transmission. 
 
 With this category we have reached what Hartmann 
 designates as thought-readiilg. Of this also we shall 
 find excellent illustrations among the Miles-Ramsden 
 experiments. Already, during their first period of 
 experimenting, in the autumn of 1905, it happened that 
 Miss Ramsden obtained impressions without her co- 
 operator having executed her share in the programme. 
 Such, for instance, was the case on the fourth day appointed 
 for experiments, on October 22nd, Miss Miles notes 
 down : 
 
 " I never tried to visualize anything at all. About 6 o'clock 
 to 7.30 I was writing letters to friends. One I was pondering 
 over, for it required an answer. It was from a Polish 
 artist .— C. M." 
 
 Miss Ramsden wrote in a letter of October 25th : 
 
 " On Sunday night [October 22nd] I felt that you were not 
 thinking of me, but were reading a letter in a sort of half 
 German writing. The letters had very long tails to them 
 
 " Is there any truth in that ?— H. R." 
 
 The letter in question was written in a sloping and 
 obviously foreign hand, corresponding with the description 
 by Miss Ramsden. 
 
 On the ninth day Miss Miles had, to be sure, thought of 
 something, but Miss Ramsden caught something wholly 
 different. The former had in the afternoon had a visit 
 from a lady, and resolved to make her name the subject
 
 TELEPATHY 23 
 
 of the experiment. Miss Ramsden did not receive this, 
 but records : 
 
 " I visualized : W. M M was more vivid. It suggested your 
 sister-in-law. E V L Evelyn ? or ' Evelina,' which is the 
 name of an old-fashioned novel. Were you thinking about 
 me at all ? These I saw, but no vivid impressions. Perhaps 
 they had been topics of conversation, and were still on your 
 mind.— H. R." 
 
 Miss Miles and her visitor had talked of an acquaintance 
 with the initials W. M., and of Miss Miles's sister-in-law, 
 Eveline, whose name Miss Ramsden did not know. 
 
 Other instances of Miss Ramsden being able to obtain 
 impressions of names without any intention on the part of 
 Miss Miles are, from a later period of experimenting, 
 " Tichbome," which she caught the day after a gentleman 
 had entertained Miss Miles about Lord Tichborne, and 
 " Lotherton " when the same gentleman had mentioned 
 Lotherton Hall to her. 
 
 There seems to be a certain difference between the 
 process when Miss Ramsden is influenced by the agent's 
 thinking of a word, and when this is not so. In the 
 former case she gropes her way with the right word, so to 
 speak, within sight, but generally without obtaining more 
 than an approximation. When, on the contrary, she 
 perceives something which Miss Miles has not intended 
 to transmit, it is no longer mere approximations that she 
 gives ; the perceived thing is in a wise correct, and is given 
 without hesitation. It seems, in fact, to be easier to 
 " perceive " of one's own accord than to grasp the 
 thoughts of an agent. 
 
 In the following autumn, 1906, the two ladies recom- 
 menced their experiments. Miss Miles during most of 
 the time was far from London, in places which were 
 wholly unknown to Miss Ramsden. She was staying 
 first at Blaise Castle, about 400 miles from the home 
 of her co-experimenter. The plan was, as before, that 
 Miss Ramsden should think of Miss Miles regularly at 
 7 p.m., while the latter on her side had no fixed time for
 
 24 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 thinking of Miss Ramsden, but thouglit of her more or 
 less during the whole day, and in the evening noted briefly 
 what ideas had been most prominently before her mind. 
 
 The result was that she only succeeded occasionally in 
 transferring those ideas, but that almost every day some 
 of Miss Ramsden's impressions represented, more or less 
 closely, something that Miss Miles had been occupied 
 with, or tallying about, on the same day. Sometimes it 
 was her surroundings rather than her thoughts which were 
 perceived by Miss Ramsden. In the two cases cited 
 below. Miss Miles had sent no message at all. 
 
 On the third day of experimenting she wrote on a 
 post-card dated from Blaise Castle : 
 
 " At 7, 1 was so overcome with the heat that I sat in a white 
 dressing-gown and said I could send no message. You might 
 have seen a castle on a hill, or pencil heads, or a room full of 
 people at Kingsweston all having tea. — C. M." 
 
 On the same evening Miss Ramsden caught a series of 
 impressions from Miss Miles's surroundings, among which 
 were the following : 
 
 " Now I see a big, plain, old-fashioned English country- 
 house among trees ; it is rather a distant view, I am looking 
 up at it from below, standing in what seems to be a ravine full 
 of trees. There ^ are all sorts of precious curios in the 
 house " 
 
 The curious point is, that Miss Miles had " willed " her 
 to see, not the actual house, but a castle. She writes : 
 
 " I tried to make Miss Ramsden think I was living in a 
 castle, as the name of the house would make you think so. It 
 is a square, old-fashioned country-house situated close to the 
 
 woods. It is full of precious curios . A deep ravine full of 
 
 trees stands between you and the house " 
 
 Miss Ramsden, in fact, had believed Blaise Castle to be 
 a castle, and therefore did not suspect that her vision 
 referred to that building. She comments afterwards on 
 this case as follows : 
 
 " I am not a good visualizer, and although I sometimes see 
 visions in the same way as one sees the so-called ' hypnagogic
 
 TELEPATHY 25 
 
 illusions,' which most of us have experienced, though perhaps 
 rarely, in the moments between sleeping and waking, I am not 
 able to visualize at will, nor can I see in a crystal. Blaise 
 Castle appeared to me after the manner of a hypnagogic 
 illusion ; it was a perfect picture in colour, in fact it was the 
 place itself — so it seemed to me — though I did not know that 
 it was Blaise Castle, as I had imagined the latter to be a real 
 old castle with turrets." 
 
 On the day for the thirteenth experiment, Novem- 
 ber I2th, 1906, Miss Miles, without the knowledge of Miss 
 Ramsden, had returned to London, and made no attempt 
 to impress her co-experimenter. The latter on her side 
 wrote as follows : 
 
 " A tree, a bay tree, a camp-stool, a wreath of bays or 
 laurels, a fir tree, a lawn-tennis net and people playing. I 
 don't know what to think of this evening's experiment ; either 
 it is a complete failure or else it is the best success we have 
 ever had. I saw the pattern of the tennis net, then it changed, 
 and I saw that it was a window with white dimity curtains 
 and a criss-cross pattern of green with little pink rosebuds in 
 the centre of each. [Drawing of a window with curtains.] 
 First the curtains were shut across the window, and then they 
 were drawn aside. It was a school-room, a big, long, low 
 room, with a long, wide window. Th6 height and width of 
 the room is not much more than that of the window. There is 
 a large table in the middle laid for tea. Two little girls with 
 their hair down their backs, loosely tied with blue and white 
 ribbons, are waltzing together very prettily. I can hear the 
 time they keep, but I cannot hear the music. You and 
 another lady are standing watching them, and I think there is 
 some one else in the room ; she is sitting down. 
 
 " I shall be very anxious to hear whether this is right. I 
 have my doubts because there were so many other impressions 
 first.— H. R." 
 
 Referring to this impression Miss Miles's sister, Mrs. 
 Coventry, wrote : 
 
 " My sister, Clarissa Miles, dined with me on Monday, 
 November 12th, at 7.30. My little girl, Nesta, came down on 
 puipose to see her, and she asked her many questions about 
 her lessons, and how she was getting on at her school and 
 about her dancing, of which she is very fond. The wall paper 
 in her bedroom, and nursery, has a trellis work of brown, with 
 bunches of pink roses and green leaves in the centre of each. 
 Also a window very like what Miss Ramsden drew. She
 
 26 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 described exactly what had often taken place, Nesta dancing 
 with a little friend, and my sister and I often watching them, 
 and her nurse sitting sewing." 
 
 Miss Ramsden was afterwards shown the room, and 
 recognized the wall paper. The room was much smaller 
 than she saw it, but in other respects it was the same. 
 From her drawing of November 12th, it appears that it 
 was not tha curtains that had a pattern with rosebuds, 
 which might perhaps be inferred from the description. 
 The window in her sketch, however, is divided in two 
 parts which the real window was not. 
 
 In this case, then. Miss Ramsden saw a place and a 
 scene which Miss Miles had not seen recently, and did not 
 think of, but which of course may have been on the 
 threshold of her consciousness during her talk with the 
 child. 
 
 During the experiments with Miss Miles, Miss Ramsden, 
 as told above, had been led to try for visions instead of 
 auditory impressions ; before this, however, she had had 
 some interesting experiences of the latter type. These 
 are recorded in the Proceedings of the American Society 
 for Psychical Research,^ and partly belong to the category 
 dealt with here. 
 
 Miss Ramsden, staying in England, had proposed to a 
 friend in Copenhagen an experiment where she would be 
 the agent while he should be the receiver. It was to take 
 place on a pre-arranged day, September 24th, 1905, at 
 one o'clock in England, which is two o'clock in Denmark. 
 At the said hour Miss Ramsden, after fifteen minutes of 
 intense concentration, asked : " Are you there ? Do 
 you hear me ? " Then, to her amazement, she heard the 
 voice of her friend calling her name and saying in an 
 amused tone in Danish : " Are you there ? I cannot 
 hear, speak a little louder . . . your invisible wires ..." 
 
 Miss Ramsden says that the expression " invisible 
 
 * Experiments and Experiences in Telepathy, Vol. V., pp. 673 
 —753-
 
 TELEPATHY 27 
 
 wires," was one that she had never thought of, and 
 certainly could not have invented in Danish. It turned 
 out, however, that her friend had not at all tried the 
 experiment ; but he had thought of her earlier in the day 
 when he read her letter, and had used the expression 
 " invisible wires," in Danish, in speaking about her to 
 another person. 
 
 In this case, then, the would-be agent, Miss Ramsden, 
 had in fact become percipient. It seems correct, though, 
 to interpret the phenomenon as intentional perception, 
 both on account of her question to her supposed co- 
 experimenter, " Are you there ? " etc., and on account 
 of the state of concentration she had produced in herself 
 for the sake of the experiment. That she caught some- 
 thing which was said at another time of the day is not 
 different from what she experienced with Miss Miles. 
 
 A few days afterwards Miss Ramsden tried to experi- 
 ment with a lady who was living at Newmarket. The 
 first day she had arranged to be percipient, and heard 
 then what she describes as a " soundless voice " that told 
 her several things which turned out to be a mixture of 
 truth and falsehood. In this case her friend had really 
 " telepathed " to her. But the next day Miss Ramsden 
 was to be agent. The result hereof was wholly negative ; 
 her friend did not receive anything at all. But Miss 
 Ramsden herself after fifteen minutes once more heard 
 the soundless voice, saying : 
 
 " I can't hear. Such a pity. I wonder if you heard me 
 . . . Packing ... off to-morrow ... so sorry I shall miss 
 your letter . . , mother's health . . . Nelly has a cough, 
 doctor advises change of air " 
 
 It was true that her friend could not " hear," but she 
 had not tried to communicate this fact to Miss Ramsden. 
 The latter knew that she was thinking of leaving, and was 
 anxious about her mother's health. It was not true that 
 her pupil, Nelly, had a cough ; nor had the doctor been 
 called in. 
 
 Miss Ramsden, then, cannot in this case be said to have
 
 28 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 gained knowledge supernormally. It is interesting, 
 though, that she not only got impressions of, but even 
 heard, things which were partly false. Also it is note- 
 worthy that her attempt to be agent once more resulted 
 in a perception. It confirms what all the cases of this 
 category have shown — that it is the faculty to obtain 
 impressions which is the principal thing. The part of 
 the agent is bf minor importance ; his co-operation is not 
 indispensable, and he can effect nothing when the per- 
 cipient does not possess the necessary qualities. 
 
 4. Non-intentional Perception without Inten- 
 tional Transmission. 
 
 As an instance of this category, Hartmann refers to a 
 case which on account of the informant's authority ought 
 to be quoted with his own words. The renowned Swiss 
 philosopher, Heinrich Zschokke, in his autobiography, 
 writes as follows : ^ 
 
 " It sometimes happened that at my first interview with a 
 person hitherto unknown to me, I saw his past life with many 
 small particulars, or perhaps only some scene from it, in a 
 dreamlike and yet clear manner pass before me, quite spon- 
 taneously and in- the course of a few minutes On a 
 
 market-day in the town of Waldshut, I returned in the even- 
 ing, tired after a forest-inspection, to the hostelry ' Zum 
 Rebstock ' in the company of two young students of forestry 
 who are still living. We supped at the table d'hote where the 
 numerous guests were in the act of making fun of the many 
 peculiarities of the Swiss, Mesmer's magnetism, Lavater's 
 physionomics, etc. One of my companions, feeling hurt in 
 his national pride, asked me to protest, especially against a 
 handsome young man who sat opposite to us and delivered the 
 most flippant jokes. The life of this youth had just passed 
 before me. So I addressed myself to him with the question 
 whether he would answer me honestly when I told him the 
 most secret thing of his life, though I knew him no more than 
 he me. That, I said, would be even more than the physio- 
 nomics of Lavater. He promised me to confess if I told him 
 the truth. Then I related what my dream vision had told 
 me, and the whole company was made acquainted with the 
 
 ' Selbstschau, I., p. 227,
 
 TELEPATHY 29 
 
 life story of this young merchant, his years of apprenticeship, 
 his little aberrations, and finally with a small defalcation from 
 his employer. I described the bare room with the white- 
 washed walls where the black money-box stood on a table to 
 the right of the door, etc. A dead silence reigned in the room 
 during the narration which I only interrupted now and again 
 to ask whether I spoke the truth. Each circumstance was 
 affirmed by the deeply moved youth, even — what I did not 
 expect — the last one." 
 
 A small incident which confirms the existence of such a 
 phenomenon where the percipient plays his part just as 
 unintentionally as the person from whom the impression 
 emanates, is the following, which Sir Oliver Lodge ^ quotes 
 about a connection of his own, Mrs. Fred. Lodge. Here, 
 moreover, the two parties were not in the same room, 
 but separated by many miles. 
 
 Mrs. Fred. Lodge was expecting her sister from South 
 America, but, being away from home, was unable to meet 
 her at Southampton. So a friend, Mr. P., had offered to 
 do so. While travelHng in the train on her way to her 
 home, about 3.30 p.m., Mrs. Lodge closed her eyes to rest, 
 and at the same moment a telegram form appeared before 
 her with the words, " Come at once, your sister is dange- 
 rously ill." During the afternoon Mr. Fred. Lodge received 
 a telegram from Mr. P. to his wife, worded exactly as 
 above and sent from Southampton at 3.30 p.m. Mrs. 
 Lodge had no idea of her sister being ill, and was not even 
 at the time thinking about her, but about the illness of 
 her own daughter whom she had just left. The hand- 
 writing she saw she recognized to be Mr. P.'s, but the 
 paper was the brown-coloured one of a telegram, while he 
 would have been writing on a white-paper form. Such a 
 mixture of true and false seems to characterize both 
 telepathy and clairvoyance. 
 
 * The Survival of Man, pp. 73 — 74.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 
 
 As mentioned before, Hartmann was unable to draw a 
 decisive line between telepathy and clairvoyance. Theo- 
 retically he was clear enough, " Clairvoyance," he alleges, 
 " differs from thought-reading, in that it is not the 
 contents of another mind ^ which are perceived, but 
 objective facts." But how make sure of this in individual 
 cases ? 
 
 Hartmann himself stretched the theory of mind-reading 
 as far as possible. When a medium states particulars 
 concerning a sitter's past Ufe, which the latter at the 
 moment believes to be incorrect, but which turn out to 
 be correct, Hartmann contends that the right knowledge 
 was obtained from the sitter's subconsciousness. When 
 the sensitives, without desiring it, in a moment discern 
 the chief events of a person's whole life, it is because their 
 unconscious wilh to read characters and fates forces the 
 person's subconsciousness to recall just these events. 
 Knowledge about an absent person the medium procures 
 either by reading the thoughts of the people present about 
 him, or by entering into rapport with him through a 
 present person, and afterwards reading his own thoughts. 
 
 As an illustration of the last-mentioned phenomenon, 
 I may refer to an interesting series of experiments per- 
 formed by Andrew Lang.^ Lang demonstrated that 
 certain sensitives could, by looking into a crystal or glass 
 ball, pick up facts unknown to the sitter about people 
 whom they did not know, but who were known to the 
 sitter. He baptized this phenomenon " telepathy a 
 trois " after the three participators, — the crystal-gazer, 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XV., pp. 48 seqq.
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 31 
 
 the sitter, and the sitter's absent acquaintance. He did 
 not, however, feel sure that the performance was not due 
 to clairvoyance, rather than to telepathy. But such 
 would not have been the opinion of Hartmann, — his 
 criterion of clairvoyance just being the absence of every 
 interconnection, or rapport, between the sensitive and the 
 thing perceived. That it is practically impossible to be 
 sure of such an absence is another matter. Hartmann, in 
 fact, finished by referring to prevision as the one kind of 
 clairvoyance about which there could be no doubt. 
 
 Somewhat inconsistently, however, he classified as 
 clairvoyance psychometry or, to cite his own words, " the 
 reconstruction of persons or characters by means of locks 
 of hair, written documents, and other articles to which 
 their personal aura is attached." 
 
 Psychometry, it would seem, is a rather common art 
 in the latter days, even if it be not easy to find well- 
 attested cases of it. Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden both 
 seem to practise it. Miss Miles says that since the year 
 1892, at which time circumstances " brought out all the 
 clairvoyant faculty that had been dormant " in her, she 
 has been able to see in crystals, psychometrize letters or 
 articles for people, and tell fortunes for her friends. 
 Miss Ramsden writes concerning her in 1906 that she is a 
 very good psychometrist, who has often held letters for 
 her and described scenes in connection with the life of the 
 writer. At a later time they made some very careful 
 experiments in psychometry of which Miss Ramsden 
 relates : 
 
 " I collected a number of articles such as pens, thimbles, 
 safety pins, watch chains, from relations and servants, allowing 
 her to choose one, while I sat on the other side of a screen, our 
 object being to test whether I should be able to recognize the 
 owner of the articles from her description, and also whether 
 her knowledge was really gained through contact with the 
 article, and not through reading my mind. The result was 
 quite satisfactory, she not only gave accurate descriptions of 
 the owners, but also detailed information of which I was 
 entirely ignorant, but was afterwards able to verify."
 
 32 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 About herself Miss Ramsden writes that she has had 
 " several successes, and also many failures, in what is 
 called psychometry, i.e., holding an article and describing 
 the owner and scenes from his or her surroundings." 
 
 Among older accounts of the phenomenon may be 
 chosen the following, where Mr. Edmund Gumey vouches 
 for the trustworthiness of the narration.^ An acquain- 
 tance of his^ Mrs. Stella, of Chieri, Italy, hearing that there 
 was a " sonnambula" in the neighbouring town, went to 
 see her out of pure curiosity. The sitting, which com- 
 menced with the woman being placed in a state of trance 
 by a young girl who then left the house, did, however, 
 shake her disbelief, and she sent a description of it to 
 Mr. Gumey. She narrates as foUows : 
 
 " The woman first gave me a personal description of myself, 
 nationality, etc., with a description of character, which was 
 
 perfectly correct . I then gave her some hair which I had 
 
 combed out of a brush in my stepson's travelling bag, he having 
 just arrived from Spain. She took the hair in her hand, 
 placing it on her forehead, and at the same time leaving her 
 hold on my hand. At first she was puzzled and confused, but 
 soon her ideas seemed to become more distinct, and then she 
 told me his relationship to myself, giving an exact personal 
 description of his appearance, character, etc. She did not 
 call him my stepson, but ' a close relation without consan- 
 guinity.' I then-asked her where he lived, what he did, etc. 
 She told me aU, even to unimportant details. For instance, 
 she said, ' Yesterday, he rode into the country, got off his 
 horse, and bought some cigars. The tobacconist could not 
 give him change, so seeing two friends passing he asked them 
 to change the note.' I knew nothing of this, but asked my 
 boy when I returned home, and found it true." 
 
 Mr. Gumey suggested that this may have been a case 
 of reading the mind of a person not present through its 
 affinity to the person who was present ; no doubt it 
 makes, setting aside the " article," a parallel to Lang's 
 telepathy a irois. But it is worth noticing the Itahan 
 psychic's proceedings when going to psychometrize the 
 young man's hair. She not only took it in her Jdand and 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. VII., p. 99.
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 33 
 
 placed it on her forehead, but, what is more significant, 
 she let go Mrs. Stella's hand which she had hitherto held. 
 If she meant to reach him through the stepmother, she 
 must have done quite the reverse. She, at least, must 
 have believed that it was from the article and not from 
 the sitter that her impressions were derived. 
 
 With a well-known English medium, Mr. Vout Peters, 
 a series of psychometrical sittings were held, under scien- 
 tific supervision, in the spring of 1908, at Helsingfors in 
 Finland. The inspecting committee afterwards published 
 a number of the stenographic records, annotated by those 
 sitters whose articles had been psychometrized.^ In this 
 manner were procured materials of evidential value, from 
 which no small amount of knowledge about the pheno- 
 menon may be gained. 
 
 Mr. Vout Peters regards his psychometric faculty as 
 something wholly apart from mind-reading. The com- 
 mittee that supervised his performances leaned to the 
 latter explanation — not because they could account for 
 their opinion, but because they found the psychometrical 
 theory too inconceivable. But the medium protested 
 emphatically against this. " I don't get before me what 
 you expect," he said ; " I get the actual facts." He 
 maintains that his impressions are due to an aura attached 
 to the articles. They crowd, he says, upon him with such 
 rapidity, that he can scarcely manage to translate them 
 into words. He not only sees and hears, but feels as if 
 the whole of his body knew about the things he is going 
 to tell. 
 
 Mr. Peters's utterances are confirmed and supplemented 
 by the published records. It seems as if he can feel that 
 which the person he speaks about is supposed to have 
 felt, nay as if he can feel his character or nature within 
 himself. His psychometrizing consisted of character- 
 descriptions and the telling of incidents from the life of 
 the owners of the articles ; at the same time, he seemed 
 
 1 Meddelanden utgifna af Sallskapet for Psykisk Forskning i Hel- 
 singfors. No. I. 
 
 CD. D
 
 34 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 unable to describe their exterior ; in one case when, 
 contrary to his habit, he tried such a description which 
 was far from correct, he said : " I can't tell his com- 
 plexion, because I only feel him as within myself." 
 Generally he could not even tell whether it was a man or 
 a woman he psychometrized, unless the object itself gave 
 some indication of it. But he could feel whether the 
 person in question had been ill or infirm ; once he said 
 that he saw indistinctly as if the owner of the article had 
 been blind in his old age, which had, in fact, been the 
 case. 
 
 The committee published those among Mr. Peters's 
 performances which they considered the best ones ; they 
 were very unequal, and at least a fourth part are des- 
 cribed as failures. Also in the successful cases errors 
 did occur ; but on the whole they were of a character to 
 convince most people that his power of supernormal 
 perception was remarkable. I shall cite a few of them. 
 
 Some months before the arrival of Mr. Peters in Finland, 
 a young university student from Helsingfors, politically 
 interested, was found dead on the railway line, run over 
 by the train, but with traces of a revolver shot through 
 his head. Circumstances made it probable that another 
 person had fired the shot, and afterwards placed the body 
 on the lines. When it was found, it was covered with 
 snow. 
 
 Several objects which the young man had had upon 
 him when he died — a pocket-book, a watch, and some 
 money — were at three different sittings given to Mr. Peters 
 for psychometrizing, of course without his knowing that 
 they had belonged to the same person. It is true that it 
 was the same lady who brought them, but there were a 
 great many people present at the seances, and no likeli- 
 hood of the medium recognizing them individually. 
 Besides, the articles were not handed to him personally 
 by those who had brought them, and the same person 
 might of course bring articles from more than one owner. 
 At any rate there is not, either in this or in other cases.
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 35 
 
 anything which intimates that Mr. Peters suspected that 
 he spoke about a person whom he had characterized before. 
 In this case it is worth noting that he caught from each 
 object impressions that were partially new, although with 
 scarcely any exception they were consistent with the 
 facts. 
 
 With the pocket-book in his hand he gave the following 
 correct statements : 
 
 " The first impression I get is an impression of wanting to 
 throw away the pocket-book, an impression of death, of some 
 one who has passed away. 
 
 " When I hold the pocket-book, I feel that the person who 
 owned it used to do so [Mr. Peters walks rapidly to and fro on 
 the floor], when thinking. 
 
 " And he wanted, when thinking, to move something. He 
 easily became enervated. I have a sensation of immense 
 activity, of being tremendously busy and having much to do 
 in hfe. He writes rapidly. 
 
 " It was a very open nature, an honest nature, he could not 
 and would not tell a lie, nor do anything wrong, because he 
 could not. 
 
 " He used to do so when speaking [Mr. Peters pushes his hair 
 from his forehead] . 
 
 " This person had for a time had much to fight against. 
 And before he had won the battle, he died." 
 
 It was on this occasion that the medium said that he 
 seemed to feel the person within himself, and gave a 
 description of his appearance ; here the items which 
 referred to the young man's figure were correct, while 
 those which referred to his face were wrong. 
 
 With the young man's watch in his hand, Mr. Peters 
 at the next sitting said : 
 
 " The first impression I get with this watch is a pain in my 
 head, a pain just above the right eye. 
 
 " Whoever possessed it, was a very quick, impulsive, 
 energetic person who was capable of acting incautiously. He 
 stood in the midst of a danger, and went towards it though he 
 was warned. It seemed to overtake him suddenly, and for a 
 moment it was as if he became stunned, and then he gets that 
 pain in his head. I cannot tell what happened. I feel as a 
 blow against the head, and it is in a whirl, so to speak." 
 
 D 2
 
 36 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 After an interval of three sittings some pieces of money 
 that had been found upon the young man's body were 
 handed to the medium. Mr, Peters objected that it was 
 difficult to psychometrize money, because it had been 
 handled by so many people, and asked whether they were 
 connected \dth some special incident. Having been 
 answered in the affirmative, he said : 
 
 " They belonged to someone who used to sing, who was a 
 bright and happy nature. It was a person who didn't care 
 much about money, or what people call practical things, but 
 took life joyfully. I do not, however, mean to say that it was 
 a careless nature. I don't know whether I can get much out 
 of this, but I feel as if this bright joy would be extinguished of 
 a sudden, as if something would suddenly happen. I have a 
 sensation as if water arose, and a feeling of intense cold. I 
 have the feehng that the spirit leaves the body without the 
 body lying in its bed. It is as if the body stood erect and was 
 dressed while life flees. I have a feeling of wanting to scream, 
 but not being able to. I feel it as if nobody would hear me 
 even if I screamed. And a sensation of absolute helplessness 
 comes over me." 
 
 All this would be correct if snow were substituted for 
 water as the cause of the feeling of cold. 
 
 Mr. Peters showed a certain preference for the psycho- 
 metrizing of letters, which he seemed to find specially 
 adapted to preserve the " aura." It is considered certain 
 that he did not try to obtain information by means of 
 the hand\mting. \\Tien dealing with an article, he used 
 to place it in his left hand ; he did the same with letters, 
 without unfolding or in any way examining them. Neither 
 did he care for the language used in them, as in no case 
 did he look at their contents. The letters which he 
 psychometrized in Finland were generally written in 
 Swedish. One of them came from a personahty well- 
 known in history, the hero of Sweden's fight with Russia 
 about Finland, von Dobeln, who died in the year 1820. 
 About this letter the medium spoke as follows : 
 
 " This letter, though old, is full of strength. Whoever 
 wrote it, is a person with a very strong character and a strong 
 individuality, vivid, quick, precise and somewhat exacting ;
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 37 
 
 who had a very strong will and was fond of governing, of being 
 the master of all with whom he got into contact. Neverthe- 
 less, beneath this hard exterior there was a very good nature, 
 a very good heart. It was someone who was fond of reading 
 and studying, and who was so to speak ahead of the age he 
 lived in. There was some difficulty for this person, — whether 
 it was a man or a woman, I will not decide,— but it was difficult 
 for him to be himself in the place where he stood. 
 
 " This person was a httle impatient. If he waited for some- 
 thing, he showed his impatience. I feel when I describe this 
 as if I must do so with my fingers [gesture]. I don't assert 
 that the person in question did so, but I express impatience." 
 
 The annotations, taken from historical and biographical 
 works, show in every particular an exact correspondence 
 to the characterization given by Mr. Peters. Von Dobeln 
 was not only a great commander with the temperament 
 of the born ruler, but intelligent and warm-hearted 
 withal. His spare time he employed in reading, quite 
 an unusual thing with Swedish officers of that period. 
 His greatest faults were impetuosity and impatience ; 
 it was better, people said, to commit a blunder than to 
 ask him twice about the same thing. To his misfortune, 
 his superiors were mediocrities to whom he would not 
 bow ; thus it might rightly be said that it " was difficult 
 for him to be himself in the place where he stood." 
 
 The mediumism of Mr. Vout Peters presents another 
 phenomenon, his so-called spirit-visions. During the 
 sittings, the psychometrizing is now and again interrupted 
 by the description of forms whom he generally alludes to 
 as standing beside some one among the sitters, and who 
 are in many cases recognized by the person designated. 
 It is seldom that the description refers to the owners of 
 the articles ; among fourteen descriptions of recognized 
 figures, published by the committee, this was only the 
 case with two. This phenomenon, however, carries us 
 beyond the subject of the present discussion — super- 
 normal perception without any alleged participation of 
 the dead. I have merely mentioned it to point out a 
 most remarkable difference between these visions and the 
 impressions obtained by the medium by means of the
 
 38 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 articles. The latter were throughout, even when correct, 
 rather vague and not at all exhaustive. Thus in the case 
 of the murdered student we saw that the medium could 
 every time tell something new. Neither could he by 
 means of the articles describe the exterior of their owners. 
 The spirit-descriptions, on the contrary, refer above all 
 to the outward appearance, being in return so exact and 
 precise, that^ for instance, in a case where the same lady 
 was seen twice by Mr. Peters after an interval of two 
 sittings, the wording of the two descriptions was all but 
 identical. If these visions be due to clairvoyance, they 
 represent, in fact, a quite separate type of this pheno- 
 menon. 
 
 We have now reached the top rung of the ladder, the 
 apparently highest of the supernormal powers of man, 
 but at the same time the one which it is most difficult 
 to accept — namely the faculty of prevision. On men- 
 tioning this phenomenon in his book, The Survival of Man, 
 Sir Oliver Lodge cites Frederic Myers as one of those who 
 recognized its reality as a possibility worthy of serious 
 discussion. In eloquent and beautiful words this pioneer 
 of psychical research wrote : 
 
 " Few men have- pondered long on these problems of Past 
 and Future without wondering whether Past and Future be in 
 very truth more than a name — whether we may not be appre- 
 hending as a stream of sequence that which is an ocean of 
 
 co-existence Let us imagine that a whole earth-life is in 
 
 reality an absolutely instantaneous although an infinitely 
 complex phenomenon. Let us suppose that my transcen- 
 dental self discerns with equal directness and immediacy every 
 element of this phenomenon ; but that my empirical self 
 receives each element mediately, and through media involving 
 different rates of retardation ; just as I receive the lightning 
 more quickly than the thunder. May not then seventy years 
 intervene between my perceptions of birth and death as easily 
 as seven seconds between my perceptions of the flash and the 
 peal ? And may not some intercommunication of conscious- 
 ness enable the wider self to call to the narrower, the more 
 central to the more external, ' At such an hour this shock will 
 reach you ! Listen for the nearing roar ! ' " i 
 
 ' The Survival of Man, pp. 159 — 160,
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 39 
 
 The poetical illustration of Myers suits especially those 
 cases where an important and sad occurrence is foreseen. 
 Such cases are probably those most often heard of ; death 
 plays the principal part in this strange phenomenon. Living 
 people who are seen dead though they have not been ill, 
 funeral processions where the visionary recognizes the 
 mourners and by this means can tell who is lying in the 
 coffin — previsions of this type abound. Allied to these 
 are the following cases which I reproduce from Mrs. Sidg- 
 wick's paper, " On the Evidence for Premonitions," ^ that 
 contains a carefully sifted material where only the best 
 attested instances have found admission. 
 
 A lady in India, who had lost several children, heard 
 a voice say, " If there is darkness at the eleventh hour 
 there will be death." About a week after, a little girl 
 was taken ill. Two or three days passed ; the sun blazed 
 above, and the child hovered between life and death. 
 At last, after more than a week of cloudless weather, a 
 few minutes before eleven in the morning a squall arose, 
 and the sky became black. That day, soon after one 
 o'clock, the child died. 
 
 A lady in London, Mrs. Schweizer, dreamed that she 
 was walking on the edge of a cliff, her son Fred and a 
 stranger a little in advance, when her son slipped suddenly 
 down the side of the cliff. She turned to the stranger and 
 asked for his name, and got the reply, " My name is 
 Henry Irvin." She said, " Do you mean Irving the 
 actor ? " " No," he replied, " not exactly : but some- 
 thing after that style." Her son was then on a journey, 
 but the anxious mother told her dream to his brotlier. A 
 week afterwards, Mr. Frederick Schweizer went for a ride 
 on horseback along with a casual acquaintance named 
 Deverell ; his horse shied, he was thrown on the road, 
 and expired three hours later. When his mother arrived 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. Y., pp. 2S8 — 354. Mrs. Sidgwick employs 
 the term " premonition" as comprising more cases than " prevision." 
 Clairvoyance, however, being used to designate both what is heard and 
 seen supernormaMy, or caught by impressions, it seems permissible to 
 stretch prevision in a similar manner.
 
 40 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 at the place of his death, she recognized in Mr. Deverell 
 the stranger of her dream, and asked him at once if his 
 name was Henry. When he answered, " Yes, my name 
 is Henry," she told the dream. He was extremely 
 impressed, and told her that he occasionally took part in 
 private theatricals, and was on those occasions introduced 
 as " Henry Irvin, junior." 
 
 Both case? are remarkable on account of the strange 
 details which cannot be explained as due to guessing or 
 chance. Noteworthy is in the latter case the mixture of 
 true and false ; only the main points are correct : the 
 fall of the son, the stranger's relation to the name Henry 
 Irvin ; the rest of the dreamed^of scene is construction. 
 
 A contrast to the previsions of death is presented by a 
 number of cases where the foreseen event is of quite an 
 ordinary and often extremely trivial character. I borrow 
 a few examples from Mrs. Sidgwick.^ 
 
 An American lady saw a friend, Mrs. Conner, falhng up 
 the front steps in the yard of her house, about one mile 
 and a half distant, while a lot of papers which she had in 
 her hand were scattered around her. The vision took 
 place about two o'clock, the fall, with many minutely 
 foretold circumstances, at 2.40 p.m. 
 
 A lady, Mrs. Mackenzie, one morning at breakfast told 
 her house party that she had had the following dream. 
 She thought there were several people in her drawing- 
 room, among others Mr. J., and she left the room to see 
 if supper was ready, and when she came back she found 
 the carpet covered with black spots. She was very angry, 
 and when Mr. J. said it was ink stains, she retorted, 
 " Don't say so, I know it has been burned, and I counted 
 five patches." So ends the dream. Afterwards they all 
 went to church, and on their return Mr. J. came with 
 them to luncheon, a thing he had never done before. 
 And now everything happened as in the dream. Mrs, 
 Mackenzie went into the dining-room to see if things were 
 
 1 The first case is taken from her paper, " On the Evidence for 
 Clairvoyance," Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. VII., pp. 30 — 99.
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 41 
 
 ready, and then going back into the drawing-room she 
 noticed a spot near the door and asked who had been in 
 with dirty feet ; Mr. J. said it was surely ink, and then 
 pointed out some more spots, when Mrs, Mackenzie called 
 out, " Oh ! my dream ! my new carpet ! burnt ! " As 
 they afterwards discovered, the housemaid had carried in 
 live coals which she had dropped on the carpet, burning 
 five holes. 
 
 A lady in London dreamed that she found a brooch 
 upon a seat in Richmond Park, which she gave to her 
 maid. She mentioned the dream to the maid next 
 morning. Unexpectedly, she went to Richmond on the 
 following afternoon, and found the brooch on the seat as 
 in her dream. 
 
 The triviality of previsions such as these is of a special 
 interest, because it speaks loudly against connecting them 
 with spirits, or on the whole believing that they are due 
 to an intention. Mrs. Sidgwick justly remarks that we 
 have no reason to suppose " that premonitions, if they 
 exist, are a species of petty private miracles intended to 
 help us in conducting our affairs — temporal or spiritual." 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge, too, is seen to share the opinion of 
 Hartmann, that the question of prevision has nothing to 
 do with the question of spirits, when he writes : 
 
 " The anticipation of future events is a power not at all 
 necessarily to be expected on a Spiritistic or any other hypo- 
 thesis ; it is a separate question, and will have important 
 bearings of its own. An answer to this question in the affir- 
 mative may vitally affect our metaphysical notions of ' Time,' 
 but will not of necessity have an immediate bearing on the 
 existence in the universe of intelligences other than our own. 
 A cosmic picture gallery (as Mr. Myers calls it), a photographic 
 or phonographic record of all that has occurred or will occur in 
 the universe, may conceivably — or perhaps not conceivably — 
 in some sense exist, and may be partly open and dimly 
 decipherable to the lucid part of the automatist's or entranced 
 person's mind." ^ 
 
 By virtue of such a faculty of " dimly deciphering," it 
 is, then, that the ordinary clairvoyant displays his art 
 
 1 The Survival of Man, p. 151.
 
 42 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 when people " consult " him. But well-attested cases 
 of such prophesying are no doubt scarce. As an instance 
 may be referred to a case mentioned by Mrs. Sidgwick, 
 where a medium in Boston told an English lady that she 
 had a picture of her children with her, and on seeing it 
 pointed to one of these, a boy of seventeen, saying that 
 he would die soon and suddenly. A few weeks after the 
 return of the mother to England her son was killed at a 
 game of football. 
 
 Mr. Vout Peters, too, often foretells the future when 
 psychometrizing articles whose owners are living. Miss 
 Miles is, as told above, not only able to psychometrize, 
 but also able to tell fortunes- for people. She is withal 
 spontaneously foresighted. Coming events, she writes, 
 are so distinctly impressed on her mental vision, that they 
 become a positive nuisance. As for Miss Ramsden, she 
 has had many premonitory dreams, and when she has 
 tried to write down impressions— being unable to write 
 automatically — the writing generally consists of prophe- 
 cies of evil to come. The proportion of truth to fiction 
 being about fifty per cent., she has found it to be a most 
 uncomfortable faculty, and so has discontinued the 
 exertion of it. 
 
 It appears, then, to have been in every particular 
 possible to find evidence to prove that Hartmann and 
 Professor Flournoy were right in their assertion about 
 the supernormal powers of man. Certain people can in 
 a more or less mysterious manner obtain knowledge about 
 others, about distant events, about the past, nay, about 
 the future. 
 
 The only point where it proved difficult to agree with 
 Hartmann was perhaps in his attempt to fix a boundary 
 between telepathy and clairvoyance ; an attempt, 
 however, which he was not himself able to carry through. 
 The greater number of psychical researchers acknowledge 
 the difficulty of distinguishing between the two pheno- 
 mena. Mrs. Sidgwick intimates that the fine drawn
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 43 
 
 between them has not much scientific value. Professor 
 Hyslop writes when referring to Miss Ramsden's experi- 
 ments that she has " access to the marginal data in the 
 mind of the agent, if ' in that mind ' rightly describes the 
 facts," and in another place : " There is a fragmentary 
 access to various facts belonging to the agent's mind, or 
 connected with her physical environment and possibly not 
 in her mind at all." And Sir Oliver Lodge accentuates 
 that " we must not too readily assume that the apparent 
 action of one mind on another is really such an action." 
 
 Possibly, then, there is reason to ask whether Hartmann 
 and others have not assigned to telepathy a larger part 
 than is due to it. Because it was possible to make inten- 
 tional thought-transference the subject of experiments, it 
 became for the researchers the natural starting-point for 
 the treatment of the whole problem. It seemed to be 
 scientifically correct to proceed from thought-trans- 
 ference to thought-reading as from the known to the less 
 known, and to cling to the utmost to this " explanation " 
 as preferable to the wholly mysterious clairvoyance. But 
 in reality the matter stands otherwise. It is the faculty 
 of perception that is the commencement of the whole 
 phenomenon. The percipient, the sensitive, the psychic, 
 the medium — whatever he is to be called — is the principal 
 factor also in intentional thought-transference. There 
 must be a more or less sensitive person to impress if the 
 agent shall effect anything at all. Nay, the agent is, in 
 fact, just as secondary as the percipient is important. 
 The percipient is even better able to catch things which 
 the agent is not thinking about than those which he is 
 striving to transmit with all his might. This was evident 
 in the Miles-Ramsden experiments. Intentional thought- 
 transference is so to speak an artificial scion, grafted into 
 the naturally growing tree of supernormal perception. 
 
 But with perception as starting-point the second class 
 of telepathic phenomena, thought- or mind-reading, 
 appears in a new light. That clairvoyance exists is at 
 any rate shown through prevision. Why then not give
 
 44 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 it its due and admit that supernormal perception is 
 clairvoyance, and so-called mind-reading only an element 
 of it ? The impression must, doubtless, have some cause 
 besides the faculty of the sensitive. In psychometry 
 this cause seems to be an article, inconceivable as it may 
 be. In the apprehension of a present person's character 
 and life-story, his presence seems to be the cause. In 
 this case we may as well say that he is psychometrized as 
 that an article is. But this is not equivalent to his 
 thoughts being read. It is himself, the whole of his per- 
 sonality, that is psychometrized ; because his thoughts 
 are an element of the personality, they may slip in, but 
 only as one factor among many. On account of this, 
 things may be perceived which the psychometrized person 
 believes to be right, but which are wrong. On the other 
 hand, true facts may be perceived without regard to the 
 erroneous belief of the sitter. 
 
 In cases where the cause of the perception is neither an 
 article nor the presence of a person, it may often be 
 characterized as a rapport between the clairvoyant and 
 the thing perceived, and this rapport may be a person. 
 Such was the case with regard to the perceptions of 
 Miss Ramsden ; even when Miss Miles did not perform 
 her duty as agent, the once established connection— the 
 invisible wires, as Miss Ramsden's friend in Copenhagen 
 appropriately called them — continued to exist. And, 
 doubtless, in those cases where the cause cannot be dis- 
 covered, some unknown line of connection exists which 
 leads this impression just to this percipient. 
 
 For our problem, however, it may in a degree be said 
 to be of slight consequence whether the line drawn by 
 Hartmann between telepathy and clairvoyance is abolished 
 or not. Whether it is by mind-reading, psychometry, or 
 direct clairvoyance, that mediumistic individuals become 
 possessed of their supernormal knowledge, is unimportant 
 in proportion to the fact that all these powers exist, and 
 must be reckoned with as a possible explanation of the 
 alleged communications from the dead.
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE 45 
 
 Still, one circumstance must be pointed out before the 
 discussion of the supernormal powers of man can be 
 completed. The evidence which we found for their 
 existence at the same time spoke loudly about their 
 limitation. Even Miss Ramsden's most successful per- 
 ceptions were only approximative. With regard to the 
 visionary impressions this is clearly seen in the cases 
 where she subjoins a sketch of her vision ; though it is 
 impossible to deny its resemblance to the real thing, it 
 most often turns out to be a far from correct reproduction 
 of it. As to the auditions, the incorrectness was even 
 greater. Neither are the achievements of the professional 
 mediums perfect. Of Mr. Vout Peters's performances 
 in Helsingfors at least a fourth part were failures, 
 and even the best ones contained errors. In cases which 
 are not given verbatim, as for instance Mrs. Stella's, we 
 cannot of course expect to get full information about the 
 incorrect statements. In the cases of prevision, too, we 
 find the same inaccuracy. Rightly Sir Oliver Lodge uses 
 expressions as " partly open " and " dimly decipherable " 
 when he metaphorically describes the relation between 
 the clairvoyant persons and the record which they are 
 reading. That kind of clairvoyance which the name 
 denotes does not seem to exist. A dim and clouded vision 
 would be a more correct designation for supernormal 
 perception. 
 
 Only with this reservation can we subscribe to the asser- 
 tion of Hartmann.
 
 SECTION II 
 
 The Automatic Writing of Mrs. Verrall 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 introduction, dr. verrall's experiment 
 
 The instances of supernormal perception by means of 
 which Hartmann's assertion was illustrated must neces- 
 sarily be taken from cases where no participation of the 
 dead was assumed. This, however, involved that it was 
 as a rule perception in a waking condition we had to deal 
 with. For with the trance state imagination sets in, and 
 most often gives birth to the idea of an extra-terrestrial 
 origin of the mediumistic productions. 
 
 With the trance, then, we have reached quite a new 
 territory. A state of concentration or otherwise abnormal 
 condition is probably the necessary accessory both of 
 telepathy, psychometry, and clairvoyance ; Miss Ramsden 
 accentuates the importance of concentration, and Mr. Vout 
 Peters says that he puts himself in a slight ecstasy when 
 accomphshing his performances. But this is very different 
 from the state which excludes the psychic's waking co- 
 operation and conscious apprehension of his perceptions. 
 Only in that state commences the production of those 
 romances which Professor Flournoy relates. Cryptom- 
 nesia, also, of course implies that the waking consciousness 
 is in abeyance. 
 
 What is said here, however, is not confined to real 
 trance, but includes as well that state in which the other- 
 wise waking individual is automatically producing speech 
 or script without knowing what he produces. Mrs. A. W. 
 Verrall, whose automatic script we are first going to
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 47 
 
 examine, gives an account of the manner of its production 
 which shows how completely this is the case with her. 
 The words come to her as single things, she says, and 
 seem to vanish as soon as she has written them. She 
 perceives a word or two, but never understands whether 
 it makes sense with what goes before. Though she is 
 aware at the moment of writing what language her hand 
 is using, when the script is finished she often cannot say 
 what language has been used as the recollection of the 
 words passes away with extreme rapidity. She is some- 
 times exceedingly sleepy during the production of the 
 writing, and more than once she has momentarily lost 
 consciousness of her surroundings. 
 
 There seems to be no reason to doubt that this is a 
 state similar to trance as regards the co-operation of 
 consciousness. It is quite another matter when Miss 
 Ramsden describes her impressions, and reasons about 
 their being right or wrong, etc. Mrs. Verrall is just as 
 ignorant of her writing as she is irresponsible for it. 
 
 The problem, then, which will occupy us in the following 
 pages is, how to account for the origin of her productions. 
 
 Mrs. A. W. Verrall is a most inteUigent lady, with 
 extensive knowledge of modern and ancient literature, a 
 lecturer in Greek at Newnham College in Cambridge. 
 She has herself in the Proceedings of the Society for 
 Psychical Research^ published a report of her automatic 
 writing during the first four years of its existence (1901 — 
 1904). She has done this with a critical sense which is 
 both acute and fine, and which in many points makes her 
 clear-sighted as to the character of the script. That an 
 intimate connection exists between its contents and her 
 own mind is shown, she says, in the languages used? in 
 quotations from authors known to her, in allusions to 
 literary and other subjects familiar to her. She speaks 
 of " the extremely far-fetched nature of associations in 
 the region of her subliminal self " ; she points out the part 
 
 1 Vol. XX., pp. 1—432.
 
 48 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 played by assonance, — as when Daphne seems suggested 
 by daffodil, and the like. But in spite of all this, she does 
 not believe that the script as a whole originates from her 
 own self. It can intrude upon it and often does so ; but 
 the chief part is due to other factors. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had been interested in psychical pheno- 
 mena for many years before she herself succeeded in 
 producing automatic script. She had tried writing and 
 " planchette " as well as crystal-gazing ; her experiments 
 in the latter direction were published in the Pro- 
 ceedings ; but with a few doubtful exceptions the pictures 
 so seen were, she herself says, purely fantastical. She 
 was a very close friend of that eminent representative of 
 psychical research in England, Frederic Myers. Like 
 herself and her husband, Dr. A. W. Verrall, he resided in 
 Cambridge. His death in Rome, on January 17th, 1901, 
 was a double bereavement ; she not only lost a friend, 
 but the one who had more than any other been the 
 participator of her interest in psychical matters. 
 
 From January 19th, 1901, Mrs. Verrall recommenced 
 her attempts to obtain psychical phenomena. She sat 
 in the darkness, she held her hand on a planchette or 
 tried with a pencil. On March 5th her efforts were 
 crowned with success, and her first script was produced. 
 It contained about eighty words almost entirely in Latin, 
 but though the words seemed to make phrases, there was 
 no general sense in these. By degrees, though, the 
 script became more comprehensible ; besides Latin and 
 Greek, English too was employed. 
 
 When reading consecutively a large quantity of 
 Mrs. VerraU's script, one is struck at the same time 
 with its learned and poetical character, and with its 
 want of cohesion, its use of wrong quotations and self- 
 fabricated language, its apparent profundities which 
 most often turn out to be nonsense ; to all of which must 
 be added its faltering and seeking, its groping both for 
 words and ideas. All this can be explained in different 
 ways. The learning and the poetry may be due to Myers
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 49 
 
 in whose name the script most frequently speaks, in a 
 more or less open manner. The confusion may be due 
 to Mrs. Verrall's automatic self that, like the dream-self, 
 lacks the reasoning power of the waking consciousness. 
 The groping and faltering may be due to the automatist's 
 defective power of perception. But the learning and 
 poetry may also be due to Mrs. Verrall's own high culture 
 and philological erudition. Her subconscious memory 
 may bring to light matter which she had normally for- 
 gotten, so that the script will in a manner give more than 
 she herself would be capable of giving, and at the same 
 time less, owing to the want of control on the part of the 
 waking intelligence. There remains, then, the question of 
 the origin of those things which the automatist gropingly 
 seems to seek. 
 
 It will be necessary, I believe, to analyze a large portion 
 of the script in order to answer these questions. It does 
 not suffice to give instances. There ought not to remain 
 anything after examination which might justly be 
 advanced in support of an opposite theory to that which 
 will be laid down here. 
 
 • • • • • ' • 
 
 One of the questions asked above referred to the cause 
 of the seeking and groping which was sometimes apparent 
 in the script. No doubt it is not certain beforehand that 
 it is due to an external source ; everybody knows from 
 personal experience what it is to search one's own memory 
 for a forgotten word. On the other hand, we have seen 
 how Miss Ramsden groped for the things which Miss Miles 
 tried to transmit to her. Now it happens that Mrs. 
 Verrall's script of an early period presents an instance of 
 her being made to receive an impression from a willing 
 agent, without willing it and without knowing anything 
 about it. The case has been mentioned as an illustration 
 of Hartmann's category of " non-intentional perception 
 by intentional transmission " ; it will later on be very 
 useful in the discussion of these problems. So I propose 
 to reproduce it at some length. 
 
 CD. E
 
 50 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Not long after the inception of Mrs. Verrall's automatic 
 writing, in April, 1901, her husband decided to try whether 
 he could by thought-transference produce a certain thing 
 in her script. He chose for his subject a Greek sentence, 
 and though she partly wrote in Greek this no doubt 
 rendered the whole thing more difhcult. At the same 
 time, it was of course wise to choose something quite out 
 of the ordinary, in order that a possible success might not 
 be ascribed to chance. 
 
 The sentence was fxov67r(a>Xov es aw, and belonged to a 
 passage from the Orestes of Euripides set for translation 
 in the Tripos of 1873, the year of Dr. Verrall's degree ; 
 it had at the time caused some^mirth between himself and 
 his friends, among whom were Edmund Gurney, who died 
 in 1888, and Dr. A. T. Myers, who died in 1894. The 
 literal translation of the phrase is "to the one-horse [car 
 of] dawn " ; in Dr. Verrall's opinion the translation 
 ought to be " to the lonely wandering dawn." The 
 incident was never known, as far as they were aware, to 
 his future wife. 
 
 The result of the experiment was that Mrs. Verrall 
 never produced the phrase in her automatic script ; but 
 that in the course of the summer of 1901, from May to 
 September, it presented in so many different ways an 
 approximation now to the sound of the words, and now 
 to their sense, that it is impossible to doubt that she was 
 unconsciously influenced by her husband's thought. At 
 the same time it is seen that not only the sentence which 
 he wanted to get written, but other circumstances con- 
 nected with the episode from 1873, were reflected in the 
 script. Besides, other occurrences of his, but possibly 
 known to Mrs. Verrall, seem to have appeared in the script 
 as a consequence of her exertions to produce his Greek 
 words. Further, it is interesting to see that he himself 
 is often referred to during these exertions, as if her sub- 
 consciousness together with the impression received 
 quite a correct idea as to its origin, and this in spite of 
 Mrs. Verrall's own conception imprinting on the whole
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 51 
 
 production the stamp of being derived from another 
 source. 
 
 It will appear from the following extracts that the efforts 
 of the script were with a single exception — ixovoxtToovos 
 on July 31st — for a long time directed exclusively towards 
 the notion of dawn. At that notion it aimed directly and 
 indirectly, the latter mostly by means of the symbols 
 cock and cock-crowing. Mrs. Verrall herself thinks that 
 the first allusion is to be found in a script of June i6th, 
 1901 ; I beheve it dates further back, and that the script 
 of May nth is already connected with Dr. Verrall's 
 experiment, although another element, of which account 
 will be rendered later on, intermingles with it. I com- 
 mence therefore with the earlier script which both alludes 
 to Dr. Verrall, and contains the drawing of a bird which 
 Mrs. Verrall interpreted as a cock and in jest dubbed 
 " the cocky oly bird." 
 
 May nth, 1901. 
 
 " Do not hurry date this hoc est quod volui — tandem [this 
 
 is what I have wanted — at last]. A. W. V. [in Greek :] 
 
 and perhaps some one else. Calx pedibus inhaerens diffi- 
 cultatem superavit [chalk sticking to the feet has got over the 
 difaculty]. " 
 
 "A. W. V." is in the script the usual designation for 
 Dr. A. W. Verrall, when it does not say " your husband." 
 As Mrs. Verrall beUeves that another personality makes 
 use of her hand, she addresses herself in the second person, 
 and means when she says " I " the invisible writer. The 
 sentence, " This is what I have wanted — at last," also 
 intimates that it is Dr. Verrall's phrase the script refers 
 to. But just like as in dreaming one matter is by a 
 
 E 2
 
 52 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 desultory association of ideas interwoven with another ; 
 the idea of the cock leads to something wholly different ; 
 the words " Chalk sticking to the feet," etc., have their 
 own curious history. Altogether, it would be unjusti- 
 fiable to connect the script with Dr. Verrall's experiment 
 if the interesting bird did not reappear under circum- 
 stances which show that it is meant to symbolize the dawn. 
 The nejit writings referring to the experiment run as 
 follows : 
 
 June i6th, 1901. 
 
 " Five stars in the east that is not right. Can't you under- 
 stand — avis ille incredibilis redibit [the incredible bird will 
 return] Show it all to your husband 
 
 July 4th, igoi. 
 
 " Yellow is the colour of the dawn 
 
 July 31st, 1901. 
 
 " Longaevus senex barba alba /xovoxtTwvos [an aged man 
 with a white beard, one-garmented] 
 
 August 13th, 1901. 
 
 " [Drawing of a cock] cock a crested cock that crows is the 
 emblem — not a real bird, heraldic — with a motto^cano 
 canam albam [I sing the white dawn]." 
 
 The last script contained withal an allusion to an 
 incident connected with Dr. Verrall, the loss of a hat and 
 a hatbox some years previously : " Hat — a black hat in 
 a box belonging to him was lost." Afterwards follow 
 quickly one upon the other, a number of writings con- 
 nected with the experiment. 
 
 August 16th, 1901. 
 
 " Easier and easier, though you do not know. The cock is 
 inside a circle perhaps a coin. Try for the words again. 
 Cano canti clam no carmen cano [I sing a song] Canam some- 
 how belongs going towards the east. A. W. V. will under- 
 stand this — I think of him when I say it. You do not know. 
 
 August 20th, 1901. 
 
 " [Remarks in Greek about others being present.] Now you 
 must see that it is right. The long room with the many 
 windows is near this hot room — he was outside — how plain it 
 seems to me! but you don't know. Arthur [Dr. A. T. 
 Myers ?^ can tell you.
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 53 
 
 August 2yd, 1901. 
 
 " Canta catechumen no that's not right But it looks 
 
 like canta and then something. The cock is really important 
 — crowing in a circle [circle drawn] there is writing round the 
 bird letters raised :jTrA something like that. And there 
 is something gold about it somewhere. Canticlere is nearer 
 [drawing of bell] a bell. 
 
 August 28th, igoi. 
 
 " [Drawing of cock in circle] Kikiriki ! it is better now — the 
 
 emblem is within the circle, golden I think Ask A. W. 
 
 he will recognize this Cappa or Cana is a word that 
 
 belongs. Cantilupe is more like — cant ilenam Cantiaris 
 
 [drawing of sundial] x x x in the east to the daylight — 
 happily. Now write the word — it runs round a dial or font." 
 
 As may be seen, the script of August i6th had placed 
 the cock within a circle or perhaps a coin. This idea was 
 followed up on August 23rd where it was said that there 
 were letters round the bird ; besides, a sundial was 
 mentioned, and on August 28th the two motives, the 
 cock and the sundial, were closely connected ; there 
 seemed to be a question of a sundial with an inscription 
 round the ring and a cock in the middle. This is another 
 interweaving like that which is known from dreams. But 
 the remarkable point is, that all the motives have some- 
 thing to do with Dr. Verrall. He had once composed a 
 Latin description for a friend of Frederic Myers ; it seems 
 that the object to be inscribed was a mantelpiece, but 
 that his recollection was that it was a sundial. It is of 
 course possible that it was the mention of a sundial in the 
 script, which was shown to him by his wife, that made 
 him connect the inscription with such a one ; if this be 
 the case, the placing of it in a circle is Mrs. Verrall's own 
 subliminal invention. But at any rate the fact remains, 
 that she in her script connected her husband's Latin 
 inscription with the cock of whose relation to him she was 
 normally ignorant. 
 
 After the conversation between Dr. and Mrs. Verrall 
 about the sundial and the inscription, the script no more 
 reverted to these subjects, but continued in the following 
 manner :
 
 54 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 August 29th, 1 90 1. 
 
 " Cantilect — that is not so good as before — Cantuar CC 
 and a heraldic bird in colours — the light comes through, on 
 a window to the east 
 
 September 2nd, 1901. 
 
 " Canticlene has a word to say — one for him not you 
 
 There could be more. Malleson Don't give up. Listen 
 
 again — waly is the beginning — perhaps vale, two syllables 
 is TO follow the valy — it comes again." 
 
 This w^as the first of a series of attempts to produce the 
 identical Greek words, is acJ and ixoifoircoKov, of which 
 the following are the clearest : 
 
 September 4th, 1901. 
 
 " Find it and you will see — — /jlovoo-toXos — /Aovo;^tTa)vos /aovos 
 
 [single-vested — single-robed alone] There were others 
 
 but he knew more than the rest 
 
 September yth, 1901. 
 
 " Mol es to but the 6C is the end of the word c? there 
 
 are o and 1 before the es, o\ cs Tender es fusa a long word 
 
 like that. 
 
 September gih, 1901. 
 
 " 01 un c es that's not right — but the m comes before the 
 6s a g iles. I can't tell you the sense, only the letters. It 
 was someone else's words, not his — His are the other, quite 
 separate. — moleskin — that is more like, the look not the mean- 
 ing. Pye is a bird too but not ours Find the herb moly 
 
 that will help '' 
 
 Pye is the first intimation of the rr in ixovottcoKov. As 
 regards moly, Mrs, Verrall points out that this word is 
 found in a passage from Milton's Comus, which was the 
 subject for Latin hexameters in the Tripos examination 
 of 1873. Dr. Verrall, however, had completely forgotten 
 this circumstance, and it seems quite unjustifiable to 
 connect it with the " moly " of the script. The latter 
 exactly resembles the other approximations to ixovoiruiKov 
 — valy, mol, moleskin, etc. — which are given there. 
 
 Meanwhile the script continued its evident but not very 
 successful attempts at the words. 
 
 September 12th, 1901. 
 
 " — fjLo — €s eyu-oXcs mollis Pye gives one clue, but there 
 
 is another a dark man who smoked — Both were in it —
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 55 
 
 which of them spoke ? not yours. In the long dull room — 
 with candles lighted. Pale when that is not sense, but not 
 very wrong. 
 
 September 14th, 1901. 
 
 " Moaves that is the old mistake — estote looks like a part. 
 On the wall, mola or molina is more like. Strange it seems 
 that you cannot read. On the left there are more A V E N T 
 
 then the word that ends in es and something after it 
 
 Pla net or play net. illustre vagatur caelo sine comite [bright 
 it wanders in the sky uncompanioned] palely loitering — I can't 
 get it to-night — wait — you will hear later " 
 
 In the latter script the passage about the uncom- 
 panioned planet is perhaps an echo of the one-horse dawn. 
 But with regard to the reproduction of the Greek the 
 progress was small. To forward matters Dr. Verrall, on 
 September i8th, while his wife was writing in one room 
 and he sitting in another, fixed his mind upon the notion 
 of horse, the only idea which had so far been entirely 
 absent. That he did not do so in vain, the following 
 script will show : 
 
 September 18th, 1901. 
 
 " There is a message for her — about a knife — on a table, with 
 letters engraved upon it — not in Enghsh J~H mTr c^- [one 
 
 horse] the letters look like that " 
 
 Possibly the reading ought to be evLiTTros, " of goodly 
 horses," but the notion of horse had at any rate appeared. 
 But with this nice instance of thought-transference there 
 was put an end to the success of the experiment. Dr. 
 Verrall on September 19th told his wife that in the above 
 writing there was an allusion to a point which he had long 
 looked for, and that when she went to write on the i8th 
 he had fixed upon this point. This communication 
 evidently changed the course of the experiment. The 
 automatic self seems to have been unable to continue its 
 exertions after Mrs. Verrall had learned that they were 
 caused by a living person. The following script is very 
 characteristic : 
 
 October 6th, 1901. 
 " But A. W. V. must be satisfied What is the word he
 
 56 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 wants to complete, neither you nor I know it. so it is hard 
 to get. It all belongs to him but not to me, his friends but 
 not mine. No one here knows but one & her I have not 
 met. I will ask Arthur " 
 
 It is remarkable to see how the script clings to the belief 
 that it speaks in the name of a deceased person, viz., Myers. 
 As long as Mrs. Verrall thought that it was he who wanted 
 to express certain things by means of her hand, it ran : 
 " How plain it seems to me ! but you don't know," etc. 
 But as soon as she had learned that it was her husband 
 who tried to impress her, it was quite another part that 
 was assigned to the alleged communicator. Now it is no 
 longer he who knows the wanting word ; now he and 
 Mrs. Verrall are equally in the dark. " What is the word 
 he [A. W. v.] wants to complete ? " it now runs : " neither 
 you nor I know it, so it is hard to get." Formerly it was 
 Myers who urged her to write the words ; now he does 
 not know them. The automatic self does not shun any 
 inconsistency in order to preserve its leading idea. 
 
 It was not, however, until October of the following 
 year, 1902, that Dr. Verrall related the whole experiment 
 to his wife. In the meantime allusions to it had now and 
 again appeared in the script. But now it was evident 
 construction, and no longer anything due to the thoughts 
 of Dr. Verrall. As instances the following writings may 
 be quoted : 
 
 November 4th, 1901. 
 
 " It is the woman's name your husband wants — it was not 
 Clara — but I see the curve beginning it." 
 
 Clara seems to be a reminiscence of Canticlere and the 
 other attempts at words beginning with C. 
 
 March 10th, 1902. 
 
 " Your husband's cocks have gone away, but I will tell 
 more later," 
 
 March 2yih, 1902. 
 
 " Your husband's thought was good but not complete. The 
 old man in white was the best part of it but I have not been 
 able to finish that, and now it has all gone away," 
 
 The experiment was finished, but a good deal may be
 
 DR. VERRALL'S EXPERIMENT 57 
 
 learned from it. A comparison with Miss Ramsden's 
 attempts to receive what Miss Miles strove to transmit 
 shows both resemblance and disparity. The resemblance 
 consists in the difficulty which the automatic writer no 
 less than the waking percipient has in grasping things 
 which really come from outside. As regards this, it seems 
 to make no difference whether the percipient knows that 
 someone tries to impress him, or, as Mrs. Verrall, is 
 ignorant of it. There is a strong contrast between this 
 difficulty and the fluency with which the words flow from 
 the automatist's hand when left to himself. Perhaps 
 one ought always on meeting such a groping, such a 
 desperate struggle to express something which the writer 
 does not even subconsciously seem to know, to stop and 
 ask : " What can be the origin of this that intrudes here 
 upon the psychic's mind ? " 
 
 The two phenomena further resemble each other 
 therein, that Mrs. Verrall, as well as Miss Ramsden, not 
 only receives impressions of the words and notions which 
 the agent intends to transmit ; she dimly discerns other 
 circumstances belonging to the distant episode which her 
 husband had in mind. He had after the translation of 
 the passage from the Orestes stood outside the Senate 
 house where the examination took place, and with his 
 friends laughed at the odd phrase " the one-horse dawn." 
 More than once this situation seems to have been dis- 
 cernible to the inner vision of his wife. " He was out- 
 side," the script relates on August 20th ; and on Sep- 
 tember 9th : " there were others there, but he knew more 
 than the rest." Of the words themselves it says on 
 September 9th : "It was someone else's words, not his." 
 This is correct, as the words were taken from Euripides. 
 To the examination the script seems to allude on Sep- 
 tember 12th when it says : "In the long dull room — 
 with candles lighted." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall, then, has shown herself not only able to 
 receive impressions supernormally, but clairvoyant, or 
 mind-reading if that term be preferred.
 
 58 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The difference between Miss Ramsden and Mrs. Verrall 
 is mostly due to the circumstance that the latter not 
 only " perceives," but constructs withal. This, and the 
 cause of it, the trance-like and irresponsible state which 
 accompanies the writing, has already been spoken of. 
 Dr. Verrall's experiment has shown that the supernormal 
 perceptions are woven into the dream-like fabrication 
 exactly in \the same manner as the automatist's own 
 normal or latent knowledge. They are used to support 
 the idea that the invisible power which employs her hand 
 and puts down words which her brain does not apprehend 
 is some other than herself. 
 
 This idea is the life-principle in Mrs. Verrall's writing. 
 When she addresses herself by yon, she does not see that 
 the one who does so is another part of her own self. But 
 is it, after having followed Dr. Verrall's experiment 
 through its different phases, possible to doubt this ? Is 
 it possible to doubt that when, for instance, the script 
 says : " A. W. V. will understand — I think of him when 
 I say it. You do not know," it is the lucid part of her 
 mind, to quote Sir Oliver Lodge,^ that thinks of Dr. 
 Verrall, while her normal self ignores that he is concerned 
 with the matter ? But this kind of dramatic play 
 between the writer and her automatic self is throughout 
 characteristic of Mrs. Verrall's script, and confirmed her 
 belief in its being another person who wrote. At the 
 outset, her hand refused to put the name of that other 
 person under the messages. Once even her own initials 
 were written under the words spoken to herself : " Can't 
 you see ? Can't you believe ? M. de G. V." A battle 
 seems to be fought between her subconscious knowledge 
 and the belief of her waking self ; but the latter gains the 
 victory, and many communications are signed with the 
 names of Frederic Myers or other departed persons. 
 
 ' See above, p. 41.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 
 
 A SHORT time before the death of Frederic Myers and 
 the commencement of her own automatic writing, 
 Mrs. Verrall had made the acquaintance of another lady- 
 automatist, Mrs. Forbes (pseudonym). The script of 
 the latter, which was partly produced by means of plan- 
 chette, was thought by her to originate fiom her son 
 Talbot (pseudonym) who had been killed in the South 
 African war in the beginning of the year 1900, and from 
 Edmund Gurney who had been known to her personally. 
 From February, 1901, Myers, who had been also known 
 to her, was added to these. The state of Mrs. Forbes, 
 also when she produced direct script, was less uncon- 
 scious than that of Mrs. Verrall ; she understood what 
 she wrote, and sometimes completed the words by 
 guesses ; it was, however, always carefully noted down 
 when such was the case. 
 
 A couple of months after becoming acquainted with 
 Mrs. Verrall, on February 24th, 1901, Mrs. Forbes obtained 
 at her house in the north of England in planchette- 
 writing what turned out to be a correct description of 
 Mrs. Verrall's contemporaneous situation in Cambridge. 
 The first words were : " Edmund Gurney writes for 
 
 Myers^ let us see our friends in Cambridge. Mrs. Verrall 
 
 is so strongly my friend that I can be with her." Plan- 
 chette then said that she was sitting in a chair near the 
 fire, very comfortable, and added : " but don't ask me 
 to look over her shoulder, for I can't see that she has got 
 a book." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall at the time was sitting in a low chair near 
 
 1 This commuiiicator is throughout Mrs. Verrall's report designated 
 by the initial H.
 
 6o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 the fire, close to her husband's chair ; they were together 
 looking over a typewritten manuscript of an article which 
 she had written ; her attitude and occupation were 
 suggestive of reading, but she held no book. 
 
 On March 4th Mrs. Verrall had a letter from Mrs. Forbes 
 giving the full account of this incident. The next day 
 she obtained her first script with real words. She herself 
 thinks that \ there is possibly a connection between 
 Mrs. Forbes's letter where the names of her supposed 
 communicators were given, and the marked improvement 
 in her own script. 
 
 At any rate, the connection with Mrs. Forbes became 
 of much importance in the next period. On March 17th 
 Mrs. Verrall's script contained the following words in 
 Latin : 
 
 " What is more difficult, not to say impossible, unless you 
 also wish it ? To-day I can, not without doubt. Write ' we 
 are in Diana's allegiance.' Note it again." 
 
 The reference is to a poem of Catullus ; but Diana is 
 the Christian name of Mrs. Forbes, and Mrs. Verrall took 
 the words to be a message from the persons writing 
 through this lady. In themselves they do not seem to 
 contain anything to support such an assumption. But 
 gradually there developed between the two automatists 
 a faculty of influencing each other supernormally which 
 recalls the relations between Miss Ramsden and Miss 
 Miles. These are described by Miss Miles as follows^ : 
 " There seems," says she, " an invisible cord attached to 
 Miss Ramsden. When the power is once fairly started 
 she seems to get any message whether I am thinking of 
 her or not. It seems to go on the whole time." At other 
 times, on the contrary, they " cannot get into touch at 
 all." With this the following account by Mrs. Verrall 
 ought to be compared : " On January nth, 1902, I noted 
 in my diary that I had felt on the day before that ' after 
 an interval I had again come into touch ' with whatever 
 
 1 Proceedings Am. S.P.R., Vol. V., p. 688.
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 6i 
 
 it was that produced my automatic script On 
 
 January loth, Mrs. Forbes automatically wrote a long 
 message for me from ' Edmund ' which I received after 
 I had made the above-mentioned entry in my diary. 
 Neither the subjective impression nor the contents of the 
 script are definite enough to be evidential. But the 
 coincidence between the reference to me after three 
 weeks' silence and my own sensation of having ' come 
 into touch ' is worth noting." It seems then as if Mrs. 
 Verrall could feel that Mrs. Forbes was once more engaged 
 with thoughts of her. No doubt she herself took her 
 sensation to mean more than this ; but the " message " 
 has evidently contained nothing to sustain her belief. 
 If it cannot be supported in other ways, the parallel to 
 the Miles-Ramsden cases must give the precedence to 
 the purely human interpretation. 
 
 In the planchette- writing of February 24th, Mrs. Forbes 
 had shown a supernormal power to perceive the surround- 
 ings of Mrs. Verrall of which several instances occur in the 
 time following. Essentially it did not differ from that 
 displayed by Miss Ramsden and other sensitives. Some- 
 times it had the character of a faculty to obtain impres- 
 sions about something which occupied Mrs. Verrall, at 
 other times it was of a more visionary nature. No 
 doubt it was further developed through experiments 
 made by the two ladies simultaneously trying for auto- 
 matic script, and the like. 
 
 This faculty of Mrs. Forbes became important in the 
 following case which in its way is as instructive as the 
 experiment of Dr. Verrall. " The Symposium incident " 
 presents an instance of subconscious fabrication which 
 must be acknowledged as such because it led to an actual 
 event, viz., the opening of a sealed letter left by Frederic 
 Myers, by which its real nature was unveiled. But the 
 part played by Mrs. Forbes as co-operating at a certain 
 point was a phenomenon which might well confirm 
 Mrs. Verrall's behef in the genuineness of her own script.
 
 62 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The incident, however, had a prelude which had nothing 
 to do with Mrs. Forbes. 
 
 On May 31st, 1901, Mrs. Verrall's script among other 
 things contained the phrase " Diotima gave the clue." 
 Mrs. Verrall states that she knew at that time nothing 
 about Diotima except that she was the one woman in 
 the Platonic dialogues, and that she was mentioned in the 
 Symposium. \ The dialogue itself she had never read, and 
 had very little conscious knowledge of its contents. 
 
 No doubt it does not in itself require a special explana- 
 tion that Mrs. Verrall's script, which so often refers to 
 classical subjects, mentioned a name from Plato which 
 she at any rate knew. A possible ground for its emer- 
 gence just at this point may, however, be adduced. 
 Diotima is mentioned in Myers's work, Human Personality 
 and its Survival of Bodily Death, which was just then going 
 through the press. The proofs v/ere in Mrs. Myers's 
 house at Cambridge where Mrs. Verrall was a frequent 
 visitor in the spring and summer of 1901. It is therefore, 
 as she herself states, not impossible that she should have 
 seen, without consciously noticing, the passage which 
 contains the name Diotima. She corrected the proofs of 
 a portion of the book, and must doubtless have been near 
 the remaining parf. 
 
 Nay it may even be contended that it is not only 
 possible, but all but certain that such was the cause of 
 the mention of Diotima in the script. At a later time, 
 but before the publication of the book, Mrs. Verrall 
 expressed through the script her belief that the passage 
 in question was to be found in it. This already intimates 
 that she had without knowing seen the passage. But, 
 moreover, the script of this period contains a case pointing 
 in the same direction. When Mrs. Verrall had written 
 of Diotima, she wanted to learn more about her ; so, on 
 June 1st, she looked up in the Symposium the passage 
 where Socrates says that Diotima, the prophetess, had 
 said that Love (Eros) was a spirit (daimon) and mediator 
 between God and man. The speech of Socrates comes
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 63 
 
 immediately after Agathon's panegyric of Love, at the 
 end of which are introduced two hexameter lines con- 
 taining the phrases " calm [<ya\rivrj\ on the sea, and 
 " stillness [vr]v€iiLav] of winds." Mrs. Verrall herself 
 thinks that she may unconsciously have seen these lines 
 on the day when she read about Diotima. Later she 
 automatically wrote as follows : 
 
 June 2yth, 1901. 
 
 " Quid coerces nenymon yaXT^vwv p^fx-qv [why dost thou 
 stay the might of the windless calm]. 
 
 September 28th, 1901. 
 
 " Noenymus vt^vc/^os eo-rt yaX-rjvrj [windless is the calm]. 
 
 December 12th, 1901. 
 
 " Nenymos yaXrjvrj — is the word but there is more It 
 
 is Greek but written in English letters — two words are plain. 
 I think there is something more. This is not your husband's 
 word — he wants a word but more than a name." 
 
 The latter script shows that Agathon's words from the 
 Symposium, which have nothing whatever to do with the 
 Diotima incident save that they precede the passage which 
 Mrs. Verrall looked up, had become for the automatist a 
 part of the usual notion of something that was to be 
 found and supplemented, i.e., the notion that her impres- 
 sions came from outside. Possibly the unconscious groping 
 for Dr. VerraU's phrase had taught the automatic self to 
 grope for words and seek for clues generally. But when 
 the idea of the " windless calm " undoubtedly had come 
 to Mrs. Verrall by a casual glance at something which did 
 not reach her waking consciousness, it is highly probable 
 that the same had been the case with the Diotima passage 
 in the proofs of Myers's book, which had at any rate been 
 in her immediate proximity.^ 
 
 The Symposium incident's real history, however, does 
 not begin until November 26th, 1902, a year and a half 
 after the mention of Diotima in the script. It happened 
 
 1 Cf. Mrs. Myers's remarks about the proofs of Fragments from Prose 
 and Poetry, to which, other aUusions in Mrs. VerraU's script of the same 
 period seem due {Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXVI., p. 229).
 
 64 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 that the Diotima passage from the Symposium had been 
 set for translation by a lecturer at Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, and that Mrs. Verrall was in the habit of using the 
 Trinity College translation papers for her class at Newn- 
 ham College. On account of this she read on Novem- 
 ber 26th in the dialogue the context of the passage, and 
 on November 27th looked over some ten or twelve 
 translation? of it. " During these two days," she writes, 
 " my mind was full of the passage, of the reference to it 
 earlier in my script, and of the appropriateness of its 
 selection." 
 
 By the last phrase Mrs. Verrall means the appropriate- 
 ness of the selection of the passage by Myers as a message 
 on May 31st of the preceding year. When she could 
 make so much of the bare mention of the name Diotima 
 in her script, it is no wonder that the subsequent develop- 
 ment of the case must impress her greatly. For those 
 acquainted with the final result it must of course appear 
 in another light. 
 
 At this point Mrs. Forbes's receptiveness for impres- 
 sions concerning Mrs. Verrall had reached no small pro- 
 portions, and she had given several proofs of supernormal 
 knowledge about her doings and preoccupations. It had 
 been agreed bet\\^een the two automatists that Mrs. Verrall 
 ought to receive all of Mrs. Forbes's script which the 
 writer thought referred to her, while on the contrary. 
 Mis. Forbes never saw the other's script nor learned 
 anything whatever about her opinion of her own. Con- 
 sequently she knew nothing about the references to 
 Diotima or the Symposium. At the same time she of 
 course knew that Mrs. Verrall like herself was interested 
 in Myers, and hoped that her script had him partially for 
 its source. The importance of ascertaining this by means 
 of some test must likewise be clear to her. With this in 
 mind it is not difficult to understand that she could 
 produce the following scripts : 
 
 November 26th, 1902. 
 
 " Myers opens a book long closed.
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 65 
 
 November 2'jth, 1902. 
 
 " Will it be worth while to try to follow the clue of yester- 
 day ? Myers wishes Mrs. Verrall to open the last book she 
 read for him in which is the true word of the test. If she will 
 try to begin the sentence with this word he will be sm^e to 
 prove his being the writer — let the letter be sent to-night." 
 
 On the other hand, a supernormal element probably 
 intervenes. In view of the relations between the two 
 sensitives it is very likely that Mrs. Forbes has had a 
 vague perception of the matter which occupied Mrs. 
 Verrall during the same days — a book in which was a word 
 that was perhaps a test. But a real conformity is wanting ; 
 on the base of what is in itself a correct impression, 
 something wholly wrong or nonsensical has been con- 
 structed. It was wrong to speak about a book which 
 Mrs. Verrall had read for Myers. And even if we accept 
 an interpretation which Mrs. Verrall favours, and take 
 the phrase " open the last book she read for him " to 
 mean " open for him the last book she read," viz., the 
 Symposium, the result did not confirm that the instruction 
 to find a word there and begin a sentence with it came 
 from Myers. As proceeding from him the script is irre- 
 levant ; as built on an impression about the preoccupation 
 of Mrs. Verrall it is comprehensible and interesting. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall, however, was much struck with its con- 
 tents which seemed so clearly connected with her own 
 thoughts at the time of its production. She tried now if, by 
 fixing her mind upon iheSymposium before trying for auto- 
 matic script, she could obtain further instructions ; but this 
 attempt met with no success. On the other hand, the script 
 told her already on November 28th that " it must come 
 elsewhere " ; and her belief in this has possibly had a 
 stimulating effect on Mrs. Forbes, whose subsequent script 
 clearly reflects the ideas which filled her co-operator — 
 Diotima, Eros, the Symposium. She writes as foUows : 
 
 December iSth, 1902. 
 
 "... word . . . Myers make it — . . . with the — Diony- 
 sus {} y Dion — . . . 
 
 1 A query indicates that part of the word is a guess. 
 CD. F
 
 66 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " Edmund writes to tell the friend — who writes with Talbot 
 — word of the Test will be Dy . . . Will you give the sense of 
 the message. Write to Mrs. Verrall and say the word 
 will be found in Myers own . . . will you send a message to 
 Mrs. Verrall to say Myers will see with^ her on Friday 
 [December igth] — will you be so kind as to send this to-day ? 
 
 "... Talbot writes to say you can be sure ... it is 
 one of the most Hymeneal Songs — Love's oldest melody. 
 
 January 6th, 1903. 
 
 "... sou . . . son suspuro suspiro sryseo sym on Myers 
 eros." 
 
 Moreover, on January nth, Mrs. Forbes, who did not 
 know Greek, produced the following letters : w, e, p, a-, (p, s, a, 
 which were described as part of an uncompleted test. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that Mrs. Verrall after this 
 apparent confirmation of her belief in " Diotima " as a 
 message sent by Myers produced one script after another 
 full of allusions to the co-operation of Mrs. Forbes, and to 
 the book of Myers, which was about to be published. 
 It began after she had received Mrs. Forbes's script of 
 December i8th. 
 
 December igth, 1902. 
 
 " In the sealed book is the word, the message to men, the 
 new and old Diatesseron. 
 
 December 26th, 1902. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes will get the words I want, but wait, happy is 
 the hour, let your thoughts follow her, do not write. 
 
 January i^th, 1903. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes has sent it to you — or should have by now ; 
 she has got nearer and will get the word. Write more often 
 this month — we can do more now for you. Your husband's 
 test goes forward, Mrs. Forbes gets that better than you do — 
 write regularly — there will be news for you to write next week 
 — good news before the month is out. The book will help — 
 our word is there contained. 
 
 January 21st, 1903. 
 
 " Wait for the word from Mrs. Forbes 
 
 January 22nd, 1903. 
 
 " In Myers' book is a word that ought to make things 
 plain — read it to see — not at the head of a chapter — but 
 quoted in the text — it should have been — and surely is. 
 
 1 This expression is in Mrs. Forbes's script the usual equivalent for 
 " communicate with " or " write by means of.'!
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 67 
 
 January 23rd, 1903. 
 
 " Read the book for me. Look there for the helping word. 
 
 January 2$th, 1903. 
 
 " Between God and Man is the ^aifrnviov n — you will see 
 that quoted in the book — Love is the bond. 
 
 January '^ist, 1903. 
 
 " Look for what I have told you in the book — Myers' book. 
 The passage is important ' To the ends of the earth.' That 
 is the countersign." 
 
 As may be seen, there is nothing supernormal in all 
 this. It is simply an expression of Mrs. Veriall's belief 
 that the Diotima passage was to be found in Myers's 
 book, whose pubHcation she awaited in much excitement. 
 She is, however, not blind to the fact that it is herself who 
 at times speaks in the script. She points out, for instance, 
 with regard to the remark on January 22nd : " not at the 
 head of a chapter," that she had corrected for press a slip 
 consisting of a list of quotations for the headings of the 
 chapters, adding : " Hence no doubt the allusion in the 
 script." Other things in the script characterize them- 
 selves as fabrications because they are wrong ; such a one 
 is the remark on January 14th on Dr. Verrall's test ; it 
 neither went forward nor had anything to do with Mrs. 
 Forbes ; and the phrase at the end of the script of 
 January 31st, about the important passage " To the ends 
 of the earth " ; it was not found in Myers's book. 
 
 But the Diotima passage was really found in Human 
 Personality. It is argued above that Mrs. Verrall had 
 seen it unconsciously in the proofs in the spring of 1901, 
 and had thus throughout had a latent knowledge thereof. 
 But for herself this explanation hardly existed as a 
 possibility. The genuineness of her script became for 
 her almost indisputable when she found on looking over 
 the book on February loth, 1903, that Myers in its first 
 volume "gives an abstract of the ' cosmical ' aspect of 
 Love, as described by Plato in the Symposium, calhng 
 special attention to the fact that this utterance is placed 
 by Plato in the mouth of Diotima, the prophetess." 
 
 With this apparent success the first chapter of the 
 
 F 3
 
 68 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Symposium incident ends. Only Mrs. Forbes, who 
 normally knew nothing about the whole matter, continued 
 to dwell on the Symposium. She writes : 
 
 February 20th, 1903. 
 
 " All we write is really S Y M P— a the tic (?) 
 March 2nd, 1903. 
 
 " Write to Mrs. Verrall to say the word we want to send 
 
 her to-day is sympathy come y Epus [?] love [?]. 
 
 April 1st, 1903. 
 
 " S y m p athy Seal s ym p athy write this." 
 
 The word seal, though, in the last script is possibly due 
 to a new impression from Mrs. Verrall. And its appear- 
 ance in Mrs. Forbes's script together with the attempt at 
 symposium might well confirni the former's belief that it 
 was Myers who continued to use the hand of her fellow- 
 automatist. Apart from this contribution Mrs. Forbes, 
 however, had no part in the further development of the 
 Symposium case. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's script, on the contrary, had only two da^^'s 
 after the appearance of Human Personality continued in a 
 new line. 
 
 Several years before his death, in 1891, Frederic Myers 
 had given into the charge of Sir Oliver Lodge a sealed 
 envelope which was to be opened after his death if some 
 medium produced a communication about its contents in 
 a manner that made it probable that it came from him. 
 
 It was with the contents of this envelope that Mrs. 
 Verrall's script after the success with the Diotima passage 
 began to occupy itself. The automatist herself is of 
 opinion that she may unconsciously have been led to 
 think of this envelope by her script of December 19th, 
 1902 : "In the sealed book is the word " ; to the impres- 
 sion which the word sealed made on her subconsciousness 
 all the following utterances about Myers's sealed envelope 
 might be due. But although she was willing in this case, 
 where the result proved that the communications did not 
 proceed from the alleged source, to ascribe them to herself, 
 she did not from thence draw any conclusion with regard
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 69 
 
 to the remaining script. And yet there seems to be no 
 essential difference between other " messages " and those 
 referring to the sealed envelope. For the estimation of 
 Mrs. Verrall's script as a whole it is therefore very useful 
 to thoroughly study this case. 
 
 During the first two months after the publication of 
 Myers's book the following scripts were written : 
 
 February 12th, 1903. 
 
 " Hodgson will help . . . The key of the box is in a little 
 
 drawer upstairs The metal box is heavy not very small 
 
 — not a cash box to carry. The letter is tied with thread and 
 there is a word stamped on the seal, — not a figure — a word of 
 4 letters. 
 February 22nd, 1903. 
 
 " Direct Leaf and Pitherington to see open the chest and 
 this is the order of the rite — Seal green and irregular has a 
 word across it in an oval little print letters in English. Truth, 
 Light — no not those — Love you mistake — that is not outside 
 — you do not hear. 
 March lyth, 1903. 
 
 " Two high windows, with dark curtains — looking on a 
 street — and a table with a red cloth. The writing table is 
 
 in that room and the key in its drawer would fit Ask 
 
 Hodgson too — 
 March 20th, 1903. 
 
 " Now something else. You must find that drawer and get 
 the key. Then things will be plain. There are papers inside 
 and you will not find mine at once, you must look for it. 
 
 The seal is quite irregular — ragged in outline 
 
 March 26th, 1903. 
 
 " The device on the seal is distinctive — get that first 
 [drawing of oval seal] four letters ^s :r^ like that, pairs 
 [scrawls] no you don't understand. It is on the seal, an 
 oval shaped seal, with four letters on it — Roma or amor 
 perhaps — not a figure but a word with a meaning. Inside 
 is the sentence you know — but it is not in Greek — it is in 
 English letters — It is the word of the simposium — and the 
 greatest of these is Charity is like it — but the word is Love — 
 Crosst amor. 
 
 April igth, 1903. 
 
 " [Drawing of oval seal] sigillum. The envelope is square 
 
 square and white Go to the box for it — it lies there with 
 
 others and is not on the top. The paper inside is folded once. 
 The box has a handle on the middle of the top, — a sunken 
 handle. There is some double locking — two keys are wanted
 
 70 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 — the small one and one on a bunch. Orotava or something 
 like that is the password Life is more like the word on the 
 seal. LIFE there is a little frame round of double lines. 
 Is not this enough ? The seal — the box — the 2 keys in 
 different places — the dark house & high windows the box 
 and something green." 
 
 Mrs, Verrall had thus gradually written down a great 
 many particulars which she thought referred to Myers's 
 envelope. It^ is true that most of them were quite 
 unimportant, as regards the test ; others were self -con- 
 tradictory ; now it is Dr. Leaf and Mr. Piddington who 
 ought to open the chest, now the assistance of Dr. Hodg- 
 son — who was in America — is invoked. However, on 
 March 26th the script had clearly stated the main point. 
 " Inside is the sentence you know," it ran, " it is the word 
 of the Symposium — the word is Love." To be sure, this 
 was a rather likely guess. Possibly Mrs. Forbes's script 
 of March 2nd had its share in it ; Mrs. Verrall, of course, 
 did not consider it an echo of the preceding ones. 
 
 On April 17th Mrs. Verrall 's script had given a very 
 clear description of a box in a bank as the place where the 
 letter was kept. This agreed with the normal knowledge 
 of the automatist ; Sir Oliver Lodge had, in fact, deposited 
 Myers's sealed envelope in a bank. But on the other hand 
 the script had mentioned Hodgson, and Mrs. Verrall 
 therefore thought that it did not at all refer to the envelope 
 in Sir Oliver's charge, but to some other letter left with 
 Dr. Hodgson. The allusions on April 17th to the pass- 
 word, " Orotava or something like that," also pointed to 
 Dr. Hodgson ; the exertions to produce a particular word 
 were continued for some time in the script and were in 
 fact connected with Dr. Hodgson, as will be seen later on. 
 But they had not, as believed by Mrs. Verrall, any con- 
 nection with a Myers envelope. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's belief in such a connection was, however, 
 displayed in the following script : 
 
 August 18th, 1903. 
 
 " The box that I told of stands on a chair, squared with 
 metal clamps — yellowish wood. It is near a window. Hodgson
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 71 
 
 expects a message about it before he will open it — you have 
 sent part of the word to him but not all. The word you should 
 send is the name of a ship — Orinaria Orellaria, like that. 
 It ends in — ia. The message inside is from the Symposium 
 the passage you know " 
 
 After this most clear intimation of Dr. Hodgson being 
 the keeper of the envelope with the Symposium-passage, 
 Mrs. Verrall wrote to him telling him of the description 
 of the box. In his reply, dated September 17th, 1903, he 
 told her that he knew nothing of any box like that 
 described, and had no sealed envelope left him for 
 posthumous reading. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's subsequent script contained among other 
 things divers messages that purported to come from 
 Professor Sidgwick who died in the year igoo. As a 
 consequence hereof, the subject of an envelope left by 
 him with his wife was introduced, though such a one does 
 not seem to have existed. References to this envelope 
 and to that of Myers were mixed in a confused manner. 
 In the script it was now Myers and now Professor Sidg- 
 wick who held the conversation. 
 
 September 22nd, 1903. 
 
 " In his [i.e. Myers's] envelope is a drawing, a curved line, 
 on one side of the paper, and a word or two on the other side 
 . . . ^L-yixa stands for Sidgwick elsewhere, why not there 
 too ? But you must give another message correctly first 
 and then ask her to open my envelope. 
 
 January lyth, 1904. 
 
 " S is the letter. S in the envelope S and on a seal. 2. In 
 Mrs. Sidgwick's letter a 2 — and three words on the paper — 
 not without hope. The question is answered. This must 
 succeed — the other is harder 
 
 July 13th, 1904. 
 
 " I have long told you of the contents of the envelope. 
 Myers' sealed envelope left with Lodge. You have not 
 understood. It has in it the words from the Symposium — 
 about Love bridging the chasm. They are written on a 
 piece of single paper — folded and put in an envelope. That 
 is inside another envelope which has my initial at the bottom, 
 left hand and there is a date on the envelope too, the outside 
 envelope not in my writing. The whole thing has been put 
 with other papers in a box a small box clamped with metal.
 
 72 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 July i^th, 1904. 
 
 " It would be important that Hodgson should see the box 
 opened — with the double envelope. His own may wait. 
 
 July 18th, 1904. 
 
 " Let the trial be made as they desire — this is clear — that 
 the passage from the Symposium which you have found as 
 was told you in the book is in an envelope, sealed by me. I 
 should like Hodgson to know this but it is not in his envelope. 
 I wrote the words some time before the book was ready — 
 perhaps the tost is not very good, but it should help. 
 
 August 14th, 1904. 
 
 " And in one envelope the reference to Love in the other 
 to Hope. And you will not look— Faith is not yours. Though 
 I speak with the tongue of an angel, you have not heard or 
 hearing have not done. Surely this is plain. 
 
 November 2^th, 1904. 
 
 " Why will you not look for it. Tell them that. Long 
 have they waited we do not know why — but can do no more." 
 
 In the face of such earnest appeals — which Mrs. Verrall 
 did not realize came from one part of her own self while 
 another part was sceptical — it seemed at last right to 
 yield. The many contradictory statements, nay mistakes 
 of the script — among which were the references to an 
 envelope left with Dr. Hodgson that continued in spite 
 of Mrs. Verrall's knowledge to the contrary — were over- 
 looked. The sealed envelope entrusted by Frederic Myers 
 to Sir Oliver Lodge was opened in the rooms of the 
 Society for Psychical Research in London on Decem- 
 ber 13th, 1904, and proved to contain a sentence bearing 
 no resemblance to the phrase from the Symposium which 
 Mrs. Verrall's script had led her to expect. 
 
 Such was the end of this incident which has presented 
 a unique opportunity to substantiate the subHminal power 
 of construction. Here where circumstances made it possible 
 to compare the statements of the script to an actual fact, 
 it became evident that the script was fiction. Apart from 
 " Diotima " that was doubtless due to latent memory, 
 the whole series of " messages " proved to be nothing but 
 subconscious fabrication. Not even Mrs. Forbes had 
 influenced the script supernormally ; as Mrs. VerraU read 
 her writings, the impulses due to them were conveyed to
 
 THE SYMPOSIUM INCIDENT 73 
 
 her in a wholly normal manner. Judging by this incident, 
 Mrs. Verrall's automatism would seem to be exactly of 
 the same type as those mediums who were the subject of 
 Professor Flournoy's studies. Cryptomnesia and imagi- 
 nation suffice to explain all. 
 
 From Dr. Verrall's experiment, however, it appeared 
 that she was capable of receiving impressions transmitted 
 to her by a " willing agent." In the sequel it will be 
 proved that her susceptibility went further than this ; 
 that faculty of obtaining impressions without a willing 
 agent which Mrs. Forbes displayed in the Symposium 
 case, Mrs. Verrall herself possessed in no less a degree.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES WITH MRS. FORBES 
 
 The results of a supernormal relation between two 
 sensitives, or two automatists, like that which was in the 
 Symposium case seen to exist between Mrs. Verrall and 
 Mrs. Forbes, have in psychical research obtained the name 
 of cross-correspondences. It is used in a narrower sense 
 about the appearance in the scripts of two automatists 
 of the same, or similar, words or notions, and in a wider 
 sense about all veridical impressions which one of them 
 receives concerning the other. Mrs. Verrall employs it in 
 the latter sense when speaking of her " cross-correspon- 
 dences with Mrs. Forbes." But she reports also those 
 cases where her script refers to Mrs. Forbes, and vice-versa, 
 but where the reference does not correspond to any fact. 
 Her paper, she says, is a record, not of successes, but of 
 incidents. ^ 
 
 A classification of these incidents would show that they 
 constitute two groups of about equal size of which one 
 may be called successes. On the whole, there wiU here 
 be reason to dwell on the latter group only ; but I will 
 cite a few failures which throw light on the entire process. 
 This for instance applies to a number of allusions in 
 Mrs. Verrall's script to the assistance she will get from 
 Mrs. Forbes : 
 
 March nth, 1903. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes has got the other word and will send it — not 
 Symposium but it helps and is clear. I don't think she knows 
 it is for you but you will understand. 
 
 March i^th, 1903. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes is slow but she has something which you have 
 not seen.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: MRS. FORBES 75 
 
 July lyth, 1903. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes has something which should settle the date — 
 it fills your gap." 
 
 The last phrase, " it fills your gap," has many parallels 
 which will be mentioned later ; Mrs. Verrall during the 
 growth of her collaboration with Mrs. Forbes had con- 
 ceived the not unnatural idea that the " controls " gave 
 through one of them what they could not produce through 
 the other. But in none of the above cited cases was the 
 assurance of the script based on any reality ; Mrs. Forbes's 
 writings contained nothing that referred to Mrs. Verrall. 
 And other incidents confirm the conception that it was 
 the automatists themselves who had invented this 
 romance about their co-operation under extra-terrestrial 
 influence. For instance, Mrs. Forbes in the summer of 
 1904 wrote the following which, as Mrs. Verrall says, 
 " suggested that some episode was now closed and that 
 some distinct success had been accomplished " : 
 
 July 16th, 1904, 
 
 " Our dream of our own home will soon be realized. All 
 is written to the end of the first chapter. I was overjoyed — 
 our friends were here ; all I felt was great joy ; all I knew 
 was the end of the first chapter seemed come, with the next 
 page began the real story. Send Mrs. Verrall this message. 
 The end of the first chapter has come — all will be ready for the 
 next which begins — over the page . . . great joy sympathy." 
 
 It is not impossible that this " message " wliich expressly 
 mentions Mrs. Verrall is founded on a supernormal 
 impression of her conscious or unconscious sensations. 
 She had had a great success when the appearance of 
 Human Personality confirmed the statements of her script 
 about the Diotima passage which was to be found there. 
 Now she was filled with thoughts of that which seemed to 
 be the next chapter of the same story, the assurances in 
 the sciipt that the same passage from the Symposium 
 was contained in Myers's sealed envelope. But even if 
 Mrs. Forbes's writing reflected the feelings of Mrs. Verrall, 
 it was, as we know, anything but consistent with the real 
 circumstances.
 
 76 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Instructive in another way is a case where Mrs. Forbes 
 appeared unable to be influenced by Mrs. Verrall's 
 thoughts. After the failure with regard to the Myers 
 envelope, Mrs. Verrall's script repeatedly assmed her that 
 the incident would be mentioned through Mrs. Forbes, 
 who normally knew nothing of the proposal to open the 
 envelope, nor of the event of December 13th, 1904. 
 Mrs. VerraU wrote : 
 
 December 21st, 1904. 
 
 " I will send a message about this through Mrs. Forbes — 
 do not ask for it it may take. time. 
 
 December 28th, 1904. 
 
 " Six days you must wait from now and other three — then 
 the message will make things "clear. Let it come then. I 
 want to confirm it through Mrs. Forbes but she has not under- 
 stood. I want her to write and sympathize with the failure 
 and not to know what it is. I shall try all this week — wait 
 for her letter and help. Think of her often, send a message 
 to her in mind to write and say she is sure you are disappointed. 
 
 January 6th, 1905. 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes has been anxious this week but the anxiety 
 is less now. I could not make her hear what I wanted her 
 to write to you — but ask to see what she wrote on Monday." 
 
 How clearly does the script express the desires of 
 Mrs. Verrall ! How evident is her need of a word from 
 Myers which might neutralize the effect of the envelope 
 failure and restore the certainty that they were in 
 communication with him ! But when she UTote to 
 Mrs. Forbes, this lady replied that she had written no 
 script on the preceding Monday nor had she had any 
 special impression about Mrs, Verrall or the opening of 
 an envelope. In vain had the latter, in accordance with 
 the request in her own script, tried to impress her with a 
 sense of her disappointment. As has been pointed out 
 before, and as will often be seen, it seems more difficult 
 for a sensitive to catch those things which an agent is 
 eagerly stiiving to transmit than the ideas that more or 
 less unconsciously fill his mind. 
 
 The incidents that deserve the name of successes
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES : MRS. FORBES tj 
 
 consist on the whole in Mrs. Forbes obtaining during the 
 production of her script veridical impressions about 
 Mrs. Verrall, and vice versa. In Mrs. Forbes's script 
 these impressions are most often clothed in words which 
 indicate that it is a discarnate, especially Myers, who 
 tells her about the situation which is described. A case, 
 of February 24th, 1901, has been mentioned above ; 
 Myers has seen Mrs. Verrall sitting in a chair near the 
 fire, possibly reading, though he cannot see any book. 
 Altogether more than a dozen times things that corre- 
 spond to a real situation are found in Mrs. Forbes's script. 
 I reproduce some of the clearest cases. 
 
 November 2^th, 1901. 
 
 " [Mrs. Verrall was to be told] that the friends were with 
 her when she was with Mrs. Sidgwick." 
 
 On November 22nd Mrs. Verrall's script had produced 
 an attempt to represent a communication from Mrs. 
 Sidgwick's deceased brother, which attempt had impressed 
 the automatist a good deal. The phrase in Mrs. Forbes's 
 script seems to reflect her attitude of mind between the 
 22nd and 25th. 
 
 December 16th, 1901. 
 
 " Mrs. Verrall to try to see for Myers. Myers says — to say 
 friends can wait is far from courteous . . .would it seem fair 
 for the spirits to sit for work for hours [while ?] she sat with 
 foolish . . ."1 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had by arrangement with Mrs. Forbes for 
 some days tried the experiment of writing every day at 
 a fixed hour. But during a visit at a friend's house she 
 was to her annoyance prevented from keeping the appoint- 
 ment both on December 14th and 15th. On the i6th she 
 wrote to Mrs. Forbes that she must abandon the experi- 
 ment. The latter had not known that she was away 
 from home, but had felt convinced that she wrote every 
 day. The remark of her script " she sat with foolish " 
 closely represented Mrs. Verrall's own feehng of annoyance 
 
 ^ Dots in Mrs. Forbes's script indicate illegible words.
 
 78 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 that she had been occupied in conversation when she ought 
 to have been writing. 
 
 November 2nd, 1902. 
 
 " Tell Mrs, Verrall to be sure I am the writer — the friend 
 was with her when she sat On the old seat ( ? ) when she felt 
 for (?) . . . in the dark she tried to find the Old — with 
 sympathy, Myers." 
 
 On Octqber 27th and 31st Mrs. Verrall had before 
 writing sat for some fifteen minutes in the dark, concen- 
 trating her thoughts on Frederic Myers. She imagined 
 him sitting on the corner of the seat in the drawing-room, 
 where he always sat when he called. There was a moment 
 on the 27th when she had sa clear a mental image of him 
 that she found herself looking towards the seat as if he 
 were actually sitting there. The case recalls Miss Miles's 
 efforts to visualize when wanting to transmit an idea to 
 Miss Ramsden. 
 
 January 20th, 1903. 
 
 " Myers writes to say Verrall . . . Verrall saw with Myers 
 on Sunday . . . Mrs. Verrall was with Myers on Sunday 
 when he (or she) sat with Mr. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had on Sunday, January i8th, before 
 writing fixed her attention on talks with Frederic Myers 
 on certain days -in 1900. 
 
 January 25th, 1903, 6.30 p.m. 
 
 " You can tell her that Myers sat with her — when she sat 
 still in the . . . Mr. Verrall's room — with ... on her . . . 
 Mr. Verrall Dr. Verrall was with own work — say work work of 
 . . . Let us see first the Cambridge writer — on the chair lies 
 the Paper — the work is done ... no word Myers will ever 
 see ... it is too far for you to travel." 
 
 Dr. Verrall finished a paper on the afternoon of 
 January 25th, and put it when finished on a chair beside 
 him. His wife by appointment had been writing simul- 
 taneously with Mrs. Forbes, but her script contained no 
 reference to that lady. 
 
 February 2-^rd, 1903, 6 p.m. 
 
 [Planchette-writing] " Tell Mrs. Verrall to take care — to 
 go — Hove when she is visiting Brighton ALFRED. Tell
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: MRS. FORBES 79 
 
 Mrs. Verrall Myers sees with a trouble of which he cannot 
 speak — you will know — when he writes — Hove." 
 
 For some days Mrs. Verrall had been much occupied 
 with a trouble connected with the illness of the daughter 
 of a friend of hers whose Christian name was Alfred, and 
 who was living at Hove, near Brighton. Neither 
 Mrs. Forbes nor another lady, Mrs. Baltimore, who assisted 
 at the planchette-writing, knew anything of this friend. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall by arrangement sat for automatic writing 
 simultaneously with Mrs. Forbes and Mrs. Baltimore. 
 Towards 6.30 p.m. she fell asleep for a moment ; when 
 she awoke, her script went on : "It has helped them and 
 you will get a message now plain to read. Send this to 
 her." Here then the influence seems to have been 
 reciprocal — i.e., Mrs. Verrall got the veridical impression 
 that Mrs. Forbes's script contained something referring 
 to her. But of course the utterance is so vague, that it 
 may be due simply to a guess. 
 
 June 30th, 1903. 
 
 " Mrs. Verrall is trying to see with Brighton friends who 
 send the letter to be read. Myers writes with sympathy." 
 
 At the end of June, or quite early in July, at least 
 before July 3rd, Mrs. Verrall received in Switzerland news 
 from Brighton of a very serious illness of a relative. If 
 it was really not until July, Mrs. Forbes may have got 
 the impression from a presentiment or expectation in 
 Mrs. Verrall. But the reference is too indefinite for 
 attributing much importance to the case. 
 
 The supernormal knowledge about Mrs. Forbes which 
 is displayed in Mrs. Verrall's script was in many cases 
 ascribed to the former's deceased son Talbot. The first 
 veridical impression which she at all obtained about her 
 collaborator, seems connected with the following script 
 which Mrs. Forbes had written a few hours earlier with 
 Talbot as the alleged communicator. 
 
 August 28th,. igoi. 
 
 "I am looking for a sensitive who writes to tell Father to
 
 8o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 believe I can write through you . . . I have to sit with our 
 friend Edmund to control the sensitive." 
 
 It was doubtless a deep desire with Mrs. Forbes which 
 
 had here gained expression through her automatic script ; 
 
 contrary to Mrs. Verrall after the envelope failure, she 
 
 did not, however, make any conscious effort to influence 
 
 her colleague. In the evening of the same day Mrs. Verrall 
 
 wrote in Latin as follows : 
 
 " Sign with the seal. The fir-tree that has already been 
 planted in the garden gives its own portent." 
 
 [signed] 
 
 y: 
 
 The two drawings in the middle are supposed to 
 represent a sword and a suspended bugle. Now a 
 suspended bugle, surmounted by a crown, was the badge 
 of the regiment to which the deceased Talbot had belonged. 
 Besides, Mrs. Forbes had in her garden four or five small 
 fir trees grown from seed sent from abroad by him and 
 called by her Talbot's trees. Both facts were entirely 
 unknown to Mrs. Verrall. Perhaps, then, Mrs. Forbes's 
 wish that her son would manifest through another sensi- 
 tive had really left its trace in these dim perceptions of 
 things which in the mother's thoughts were connected 
 with him. 
 
 From the alleged Talbot came also the following com- 
 munication, obtained with planchette by Mrs. Verrall and 
 her daughter. 
 
 May 4th, 1902. 
 
 " My mother has had a wounded man to stay with her. 
 Will not tell you his name. Want you to tell my mother my 
 message."
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: MRS. FORBES 8i 
 
 A man who had been very bad with sciatica, and was 
 still suffering and Hmping, stayed with Mrs. Forbes from 
 May 3rd to 5th. 
 
 In the summer of 1902, Mrs. Verrall's script contained 
 veridical references to " Talbot's lihes " in Mrs. Forbes's 
 garden. An attempt, however, which Mrs. Forbes herself 
 made to impress her with the idea of the said lilies, was a 
 failure. 
 
 The next script with a possible reference to Talbot is 
 the following, written in Latin : 
 
 January gth, 1904. 
 
 " Nevertheless consolation for the same grief will concern 
 (?) neither me nor you — you ought to receive it from others : 
 after the seventh day you will be able to understand every- 
 thing." 
 
 On the seventh day, i.e., on January i6th, Mrs. Verrall 
 received a letter from Mrs. Forbes whose script had told 
 her to ask for the last week's writings. As the above was 
 the only piece which Mrs. Verrall had produced during 
 the week in question, she sent her a copy of it. In reply 
 Mrs. Forbes told her that January 6th was the anniversary 
 of her son's death and that her own script on January 5tli 
 had begun a message of consolation to her which was left 
 incomplete, and had then suggested that Mrs. Verrall had 
 some answer to send. 
 
 It seems, then, not improbable that Mrs. Verrall's 
 somewhat mysterious utterances on January 9th about 
 consolation were due to an impression about the feelings 
 of Mrs. Forbes in the preceding days. 
 
 In the following cases Mrs. Verrall's supernormal 
 knowledge about things concerning Mrs. Forbes appears 
 without connection with Talbot or others : 
 
 February 2nd, 1903. 
 
 " Harriet de Vane with another." 
 
 The two automatists had as was often the case sat 
 simultaneously by arrangement. Mrs. Forbes had in her 
 room where she was writing a pastel drawing of her great- 
 grandmother by Harriet de Vim. - 
 
 CD. G
 
 82 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 July 31st, 1903. 
 
 " The picture in the picture-frame — upon the wall — and 
 no name upon it — in her room. Ask Mrs. Forbes. She has 
 
 thought lately of the picture, and will remember Go 
 
 into the gallery at Venice " 
 
 Mrs. Forbes had lately put a tiny sketch of Venice into 
 a frame. There was no name on the sketch. The 
 picture was not hung, but was resting against the wall in 
 the drawing-room. The mention of Venice, though, may 
 be due to the knowledge of Mrs. Verrall that Mrs. Forbes 
 was going to Italy in August, and not to any perception 
 of the sketch. 
 
 October 6th, 1903. ^ 
 
 " Mrs. Forbes comes home this week She has had a 
 
 success while she was away — ask about it. Her mother will 
 want her much this winter — she will be in the south." 
 
 The statement about the success corresponded to 
 Mrs. Forbes's own feeling ; at Venice there came to her 
 an impression which explained some things unintelligible 
 hitherto. 
 
 The last statement also proved to be correct. On 
 November 30th, 1903, Mrs. Forbes told Mrs. Verrall that 
 her mother was ill. Mrs. Verrall did not mention her 
 script of October 6th. On December 2nd Mrs. Forbes 
 was called to her mother's house in the south, whence 
 she wrote to Mrs. Verrall, saying that she would have to 
 stay a long time away from home. 
 
 As regards Mrs. Verrall, the following case is of a 
 different type from the others : 
 
 October 16th, 1904, 10.30 p.m. 
 
 " Tell this. In the fire-lighted room she and the dog 
 alone, and the thought came to her as she held up the screen 
 before the fire — and the dog stirred in his sleep — he felt that 
 I was there. It was only for a moment — but the scene was 
 plain. Will this meet your point ? It is all that I can do 
 to-night." 
 
 As she finished her script, Mrs. Verrall had a mental 
 impression of Mrs. Forbes sitting in her drawing-room.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES : MRS. FORBES 83 
 
 with the door into the greenhouse open ; through that 
 door a shadowy figure, which she knew to be Talbot, 
 came and stood looking at Mrs. Forbes. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had on the same day had a letter from 
 Mrs. Forbes who told her of a script she had produced 
 on October 14th, wherein was made the suggestion that 
 her colleague should sit on Sunday, October i6th, to obtain 
 " some story scene or episode." " Tell Mrs. Verrall," it 
 continued, " we will send the scene to her . . . write 
 this message I will send the scene to Mrs. Verrall to be 
 read by you. E. G." Afterwards, on October i6th, 
 ^t 545 p.m., Mrs. Forbes wrote as follows : 
 
 " Gurney . . . write to you . . . from Cambridge G . . . 
 you will be written to for a test is being given — a very strong 
 evidence Gurney will be sure to give Mrs. Verrall a . . ." 
 
 This, though, is but a repetition of the announcement 
 in her former script, — that Gurney would give a test which 
 Mrs. Verrall would write to her about. The super- 
 normalness of the case is confined to Mrs. Verrall's per- 
 ception of the situation of Mrs. Forbes, not at 10.30 p.m. 
 when the script was produced, but earlier in the afternoon 
 when she herself was writing automatically. But 
 Mrs. Forbes's drawing-room and her usual place by the 
 fire were known to Mrs. Verrall, and her letter had sug- 
 gested that a scene would be shown to her co-operator. 
 Thus the whole might be put down to imagination with 
 no addition of clairvoyance. On the other hand, how- 
 ever, Mrs. Verrall used to associate Mrs. Forbes not with 
 her drawing-room but with her own sitting-room where 
 she did her automatic writing. Moreover, divers minor 
 circumstances agreed with her impression. Mrs. Forbes 
 and the dog were alone ; there had been two dogs con- 
 stantly with her when Mrs. Verrall last stayed at the 
 house, but only one was in the room on this occasion. 
 She was holding a piece of paper as a screen. The door 
 to the greenhouse was open, the room mainly fire-lighted ; 
 there was a small lamp but little light from it. 
 
 G2
 
 84 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Altogether, Mrs. Verrall's impressions on this occasion 
 may thus be said to be of the same type as those about 
 her own surroundings which the script of Mrs. Forbes 
 several times reflected. But more than a proof of her 
 faculty of supernormal perception the incident does not 
 contain. Her romance about Talbot in his mother's 
 drawing-room is quite another thing than that which 
 Mrs. Forbe^'s script spoke of ; there it was Gurney who 
 would send some " story scene or episode." On the 
 basis of the impulse given by this script Mrs. Verrall had 
 dreamed on in a manner which under the circumstances 
 was very natural.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION 
 
 Whether impressions like those of Mrs. Vcrrall and 
 her fellow-experimenter are due to mind-reading or to 
 direct clairvoyance is difficult to decide. It is even 
 possible that they have something to do with psychometry. 
 Mrs. Verrall constantly received letters from Mrs. Forbes 
 and vice versa ; the acquirement of knowledge super- 
 normally by means of a written document about the 
 writer, as well as by means of an object about the person 
 who makes use of it, is just what psychometric perform- 
 ances are aiming at. The different psychic phenomena 
 seem to have a tendency to merge into one another, and 
 Mrs. Verrall has in other cases been proved to possess an 
 unquestionable power to psychometrize. 
 
 A single but interesting instance hereof is found within 
 the period dealt with by Mrs. Verrall in her own report. 
 
 It belongs to those days when the question of opening 
 Myers's sealed envelope, in consequence of the statements 
 made in Mrs. Verrall's script, was discussed within the 
 Society for Psychical Research. A member of the 
 Society, Mr. Constable, heard about the proposal at the 
 council dinner on October 21st, 1904. It seemed to him 
 that not even such a test, if successful, i.e., if the envelope 
 contained the passage from the Symposium as stated in 
 the script, would be conclusive proof of Myers being the 
 source of the script. It was, he argued, not inconceivable 
 that the contents of the letter might become known to a 
 medium by clairvoyance. So he tried to devise a test to 
 distinguish between the effect on a medium of the actual 
 words written in a letter, to be read by clairvoyance, and 
 the thoughts of the writer, to be learned by mind-reading.
 
 86 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 With regard to the question here at issue it is of no 
 consequence whether Mr. Constable could achieve his 
 object by such an experiment, which is disputable. He 
 knew himself the contents of the sealed letter which 
 Mrs. Verrall, whose assistance he had asked for, was even- 
 tually to read by clairvoyance ; thus the possibility was 
 not precluded that she might learn them by reading of 
 his mind. ^Nevertheless the experiment is instructive. 
 
 Mr. Constable had had a psychic experience following 
 upon his mother's death in 1867, in which the word 
 " fuchsia " was the important point. His sealed letter 
 which, on November 9th, 1904, was sent to Mrs. Verrall, 
 contained the sign O and the word fuchsia. Contem- 
 poraneously, he wrote another letter which was retained 
 in the custody of his wife, and in which he stated that he 
 had been thinking of his mother. 
 
 On three occasions, Mrs. Verrall held Mr. Constable's 
 sealed letter in her hand while trying for automatic script. 
 Contrary to her habit, however, after the first attempt, 
 on November i8th, she had a strong impression about 
 the contents, while her script had said nothing referring 
 to them. The impression was as follows : 
 
 1. That the contents of the letter were less important than 
 the circumstances of the experiment ; 
 
 2. That the experiment was suggested to Mr. Constable 
 by some one else ; 
 
 3. That it was connected with the Myers envelope ; 
 
 4. That the envelope sent to her was one of two and the 
 less important. 
 
 All this may, on the whole, be said to be correct. 
 Although in Mr. Constable's opinion the experiment was 
 not suggested to him by any one, it was at least devised 
 as the result of conversations with other persons. The 
 envelope sent to Mrs. Verrall was one of two and the less 
 important, inasmuch as it represented the written word, 
 and not the writer's thoughts. And, above all, " the 
 contents of the letter were less important than the cir- 
 cumstances of the experiment." The connection with
 
 PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION 87 
 
 the Myers envelope may no doubt have been a conjec- 
 ture, or due to the great part it played in the thoughts of 
 the sensitive. 
 
 When Mrs. Verrall held the letter for the second time, 
 her hand wrote : 
 
 November 2^rd, 1904. 
 
 someone has written down a fM/^ ^^^^^^^ "'^^ 
 
 word for you to read — a short 
 word like what is above." 
 
 " But it was not his own idea it was an experiment suggested 
 by someone else. Another person holds the other envelope. 
 The word inside one is mere nonsense just a test, but it is 
 all connected with the real test of the sealed envelope. But 
 what is clear is this There are 2 envelopes and the less important 
 is the one you hold." 
 
 The greater portion of this script is a repetition of 
 Mrs. Verrall's impressions on November i8th, which she 
 had at once noted down in her diary. But it gives, 
 withal, the important information that the envelope 
 contained a short word and a drawing, reproducing the 
 latter with approximative correctness ; © and m are 
 rather similar. That " another person holds the other 
 envelope " is also correct, as it had been given into the 
 custody of Mrs. Constable. The word itself is not repro- 
 duced ; but ysis — usis may be due to a vague perception 
 of fuchsia. 
 
 On the third occasion when Mrs. Verrall held the 
 envelope, the script ran : 
 
 November 2^lh, 1904. 
 
 " /Ti---* the sign is there — in this envelope as in the other. 
 Why will you not look for it. Tell them that. Long have they 
 waited we do not know why — but can do no more.^ Don't 
 touch her — let her work alone, the touch confuses. In 
 
 ' These sentences have been quoted above, p. 73.
 
 88 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 sleep to-night we will try. But there is less in the con- 
 tents than in the circumstances — another's suggestion. He 
 only carries out, and all devised as a preliminary to the real 
 trial." 
 
 Here the idea of Myers's envelope is entirely inter- 
 woven with that of Mr. Constable's. But the relations 
 between them are correctly described, the experiment 
 was in fact a " preliminary to the real trial." And even 
 if the possibiHty of guessing may detract from the value 
 hereof, this cannot be said with regard to the remaining 
 details. 
 
 As a whole the experiment stands out among the rest 
 of Mrs. Verrall's performances already through the cir- 
 cumstance that when she held the letter in her hand for 
 the first time she obtained impressions in an apparently 
 normal state. While the words of her automatic script 
 come to her singly and are forgotten immediately, those 
 impressions were coherent, and she could remember and 
 reproduce them in the usual manner of psychometrists. 
 Moreover, it is noteworthy that Mrs. Verrall neither 
 directly nor through her script caught the idea of Mr. Con- 
 stable's deceased mother which constituted the second 
 part of the experiment. All her impressions were con- 
 nected with the pi€ce of paper which she held in her hand. 
 Not only the sign and the word but the circumstances 
 that had caused the production of the letter were dimly 
 perceived by her, while Mr. Constable's other thoughts 
 remained unknown to her. This, of course, is no con- 
 clusive proof against mind-reading, as Mr. Constable 
 knew all that she perceived. But that just those things 
 which concerned the letter, and nothing more, were 
 perceived, must nevertheless confirm the conception that 
 " the article " had a share in the result — and that a 
 special place must, among Mrs. Verrall's psychic faculties, 
 be assigned to psychometry. 
 
 We have now seen Mrs. Verrall's unquestionable 
 mediumistic power manifest itself as a faculty to receive
 
 PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION 89 
 
 impressions from a willing agent — Dr. Verrall — to 
 " perceive " without intentional thought-transmission 
 from anybody — in her relations with Mrs. Forbes — and 
 to psychometrize. There remains to state that her 
 script also contains evidence for her faculty of prevision. 
 
 One instance of this class has been mentioned before — 
 the prediction that Mrs. Forbes would be obliged to stay 
 with her mother in the south. In most cases it was as 
 here ordinary occurrences which were foretold. Mrs. 
 Verrall rightly prefers to speak of " anticipations " rather 
 than prophecies. To characterize their type the following 
 examples will suffice. 
 
 I begin with a script which has already been mentioned 
 in another connection. 
 
 May nth, 1901. 
 
 " Do not hurry date this hoc est quod volui — tandem 
 
 [this is what I have wanted — at last]. A. W. V. [in Greek ;] 
 
 and perhaps some one else. Calx pedibus inhaerens difftcul- 
 tatem superavit [chalk sticking to the feet has got over the 
 difficulty] [drawing of a bird].'" 
 
 As pointed out before, this script was no doubt con- 
 nected with Dr. Verrall 's experiment ; " the cocky oly 
 bird " was the often returning cock that symboHzed the 
 daw7i of his Greek quotation. But, as the script itself 
 has it, " perhaps some one else " played a part in the 
 case. 
 
 On May i6th, 1901, Mrs. Verrall saw in the West- 
 minster Gazette an account from the Daily Mail of May 13th 
 of an incident occurring in the night between May nth 
 and I2th, which recalled to her the script of May nth. 
 The writer told how a friend of his had been compelled 
 to leave his rooms on account of " uncanny happenings " ; 
 so the writer and another friend had arranged to sit 
 through the night of May nth in the empty rooms to 
 watch. Powdered chalk had been spread on the floor of 
 two of the rooms to trace anybody or anything that might 
 come or go. Several times the two friends saw doors 
 opened or closed. The last opening took place at 2.9 a.m.
 
 90 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 and at 2.30 the watchers examined the chalk and found 
 marks upon it. The marks were clearly defined bird's 
 footprints ; they might be compared to the footprints of 
 a bird about the size of a turkey. 
 
 It would be difficult to deny a connection between this 
 event, or the account of it, and the statement in Mrs. 
 Verrall's script about the sticking of chalk to the feet, 
 followed by t,he drawing of a bird with a jeer. But the 
 script was produced at 11. 10 p.m. on May nth ; the 
 statement therefore anticipated the event by some three 
 hours, and its publication by a still longer period. The 
 chalk may have been spread before 11. 10, but the 
 watchers had no expectation -as to the sort of marks 
 they might find in it. 
 
 As Mrs. Verrall remarks, the question of a connection 
 between the story and the script is not affected by the 
 value of the story. Whether or not a bird made marks 
 in the chalk in the early hours of May 12th, it is certain 
 that a story to that effect was printed on May 13th. 
 
 The parallel with another incident makes it more than 
 probable that it was the newspaper story, and not the 
 event, that was anticipated in Mrs. Verrall's script of 
 May nth, 1901. During a sojourn in Switzerland she 
 wrote as follows :" 
 
 June 2yth, 1902. 
 
 " Veni Creator were the words exultans cantavit apud 
 spiritus sanctos inter filios Dei [he (or she) triumphantly sang 
 at the place of the holy spirits among the sons of God]." 
 
 On July 4th she read in the Giornale d' Italia of July 2nd 
 that at Coursegoules, in the department of Alpes-Mari- 
 times, the Sisters of the Holy Spirit had been expelled, 
 and had left the convent singing the Veni Creator. Thus 
 it seemed to have been to this expulsion that the script 
 had referred. But when inquiries were made, Mrs. Verrall 
 learned that there was certainly a convent of the Sisters 
 of the Holy Spirit in the department of Alpes-Maritimes 
 (though at Juan les Pins and not at Coursegoules), and 
 that on June 29th, 1902, in conformity with the edict of
 
 PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION 91 
 
 June 27th, the Sisters and orphans had left the Orphelinat 
 for the Oratory, but that at no moment did the Sisters 
 sing the Vcni Creator. In this case, therefore, it was 
 clear that Mrs. Verrall's script had anticipated the fiction 
 of a journalist, and not the event itself. 
 
 As an example of a very insignificant sort of prevision 
 the following may be cited : 
 
 September 4th, igoi. 
 
 " Madment Maidment 
 
 September yth, igoi. 
 
 " M AI M E N T I S W I T H I N. on the right-hand side 
 as you look — the window is behind, so it is not very plain to 
 read. But he knows it." 
 
 From September 26th till October 2nd, 1901, Mrs. Verrall 
 stayed with friends at Winchester. On September 30th 
 she went with her hostess to a shop and noticed the name 
 Maidment on a paper bag hanging up inside the shop on 
 the right-hand wall. The shop-window was, of course, 
 behind her when she was within the shop, but the name 
 was quite plain to read. But the script is as usual vague 
 and groping, and at the same time hinting at a greater 
 knowledge somewhere (" he knows it "). 
 
 Doubtless the most remarkable among Mrs. Verrall's 
 anticipations were the following two : 
 
 December nth, igoi. 
 
 " Nothing too mean the trivial helps, gives confidence. 
 Hence this. Frost and a candle in the dim light Marmontel 
 he was reading on a sofa or in bed — there was only a candle's 
 light. She will surely remember this. The book was lent 
 not his own — he talked about it. 
 
 December ijih, igoi. 
 
 " I wanted to write Marmontel is right. It was a French 
 book, a Memoir I think. Passy may help. Souvenirs de 
 Passy or Fleury. Marmontel was not on the cover — the book 
 was bound and was lent — two volumes in old-fashioned 
 binding and print. It is not in any papers — it is an attempt 
 to make someone remember — an incident." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall did not know the French author Marmon- 
 tel ; but -she had probably without noticing seen his 
 name in a list of books which she had glanced at before
 
 92 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 December nth, and where she afterwards found it. On 
 March ist, 1902, she had a visit from a friend, Mr. Marsh, 
 who mentioned that he had lately been reading Mar- 
 montel's Memoirs. Mrs. Verrall asked for particulars 
 about his reading, at the same time explaining her 
 reasons for the question. He then told her that he got 
 the work from the London Library, and took the first of 
 its three volumes to Paris with him ; there he read it on 
 the evenings of February 20th and 21st, 1902. On each 
 occasion he read by the hght of a candle. On the 20th 
 he was in bed, on the 21st lying on two chairs. The 
 weather was cold, but there was no frost. The book was 
 bound, and not in modern binding, but the name Mar- 
 montel was on the back of the volume. As to " Passy " 
 and " Fleury," he added in a letter of March 4th that on 
 February 21st, while lying on two chairs, he read a chapter 
 describing the finding at Passy of a panel, etc., con- 
 nected with a story in which Fleury played an important 
 part. 
 
 On comparing the divers particulars, true and false, 
 in Mrs. Verrall's script with the actual facts, one gets the 
 impression that she has clairvoyantly caught a ghmpse of 
 the scene which as yet belonged to the future — a winter 
 day and some one" on something that resembled a sofa, 
 reading by candle-light in a book whose binding was old- 
 fashioned, and at the same time suggestive of a public 
 hbrary, and wherein the passage about Passy and Fleury 
 was visible. " He talked about it," on the other hand, 
 seems to anticipate that which took place in March, 
 Mr. Marsh's mention of his reading to herself. And the 
 whole of the prevision has in the usual way been put into 
 the mouth of the alleged communicator to serve as a 
 test. 
 
 The second remarkable prevision is the following : 
 
 April 2nd, 1903. 
 
 " Now draw on five stone steps a cross [drawing] and on the 
 cross hangs a wreath, a fresh green wreath. They have come 
 to see it there — out in the open on the hill side in the sound of
 
 PSYCHOMETRY AND PREVISION 93 
 
 the sea. It is not a personal thing — but know («). This is 
 for evidence. There is an inscription fastened to the wreath. 
 In honour Jl » ^^ • ^^ ^^P^^ t^"^ ^^^^ banks of] Douern 
 I think it qJh^/\^ is for an old heroic deed. Grey sky 
 and sea and u ^ the grey gulls cry in the wind. 
 
 February 24th, 1905.^ 
 
 " Wait now for this news. There is a grey stone cross on 
 the hill side close by the spot — a cross on stone steps. Volti- 
 gern no VoUernius ager is more like. Voltern's Field. Some 
 one could tell you of the cross. 
 
 March lyih, 1906. 
 
 " Stone I want to say. Stone a white stone and no inscrip- 
 tion but you would recognize if you saw. Can you not find 
 
 the cross on its five steps and the green wreath ? On 
 
 the banks of the stream — the Derwent water, not a lake — 
 wait and see yourself what I mean." 
 
 About a fortnight after the production of the last script, 
 on April 4th, Mrs. Verrall went on a visit to Miss Curtois, 
 in Westminster, a lady whose acquaintance she had made 
 in the preceding autumn. In her room she saw, hanging 
 on the wall, a photograph of a cross on stone steps which 
 reminded her of the cross described in her script. Asked 
 about it Miss Curtois gave her the following information. 
 
 In the churchyard of Washingborough, a village near 
 Lincoln, on the river Witham, was an old pedestal of five 
 stone steps. On this pedestal a modern cross was erected 
 in memory of Miss Curtois's mother, Ann Henrietta 
 Curtois, and dedicated on July 5th, 1903. There was no 
 inscription on the cross. A green wreath was once placed 
 on it, most probably at Christmas, 1903, but as it was 
 feared that it might injure the cross, the experiment was 
 not repeated. Miss Curtois did not know whether any 
 inscription was attached to the wreath. The village Hes 
 on a little hill near the top of which stands the cross. 
 Miss Curtois said that she had seen the country beneath 
 it flooded and dotted with seagulls, but the sea is some 
 thirty miles away. 
 
 * In order to complete this incident Mrs. Verrall has made an excep- 
 tion and passed beyond the period (1901 — 1904) on which she reports.
 
 94 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's script of April 2nd, 1903, to which the 
 two following add nothing of importance, thus seems to 
 have anticipated an event which had not yet occurred. 
 As in the Marmontel case, the prevision seems to describe 
 a definite situation, viz., the moment when they had 
 " come to see it {i.e., the cross with the wreath) there out 
 in the open on the hill side." Miss Curtois said that 
 there had been a great deal of discussion about the wreath. 
 As the cross was not dedicated until July 5th, 1903, the 
 scene which Mrs. Verrall perceived cannot at any rate 
 have taken place before this date. The supposition that 
 it took place at Christmas is supported by the description 
 of the winter landscape. 
 
 The remark in the script of February 24th, 1905, 
 " some one could tell you of the cross," makes an interest- 
 ing parallel to the one in the Marmontel case, " he talked 
 about it." Both contain the special prophecy that 
 Mrs. Verrall will meet some one who will elucidate the 
 incomprehensible things which her hand in both cases 
 had produced. Noteworthy is also the remark in the 
 Marmontel script of December 17th, 1901, " it is not in 
 any papers " ; it was in the newspapers that the explana- 
 tion of the script with " the cocky oly bird " had been 
 found. It seems as if Mrs. Verrall subconsciously knew 
 that she must meet somewhere in her real life that which 
 as yet only dawns in that part of her self that speaks in 
 her script. 
 
 One is reminded of Myers's words about the possibility 
 that the wider self with equal directness and immediacy 
 discerns every element of the phenomenon which we call 
 Life, and at times calls to the narrower, waking self.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES WITH MRS. PIPER 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's report contains one thing more of some 
 interest, namely the so-called cross-correspondences with 
 Mrs. Piper. Cross-correspondences with this renowned 
 medium got to play a large part later on in the experiments 
 of the Society for Psychical Research ; it may therefore 
 be useful to inquire into their character at that time. It 
 was at a period when Dr. Richard Hodgson had the charge 
 of the sittings with Mrs. Piper in Boston, and in the few, 
 hardly more than two, cases where a connection seems to 
 exist between these sittings and Mrs. Verrall's script, the 
 plan of the " correspondence " was proposed by him. In 
 the first case it was suggested to him through an un- 
 verified assertion by Mrs. Piper's " control " that a vision 
 of a figure had been seen by Mrs. Verrall's daughter 
 Helen. This led to the following conversation at a 
 Piper-sitting : 
 
 January 28th, 1902. 
 
 " Dr. Hodgson. Can you try and make Helen see you 
 holding a spear in your hand ? 
 
 " Control. Why a sphere ? 
 
 " Dr. Hodgson. A spear." 
 
 The control promised to try, and at the next sitting, on 
 February 4th, claimed to have succeeded in making him- 
 self visible to Helen Verrall with a " sphear " [sic]. 
 
 Miss Verrall had no such vision , Mrs. VerraU, however, 
 three days after the seance in Boston, having lunched 
 with Mr. Piddington in London, felt suddenly so strong 
 a desire to write automatically that she made an excuse 
 for not accompanying him and Sir Oliver Lodge to the
 
 96 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 S.P.R. council meeting as had been arranged. After 
 their departure she wrote as follows : 
 
 January 315^, 1902. 
 
 Panopticon cr^aipSs aTirdXAet crvvSeyfxa jxvcTTiKov, TL ovK eSt'Scos ; 
 volatile ferrum — pro telo impinget [Universal seeing of a 
 sphere fosters the mystic joint-reception. Why did you not 
 give it? the flying iron — used as a weapon will hit]. " 
 
 She was interrupted by Mr. Piddington returning to 
 fetch her. But in the train on the way home to Cam- 
 bridge more script was produced. That script, however, 
 contained no verifiable statement, but was signed with 
 two crosses, one of them being the Greek cross used by 
 " Rector," one of Mrs. Piper's^chief controls. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall contends that there is strong reason for 
 thinking that her script of January 31st was in some way 
 affected by the experiment proposed in Boston. Probably 
 she is right ; but the question remains, in what manner ? 
 Mrs. Piper's control claimed to have made himself visible 
 to Miss Helen Verrall, and did not seem to know anything 
 about her mother's script. Besides, the character of the 
 latter speaks decidedly against interpreting it as the 
 result of intentional transmission. The commingling of 
 " sphere " and " spear " is more indicative of a vague 
 impression like those which, for instance. Miss Ramsden 
 got from Miss Miles without any intention on the part of 
 the latter. It is conceivable that it originated from 
 Dr. Hodgson, or rather from the " conversation " between 
 him and the control. In view of the interchanging of 
 letters between Dr. Hodgson and Mrs. Verrall, this would 
 hardly be more singular than Miss Ramsden obtaining 
 impressions of conversations between Miss Miles and her 
 friends. That the notion of " Rector " emerged with the 
 rest can only strengthen the supposition of such a con- 
 nection.^ 
 
 In April, 1902, Dr. Hodgson proposed an experiment 
 
 1 Dr. Joseph Maxwell {Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXVI., p. 60) points 
 out that " panopticon a-(paipas " occurs already in Mrs. Verrall's script 
 from March, 1901. That the expression had been used before might no 
 doubt facilitate its appearance.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES : MRS. PIPER 97 
 
 with Mrs. Verrall as agent ; she should look at a noticeable 
 group of flowers and try to get them mentioned to him 
 in Mrs. Piper's trance. This, however, led to nothing 
 except some allusions to flowers in Mrs. Verrall's own 
 script. 
 
 The next case is more like a real cross-correspondence. 
 On March loth, 1903, Dr. Hodgson gave to the entranced 
 Mrs. Piper what is described as " a pass- word for repro- 
 duction by other automatists " ; the intention being that 
 her controls should reproduce it in, for instance, Mrs. 
 Verrall's script. It was not a real word, but, as Mrs. 
 Verrall learned later, an arbitrary collection of letters, 
 stahdelta. Mrs. Verrall knew nothing about the experi- 
 ment, but thinks that the following scripts contain 
 attempts to produce the word : 
 
 March i^th, 1903, 
 
 " S is the first to be recognized but there are others. Write 
 
 yourself now Camilla inest [is in it] Cameloi or 
 
 Cameleon — Camus no there is an ilia or ella somewhere 
 
 But Hodgson would understand much that you write — he must 
 see it 
 
 March lyth, 1903. 
 
 " The word is Caldiona more like that. Capella Aurigae 
 seems much nearer. Find what constellation is marked with 
 y Ask Hodgson too — 
 
 April lyth, 1903. 
 
 " Orotava or something like that is the pass- word Life is 
 more like the word on the seal." 
 
 In the latter script it is plainly said that Orotava or 
 something like that is the pass-word. It seems, in fact^ 
 as the automatist herself believed afterwards, that this 
 evident seeking for a definite word is connected with the 
 stahdelta experiment in Boston. At the time, however, 
 Mrs. Verrall took it to refer to a Myers envelope, and was, 
 as we have seen, led to believe that such a one had been 
 committed to the charge of Dr. Hodgson. Under these 
 circumstances she produced the following scripts : 
 
 August 18th, 1903. 
 
 " The box Hodgson expects a message about it before 
 
 he will open it — you have sent part of the word to him but 
 
 CD. H
 
 98 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 not all. The word you should send is the name of a ship — 
 
 Orinaria Orellaria, like that. It ends in — ia. Oriana no 
 
 Oronia Auronia no Orona. 
 September gth, 1903. 
 
 " Coronaria Campanile — Coronella no but why the star ? 
 Auriga Capellae has the letters of it but is too long — and it 
 should be one word not two. Auricapella auricolorata 
 
 Oriflamma auricomata goldhaired Oritella Coronata 
 
 Ariadne's crown in the sky 
 
 September lyth, 1903. 
 
 " You have the key word now Hodgson will act, but 
 
 will not tell you till it is done." 
 
 These scripts did not, in the opinion of Mrs. Verrall, 
 refer to the pass-word experiment. It seems, though, 
 that Orellaria, Coronella, Oritella, are quite as good 
 approaches to " Stabdelta " as Camilla, Orotava, etc., in 
 the writings from the preceding spring. " Auriga 
 Capellae " appears both in March and September, and the 
 connection with Dr. Hodgson is indisputable in both 
 series. 
 
 But the problem is not solved even if it be admitted 
 that Mrs. Verrall for a long time worked persistently at 
 reproducing the word which Dr. Hodgson and the control 
 of Mrs. Piper had agreed to send her. The case differs 
 very much from that of " sphere." There at any rate 
 she was only pefceiving something which nobody had 
 wanted to transmit ; what she obtained was a vague and 
 dim impression, but it came out without any hesitation 
 in that manner which we have throughout found to be 
 typical of spontaneous perception. Just on the contrary, 
 the attempts at stabdelta exhibit all those criterions that 
 characterized Dr. Verrall's experiment with the one-horse 
 dawn. It was just as difficult, nay impossible, for 
 Mrs. Verrall to write stabdelta as it had been to reproduce 
 the Greek phrase. But she tried and struggled, reverting 
 again and again to the attempt ; it was as if a foreign 
 will had got hold of her and would not let go. As regards 
 the Greek words, we know that such was really the case. 
 But here the parallel with the pass-word fails ; Dr. Hodg- 
 son was not a " wiUing agent." He knew the word, but
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES: MRS. PIPER 99 
 
 he did not try to impress Mrs. Verrall to write it. The 
 assertion that he, nevertheless, was the transmittor cannot 
 be advanced with any show of reason. 
 
 For completeness' sake two more incidents that touch 
 upon Dr. Hodgson ought to be mentioned. As just said, 
 Mrs. Verrall did not connect the above scripts from the 
 autumn of 1903 with the stahdelta experiment. All the 
 same, she took them to refer to Dr. Hodgson, and thought 
 that the following script was a continuation of them : 
 
 October $th, 1903. 
 
 " Ariadne Stella coronaria hoc est omen et nomen — mitte 
 [Ariadne a crowned star this is the omen and the name — 
 send it]. Seven stars in the crown and Berenice's hair too 
 
 flava comam [yellow-haired] lilia Olympiaca non Romana 
 
 [Olympian lilies not Roman] " 
 
 To obey the instruction, Mrs. Verrall sent the script to 
 Dr. Hodgson. He replied that the phrase about " Olym- 
 pian lilies not Roman " had reminded him of the name 
 syringa, but that he could trace no connection. Syringa 
 blossoms, he added, had a special significance for him. 
 He had looked up syringa in a dictionary and found that 
 its Latin name is Philadelphus coronarius. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall who, as must be borne in mind, did not 
 connect the later attempts at producing a word with the 
 stahdelta experiment of which she had now been told, got 
 the idea on reading Dr. Hodgson's letter that Oritella 
 coronata perhaps represented attempts at the name 
 Philadelphus coronarius. Moreover, it occurred to her 
 that the introduction of Berenice was accounted for if 
 what was wanted was not only coronarius but Philadelphus 
 — because of the relationship of Berenice to Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus. 
 
 The idea of course falls to the ground when Oritella, etc., 
 are seen to be attempts at stahdelta. As to " Berenice's 
 hair," that is the name of a constellation, it was probably 
 suggested by the mention of " Ariadne's crown," which 
 again was due, perhaps, to Auriga Capellae in the script 
 of September 9th that contains both. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 This incident, then, cannot be used as evidence of a 
 supernormal connection between Dr. Hodgson and 
 Mrs. Verrall's automatic writing. At a later time her 
 script contained a reference to " Hodgson's constellation," 
 after which came the following : 
 
 July 3rd, 1904. 
 
 " That star is visible in winter nights Auriga Capellae : it 
 was one wintfer night that the star and the resolve flashed out 
 together, & the shape of his life was thus determined, 
 though not carried out for four more years." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall says that " Hodgson's constellation " and 
 " Auriga Capellae " with the subsequent statement about 
 " four more years " were intelligible to Dr. Hodgson, 
 though meaningless to her. This might go to show that 
 she was capable of obtaining impressions about him. 
 But the account is incomplete, and, moreover, the possi- 
 bility of latent memory — of her having sometime without 
 remembering heard of the event to which the script is 
 presumed to refer — is too great to enable us to build 
 anything on an isolated incident like this. At any rate 
 it would be impossible from this case to draw a conclusion 
 to that of stabdelta, which is of quite another type. The 
 latter must be left standing as the sole incident that has 
 not been fully elucidated by a comparison with those 
 phenomena which do not pretend to be due to the inter- 
 vention of the dead.
 
 SECTION III 
 The Automatic Writing of Mrs. Holland 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 spontaneous writing 
 
 In the years following the period on which Mrs. Verrall 
 reports, her script presents a new interest on account of 
 its relation to another automatic writer whose faculties 
 in many respects resemble her own. This was a lady who 
 was introduced to the pubhc by the pseudonym of 
 Mrs. Holland, and whose productions are the subject of a 
 series of reports by the secretary of the Society for 
 Psychical Research, Miss Ahce Johnson, together with 
 those writings of Mrs. Verrall's which seem to be in some 
 way connected with them.^ 
 
 The mediumism of Mrs. Holland is doubtless more 
 spontaneous and perhaps more extensive than that of 
 Mrs. Verrall. The disparity between them forms an 
 obvious parallel to that between Miss Miles and Miss 
 Ramsden. In the year 1893, Mrs. Holland in the Review 
 of Reviews, saw a reference to automatic writing, and when 
 she afterwards tried it herself, her hand began to form 
 words almost immediately. Also, she is able to see 
 pictures in a crystal. Moreover " she does see, hear, feel 
 or otherwise become conscious of beings and influences 
 that are not patent to all." The same was the case with 
 Miss Miles, but not with Miss Ramsden. Of her visions, 
 Mrs. Holland, referring to one of them, says, " By seeing 
 
 » Proceedings S.P.R.. Vol. XXL, pp. 166—391 ; VoL XXIV., 
 pp. 2 — 10 and 201 — 263 ; and VoL XXV., pp. 218 — 303.
 
 102 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 I do not mean standing in the room ; I saw it ' at 
 
 the back of the brain ' in the way that clairvoyant sights 
 come to me." 
 
 When Mrs. Holland writes automatically, she is always 
 fully conscious, but her hand moves so rapidly that she 
 seldom knows what words it is forming. She is, however, 
 immediately after their production more conscious of 
 them than ]\Irs. Verrall is of her script. She sometimes 
 asks questions of the writing power which she puts down 
 with full consciousness among the automatically written 
 sentences. It happens too that instead of writing auto- 
 matically she notes down impressions that come to her 
 when she is trying for automatic script. 
 
 Later she displayed during her writing a tendency to 
 become unconscious that even threatened to develop into 
 trance. In November, 1904, she spoke in the presence of 
 a friend in a trance condition for about a quarter of an 
 hour. She succeeded, however, in conquering this ten- 
 dency, which made her very uncomfortable. She had 
 never been present at seances or had to do at all with 
 spirituaHsm. Neither had she any first-hand knowledge 
 of psychical research nor of the publications of the 
 Society. As mentioned above, she had only read in 
 the Review of Reviews about automatic writing. Besides, 
 she had read some collections of ghost stories, and a 
 manuscript book of " spirit-writings " which she had 
 disliked very much. 
 
 Mrs. Holland was very familiar with English poetry, 
 and wrote verse herself. During a long period her script 
 was almost exclusively in verse. Contrary to her original 
 compositions they came with great rapidity as if swiftly 
 dictated, and there were never any erasures. In return 
 they were, as she says herself, " often childishly simple in 
 wording and jingling in rhyme." 
 
 Generally the verses did not deal with facts. As an 
 exception is mentioned a case where a clairvoyant per- 
 ception seems to have called forth the script. In Italy, 
 in the year 1901, the day after her arrival in an old palazzo
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 103 
 
 she had never before seen, the impulse to write came on 
 her, and she wrote as follows : 
 
 " Under the orange tree 
 Who is it lies ? 
 Baby hair that is flaxen fair, 
 Shines when the dew on the grass is wet. 
 Under the iris and violet. 
 'Neath the orange tree 
 Where the dead leaves be. 
 Look at the dead child's eyes ! " 
 
 On reading it to a friend she was told that there was a 
 tradition that a child was buried in the garden of the 
 palace. 
 
 Later she experienced a new form of automatic writing. 
 On several occasions her hand insisted on writing a letter 
 or message from some dead person whom she did not 
 know, to some one among her acquaintance. It was 
 clearly impressed upon her for whom the letter was 
 intended, and she felt compelled to send it. It was 
 always to a person with whom she had recently become 
 acquainted. 
 
 In 1903, Mrs. Holland, who was then living in India, 
 read Frederic Myers's recently published work. Human 
 Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death. This book 
 became for her what the author's death had been for 
 Mrs. Verrall, the commencement of a new era in her life. 
 She was greatly interested in it and, on July 2nd, wrote 
 to Miss Johnson, whom she did not know personally, and 
 told her of her own experiences. Miss Johnson answered 
 her letter, and the correspondence was continued during 
 the following winter. By agreement Mrs. Holland was 
 kept 'gnorant of the secretary's opinion about her script ; 
 on the whole the latter was careful not to mention any- 
 thing that might detract from the evidential value of the 
 productions. Mrs. Holland met her for the first time 
 during a sojourn in England about two years later. 
 
 But it was not only the acquaintance with Miss Johnson, 
 and the latter's interest in her automatic writing, which
 
 104 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 became for Mrs. Holland the important consequence of 
 her reading of Human Personality. In her script itself 
 it left its mark in a most conspicuous manner. Hence- 
 forward it was Myers who spoke through it, with Edmund 
 Gurney to assist him as he had assisted him in their mutual 
 youth when both were full of enthusiasm for psychical 
 research. Also Mrs. Holland had got to know the third 
 confederate, Henry Sidgwick, by means of Human Per- 
 sonality, besides many of Myers's friends who were stiU 
 hving. What the book might teach her about Myers 
 himself, of his personaHty as well as of his opinions, every 
 reader of it will know. 
 
 Here, then, was plenty of material for the subconscious 
 imagination to work upon. Neither does the editor of 
 the script ignore this circumstance. Miss Johnson 
 writes : " Her first reading of Human Personality formed 
 an epoch in Mrs. Holland's life, and thenceforth her auto- 
 matic writing was coloured largely by the influence of 
 that book. The personality of the author strongly 
 appealed to her — it was not only natural but almost 
 inevitable that a great part of her writing should now 
 purport to be inspired by him, or — to a less extent — by 
 the two friends to whom his book is dedicated, Mr. Gurney 
 and Dr. Sidgwick.'- Later on she adds : "I am bound 
 to emphasize the large part played by Mrs. Holland's 
 normal knowledge in the construction of the various roles. 
 They came into existence first shortly after she had read 
 Human Personality, and it will be seen that passages from 
 this book are clearly to be traced in the script ; there is 
 little or nothing in the characterizations that could not 
 be derived from it directly or by inference by an intelli- 
 gent and sympathetic reader. There are, moreover, a 
 certain number of features that an intimate friend of 
 Mr. Myers's would see to be uncharacteristic or positively 
 incorrect. Further, the personahties become suddenly 
 more vivid and reahstic at a later date, after Mrs. Holland 
 had seen the portraits of Mr. Myers, Mr. Gurney and 
 Dr. Sidgwick."
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 105 
 
 We are then in the presence of a phenomenon which 
 seems to have the same origin as much of Mrs. Verrall's 
 script. A more or less conscious desire to come into 
 communication with Frederic Myers was the foundation of 
 the productions of both automatists — those of Mrs. Verrall 
 who had lost a friend, and those of Mrs. Holland who too 
 late, through his posthumous work, had made the acquain- 
 tance of a congenial personality. Also in details, their 
 scripts display a psychological resemblance. Mrs. Holland, 
 as well as Mrs. Verrall, had a great dread of being 
 imposed upon by her own self. Mrs. Verrall had hesitated 
 in putting the names of Myers and other alleged communi- 
 cators under the script. Mrs. Holland had a similar 
 struggle with the " invisible writer." The result of it 
 was in her case the most singular arrangements, numbers 
 instead of letters, dates made unrecognizable by being 
 scattered throughout the script, and names that could 
 only be read by substituting the preceding letters of the 
 alphabet for the written ones. She had as a child played 
 at a secret language made by using either the letter before 
 or the letter after the real one. One is reminded of 
 Professor Flournoy's Helen Smith and the Martian 
 language. 
 
 When the script of Mrs. Verrall made one part of her 
 personahty call itself " I " and address the other part as 
 " you," and made the "I" be knowing and somewhat 
 impatient with the other's want of comprehension, it was 
 implied, even when not expressly stated, that " I " was 
 a deceased person. With Mrs. Holland it is as a rule 
 distinctly indicated who the writer is ; Myers is gentle, 
 Gurney exacting and impatient ; the handwriting is 
 different ; one will only use a pen, the other a pencil, 
 etc. Often the automatist asks questions of them in her 
 own name and with full consciousness. But in spite of 
 all this it is, as with Mrs. Verrall, evident that she holds, 
 in fact, a conversation with herself. A great portion of 
 the script consists in admonitions to write more often 
 and regularly and not to dread that it is herself who
 
 io6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 produces the script, regret that she is alone with her 
 interest, advice with regard to the writing, and the Uke. 
 " It is such a pity to break the chain— Since you were out 
 in the morning yesterday why didn't you try in the after- 
 noon — a few minutes each day are not much to ask from 
 you." "Do try to forget your abiding fear of being made 
 
 a fool or a dupe It's a form of restless vanity to 
 
 fear that your hand is imposing upon itself as it were— 
 Leave youtself out of the matter." " I fear you will 
 never be really responsive trying alone." " The agent 
 [sic] is all alone and that makes it hard." " Try not to 
 wish too much for any particular topic— or you are more 
 likely to deceive yourself by supplying phrases from the 
 subhminal self." The subject is varied often and in many 
 ways ; it is evident that Mrs. Holland vacillates between 
 doubt and behef . 
 
 In the light hereof the lamentations must also be seen 
 which the script puts into the mouth of Myers of being 
 unable to reach his friends in England. " I cannot reach 
 them." " I cannot get into communication with those 
 who would understand and beheve me." " Surely you 
 sent them what I strove so to transmit." ^ Mrs. Holland's 
 fear that the script was not what it pretended to be made 
 her hesitate in sending it to Miss Johnson, These exhor- 
 tations from " Myers " thus seem to be the means found 
 by the automatic self to conquer her unwilHngness. 
 
 Miss Johnson, as said before, did not let the automatist 
 knov/ anything about her valuation of the script. It will 
 be seen later that in spite of her clear perception of the 
 influence due to the reading of Human Personality she 
 arrived at the conclusion that this could not explain 
 everything. The subconscious imagination of Mrs. 
 Holland was considerable, and her latent memory so 
 extensive that in all cases where there is the barest 
 
 1 It is clear that utterances like these do not agree with the belief in 
 Myers's communications through Mrs. Verrall. As there is, however, 
 no ground to accept the latter as genuine, the contradiction cannot 
 speak against the genuineness of his communications through Mrs. 
 Holland. They must stand or fall alone.
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 107 
 
 possibility for an appeal to cryptomnesia it is necessary 
 to make it ; but interspersed in her productions things 
 occurred which could neither be ascribed to one nor to 
 the other of these quahties. From whence they came, 
 and how far they can justify the assumption that Myers 
 or other discarnate communicated by means of her hand, 
 are questions which an investigation of the most impor- 
 tant among her writings will decide. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The first script of Mrs. Holland's ascribed to Myers was 
 
 the following : 
 
 September 16th, 1903. 
 "F. 
 
 " Friend while on earth with knowledge slight 
 I had the hving power to write 
 Death tutored now in things of might 
 I yearn to you and cannot write. 
 
 17 I 
 " It may be that those who die suddenly suffer no prolonged 
 obscuration of consciousness but for my own experience the 
 unconsciousness was exceedingly prolonged. 
 
 I I 
 
 " The reality is infinitely more wonderful than our most 
 daring conjectures. Indeed no conjecture can be sufficiently 
 daring. 
 
 I 01 
 
 " But this is Hke the first stumbling attempts at expression 
 in an unknown language imperfectly explained so far away 
 so very far away and yet longing and understanding poten- 
 tialities of nearness. 
 
 "M." 
 
 One of the traits that characterize Mrs. Holland's 
 script — that it, as it were, wants to mystify herself — is 
 displayed here. The two initials of course stand for 
 Frederic Myers, and the numbers when put together 
 make " January 17th, 1901," which was the day of his 
 death, as stated in Human Personality. For the rest, in 
 this script the tone is already struck which for Mrs. 
 Holland gave her productions, so to speak, their raison 
 d'etre, — Myers's desire to communicate with the living. 
 But although he is represented as saying, " I yearn to
 
 io8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 you and cannot write," and speaking of " stumbling 
 attempts," the script is in fact exactly so fluent as auto- 
 matic compositions generally are when undisturbed by 
 any outside influence. 
 
 Later in the same day Mrs. HoUand wrote another 
 piece of script which like her earlier productions was 
 entirely in verse. 
 
 September i6th, 1903. 
 
 ^ " 1888 F. E. HS. [in monogram] 
 
 " Believe in what thou canst not see 
 
 Until the vision come to thee 
 
 There were three workers once upon the earth 
 Three that have passed through Death's great second 
 
 birth 
 Their work remains and some of lasting worth 
 Long dead and lately dead shall be as one. 
 " 1888. 1888." 
 
 It is the idea that had impressed Mrs. Holland so 
 strongly, of the three friends, now all dead, and their 
 work, which has here gained expression. " F." is Myers, 
 " E." Gurney, and " H.S." Professor Henry Sidgwick, 
 that is, the author of Human Personality and the two 
 men to whom it is dedicated. The early death of Gurney 
 seems to have made a special impression upon her ; it 
 took place in the year 1888 as intimated in the script — 
 and stated in the" book. 
 
 In a following script she reverts to the same idea : 
 
 September 18th, 1903. 
 
 "1873. 30 years ago. Cmrde. A big. Youth. 
 
 " It has been a long work — but the work is not nearly over 
 yet — It has barely begun — Go on with it — go on — We were the 
 torch bearers — follow after us — The flame burns more steadily 
 now — 
 
 " E. G. 1888." 
 
 The mysterious letters "Cmrde Abig" are an 
 anagram for Cambridge. On one of the first pages of 
 
 Human Personality is the passage : "In about 1873 
 
 it became the conviction of a small group of Cambridge 
 friends that the deep questions thus at issue must be 
 fought out ."
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 109 
 
 So far everything must be explained as owing to the 
 reading of Myers's book. But very soon things appear 
 which cannot be so explained. By the handwriting 
 which is ascribed to Myers, Mrs. Holland writes as 
 follows : 
 
 September 21st, 1903. 
 
 " A room that is rather narrow for its length with three 
 windows and a long narrow table covered with a dull red 
 cloth rather faded. 
 
 " The walls need repapering. The ceiling needs white- 
 washing. There is a portrait over the fire-place of a man with 
 a high forehead — the background of it is very dark — A bust 
 on a pedestal stands in a very shadowed corner — The head is 
 not clear — round the shoulders is a kind of bath towel like 
 drapery. The pedestal is imitation greenish marble — 
 
 " There are a few good prints in the room — but it is not easy 
 to see them — 
 
 " Shelves on one side have a few books and a great many 
 papers and pamphlets on them — The room is not in the least 
 interesting in itself but very interesting things have happened 
 there and some men now dead still influence that room very 
 strongly — " 
 
 Mrs. Verrall, on reading this script more than two 
 years later, pointed out to Miss Johnson that the descrip- 
 tion applied closely to her dining-room ; only the portrait, 
 which represented Dr. Verrall, was beside the fire-place 
 and not over it, and there was no bust in the room. In 
 a dark corner, however, stood a large filter ; a friend of 
 Mrs. Verrall's, on being told of the description, exclaimed : 
 " But there is a bust in your dining-room " ; Mrs. Verrall 
 took him into the room and found that what he had taken 
 for a bust was really this filter. 
 
 Mrs. Holland thus seems to have had a clairvoyant 
 perception of a room that she had never seen, and of which 
 it was impossible that she could have read or heard. 
 Here at any rate we find a supernormal element in her 
 script. And it was not the sole case where, while still in 
 India, she saw a picture of something that existed far 
 away in England. 
 
 A few weeks later appeared the following which, after
 
 no COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 the fashion of her earlier productions, was formed as a 
 letter : 
 
 November 'jth, 1903. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Verrall 
 
 " I am very anxious to speak to some of the old 
 friends — Miss J. — and to A. W. 
 
 " There is so much to say and yet so very little chance of 
 saying it. Communication is tremendously difficult. The 
 brain of the agent though indispensable is so hampering I 
 think it might be better if the agent wrote the thoughts in her 
 brain instead of keeping a vacant brain and a passive hand — " 
 
 It is difficult to imagine another than Mrs. Holland 
 herself being the origin of this letter, which is interrupted 
 because she prefers to write down impressions in her own 
 name. Moreover, she has committed the mistake to 
 speak of herself as the agent ; no doubt she conceives her 
 writing as an action ; in Myers's language she would of 
 course have been called the percipient. 
 
 The remarkable point is, that the letter is addressed to 
 Mrs. Verrall, and that it refers to " A. W.," the use of 
 these initials being characteristic for the friends of 
 Dr. Verrall. Mrs. Holland, however, knew of Mrs. Verrall 
 from Human Personality, where she is mentioned as 
 " Mrs. A. W. Verrall, a lecturer at Newnham College " ; 
 thus it is probable that she has from thence got the idea 
 of her husband as " A. W." 
 
 The script goes on, Mrs. Holland having in reply to the 
 last remark declared that she will write down what she 
 is thinking of. This is as follows : 
 
 " I find myself picturing a tall man who seems about 60 
 years of age — He is rather thin and has bent shoulders — His 
 face is pale — not handsome — very intelligent — He has a 
 moustache — dark — with grey threads — more grey than his 
 hair — which is thin — parted at one side and pushed over the 
 top of the head — It has receded a good deal from the temples 
 — His eyes are grey — he wears pince nez — The nose is rather 
 long — the face narrow — the throat is long — He used to have 
 a nervous cough — When he is interested in what he talks of 
 he has a trick of leaning forward and gesticulating a good 
 deal — He has well shaped hands with long fingers — There is 
 a seal ring on the little finger of the right hand — but I can't
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING iii 
 
 see if it has a crest or a monogram on it — His tie is rather 
 loosely tied — he wears no pin in it — It is more like looking 
 at a lantern picture than at a real man — I mean he seems to 
 be summoning up the appearance of what he used to be — 
 I can feel that he wants to say many things — but only confused 
 phrases reach me — that I can't note down — But what seems 
 to be an address is very clear — 5 Selwyn Gardens — 
 Cambridge." 
 
 Mrs, Holland — at any rate subconsciously — believed 
 that the man she had here described was Myers. There- 
 fore she ascribed the dimness of the picture to the circum- 
 stance that it was a deceased person she saw. " He 
 seems to be summoning up the appearance of what he 
 used to be," she writes. And therefore she believed she 
 could feel that he wanted to " say many things." On 
 November 21st, the script makes Gurney say about Myers : 
 " It was a tremendous effort to him to appear in your 
 mind's eye the way that he did a fortnight ago — and it 
 has weakened the messages ever since." Here, at any 
 rate, is evidence of pure fiction. For it was not Myers 
 who had " appeared in her mind's eye " on November 7th. 
 The description seems in almost all particulars to fit 
 Dr. Verrall. Miss Johnson writes : " In 1903 Dr. VerraU 
 was 52, but looked older on account of his delicate 
 health. He had a beard as well as moustache — more 
 grey than his hair ; when run down, he tended to have a 
 nervous cough. His hands were well-shaped with long 
 fingers which have become crippled and much bent from 
 rheumatism. He has never worn a seal ring. The other 
 points mentioned are correct." Mrs. Verrall adds : 
 " The attitude strikes me as particularly good. The 
 trick of leaning forward and gesticulating when interested 
 in what he talks of is very characteristic." 
 
 Thus Mrs. Holland once more seems to have had a 
 veridical impression, with the deficiencies that are usual 
 in " clairvoyance." The address that followed, as if 
 belonging to the impression, was that of the Verralls. It 
 is not given in Human Personality. Of course Mrs. Hol- 
 land may have seen it elsewhere, in Who's Who ? for
 
 112 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 instance, as Miss Johnson intimates ; but it is at least 
 conceivable that it may have been caught supernormally 
 together with the impression of Dr. Verrall ; we have 
 seen that Miss Ramsden could obtain names as well as 
 pictures which belonged to the surroundings of Miss Miles, 
 and that without any intention on the part of the latter. 
 
 After the description of Dr. Verrall the script went on 
 as follows : 
 
 " I will write down the stray words and phrases that come 
 into my mind' — 
 
 " Edmund — the first to come Henry I had to wait some 
 time for — Those one most wants have often their own employ- 
 ments — S M [probably Stainton Moses] has not appeared yet — 
 Tell Miss J — that the compact is not forgotten — 
 
 " I knew the success at once^ — The Times — Is A. W. satis- 
 fied ? Pod — how the typewriter ? 
 
 " Only a little at a time — Practice is needed and sympathy. 
 The agent is all alone and that makes it hard. 
 
 " Eidolon [attempt at Greek letters] — Timor mortis [fear of 
 death]. 
 
 " Lucy — Lucy. Agnes Lysaght 17 Manchester Square. 
 
 " Send to 5 Selwyn Gardens Cambridge. 
 
 " It is like entrusting a message on which infinite 
 
 importance depends to a sleeping person — Get a proof — try 
 for a proof if you feel this is a waste of time without. Send 
 this to Mrs. Verrall 5 Selwyn Gardens Cambridge." 
 
 Much of this is pure imagination. Not only was there 
 no Agnes Lysaght in Manchester Square, nor had the talk 
 of a compact and a success any foundation. 
 
 The remaining part does not differ from the preceding 
 constructions based on Human Personality. An excep- 
 tion is the word eidolon. Mrs. Holland, who did not know 
 either Greek or Latin, did not understand this Greek 
 term which if employed by Myers would be specially 
 appropriate. It returns in later writings and wiU be 
 discussed there. 
 
 The next script of interest contains the following 
 description given in the " Myers handwriting " : 
 
 January $th, 1904. 
 
 " She is not very tall — a slender figure often dressed in 
 green — dark hair — rather pushed from the forehead — straying
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 113 
 
 a little from the centre parting — very mobile brows — pince- 
 nez when she writes — A strong chin — mouth thin-lipped but 
 sympathetic — a strong but not a hard one — Mind admirably 
 well balance [sic] — Hands with long lingers — but the palms 
 well developed — No foolish impulses — but no fear of sudden 
 actions which seem the outcome of sudden impulse — Age — 
 32 — '^^ — I forget — what importance has age to me now — " 
 
 The description appears to fit Mrs. Verrall. That it is 
 due to supernormal perception seems clear, Mrs. Holland 
 ascribes it to Myers — the phrase " what importance has 
 age to me now," marks it as the product of a discarnate — 
 at the same time reproducing it with a womanly sense for 
 particulars which was characteristic, too, of her description 
 of the Verralls' dining-room, and which will reappear in 
 later cases. 
 
 The next writings refer to the eidolon. " Myers " 
 says : 
 
 January yth, 1904. 
 
 " I want to make it thoroughly clear to you all that the 
 eidolon is not the spirit — only the simulachrum [sic] — If M 
 were to see me sitting at my table or if any one of you became 
 conscious of my semblance standing near my chair that would 
 not be me. My spirit would be there invisible but perceptive 
 but the appearance would be merely to call your attention to 
 identify me — It fades and grows less easily recognizable as 
 the years pass and my remembrance of my earthly appearance 
 
 grows weaker the phantasm the so-called ghost is a 
 
 counterfeit presentment projected by the spirit . . . 
 
 January 8ih, 1904. 
 
 " The appearance of the simulacre [sic] does not necessarily 
 imply that the spirit is consciously present. It may project 
 the phantasm from a great distance. More usually however 
 it is present. On two occasions only I myself have been able 
 to perceive the surroundings I so desired to see — Once at a 
 meeting The next time was a few weeks ago at home. 
 
 " I wou^d try so hard on the anniversary that is only nine 
 days away now if I could be sure that you really wished and 
 desired my eidolon without any fear or reluctance " 
 
 The starting-point for these writings seems to be a 
 vision which Mrs. Holland had on the night of January 4th, 
 of a man sitting at a writing table. His head was so bent 
 
 CD. I
 
 114 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 that she only saw " a fine brow, grey hair, the points of 
 his rather old-fashioned turned-down collar, and a loosely 
 tied dark tie." If this vision represented her subconscious 
 conception of Myers, the disparity between it and her 
 impression in November, which she also took to refer to 
 Myers, may well have caused her reflections about the 
 phantom not being the spirit itself. At the same time, 
 as Miss Johnson points out, " the theory here expressed 
 as to the true nature of a ghost is no doubt derived from 
 the first part of the chapter on ' Phantasms of the Dead ' 
 in Human Personality, Vol. II." 
 
 Remarkable, however, is the correct use of the words 
 eidolon and simulacrum, whix;h do not occur in the said 
 chapter. Eidolon is used in Odyssey XL, v. 6oi, where it 
 is told that Odysseus in Hades meets " great Herakles, 
 his phantom {USooXov) ; himself rejoices amid the im- 
 mortals." The passage is alluded to by Plotinus, and this 
 allusion is quoted in Human Personality, Vol. 11. (p. 290) ; 
 but neither the Greek nor the Latin word is mentioned 
 there. Myers, however, employs the term eidolon in a 
 paper in the S.P.R. Proceedings, Vol. VI. (p. 64), in the 
 same sense as Mrs. Holland's script.^ Mrs. Holland felt 
 sure of having never seen any volume of the Proceedings ; 
 but she may have seen extracts from them elsewhere. 
 It is impossible to exclude the possibility of cryptomnesia 
 in questions regarding matter that has appeared in print. 
 Moreover, Mrs. Holland is a great reader, and reads very 
 fast : " I am," she herself narrates, " a proverb in my 
 family for ' tearing the heart ' out of a book or a paper in 
 a few minutes." 
 
 The initial M in the script of January 7th is supposed 
 to mean Margaret, and to refer to Mrs. Verrall, In later 
 scripts it is undoubtedly used in this sense. Here, again, as 
 with regard to the address, Selwyn Gardens, two explana- 
 tions are possible ; Mrs. Holland may somewhere have 
 seen Mrs. Verrall's Christian name, or she may have 
 
 1 See Miss Johnson's second report on Mrs. Holland's automatic 
 writing. Proceedings S.P.R. , Vol. XXIV., p. 3.
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 115 
 
 obtained it supernormally together with the impression 
 of her personahty. 
 
 On January 8th the writing had alluded to the anniver- 
 sary of Myers's death, January 17th. It had played a 
 part already in the first script of Mrs. Holland's that 
 purported to come from him ; it is on the whole charac- 
 teristic of her script to lay stress on dates. On the said 
 anniversary she wrote her next important piece in the 
 name of Myers : 
 
 " Thursday, January 17th, igoi. 
 
 " I have no wish to return in thought or memory to that 
 time but let the date stand for what it stands for to mine and 
 me 
 
 " The sealed envelope (1899) is not to be opened yet — not 
 yet— 
 
 " I am unable to make your hand form Greek characters 
 and so I cannot give the text as I wish — only the reference — 
 I Cor. 16-13 ... Oh I am feeble with eagerness — How can 
 I best be identified " 
 
 It seems certain that Mrs. Holland did not know any- 
 thing about the sealed envelope which Myers in 1891 — 
 not as the script has it, in 1899 — had given into the 
 custody of Sir OHver Lodge for posthumous reading. 
 She remembered, however, that he recommends in Human 
 Personality such experiments to be made. The Bible 
 text to which the script gives the reference is the following : 
 " Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be 
 strong." This text, with the omission of the last two 
 words, is inscribed in Greek over the gateway of Selwyn 
 College, Cambridge. The road in which Mrs. Verrall lives 
 is named Selwyn Gardens, on account of its proximity to 
 Selwyn College. 
 
 Mrs. Holland had never been in Cambridge, but of 
 course she might have read about the inscription. 
 Another possibihty is that it was perceived by her super- 
 normally in the same way as, perhaps, Mrs. Verrall's 
 address and the initial of her Christian name. That she 
 does not quote the text but only gives the reference is in 
 view of the tendency of her script to mysteriousness not 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 remarkable. She read the Bible constantly/ and may, no 
 doubt, have known subconsciously what the numbers 
 referred to. 
 
 But whether the reference to the " Selwyn text " was 
 due to cryptomnesia or to supernormal perception, there 
 seemed at any rate to be a supernormal connection between 
 the script of January 17th, 1904, and Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 On the same day the latter wrote as follows : ^ 
 
 " S is the letter — S in the envelope — S and on a seal — 2. 
 
 " In Mrs. Sidgwick's letter a 2 — and three words on the 
 paper — not without hope. The question is answered. This 
 must succeed — the other is harder 
 
 " The text and the answer are one and are given " 
 
 It was in the period when Mrs. Verrall was full of the 
 thought of Myers's sealed letter, and at the same time of 
 a test question which, prompted by her script, she had 
 asked Mrs. Sidgwick to send her. We have seen how the 
 two things were interwoven in her script in a rather con- 
 fusing manner, and we know how the opening of the 
 envelope proved the statements concerning its contents 
 to be pure construction. 
 
 The test question which Mrs. Verrall had received from 
 Mrs. Sidgwick was this : " What was the last of Dr. Sidg- 
 wick's texts, the one that belonged to the latter part of 
 his life ? " Professor Sidgwick had in the different periods 
 of his life had different " texts " of this kind ; the last one 
 was : " Gather up the fragments that remain, that 
 nothing be lost." Mrs. Verrall's script of December 25th, 
 1903, had contained another text of a kindred nature, 
 namely : " Use the daylight hours, for the night cometh 
 when no man may work." Whether its appearance was 
 due to cryptomnesia, subconscious guessing, or an impres- 
 sion caught from Mrs. Sidgwick, is of minor interest in 
 the present connection ; the point is, that the automatist 
 was thinking of a text. Confused as her script of 
 January 17th was, it was equally filled with that matter 
 
 ^ See below, p. 125. 
 2 Cf. above, p. 71.
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 117 
 
 and with the sealed envelope. Under these circumstances 
 it is that it produces the mystic announcement that 
 " the text and the answer are one and are given." 
 
 As may be seen, there is no possibility of construing 
 this into an allusion to Mrs. Holland's script. In the 
 latter, as in that of Mrs. Verrall, there is a reference to a 
 sealed letter and to a text ; but it is not the same text. 
 " Mrs. Holland's text," Miss Johnson writes, " has no 
 sort of connection with the text asked for by Mrs. Sidg- 
 wick, which Mrs. Verrall's script was trying to produce." 
 Moreover, Mrs. Verrall's script of January 17th has no 
 claim to be considered anything but a subconscious 
 production. 
 
 On the other hand, it is more than probable that 
 Mrs. Holland's script is founded on an impression from 
 Mrs. Verrall. It can hardly be due to chance that the 
 references to the sealed envelope and to the text — a text, 
 moreover, which is connected with Mrs. Verrall's residence 
 — appear at a time when the latter was engrossed by the 
 same subjects. It is a cross-correspondence — but a cross- 
 correspondence that has an entirely human foundation. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's script of January 17th, 1904, contains 
 one more remarkable passage. She wrote : 
 
 " Dear old chap you have done so much in the past three 
 years — I am cognizant of a great deal but with strange gaps 
 in my knowledge — If I could only talk with you — If I could 
 only help you with some advice — I tried more than once did 
 it ever come — There's so much to be learnt from the Diamond 
 Island experiment " 
 
 Neither Mrs. Holland nor Miss Johnson understood the 
 meaning of this " letter," nor saw for whom it was 
 intended. More than four years after its production, in 
 1908, Mrs. Holland, however, got the idea that it referred 
 to wireless telegraphy, as there was a wireless station on 
 Diamond Island, in India. Mrs. Verrall now pointed out 
 that the person addressed must be Sir Ohver Lodge ; 
 inquiries proved that the Lodge-Muirhead system was in 
 fact at work between Burma and the Andaman Islands,
 
 ii8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 with a station on Diamond Island. The installation had 
 not begun until February, 1904, but the apparatus had 
 come from England in January.^ 
 
 The discovery, however, lost most of its interest, as it 
 turned out that Mrs. Holland in all probabiUty had in the 
 winter 1903 — 4 read in the Indian papers about the 
 intended installation. She was interested in wireless 
 telegraphy, had heard a lecture by Marconi, and rather 
 regretted tliat an Itahan was, as she supposed, ahead of 
 Englishmen in this matter. That she had not on the 
 appearance of the script, connected it with the subject 
 was natural, as it did not contain anything that pointed 
 to it save the name of Diamond Island, and that name had 
 told her nothing ; in 1908, when the question was reverted 
 to, she confounded it with that of Diamond Harbour, in 
 Bengal. 
 
 The whole thing, then, is no doubt due to subconscious 
 memory. That Mrs. Holland by reading about the 
 Lodge-Muirhead system and the experimenting going to 
 be done on Diamond Island supplied her automatic self 
 with material for a " letter " from Myers, is not strange. 
 " Lodge " is mentioned by the Holland-Myers on 
 November 25th, 1903, and the automatist had recently 
 been reminded of .him by reading in the Review of Reviews 
 a letter from him to the editor of that periodical. At 
 any rate, it is less difficult to adopt this explanation than 
 to suppose that Myers was cognizant of the Diamond 
 Island experiment at a time when it still belonged to the 
 future. 
 
 • *•••• 
 
 After this — for nearly a year — Mrs. Holland fought 
 against her tendency to write automatically. She did 
 not herself value her writings much. " She was con- 
 scious," Miss Johnson says, " of the superficially trivial 
 and incoherent nature of her script, and could not tell 
 whether there was anything in it beyond a dream-like 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXV., pp. 293 seq.
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 119 
 
 rechauffi of her own thoughts." Besides, she suffered by 
 being constantly exposed to interruptions when writing. 
 " The shock of any chance interruption seemed to her 
 out of all proportion to the value of anything she obtained." 
 From April, 1904, till June, 1906, she was in Europe. 
 She did not, however, make the personal acquaintance of 
 Miss Johnson and Mrs. Verrall until the autumn of 1905. 
 The correspondence with Miss Johnson had also ceased 
 after Mrs. Holland left India. But on February 15th, 
 1905, she had an unexpected impulse to write auto- 
 matically, and on the same day sent her script to the 
 secretary. It contained among other things the following 
 piece : 
 
 February isth, 1905. 
 
 '"Oh good Oliver ! Oh brave Oliver ! 
 Leave me not behind thee ! ' ^ 
 " Is your personal interest in me fading even as the years 
 lengthen between your present to-day and the January day 
 that ended time for me — Not the affection that endures I 
 know — but the interest perhaps — -Have I gone where the 
 failed experiments go — 
 
 " ' And all dead dreams go thither 
 And all disastrous things ' 
 " Under other conditions I should say how much I regretted 
 the failure of the envelope test and I do regret it because it 
 was a disappointment to you — otherwise it is too trivial to 
 
 waste a thought upon 
 
 " Eternally 
 
 " F." 
 
 The sealed envelope left by Myers with Sir Oliver Lodge 
 had been opened on December 13th, 1904 ; an account of 
 the event had been printed in the Journal of the Society 
 for January, 1905, and had afterwards been referred to by 
 the papers, which did not, however, mention Mrs. Verrall, 
 but only Sir Oliver Lodge. In view hereof it is almost 
 impossible to help believing that Mrs. Holland had seen 
 one of the newspaper accounts, and that this was the source 
 of her script of February 15th. She did not herself 
 believe so ; she felt sure that her interest in Myers would 
 
 ' Cf. Shakespeare, As you Like It, Act. III., Sc. iii.
 
 120 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 have prevented her forgetting such an incident, if she had 
 seen a reference to it. But she may have seen the para- 
 graph without consciously noticing. In view of her 
 manner of reading there is nothing unhkely in this 
 supposition. 
 
 As regards this case, the explanation cryptomnesia 
 must, then, suffice. It may in this connection be men- 
 tioned that Mrs. Holland, in the course of the summer, 
 1905, produced a series of scripts that purported to come 
 from the deceased author, Laurence Oliphant, but which 
 in aU particulars can be explained by the circumstance 
 that she had, in 1903, read a biography of him. Of 
 course this and similar instances of unquestionable 
 fabrication must not be overlooked when reviewing her 
 production as a whole. 
 
 We have now reached a point where such a review ought 
 to take place with regard to the preceding writings. 
 The performances that are of interest in the following 
 period are mostly of another type ; they consist largely 
 in experiments, while the preceding ones were spon- 
 taneous. Besides, the personal acquaintance with Miss 
 Johnson and Mrs. Verrall presently intervenes. The 
 writings produced in India in 1903 — 4 form a separate 
 whole and must b^ considered separately. Outwardly, 
 the script of February 15th, 1905, belongs to them ; but 
 as it does not seem to contain any supernormal element, 
 it may be disregarded in this connection. The same will 
 apply to several pieces from the earlier period — for instance, 
 those of September i6th and i8th, 1903, and of 
 January 8th, 1904, and many that have not been 
 reproduced here. 
 
 The remaining scripts are those of September 21st and 
 November 7th, 1903, and of January 5th, 7th, and 17th, 
 1904. Of these, three pieces have been seen to contain an 
 undisputably supernormal element, while the same was 
 possibly the case with the two others. The supernormal 
 element was the description of the Verralls' dining-room
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 121 
 
 on September 21st, of Dr. Verrall on November 7th, and 
 of Mrs. Verrall on January 5th ; possibly supernormal 
 were the mention of the latter's initial on January 7th 
 and the reference to the Selwyn text on January 17th ; 
 besides, in the script of November 7th, the address of the 
 Verralls. The three last statements may be due to latent 
 memory ; but as it is impossible to prove this, it cannot 
 be absolutely denied that they may be of the same origin 
 as the three descriptions which cannot be ascribed to 
 cryptomnesia. They are, moreover, of a nature that 
 makes it possible to connect them with the descriptions. 
 
 The problem, then, is this, what is the source of these 
 descriptions ? It is a problem whose solution is greatly 
 simplified through the circumstance that it is one and the 
 same phenomenon that recurs ; a phenomenon, more- 
 over, which we have met before. Such " mental pic- 
 tures," or clairvoyant impressions, as those which 
 Mrs. Holland caught of Mrs. Verrall's dining-room, her 
 husband, and herself, had Mrs. Verrall obtained from 
 Mrs. Forbes, and vice-versa, or, to keep to the experi- 
 mental territory. Miss Ramsden from Miss Miles. Those 
 of Mrs. Holland were perhaps a little clearer and more 
 detailed — although, as all clairvoyant perceptions, not 
 whoUy correct — but essentially they were of the same 
 type as the others. Mrs. Holland's visionary powers 
 seemed altogether more developed than those of the two 
 other sensitives ; she was able to see things in a crystal, 
 and had experienced several visions when not writing 
 automatically. 
 
 But why did Mrs. Holland get these impressions about 
 people and places that she did not know ? We have here 
 to do with a similar phenomenon as that to which Andrew 
 Lang gave the name of " telepathy a trois." The visions 
 which Lang's sensitives saw in the glass ball referred 
 to people whom the psychics did not know but who were 
 known to some one among the persons present at the 
 experiment ; but this person might himself be ignorant 
 of the things that were perceived. His part was only to
 
 122 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 put the medium in rapport with the absent person, 
 whose circumstances were revealed by means of the 
 picture seen in the crystal. It was the necessity of such 
 an intermediary that gave the phenomenon its name ; 
 only it ought to have been called clairvoyance d. trois — or 
 " clairvoyance with rapport " — rather than telepathy ; 
 Lang himself did not feel sure that the latter designation 
 hit the mark. 
 
 In the case of Mrs. Holland the intermediary must have 
 been Miss Johnson. This supposition is not so improbable 
 as it will perhaps appear at first sight. In a letter of 
 February 23rd, 1905, while Mrs. Holland did not yet 
 know the secretary personally, she begged her to send her 
 some paper that had been lying in her desk, and a pen- 
 holder that she had used for some time. She fancied that 
 it would help her script to use these things, and though 
 it seemed silly to her to ask for them, she felt that she 
 must do so. Is it possible to doubt that the sensitive 
 was here governed by an instinct, and that the paper 
 and the penholder did play a similar part for her as 
 the " articles " do for those who practise psychometry ? 
 On a later occasion she contends that she has get a veri- 
 dical impression by reading a letter from Miss Johnson, 
 and says : " The conviction came instantly, as an impres- 
 sion gained from" a letter often does come with me." 
 Thus letters too seem to convey knowledge to her super- 
 normally. Whether we shall call it psychometry, or 
 regard the objects — paper, penholder, letters — as lines 
 that bring about the connection, is unimportant ; most 
 likely it is a different mode of expressing the same thing. 
 
 At a later time it once happened that Mrs. Holland 
 caught a veridical impression about Mrs. Forbes's sur- 
 roundings by reading a letter from Mrs. Verrall. 
 Mrs. Holland did not know Mrs. Forbes, and Mrs. Verrall 
 was not near her when she wrote the letter. This is an 
 almost exact parallel to her obtaining, during the corre- 
 spondence with Miss Johnson in the winter of 1903 — 4, 
 veridical impressions about the surroundings of Mrs.
 
 SPONTANEOUS WRITING 123 
 
 Verrall. That she did not know her correspondent person- 
 ally is of no consequence, as it was from the letters that 
 the influence emanated ; and no more did she know Miss 
 Johnson when in February, 1905, she asked for her paper 
 and penholder. Neither can it, with regard to this theory, 
 be of any consequence whether the distance between the 
 percipient and the things perceived is great or small. 
 In the moment when Mrs. Holland holds the letter in 
 her hand, she has obtained connection with the writer, 
 and it makes no difference whether it has travelled all the 
 way from England to India or only that from Cambridge 
 to London. 
 
 Still, it might be asked why it was just Mrs. Verrall and 
 her surroundings that were perceived by Mrs. Holland 
 through the intermediation of Miss Johnson. Was it 
 because this lady consciously or unconsciously had her 
 in her mind when writing to her fellow-automatist ? 
 Or was it due to the circumstance that Mrs. Verrall 
 herself was a sensitive ? The parallel with her perception 
 of Mrs. Forbes's surroundings cannot help us to solve 
 the question, because both explanations are possible also 
 in the latter case. When Mrs. Verrall wrote the letter 
 that led to Mrs. Holland's perception, Mrs. Forbes in all 
 probability was not far from her thoughts, as she was just 
 in the act of leaving home for a visit to her house in the 
 north of England. But on the other hand, Mrs. Forbes 
 too was a sensitive, and the possibility of this playing a 
 part in the phenomenon is not excluded. 
 
 Be that as it may, it seems certain that Miss Johnson 
 was the connecting hnk between the two automatists in 
 the winter 1903 — 4. The script of February 15th, 1905, 
 which was produced after the correspondence with the 
 secretary had been discontinued for about a year, con- 
 tained nothing that suggests supernormal perception.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 
 
 After the~^ renewal of the correspondence with Miss 
 Johnson in February, 1905, Mrs. Holland's automatism 
 entered upon a new phase, her correspondent having 
 suggested a series of experiments to take place between 
 her and Mrs. Verrall. These experiments confirm what 
 has been said above of Mrs. Holland's faculty to obtain 
 impressions about Mrs. Verrall, at the same time showing 
 that the latter, though in a lesser degree, possessed the 
 same faculty with regard to Mrs. Holland. At this time 
 there was no personal acquaintance between the two auto- 
 matists, nor did any of them know who her fellow- 
 experimenter was. 
 
 It was arranged that the two ladies on Wednesday, 
 March 1st, 1905, and on the following five Wednesdays, 
 but at the time of day that was most convenient to each 
 of them, ought to try for automatic writing. There was 
 no attempt made to produce a definite word or idea in 
 the other's script. The experiment must be characterized 
 as " intentional perception without intentional trans- 
 mission." On the first Wednesday Mrs. Holland wrote 
 as follows : 
 
 March 1st, 1905, 10.45 <^-^' 
 
 " There are cut flowers in the blue jar — jonquils I think and 
 tulips — growing tulips near the window — A dull day but the 
 sky hints at Spring and one chirping bird is heard about the 
 roar of the traffic — 
 
 Watch ye stand fast in the faith — quit you like men 
 be strong ' 
 
 " Does Mrs. V. own herself worsted for once ? Or does she 
 wait for a triumph in May — The Banks in May I Ah me 
 Earth's glamour holds — 
 
 " A slender lady with dark hair drawn to a heavy knot at
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 125 
 
 the base of her long throat. Eyes like dark jewels in a pale 
 pale face — the outline of it ' hollowed a little mournfully.' 
 A very sensitive mouth — Long hands — a signet ring on the 
 middle finger " 
 
 This is a series of supernormal impressions concerning 
 Mrs. Verrall. It begins with a fairly correct description 
 of the flowers in her drawing-room. On asking, Miss John- 
 son received the following reply from her : " On March ist 
 the only cut flowers in my drawing-room were in two 
 blue china jars on the mantelpiece ; the flowers were 
 large single daffodils. On the ledge of the window looking 
 into the greenhouse — on the greenhouse side — were three 
 
 pots of growing yellow tulips ." On the other hand, 
 
 the writer cannot have had Mrs. Verrall 's residence in 
 mind when referring to the roar of the traffic ; there is 
 no traffic in Selwyn Gardens, which is not a thoroughfare. 
 
 The described lady is evidently Mrs. Verrall herself. 
 The question, " Does Mrs. V. own herself worsted for 
 once ? " might imply that the script connected her with 
 the envelope failure. But it is very unhkely that it 
 would speak with such want of sympathy about anything 
 that concerned Myers. The remark is probably due to 
 a general impression of failure, and to nothing more. 
 Mrs. Holland, then, has obtained impressions supernor- 
 mally of the drawing-room of her unknown colleague, of 
 her appearance and name, and of some disappointment 
 connected with her. 
 
 Besides this, the script quotes the " Selwyn text," or 
 rather the whole of the verse i Cor. xvi. 13 ; the two 
 words " be strong " are not included in the Greek inscrip- 
 tion over the gate of Selwyn College. Mrs. Holland had 
 in the morning of March ist read the beginning of i Corin- 
 thians xvi. ; when she continued her reading the next 
 morning she noticed that xvi. 13 had been quoted in her 
 writing the day before. It is highly probable, though, 
 that she had seen the verse without knowing on March ist, 
 and that she subconsciously at least had known that it 
 was the same text which had been referred to formerly.
 
 126 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 As the reference was on that occasion associated with a 
 perception of Mrs. Verrall, it is only natural that the 
 verse was now quoted in connection with her. That the 
 last two words were added was a simple consequence of 
 Mrs. Holland's knowledge of the verse. It emerged as 
 an impression about Mrs. Verrall, not specially as the 
 Selwyn text, which the automatist hardly knew. 
 
 As regards Mrs. Verrall, her script of March ist, 1905, 
 written at 6 p.m., contains the following : 
 
 " V. iii black letter text .... 
 Don't identify it might alarm her." 
 
 The first words may be due to a vague impression about 
 Mrs. Holland. The latter tli^ught, when told of them, 
 that they must refer to i Cor. xvi. 3, which she had read 
 on the same morning and which runs : " For I verily, 
 as absent in body, but present in spirit ..." If these 
 words have consciously or unconsciously impressed her 
 specially, it might possibly increase the chance of their 
 being caught by Mrs. Verrall. But she would hardly 
 have been impressed with the number of the verse. 
 More likely it is the quotation of the Bible text in 
 Mrs. Holland's script that has been reflected — if a vague 
 correspondence hke that can be considered more than an 
 accident. 
 
 The second phrase is in itself quite meaningless, but a 
 very natural outcome of Mrs. Verrall 's knowledge of the 
 co-operation of another automatist. 
 
 None of the writings on the two following Wednesdays 
 contained anything intimating supernormal connection. 
 But on the latter day Mrs. Verrall had written as follows : 
 
 March i^th, 1905. 
 
 " Send these five notes [drawing of five notes]. 
 
 " She will send you something like them — verse I think " 
 
 On March 19th, her script once more contained notes, 
 and on the following Wednesday Mrs. Holland wrote as 
 follows : 
 
 March 22nd, 1905. 
 
 " The ivory gate through which all good dreams come.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 127 
 
 " Sono molto fatigato e ammalatto [sic] — Ho paura [I am 
 very tired and ill — I am frightened] [drawing of six notes]." 
 
 This represents impressions both of Mrs. Verrall's 
 script, namely of the notes, and of her occupations. 
 She had on March 19th and 20th spent a great deal of 
 her time in looking up descriptions by Virgil and Dante 
 of the " gate of hell," and in the course of so doing read 
 the passage in the sixth Aeneid about the gates of horn 
 and ivory and about the true dreams — which, however, 
 came through the former, not, as Mrs. Holland has it, 
 through the ivory gate. On the same two days she was 
 reading Itahan for the first time for months. So many 
 correspondences cannot be due to chance. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Verrall, too, had caught an impression 
 about Mrs. HoUand. It was not on a Wednesday, but on 
 a Sunday : 
 
 March igth, 1905, 6.50 p.m. 
 
 " That lady has gone to church — go into her house with me 
 — up 3 stairs on the left into a room — and over the mantel- 
 piece hangs a picture a photograph Ruskin has written of it — 
 Carpaccio's Ursula She does not want us in her room- 
 come away — you have seen the Ursula which I meant to show 
 you—" 
 
 This little story has a supernormal perception for its 
 foundation. On asking, Miss Johnson was told in a letter 
 from Mrs. Holland that she was not at church on Sunday 
 evening, March 19th, and that the Dream of St. Ursula 
 did not hang in her room.. " But," she added, " on 
 Saturday evening I was going through the portfolio of 
 ' Great Masters,' and the Carpaccio Ursula was the picture 
 I looked at longest and returned to most frequently 
 — so much so, indeed, that my father asked me if I would 
 like to have it framed and hung in my room." 
 
 In the same letter, dated March 24th, Mrs. Holland 
 sent to Miss Johnson the description of an impression 
 that had come to her very strongly within the last days. 
 It was not automatically written, and she did not know 
 why the impression had come into her mind. She did
 
 128 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 not seem to suspect that she had twice before tried to 
 describe the same lady in her script. The impression was 
 as follows : 
 
 " A thin woman, not very young ; at least the further side 
 of thirty. Her dark hair is slightly rough or naturally fluffy 
 and begins to show threads of grey over the ears. She often 
 wears a pince nez with either no frame or a very slight one. 
 She has lost a great many people she loved both relatives and 
 friends, and the trinkets she habitually wears are more relics 
 than ornaments. A ring, a gold chain, both very full of 
 memories. Grey eyes ; the black lashes almost close when she 
 laughs. Ore}' dresses, green dresses, simply made — often with 
 wide belts. Not a ' tailor-made ' woman. Critical ; a little 
 too incisive in manner ; with a warm heart and a curiously 
 unexpected fund of shyness. Very well educated. Her college 
 career was attended with a good deal of distinction. She is 
 very highly strung ; but too self-controlled to be called 
 ' nervous.' The mouth has mobile lips and she has a trick 
 of contracting the lower lip of which she is probably un- 
 conscious. Reserved to a fault. She is beginning to attain 
 to a faith she once thought she had outgrown." 
 
 The fullness of this description excludes all possibility 
 of chance coincidence. With the exception of the colour 
 of the eyes and lashes it seems in all points to fit Mrs. 
 Verrall, even to the trick of drawing in her lower lip, a 
 habit contracted on account of a criticism made on her in 
 her childhood. As for the description of her character. 
 Miss Johnson thinks that " her friends would consider it 
 in many points very apt." 
 
 This impression was the last real success occurring 
 during the period of experimenting. On the sixth 
 Wednesday, Mrs. Verrall's script seemed to reflect 
 vaguely Mrs. Holland's surroundings — a gate in a hedge 
 looking to the western sky, and a peaceful landscape. 
 That was all. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's script of March ist and 22nd, Mrs. 
 Verrall's of March 19th, and the former's impression about 
 her co-experimenter, were thus the essential result of the 
 experiments on these six Wednesdays. Only two of the 
 coincidences, however, occurred on the appointed days, 
 and it must on the whole be said that the successes
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 129 
 
 seemed due more to the circumstance that the two 
 psychics — as was formerly the case with Mrs. Verrall 
 and Mrs. Forbes — had got into touch with each other 
 than to their directing their thoughts towards each other. 
 The reciprocal sensitiveness is of the same type as that 
 which Mrs. Holland had displayed in India with regard 
 to Mrs. Verrall. That it was " clairvoyance a trois," 
 and that Miss Johnson was the intermediary, must 
 then here as there be the one possible manner of inter- 
 preting it. 
 
 It is worth noting that a following series of experiments 
 of another type was a decided failure. During the next 
 six weeks, while Mrs. Holland was travelling on the Con- 
 tinent, she attempted every Wednesday to convey an 
 impression and one definite word to her fellow-experi- 
 menter ; but in no case did Mrs. Verrall's script show any 
 coincidence with the topics selected. After this, Mrs. 
 Verrall tried for a few weeks, with no better success, to 
 convey ideas chosen by herself to Mrs. Holland. This is a 
 repetition of what we experienced in former cases — that 
 it is much more difficult for a sensitive to grasp what 
 an agent strives to produce than to " perceive " what 
 is not intended for transmission. Neither the one-horse 
 nor the stabdelta experiment obtained a full success, 
 though the attempts left distinct traces in Mrs. Verrall's 
 script. But not even a faint trace was produced by 
 the latter's exertions with regard to Mrs. Holland, nor 
 the reverse ; evidently the rapport between them was 
 not strong enough for that, though permitting them 
 to obtain supernormal impressions about each other's 
 doings. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 In thj following autumn Mrs. Holland became per- 
 sonally acquainted with Miss Johnson. On October 6th, 
 1905, the two ladies met for the first time in the rooms of 
 the Society for Psychical Research in London and had a 
 long conversation. On November i6th, Mrs. Holland 
 met Mrs. Verrall at the same place in the presence of the 
 
 CD. K
 
 130 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 secretary ; on November 21st she spoke with the latter 
 alone. After this she did not see her until February 21st, 
 1906, when Mrs, Verrall and Mr. Piddington were also 
 present. 
 
 To this first period of the personal acquaintance with 
 Miss Johnson belong some pieces of Mrs. Holland's script 
 which, in the opinion of Miss Johnson, strongly suggest an 
 influence from herself. 
 
 In the spectator for October 7th, 1905, Mrs. Holland 
 had read a review of Dr. Maxwell's book Metapsychical 
 Phenomena ; it is, Miss Johnson says, clearly responsible 
 for much of the matter of the script produced during this 
 period. But although Mrs. Holland had read the review 
 at any rate before October 27th, when she spoke of it in 
 a letter to Miss Johnson, it was not until several weeks 
 later that the script touched on the topic. 
 
 On November 19th, 1905, Miss Johnson had spent 
 most of the morning in looking out for Mr. Everard 
 Feilding, who was going to Paris to attend some sittings 
 with Eusapia Paladino, her own records of the sittings 
 at Cambridge with this medium. In the afternoon 
 of the same day Mr. Feilding was with her discussing the 
 matter. 
 
 It was on this day that Mrs. Holland's script commenced 
 a series of remarks about psychical phenomena, put into 
 the mouth now of Myers and now of Gurney ; for instance, 
 the following : 
 
 November iglh, 1905, 11 a.m. 
 
 " The phenomena that will shortly be induced are utterly 
 misleading — They will not be completely fraudulent — at least 
 not consciously so — but the influence will be of the poltergeist 
 type and the lowest forms of physical magnetism will be called 
 upon 
 
 November 20th, 1905. 
 
 " The properties apertaining [sic] to the deception wifl be 
 
 daringly simple — the old familiar trickery There will be 
 
 a piece of elastic in his shirt sleeve — No— nothing so elaborate 
 
 as a pneumatic glove Of course there is a great substratum 
 
 of truth but those two people won't help you to arrive at it.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 131 
 
 The man is a charlatan — and the woman — though with a 
 good deal of sincerity at first has lost it through vanity and 
 
 the desire for effectiveness 
 
 " [?] Palladia — Mrs. Eustace Lucas — Annie Bird — 
 Euphronia — Katie King — Eustonia — Pallonia — " 
 
 Miss Johnson thinks that these descriptions of fraudu- 
 lent phenomena may have been partly due to "a 
 vague telepathic reflection " of her conversation with 
 Mr. Feilding. 
 
 On November 21st, Mrs. Holland brought her the script 
 in question ; she asked her then what she had read about 
 physical phenomena, but of course told her nothing of 
 her own views as to these. The conversation seems to 
 have given the impulse to some pieces of script in the 
 beginning of December where Miss Johnson is introduced, 
 nay where it is said that she " will be the best help in this 
 case." 
 
 This of course involves nothing supernormal. The 
 remarkable point is this, that when Mrs. Holland's script 
 after a long interval once more spoke of physical pheno- 
 mena, it was again after a conversation between Miss 
 Johnson and Mr. Feilding about the subject. On 
 March 13th, 1906, the secretary had received a paper 
 containing an attack on the Algerian " materializations " 
 reported by Professor Richet ; either on the same or on 
 the next day she discussed the matter with Mr. Feilding. 
 Mrs. Holland's script on this occasion contained among 
 other things the following : 
 
 March 14th, 1906. 
 
 "It is a pity R [ichet] has no sense of humour but not 
 unusual for his nationality. It gives him a certain power too — 
 some of us were too whimsical perhaps are " 
 
 This is followed by further remarks about fraudulent 
 performances. In all probability Mrs. Holland had in 
 the course of the winter read or heard more of physical 
 phenomena than what she had gained from the review in 
 The Spectator. The whole topic was, as Miss Johnson 
 writes, very much in the air at that time. But that her 
 
 K 2
 
 132 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 script started the subject just when it was occupying 
 Miss Johnson's mind and conversation, and recurred to 
 it after an interval of more than three months, just at the 
 moment when she was once more discussing it, is a double 
 coincidence which can hardly be due to chance, but which 
 adds to the evidence for Mrs. Holland's faculty of obtaining 
 supernormal impressions from other persons. 
 
 On December 20th, 1905, Dr. Richard Hodgson, the 
 ardent psychical researcher who had for many years 
 supervised the sittings with Mrs. Piper, died suddenly in 
 Boston. Mrs. Holland knew his name at least from 
 Human Personality. On January 22nd, igo6, she learned 
 through a newspaper paragraph that he had " died at 
 Boston a month ago." This was all that she, to the best 
 of her belief, had heard about it. 
 
 About this time Mrs. Holland had the feeling that her 
 mediumism showed a tendency to enter upon a new phase. 
 She told this to Miss Johnson in a letter which she sent 
 her together with a piece of script of February 9th, 
 printed below. For some time, she said, a few moments 
 of writing had made her feel at once very sleepy and very 
 loquacious. She fancied that under favourable condi- 
 tions her automatic writing would change into trance or 
 semi-trance conditions with spoken words instead of 
 written ones. A few times, just before falling asleep at 
 night, she had heard fragments of speech which she knew 
 were not real, and she ascribed them to a possible new 
 attempt at communication. 
 
 Whether this state — which did not develop further — 
 was of any consequence with regard to the script, can 
 hardly be determined. It has seemed natural to men- 
 tion it as the automatist herself laid so much stress 
 upon it. 
 
 Under these circumstances the following script was 
 produced :
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 133 
 
 February gth, igo6. 
 
 "... Sjdibse Ipehtpo — only one letter further on — 
 18 8 
 
 9 15 
 
 3 4 
 8 7 
 I 19 
 
 18 15 
 
 4 14 
 
 " They are not haphazard figures read them as letters — 
 
 " The shortness of breath was the worst part of the illness 
 — worse even than the exhaustion — 
 
 " K. 57. Jessie — Grey paper — 
 
 " The (?) straggler (?) returns — a printed address on the 
 sheet of paper — Three small lines of writing — a wide margin 
 left — I cannot make it clear to you. 
 
 " Concejttrate hard. 
 
 " 1 3 initials. 
 
 " Nothing else upon the sheet — 
 
 " It's a wide prospect from the windows — 
 
 " A gold watch chain with a horse-shoe shaped cigar cutter 
 attached to it — An old seal not his own initials — A white 
 handled knife inkstained — 
 
 " Nitrate of amyl — probably too late even if it had been 
 thought of — 
 
 " A corpse needs no shoes — " 
 
 When the direction of the script is followed, and the 
 letters are replaced by those preceding them in the alpha- 
 bet, they give the name Richard Hodgson, while the 
 numbers read as letters give the same name. As we know, 
 Mrs. Holland had as a child played at a secret language 
 made by using either the letter before or the letter after 
 the real one. Besides, her script had always shown a 
 tendency to mystifi-cation. A similar tendency is said to 
 have characterized Dr. Hodgson ; but this coincidence, 
 of course, loses all importance, as the same quality is 
 displayed by the other alleged controls of Mrs. Holland. 
 
 The whole script, however, seems less fabricated than 
 Mrs. Holland's productions used to be. It appears to 
 
 1 The three lines represent writing which is too vague for identifica- 
 tion.
 
 134 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 consist of a series of impressions put loosely down. They 
 are all of them of a nature that makes it possible to connect 
 them with Dr. Hodgson, and they are just as correct as 
 supernormal impressions use to be, i.e., there are some 
 incorrect things interspersed here and there. An illness 
 is mentioned, with shortness of breath ; Dr. Hodgson 
 died of heart-failure while playing a game of handball, 
 with no preceding illness ; but " nitrate of amyl," which 
 is mentioned with the addition that it probably would 
 have been too late even if it had been thought of, is given 
 for heart-failure. " The wide prospect from the windows " 
 may refer to the Union Boat Club in Boston, where 
 Dr, Hodgson died ; its windows overlook the Back Bay 
 to some hills beyond. Dr, Hodgson wore a gold watch 
 chain with a gold cigar-cutter, but the latter was not 
 horseshoe shaped. He had an old seal which had a female 
 figure cut on it, but it was not worn by him at the time of 
 his death. 
 
 One of these things, the cause of death, Mrs. Holland 
 no doubt might have heard or read about without knowing. 
 Most of the remaining statements are too indefinite or 
 common to be of much value. This, however, does not 
 apply to the name Jessie or to the mystic " K. 57," 
 Jessie ^ was the first^name of Dr. Hodgson's much beloved 
 cousin, who died in Australia in 1879, She is mentioned 
 in the records of the sittings with Mrs, Piper by the 
 pseudonym Q ; Mrs, Piper's control Phinuit had once 
 remarked that the second part of her first name was sie ; 
 afterwards Dr. Hodgson had told him her full name, but 
 this had not been published. And in a still more remark- 
 able manner " K, 57 " seems to point to Dr. Hodgson. 
 
 During April and May, 1906, Mr. Piddington was in 
 Boston to assist in the arrangement of Dr. Hodgson's 
 affairs as the representative of the Society for Psychical 
 Research. Miss Johnson sent him a copy of the above 
 script, asking him to make inquiries about the divers 
 
 * The name is not given in Miss Johnson's report, but has been 
 published later.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 135 
 
 particulars contained in it. After the reception of her 
 letter, Mr. Piddington found among Dr. Hodgson's papers 
 a dilapidated note-book, on the front cover of which was 
 written " The Eternal Life," while inside, on two loose 
 sheets. Dr. Hodgson had made notes for an article which 
 he had probably intended to write in answer to Professor 
 Hugo Miinsterberg's book of that name. On the back 
 cover of this note-book he had written in pencil as follows : 
 
 " R.H. R.H. 
 
 I K-6 
 
 4 K 52 
 
 6 K 8 
 
 3 3 
 
 4 K 6 
 
 52 K 6 
 
 K-ii K 7 
 
 K-52 K 52 
 
 10 K 13 
 K-30 7 
 
 3 
 
 " Mr. [or Mrs.] C. 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 7 
 10 
 
 Mr. Piddington declares that he feels " practically 
 certain that K followed by numerals refers to some par- 
 ticular series of Piper sittings, or to some particular 
 subject of the communications." At any rate, it is 
 mdisputable that the said combination had some signifi- 
 cance for Dr. Hodgson. In Mrs. Holland's script of 
 February 9th, " K. 57 " and " Jessie " are followed by a 
 reference to a grey paper. This would agree with the 
 conception of " K. 57 " as the designation of some memo- 
 randum. The passage about the sheet of paper, etc., 
 perhaps points to the same, but it is too vague to found 
 anything upon. 
 
 But in any case it can hardly be denied that this com- 
 bination of references to Dr. Hodgson, " K. 57," and
 
 136 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Jessie, is more than can be ascribed to chance. As 
 regards " K. 57," the explanation cryptomnesia, more- 
 over, is quite excluded. But if we must assume a super- 
 normal impression to be the cause, from whence does it 
 originate ? Nobody with whom Mrs. Holland can be 
 supposed to be in rapport, and perhaps no living person, 
 knew of the designations which the cover of his note-book 
 shows Dr. ^odgson to have used. That Mrs. Holland 
 through direct clairvoyance might read them in Boston, 
 nothing justifies us in asserting. Thus it must suffice to 
 say that we have here met with a phenomenon which we 
 are unable to place under the categories which we have 
 hitherto acknowledged ; ^ as it, is so solitary and slender, 
 it would be rash to make it the base of any theory. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's script held a few more references to 
 Dr. Hodgson in the following period. But they do not 
 contain anything that might not be due to cryptomnesia ; 
 besides, she had on February 21st talked of him with 
 Miss Johnson, and had no doubt got an impulse to write 
 about him that detracts from the significance of her pro- 
 ductions ; her attitude of mind is seen in a letter of 
 March nth where she, referring to a date given in her 
 script, writes : " How glad I should be if the date given 
 was a definite bit -of evidence from Dr. Hodgson." For 
 completeness' sake, however, I quote the pieces in 
 question : 
 
 February 28th, igo6. 
 
 " Dickon of Norfolk — is that far enough away from the 
 real name ? I'll describe R H [in monogram]. 
 
 " A short man — but held himself well — broad shoulders — 
 
 1 The explanation which Dr. Maxwell [see his paper in the Pro- 
 ceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXVI., pp. 57 — 144] tries to give of " K. 57 " is 
 quite insufficient. " La lettre L," he says, " est employee, suivie d'un 
 numero pour designer une certaine cat6gorie d'hallucinations locales. 
 Or, la lettre K precede immediatement la lettre L ; une substitution 
 analogue a celle qui dissimule le nom de M. Hodgson au commencement 
 du texte I'explique bien simplement." But there can be no analogy 
 between a substitution that is intended to mystify, and the exchange 
 of one indifferent letter for another. Besides, there is no reason why 
 Mrs. Holland should use the letter L. And to the connection in which 
 " K. 57 " occurs, Dr. Maxwell pays no attention. " K. 37 " in a later 
 script is probably an echo of " K. 57."
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 137 
 
 thick grey white hair — thick grey brows — very straight — A 
 florid face — reddish brown — (though it was pale enough at 
 the end). Strong chin — mobile mouth. 
 
 " The young wife died so long ago — that perhaps some people 
 forgot her. Jessie." 
 
 About the description, if applied to Dr. Hodgson, 
 
 Mr. Piddington says that it is neither very good nor very 
 
 bad. Mrs. Holland had never seen a portrait of him ; 
 
 but she may, no doubt, have heard him mentioned. 
 
 " Jessie " is probably a reminiscence from the former 
 
 script. The term " wife " is incorrect; she was not the 
 
 wife of Dr. Hodgson, and is not known to have been 
 
 married. 
 
 March jth, 1906. 
 
 " Brittleworth — Brickeldale. Britleton — No — not him and 
 not James — Brit — Brittle Brick Brickleton — Hugo — H.M. — 
 Minster Berg. Hugo. 
 " Was he not aware ? 
 
 "R. 
 " Why are they so brutally dense. 
 
 "H. 
 " I always had a quick temper." 
 
 There is, of course, nothing supernormal in connecting 
 Dr. Hodgson with Professor James or Professor Miinster- 
 berg, who were both well known within the pale of psychical 
 research. Neither can I agree with Miss Johnson when 
 she speaks about the " various attempts made at the 
 name Hugo Miinsterberg " as a possible result of a 
 " telepathic effort," comparable with Dr. VerraU's experi- 
 ment. It is not the name Miinsterberg that is sought 
 for ; it is, on the contrary, given without groping, and 
 has nothing to do with the preceding attempts at Brittle- 
 worth, etc. 
 
 May 16th, 1906. 
 
 " When the deep red blood of the maple leaf 
 Burns on the boughs again. 
 " Spring on a Boston hillside. One clump of maples stands 
 alone — they are outlined against the sunset and the sunset 
 is no redder than they. — R. H." 
 
 In respect to this script, an American friend of Dr. 
 Hodgson says : " The foliage of one of our maples turns
 
 138 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 a very brilliant red in the autumn, and its minute flowers 
 are a most brilliant red in the spring." Miss Johnson adds 
 that this spring red, which is specially referred to in the 
 script, is probably a far less familiar fact to English people 
 than the autumn red, and that Mrs. Holland believed that 
 she had never heard of it. But this, of course, is one of 
 the things which it is quite impossible to be sure of. 
 That she i^ust subconsciously connect Boston with 
 Dr. Hodgson goes without saying. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 In the spring of 1906, Mrs. Holland undertook a few 
 experiments which Miss Johnson in her report calls 
 " Experiments on the supposed influence of inanimate 
 objects." Mrs. Verrall's script of March 7th, 1906, had 
 among other things contained the sentence : " Send 
 [Mrs. Holland] something of yours, a ring, that would 
 help her." The suggestion interested Mrs. Holland, who 
 had received from Miss Johnson a copy of the script, and 
 she expressed her wish to borrow for a few weeks a ring 
 from Mrs. Verrall ; one that she had had a long time 
 would be the best, she added. Evidently Mrs. Holland, 
 just as when at an earlier time she asked for Miss Johnson's 
 paper and penholder, was guided by an instinctive under- 
 standing of the significance of " articles." That Mrs. 
 Verrall subconsciously had the same understanding, the 
 above script of March 7th testifies. A characteristic 
 contrast to this presents the non-mediumistic secretary, 
 who scorns the notion that objects might have influence. 
 
 The first result of the experiment with the ring has been 
 referred to above ; ^ only it was probably due to the letter 
 from Mrs. Verrall that accompanied the ring rather than 
 to the object itself. Mrs. Holland received it by the first 
 post on the morning of March 15th, and immediately 
 afterwards had an impression which she noted down at 
 once and sent to Mrs. Verrall. The latter on the same 
 day left her home for a round of visits ; Mrs. Holland did 
 
 * See p. 122.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 139 
 
 not know where she was going ; she had written that her 
 letters would be forwarded. The impression was as 
 follows : 
 
 March i^th, 1906, 8.45 a.m. 
 
 " A dining room, narrow for its height, a long room. Dull 
 red paper on the wall ; brown wood dado or high wainscot. 
 A great deal of brass about the fireplace. Table laid for a 
 meal, bright fire. Something Egyptian in the room, or else 
 ornaments of an ' Egyptian pattern.' Lady in brown dress 
 reading letter. Is it Mrs. V. ? An elaborate coffee-making 
 machine and a silver urn. Green-handled knives. Honey- 
 comb. Indian tree patterned china." 
 
 In her letter to Mrs. Verrall she added : " The lady in 
 brown hardly seemed to be you, but the room had to do 
 with you." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall was on that day going to Mrs. Forbes's 
 house, where she arrived at about 5.45 p.m. Mrs. Holland, 
 as before said, was ignorant of this, and she knew nothing 
 whatever about Mrs. Forbes ; Mrs. Verrall's report in 
 which the latter plays a large part, had not yet been 
 published. The described room was, however, indis- 
 putably the dining-room of that lady as it looked on the 
 morning of March 15th. The greater part of the par- 
 ticulars are quite correct; on the other hand, a small 
 amount of errors have slipped in, as is usually the case 
 with clairvoyant impressions. As a characteristic instance 
 of their vagueness may be mentioned Mrs. Holland's 
 uncertainty whether there was an Egyptian object in 
 the room, or only ornaments of an Egyptian pattern. 
 In fact, there were both; Mrs. Forbes states that the 
 most conspicuous and distinctive object in the room is a 
 large Cairene screen which has the regular Egyptian 
 pattern work in dark wood. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall, of course, was not in the room. There 
 were two ladies in the house besides Mrs. Forbes ; one of 
 them wore a conspicuously brown dress — brown tweed, 
 brown shoes and stockings. They had breakfasted at a 
 little after eight. 
 
 Such was the prelude to the real experiments. The
 
 140 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 significance of Mrs. Holland being able to obtain an 
 impression about the surroundings of a stranger through 
 an "article " — letter or ring — sent by an acquaintance of 
 that stranger, has been spoken about. Moreover, as 
 Mrs. Verrall had never seen the brown lady when Mrs. 
 Holland described her, it can be established beyond the 
 shade of a doubt that the impression was not due to 
 telepathy, X but presents an uncommonly clear instance of 
 clairvoyance by means of an intermediary. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's first script written while holding 
 Mrs. Verrall's ring consisted of a series of impressions 
 more or less veridical, interspersed with reflections. To 
 the ring itself the following seems to refer : 
 
 March lyth, 1906. 
 
 " It dates from more than twenty years ago One of 
 
 the first among the wedding gifts." 
 
 Both statements, however, may be due to subconscious 
 guessing. The ring had been sent in its original case, 
 marked with the initials of Mrs. Verrall while unmarried ; 
 it had been given to her on her last birthday before her 
 marriage, partly as a birthday and partly as a wedding 
 present. A description of her character followed, but is 
 of course of minor interest after Mrs. Holland had made 
 her acquaintance. 
 
 The most interesting portion of this script, no doubt, 
 are some remarks which seem to apply to the circumstances 
 of Mrs. Forbes. And in a script produced some days 
 later while Mrs. Holland was wearing Mrs. VerraU's ring, 
 there are several things which seem due to impressions 
 about Mrs. Forbes's house, where Mrs. Verrall was now 
 staying. For instance, the following : 
 
 March 21st, 1906. 
 
 " Two windows in the room — one very much smaller than 
 the other — Yes you can see the river. 
 
 " The honeysuckle is all right but the Jap passion flower 
 died in the frost 
 
 " There is gold inlay on the blade — the hilt is very worn — 
 It's in the hall "
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 141 
 
 There are two windows in Mrs. Forbes's drawing-room, 
 one a large bow, the other a small window. There is a 
 stream in the garden whicli can be seen from one of these 
 windows. There is honeysuckle outside the window on 
 the house, and there was a Pyrus Japonica, but all except 
 a small shoot had died. No passion flower. 
 
 On the day when the script was written, Mrs. Verrall 
 asked Mrs. Forbes if she possessed an inlaid musket. 
 Mrs. Forbes said she had an inlaid weapon of another 
 kind, and brought it in from the hall. It was a dagger, 
 part of which was much worn. 
 
 But of course these impressions are less remarkable 
 than the one of March 15th, when Mrs. Verrall was not in 
 the place. Whether they had anything to do with the 
 ring, it is impossible to decide. It must be remembered 
 that they were obtained by Mrs. Holland when writing 
 automatically, that is, in a state which in itself makes 
 the sensitive susceptible of impressions. Moreover, 
 Mrs. Holland was beforehand in touch with Mrs. Verrall, 
 who in this case was the owner of the article. 
 
 The next experiments, however, were made with objects 
 that belonged to Mrs. Forbes, whom Mrs. Holland did not 
 know. Through Miss Johnson a glove was sent her, 
 and while holding it she wrote the following : 
 
 March 315^, 1906. 
 
 " The greenhouse looks neglected now. 
 
 " There is a dull sound like a rushing river some distance 
 away 
 
 " God will forgive thee all but thy despair. 
 
 April 1st, 1906. 
 
 " Lincoln. The bronze is out of place it should be on the 
 shelf again." 
 
 Besides, she saw on the first day in a crystal among 
 other things " a small statuette — not at all clear — of a 
 woman with outstretched arms." She thought it was a 
 Madonna. 
 
 There is a greenhouse opening into Mrs. Forbes's 
 drawing-room. She can hear the noise of a stream at
 
 142 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 night when she leans from her window. The quotation, 
 " God will forgive thee all but thy despair," is from 
 Frederic Myers's poem St. Paul, and Mrs. Forbes had 
 known it since she was twenty and " felt with " it very 
 strongly. 
 
 She had taken a little bronze statuette of Washington 
 to be mended, so it was missing from its place. A 
 statuette pi Victory, with outstretched arms, stands on 
 her writing-table. 
 
 As usual, impressions or remarks of a non-veridical 
 kind were interwoven. To the errors that characterize 
 clairvoyance belongs " Lincoln " instead of Washington. 
 
 On May 15th, Mrs. Holland's script contained, without 
 connection with any article, a description of a man, 
 identified as Mr. Forbes. Details like the following were 
 given : " His right hand is holding his left ankle — 
 inelegant but characteristic — — His eyes have a trick of 
 half shutting when he talks earnestly." Mrs. Verrall 
 testifies to the correctness of the description, saying 
 among other things : " He almost closes his eyes when he 
 
 speaks 1 have certainly seen him hold his left ankle 
 
 in his right hand." 
 
 The concluding experiment consisted in Mrs. Holland 
 receiving, through Miss Johnson, a glove that had been 
 worn by Mrs. Forbes's deceased son, " Talbot," and a 
 Japanese bronze bird which he had kept on his mantel- 
 piece at school. She did not know that the objects 
 came from the same person as the glove sent before. 
 As a matter of fact, she thought that they belonged to 
 Mr. Everard Feilding, whose acquaintance she had made 
 some time before. 
 
 While holding these objects she wrote : 
 
 May 22nd, 1906. 
 
 " In my own room — where the deep green colour predomi- 
 nates — and a trifle becomes a relic " 
 
 The small room in which Mrs. Forbes writes is papered 
 with a deep green colour. In it she had collected all the
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 143 
 
 little possessions of her son. The bronze bird came from 
 the chimney piece there. 
 
 On the next day, at the end of a script which showed 
 no connection with Mrs. Forbes, came the phrases : 
 
 May 2yd, 1906. 
 
 " The Winged Victory, Lime blossoms wait for June — The 
 sleepy bird has waked its way." 
 
 The bronze bird had its head turned round and lying 
 back, as if asleep ; " the sleepy bird " thus seems to 
 indicate that the passage referred to its owner. 
 Mrs. Forbes had given the " winged Victory " of Pompeii 
 to the chapel of her son's school as a memorial of him. 
 
 This last case seems to indicate that the objects are not 
 without influence ; the earlier references to Mrs. Forbes 
 had had nothing to do with her son, save indirectly 
 through allusions to her grief. Miss Johnson suggests 
 that Mrs. Forbes may have thought specially of him 
 after having sent the articles to be psychometrized ; but 
 as her mind was always full of him, this does not seem a 
 sufficient explanation of the coincidence. The objects 
 themselves could tell Mrs. Holland nothing ; moreover, 
 she fancied that they came from Mr. Feilding. 
 
 This opinion, for the rest, had a curious consequence. 
 The script which she produced on May 22nd, while holding 
 Talbot's glove and bird, began as follows : 
 
 " But it should not have been cleaned — 
 
 " It is the wiring — the electric lighting in the John St. 
 house that is dangerous — the terms of the fire insurance too 
 need supervising — Denbigh." 
 
 The first remark of course refers to the glove. But 
 the next sentences are connected with Mr. Feilding, who 
 lived in John Street and was the brother of Lord Denbigh. 
 Mrs. Holland had met him at a dinner, and though she 
 was confident that she had not heard either the address 
 of his house or the name of his brother, it is possible that 
 without consciously noticing she may have heard both 
 things mentioned. But it is not possible that she could 
 know of a matter which Mr. F^'dlding himself did not
 
 144 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 know, but discovered when, in view of her statement, he 
 had the electric system in his house tested — that there 
 was a very serious leakage which might have proved 
 dangerous. As to the fire insurance, Mr. Feilding had 
 lately thought of getting the policies supervised. 
 
 In this case, then, Mrs. Holland had produced veridical 
 statements referring to a person whom she knew slightly 
 and had in mind at the moment, but with whom she was 
 not otherwise connected — unless Miss Johnson's letter 
 that accompanied the objects was " the line." One of 
 these statements, moreover^ referred to something which 
 nobody knew, and must be called clairvoyance in a true 
 sense, if it were permissible to disregard the possibility 
 that it was the thought of the fire insurance which led up 
 to it, and that it was only by chance that it coincided 
 with a real fact. 
 
 The last incident has, of course, nothing to do with the 
 possible influence of articles. But as Mrs. Holland's 
 impressions are obtained while she is writing automatically, 
 there is, as intimated above, no reason why they should 
 refer only to persons connected with the objects. These 
 may be one of the sources of her impressions, but nothing 
 more. -^ 
 
 Miss Johnson, who does not believe in psychometry, 
 points out that the veridical statements in Mrs. Holland's 
 script " had little or nothing to do with the past history 
 of the objects, but were concerned rather with the past 
 or present doings or surroundings of their owners." 
 This is true, but quite consistent with what psychome- 
 trists themselves believe that articles can effect — namely, 
 give impressions about the owners and their circumstances ; 
 they can sometimes tell whether the object has had more 
 than one owner, but that is of course the same thing. 
 
 Furthermore, Miss Johnson insists that the whole series 
 of experiments "is of just the same character as the 
 writings produced without any such objects," and that 
 the veridical statements " point far more to telepathy
 
 THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTS 145 
 
 from Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Forbes, or Mr. Feilding than to 
 any influence emanating from the objects." 
 
 As regards the first point, I believe, as said above, that 
 at least Talbot Forbes's objects had some influence. But 
 the boundary is no doubt floating when the would-be 
 psychometrist is beforehand in touch with the owners of 
 the articles, as Mrs. Holland was with Mrs. Forbes already 
 through Mrs. Verrall. Pure psychometry we cannot 
 expect to find unless the object belongs to some one with 
 whom the psychic is not otherwise connected, and even 
 then the statements ought not to be given through 
 automatic writing. 
 
 But even if it be in the above cases unjustifiable to 
 ascribe the results to the objects, it would be wholly 
 misleading to ascribe them to telepathy. The statements 
 point to clairvoyant impressions about the persons 
 concerned ; they were not agents, but, no doubt, as passive 
 as the objects themselves. 
 
 CD.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 
 
 Meanwhile, in February, 1906, there had begun a 
 new series of experiments of the same type as in 
 the preceding spring ; on a certain day of the week, 
 Wednesday, Mrs. Holland and Mrs. Verrall were both to try 
 to get automatic script. The result was, as in 1905, divers 
 supernormal allusions to the circumstances of the writer's 
 co-experimenter. Besides, in a far higher degree than in 
 the preceding year, the script of one automatist, usually 
 Mrs, Holland's, gave a sort of reflex of something which 
 the other had produced. The same can in 1905 only be 
 said with certainty to have happened once, namely when 
 the notes in Mrs, Verrall's script of March 15th and 19th 
 were reflected in Mrs. Holland's of March 22nd, 
 
 Miss Johnson distinguishes sharply between the two 
 types : those in which one automatist refers to events 
 happening to the other, or to some feature in her sur- 
 roundings, and those in which references to the same topic 
 occur in the scripts of both writers. It is to the latter 
 type only that she applies the term cross-correspon- 
 dence, 
 
 I shall in the following dwell exclusively on this type, 
 which got to play a very important part in the later 
 experimenting, and review all cases from this first period 
 of its existence. 
 
 In an ordinary sense it was hardly of any consequence 
 that the two automatists now knew each other ; nothing 
 indicates that the cross-correspondences were a result of 
 their thoughts running along the same lines. On the 
 other hand, the supernormal rapport between them had 
 no doubt grown stronger with their personal acquaintance.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 147 
 
 Perhaps, also, the circumstance that they desired their 
 writings to correspond may have strengthened the rapport. 
 That they were animated by such a desire is seen from 
 Mrs. Verrall's script of February 19th, 1906 : " When 
 you see the same in the other scripts with your own eyes, 
 you will have belief in my words " ; and from a letter 
 to her of April 17th from Mrs. Holland, who says that 
 she cannot help believing that they will be " tuned into 
 accord some day and register the same messages." They 
 believed that such a correspondence would testify to the 
 scripts originating from Myers or other spirits. 
 
 The first series of experiments covered the seven 
 weeks from February 28th to April nth. Of the writings 
 which showed some correspondence, those of Mrs. Verrall 
 generally preceded those of Mrs. Holland, and were not 
 always written on a Wednesday. This, on the contrary, 
 was always the case with Mrs. Holland's script, and on 
 all of the seven Wednesdays something occurred in it 
 which at any rate mighi be taken to refer to something 
 written by Mrs. Verrall. Most often, however, the script 
 contained a quantity of other matter. I quote only the 
 most necessary passages, beginning always with the script 
 of Mrs. Holland. 
 
 I. Electra. 
 
 February 28th, 1906, 2 p.m. 
 
 " No not in the Electra. M. will know better." 
 
 " M " stands for Margaret, i.e., Mrs. Verrall. The 
 
 latter' s script of the preceding weeks contained the 
 
 following : 
 
 February gth, 1906. 
 
 " Tell her this [in Greek :] Be sorrow sorrow spoken, but 
 let the good prevail 
 
 February 20th, 1906. 
 
 " Get her to write [in Greek :] sorrow sorrow ■ 
 
 February 2&h, 1906, 11. 15 p.m. 
 
 " [In Greek :] Be sorrow sorrow spoken, but let the good 
 prevail." 
 
 The script from the day set off for experimenting, 
 
 L 2
 
 148 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 February 28th, is hardly more than a repetition of the 
 preceding ones. Mrs. Holland's remark about " Electra " 
 may be due to the other's Greek quotation. This comes 
 from ^schylus' Agamemnon, but Mrs. Holland's impres- 
 sion had evidently not got beyond " Greek tragedy," and 
 she could do no more than indicate this impression through 
 her rejection of the Electra. That just this tragedy was 
 mentioned i^ no doubt accounted for by the circumstance 
 that Euripides' Electra was being performed in London 
 at about this time. The addition about " M " who 
 would know better, perhaps points to a subconscious 
 recognition of the source of the impression ; if so, it 
 corresponds to Mrs. Verrall's .former remarks about her 
 husband during his experiment. But it may, of course, 
 be due solely to Mrs. Holland's preoccupation with her 
 co-experimenter. 
 
 2. Ave Roma. 
 
 March 'jth, 1906. 
 
 " Not enough bulbs — and it's a pity the quincetree has 
 suffered so. 
 
 " Ave Roma immortalis [Hail immortal Rome]. How 
 could I make it any clearer without giving her the clue ? 
 
 " How cold it was that winter — Even snow in Rome — we 
 might have stayed at home for that — 
 
 " The sunshine has brought out the bees before the tulips 
 are ready for them — " 
 
 It is the passage Ave Roma immortalis that is important 
 in this script. The context makes it probable that it has 
 to do with Mrs. Verrall ; on March 7th the latter went to 
 the Botanical Gardens to see the bulbs, because on that 
 morning her own garden was full of bees, and she knew 
 bees meant open bulbs. About this Mrs. Holland thus 
 seems to have caught an impression, and " Ave Roma " 
 perhaps has come along with it. The allusion to " snow 
 in Rome " is no doubt owing to her knowledge that Myers 
 died in Rome in the month of January ; it is a memory 
 that emerges at the mention of Rome.^ 
 
 1 Dr. Maxwell, in his above-mentioned paper, contends that " Ave 
 Ronaa," on the contrary, is due to the thought of Myers's death in 
 Rome. But then there is no ground for the emergence of this thought.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 149 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's corresponding writings are the following : 
 
 March 2nd, 1906. 
 
 " [In Latin :] Not with such help will you find what you 
 want ; not with such help, nor with those defenders of yours 
 
 First among his peers, himself not unmindful of his name ; 
 
 with him a brother related in feeling, though not in blood. 
 Both these will send a word to you through another woman. 
 After some days you will easily understand what I say. 
 
 March /[fh, 1906. 
 
 " Pagan and pope. The Stoic persecutor and the Christian. 
 Gregory not Basil's friend ought to be a clue but you have it 
 not quite right. 
 
 " Pagan and Pope and Reformer all enemies as you think. 
 [In Latin .•] The cross has a meaning. The cross-bearer who 
 one day is borne. [In English .•] The standard-bearer is the 
 hnk. 
 
 March 5th, 1906. 
 
 " [In Latin :] The club-bearer [or key-bearer] with the 
 lion's skin already well described before this in the writings. 
 Some things are to be corrected. [In English :] Ask your hus- 
 band, he knows it well." 
 
 The script of March 2nd, of course, refers to Mrs. 
 Holland and to the much desired cross-correspondence, 
 " the word to be sent through another woman." But 
 it is not clear who is meant by " Primus inter pares," the 
 first among his peers, or by the brother related in feeling 
 though not in blood. If the script had stood alone, it 
 would have been natural to guess that the expression 
 was due to a conception of Myers and Gurney as the 
 brethren who would send the word ; very probably 
 Mrs. Verrall might subconsciously take Primus inter pares 
 to mean Myers. But the waking Mrs. Verrall made no 
 such conjecture, and as she did not know to whom the 
 description referred, she asked her husband about it. 
 Dr. Verrall told her that the Pope is thus described, 
 adding, when his wife had read the script for him, that 
 he saw what it was driving at. It reminded him of — 
 what he did not, however, mention until March nth — 
 Raphael's famous picture of Attila, terrified by the vision 
 of St. Peter and St. Paul, when meeting Pope Leo, who 
 went out to save Rome from the onslaught of the Huns.
 
 150 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The preceding quotation from the Mneid, which refers 
 to the defence of Troy against the invading Greeks,^ had 
 contributed to recall the picture to his mind, doubtless, 
 he says, only because he was specially familiar with it. 
 
 In fact, the designation " Primus inter pares," in con- 
 nection with the phrase about the name which might 
 suggest Leo (lion), seems to be the only thing that can 
 lead to the^ supposition that the script is alluding to 
 Raphael's picture. It is, for instance, quite uncertain to 
 whom in that case the talk about the two brethren refers. 
 When the Pope is one of them, it cannot be to the two 
 apostles. 
 
 The script of March 4th, however, carried the matter 
 a great step further. It not only expressed the idea of 
 the Pope which Mrs, Verrall might have got normally 
 from the conversation with her husband, but it had also 
 got hold of the Pagan. To be sure, it is a pagan Emperor 
 (the Stoic persecutor — Marcus Aurelius) it seems to allude 
 to; but when it has been reminded through him of another 
 persecutor (Julian Apostata), and thus has reached 
 Gregory (Nazianzen), it protests against its own wan- 
 derings, and with an energetic " not Basil's friend," reverts 
 to the thought about the Pope : " Gregory ought to be a 
 clue." Through all this groping it arrives at something 
 which really points to Raphael's picture, the cross-bearer 
 and the standard-bearer. In the script of March 5th, 
 this leads to the club-bearer with the lion's skin, i.e., 
 Hercules, which seems to be a confused result of the 
 attempt to get hold of the key-bearer Leo. 
 
 " Ask your husband, he knows it well," the script 
 concludes. One thing with another indicates that it is 
 his thoughts about the picture which constitute the basis 
 of the writings of March 4th and 5th. In this wise the 
 script used to refer to him in the one-horse dawn case ; 
 and his wife's faculty to obtain impressions from him 
 
 * The words are used by Hecuba when she sees the old Priam pre- 
 paring himself for the defence. Has Mrs. Verrall subconsciously made 
 a leap from Priamus to Primus .^
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 151 
 
 which he had not intended to transmit was sufficiently 
 proved through the same case. 
 
 The script of March 4th, which Mrs. Holland's script 
 of March 7th perhaps reflects, has thus an entirely human 
 source. Of course, there is also the possibility that it is 
 Dr. Verrall's thought, and not the script of his wife, that 
 has influenced Mrs. Holland ; but it is in this connection 
 of less interest. The mysterious addition in Mrs. Holland's 
 script : " How could I make it any clearer without giving 
 her the clue ? " is perhaps of the same kind as the various 
 remarks about clues in Mrs. Verrall's writings, which 
 originally expressed her subconscious sensation of groping 
 her way, but which gradually became rather stereotyped. 
 Or perhaps it was part of the impression received from 
 Mrs. Verrall.^ A tendency to mystification is, at any rate, 
 characteristic of Mrs. Holland's own automatic writing ; 
 in the script produced on the next day for experimenting 
 she speaks of the necessity of secretiveness in a connection 
 where it is absolutely meaningless. 
 
 3. RoDEN Noel. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's first contribution to the next cross- 
 correspondence was given in a script that was not 
 produced on the day for experimenting, but on a 
 Sunday : 
 
 March nth, 1906. 
 
 "This is for A.W. [Verrall]. Ask him what the date 
 May 26th 1894 meant to him— to me — and to F.W.H. 
 [Myers]. I do not think they will find it hard to recall but 
 if so — let them ask Nora. 
 
 " We no more solve the riddle of Death by dying than we 
 
 solve the problem of Life by being born I seek still I 
 
 am not oppressed with the desire that animates some of us 
 to share our knowledge or optimism with you all before the 
 time. You know who feels like that but I am content that 
 you should wait " 
 
 1 In the middle of April, 1906, Mrs. Holland saw some proofs of 
 Mrs. Verrall's report on her own script. Before this she had seen a 
 few of her writings, but hardly so much that she can have learned her 
 mode of speech in that way.
 
 152 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 On the ensuing Wednesda,y she wrote : 
 
 March 14th, 1906. 
 
 " Eighteen fifteen four five fourteen — Fourteen fifteen five 
 twelve — Not to be taken as they stand. See Rev. 13-18 — 
 but only the central 8 words not the whole passage — It does 
 not do to be clearer under existing circumstances .... 
 
 " H.S. [in monogram] R.N. [in monogram] June ist 1881 (?) 
 Surely you will not need to ask about that . . . ." 
 
 The script of March nth purports to come from 
 Professor Sidgwick ; " Nora " is Mrs. Sidgwick. The 
 date is that of the death of his friend, the poet Roden 
 Noel. The numbers in the script of March 14th con- 
 stitute his name when read as letters. The eight central 
 words in Revelation, xiii., 18, are " for it is the number of 
 a man." H.S. and R.N., of course, stand for Henry 
 Sidgwick and Roden Noel. The date has found no 
 interpretation. 
 
 Mrs. Holland had recently, before March nth, in the 
 Westminster Gazette and the Daily Chronicle, read two 
 reviews of the Memoir of Professor Sidgwick ; one of 
 these contained extracts from a letter by him to Frederic 
 Myers, which, as Miss Johnson points out, is clearly the 
 basis of the passage in the script that the writer is not 
 animated by a desire to share his knowledge of life after 
 death with the living. It is, then, safe to assume that 
 the reading of these reviews has given the main impulse 
 to the script. But as regards Roden Noel, the cause must 
 be sought elsewhere, as his friendship with Professor 
 Sidgwick, though mentioned in the Memoir, was not 
 alluded to in the reviews. 
 
 The Memoir had appeared on February 27th, 1906, and 
 Mrs. Verrall had been highly interested in its mention of 
 two matters which seemed to have been referred to in her 
 ovm script. One of these was a conversation between 
 Professor Sidgwick and Sir George Trevelyan, the other 
 was his opinion, expressed in a letter to Roden Noel, that 
 hope of life after death is better than certainty. In 
 neither of the two cases, however, were the references in 
 her script congruent with the facts ; in all probability
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 153 
 
 they were due to cryptomnesia ; Mrs. Verrall might very 
 well have heard the utterances, upon which her script is 
 based, from the living Professor Sidgwick. While her 
 thoughts were occupied with this matter, she automati- 
 cally wrote the following verse : 
 
 March jth, 1906. 
 
 " Tintagel and the sea that moaned in pain 
 
 And Arthur's mount uplifted from the plain 
 
 And crowding towers of quaint fantastic shape 
 
 Ah ! never more to see 
 
 The ripples dance 
 
 Nor hear again the roar 
 
 On smitten shore 
 
 Where the huge wave rolls on 
 
 Amid the salt and savour of the sea." 
 
 The verse bears much resemblance to Roden Noel's 
 poem Tintagel. It was Miss Johnson who, at a much 
 later date, discovered this circumstance. Mrs. Verrall 
 did not think that she had ever read the poem, and Mrs. 
 Holland, who saw the script before March nth, had no 
 conscious thought of connecting it with Roden Noel ; as 
 far as she remembered she had only read a few of his 
 poems in a collection of English verse. 
 
 Be that as it may, it seems all but certain that Mrs. 
 Holland has got her impression about him either from 
 Mrs. Verrall's script, by means of subconscious recognition 
 of his verse, or else supernormally owing to her co-experi- 
 menter's preoccupation with him. The date of his death 
 is probably due to latent memory ; it is mentioned in his 
 Collected Poems, published in 1902 ; a description of him 
 in her script of March 28th, and divers other particulars, 
 point to this book, which contains his picture ; thus it is 
 impossible to disregard the possibility of her having seen 
 it in passing, without consciously remembering. That 
 she connects him with Professor Sidgwick is, however, a 
 circumstance indicative of an impression received from 
 Mrs. Verrall. But what her script intimates about 
 similar relations to Dr. Verrall and Frederic Myers is 
 imagination ; their acquaintance with Roden Noel was
 
 154 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 slight, and the date of his death could not mean very 
 much to them. 
 
 As regards the remark referring to the cryptogram on 
 March 14th : "It does not do to be clearer under existing 
 circumstances," it looks as if the automatist played at 
 hide and seek with herself. It must be an easy matter to 
 see what the numbers stood for. As will be seen later, 
 Miss Johnson took the corresponding remark in the Ave 
 Roma case to mean that Mrs. Verrall must remain ignorant 
 of the meaning of her own script to prevent her from 
 " telepathing " it to her co-experimenter ; but it is 
 evident that a similar reason cannot in this case be 
 brought forward with regard to Mrs. Holland. 
 
 4. POSILIPO. 
 
 March 21st, 1906, 10.10 p.m. 
 
 " M [argaret] saw a real place that last time but she has 
 never seen the place itself and did not describe it very clearly." 
 
 On the same day at 11 p.m., Mrs. Verrall wrote : 
 
 " Posilippo [sic] and a terrace there — blue sea beyond the 
 marble balustrade. No I can see no more here." 
 
 As far as this cross-correspondence is more than a 
 chance coincidence, it presents the peculiarity that Mrs. 
 Holland's script apparently reflects something which Mrs. 
 Verrall had not yet written. It is conceivable that the 
 latter has before the production of her script had a sub- 
 conscious impression of the described place, and that it 
 is this impression which has influenced Mrs. Holland. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had never been to Posilipo or Naples. On 
 looking in a guide-book, she found that there were views 
 from an inn and a terrace, but could find no marble 
 balustrade. At any rate, her description is too vague for 
 identification. 
 
 5. Fawcett. 
 
 The cross-correspondence on the two next Wednesdays, 
 on March 28th and April 4th, is very insignificant. Mrs. 
 Holland's script contained on both occasions allusions to
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 155 
 
 Henry Fawcett, the blind Postmaster-General, no doubt 
 in consequence of his associations with Salisbury, near 
 which town she was then staying. Commingled with 
 these were, on April 4th, some correct details connected 
 with Mrs. Verrall's relations of the name of Fawcett. 
 The correspondence with Mrs. Verrall's script is confined 
 to the circumstance that the latter had on March 20th 
 obtained in planchette-writing what she took to be 
 allusions to members of that family ; Mrs. Holland knew, 
 however, that Fawcett was the name of her mother's 
 cousin. The only possibly supernormal thing is therefore 
 the said details : " F. a blue jewel — set in a ring — or else 
 in a brooch ; " that may refer to a brooch with a blue stone 
 which Mrs. Verrall's sister Fanny had inherited from a 
 Mrs. Fawcett. The remark was followed by a reference 
 to Mrs. Verrall : " Tell Margaret not to loose another 
 earring." 
 
 6. Eheu Fugaces. 
 
 April nth, igo6, 11.30 p.m. 
 
 " A great black shadow and the sound of a wailing wind — 
 Eheu fugaces." 
 
 Half an hour earlier Mrs. Verrall had written : 
 
 " Bells and a whip, and snow upon the ground bright 
 sunshine and hard frost — they drive together over frozen 
 roads. I see their backs only, fair hair under the cap. Maloja 
 or near the Maloja. 7 years ago Something fluttered and was 
 gone — and the black bat night has flown 
 
 " That has been repeated — There is an effort to have the 
 same words this time. On bat's wings rides Queen Mab." 
 
 The few lines in Mrs. Holland's script may perhaps be 
 said to reproduce the ideas from that of Mrs. Verrall — 
 the black shadow corresponds to the latter part of her 
 script, the famous Horatian words to the description of 
 the flight. That there are two coincidences makes it 
 less possible to ascribe them to chance. Moreover, it is 
 perhaps in this case as in that of Ave Roma the thought 
 of Mrs. Verrall that makes Mrs. Holland, who is no 
 Latinist, quote familiar phrases from that language.
 
 156 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 But this cannot be ascribed to a supernormal impression, 
 as Mrs. Holland was at that time no longer in ignorance 
 about her co-operator. 
 
 In June, 1906, Mrs. Holland departed for India, but 
 continued by appointment as far as possible to try for 
 automatic script every Wednesday, while Mrs. Verrall 
 on her side^did the same. As regards Mrs. Holland, the 
 first two cross-correspondences occurred, however, in 
 script that had been produced on other days of the week. 
 A few times in the period to be dealt with in the sequel, 
 June — October, 1906, Mrs. Holland's script reflects as 
 in the preceding spring something that had beforehand 
 appeared in that of Mrs. Verrall ; once it seems due to an 
 impression from Miss Helen Verrall, who also wrote 
 automatically. But at any rate in two cases it was 
 Mrs. Holland's script that came first. Here they will be 
 quoted with her script first in all cases : 
 
 7. Janiculum. 
 
 June 24th, 1906 {Sunday). 
 
 " The jagged outline of the Janiculum black against the 
 sunset sky. The final renouncement of the summit of belief 
 
 To you the half and . . . tion of the sentence — the sense 
 
 to be revealed." 
 
 On Wednesday, June 20th, Mrs. Verrall, who was then 
 staying in Switzerland, had written as follows : 
 
 " Sun on high summits — mist veils — then reveals the great 
 Eternities. The twin Eternities afar. 
 
 " The upstanding white majestic dome 
 On buttress borne on high 
 The cloudcapped towers of royal Rome 
 Against the Italian sky. 
 " But I have not made her see the point of union between 
 the mountain and St. Peter's rock. Upon this rock Super 
 hanc petram Leave it now." 
 
 " The jagged outline of the Janiculum black against 
 the sunset sky " seems a very clear reflex of Mrs. Verrall's 
 " cloudcapped towers of royal Rome against the Italian
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 157 
 
 sky." That Mrs. Verrall's script is influenced by her 
 surroundings — " partly inspired by the scenery of her 
 surroundings," Miss Johnson admits — can hardly be 
 disputed. 
 
 The peculiar allusions in both scripts to the co-operation 
 of the other are connected with a theory of Miss Johnson's 
 which will be mentioned below. There is nothing super- 
 normal in them, and nothing remarkable in their appear- 
 ance through both automatists, seeing that Miss Johnson 
 had communicated her idea to both before Mrs. Holland's 
 departure for India. 
 
 8. Yellow. 
 
 August 6th, 1906 {Monday). 
 " y e 1 o [scribbles] 
 " yellow ivory." 
 
 These words were written towards the end of a long 
 piece of script and marked off from the rest by a space 
 and a change in the handwriting. On Wednesday, 
 August 8th, Mrs. Verrall wrote : 
 
 " I have done it to night y yellow is the written word 
 yellow 
 yellow 
 " Say only yellow " 
 
 This case differs in several points from all earlier ones. 
 Mrs. Holland's script comes first, but is unconnected 
 with what goes before, and cannot be traced back to her 
 surroundings or train of thought, as was most often the 
 case with that of Mrs. Verrall, Furthermore, the cross- 
 correspondence is this time quite undeniable. One 
 script is not a reflex of the other, but both give exactly 
 the same, though not more than a single word. 
 
 Simultaneously with her mother, and sitting in the 
 same room, Miss Helen Verrall wrote : 
 
 " Camomile and resin the prescription is old on yellow paper 
 in a box with a sweet scent."
 
 158 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 9. Franz Joseph. 
 
 September 12th, 1906. 
 
 " Franz Joseph— Sept 13th to 25th — a rally on the 21st 
 followed by a complete and unlooked for collapse — Hepatic 
 complications — " 
 
 This time it was once more Mrs. Holland's script that 
 came first ; but the cause of it was quite evidently the 
 circumstance that she had on the same day read in a 
 paper about the illness of the Emperor Franz Joseph. 
 On September 20th Mrs. Verrall, who had been unable to 
 write on Wednesday, September 19th, wrote with her 
 attention fixed upon Mrs. Holland as follows : 
 
 " Now say this Mrs. [Holland] had the warning more than 
 
 a week ago but may not have understood what was meant 
 
 surely there was a note of the day Sept. 21 — or 21st of some 
 month was named. 
 
 " But there is another message now for you Hildesheim, 
 
 Klosterli that is not right but it is a German name that 
 
 is wanted . . . Hildesbruder is more like Sept. 21 is a date 
 something has been hindered for this day " 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that this script is due to a 
 supernormal impression of Mrs. Holland's script of 
 September 12th ; there are correspondences both with 
 regard to " the warning," the date September 21st, and 
 the German name ; " Hildesbruder " is perhaps an 
 attempt at Hapsburger. That Mrs. Holland had the 
 warning " more than a week ago " (i.e., on the preceding 
 Wednesday ?) is probably a subconscious guess. It 
 turned out, however, to be nothing supernormal in this 
 warning ; September 21st brought neither a rally nor a 
 collapse, nor anything remarkable at all. Mrs. Verrall's 
 impression originated from a fancy of Mrs. Holland's. 
 
 10. Monks. 
 
 October 8th, 1906 (Monday). 
 
 " Ask his daughter about the dream — Grey monks of long 
 ago—" 
 
 In this case it seems to be from Miss Helen Verrall that
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 159 
 
 Mrs. Holland had received an impression. The former 
 had on October 6th, away from home, written as follows : 
 
 " Remember the word and the date. Carthusians two and 
 two the long black robes and the candles and the images the 
 bright sun and the gaping crowd she will remember " 
 
 It is true that she speaks of black robes, and of Car- 
 thusians that are white ; thus the correspondence with 
 Mrs. Holland's grey monks is not very exact. But the 
 words, " Ask his daughter," by whom Mrs. Holland 
 doubtless means Dr. Verrall's daughter, indicate that she 
 subconsciously feels that the impression emanates from 
 Miss Verrall. Of course, Mrs. Holland knew that she 
 was an automatic writer. 
 
 On Wednesday, October loth, Mrs. Verrall, without 
 having seen her daughter's script, wrote : 
 
 " See Savonarola all wrapped in black in threes and threes 
 they entered till the place was full " 
 
 This, too, seems a reflex from Miss Verrall's description, 
 the original of which is perhaps a procession with Savo- 
 narola, described in Romola. 
 
 II. Procession. 
 October lyth, igo6. 
 
 " The men with staves head the procession — the lictors — 
 About half way comes the litter — too heavy for the slaves 
 that bear it — Garlands — but not of triumph 
 
 " The noonday sun has dimmed the torches flare." 
 
 On Wednesday, October 3rd, Mrs. Verrall had written 
 the following script, evidently owing to the two circum- 
 stances that the husband of Mrs. Forbes was buried on 
 the same day at midday, as she knew, and that she was 
 herself much occupied by the arrangement of the proces- 
 sion in the EumenidcB, which was to be played by students 
 in Cambridge : 
 
 " The sun shone in the north at midday. [In Greek ;] Sing 
 songs of good omen, all of you. [In English ;] The propomps 
 wave their torches 
 
 " Perishing like the grass which to-day is and to-morrow 
 is not."
 
 i6o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The Greek burden, as well as the term " propomps," 
 are from the Eumenidce. 
 
 It is interesting to see that Mrs. Holland in her script 
 has caught both impressions from Mrs. Verrall : her pro- 
 cession seems a funeral procession. Even the allusion to 
 the time of day has been reflected : " the noonday sun 
 has dimmed the torches flare." 
 
 12. Blue Flower. 
 
 October 24th, 1906. 
 
 " [Drawing of a flower] The Blue Flower." 
 
 This was written in a line by itself and in a rather 
 peculiar hand. On the same day Mrs. Verrall wrote : 
 
 " The blue is to be preferred Blue is her colour 
 
 " Where others see the flowers blue 
 
 " the misty blue veiled flower. Let him that has eyes see." 
 
 There is some resemblance between this cross-corre- 
 spondence and that of yellow, and both of them are different 
 from all the rest. One script is not a vague reflex of the 
 other, but they give both clearly the same word or 
 words. 
 
 The above cross-correspondences undoubtedly prove 
 that the faculty of the two automatists to receive impres- 
 sions from each other had reached a considerable height. 
 There was some difference between them ; Mrs. HoUand 
 seemed to be the best percipient ; at any rate, the corre- 
 spondences were more often due to her obtaining an impres- 
 sion from Mrs. Verrall than the reverse ; but this is only 
 a difference in degree, and not in kind. The Franz 
 Joseph case, for instance, proves that Mrs. Verrall possesses 
 the same faculty. 
 
 Miss Johnson, however, saw in these correspondences 
 something far more important than a proof of supernormal 
 human faculty. In every single case, to be sure, she saw 
 clearly what might be alleged in favour of the latter 
 conception ; in the Ave Roma case, for instance, she did
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES i6i 
 
 not consider it impossible that Mrs. Holland might have 
 received the idea telepathically from Dr. Verrall, as in 
 other cases from Mrs. Verrall herself. But she rejected 
 this conception because she discerned behind the in- 
 dividual cross-correspondences a common plan which it 
 seemed impossible to ascribe to any of the automatists. 
 She had been much struck by the circumstance that the 
 corresponding scripts did not simply reproduce but, as it 
 were, completed each other. When Mrs. Verrall quoted 
 from Agamemnon, Mrs. Holland wrote : " not in the 
 Electra." When one alluded to Pope Leo's meeting with 
 Attila, the other exclaimed : " Ave Roma immortalis." 
 Mrs. Verrall imitates Roden Noel's Tintagel, Mrs. Holland 
 produces in a cryptogram the name of the poet. Mrs. 
 Verrall describes a flight, Mrs. Holland ejaculates : 
 " Eheu fugaces ! " Miss Johnson thought it possible 
 that she had found the clue to this phenomenon. The 
 occurrence of the same word or the same phrase in both 
 scripts might, she argued, be explained by telepathy from 
 one automatist to the other ; but it would be much more 
 difficult to suppose that the perception of one fragment 
 could lead to the production of another fragment which 
 could only " after careful comparison be seen to be related 
 to the first." So the plan of complementary correspon- 
 dences had been invented ; by this method the automa- 
 tists were prevented from communicating telepathically 
 with each other, and the experimenters from thinking 
 that they did so. But such a plan must needs be an 
 element imported from outside ; its existence proved that 
 of the controls. 
 
 Against this hypothesis important objections have long 
 ago been raised. Thus Professor A. C, Pigou,^ pointing 
 among other things to the parallel of Dr. Verrall's Greek 
 experiment, has contended that the apparent complemen- 
 tariness of the cross-correspondences is owing, so to speak, 
 to shots that have not hit the mark. " H we compare 
 
 ' " Psychical Research and Survival after Bodily DQd^ih.," Proceedings 
 S.P.R., Vol. XXIII., pp. 286—303. 
 
 CD. M
 
 i62 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 the word aimed at to the bull of a target," he says, " it is 
 in a high degree probable that attempts to hit the bull 
 would result in shots scattered widely round it." Thus 
 it had fared with Dr. Verrall's sentence ; in spite of the 
 many attempts, the " one-horse dawn " was never 
 attained. Similarly, Miss Miles's thought of Sphinx had 
 produced Luxor in Egypt instead. " Mildly complemen- 
 tary correspondences are likely to result from attempts at 
 simple cori'espondences." 
 
 Professor Pigou is no doubt right as regards his simile. 
 When Mrs. Verrall, under the influence of her husband, 
 wrote cock instead of dawn, or when Miss Ramsden 
 obtained the impression of an orange, while Miss Miles 
 thought of a lamp-globe like a fire-ball, the result may be 
 compared to that of a bad shot. But the application of 
 the simile to the cross-correspondences between Mrs. 
 Verrall and Mrs. Holland is not fully justifiable. In 
 Dr. Verrall's experiment there was an outside intelligence 
 at work. The cross-correspondences between his wife 
 and Mrs. Holland could only be compared to that case if 
 one of the automatists had purposely tried to influence 
 the other. Such attempts had been made in 1905, but 
 with no result whatever. In the above quoted experi- 
 ments both parts^were without conscious influence on the 
 production of the script of her co-operator. The com- 
 parison with the bad shot halts, because there is no one 
 who shoots. 
 
 On the other hand, there is an undeniable resemblance 
 between the faculty of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland to 
 produce " complementary correspondences," and that 
 displayed by the former during her husband's experiment 
 to perceive things which he had not intended to transmit. 
 No doubt his attempt to influence her had created a 
 special receptiveness in her with regard to him, and like- 
 wise it is probable that the constant experimenting made 
 Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland specially sensitive towards 
 each other. This, however, only means that they were 
 in rapport, or touch, with each other. But Professor
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 163 
 
 Pigou's simile may apply to the resulting correspondences 
 as far as there was, of course, a greater chance of catching 
 an impression of something or other in the script of the co- 
 operator, or of her doings and surroundings, than there 
 would be of reproducing a particular word, or of mention- 
 ing particular things. To obtain through the plan of 
 complementary correspondences that which Miss Johnson 
 had in mind, its execution must in fact hit some bull. 
 The correspondence ought, for instance, to consist in each 
 automatist writing fragments of a sentence which could 
 only be comprehended when brought together. The 
 relation of the two scripts to each other ought not to be so 
 distant that it could only, as Miss Johnson writes, be seen 
 after careful comparison. So vague a correspondence is 
 not complementary, but simply the result of the vagueness 
 of the impression. 
 
 A concurrent reason for Miss Johnson, when shaping 
 her theory on cross-correspondences, was, however, the 
 circumstance that the writings themselves seemed, in her 
 opinion, to point to it. From the beginning Mrs. Verrall's 
 script had contained allusions to its own incompleteness 
 and mysteriousness. Sometimes it had referred to Mrs. 
 Forbes as the one who ought to complete it — " fill the 
 gaps " as it was once called — and the products of this lady 
 had in fact contained things that corresponded to those 
 of Mrs. Verrall. In Mrs. Holland's script, too, allusions 
 to the desirability of a co-operator occurred at an early 
 date. At the same time it says that " thought-trans- 
 ference would make another difficulty," and by so saying 
 " recognizes that what is desired is to transcend telepathy 
 between the living." Against this background is, in Miss 
 Johnson's opinion, the series of cross-correspondences 
 between Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland to be seen. But, 
 above all, utterances that indicate a plan are connected 
 with the correspondences themselves. The necessity of 
 secretiveness is alluded to when it is said for instance in 
 the Ave Roma case : " How could I make it any clearer 
 without giving her the clue ? " And in a great many 
 
 M 2
 
 i64 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 cases the cross-correspondence is accompanied by some 
 remark that calls the attention to its being a cross- 
 correspondence — so to speak signalizes it as such a one. 
 It is quite impossible, Miss Johnson argues, that the 
 automatists themselves, while writing, could suspect this, 
 and she regards it perhaps as the most decisive reason for 
 assuming the co-operation ot an outside intelligence. 
 
 On closer inspection, Miss Johnson's chain of argument 
 is, however, hardly strong enough to hold her theory. 
 
 The script of Mrs. Verrall, no doubt, especially in the 
 beginning, contained a great many remarks about its own 
 incompleteness ; there is much talk about " weaving 
 together," and " superposing one thing on another to 
 make the meaning clear " ; one piece of writing does not 
 in itself suffice. But all these utterances refer to Mrs. 
 Verrall herself ; it is her own script which is b3^ and by to 
 supply what is wanting. " Oh, if you cannot weave 
 together pertinaciously, write all you know," it says on 
 March 21st, 1901 ; and on March 28th : " What you have 
 done is always dissociated ; improve it by denying folds, 
 weave together, weave together always " ; "to one 
 superposing certain things on certain things, everything 
 is clear " (March 31st) ; " why do you not superpose all 
 in a bundle and f)erceive the truth " (April 4th). That it 
 is not the co-operation of another person that is meant, is 
 accentuated when it is said on March 8th, 1901 : " Some 
 day a later part will come, yours [ulterior veniet pars tua], 
 and the final explanation will commend itself to you." 
 And far later still, on July nth, 1905, it runs : " A broken 
 thread can you not mend and the scattered fragments 
 place to perfection you ought to unite the parts." The 
 last phrase is in Latin, and the singular number, debes, 
 proves that it is Mrs. Verrall alone who is addressed. It 
 is the subconscious sensation of the fragmentariness of the 
 productions that underlies all these exclamations. 
 
 In a similar manner, it is the sensation of the 
 mysteriousness of the script that finds vent in the per- 
 petual talk about " clues," or in utterings like the follow-
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 165 
 
 ing : " Explanation is at hand for you and some one 
 else " (August i6th, 1901) ; " in mysteries I weave 
 riddles for you and certain others for whom it is right " 
 (September 28th, 1901). These two phrases no doubt 
 allude to Dr. Verrall, and in the latter at least there is 
 nothing supernormal, seeing that he had at this point 
 given his wife cause to believe that he was at the bottom 
 of some of the riddles. 
 
 In the meantime, Mrs. Verrall had very soon got a co- 
 operator in Mrs. Forbes. The consequence hereof was 
 for one thing this, that her script was filled with allusions 
 to her, and amongst these were, as just mentioned, 
 several that foretold that her writings would complete 
 Mrs. Verrall's own productions. They were often clear 
 enough, as when it is said : " It is not wholly right ; try 
 to understand. Mrs. Forbes has the other words — piece 
 together. Add hers to yours " (October 27th, 1902), or : 
 " You have not understood all — try further. She has 
 had some words incomplete to be added to and pieced and 
 make the clue " (October 31st, 1902). No doubt it was 
 also here the feeling of the script's own incompleteness 
 that found expression. There is nothing that indicates 
 that Mrs. Verrall, consciously or subconsciously, had 
 comprehended the advantages of a complementary 
 correspondence. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Forbes's 
 writings did not in the above cases contain anything 
 whatever of that which the utterances in Mrs. Verrall's 
 script must make her expect. And, as regards the 
 veridical allusions to her doings and surroundings which 
 Mrs. Forbes's writings did contain, we have seen, for 
 instance, through the Symposium case, that a supernormal 
 faculty of obtaining impressions is the one possible 
 interpretation of the phenomenon. 
 
 The next point of support of Miss Johnson's theory were 
 divers remarks in Mrs. Holland's early script. They 
 referred mostly to the loneliness of the automatist ; " one 
 person alone, does so little " ; " the agent {i.e., Mrs. 
 Holland) is all alone and that makes it hard," and the
 
 i66 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 like. They are easily explained by the fact that Mrs. 
 Holland, during her sojourn in India, had no one to whom 
 she could or would speak about her interest in psychical 
 subjects. As to the utterance about thought-transference 
 quoted above, it is so evident a result of Mrs. Holland's 
 own reflections, that it cannot claim any consideration 
 at all. 
 
 In fact, ^it is the remarks connected with the cross- 
 correspondences in the scripts of the two automatists in 
 1906 that have given birth to the theory, and on which 
 Miss Johnson is really resting it. That the cross- corre- 
 spondence is announced by a kind of signal, accompanying 
 those words of the script that correspond to the other 
 script, might indeed look like a remarkable circumstance. 
 But a closer examination of the signals will reduce their 
 importance very much. 
 
 There are, firstly, some cases where " the signal " is so 
 much a part of the cross-correspondence that there 
 would not be any cross-correspondence at all without it, 
 " Not in the Electra " could hardly be connected with 
 a quotation from ^schylus' Agamemnon, if Mrs. Holland's 
 script had not added : " M. will know better " ; in the 
 Fawcett case the slender possibility of " F." representing 
 the sister of Mrs.-Verrall rests on the subsequent mention 
 of " Margaret " ; nay, the Posilipo cross-correspondence 
 consists in Mrs. Holland writing : " M. saw a real place." 
 In these cases, then, Mrs. Verrall is, so to speak, a part of 
 the impression obtained by Mrs. Holland. The same 
 must be said of Miss Helen Verrall when Mrs. Holland, 
 on October 8th, 1906, writes : " Ask his daughter about 
 the dream." As to Miss Verrall writing in the same 
 cross-correspondence : " Remember the word and the 
 date," it is evidently the outcome of the tendency to 
 mysticism which is characteristic of the automatists 
 generally ; in themselves these words have not the 
 slightest meaning. The same applies, as shown above, 
 to the signal in Mrs. Holland's script accompanying the 
 cryptogram on Roden Noel's name : " It does not do
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 167 
 
 to be clearer under existing circumstances " ; as it is 
 only during the writing that the automatist need be 
 mystified, the remark is quite meaningless. Moreover, 
 Mrs. Verrall's Roden Noel script preceded Mrs. Holland's ; 
 thus it was wholly superfluous to prevent the latter 
 from " telepathing " to her. 
 
 The Ave Roma case has also been spoken of before. As 
 a signal, the exclamation in Mrs. Holland's script : " How 
 could I make it any clearer without giving her the clue ? " 
 is decidedly the clearest among them all. But as the 
 cross-correspondence to which it belongs can be shown 
 to have a human source, that reason alone makes it 
 unfit for supporting Miss Johnson's theory. 
 
 In the Franz Joseph case the signal : " Mrs. Holland 
 had the warning," is part of the impression itself, and the 
 source, as in the preceding one, is demonstrably human. 
 
 In the Procession case there is no signal. There remain, 
 besides the Janiciilum case, which will be spoken about 
 below, a few cases that speak directly against the theory 
 of complementary correspondences. On April nth, 
 1906, Mrs. Verrall wrote : " There is an effort to have 
 the same words this time." If this is a signal, it must 
 allude to Mrs. Holland's script ; but she gave just on 
 this occasion, with the words " Eheu fugaces," what 
 Miss Johnson characterizes as an " apt paraphrase " of 
 the idea expressed by Mrs. Verrall. To signalize a 
 complementary correspondence by announcing that the 
 same words would appear in the script of the co-operator 
 would certainly be strange. But, moreover, there are 
 the two cases where the same thing really appeared in 
 both scripts, viz., "yellow" and "blue flower." Here 
 it would seem that the signal was superfluous, as the 
 correspondence is evident ; nevertheless Mrs. Verrall 
 writes in one case : "let him that has eyes see," which 
 in the opinion of Miss Johnson must be a very clear 
 announcement of a complementary correspondence ; in 
 the other case the script even exclaims, apparently with 
 a special triumph : "I have done it to-night ! "
 
 i68 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The inspection of the signals thus shows that their 
 vahie for Miss Johnson's theory is somewhat dubious. 
 Besides, when judging them it must not be overlooked 
 that Mrs. Vcrrall and Mrs. Holland were themselves 
 very eager to produce cross-correspondences. Under the 
 experimenting in the spring of 1906 their hope was 
 directed to obtaining the same words : "I can't be 
 content till we get the same message," Mrs. Holland 
 wrote on April 12th to Miss Johnson ; and in Mrs. 
 Verrall's script of February 19th the same hope had 
 found expression.^ But after the completion of the said 
 series of experiments, the theory of complementary 
 correspondences was shaped by Miss Johnson, and soon 
 afterwards she mentioned it to both automatists. In 
 the following June it is said in Mrs. Verrall's script : 
 " I have not made her see the point of union," and in 
 that of Mrs. Holland : " To you the half— the sense to 
 be revealed." Is it possible to doubt that this is a result 
 of Miss Johnson's communication ? Of course, it could 
 not produce the "complementary correspondences" — 
 the cause of their occurrence has been spoken of before — 
 but that it is responsible at least for this " signal " 
 seems indisputable. And it is surely legitimate from 
 thence to draw the^ conclusion that most of these allusions 
 had an equally normal origin, namely, the desire of the 
 automatists that their scripts would correspond. The 
 only supernormal clement was, now and again, a sub- 
 conscious sensation in the automat ist that the impres- 
 sion she had received was connected with her co-operator. 
 Seeing that they had for a long time been experimenting 
 together, this was hardly as remarkable as had been 
 Mrs. Verrall's subconscious perception that it was her 
 husband who influenced her. 
 
 Miss Johnson's argument, then, cannot invalidate the 
 conception which the; examination of the cross-corre- 
 spondences themselves resulted in. The phenomenon is 
 
 1 C/. above, p. 147.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 169 
 
 not so mysterious as it appeared to Miss Johnson, She 
 thought it even possible that the objection might be 
 raised against her theory that the plan might be " a 
 subliminal invention of Mrs. Verrall's, since it is on her 
 script that the hypothesis is chiefly based." I doubt 
 that there is any analogy for the assumption of sub- 
 liminal plans ; but all cause for such an assumption 
 vanishes, of course, where it is impossible to discover 
 any plan. One automatist, most often Mrs. Holland, 
 obtained impressions about the other, perhaps less about 
 her script than about the occurrences which, with or 
 without her knowledge, had occasioned the script, just as 
 she caught at the same time or at other times impressions 
 of circumstances in the other's life which had not left any 
 trace in her script. This is the simple explanation of 
 the complementary correspondences — a systematized 
 " reading off " of impressions, which only because it 
 took place while the percipient was writing automatically 
 differs from that of Miss Ramsden and other sensitives 
 experimenting in a conscious state. 
 
 The inspection of Mrs. Verrall's and Mrs. Holland's 
 performances until the autumn of 1906 has shown that 
 both of them in a marked degree possessed faculties that 
 must be called supernormal. As good as all the cate- 
 gories enumerated above as constituting " the super- 
 normal powers of man," are represented by one or the 
 other of them. At the same time, thev illustrate well 
 the truth of an often advanced statement, that no medium 
 is like another. In several respects Mrs. Holland appears 
 to be the most mediumistic ; she " sees " more than 
 Mrs. Verrall, she seems more liable to become entranced, 
 and she is indisputably more able to obtain impressions 
 about Mrs. Verrall than vice-versa. In return, Mrs. 
 Verrall is foresighted, which at a first glance seems to 
 indicate a very high degree of supernormal faculty, and 
 which Mrs. Holland, judging by the reports, is not. On 
 the other hand, prevision, at least in dreams, is perhaps
 
 170 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 just that supernormal power which most often occurs in 
 people who are not otherwise mediumistic. 
 
 The great difference between the psychics whom we 
 heard of in the chapters dealing with telepathy and clair- 
 voyance, and those with whom we have become acquainted 
 in the two following sections, Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Holland, 
 and in a less degree Mrs. Forbes and Miss VerraJl, is, 
 however, that the last mentioned are all of them automatic 
 writers. The consequences hereof are great. In that 
 state of unconsciousness with regard to the things pro- 
 duced which characterizes automatism, imagination begins 
 its work ; what it is able to perform, all of us know from 
 our dreams, which can be more fanciful than anything we 
 are capable of creating in a waking state, and at the same 
 time, because the control of reason is wanting, are in- 
 coherent and nonsensical. What the automatic writing 
 effects is, above all, to fix the subconscious, dream-like 
 ideas to the paper. But the material out of which the 
 writer shapes his fabrications is richer than the conscious 
 contents of the same individual ; subconscious memory 
 encompasses a territory that reaches far beyond that of 
 the waking self. On this point, too, the automatic per- 
 formances must needs differ from those of the conscious 
 sensitives ; crypt^mnesia of course presupposes uncon- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Thus it is clear that it is not the possession of super- 
 normal faculties that makes the boundary line between 
 automatists and those sensitives who in a conscious state 
 obtain impressions otherwise than by means of their 
 senses. Here, on the contrary, the two groups join each 
 other, while the automatists alone have imagination and 
 latent memory to work with. It is the state that makes 
 the boundary. And we have seen the consequences. 
 While the persons who obtain supernormal impressions in 
 a conscious state do not connect them with spirits, even if 
 they write automatically at other times, the conception 
 seems to make its appearance as soon as the percipient is 
 acting automatically. When, for instance, Mrs. Holland
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 171 
 
 " saw " Mrs. Forbes 's dining-room, she wrote down her 
 impression in quite ordinary words, while Mrs. Verrall, 
 when she caught an impression about Carpaccio's Ursula 
 in connection with Mrs. Holland, in her script composed 
 a story about Myers conducting her to that lady's room 
 where it hung on the wall. The notion of deceased 
 communicators seems to be a natural consequence of 
 producing something which the conscious self cannot 
 accept as its own achievement. 
 
 But when we acknowledge that a supernormal element 
 in the writings cannot prove the co-operation of the dead, 
 all reason for assuming such a co-operation fails, as regards 
 the scripts we have here examined. The rest was easily 
 explained, and moreover was often so childish that it 
 justified Professor Flournoy's contention that the medium- 
 istic state represents a lower stage than that occupied by 
 the waking person. The intelligence and culture of the 
 automatic writers veiled the fact somewhat in the above 
 cases ; Mrs. Verrall's classical erudition and Mrs. Holland's 
 extensive reading, together with their poetical gifts, could, 
 in addition to the miracles worked by cryptomnesia, at 
 times produce a result which at first sight might impose 
 on the reader. But the more conspicuous glare the 
 incongruities — the false profundity, the naive mysticism, 
 the often quite meaningless speech. These things are not 
 consistent with the automatic writers' own stage of 
 development. How then is it possible to assign them to 
 Frederic Myers and his friends ?
 
 SECTION IV 
 
 The Mediumism of Mrs. Piper 
 X I. The Phinuit Period 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PHINUIT 
 
 At the point at which we have now arrived with regard 
 to the EngHsh automatists, the Society for Psychical 
 Research commenced a series of experiments between 
 these and Mrs. Piper, the renowned medium from Boston, 
 who by arrangement with the Society passed her time 
 from November, 1906, till June, 1907, in England. Here, 
 then, is the moment for getting better acquainted with 
 this lady, whose mediumism is very different from the 
 types we have dealt with until now. 
 
 As just set forth, the principal disparity between auto- 
 matic writers and 4Dther sensitives is the circumstance 
 that the automatists are unconscious of their productions, 
 though otherwise awake. The next stage, as regards the 
 state of the sensitive, is complete unconsciousness, or 
 trance. The medium who is speaking or writing in a 
 deep trance, is in all other respects, setting aside the 
 speaking or writing, like the profound sleeper ; his per- 
 formances cannot, like those of the waking automatist, 
 take place when he is alone ; if he spoke in solitude 
 nobody would know it, and when he is writing, someone 
 must be present to take care of the writing material. 
 Mrs. Piper gradually developed into a writing medium ; 
 the proceedings were then as a rule that she sat behind 
 a table furnished with pillows in which her head sank 
 down at the commencement of the trance, her face turned
 
 PHINUIT 173 
 
 to the left ; on another table to the right of her were 
 pencils and a block of paper ; a few minutes after the 
 trance had become complete, her right hand seized a 
 pencil and began to write. The experimenter in charge 
 must take care to tear off the paper and procure new pencils 
 and more paper when the block was used up, exactly as 
 if the medium was a machine to be served. When 
 Mrs. Piper, on awakening, began to speak, it was as if she 
 returned from distant places, and she knew nothing 
 whatever of what she had done in her sleep. 
 
 This disparity between the state of Mrs. Piper and that 
 of the waking automatists coincides with a marked 
 difference in the contents of their productions. As 
 we saw, the contents of the automatic scripts mainly 
 originated from three sources : imagination, cryptom- 
 nesia, and supernormal perception ; to which must of 
 course be added such matter as the writers also remembered 
 in their normal state. Both the latter and subconscious 
 reminiscences played a prominent part in their case. 
 With Mrs. Piper it is quite otherwise. When she is 
 entranced, her normal knowledge scarcely seems to exist. 
 Whether her statements are due to latent memory is more 
 difficult to decide. Contrary • to Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. 
 Holland, she is not much of a reader ; neither does it 
 seem probable that much knowledge is conveyed to her 
 orally ; one of the experimenters ^ expressly mentions 
 " the singularly limited range of her conversation." 
 Cryptomnesia, however, covers a wide territory ; hastily 
 read newspaper-stories, casual turning-over of books, 
 scarcely caught fragments of conversations between other 
 people, may all become material for it. It can only be 
 said with safety that the achievements of Mrs. Piper do 
 not generally make the impression of being due to latent 
 memory, but that it may no doubt sometimes be at the 
 bottom of them. 
 
 Compared to the automatic scripts, and to the possi- 
 
 ' Dr. Walter Leaf {Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. VI., p. 559).
 
 174 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 bilities set up by Professor Flournoy and Hartmann, 
 imagination and supernormal perception remain. It is, 
 when we exclude, as we must provisionally, the theory of 
 spirits, mainly on these that the performances of Mrs. 
 Piper must be said to rest. Supernormal perception 
 provides her with the material, imagination gives this 
 material its shape. But even as the material is infinitely 
 richer than t^hat which we found in the automatic scripts, 
 thus the shape is of another and more dramatic kind. 
 This, no doubt, is partly a consequence of the circum- 
 stance that the communicators converse with the sitters, 
 and not, as in the case of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland, 
 with the medium ; but still ipore it is due to the large 
 number of communicators and, above all, to the life-like 
 characterization by which they are distinguished from 
 each other, and in their relations to their present friends, 
 to the experimenter in charge, and to strangers. The 
 reports on the sittings with Mrs. Piper make on the reader 
 the impression of being scenes from a play. 
 
 Besides being an eminent medium, Mrs. Piper occupies 
 a unique position as one who has for a long series of years, 
 and under the most satisfactory circumstances, been the 
 subject of scientific study. In the middle of the eighties 
 Professor William^James happened to make her acquain- 
 tance ; she was then twenty odd years old, and her 
 mediumistic faculty had only recently made itself known. 
 By arrangement with Professor James, Dr. Richard 
 Hodgson came to Boston in the spring of 1887 as the 
 emissary of the Society for Psychical Research to investigate 
 the matter, and this investigation led to her being tied to 
 the Society by a sort of contract, while he got the entire 
 charge of her sittings on its behalf. In this position he con- 
 tinued until his death in 1905. In the winter of 1889 — 90, 
 however, Mrs. Piper had been in England, where the 
 leaders of the Society had held numerous seances with her. 
 
 A number of reports on the sittings with Mrs. Piper 
 during this long period (1887 — 1905) are published in the 
 Proceedings of the Society, and commented on by promi-
 
 PHINUIT 175 
 
 nent researchers. To these must be added a " Report on 
 Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control," that is, on seances held 
 after Dr. Hodgson's death, which belongs here as far as it 
 deals with the first half of 1906, the period before her 
 going to England for the second time. Of course, there 
 can be no question here of an exhaustive perusal of this 
 large material. A selection must suffice, and of very 
 limited extent ; I think, however, that it ought to repre- 
 sent the whole number of reports, only in a less degree Dr. 
 Hodgson's record for 1887 — 91,^ as most accounts of the 
 sittings from this period are written down some time 
 after their occurrence, and are much abbreviated. The 
 reports from Mrs. Piper's sojourn in England^ are, on 
 the contrary, written down during the sittings, and with 
 great fullness, some of them even in shorthand. At that 
 time the trance communications were as yet given orally, 
 and thus did not register themselves. 
 
 As regards the method of selection, I do not intend to 
 dwell on the so-called evidential statements specially. It 
 is no doubt very valuable to establish that information 
 is produced in the trance which the medium cannot possess 
 normally, and which is not, perhaps, known to any present 
 person ; and many instances will occur hereof. But as 
 said above, this is only one remarkable feature in Mrs. 
 Piper's performances. To give an idea of them in toto, it 
 is at least equally necessary now and again to make the 
 extracts so copious that the dramatic play is done justice 
 to, even if it involves the admission of much that is quite 
 unevidential. 
 
 In conformity with the practice of the editors, the com- 
 municators will be called by the names of the persons who 
 they pretend to be. "This manner of speech," Dr. Hodg- 
 son says in one of his reports,^ " is the most convenient for 
 rendering the facts intelligible ; to attempt to give a full 
 
 1 " A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance," 
 1887—91 {Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. VIII., pp. i— 167). 
 
 2 " A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance," 
 1889 — 90 [ibidem, Vol. VI., pp. 436 — 659). 
 
 » Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XIII., p. 287.
 
 176 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 description in each case of what is ' claimed ' or ' alleged ' 
 or ' purported ' would involve a tedious and useless 
 repetition." Of course, the meaning hereof is not to 
 indicate any conception as to their real nature. For the 
 present, they must be conceived as " trance-personalities," 
 and this, whether they purport to be well-known deceased 
 persons, or are figures whose identity it seems impossible 
 to establish, and who therefore must be specially suspected 
 of being creations of Mrs. Piper's subconscious imagination. 
 In itself, the word, of course, means nothing more than 
 that they are personalities who for us exist only through 
 a medium in trance. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The first personality of whom we by means of the 
 reports make the acquaintance at Mrs. Piper's sittings, 
 and who completely dominates there during a series of 
 years, is of a very peculiar type. It is an elderly man who 
 calls himself Dr. Phinuit, or more explicitly Dr. Jean 
 Phinuit ScIiviUe, and states that he has been a French 
 physician who had, however, by associating with English- 
 men learned their language, and who at any rate through 
 Mrs. Piper only exceptionally uses French expressions. 
 His life-time is said to have been the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century. But in spite of his rather detailed state- 
 ments, the researchers have never been able to identify 
 him, and it seems impossible to attain to a satisfactory 
 hypothesis that accounts for his appearance in Mrs. 
 Piper's trance. 
 
 Be that as it may, the image drawn of him through the 
 long series of seances is extremely living and consistent 
 with itself. He is a good-natured and very obliging old 
 man, in fact amiable, but a little coarse ; he swears not 
 a little, and is apt to grow sulky. He seemed to have 
 made it his task to answer the questions of all the people 
 that had sittings with Mrs. Piper, and he went to work 
 exactly as a medium — a psychometrizing or clairvoyant 
 medium like Mr. Vout Peters, for instance, of whom we 
 made the acquaintance in an earlier chapter. That he
 
 PHINUIT 177 
 
 was in fact a medium of this type appears from every 
 sitting. The remarkable point is, that Mrs. Piper in her 
 ordinary state did not seem to possess supernormal 
 powers, and that there is among her other trance figures 
 no one who is mediumistic in the manner of Phinuit, 
 
 A good idea of Phinuit's psychometric faculty may be 
 got by reading what is said about it by Professor Hyslop,^ 
 who is himself unable to believe in such a power in 
 human beings. Almost with indignation he m.entions 
 the experiments in which Phinuit " would undertake to 
 furnish the names and incidents in the lives of persons 
 intimately connected with some old rag or trinket of 
 whose ownership and history the sitter might be entirely 
 ignorant," even without caring whether the owners 
 were living or dead. If it had at least been confined to 
 the dead ! But, Professor Hyslop admits, there were 
 " instances in which Phinuit apparently read the minds 
 of certain persons at a distance, merely by having a 
 trinket of some sort in Mrs. Piper's hand that belonged 
 to the person." This was done in some cases in which 
 the sitter, Dr. Hodgson, had no knowledge of the owner. 
 There was no pretence of spirit communication in the 
 contents of the messages. 
 
 Professor Hyslop overcomes the difficulty by supposing 
 Phinuit to be what he himself claims to be, a discarnate 
 spirit, and thinks that this circumstance will " unravel 
 the mystery of his performances." For us, however, 
 there is no reason to doubt that living people may possess 
 such faculties ; neither can we accept the contention 
 that they would obtain possession of them as spirits if 
 they had not possessed them before. Phinuit himself 
 held a different opinion ; when a sitter. Professor Newbold, 
 asked him : " Does a person who has light [i.e., is medium- 
 istic] in the body, have in the spirit also more light than 
 others ? " he answered emphatically : " Yes, indeed." 
 
 As regards the remark of Professor Hyslop, that 
 
 » Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XVI., p. 251 seq 
 CD. N
 
 178 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Phinuit apparently reads the minds of people by means 
 of the said articles, this neither is Phinuit's own opinion. 
 He is curiously at one with Mr. Vout Peters as to its 
 being not by mind-reading, but through an influence 
 emanating from the objects, that he obtains his know- 
 ledge. Again and again he asserts that he is no thought- 
 reader. " If I could read your head, I could tell you. 
 I can't," he says. "I get nothing from your mind ; I 
 cannot read^ your mind any more than I can see through 
 a stone wall," he answers a sitter who questions him. 
 However, he soon learned that the investigators were 
 specially anxious to be told things which they did not 
 know beforehand. " I tell y^ou this because you don't 
 know it, and that is the kind of thing you like," he says. 
 On another occasion he made downright fun of their 
 eagerness to make out whether or not his achievements 
 were due to mind-reading. It was during a sitting in 
 Liverpool ; it was planned that Phinuit, if possible, 
 should procure information about the doings of the 
 sitter's mother in London. Sir Oliver Lodge — then 
 Professor Lodge— was the experimenter in charge, and 
 the conversation ran as follows : 
 
 " Sir 0. Tell him about his mother and what she's doing 
 now. It's very im^portant. 
 
 " Ph. Ha ha ! I'll tell you why it's important, because 
 he don't know it himself. I read your thoughts then. I 
 can't generally." 
 
 On the other hand, there are many tokens of his being 
 in earnest when speaking of an influence that emanates 
 from the objects. " There is very little influence in that," 
 he said about a lock of hair ; another, that was dyed, he 
 called " dead and devilish." Once, when he could say 
 next to nothing about the lock given him, he asked for a 
 *' better piece " ; when he got another piece of the same 
 hair, cut close to the head, he could tell a great deal. He 
 was very anxious that the influences should not get 
 mingled. Once when a letter was handed him by Sir 
 Oliver Lodge, he reproached him that he had kept it in
 
 PHINUIT 179 
 
 the same pocket with the portrait of another person ; 
 " you mix things up if you do that," he said. A curious 
 instance of the consequences of such a commingUng is 
 the following. Dr. Hodgson had handed Phinuit a letter 
 from another person, but enclosed in an envelope addressed 
 to himself by Mrs. Piper. Phinuit gave a correct general 
 description of the writer of the letter, giving the name 
 William in connection with it. Then he went on to 
 describe a lady — tall, fair, etc. Dr. Hodgson now gave 
 him another envelope addressed by Mrs. Piper, and after 
 handling it he at once exclaimed that this was the in- 
 fluence he had described previously in connection with 
 " the gentleman " ; that it had nothing to do with him ; 
 that Dr. Hodgson had got them mixed. The description 
 of the lady did suit Mrs. Piper. 
 
 At the same time, it is evident that the sitters had a 
 similar significance for Phinuit as a source of knowledge. 
 Just like the objects, they were in possession of an 
 " influence " ; it was from this, and not from their 
 thoughts, that he obtained his information. A sitter 
 who asked him : " How do you get what you tell me 
 about > myself ? " got the reply: "I get it from your 
 astral light." It was, therefore, in their case, as in 
 that of the articles, necessary that they should be kept 
 away from each other. Once he begged Sir Oliver 
 Lodge not to admit two sitters at a time ; " can't sort 
 them out properly," he alleged in explanation of his 
 request. 
 
 While thus Phinuit, exactly like Mr. Vout Peters, had 
 his decisive opinion about " the mystery of his per- 
 formances," and declared that it had nothing to do with 
 mind-reading, the experimenters leaned to the opposite 
 view. The solid starting-point presented by experi- 
 mental thought-transference made them conceive mind- 
 reading a more likely explanation than the mysterious 
 notion " influence." To be sure, there were cases where 
 the connection between a person whose mind might be 
 read by the medium, and the latter, was so improbable, 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 that the hypothesis was fain to burst. But on the other 
 hand, it might happen that Phinuit gave information 
 which was wrong, but agreed with the sitter's opinion of 
 the matter. For instance, Phinuit once in Boston told 
 an English sitter that a big man with a dark moustache 
 was in his house, and had been put there to watch the 
 place. There had, before the sitter left home, been a 
 question of hiring a policeman to guard his house and live 
 there in his absence, and the sitter thought that the plan 
 had been realized, which, however, was not the case. On 
 another occasion, Phinuit was asked to describe what 
 Professor Sidgwick was doing, and declared that he stood 
 on his head. The Professor had, when the experiment 
 was arranged, said in joke that he would do this. In a 
 similar experiment with Dr. Hodgson, Phinuit said : 
 " He has taken a wreath and put it on his head." Dr. 
 Hodgson had thought of putting the wreath on his head, 
 but had confined himself to holding it in his hand. 
 
 All this does not, however, go to show more than that 
 the impressions which Phinuit obtains are dim and un- 
 certain, and that the thoughts of the sitter, or of other 
 people who are in contact with him, enter into their 
 composition. There are other cases where Phinuit's 
 statements are correct, while the sitter's thoughts are 
 wrong. Thus a sitter asked, after Phinuit had described 
 the young lady to whom he was engaged, if there was not 
 something peculiar about her hair. Phinuit said no, and 
 it turned out that it had not, as the sitter had been told 
 for fun, been cut short since he saw her last. Further- 
 more, it was shown through experiments that intentional 
 thought-transference did not succeed with Phinuit. 
 This agrees with all that we have formerly seen. The 
 percipient obtains impressions, among these at times 
 and by chance impressions of the thoughts of other 
 people ; but he is not especially susceptible to thoughts, 
 and to force them upon him is difficult, or even impossible. 
 Phinuit's conception of the phenomenon is not far from 
 hitting the mark.
 
 PHINUIT i8i 
 
 But while contending that " clairvoyance " rather 
 than mind-reading is in this as in other cases the rubric 
 under which supernormal performances, generally speak- 
 ing, ought to be placed, we must as strongly as ever 
 accentuate the limitations of this faculty. Sir Oliver 
 Lodge says pertinently with regard to Phinuit's state- 
 ments : " We are evidently not in a region of clear and 
 exact knowledge. Events are dimly perceived, and 
 error is mixed with truth." This is a description which 
 would also fit Mr. Vout Peters's achievements, or Miss 
 Ramsden's characterization of her own perceptions. 
 Phinuit himself declares that he does the best he can, 
 but sometimes " everything seems dark to him," and 
 then he flounders and gropes, and makes mistakes. 
 
 The above view is confirmed through some experi- 
 ments which were made with Phinuit during Mrs. Piper's 
 sojourn in England, expressly with the object of ascer- 
 taining whether it was a case of direct clairvoyance, or 
 " only " of mind-reading. Apparently their success was 
 small. Sir Oliver Lodge handed Phinuit a box with 
 letters which were taken at haphazard from several 
 alphabets and had been seen by no one ; Phinuit named, 
 very reluctantly, a number of letters, but only two were 
 correct, a result so bad that chance might have done it 
 better. Of a similar type was an experiment which 
 Dr. Walter Leaf made with a closed envelope that con- 
 tained a slip of paper with the title of a book on it ; it 
 was drawn from among two thousand such slips, and no- 
 body knew of its contents. Before Phinuit got the 
 envelope, he called it " that book that you have in your 
 hand," and after it had been given him, he said : " That's 
 only a note ; it doesn't amount to anything." Both 
 things may of course be conceived as a perception of the 
 experimenter's knowledge of the matter. This is more 
 doubtful in two other instances where Dr. Leaf knew 
 the contents of the envelopes. In one case the words 
 on the enclosed paper were the following : " Charles L 
 was beheaded in 1649 " ; Phinuit said among other
 
 i82 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 things : " It is written by some one named Charles." 
 In the other case the words were : " Weep no more — for 
 Lycidas is not dead " ; Phinuit said : " That's a letter — 
 there is an illness round that." In a third case where 
 the experimenter did not know the contents, which ran : 
 " Iliad. La France," Phinuit said that the envelope 
 contained a lock of Frank's hair. It is at least singular 
 that however far he may be from the right, he always 
 says something that has some sort of association with the 
 contents. If it be due to an impression from somebody's 
 mind, it is a highly distorted impression. And if it 
 have nothing to do with minds, but be due to a kind of 
 clairvoyance, it testifies strongly to its vagueness. Being 
 a faculty of clouded, not of clear vision, it evidently does 
 not suffice to read the contents of closed envelopes. 
 
 It would seem that Phinuit himself had a feeling of 
 the limitation of his powers. Sir Oliver Lodge says that 
 he does not much care for this kind of thing, but says it 
 strains him. After the unsuccessful experiment with the 
 letters of the alphabet he said in an excusatory manner : 
 " You see this is something new to me ; I am not accus- 
 tomed to do these things for people." Of course it is 
 impossible that he in such a case would find any of the 
 " influences " that used to guide him. 
 
 With this in mind it will not be difficult to comprehend 
 an accusation that was directed towards Phinuit by many 
 of the sitters, namely, that he acquired a large portion 
 of his apparent knowledge by guessing and " fishing " ; 
 by the latter appellation was meant the process that he 
 made the sitters unconsciously furnish him with informa- 
 tion which he afterwards tried to pass off as his own 
 knowledge. When it is recognized that his impressions 
 were dim and fragmentary, that he must often feel or 
 grope his way towards them, and that he must in a 
 degree have the sitter's assistance to be able to decide 
 whether they were right, his proceedings, however, look 
 different. No doubt he wanted to get as much credit as
 
 PHINUIT 183 
 
 possible for his performances ; he desired to satisfy the 
 sitters, but it was also a personal satisfaction to him to 
 show off his faculties. Nay, it is certain that he some- 
 times supplemented his insufficient knowledge by self- 
 devised statements. But the frequent talk of fishing and 
 guessing is due to a misapprehension of the whole 
 phenomenon. It is, however, as shown above, not 
 shared by Sir Oliver Lodge, who has clearly characterized 
 the nature of Phinuit's perceptions. 
 
 There are, moreover, cases enough where Phinuit does 
 just the opposite of fishing or taking the hints of the 
 sitters. Once it is said that he " seemed so obstinately 
 bent upon some erroneous ideas of his own that he would 
 pay no attention to [the sitter's] leading questions." 
 On another occasion he kept to his own opinion in spite 
 of the sitter's denial, and it turned out that it was he who 
 was right. The episode is as follows : 
 
 " Ph. Who is this uncle of yours named John ? 
 " 5. I have no uncle named John. 
 
 " Ph. Yes yes you have — the man that married your aunt. 
 " 5. No you are wrong ; the man that married my aunt 
 was called Philip. 
 
 " Ph. Well, I think I know." 
 
 After this he, grumbling, changed the subject. But 
 the sitter afterwards discovered that an aunt of his had 
 in fact married a man named John. 
 
 And even if Phinuit sometimes invents things, he is 
 not destitute of a certain honesty. Often he downright 
 declares that there is something he cannot tell. " What 
 is his name ? " he is asked. " Don't get his name," is 
 the curt answer. Once a lady has asked him who it is 
 she calls " Mr, Man." Then he guesses openly on all the 
 membeis of her family. " It is not Harry ? nor George ? 
 nor your uncle ? do you call your gentleman [i.e., husband] 
 Mr. Man ? Then the gentleman's father ? I give it up. 
 WTiom do you call Mr. Man ? " The lady informs him 
 that it is her dog. Afterwards Phinuit spontaneously 
 reverts to the matter. " I could not tell you who you
 
 i84 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 call Mr. Man," he says deprecatingly, though he had told 
 her a number of other things. 
 
 The following is an instance at the same time of his 
 honesty, and of the difficulties which he has to overcome. 
 Dr. Walter Leaf had had the charge of several seances 
 when one day his brother appeared as sitter. Phinuit 
 said to the latter : " There is a Charles about you. I get 
 the same influence with both of you ; why, you are 
 brothers. Charles must be your father." And addressing 
 himself to Dr. Leaf, he continued : " Walter, I thought 
 that William was your father till I got this other influence, 
 but now I see that Charles is your father and William is 
 your grandfather, your father's father." All this was 
 absolutely correct, and Phinuit, who evidently felt sure 
 of what he now said, had not been obliged to confess his 
 former mistake. 
 
 As may be seen, Phinuit could also give the names of 
 people. And it is evident that he partly obtained them 
 in the same manner as so many other things, namely, as 
 an impression, now vague, and now more distinct. Here 
 also he has therefore been accused of guessing and fishing. 
 For instance, it was pointed out that it was generally the 
 most common Christian names, as John, William, etc., 
 that he produced. This, though, ought hardly to be 
 wondered at, especially as it is admitted that they w^ere 
 most often the right ones. And in the numerous cases 
 where the name was not common, it was only natural 
 that he could not feel sure of his impression being correct, 
 or could not at all get hold of the right name. But the 
 approximations might be obvious enough. " Gibbens 
 was announced first as Niblin, then as Giblin," Professor 
 James relates ; " a child Herman had his name spelt out 
 as Hcrrin." At a sitting with Mrs. Verrall, Phinuit 
 asked : " Ellums, Vellums, what is that ? That's you. 
 Mrs. Vennalls, Vernils Verils Veril." Even a mistake 
 as " Susan Mary " for Selma seems due to a perception of 
 the real name. 
 
 The names did not always come to him as sounds. At
 
 PHINUIT 185 
 
 a seance he said that the sitter would get into intercourse 
 with a man whose name was " something Hke Atwood." 
 " The name is nearly right," he continued, " an A-t and 
 then two O's and a W. I see this myself. There are no 
 special spirits. I see it back of you just as plainly as if 
 it was before your eyes." Here, then, Phinuit had a 
 vision of the name. Exactly in the same manner, the 
 perceptions of Miss Ramsden were now auditory, and now 
 visual. 
 
 The remark of Phinuit on this occasion, " I see this my 
 own self. There are no special spirits," alludes to another 
 way in which he gained his knowledge. And, whatever 
 may otherwise be thought of it, one must for the sake of 
 clearness make a keen distinction between it and his 
 clairvoyant power. 
 
 In his report on his sittings with Mrs. Piper in Liverpool 
 in 1889 — 90 ' Sir Oliver Lodge strongly accentuates the 
 above-mentioned difference. " While Phinuit," he writes, 
 " frequently speaks in his own person, relating things 
 which he himself discovers by what I suppose we must 
 call ostensible clairvoyance, sometimes he represents 
 himself as in communication with one's relatives and 
 friends who have departed this life. The messages and 
 communications from these persons are usually given 
 through Phinuit as a reporter. And he reports sometimes 
 in the third person, sometimes in the first." 
 
 Thus we meet in Phinuit the same doubleness which 
 we found in the medium, Mr. Vout Peters. On one hand 
 his own performances, on the other spirits that he sees 
 and tells about or brings messages from. Occasionally 
 Phinuit seems to give up his place altogether to these 
 spirits ; but then we have exceeded his own territory. 
 It is not, however, always easy to decide whether they 
 speak directly, or it is Phinuit who speaks for them in 
 the first person. It is seldom that the change of per- 
 sonality is announced with such plainness as in the 
 following case, where Phinuit tells the sitter : " Here's
 
 i86 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Newell, and he wants to talk with you. So I'll go about 
 my business whilst you are talking with him, and will 
 come back again later," and then addressing himself 
 to the spirit, says in his drastic manner : " Here, 
 Newell, you come by the hands while I go out by the 
 feet." 
 
 As regards his relation to the spirits, Phinuit alleged 
 that he saw objectively the persons he spoke of. Often 
 he described their appearance ; once more one is reminded 
 of Mr. Vout Peters and his accurate descriptions of his 
 spirit-visions in contrast to the more vague charac- 
 terizations of the non-present owners of the " articles." 
 Also the relation between the spirits and the objects 
 presents a parallel. At the seances in Finland many 
 spirits came to their friends and relatives among the 
 sitters ; but only in a few cases it was the owners of the 
 objects who came. Quite in accordance with this, 
 Phinuit seems to believe that the sitters have more power 
 to attract the spirits than the objects have ; for instance, 
 he says to Sir Oliver Lodge, who doubted that the 
 owner of a certain chain would appear as he was a 
 stranger to himself : " Oh well, he may recognize it. 
 Your own friends come to you. A strange spirit is 
 rather difficult, but they sometimes come to their 
 things." 
 
 A rather strange thing ought to be mentioned here, 
 namely, that Phinuit sees at times among the spirits that 
 surround him also persons that are not dead. But even 
 this has its parallel with other clairvoyants ; thus Miss 
 Miles relates that she when psychometrizing sees herself 
 surrounded both by living and dead people. Phinuit, for 
 instance, says to a sitter : " Now I am trying to get your 
 brothers and sisters nearer," and it turns out that some 
 among these, as he knows very well, are alive. In another 
 case he says about the sitter's, Mrs. H.'s, mother : " [She 
 is] here with me, right beside me. [She is] in the body, but 
 I get her spirit influence, so I can tell you about her." 
 In itself it is of course not remarkable that a clairvoyant
 
 PHINUIT 187 
 
 can see the double of a living person. A curious instance 
 is the following. Dr. Hodgson handed Phinuit an enve- 
 lope addressed by Mrs. Piper, and asked among other 
 things whether the writer was in the body or in spirit. 
 " In the body," Phinuit replied, but went on : " Why 
 no — that's curious. There she is in the spirit talking to 
 an old lady." Whatever may else be thought of this, it 
 is correct from the dramatical point of view that the 
 entranced medium speaks in this way about her own 
 spirit. 
 
 On the other hand, Phinuit did not seem able to procure 
 information through speaking with the living. To a 
 question concerning a living lady he replied : " How 
 can she tell me, when she is in the body ? " About 
 such he must, as seen in the case of Mrs. H.'s mother, 
 procure his knowledge clairvoyantly by means of their 
 influence, just as he gained knowledge by means of 
 objects. 
 
 Is, now, this division of Phinuit's performances into 
 clairvoyantly obtained information and communications 
 from spirits founded on any kind of reality, or rather, is 
 the dramatic effect of the division supported by any 
 difference between the two kinds ? 
 
 If there is any sense in distinguishing between Phinuit's 
 own achievements and those things which are said to 
 originate from spirits, present or near at hand, that 
 produce information which they must be supposed to 
 have acquired in a normal manner, there must be 
 an essential difference between the two categories. The 
 knowledge of the departed may, of course, be deficient ; 
 they may have forgotten much, they may in the unaccus- 
 tomed situation find it difficult to keep their thoughts 
 together, and so on. But what they know will both 
 positively and negatively differ from the clairvoyant 
 knowledge of Phinuit. They will not falter and grope ; 
 their statements will not be founded on vague and inaccu- 
 rate impressions ; and they will not produce information 
 about any one but themselves and people they know, will
 
 i88 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 in other words not speak about things which they 
 could be acquainted with only in a supernormal manner. 
 Of course it is conceivable that they may have learned 
 things from Phinuit or other spirits, and that on the other 
 hand Phinuit 's memory may fail him — for instance, when 
 he reports what he, presumably, has been told by spirits 
 before the sitting.^ But this knowledge and these 
 deficiencies ^it will be easy to distinguish from the infor- 
 mation due to supernormal perception. 
 
 This thorough and important difference exists in fact 
 between the two kinds of statements in Mrs. Piper's 
 trance. " Nothing d, la mode Phinuit at all," Dr. Hodgson 
 justly says about a case from 1889, referring to the con- 
 spicuous change that took place when a spirit was 
 announced. Sir Oliver Lodge experienced the same 
 change at his very first seance with Mrs. Piper, and 
 describes it in these words : " Next follows the most 
 striking and impressive element of the whole sitting ; 
 without which, indeed, it would have been vague and 
 unsatisfactory — too much apparent guessing and too 
 little precisely accurate ; but now the manner became 
 more earnest and energetic and continuous." Dr. Leaf 
 writes in his report that the series of sittings held by 
 Sir Oliver was remarkable, as compared with those 
 reported by himself, for a high level of success. Now a 
 perusal of the detailed record of the seances by Dr. Leaf 
 will soon show that it is quite exceptional that spirits 
 appear there. It is in fact due to their co-operation that 
 Sir Oliver's sittings look so much more successful than 
 the other ones. If only those portions, where Phinuit is 
 alone, be regarded, the disparity between the two series 
 will scarcely be perceptible. 
 
 The following extracts aim at giving a notion about the 
 whole phenomenon ; no special stress will be laid upon the 
 
 1 Cf. Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. VIII., p. 92 : " The best way to get 
 a good sitting, Phinuit said, was to have him talk with departed 
 friends and then see him again."
 
 PHINUIT 189 
 
 so-called evidential things beyond stating that they belong 
 to that category. 
 
 The spirit that manifested at Sir Oliver Lodge's first 
 sitting was his aunt Anne, his mother's sister, who had 
 had the charge of him after the death of the former. 
 She appeared in all at six sittings. Phinuit gave the 
 following correct description of her exterior : " Hair on 
 top of head very plain, put back, tied up at back — 
 not frizzled, plain. Very neat in her dress, firm expression 
 about the mouth." At the first seance her own words 
 were : 
 
 " My boy, I am with you. I am Aunt Anne. I tried to 
 help you. I had little means, poor surroundings ; but I 
 did all I could. I would have done more if I could." 
 
 At her third manifestation she said : 
 
 " Isn't it curious that I can talk to you now ? You know I 
 told you that if ever I found it possible to communicate with 
 you I would." 
 
 Sir Oliver adds that his aunt is the only person who 
 ever said this to him. The next time she said about 
 a ring which he had put on his hand just before the 
 sitting : 
 
 " And Oily dear, that's one of the last things I ever gave 
 you. It was one of the last things I said to you when I gave 
 it you for Mary [i.e., Lady Lodge]. I said ' For her, through 
 you.' " 
 
 Sir Oliver writes : " This is precisely accurate. The 
 ring was her most valuable trinket, and it was given in 
 the way here stated not long before her death." 
 
 With another relative Sir Oliver specially wanted to 
 enter into communication, because he himself had hardly 
 known him and therefore thought it possible that things 
 might be told about him which could not be due to reading 
 of his own mind. That a medium might supernormally 
 obtain information by means of objects was at that time 
 less heeded than the danger of telepathy. Sir Oliver's 
 father had had a great many brothers, among whom was
 
 190 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Jerry (Jeremiah), who had died more than twenty years 
 before the sittings. Three were still living ; one of these, 
 Robert, was the twin-brother of Jerry and lived in London. 
 From him Sir Oliver on asking received a watch that had 
 belonged to Jerry. In the course of the next sitting he 
 handed this watch to Phinuit, who in his usual groping 
 manner produced a quantity of information where false 
 was mingled with true, mostly about Jerry's family 
 relations. Afterwards, however, he said : "I will bring 
 him right up close to me " ; soon after he was said to be 
 there. But Phinuit went, on talking about different 
 things, until Sir Oliver asked whether his uncle was still 
 there, and Phinuit advanced^ the following explanation : 
 
 " One difficulty that I have is to make your uncle conscious 
 
 of this, and the other is getting the spirit to speak to you 
 
 Rather difficult for me to talk to him, do you see ? Because 
 he passed out when you were young and you do not know so 
 much about him^ and at the same time he does not seem to 
 take an interest in you." 
 
 When Sir Oliver replied, "No, but he does in Uncle 
 Robert," and told that the latter had sent him the watch, 
 he succeeded, however, in making Jerry speak. 
 
 " /. Very good. Say God bless Robert and I should like 
 to see him. You -are my nephew aren't you ? 
 
 " Sir 0. Yes. 
 
 " /. I know you, seems to me I do. Yes. I used to know 
 you, but you were a little shaver then ; a very deep thinker. 
 Used to think a great deal ; more than the rest of the boys. 
 What about Alfred and all those fellows ? " 
 
 Alfred was one of Sir Oliver's many brothers. As 
 regards the term " a little shaver," Mr. Robert Lodge 
 writes that it " fits Jerry's method of expression to a T." 
 
 At a seance in the evening of the same day Phinuit 
 said to Sir Oliver, whom he had given the nickname of 
 " Captain " : 
 
 " Hulloa, Captain, I have been talking to your friends. 
 
 1 This would seem a very naive remark by Phinuit ; it has evidently 
 escaped his attention that it might be interpreted as if he used to 
 obtain his information from Sir Oliver himself, by mind-reading.
 
 PHINUIT 191 
 
 Had a long talk with Uncle Jerry. He remembers yon now, 
 as a boy with Aunt Anne, but you were kind of small. He 
 knew you, but he did not know me very well ; wondered what 
 the devil I wanted trying to talk to him and how I got here." 
 
 " This is exactly how he would remember me," is Sir 
 Oliver's comment on the remark about Aunt Anne. 
 
 Meanwhile, Sir Oliver had already in his first con- 
 versation with Uncle Jerry asked him if he could recall 
 something about his youth. He had at once said yes, he 
 remembered that he " pretty nigh got drowned," trying 
 to " swim the creek." He quite caught the idea, Sir 
 Oliver writes, namely, that the point was to produce 
 something which the nephew ignored, and at the following 
 sittings he related a number of experiences, trivial in 
 themselves, but well suited to identify him. Already the 
 day after his first appearance Phinuit said : 
 
 " Jerry says, Do you know Bob's got a long skin — a skin 
 like a snake's skin — upstairs, that Jerry got for him ? It's 
 one of the funniest things you ever saw. Ask him to show it 
 you." 
 
 Mr. Robert Lodge replied to Sir Oliver's inquiry : 
 " Yes, a crinkly, thin skin, a curious thing ; I had it in a 
 box, I remember it well. Oh, as distinct as possible. 
 Haven't seen it for years, but it was in a box, with his 
 name cut in it." 
 
 Sir Oliver lays much stress on this and other par- 
 ticulars which he did not know himself. Jerry's twin- 
 brother, Robert, did not remember many of them, but 
 some, as for instance the dangerous swdmming of the 
 creek, were affirmed by a third brother, Frank. A story 
 about the killing of a cat in " Smith's field " was reduced 
 to the cat being killed in another place, but it was verified 
 that there had been a field of the above name at Barking, 
 the scene of the youthful exploits of the brothers. Several 
 things from this distant past it was impossible to elucidate ; 
 but just the circumstance, that the trance-utterances 
 referred to matters so remote and so insignificant 
 that it proved next to impossible to verify them, gave
 
 192 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 them, when they turned out to be correct, an increased 
 significance as regards the theory of telepathy which Sir 
 Oliver wished to eliminate. At the same time, these 
 reminiscences about trifles which were in themselves 
 trivial, are no doubt characteristic of what an old man 
 might light upon when thinking of his childhood. The 
 objection that they are not very peculiar may be answered 
 in the same way as that respecting the names given by 
 Phinuit ; the chances are that the common things are 
 the right ones. 
 
 A communicator who holds a place somewhat apart 
 was Edmund Gurney, who had died the year before the 
 sittings. He was one of the very few who seemed to use 
 the organism of Mrs. Piper instead of the intermediation 
 of Phinuit. When the latter had once said about a 
 spirit : " She can't come and speak herself," and Sir 
 Oliver objected : " Mr. Gurney does," Phinuit exclaimed 
 with some indignation : " You are greedy. Yes, Mr. 
 Gurney does, but Mr. Gurney is a scientific man, 
 who has gone into these things. He comes and turns 
 me out sometimes. It would be a very narrow place 
 into which Mr. Gurney couldn't get." 
 
 Edmund Gurney appeared for the first time at a sitting 
 where Sir Oliver had handed in a letter from him. This 
 circumstance, of course, detracts very much from the 
 evidentialness of the case. In return, it is rather dra- 
 matic. Sir Oliver writes : " The personality seemed to 
 change — the speaker called me ' Lodge ' in his natural 
 manner (a name which Phinuit himself never once used), 
 and we had a long conversation, mainly non-evidential, 
 but with a reference to some private matters which were 
 said to be referred to as proof of identity, and which are 
 well adapted to the purpose. They were absolutely un- 
 known to me, but have been verified through a common 
 friend." 
 
 Here, as is often the case in the reports on Mrs. Piper's 
 sittings, the most personal and, perhaps, most convincing
 
 PHINUIT 193 
 
 things are left out. But some little scenes are dramatic. 
 Gurney appears, but has scarcely commenced speaking, 
 when he discovers that Sir Oliver is not alone. The 
 dialogue is as follows : 
 
 " G. Don't give up a good thing, Lodge . . . who is here ? 
 
 " Sir 0. This is my wife. 
 
 " G. How do you do, Mrs. Lodge ? I remember having 
 tea with you once. 
 
 " Sir 0. [introducing] Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. 
 
 " G. Yes, I remember you, I think. Good-bye, Lodge ; 
 don't divulge my secrets." 
 
 On another occasion, Sir Oliver, after a long conversa- 
 tion, which his sister had attended, said to Gurney : 
 
 " Sir 0. The Thompsons are waiting in the next room. 
 Shall I call them in ? 
 
 " G. The Thompsons ? Oh I know. I met them at your 
 house once at dinner, I think. 
 
 " Sir 0. Yes. 
 
 " G. No, I don't especially want to see them. Well, 
 Lodge, I must be going. Good-bye " 
 
 Afterwards the medium seemed to sleep for a few 
 minutes, until Phinuit, who had been absent during the 
 preceding conversation, which had partly concerned 
 himself, returned and began in the following manner : 
 
 " Eh ! what ! Oh, yes. All right. Look here, Mr. Gurney 
 has been here. He told me to express his regret that he had 
 not said Good-bye to Miss Lodge." 
 
 The remarks of Gurney agreed with the actual circum- 
 stances ; he had had tea with Lady Lodge, and he 
 had once met the Thompsons at her house. But no 
 less remarkable is the mise-en-sctne. Sir Oliver calls 
 attention to his characteristic demeanour — the natural 
 unwillingness of the man of sensitive temperament to be 
 thrown with strangers needlessly, and his friendliness 
 towards Miss Lodge. It is also dramatically correct 
 that a few minutes elapse before the return of Phinuit ; 
 they are necessary to permit him to talk with Gurney 
 " behind the- scenes." 
 
 CD. o
 
 194 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 One of the subjects of Sir Oliver's conversations with 
 Gurney was, as intimated, the personahty of Phinuit. 
 Although the statements about him are, of course, non- 
 evidential, and may be pure fabrication on the part of 
 the medium, they present at least the interest that they 
 agree with the impression which the sittings themselves 
 produce of his activity, especially with regard to other 
 spirits. 
 
 In his fiYst conversation with Sir Oliver, Gurney had 
 already spoken of the doctor. " Very few," he said, 
 " you will get like Dr. Phinuit. He is not all one could 
 wish, but he is all right." At their next meeting, he 
 described him at great length in reply to a question 
 from Sir Oliver, saying : 
 
 " Dr. Phinuit is a peculiar type of man. He goes about 
 continually, and is thrown in with everybody. He is eccentric 
 and quaint, but good-hearted. I wouldn't do the things he 
 does for anything. He lowers himself sometimes — it's a 
 great pity. He has very curious ideas about things and people ; 
 he receives a great deal about people from themselves (?) 
 And he gets expressions and phrases that one doesn't care for, 
 vulgar phrases he picks up by meeting uncanny people 
 through the medium. These things tickle him, and he goes 
 about repeating them. He has to interview a great number 
 of people, and has no easy berth of it. A high type of man 
 couldn't do the work he does. But he is a good-hearted old 
 fellow. Good-bye, Lodge, Here's the Doctor coming." 
 
 At a later seance Sir Oliver asked whether Phinuit was 
 reliable. Gurney replied : 
 
 " Not perfectly. He is not a bit infalhble. He mixes 
 things terribly sometimes. He does his best. He's a good 
 old man ; but he does get confused, and when he can't hear 
 he fills it up himself. He does invent things occasionally, 
 he certainly does. He's a shrewd doctor. He knows his 
 business thoroughly. He can see into people " 
 
 Sir Oliver asked : " Can he see ahead at all ? Can 
 anybody ? " Gurney answered : 
 
 " I can't. I haven't got into that. I think Phinuit can a 
 little sometimes. He has studied these things a good deal. 
 He can do many things that I can't do. He can look up
 
 PHINUIT 195 
 
 people's friends and say what they are doing sometimes in 
 an extraordinary way. But he is far from being infallible." 
 
 It is worth noting that Gurney did not seem to have an 
 eye for Phinuit's mediumism. He believes that he is 
 fore-sighted, and that he has " studied these things a 
 good deal," but else he only refers to the information 
 Phinuit gets from spirits, and his extraordinary faculty 
 to look up people's (living) friends and say what they are 
 doing. Sir Oliver's report contains an interesting in- 
 stance of the latter, namely, the above-mentioned 
 experiment of making Phinuit say in Liverpool what the 
 sitter's mother was doing in London. For the rest, it 
 tallies with the facts that Gurney, who died in 1888, did 
 not understand psychometry ; the non-spiritistic inter- 
 pretation of mediumistic performances had until then 
 been telepathy ; it appeared in an earlier instance, that 
 of Mrs. Stella's Italian psychic, that it was just Edmund 
 Gurney who could not accept any other explanation. 
 
 How much or how little influence, with regard to the 
 appearance of spirits, ought to be ascribed to the 
 " articles," they at any rate do not seem an indispensable 
 condition. At a seance where Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, 
 Sir Oliver Lodge's friends and neighbours in Liverpool, 
 were present for the first time, besides Sir Oliver himself 
 and his brother Alfred, Phinuit said : "Do you know 
 Richard, Rich, Mr. Rich ? " Mrs. Thompson replied : 
 " Not well, I knew a Dr. Rich." " That's him," said 
 Phinuit. " He's passed out. He sends kindest regards 
 to his father." A Dr. Rich had some time previously 
 died suddenly ; he was the son of the head of the Liver- 
 pool post office. Sir Oliver Lodge had never seen him, 
 but Mr. Thompson had, it seems, once or twice spoken to 
 him. His Christian name was not Richard ; but this 
 was hardly the opinion of Phinuit ; Richard is doubtless 
 a result of his seeking for Rich. 
 
 Some six weeks later, towards the end of a sitting with 
 the same Thompsons, Phinuit said suddenly : " Here's 
 
 o 2
 
 196 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Dr. Rich," after which the latter himself commenced 
 speaking. 
 
 " Dr. R. It is very kind of this gentleman [i.e., Phinuit] to 
 let me speak to you. Mr. Thompson, I want to give you a 
 message to father. 
 
 ]] Mr. T. I will give it. 
 
 " Dr. R. Thank you a thousand times, it is very good of you. 
 You see I passed out rather suddenly. Father was very much 
 troubled about it, and he is troubled yet. He hasn't got over 
 it. Tell hinj I am alive — that I send my love to him." 
 
 Some little facts were mentioned of an identifying 
 character, and admitted afterwards to be accurate. The 
 father, though inclined to be sceptical, confessed that he 
 had indeed been more than ordinarily troubled by the 
 sudden death of his son, becailse of a recent estrangement 
 between them which would otherwise no doubt have been 
 removed. 
 
 From among the sittings reported by Sir Oliver Lodge 
 may finally be chosen one which the sitter, a chaplain of 
 Liverpool, Mr. Lund, describes in anything but apprecia- 
 tory words. " Altogether," he writes, " there was such 
 a mixture of the true and false, the absurd and rational, 
 the vulgar commonplace of the crafty fortune-teller with 
 
 startling reality, that I have no theory to offer What 
 
 impressed me most was the way in which she [Mrs. 
 Piper] seemed to feel for information, rarely telling me 
 anything of importance right off the reel, but carefully 
 fishing, and then following up a lead." This is an un- 
 sympathetic, but on the surface not incorrect, description 
 of Phinuit's method. There was, however, one thing 
 that impressed Mr. Lund. In the midst of his pro- 
 miscuous talk of the sitter's family and their troubles, 
 of an upset carriage (wrong), and a burned carpet (right), 
 Phinuit asked : "Do you know Thomas ? " " I am 
 Thomas," replied Mr. Lund.^ And now came the words : 
 
 " He'll know me — Thomas — Lon — Lund — Tom Lund. 
 That's your sister that's saying it." 
 
 » Mrs. Piper did not know the sitter's name. Strangers were always 
 introduced anonymously.
 
 PHINUIT 197 
 
 Afterwards Phinuit told that the brother had been 
 absent when she died, and described her appearance. 
 Her name he tried in vain to grasp, and went through a 
 long list ; it had " ag " in the middle, he said. At last 
 he succeeded. 
 
 " But it's your sister — Maggie — that's it — she says you are 
 brother Tom — no, her name's ' Margie.' Too bad you were not 
 at home — it was one of the sorrows that followed Tom all his 
 life. He'll never forget it." 
 
 Mr. Lund's sister Maggie had died of diphtheria in his 
 absence quite thirty years before this, and her death was 
 a heart-aching sorrow of many years. Margie had been 
 her pet name, which he had quite forgotten. 
 
 Thus it is here also, in the case of a specially unsuccess- 
 ful seance, seen that the statements connected with the 
 manifestation of a spirit were of another and more 
 impressive kind than Phinuit's own performances. 
 
 Of the sittings reported by Dr. Leaf it has already been 
 said that they were, on the whole, less satisfactory than 
 the Lodge series, and that spirits very seldom appeared 
 in them. An exception in both respects makes a seance 
 with a Mr. Clarke and his wife, " perhaps the most 
 remarkable of the series," Dr. Leaf writes. During this 
 sitting Phinuit mentioned as present two spirits, both 
 relatives of Mrs. Clarke, who was a German by birth. 
 The names indicated in the report by initials were given 
 correctly. 
 
 " Ph. I want to talk to you about your uncle C. There 
 is someone with him — E. He is your cousin. Well, he sends 
 his love to you. 
 
 " Mrs. C. How did he die ? 
 
 " Ph. There was something the matter with his heart, and 
 with his head. He says it was an accident. He wants me 
 to tell you that it was an accident. He wants you to tell his 
 sisters. There's M. and E. ; they are sisters of E. And there 
 
 is their mother He begs you, for God's sake, to tell them 
 
 that it was an accident — that it was his head ; that he was 
 hurt there [makes motion of stabbing heart] ; that he had
 
 198 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 inherited it from his father. His father was off his head ; 
 you know what I mean — crazy. But the others are all right, 
 and will be." 
 
 Mrs. Clarke calls this " a most striking account " of her 
 uncle's family in Germany. The father was disturbed in 
 his mind for the last three years of his life in consequence 
 of a fall from his horse. The son committed suicide in a 
 fit of melancholia, by stabbing his heart as described. It 
 is true that Phinuit spoke as if the son had inherited the 
 insanity from his father ; nor did he seem to understand 
 the double cause of his death — both head and heart. 
 But as he is represented as reporting what E. says, 
 without personal knowledge oi the matter, his want of 
 comprehension rather enhances the dramatic effect. 
 Later he continued the conversation with Mrs. Clarke in 
 the following manner : 
 
 " Ph. Here's M. — She is your aunt — she is here, and 
 wants to speak to you. 
 
 " Mrs. C. What does she say about her husband ? 
 
 " Ph. She says he has changed his life since. She does not 
 like it that he married again. 
 
 " Mrs. C. Does she like the one whom he has married ? 
 
 " Ph. Oh, she loves her dearly. But she does not like 
 him to have married so soon. He married her sister. Two 
 brothers married two sisters. Her husband has children 
 now 
 
 This was an accurate description of the family of 
 another uncle of Mrs. Clarke's. His wife died childless, 
 and he soon after married her sister, by whom he had 
 children. His brother had previously married a third 
 sister. It is true that the sitter knew all these things, 
 and the facts connected with her cousin E.'s death came 
 to her mind as soon as Phinuit mentioned his name. But 
 that the assurance and fluency with which the German 
 names and peculiar circumstances are reported here, 
 where spirits are referred to as the source, differ essen- 
 tially from the vagueness that characterizes the clairvoyant 
 impressions, is at any rate indisputable.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 
 
 On March 22nd, 1892, Mr. John Hart (pseudonym) 
 had a sitting with Mrs. Piper in Boston, which was as 
 usual conducted by Dr. Hodgson.^ Mr. Hart had brought 
 some objects that had belonged to deceased relatives of 
 his, and Phinuit tried in his ordinary manner to dis- 
 entangle their relations. There were two Georges among 
 them. Suddenly Phinuit said to the sitter : " There is 
 another George, who wants to speak to you. How many 
 Georges are there about you any way ? " 
 
 This was the commencement, so to speak, of a new era 
 in the history of the Piper-trance. Mr. Hart had, a 
 month previously, through an accident in New York, 
 lost his friend George, in the reports called George Pelham, 
 or more commonly G. P. Mr. Pelham was at his death 
 thirty-two years old ; he was a lawyer by training, but 
 had devoted himself chiefly to literature and philosophy. 
 He was an Associate of the Society for Psychical Re- 
 search, and, four years before his death, had had a single 
 sitting with Mrs. Piper, one of a series arranged by the 
 Committee on Mediumistic Phenomena connected with 
 the Society. But neither the medium nor the Rev. 
 Minot J. Savage, who was on that occasion present 
 officially on behalf of the Committee, had learned his 
 name. A couple of years afterwards he had had a dis- 
 cussion vvith Dr. Hodgson on the possibility of a future 
 life, and on this occasion vowed that if he died before 
 him and found himself still existing, he would " make 
 things lively " in the effort to reveal the fact of his con- 
 
 ^ " A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of 
 Trance," Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XIII., pp. 284 — 582.
 
 200 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 tinued existence. The seance on March 22nd, 1892, was 
 the first at which any friend of his was present. His 
 relations with Dr. Hodgson had not been of an emotional 
 nature. 
 
 With Phinuit acting as intermediary, George Pelham 
 in the first sitting already gave a number of correct 
 statements, among other things his own name and the 
 names, bot^ Christian and surname, of several of his 
 intimate friends. Among these were Mr. James Howard, 
 his wife Mary, and their daughter Katharine. Referring 
 to the latter, G. P. said : " Tell her, she'll know. ' I'll 
 solve the problems, Katharine.' " Mr. Hart was aware 
 that Pelham had known the Howards, but did not under- 
 stand what this remark referred to. Mr. Howard, 
 however, to whom Mr. Hart gave an account of the sitting, 
 was very much impressed by the words. George Pelham, 
 when he had last stayed with them, had talked frequently 
 with Katharine, a girl of fifteen years of age, about the 
 great problems of existence, adding that sometime he 
 would solve them, and let her know. 
 
 This first manifestation was followed by a great many 
 others, nay it may be said that G. P. never entirely 
 disappeared from Mrs. Piper's trance. It is unnecessary 
 to repeat here much from the numerous sittings where he 
 tried to prove his identity, and in fact convinced most 
 people of it. The interest he presents reaches beyond 
 the question of identity. Besides, in this as in other 
 cases, the references that are said to be the most con- 
 vincing are omitted in the report as too personal for pub- 
 lication. But an idea about the strength of his claim to 
 be believed one gets on hearing that, out of at least one 
 hundred and fifty sitters whom in the following six years 
 he " met " at Mrs. Piper's, he recognized thirty whom 
 Pelham had known living, and never claimed acquaintance 
 with a sitter to whom Pelham was unknown. One of the 
 recognized persons, the Rev. Minot J. Savage, did not 
 himself know that he had ever met the deceased author ; 
 as mentioned above, the latter was not introduced under
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 201 
 
 his real name when he, in March, 1888, attended a sitting 
 together with Mr. Savage. Once only a sitter appeared 
 at Mrs. Piper's who was not identified by G. P., though 
 Pelham had known her ; it was a young girl who had been 
 a child when he died five years previously. Phinuit could 
 tell a great deal about her ; but this was not the way in 
 which G. P. knew people. When he was told her name, 
 however, he remembered her well. 
 
 There is, on the whole, in this remarkable case, where 
 for the first time the same personality manifested beside 
 Phinuit through a long period, abundant opportunity to 
 observe the difference between an " ordinary " spirit and 
 the medium Phinuit. What a contrast there is between 
 George's correct use of the Christian and surname of his 
 friends, or of the surname only where this would have 
 been natural to Pelham when living, and Phinuit's groping 
 for names and his tendency to let the Christian name 
 suffice. Or between Phinuit's errors when speaking of 
 all these things which he had not himself experienced, or 
 heard of, but only got an impression of then and there, 
 and George's mistakes, which are most often slips of the 
 memory, and easily accounted for. How natural is, for 
 instance, his misrecollection when he says : " Lent a book 
 to Meredith. Tell him to keep it for me," while the rights 
 of the case were that Pelham had during a visit from his 
 friend Meredith, some months before his death, wanted 
 him to take away some of his books, but that he had not 
 done so. And how different is it from the manner of 
 Phinuit when G. P., after recognizing a picture of the 
 Howards' summer-house in D., which they had left eight 
 years before Pelham's death, said : " But I have for- 
 gotten the name of the town," adding afterwards : 
 " Then you bought a place at some ville " ; they had, in 
 fact, bought a place at Xville in 1886. 
 
 In spite of the great mass of verifiable statements — of 
 which many were unknown to the actual sitters — 
 presented in the G. P. case, it is, therefore, not these that 
 have given it its greatest import. The dramatic realism
 
 202 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 which from the very first stamped the manifestations of 
 this personahty, the consistence of character maintained 
 through all the following years, did much more to con- 
 vince his friends and relatives who had originally all been 
 sceptical, not to speak of Dr. Hodgson himself. His 
 attitude towards the varying sitters, varying in accord- 
 ance with Pelham's relations with them when living, his 
 clear understanding of what was expected from him, his 
 intelligence and his wdllingness to sacrifice himself to the 
 cause he had espoused, this and much more made of G. P. 
 a figure worthy of representing the once living Pelham 
 in an altered situation. What change has been discernible 
 in this continuous living and persistent personality, says 
 Dr. Hodgson, is a change " not of any process of disinte- 
 gration, but rather of integration and evolution." 
 
 George Pelham's utterances in the first seance had 
 referred to his friends and his own affairs, which on account 
 of the suddenness of his death had been left in a certain 
 disorder. Though the most personal references are not 
 quoted, the reader gets a clear picture of the whole 
 situation. Above all he wished to speak with Mr. Howard. 
 " Tell Jim I want to see him," he said to Mr. Hart. Three 
 weeks passed befcJre his wish could be gratified, as the 
 interval was occupied by sitters for whom appointment 
 had been made previously ; but at each of these sittings 
 Phinuit represented G. P. as anxious to see him or other 
 friends, saying : " George says, when are you going to 
 bring Jim ? " or " George says he wants to tell you of 
 the philosophy of this life." At the Howards' first 
 seance, on April nth, he talked in a pertinent manner of 
 his sudden decease, and what happened afterwards, as 
 one who speaks to friends after a separation. Besides, 
 he besought them to bring his father. His mother was 
 not living. 
 
 But at this meeting the sitters had already, by request 
 of Dr. Hodgson, begun to put test questions to G. P. 
 These questions, which from the point of view of identifi-
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 203 
 
 cation it was thought specially valuable to get answered, 
 but which referred to subjects he did not spontaneously 
 allude to, strained and worried him in no small degree. 
 Dr. Hodgson himself thought afterwards that the method 
 of proceeding had often been objectionable ; the com- 
 municator was interrupted instead of allowed to say 
 what he wanted, and confusion was created by a continual 
 change of subject. For instance, he was one day while 
 other things were discussed asked about a sitter's name ; 
 it was Professor Peirce, who had been known to Pelham. 
 The question was not answered, but when Mrs. Piper was 
 just coming out of trance, she whispered among some 
 incomprehensible words twice the name Peirce, and 
 on the next day G. P. said that he had " tried to tell the 
 medium just as she was coming into her body again." 
 Here then it became clear that he had not postponed the 
 reply because he did not know the name. But, of course, 
 the experimenters must be on their guard to avoid 
 deceiving themselves. The following case illustrates well 
 the difficulty of the situation for both parts. At a sitting 
 in May, G. P. acted as amanuensis for the sitter's deceased 
 sister. The Christian name of this lady had been given, 
 and G. P. went on to write some more statements at her 
 dictation. Dr. Hodgson interrupted him by a demand 
 for her surname, to which G. P. answered with some 
 impatience : 
 
 " Don't bother me while her sister [i.e., the spirit] is 
 speaking to me please, for I have quite enough to do without 
 this." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson writes hereof : " This, thought I, is an 
 evasion ; it would have been much easier to have written 
 the name, if it were known, than to spend so many words 
 in telling me not to interrupt." His suspicion seemed to 
 receive confirmation when the writing ended without 
 any reply to his question. But afterwards Phinuit, who 
 came to speak a few words about other matters, stopping 
 suddenly, spelled out the letters of the name,
 
 204 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 MANNORS (pseudonym), adding that George was 
 " yelling at " him to say that ! 
 
 In a single case, however, a similar suspicion seemed 
 well founded. G. P. was asked about the names of two 
 ladies who had formed a society together with Pelham 
 two years before his death, and said that he would put 
 off answering until he was alone with Dr. Hodgson, who 
 did not knoW the names, in order that the answer might 
 not be considered thought-transference. But the names 
 which he gave later were not correct ; thus the alleged 
 reason for not answering at once had probably been a 
 pretext to get delay. In view of the severity with which 
 he was treated, we ought perhaps to forgive him that he 
 tried to conceal his ignorance — what the researchers, 
 however, have not been willing to do. 
 
 G. P. once says about himself and the other spirits : 
 " Like as when in the body sometimes, we can't always 
 recall everything in a moment." But the experimenters 
 seem to have been prone to suppose that he possessed a 
 similar memory as that which is ascribed to the sub- 
 conscious mind. As an instance may be quoted that a 
 sitter more than two years after Pelham's death asked 
 G. P. a series of questions concerning the number of 
 pages of a manuscript of Pelham's on a philosophical 
 subject, the paper on which it was written, its division 
 into chapters, its external title page, and its first sentence 
 and dedication. It is characterized as a failure that G. P. 
 was unable to answer these questions. 
 
 But also in another respect strange achievements 
 were exacted from George Pelham. Dr. Hodgson counts 
 as failures divers unsuccessful attempts on his part to 
 answer questions about lost objects, and a few pro- 
 phecies. He adds about the former category, that 
 correct answers would have strengthened the evidence 
 for the possession of supernormal faculty, but that the 
 failures do not directly affect the question of identity. 
 The same applies in his opinion to G. P.'s prophecies, 
 " which were not many and were chiefly personal," and
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 205 
 
 where Dr. Hodgson thinks his " success would outweigh 
 his failure." The remarkable thing is, that Dr. Hodgson 
 apparently would have found it natural, if supernormal 
 faculty had been the privilege of all departed. He does 
 not seem to have realized how different Phinuit is in this 
 respect from the other communicators in Mrs. Piper's 
 trance. As regards George Pelham, there is not much 
 reason to believe that he had mediumistic powers. But, 
 of course, it is not excluded that he may have been some- 
 thing of a psychic, though in a far less degree than 
 Phinuit. On the other hand, it is conceivable that 
 Phinuit has helped him with this kind of task. The 
 exact circumstances cannot be learned from the report, 
 where the cases in question are not recorded. 
 
 Of a wholly different type is a series of attempts to 
 make G. P. give information about the doings of some of 
 his friends or relatives ; this, of course, does not imply 
 any supernormal powers in a spirit. G. P. himself dis- 
 played a great interest in these experiments after they 
 had been suggested to him, and here he was several times 
 very successful. On April 13th, 1892, it was arranged 
 that he should watch his father, who lived in Washington, 
 and see him do something which the sitters (the Howards) 
 could not know about, and tell them at their next seance. 
 This came off on April 22nd, and G. P. said : 
 
 " I saw father and he took my photograph and took it to 
 the artist's to have it copied ... I went to Washington ; 
 my father will be hard to convince ; my mother [i.e., step- 
 mother] not so hard." 
 
 Asked about this, Mrs. Pelham wrote from Washington : 
 " His father did, without my knowledge, take a photo- 
 graph of him to a photographer here to copy — not enlarge. 
 The negative had been broken. Mrs. L. was going to 
 have it copied in New York, and Mr. Pelham thought he 
 would see what they could do here." 
 
 With the parents themselves it was at a sitting in New 
 York on Saturday, May 14th, arranged that George 
 should follow them in the afternoon of the same day.
 
 2o6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 during which they should do something special having 
 relation to him. At a seance on the following Monday, 
 where they would not be present, he should then describe 
 what he had seen. On this occasion he said as follows : 
 
 " I saw him take some notepaper and write an explanatory 
 letter to Frank about what I had said to him in or on that 
 day [i.e., Saturday] . . . The flowers which I saw mother 
 put before my photo, she and father will understand . . 
 In connection with this I saw them open my book and place 
 therein a picture of X. Y. That is all of importance that I 
 saw them do." 
 
 All these details were correct, only Mr. Pelham had not 
 written the explanatory letter to Frank, the brother of 
 George. He had intended writing such a letter on the 
 said afternoon, and had consulted his wife about the 
 proposed contents, but had not found time to do it. It is 
 conceivable that George had heard their conversation, 
 and so thought that the plan had been executed. There 
 are several instances where he claims to have heard 
 something which had really been spoken ; thus. Pro- 
 fessor Newbold ^ relates that G. P. once told him that he 
 had heard him and Dr. Hodgson speak about " the 
 memoriam Rogers," i.e., Mr. Rogers's preface to Pelham's 
 poems ; "I caught it as you were telling him and it 
 attracted me," G. P. had said. They had in fact con- 
 versed with each other on this subject. 
 
 Another successful experiment of this kind referred to 
 Mr. Howard. Phinuit had in the beginning of a seance, 
 in December, 1892, said that George had gone to find 
 Jim and would come back and tell Hodgson what he was 
 doing. Afterwards G. P. himself appeared and wrote 
 through the medium's hand, while Phinuit simultaneously 
 spoke with another person, as follows : 
 
 " Hello, I am with you now and, Hodgson, Jim has seen 
 Fenton — — Jim is reading, or was a short few minutes ago." 
 
 Both these statements were correct. Mr, Howard had 
 gone into the country to visit a friend named Fenton. 
 
 » Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XIV., p. 48.
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 207 
 
 Later in the sitting G. P. said in reply to a question from 
 Mrs. Howard, this time using the voice : 
 
 " G. P. He has gone to see his friend Fenton, saw him 
 not three quarters of an hour ago, as near as I can go by the 
 time. 
 
 " Dr. H. It was more. 
 
 " G. P. That I can't specify." 
 
 Mrs. Howard asked what Fenton and Jim talked 
 about, and G. P. gave what proved to be a correct 
 answer : 
 
 " About this very subject and about me. They have been 
 discussing it, but Fenton is as hard-headed as Orenberg [a 
 friend of Pelham's] " 
 
 Further must be mentioned an experiment, the result 
 of which was very curious. In the commencement of a 
 seance, on April 28th, 1892, Dr. Hodgson asked G. P. 
 to visit the Howards and return to inform him what they 
 were doing. Towards the end of the sitting, Phinuit 
 interrupted his talk with the sitter. Professor Peirce,^ to 
 give a number of statements about things which G. P. 
 had seen Mrs. Howard do. He spoke as follows : 
 
 " She is writing, and [has] taken some violets and put them 
 in a book. And it looks as if she's writing to my mother . . . 
 Who's Tyson . . . Davis ... I saw her sitting in the chair 
 
 sitting before a little desk or table. Took httle book, 
 
 opened it, wrote letter he thinks to his mother. Saw her take 
 a little bag and put some things in it belonging to him, placed 
 the photograph beside her on the desk. That's hers. Sent 
 
 a letter toTASON TYSON. Mrs. She hunted a 
 
 little while for her picture, sketching. He's certain that the 
 letter is to his mother. She took one of George's books and 
 turned it over and said : ' George, are you here .'* Do you see 
 that ? ' These were the very words. Then she turned and 
 went up a short flight of stairs. Took some thing from a 
 drawer, came back again, sat down to the desk, and then 
 finished the letter." 
 
 It turned out that Mrs. Howard had done none of 
 these things that day, but all of them on the evening of 
 
 1 It was at this sitting that G. P. would not give his name at once ; 
 see above, p. 203.
 
 2o8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 the 26th and the afternoon of the 27th April. On both 
 days she had written to Mrs. Pelham. On the 26th she 
 had had George's photograph before her while she wrote, 
 and had afterwards put it in an envelope with the letter 
 and another photo of him. It was also correct that she 
 had hunted a little for her picture, namely, one she had 
 painted of George. All that was said about her taking 
 George's b6ok, etc., was true, but she could not tell at 
 what time she did that. While writing to his mother she 
 went and took some things from a drawer, and came back 
 again and finished the letter. On the 27th, in the after- 
 noon, she wrote to Mrs. Tyson, a lady she had not written 
 to for weeks, perhaps for months, declining an invitation. 
 Later she wrote to Mrs. Pelham, and seeing " George's 
 violets " by her in an envelope gave them to her daughter 
 to put in a drawer. They were not put into a book. 
 
 As may be seen, Phinuit's representation, though 
 precise in most details, interweaves two series of doings 
 in a perplexing manner, beginning by the latest. Con- 
 cerning this Dr. Hodgson writes that G. P. seemed to 
 have a very obscure perception generally of our physical 
 world, and to have mistaken for contemporary physical 
 events a series of recent scenes in Mrs. Howard's subcon- 
 scious mind. But the latter explanation does not agree 
 with George Pelham's other achievements. In no other 
 instance has he proved himself able to see, by a sort of 
 retrospective clairvoyance, or by mind-reading, something 
 that has actually occurred, but at an earlier time. Either 
 he sees the events contemporaneously with their taking 
 place, though with varying clearness, or he cannot see 
 them at all. It is conceivable that he had seen those 
 events when they occurred, and reproduced his recollec- 
 tions of them, perhaps without a clear understanding as 
 to the time of their occurrence. They might have 
 " attracted " him, as he states that the conversation 
 between Dr. Hodgson and Professor Newbold about the 
 preface to his book did, because they concerned himself, 
 while Mrs. Howard, perhaps, at the time of the sitting on
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 209 
 
 April 28th, did not perform anything that could do this. 
 Likewise, all that he reported about his father's doings 
 had been things that had some relation to himself ; on the 
 first occasion he had seen his father take his photograph to 
 the photographer, in the second case he had observed a 
 series of doings which were purposely performed by the 
 parents as related to him. The same connection between 
 the events which a communicator appears to have seen, 
 and their relation to the deceased person whom he purports 
 to be, is found in other cases, and was regarded by 
 Dr. Hodgson as one of the circumstances that testified 
 to the identity of the spirits. That Phinuit can see things 
 which do not concern himself is, of course, another matter. 
 It might also, perhaps, be conceived that it was Phinuit 
 who clairvoyantly saw Mrs. Howard's past doings, and 
 reported them to help G. P., but it is hardly so probable 
 an interpretation as the other one. But in any case, it 
 is evidently Phinuit who is responsible for the form in 
 which they are presented ; it is thoroughly Phinuit-ese 
 to say : " Who's Tyson ? " and to call an envelope " a 
 little bag." It is as if he got the description from G. P. 
 through impressions, and not by means of words. 
 
 Dr. Hodgson's report contains several more contribu- 
 tions to the elucidation of the manner in which G. P. saw 
 things. At a sitting on December 22nd, 1892, the following 
 conversation took place between them on account of an 
 experiment performed by the latter : 
 
 " G.P. I followed you on a railway train for some distance, 
 and then I thought you were in New York [correct], but am 
 not sure ... I could not be too positive, as things look 
 differently to me now from what they did when I was in my 
 material body. 
 
 " Dr. H. I suppose that you don't see the physical universe 
 directly, but come into relation with our perception of the 
 physical universe ? 
 
 " G. P. Yes, absolutely in a spiritual sense ; in fact it is, 
 and must necessarily be, through the spiritual that I see you, 
 and can follow, and tell about what you are doing from time 
 to time." 
 
 CD. P
 
 210 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 What G. P. says here is not, perhaps, very clear. But 
 he seems to take no notice whatever of Dr. Hodgson's 
 speech about our perception o/the universe. His explana- 
 tion has nothing to do with seeing by means of other 
 people's minds ; in this respect he seems to agree with 
 Phinuit, who always denied being a mind-reader. And 
 at a sitting on January 24th, 1893, his words were clearer. 
 The dialogue on this occasion is the following : 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, George, I want to go away very shortly 
 while you are still here, and I want you to either go yourself 
 or to get Phinuit to go, and if possible tell them here where I 
 am going and what I am doing. 
 
 " G. P. Yes, I will try my best, but it will depend wholly 
 on my seeing your spiritual bo^y, so please send out your 
 spiritual body to me as much as you possibly can while you 
 are doing the trick." 
 
 Nothing of what G. P. on this occasion reported about 
 Dr. Hodgson's doings was correct ; thus it must be 
 supposed that the latter has not understood the art of 
 " sending out his spiritual body." An experiment with 
 an acquaintance of Pelham's, Miss M., failed likewise ; 
 Dr. Hodgson himself connected these two failures with the 
 circumstance that neither his own nor Miss M.'s relations 
 to Pelham had been of an emotional nature such as those 
 of his parents and the Howards. G. P.'s words,, perhaps, 
 expressed a similar thing ; if he could only see people 
 in the moments when they sent out their " spiritual body " 
 to him, i.e., were filled with thoughts of him, his nearest 
 friends and relatives must of course be those he most 
 often saw. 
 
 Perhaps this too is the explanation of the following case 
 from a sitting with Mr. Howard on December 9th, 1892 : 
 
 " G. P. I saw you in Marte's library a few days since. 
 
 ''^ Mr. H. All three of us ? 
 
 " G. P. No, simply you, Jim." 
 
 Mr. Howard had been in Mr. Marte's library on Decem- 
 ber ist, but all the time with the latter ; besides, Dr. 
 Hodgson had been there part of the time. Has G. P.
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 211 
 
 been able to see his friend, but not his more remote 
 acquaintance, Mr. Marte ? 
 
 A few experiments aimed at making G. P. read letters, 
 of course to the exclusion of Mrs. Piper seeing the con- 
 tents. On December 7th, 1892, a letter from Mrs. Pelham 
 to Mrs. Howard, who was present, was put into the hand 
 of the medium. After handling it G. P. said : 
 
 " G. P. Oh I see father is not well Where is it that she 
 
 says in that letter she is going ? 
 
 " Mrs. H. First to New York and then perhaps to come 
 
 here, George, to see you. Now what is the place that they 
 are going to dispose of, what does it say in the letter, 
 George ? Tell me the name. 
 
 " G. P. The house and property in New York " 
 
 All this was correct and written in the letter. But the 
 name of the place in New York, a very peculiar one, G. P. 
 was unable to give, though it was also written in the letter, 
 and though he had given it correctly in the spring. 
 
 If G. P. could see the contents of the letter, it seems 
 then to be in a similar imperfect manner as that in which 
 he on the whole saw the physical universe. At the next 
 experiment, a fortnight later, he evidently saw nothing 
 at all. Mrs. Howard had intended to bring a letter from 
 his father discussing " George's reappearance at the 
 sittings." By mistake, and without knowing it, she had 
 instead of this letter brought a business letter from 
 Mr. Pelham, which she handed to Mrs. Piper. The 
 following conversation ensued : 
 
 " Mrs. H. I want you to see your father's letter, because 
 there is something in it that will please you. 
 
 " G. P. This does not sound as father would talk when I 
 was in the body . . He believes that I exist [calls for 
 Dr. Hodgson, complains of being ' muddled ']. He was pained 
 but he is no longer pained, because he feels that I exist. 
 
 " Mrs. H. That's right ; I have read it. 
 
 " G. P. That brings me nearer to my father ; now 
 
 tell him that I am very near him and I see him and hear 
 
 him when he is talking of me, hear him discussing with mother 
 certain things about my life, some things that perhaps pained 
 him, and some things that perhaps pleased him " 
 
 P 2
 
 212 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 G. P. did not here say more than what he knew pre- 
 viously, and what Mrs. Howard's remark, that the letter 
 would please him, might lead up to. Possibly the letter, 
 which was at any rate coming from the father, had given 
 him an impression of the latter's mood ; he says of it that 
 it " brings him nearer to his father." In that case the 
 performance must be classed with psychometry. That 
 he got no suspicion of the real contents of the letter 
 agrees with the hypothesis that the non-emotional was 
 inaccessible to him. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 With the greatest possible eagerness, and with a 
 touching gratitude towards D>. Hodgson, G. P. had 
 undertaken all these tasks. " Words can never express 
 what I feel towards you for trying to get me to do things, 
 to explain to you where I am, and all for your all," he 
 said to Dr. Hodgson in the spring of 1892. But, as said 
 above, the method of the experimenters was not always 
 rational. G. P. must often beg them to pay more regard 
 to himself, and he could sometimes feel a little annoyed 
 with them. " You all want me to work for you, but you 
 don't care a straw about helping me," he exclaimed at a 
 seance in December, 1892, when two sitters overwhelmed 
 him with questions without giving him time to answer. 
 "It is hard work, Hodgson, but I have got courage to 
 brave it out," he said a few days afterwards to Dr. Hodg- 
 son. Seven years later he still remembered this period 
 with a certain bitterness. " I know how you confused 
 me, by Jove, and I don't want any more of it," he said to 
 Dr. Hodgson in the summer of 1899 at a sitting where he 
 acted as the helper of other spirits.^ 
 
 What was really amiss, however, was no doubt the 
 circumstance that George Pelham, in spite of all their 
 demands for " tests," did not understand that it could 
 be seriously doubted who he was. This appears clearly 
 at two sittings in December, 1892, of which the former 
 
 > See below, p. 248.
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 213 
 
 contains, so to speak, a making-up with Dr. Hodgson, 
 and the latter the same with Pelham's dearest friend, 
 Mr. Howard. The conversation between Dr. Hodgson 
 and G. P. took place in the presence of Mrs. Howard on 
 December 19th, and ran as follows : 
 
 " G. P. I want Hodgson to speak his mind fully to me 
 personally now. 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, I have not got anything specially on my 
 mind now, George. 
 
 " G. P. Have I said anything to trouble you ? Be frank, 
 please. 
 
 " Dr. H. No, you have not said anything to trouble me, 
 except the things that make it difficult to reconcile to your 
 identity. You said things that easily contradict, George 
 
 " G. P. I think you will find my statements contradictory 
 only when you confuse me by all talking at once, or when I 
 do not fully understand your questions. 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, George, I am going to go over all the 
 things that appear to be contradictory, and ask you about 
 them 
 
 " G. P. That is what I want. It has worried me far more 
 than it has you, my dear fellow. 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, I suppose it must have, George. I can 
 understand that. 
 
 " G. P. Now just let me illustrate. When I began to 
 speak about my existence here and was ready to quote it 
 philosophically, you interrupted me continually. 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, we are very sorry, George ; we would like 
 you to go straight on without our saying a word for an hour, 
 if you could. 
 
 " G. P. Don't you know you did it ? Please be frank. 
 
 " Dr. H. No, I am not aware that we did, George, except 
 you seemed as though you needed us to speak to you 
 occasionally. 
 
 " G. P. Have you not got the things written ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes. 
 
 " Mrs. H. [to Dr. H.]. Yes, I think he was interrupted a 
 good deal by Marte at the last sitting. 
 
 " G. P. Well, please read them carefully . . . and see if I 
 am not right. 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, we will take care, I think, George, not to do 
 an injustice. 
 
 " G.P. Thank you." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson, on examining the records, arrived at the 
 conclusion that the statements made by G. P. were fully
 
 214 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 justified, though he had not thought so at the time of 
 their conversation. 
 
 The scene between G. P. and Mr. Howard took place 
 three days later ; Dr. Hodgson was present, and had, as 
 will be seen from his very first remark, learned something 
 from the sitting on the 19th : 
 
 " G. P. No^w, what will I do for you ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Well, George, is there anything that you would 
 like to give us, any special message that you thought it would 
 be desirable for us to have, or anything about philosophy, we 
 should be glad to have that ! 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, George, before you go to philosophy — you 
 know my opinion of philosophy — 
 
 " G. P. It is rather crude, to be sure. 
 
 " Mr. H. Tell me something, you must be able to recall 
 certain things that you and I know ; now, it makes no 
 difference what the thing is ; tell me something that you and 
 I alone know. I ask you because several things I have asked 
 you, you have failed to get hold of. 
 
 " G. P. Why did you not ask me this before ? 
 
 " Mr. H. Because I did not have occasion to. 
 
 " G. P. What do you mean, Jim ? 
 
 " Mr. H. I mean, tell me something that you and I alone 
 know, something in our past that you and I alone know. 
 
 " G. P. Do you doubt me, dear old fellow ? 
 
 " Mr. H. I simply want something — you have failed to 
 answer certain questions that I have asked — now I want you 
 to give me the equivalent of the answers to those questions 
 in your own terms. 
 
 " G. P. What were they ? 
 
 " Mr. H. The questions were about where we dined, and 
 that you did not remember ; now tell me something you do 
 remember. 
 
 " G. P. Oh, you mean now." 
 
 Mr. Howard had in the beginning of the seance asked 
 G. P. where they on a certain occasion had dined together 
 in New York ; G. P. had given the names of two common 
 friends, but not that of the friend with whom they had 
 dined. It is evident that it is only at this point of the 
 conversation that it dawns upon him. that this is the 
 failure to which " Jim " is referring ; until then he had 
 believed that he spoke of former sittings. Mr. Howard 
 continues :
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 215 
 
 " Mr. H. Tell me something now that you remember that 
 happened before. 
 
 " G. P. Well, I will. About Arthur [one of the friends 
 mentioned] ought to be a test. How absurd . . . what 
 does Jim mean ? Do you mean our conversation on different 
 things, or do you mean something else ? 
 
 " Mr. H. I mean that we spent a great many summers 
 
 and winters together, and talked on a great many things and 
 had a great many views in common, went through a great 
 many experiences together 
 
 " G. P. You used to talk to me about ..." 
 
 What G. P. afterwards said has not been published. 
 " Several statements were read by me," Dr. Hodgson 
 writes, " and assented to by Mr. Howard, and then was 
 written ' private,' and the hand gently pushed me away. 
 I retired to the other side of the room, and Mr. Howard 
 took my place close to the hand where he could read the 
 writing. He did not, of course, read it aloud, and it was 
 too private for my perusal. The circumstances narrated, 
 Mr. Howard informed me, contained precisely the kind 
 of test for which he had asked." 
 
 For the readers who are not made acquainted with the 
 test, the dramatic character of the incident must suffice. 
 There is something pathetic in G. P.'s dawning compre- 
 hension of his friend's doubt about his identity — and 
 something tragi-comic in his surprise when he begins to 
 realize that the difficulty is that he cannot remember 
 where they dined together some time in New York ! 
 And it is touching that he after he has given all the 
 desired tests reverts to this forgetfulness, and says 
 deprecatingly : 
 
 " Jim, I am dull in this sphere about some things, but you 
 will forgive me, won't you ? . . . but like as when in the 
 body sometimes we can't always recaU everything in a 
 moment, can we, Jim, dear old fellow ? " 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 There has in the preceding pages almost exclusively 
 been talked about George Pelham's communications on 
 his own behalf, and about his attempts to prove his own 
 identity. He was, however, going to play a greater part
 
 2i6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 than this merely personal one. He became in the following 
 years Phinuit's co-operator and, partly, his successor as 
 the one who assisted other spirits in communicating. 
 With the clairvoyant part of Phinuit's activity he had 
 nothing to do ; but as a helper of others he displayed an 
 ability which soon threw Phinuit into the shade. 
 
 About the time of George Pelham's first manifestation 
 a development had taken place in the trance-phenomena 
 which was in itself of great importance, and, moreover, 
 enhanced the value of G. P.'s assistance. Hitherto the 
 communications had been oral, both when Phinuit spoke 
 on his own account or in the name of some other spirit, 
 and when occasionally another spirit was himself " con- 
 trolling " the medium. This happened also in the case 
 of G. P. ; in the beginning Phinuit was intermediary, 
 i.e., the medium spoke with the voice which characterized 
 Phinuit, either in the first person representing G. P. or 
 in the third person about him ; but gradually G. P. 
 himself learned to use the voice, Phinuit, however, had 
 been wont to write down now and again something by 
 the hand of the medium ; this was also done at the first 
 sittings where G. P. manifested. A short time previously 
 it had occurred that some other spirit made use of the 
 hand simultaneously with Phinuit speaking through the 
 mouth of Mrs. Piper. Dr. Hodgson experienced this 
 phenomenon for the first time on March 12th, 1892, ten 
 days before the manifestation of G. P. ; a private sitter 
 had been a witness to it already in 1891. 
 
 By degrees this led to Phinuit using the voice and the 
 other communicators the hand. An instance of its taking 
 place simultaneously has been mentioned above. But 
 even apart from this double utilization of the medium, 
 it was no doubt the increased use of writing that made it 
 possible for G. P. to co-operate in a satisfactory way with 
 Phinuit. The latter continued as a rule to be the inter- 
 mediary when the voice was employed, while G. P. acted 
 as amanuensis by the use of the hand. Already at some 
 sittings in May and June, 1892, he rendered assistance by
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 217 
 
 writing for other communicators ; a case has been quoted 
 above. From the autumn of 1893 until a new change 
 occurred in 1896, he assisted almost constantly in the 
 Piper-trance, either by writing for other communicators or 
 by advising those who tried to communicate directly 
 themselves. 
 
 Also in other respects, namely, the exchanging of the 
 trance-speech for trance-writing had proved an improve- 
 ment. Not only it secured without intervention of 
 stenographer or note-taker an exact rendering of the 
 communications, but it appeared to be a means of 
 communication of which the spirits could more easily 
 make use than of the voice. It would seem, however, 
 that until instructed in some way they were unaware that 
 they were writing. The hand was like a machine which 
 registered automatically their speech — if it were speech ; 
 several expressions intimate that the communicators 
 were only thinking. On the other hand, it was of course 
 far more difftcult for the experimenters to hold a con- 
 versation with the hand than with the voice, and this 
 might occasion some confusion. At the same time, the 
 communicators suffered from the slow manner of pro- 
 ceeding, and from the constant interruptions when the 
 writing was difficult to decipher. A helper on their side 
 like George Pelham was almost indispensable. 
 
 Meanwhile, Phinuit went on in his old way, especially 
 when alone, mingling false statements with true, and 
 often incurring the old accusations of fishing and guessing. 
 Upon much of what had formerly been conceived in 
 this manner, George Pelham's intervention had, however, 
 thrown a new light. When spirits were present, he 
 seemed far better able to manage matters than Phinuit 
 had been. It is a curious thing that Phinuit seemed to 
 be far less self-confident after G. P.'s appearance on the 
 stage. He seemed better able to understand the im- 
 portance of the cause, and to see his own deficiencies ; he 
 might be quite downcast when G. P. was absent. Such 
 was, for instance, the case at a sitting on January 3oth^
 
 2i8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 1893, where, besides Dr. Hodgson, the Howards and a 
 stranger were present. Phinuit spoke a little of the 
 stranger's character, and said there was a young man 
 and an older one who wished to communicate with him. 
 The latter tried to write a few words, but they were 
 almost illegible, and Phinuit said he would go and try to 
 get George to help him. There were further vain attempts 
 at writing", accompanied by much violent movement in 
 the hand. At last Phinuit exclaimed : 
 
 " Ph. What is the matter ? I don't know what they are 
 doing with me, any way. 
 
 " Dr. H. Seems to be a regular stream of them now. 
 
 " Ph. I can't help it ; they say these things, and they will 
 say them, Hodgson. I can't help it." 
 
 The scene ended by Mrs, Howard asking for George, 
 who then made his appearance. 
 
 The usefulness of the writing and its advantages over 
 his own proceedings were also humbly acknowledged by 
 Phinuit. Thus, in a dilemma at a sitting in April, 1893, 
 he said : 
 
 "It is hard for me to understand. If you can get him 
 [the communicator] to use the hand, you can get the messages 
 more direct. They often get confused, coming through me." 
 
 On the whole, it became under the new circumstances 
 easier to distinguish between the different causes that 
 might lead to confusion. It became evident that it was 
 in a degree due to the communicators themselves. Dr. 
 Hodgson lays much stress on the fact that the success of 
 a sitting seemed to depend on the communicating spirit, 
 and not on the sitter. If the performances varied with 
 the sitters, it would, he argued, tell in favour of the 
 explanation telepathy ; that, on the contrary, the indi- 
 vidual communicator displays the same clearness, or 
 want of clearness, in the presence of all sitters, seemed to 
 his mind an important argument against the said explana- 
 tion. And such is what his experience had told him. 
 There were, he says, mainly three causes that might 
 occasion confusion in the communicators : the difficulty,
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 219 
 
 or impossibility, of using the organism of Mrs. Piper, the 
 contact with earthly conditions, and circumstances con- 
 cerning their death. But all this was more or less indi- 
 vidual, i.e., characteristic of the individual spirit. Some 
 persons would begin to understand " the machine " at 
 once, others never attained to the direct use of it. The 
 contact with the human sphere — " your sphere," G. P. 
 calls it — was a more general cause of a certain confusion ; 
 even habitual communicators often allude to their feeling 
 muddled or weak during the sitting. Finally, there 
 was the confusion due to quite special conditions in 
 the individual communicator. Dr. Hodgson mentions, 
 among others, a case where a gentleman who committed 
 suicide in a moment of temporary aberration, due to a 
 trouble from which he had suffered for a year before his 
 death, tried in vain to communicate coherently, though 
 the information he gave sufficed to indicate who he was ; 
 in the course of some years, however, this confusion 
 cleared away and the sittings with him became excellent. 
 In the case of a friend of Dr. Hodgson's, who also took his 
 own life, there was much confusion when he first came 
 into communication, which was a year after his death, 
 but later on he gave information, unknown to the sitters, 
 of a private and personal kind, well suited as a proof of 
 identity. Dr. Hodgson asserts that there are a number 
 of such cases, and concludes as follows : "In all these 
 cases the confusion persisted through varying conditions 
 of Mrs. Piper's trance, and whUe clear communications 
 were received from other persons ; and yet, so far as the 
 sitters' minds were concerned, there seemed no assignable 
 reason why the communications were not clear originally, 
 or did not soon become clear, if dependent upon living 
 persons." A similar relation he finds between the 
 confusion and a too short distance from the moment of 
 death ; but this kind of derangement, presumably due 
 to the shock of death, disappeared as a rule in the course 
 of a short time. 
 
 Dr. Hodgson's observation on this point is of some
 
 220 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 interest even apart from its importance as an argument 
 against the explanation mind-reading — which cannot, at 
 any rate, be an argument against that of clairvoyance. 
 If it be not based on such reality as Dr. Hodgson believed, 
 there seems to be one alternative only — that the dramatic 
 sense of the entranced Mrs. Piper is so eminent that she, 
 when it serves the characterization, does not even hesitate 
 to make the communicators confused and ignorant, con- 
 cealing the knowledge which it is otherwise the most 
 important object of the sittings to display. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The last report from the Phinuit period is due to 
 Professor William Newbold, and embraces sittings from 
 the years 1894 — 96.^ Professor Newbold is an acute 
 critic, and is of opinion that a large portion of the pheno- 
 mena may be explained as a " weaving together by Mrs. 
 Piper's nervous mechanism of all the complex suggestions 
 of the seance room, supplemented by telepathic and clair- 
 voyant impressions got in connection with the sitter and 
 with the articles which he brings." But he does not 
 think that they, taken as a whole, can be so explained. 
 It is evidently Phinuit's performances that he has in 
 mind above ; the description does not fit all the pheno- 
 mena. It does not, above all, fit the cases where a distinct 
 personality comes forward with proofs of his identity and 
 in a manner that must seem characteristic just of his or 
 her individuality. 
 
 Such a communicator whose manifestation made a 
 strong impression on Professor Newbold, was for instance 
 his " Aunt Sallie," his mother's sister who had died when 
 he was not ten years old, and had been dead twenty years. 
 She showed her knowledge of his rather peculiar family 
 relations by alluding to a lady who was at the same time 
 his aunt and his grandmother. This was quite correct ; 
 a sister of his mother and of Sallie had been the wife of 
 his paternal grandfather after the death of his grand- 
 
 1 " A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of 
 Trance," Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XIV., pp. 6 — 78.
 
 GEORGE PELHAM 221 
 
 mother. A curious trait was, that the communicator 
 wanted that he should himself explain the relation so 
 that she might feel sure of his being really her nephew — 
 entirely the reverse of the usual process. " Evidence of 
 this sort," Professor Newbold concludes, " suggests the 
 actual presence of the alleged communicators." Nor was 
 he able to reconcile to a telepathic theory the circumstance 
 that just this half-forgotten aunt, whom he had not thought 
 of during the sittings, would manifest, while he vainly 
 desired to get into communication with a very near friend 
 who had died a few years previously, nay even applied to 
 George Pelham about this without result. 
 
 Professor Newbold's report further deals with the 
 transition to a group of new controls that definitely 
 supplanted Phinuit. They appeared in the end of 1896, 
 and after January, 1897, no more is heard about the 
 mysterious doctor who had been a thorn in the side of 
 many people, also among those who believed in the 
 genuineness of the other spirits. To conceive him as a 
 sub-personality of Mrs. Piper's was prevented, for one 
 thing, by the other communicators, so to speak, vouching 
 for his independent existence. This applies, as has been 
 seen, for instance, to Edmund Gurney ; and it applies to 
 George Pelham, who from the first mentions him with 
 much respect and a ceremonious use of his surname, 
 " Dr. Scliville." Thus it seems necessary to accept or 
 reject them together ; either they are all of them fancy 
 creations — sub-personalities if that name be preferred — or 
 they are all of them real, and the difference is only that 
 Phinuit has not been able to prove his identity. That 
 he was a medium is hardly sufficient to establish his being 
 Mrs. Piper's second self. 
 
 Though they are of course quite unevidential, I shall 
 finish by quoting some utterances about Phinuit which 
 occurred in the Piper-trance ten years later. Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, who had always felt more friendly towards Phinuit 
 than the other experimenters, one day during Mrs. Piper's
 
 222 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 sojoitm in England in igo6 directed a question concerning 
 him to his successor " Rector." The conversation was 
 the following : 
 
 " Sir 0. Does ' Phinuit ' mean anything to you ? 
 
 " R. You mean Dr. Phinuit ? Oh yes, we see him 
 occasionally ; he is in another sphere of this life, no longer 
 earth-bound, very well and very happy. 
 
 " Sir 0. He was a friend of mine. 
 
 " R. Cpuld you by any possibihty be the friend whom he 
 called ' Captain ' ? 
 
 " Sir 0. Yes indeed — 
 
 " R. Would you like to see and speak with him ? 
 
 " Sir 0. If it did him no harm — 
 
 " R. Oh no harm in the least ; he is beyond harm, friend. 
 He has so progressed " 
 
 Such was the not undramatic end of Phinuit's history. 
 Sir Ohver desisted from " seeing " him, as he feared it 
 might injure the medium whose trance had been of a less 
 agreeable kind in the time of Phinuit than it had after- 
 wards become.
 
 SECTION V 
 
 The Mediumism of Mrs. Piper 
 II. The New Regime 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 
 
 The old doctor's disappearance in one respect did not 
 improve the situation ; he was succeeded by some at 
 least equally mystic personalities. George Pelham was 
 evidently incapable of undertaking the management 
 alone ; it looks almost as if it was necessary to employ 
 more extraordinary spirits for that task. The introduc- 
 tion of " the band," as the new managers are often called, 
 was, however, apparently due to chance. Besides, it 
 took place under circumstances which in the beginning 
 threw a somewhat singular light on its members. 
 
 At a sitting in 1895, Professor Newbold had by the help 
 of George Pelham got hold of Stainton Moses, the well- 
 known English medium, who had died in 1892. In a 
 manuscript left with Frederic Myers, and which nobody 
 else had been allowed to see, Stainton Moses had given 
 what purported to be the real names of his controls, or 
 guides, who were in his automatic writings called Impera- 
 tor, Rector, Doctor, etc. The alleged Moses was now at 
 divers sittings with Professor Newbold and Dr. Hodgson 
 questioned about these names, and replied, though reluc- 
 tantly and with difficulty, to their questions ; but the 
 names turned out not to be identical with those found in 
 the manuscript. In other respects, however, the com- 
 municator had, in the opinion of Professor Newbold, " an 
 air of verisimilitude " ; Dr. Hodgson states that he later
 
 224 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " did furnish some private information unknown to the 
 sitters, and afterwards identified in England." Besides, 
 George Pelham vouches for him ; the same argument 
 appHes to him as to Phinuit and the new controls — they 
 must stand or fall together. 
 
 On the other hand, it appears that George Pelham had 
 no great regard for the performances of the alleged Moses 
 when aHve. " He had light," G. P. said, " but deceived 
 himself ; he was not far progressed." Stainton Moses 
 himself admitted at a Piper-sitting that much of his 
 teachings were his own theories ; " as I thought this very 
 strongly, I felt sure of having been told this," he said. 
 In reality, his productions can hardly bear a critical 
 examination, and the names left by him may like other 
 things be fabricated by his automatic self. The names 
 that were given by the Piper-Moses were those of ordinary 
 people, and seem due to a confusion which characterized 
 his first manifestations. 
 
 There remains, however, the fact that the Imperator- 
 band emerged at Mrs. Piper's in consequence of Dr. 
 Hodgson having, in 1896, pointed out to George Pelham 
 the importance of making Stainton Moses " clear," and 
 getting the answers to his questions. " The final result," 
 Dr. Hodgson writes, " was that Moses professed to get 
 the assistance of his former ' controls,' who after com- 
 municating on various occasions directly in November 
 and December, 1896, and January, 1897, demanded that 
 the control of Mrs. Piper's ' light ' should be placed in 
 their hands." That they were not really the controls of 
 vStainton Moses seems, however, quite certain ; they were 
 wholly ignorant about the automatist himself and what 
 they were supposed to have written through him ; this 
 was not the case with the Piper-Moses himself, and cannot, 
 therefore, be ascribed to the ignorance of the medium. 
 As regards their real identity, the more secondary members 
 of the band seem to have given varying and quite impos- 
 sible names, while Rector and Imperator did not even 
 try to satisfy the curiosity of the experimenters. In the
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 225 
 
 opinion of the researchers, they did not seriously claim to 
 be identical with the controls of Stainton Moses whose 
 names they had adopted. 
 
 Be that as it may, the consequences of the innovation 
 were at any rate beneficial. Imperator claimed that the 
 indiscriminate experimenting with Mrs. Piper's organism 
 should stop, and promised that he and his assistants 
 would repair it as far as possible. Dr. Hodgson then for 
 the first time explained to the normal Mrs. Piper about 
 Stainton Moses and his alleged relation to Imperator, and 
 got her sanction to the change. This led to ever happier 
 results ; the new managers were able to keep foreign 
 " influences " away ; Mrs. Piper's trance became more 
 agreeable for herself, and former sitters were all struck by 
 the improvement in the clearness and coherence of the 
 communications. 
 
 The first fruits of the new reign are, as regards the 
 published records, to be found in Professor James Hyslop's 
 report on three series of sittings which he, or Dr. Hodgson 
 on his behalf, had with Mrs. Piper in 1898 — 99.^ Tliey 
 are described with a greater completeness than any earlier. 
 All remarks by the sitter himself or by Dr. Hodgson are 
 entered, and nothing that occurred during the trance is 
 omitted. All arrangements with the managers, all their 
 introductory or concluding speeches, are given unabridged, 
 and the reader is thus able to judge fully of the character 
 and proceedings of the new controls. 
 
 There is, undeniably, a great difference between these 
 and their honest but uncouth antecessor, Phinuit. Impe- 
 rator is exalted and majestic ; Rector gentle, old-fashioned 
 in his speech, helpful and kind. Rector has got the real 
 work, having succeeded George Pelham as amanuensis at 
 the writing ; as a rule the communicators were no more 
 allowed to write themselves. The confusion which the 
 contact with earthly conditions produced, Imperator 
 
 ^ " A Further Record of Observations of Certain Trance Phenomena," 
 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XVI., pp. 46 — 49. 
 
 CD. Q
 
 226 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 seemed specially able to remove. " I am all right, when 
 Imperator is near," says Professor Hyslop's father at one 
 of the sittings. " Doctor " is the medical member of 
 the band, who diagnoses diseases and offers advice as 
 Phinuit did formerly. Another member is " Prudens " ; 
 he seems to have got the special task of " bringing light," 
 like a kind of medium on the other side. At Professor 
 Hyslop's second sitting Rector says : " We bring Prudens 
 and more light will be given," and during the third one 
 he appears after a pause, saying : "I am Prudens, and I 
 give light." 
 
 In one respect, however, the new order was inferior to 
 the period when George Pelham acted as secretary. It 
 was often hard for Rector to understand the things he 
 was to write down ; especially he had difficulty in grasping 
 names, and this easily led to misunderstandings. In 
 many cases, therefore, G. P. must step in and help. His 
 free and easy mode of address makes an interesting con 
 trast to Rector's dignified tone of language, and adds to 
 the dramatic effect. When Professor Hyslop arranged 
 with Dr. Hodgson that he was to have sittings in December, 
 1898, to the number of four, all precautions were taken 
 to conceal who he was, and Rector, for want of another 
 name, called him, in his discussions with Dr. Hodgson, 
 " the four times friend." G, P.'s opinion about all this 
 secretiveness resounds in a half-sarcastic remark to 
 Dr. Hodgson at a seance in November : " How are you, 
 
 H. ? Imperator asked me to ask you whether I could 
 
 help you out a bit when your almighty friend arrives." 
 His occasional irritability, too, makes an effective con- 
 trast to the unchanging patience and gentleness of 
 Rector. 
 
 For the rest, the habits of the Phinuit period were not 
 entirely broken. It was still the practice that the sitter 
 brought articles which had belonged to the person with 
 whom he hoped to get into communication. But at the 
 same time the part played by these articles seemed to 
 have changed somewhat. Phinuit had been able to tell
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 227 
 
 a great deal about their deceased owners, but as often as 
 not they did not seem to be present. On the other hand, 
 spirits might manifest without being attracted by objects, 
 nay, even without being much acquainted with the sitters ; 
 an instance hereof was Dr. Rich's manifestation at one 
 of Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings with the Thompsons. It 
 may therefore be said that the articles at that time served 
 mostly to procure information about people, deceased or 
 living, who were not present. 
 
 Under the new reign they were valued for another 
 reason, namely, as a means of supplying their former 
 owners with strength to communicate. The Hyslop 
 sittings contain many instances hereof. " Can't you 
 give me something belonging to him ? " Rector asks at 
 the second seance, after the manifestation of Professor 
 Hyslop's father. At the fourth sitting the son will read 
 something to the father which occasions Rector to say : 
 " Give me something of his, that I may hold him quite 
 clearly." And when Rector, in January, 1899, is going 
 to make an appointment with Dr. Hodgson about future 
 sittings for Professor Hyslop, the following conversation 
 takes place between them : 
 
 " R. Canst thou not let us know at this point whether he 
 can meet us or thee . . either him or thee, as we desire to 
 prepare his father or friends for this 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes. It will be most convenient that I should 
 have the days on his behalf in his absence. 
 
 " R. Yes, Well, friend, then we would have thee arrange 
 
 at once for articles We would like some articles if 
 
 possible worn by his father when in the body, also some one 
 
 object handled a good deal by him we are desirous of 
 
 keeping him as clear as possible, friend." 
 
 On a later occasion Rector says to Dr. Hodgson that 
 Professor Hyslop's father will be " better able to recollect 
 his earthly experiences, through coming into contact 
 with his objects." This, no doubt, is only another mode 
 of expression for his " getting clearer." But of course 
 the demand for objects must create the suspicion that it 
 is the medium who wants them, in order to procure by 
 
 Q2
 
 228 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 psychometrizing the information that is passed off as the 
 " recollections " of the communicators to prove their 
 identity. As regards Mrs. Piper, it ought, though, to be 
 pointed out that there are a number of cases where there 
 are no articles, but where the communicator is both 
 unexpected and uncalled for ; — such were, for instance, 
 Dr. Rich and " Aunt Sallie," not to speak of the large 
 number of ^ spirits that only appear for a moment to 
 disappear again. As a case where there was not even an 
 attraction to the sitters, may from a later period be 
 mentioned that of Isaac Thompson,^ who had had sittings 
 with Mrs. Piper in Liverpool in 1889-90. He had died 
 in 1903, and his son, duHng a stay in Boston in 
 December, 1905, had a single seance where messages 
 purported to come from his father, but which was on 
 the whole unsatisfactory. He was, however, obliged to 
 leave America immediately afterwards ; the medium, of 
 course, had not been told who he was. Two days later 
 Rector asked Dr. Hodgson : " Have you the influences 
 [i.e., articles] of the young man's father ? " There were 
 no articles, and Dr. Hodgson had never met Mr. Thompson 
 living. Nevertheless, the latter appeared, and succeeded 
 in identifying himself. But previously George Pelham 
 begged Dr. Hodgson to encourage him : " If he says 
 anything clearly, congratulate him, help him by words of 
 encouragement only, remember he has nothing or no one 
 except yourself to attract him here." Here it is plainly 
 stated what significance the objects and the sitters are 
 considered to have for the communication, but at the 
 same time, it is seen that everything does not depend on 
 them. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The chief communicator at Professor Hyslop's sittings 
 was his father, Robert Hyslop. He was born in 1821, 
 and had lived on a farm in Ohio until 1889, when he moved 
 west into a neighbouring State. He returned to his old 
 
 1 Sir Oliver Lodge, The Survival of Man, pp. 267 seqq.
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 229 
 
 home, and died in the house of his brother-in-law, James 
 Carruthers, in August, 1896. He had lost his first wife, 
 Martha Ann, in 1869, and was married a second time, in 
 1872, to Margaret, usually called Maggie, who outlived 
 him. His children were by his first marriage Professor 
 James Hyslop and four more sons, and a daughter, and 
 by his second marriage one daughter. Besides, three 
 daughters and a son had died as children, the daughters 
 respectively four months, two years, and three years old, 
 the son four and a half years old. The two last men- 
 tioned, Anna and Charles, died at about the same time in 
 1864, when their brother James was ten years old. These 
 two are among the communicators. Other relatives who 
 communicated were Professor Hyslop's uncle by marriage, 
 James McClellan, who died in 1876, and the husband of 
 his father's sister Eliza, James Carruthers, who died in 
 December, 1898. The husband of another aunt had also 
 died a short time before the sittings, but did not manifest. 
 James McClellan's son Robert, who died in 1897, made 
 his appearance at several sittings. Of Professor Hyslop's 
 mother, who had been dead for thirty years, only a few 
 glimpses are caught. 
 
 Regarded from an evidential point of view, the mani- 
 festation of all these persons, each of them in an identi- 
 fying manner, no doubt presents a great interest. But 
 the strongest impression left upon the reader by these 
 sittings, which made Professor Hyslop himself a believer 
 in the communication of the dead, is due to the image 
 presented of his father there. In the extracts of the 
 dialogues given below it will, therefore, above all, be 
 attempted to produce an idea of this image, while with 
 regard to the remaining communicators, only a few 
 suggestive points will be indicated. That at the same 
 time many evidential statements will get in, goes without 
 saying. Mrs. Piper did not suspect who the sitter was ; 
 she did not even see him in her normal state. So small 
 a thing, say, as his being addressed as " James," is 
 evidential.
 
 230 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 It is not until the second sitting, on December 24th, 
 1898, that we make the acquaintance of the old farmer. 
 The first seance had taken place on the day before, and 
 had made a very confused impression. Of the Hyslop 
 family, nobody but perhaps the brother Charles seemed 
 able to get in a word. Professor Hyslop said during the 
 sitting to Dr. Hodgson : " There's nothing with any 
 possibility in the whole thing except Charles." It 
 turned out ^at a later time, after the report had been 
 published, that it was the communicators from the 
 seances of an earlier sitter who had put in an appearance.^ 
 Not even George Pelham could master the situation on 
 this occasion. 
 
 But the next day brought a change. " It was," 
 Professor Hyslop writes, "as if the trance personalities 
 had consulted over the situation, and had become assured 
 of the right communicators." After some introductory 
 remarks by Rector, etc., the hand wrote as follows : 
 
 " James, James. Speak James. James, speak to me- 
 
 I am not ill. Oh, oh, I want you so much 1 want to 
 
 see you. I want to tell you everything They tell me I 
 
 will soon be all right and able to help you I heard you, 
 
 James, and I am glad. I heard you say something." 
 
 During the whole of the sitting Professor Hyslop kept 
 silent as far as possible, for fear of advancing statements 
 that might detract from the evidentialness of what 
 occurred in the trance. By degrees, as the sittings pro- 
 gressed, this caution, no doubt, grew less necessary ; 
 but quite openly he did not speak until the very last of 
 his twelve seances, in June, 1899. His taciturnity 
 makes a strange contrast to the father's yearning to 
 speak with him and difficulty in understanding his 
 silence. Not less oddly does the son's suspiciousness 
 and constant desire to obtain " tests " contrast with the 
 father's longing to talk of things which seem more im- 
 portant to him, above all of the opinions he held before 
 his death about a future life, and their relation to his 
 
 ^ Proceedings Am. S.P.R., Vol. IV., pp. 3 seqq.
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 231 
 
 present knowledge. This disparity between the feelings 
 of the communicator and the sitter's object in experi- 
 menting is the tone which pervades both Professor 
 Hyslop's and many other sittings. Even if the com- 
 municator has fully grasped the aim of the sitter, it is 
 often difficult for him to conceive that it is, above all, 
 proofs of his identity that are wanted. But it enhances, 
 no doubt, the dramatic effect that such is the case. 
 
 Especially in the beginning, Mr. Hyslop was unable to 
 communicate for any length of time. He was replaced 
 for a moment by his son Charles. 
 
 " Ch. I will ask you if you remember brother Charles. 
 
 " Dr. H. Is that brother Charles ? 
 
 " Ch. I say yes. I do not want to be put out, because I 
 can help the rest to come. Don't send me away. Don't. I 
 want to tell you about father." 
 
 Charles seems to have been present already at the first 
 sitting ; and on a later occasion his father said : " Charles 
 saw the light and spoke of it before he came here, James." 
 Thus he really seemed to be justified in demanding that 
 they should not send him away. 
 
 After Charles the recently departed uncle Carruthcrs 
 appeared. He was sufficiently identified through his 
 mention of his wife Eliza, etc., but did not give his own 
 name. When Mr. Hyslop returned, he asked : " Do you 
 know Uncle Charles ? He is here." Professor Hyslop 
 did not understand whom he referred to ; but it turned 
 out at later sittings that it was the name Carruthers, 
 pronounced " Crothers," which Rector had been unable 
 to reproduce. He persisted in calling this uncle Charles, 
 or else Clarke ; only by degrees it dawned upon Professor 
 Hyslop who was meant when these names were given. 
 
 In the following part of the sitting Mr. Carruthers 
 discovered Dr. Hodgson and asked : 
 
 " Mr. C. You are not Robert's son ? You are not George 
 [Professor Hyslop's brother], are you ? 
 
 " Prof. H. No, I am not George. 
 
 " Mr. C. No, James, I know you very well, but this one 
 . . did you know the boys ? Do you know me ? "
 
 232 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Dr. Hodgson conceived it to be Mr. Hyslop speaking ; 
 so he explained who he himself was, and profiting by the 
 occasion introduced the question of tests. He asked the 
 communicator to think over some striking incidents so 
 that his son might feel his presence by his recalling old 
 memories. Mr. Hyslop understood him very well : 
 
 " Mr. H. I thank you for helping me. I see better now, 
 and I will help him in every possible way to know all that we 
 both know. I could not hear very well before, but I under- 
 stand better now. 
 
 " Do you recall your lectures, and, if so, to whom do you 
 
 recite now ? I often hear them in my own mind Do you 
 
 remember what my feeling was about this life ? 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I do. 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, I was not so far wrong after all. I felt 
 sure that there would be some knowledge of this life, but you 
 were doubtful, remember. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I remember. 
 
 " Mr. H. You had your own ideas which were only yours, 
 James. 
 
 " Prof H. Yes, I know. 
 
 "Mr.H. Well, it is not a fault " 
 
 After a short absence Mr. Hyslop returned, and Rector 
 said : 
 
 " R. We see thy father returning to thee He will 
 
 recall every fact he ever knew. He says he thought even 
 more, if possible, of you than all the rest. Do you think so ? 
 Tip ssk^ 
 
 " Prof H. Yes, I do think so. 
 
 " Mr. H. It is my feeling, James, and why not express 
 it? 
 
 " Prof. H. That is right, father. 
 
 " Mr. H. Do you recall the fact of my being frank ? 
 
 " Prof H. Yes, I do. 
 
 " Mr. H. Sincerity of purpose . . . my sincerity. I 
 recall the struggles you had over your work well, very well. 
 Everything in life should be done with sincerity of purpose. 
 I know well all the difficulties which you encounter. But 
 keep on as you have been and you will master them ere long. 
 So many different ideas are not easily managed. But never 
 mind, do not be troubled about it, it will not last for ever, and 
 I am getting stronger. 
 
 " Prof. H. No, I will not trouble any more about it. 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, do you really think you understand ? 
 And I will come again with more clearness with the help of
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 233 
 
 this man who wears the cross [i.e. Imperator]. James, my 
 son, James my son, speak to me, I am going far away. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, father, I shall be pleased to see you again. 
 I shall have to go now. 
 
 " Mr. H. I am too far off to think more for you. J. H. H. 
 {R.} " 
 
 The initials are those of Professor Hyslop. In the 
 waking stage the medium whispered " Hyslop." 
 
 Professor Hyslop states that many of the expressions 
 used by the communicator were characteristic of his 
 father, for instance : recite, " I was not so far wrong," 
 " you had your own ideas," "it is my feeling, and why 
 not express it." Mr. Hyslop had given his son James an 
 education in the hope of seeing him as a minister ; his 
 apostasy nearly broke his heart, but what reconciled him 
 to it was that he saw how " terribly in earnest " the son 
 was about his opinions. When discussing them the father 
 would always insist that the great thing was the " sin- 
 cerity of purpose." He had himself. Professor Hyslop 
 says, a remarkably clear insight, and saw well the intellec- 
 tual difficulties of his own faith. 
 
 The third sitting, two days later, was long and important. 
 Mr. Hyslop soon appeared. 
 
 " Mr. H. James, James, James, speak my son, to me. I 
 
 am coming, coming to you, hear . . hear Where are you, 
 
 James ? 
 
 " Prof. H. I am here, father, is that you ? 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, it is I, James, I who is speaking to you. It 
 is I who is speaking to you. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I am glad to see you or hear from you. 
 
 " Mr. H. I wanted to ask you before I got too weak of the 
 story I used to tell of a fire 
 
 " Where are my books, James ? I want something to think 
 over and I will keep quite near you." 
 
 This was taken to mean that he wanted an " article," 
 and such a one was produced. 
 
 " Mr. H. I see clearly now, and oh if I could only tell you 
 all that is in my mind. It was not an hallucination, but a 
 reality, but I felt it would be possible for me to reach you. 
 
 " Prof. H. Do you remember more about that fire ?
 
 234 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 (( 
 
 Mr. H. Oh yes, the fire. Strange I was forgetting to go 
 on. Yes. Were the books destroyed ? 
 
 "Prof.H. No 
 
 " Mr. H. I wish you had them. I remember all. I am 
 thinking ..." 
 
 Here he was interrupted by Dr. Hodgson saying some- 
 thing to Rector, which led to the following remark by the 
 latter about the communicator : 
 
 " R. He^s a very intelligent spirit and will do a great deal 
 for us when he realizes where he is now and what we are 
 requesting him to do. 
 
 " Mr. H. James, are you here still ? If so I want very 
 much to know if you remember what I promised you. I told 
 you if it would be possible for me to return to you I would. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I remember, 
 
 " Mr. H. 1 remember well our talks about this life 
 
 and its conditions, and there was a great question of doubt 
 as to the possibility of communication ; that, if I remem^ber 
 rightly, was the one question which we talked over. Will 
 return soon. Wait for me." 
 
 Professor Hyslop had visited his father in the beginning 
 of 1895, having been lecturing on psychical research in 
 Indianapolis a few days before. He had talked much 
 with the father on the subject, and found his attitude 
 towards it more receptive than he had expected. After- 
 wards he had written to him on his deathbed, and begged 
 him " to come fo him after it was all over." His step- 
 mother, on reading the letter, had asked her husband 
 what was meant by this, and he had answered : " Oh, I 
 don't know," an expression, Mrs. Hyslop says, which he 
 always used when he did not want to tell what was on his 
 mind. In the reply which was dictated to his wife and 
 written by her, he did not refer to it. A promise, then, he 
 had not made. 
 
 At this point of the sitting, Pnidens, as alluded to above, 
 made his appearance to improve upon the conditions for 
 communicating : 
 
 "P. I am Prudens, and I give light I am thy friend and 
 thou will call for me when thou dost need help. P. 
 " Prof. H. Thank you. 
 "P. Mr. H. [sic] returns.
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 235 
 
 " Mr. H. I feel better now, James. I felt very much 
 confused when I first came here. I could not seem to make 
 
 out why I could not make you hear me at first I would 
 
 like to hear you speak. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, father, free your mind, I shall listen and 
 understand. 
 
 " Mr. H. I will leave nothing undone, but will reach you 
 clearly and talk as we used, when I could speak independently 
 of thought. I have not yet found out why it is that I have 
 difficulty in speech." 
 
 This made Professor Hyslop think of his father's last 
 illness, which was probably cancer of the larynx but 
 thought to be catarrh only. He asked a question which 
 was misinterpreted by the father, and led to a touching 
 remark on his part : 
 
 " Prof. H. Do you know what the trouble was when you 
 passed out ? 
 
 " Mr. H. No, I did not reahze that we had any trouble, 
 James, ever. I thought we were always most congenial to 
 each other. I do not remember any trouble, tell me what was 
 it about, you do not mean with me, do you ..." 
 
 Professor Hyslop explained that he meant his sickness, 
 and the communicator now made an attempt to state 
 what had been his sufferings immediately before his 
 death. There is a noteworthy difference between this 
 subjective mode of characterizing illness, and Phinuit's 
 medical diagnoses in former days. But Professor Hyslop 
 wanted the reply " catarrh," or " throat-trouble," and 
 continued his questioning until the communicator grew 
 tired and must leave. Rector now said : " Friend, they 
 have sent thy brother here for a few moments to wait 
 thy father's return." Both Charles, and afterwards the 
 sister, Annie, spoke. Then the father returned. After 
 an unsuccessful attempt to give the name of a medicine, 
 he replied to a remark by Professor Hyslop about Annie 
 as follows : 
 
 " Yes. She has been here longer than I have, James, and 
 is clearer in her thoughts when she is trying to speak, but do 
 not feel troubled about it. I will in time be able to tell you 
 all. I want you to know that I am at this moment trying to 
 think of anything but sickness "
 
 236 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Afterwards he began to speak of the conversations they 
 had held about the work of the son, but was interrupted. 
 A httle later " Uncle Charles " (Carruthers) put in some 
 words, and when it was once more the turn of the father, 
 he began by an introduction of himself which seems to 
 contain a jesting allusion to the fact that not all com- 
 municators were so clear as he was. Here for the first 
 time his naYne was fully given. Prudens, as has been 
 seen, confined himself to the abbreviation " Mr. H : " 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, Hyslop. I know who I am And long 
 
 before the Sun shall set for you I will give you a full and 
 complete account of your old father, James. Keep quiet, 
 do not worry about anything, as I used to say. It does not 
 pay. Remember this ? 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, father, I remember that well. 
 
 " Mr. H. That, James, wa.^ my advice always You 
 
 are not the strongest man, you know Remember, it does 
 
 not pay, and life is too short there for you to spend it in 
 worrying. You will come out all safe and well, and will one 
 day be reunited with us, and we shall meet face to face, and 
 you will know me well. What you cannot have, be content 
 
 without. 1 am a little weary, James, but I will return 
 
 and recall if possible, my medicine. He is taking me away. 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, you will have one day more now with your 
 son. 
 
 " Mr. H. Oh, let me refresh myself and return to him. 
 Seek and ye shall find. 
 
 " Prof. H. Father, good-bye until to-morrow and I will see 
 you then. 
 
 " Mr. H. Come in to-morrow and see how I am getting 
 along. Do you remember my saying this to you ? " 
 
 All that Mr. Hyslop here claimed to have said while 
 living, was correct. He used to say : " Do not worry, 
 it does not pay," " hfe is too short," etc. It is curious to 
 see that now he says : " Life is too short there " ; just so 
 it behoved one who had survived death to speak about 
 life on earth. " Come in to-morrow and see how I am 
 getting along," were the words which he used to say to 
 his son when he visited him during his last illness. 
 
 Before the third sitting concluded, Dr. Hodgson had 
 given Rector to understand that it would be useful to
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 237 
 
 get Mr. Hyslop to think over some incidents to tell his 
 son on the morrow. The consequences of this intimation 
 appeared at the sitting of that day, where the commvmi- 
 cator took great pains to recall triviahties instead of 
 speaking only of those things that interested himself : 
 
 " Mr. H. James, James I am here. My thoughts are 
 
 clearer now 1 can see and hear better than ever. Your 
 
 voice to me does not seem so far away. I will come nearer 
 
 day by day and all that transpired between us whilst in 
 
 the body I will refer to, that you may be sure it is I. I 
 remember very well indeed and what I said. I was most 
 emphatic in my desire to know the truth and make you know 
 it if possible. [To Dr. Hodgson :] Are you with James ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, will you help me to return later if I wish 
 to return ? If so, I will try and free my mind now. 
 
 " Dr. H. I shall be very pleased to take messages to your 
 son. 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, I will not feel troubled then, because I 
 have no further talks with him now. James, do you remember 
 the things I took out West ? " 
 
 After this followed divers tests. " I remember Himi 
 [i.e., Hyomei]," said Mr. Hyslop. This was the reply to 
 a question that had been put to him about his medicine 
 at the preceding sitting. He added : "I will give him 
 all of them." " All of them ? " Dr. Hodgson asked, 
 greatly surprised. Mr. Hyslop had taken a variety of 
 patent medicines, and he succeeded at this and later 
 seances in giving the names of a number of them. With 
 regard to many of them it required a careful investigation 
 on the part of Professor Hyslop to ascertain that his 
 father had in fact used them. " Do you remember the 
 
 little knife — the little brown handle [d] one ? Ask 
 
 Willie [his son] about the knife," and so forth. But he 
 soon reverted to the things which he had most at heart : 
 
 " Mr. H. I wish I could step in and hear you at college 
 and see all that disturbs you. I would soon right things there 
 for you. I had a will of my own . . . perhaps you will 
 remember. 
 
 " Prof. H. -Yes, father, I remember, but it was not a bad 
 wiU.
 
 238 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " Mr. H. I am glad you think so. But if the rest had 
 been hke you, perhaps I should not have refused them any- 
 thing." 
 
 Professor Hyslop writes that all this is very pertinent. 
 Afterwards he read aloud a series of utterances explaining 
 to the communicator the aim of the sittings. He said 
 among other things that he had not asked many questions 
 nor reminded him of any important facts, because doing 
 so would be interpreted here on earth as suggesting the 
 answers themselves. " Ah, yes ; I remember the diffi- 
 culties," Mr. Hyslop put in, and the son continued : 
 " You know it is the work of Christ, and you will re- 
 member that I always said that I wished to live the life 
 of Christ, even if I was not a behever." " Perfectly. 
 Yes. That is surely James," exclaimed the father. He 
 had not until now heard many words that could convince 
 him that he was really speaking to his son. 
 
 It was the object of Professor Hyslop to impart to his 
 father, by means of this statement, a more complete 
 understanding of the importance of the work that was 
 performed through the sittings. He understood it 
 entirely. The conversation went on in the following 
 manner : 
 
 " Mr. H. I will push from this side whilst you call from 
 yours, and from my boyhood to now I will recall everything 
 for you. Go on I am waiting. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, father, I have read all that I wished to 
 read, and I shall be glad if you can recall and tell anything 
 about a railroad collision. 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, I think I will, all about it, but do not ask 
 me just yet, James, . . just yet." 
 
 One cannot help sympathizing with the communicator, 
 if he was not at that moment disposed to think of an old 
 story about a railroad collision. Professor Hyslop him- 
 self acknowledges in his report that his remark " shows 
 as much incoherence and irrelevancy as could ever be 
 charged to a discarnate spirit." 
 
 His next question : " Do you remember much about 
 your religious life ? " fell into better ground, and resulted
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 239 
 
 for one thing in the communicator asking : " What do 
 you remember, James, of our talks about Swedenborg ? " 
 
 This was interesting also for the reason that Professor 
 Hyslop himself did not remember that he had talked with 
 his father about Swedenborg, and did not even believe 
 that he had known anything of him. But when he wrote 
 to his stepmother about it, he got the following reply : 
 " He did talk with me about Swedenborg after you had 
 
 been there 1 remember the conversation on the 
 
 Sabbath day you were at our house at Delphi about 
 psychical research, and your father was the first to speak 
 of Swedenborg, In answer to something you said he 
 replied : ' that was Swedenborg 's belief.' I cannot 
 remember much of the conversation." 
 
 A little later the father said : 
 
 " I am glad you have not given me any suggestions for your 
 sake, but it has perplexed me a little, and at times seemed 
 unlike yourself. I faintly recall the trouble on the subject of 
 spirit-return, and I see and understand now." 
 
 The conversation was broken off before he had a mind 
 to leave. " He longs to remain with him," said Rector, 
 " but Imperator is taking him away." Afterwards, 
 Rector said to Dr. Hodgson : " Friend, thou knowest not 
 the food which lieth in store for thee regarding this new 
 communicator. He is all that is good and true," 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 In February, 1899, Dr. Hodgson had five sittings with 
 Mrs. Piper on behalf of Professor Hyslop, who was in New 
 York. In the interval Rector had several times talked 
 of Mr. Hyslop and of the desirability of giving him an 
 opportunity of communicating, " Our friend Hyslop is 
 anxious to see you many more times if you think that is 
 desirable," he said on January i8th, and a week later : 
 " We have a great and good work to do with this dear 
 
 spirit Hyslop a very high and intelUgent spirit is he, 
 
 and no barrier between them, viz., himself and son." 
 When he at last got permission to come, he seemed, how- 
 ever, a little disappointed that it was not " James," It
 
 240 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 happens sometimes that " the machine " does register 
 fragments of conversations which are held apparently 
 among the spirits themselves, and which would not seem 
 destined to be reported ; it belongs to the mysteries of 
 the trance drama, and has not found any explanation. 
 Thus, the following speech by Rector must be conceived 
 to be addressed to Mr. Hyslop : 
 
 " R. Nc^ he is not . . but it is his friend . . very well. 
 No, not James but Hodgson. Yes . . come. 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, friend, I am pleased to meet you. I wish 
 to speak to James, but I understand he is not here, but sends 
 you in his place " 
 
 Professor Hyslop had in January communicated the 
 result of his inquiry about Swedenborg to Dr. Hodgson. 
 The latter had told it to Rector, by whom Mr. Hyslop 
 had apparently been informed of it. His first words to 
 Dr. Hodgson referred to this subject : 
 
 " Mr. H. I am thinking at the moment of what I referred 
 to concerning Emanuel Swedenborg. I am glad to know that 
 he understood my meaning. 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes. 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, now I wish to tell him about another 
 subject " 
 
 Mr. Hyslop had thought of divers incidents, and a 
 great portion of the sittings was employed in speaking of 
 them. On the whole his recollections seemed correct, but 
 in several cases it at first looked otherwise ; sometimes he 
 was only after long investigations proved to be right. 
 
 In the midst of his attempts to recall railway accidents 
 and fires, he reverted to his dearest memories. " I 
 often think of the long talks we used to have during my 
 last years in earth life of the possibilities of communication 
 
 with each other ." It is curious to see that it was 
 
 Rector, and not Dr. Hodgson, who would not tolerate 
 this. During a momentary absence of the communicator 
 he enforced on Dr. Hodgson the necessity of making him 
 recall his experiences, whereupon the latter told Mr. 
 Hyslop that " James would be very pleased "if he would 
 
 i
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 241 
 
 do so. " Yes, well then I may as well tell you all I can 
 remember," answered the father, almost as with a sigh. 
 " I begin to see what James is wishing me to do," he 
 added a little later. 
 
 Afterwards, however. Dr. Hodgson explained about the 
 trance and the writing, and this interested him highly. 
 " Indeed," he says. "Then, well then what I say is written 
 out for you ? " " Yes," Dr. Hodgson answered, and told 
 about Rector. " Oh yes, I begin to see," he interrupted 
 him, " but I can see Rector and hear him speak to me." 
 Dr. Hodgson went on explaining, and said at last : 
 
 " Dr. H. Well now, if James had said to you when you 
 were in the body, ' come with me and see a lady in trance. 
 Her hand is controlled by a spirit,' you probably would not 
 have believed it. 
 
 " Mr. H. No probably not. 
 
 " Dr. H. And if James had passed out of the body and 
 you were left behind, and if I came to you and said, ' Your 
 son James wishes to see you and talk to you,' and if I prevailed 
 upon you to come here, we will suppose, and you were in the 
 body with me and James where you are, talking to Rector — 
 what do you think James would try to remind you of ? 
 
 " Mr. H. Why everything that we used to do together of 
 course, friend, or in other words all. I say all, about his 
 earthly experiences, because he would like me to make sure it 
 was he. 
 
 " Dr. H. Exactly. Now that is just what he wants. He 
 wants . . . 
 
 " Mr. H. Well, it is just what he will get, then, because I 
 know perfectly well who and what I am, and I know what 
 would please my son James, and I will do all in my power to 
 prove that I am his father " 
 
 That Dr. Hodgson's explanation impressed the com- 
 municator appears from an utterance of his four months 
 later at a sitting by Professor Hyslop : 
 
 " I had no idea at first what you really wished of me, but 
 it all came to me when you [hand indicating Dr. Hodgson] 
 said ' Well how would you have James know it was you.' " 
 
 He had on this occasion endeavoured to recall the life 
 in their little family circle in the distant period when his 
 eldest son was one of them. He had not yet fully com- 
 prehended that knowledge of their joint experiences was 
 
 CD. R
 
 242 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 not considered a conclusive proof of his being the one he 
 purported to be, because they might be conceived to be 
 read from his son's own mind. 
 
 The following sittings by Dr. Hodgson were mostly 
 devoted to test questions, as before, under a faint protest 
 on the part of Mr. Hyslop. " I have so many things to 
 say of far greater importance in a way," he once replied 
 when Dr. Hodgson thanked him for having told him 
 about " the medicine and gown and reading the paper 
 and so on." Not until the last of the five sittings, on 
 February 22nd, 1899, where Dr. Hodgson read aloud a 
 letter which he had received from Professor Hyslop, but 
 which was directed to the father, did he become fully 
 interested. His eagerness was so great that he interrupted 
 the reading and replied to the contents as if the son had 
 himself been present and talked to him : 
 
 " Dr. H. [reading] I remember when you took me to the 
 station to start to college. Do you remember how you felt 
 then? 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes I do, well. At the parting. It was one of 
 the most hopeful of my life. And do you remember what I 
 said to you then ? Write, as I cannot see you often. Write 
 often as I shall be with you constantly in thought, James. 
 This is the starting point in your life. Take advantage of it, 
 improve your time, let me know how you are getting on daily 
 and keep up a stout heart. Want for nothing. Keep to the 
 right, be just in all things. I shall be lonely enough, but I 
 look forward to the future." 
 
 Professor Hyslop writes that this is a very good repro- 
 duction of what his father said when parting from him. 
 The statement "want for nothing" is literally what he 
 did say, though his pecuniary circumstances did not 
 justify him in saying so. 
 
 When Dr. Hodgson had finished reading, the com- 
 municator said : 
 
 " God bless you, my son. Do you remember this expres- 
 sion ? [To Dr. Hodgson] I wish you to know that to me James 
 was all I could ask for a son, and when I left him or he left me 
 I was heart-broken in one sense, but I felt that I had much 
 to look forward to "
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 243 
 
 This was the only occasion, Professor Hyslop adds, on 
 which he ever saw his father shed tears. 
 
 On May 29th, 1899, began the second series of Professor 
 Hyslop's personal sittings, of which there were eight. 
 They are of much the same character as the first series ; 
 only the test questions played a still larger part than they 
 had done in the beginning. 
 
 Dramatically correct it is that while in Dr. Hodgson's 
 sittings the father had been the sole communicator, now 
 when Professor Hyslop was himself present a large number 
 of his relatives appeared. " I have not seen so many 
 here around the light for a long time," Rector remarked 
 already at the first seance. Perhaps this was the reason 
 why George Pelham turned up as assistant at the second 
 sitting ; he had not been present at any Hyslop sitting 
 since the very first. " Look out, H[odgson], I am here. 
 G. P.," he announced himself ; " Imperator sent me 
 some moments ago." He began at once to make himself 
 useful by improving Rector's reproduction, viz., 
 " McAllen," of the name of Professor Hyslop's cousin, 
 McClellan. " Sounds like McLellen, G. P.," he inserts 
 in the midst of the writing. He did good service on 
 several occasions. 
 
 For the rest the seances went on in the former manner ; 
 recollections were mixed with references to matters which 
 more naturally filled the thoughts of the communicator. 
 Professor Hyslop obtained much evidence for the identity 
 of his father ; not the least valuable were his many 
 remarks about the dead and living members of his family. 
 More, perhaps, than anything, the manner in which they 
 were put forth served to convince him ; the selection 
 from the standpoint of the father and of nobody else ; 
 the faculty to distinguish between what the son must 
 know from personal experience, and what he could only 
 have been told about by others, etc., etc. The same 
 applies to the other communicators ; each of them speaks 
 from his own point of view; the different facts — for 
 
 R2
 
 244 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 instance, their mutual relationship, or the length of time 
 that had elapsed since their death, are made use of with 
 a never failing precision ; they deal with names in 
 accordance with their habit in life, etc. Professor 
 Hyslop's cousin, Robert McClellan, turns up and alludes 
 to " Uncle Hyslop," viz., the father of the professor ; 
 or inquires after " Robert," and replies to the question 
 which Robert it is : " Rob Hyslop of course, which other 
 could I mean ? " Professor Hyslop's brother Robert 
 was always called Rob. The long deceased brother 
 Charles talks about the " new sister Hettie," i.e., his 
 half-sister. The sister Annie says : "I want to help 
 father — because I came here^first and long ago." There 
 are examples ad libitum. Here is no confusion, no con- 
 founding of the numerous members of the large family. 
 What confusion there is, is of a different type, and most 
 often explicable by the existing conditions — Rector's not 
 always correct perception of names, etc., the indisposition 
 of the communicators in the earthly sphere — or as failing 
 memory. As good as always the statements contained a 
 core of truth that pointed to misrecollection and not 
 ignorance being the cause of the error. Very often, too, 
 the confusion wa.s due to the sitter's deficient memory, or 
 to his misapprehension of what was alluded to. 
 
 With regard to the theories which eventually ought to 
 explain away his own existence, Mr. Hyslop continued to 
 display a certain impatience. At the third sitting he said 
 to the son : 
 
 " Shut out the thought theory and do not let it trouble you. 
 I went on theorizing all my earthly life and what did I gain 
 by it ? My thoughts only became more subtle and 
 unsatisfactory " 
 
 And he continued, with an allusion to the topic which, 
 as seen above, had been discussed between Professor 
 Hyslop and his father during the visit in 1895, at which 
 time " the thought theory " had also been the subject of 
 their conversation : 
 
 " Now speaking of Swedenborg. What does it matter
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 245 
 
 whether his teachings were right or wrong so long as we are 
 individually and ourselves here ? " 
 
 George Pelham, too, is a little sarcastic on this point. 
 At the sixth sitting he made his appearance and got a 
 short conversation with Dr. Hodgson : 
 
 i< 
 
 G. P. H[odgson], how are you ? I have just been called 
 upon to lend a helping hand. You see I am not wholly 
 isolated from you. 
 
 " Dr. H. Good, George, were you here last time ? 
 
 " G. P. For a few moments. I helped a man named 
 Charles [i.e., Professor Hyslop's brother] but I did not get a 
 chance to say. How de do, H. 
 
 " Dr. H. All right, George. 
 
 " G. P. I am going after the elderly gentleman, look out 
 for me. 
 
 " Dr. H. We will. 
 
 " G. P. Got those theories all straightened out yet, H. ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Pretty fairly. 
 
 " G. P. I am going. Auf Wiedersehen. G.P." 
 
 At this sitting Professor Hyslop asked his father to 
 tell something that had occurred before his own birth, 
 but which his two aunts might possibly remember. That 
 Mr. Hyslop understood well that the object was to exclude 
 the interpretation of telepathy from the son, appears 
 from his instantaneous attempt to comply with the 
 request : 
 
 " Mr. H. Will you kindly ask Aunt Eliza if she remembers 
 a young man named Baker, and if she recall going to a prayer 
 meeting one evening with him, and if she remembers who 
 teased her about him. And ask them both if they remember 
 Jerry. 
 
 " Prof. H. [to Dr. Hodgson] That's right. 
 
 " Mr. H. Perhaps you may know of this. If you do, say 
 so, James, and I will think of something which you do not 
 know." 
 
 Professor Hyslop had heard about Jerry, and his remark 
 to Dr. Hodgson referred to the latter's reading of the name. 
 One cannot help acknowledging the intelligence and quick- 
 ness of reasoning of the communicator, first in devising 
 something which could hardly be known to the son, and 
 then in comprehending the intimation of his knowing it
 
 246 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 which the remark "That's right" implied. The story 
 about the yoimg man Professor Hyslop had never heard, 
 and his Aimt Eliza was disposed to deny it, but finished 
 by admitting its correctness, perhaps with the exception 
 of the name Baker. Several statements from the following 
 sittings were likewise verified by the aunts. 
 
 From first to last Mr, Hyslop was interested in the 
 son's work as a psychical researcher. This interest had 
 at the first sitting of the new series led to a curious 
 remark : 
 
 " Mr. H. Do not go more to that place. I am not there. 
 I am not there and you cannot find me if you go. 
 
 " Prof. H. What place is that, father ? 
 
 " Mr. H. With the younger men trying to find me. They 
 are not light and I cannot reach you there." 
 
 Immediately after his first sittings, Professor Hyslop 
 had instituted a system of experiments with some young 
 men in New York to imitate the Piper phenomenon. The 
 object was only to demonstrate it ; there was no medium 
 present. It seems to be to these experiments that Mr. 
 Hyslop alluded. Now, at the sixth sitting, he reverted 
 to the subject of psychical research: 
 
 " Mr. H. Do you remember our conversation on this 
 subject ? Do you remember your last visit with me ? 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes. 
 
 " Mr. H. It was more particularly on this occasion than 
 before. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, that is right. Do you know what I was 
 doing just before I made the visit ? 
 
 " Mr. H. Yes, I believe you had been experimenting on 
 the subject and I remember of your telling me something 
 about Hypnotism. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I remember that well. 
 
 " Mr. H. And what did you tell me about some kind of 
 manifestation which you were in doubt about ? 
 
 " Prof. H. It was about apparitions near the point of 
 death. 
 
 " Mr. H. Oh, yes, indeed, I recall it very well, and you told 
 me about a young woman who had had some experiments 
 [i.e., experiences] and dreams. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, that is right.
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 247 
 
 " Mr. H. Which interested me very much, but yet you 
 were doubtful about hfe after so-called death. Remember 
 the long talks we had together on this, James ? " 
 
 The last sitting but one contains an interesting attempt 
 to elucidate a former misunderstanding. Just as the 
 uncle Carruthers had all the time gone by the name of 
 Charles, or of Clarke, thus Professor Hyslop's stepmother 
 had always been spoken of by a wrong name, viz., Nannie, 
 instead of Maggie (Margaret), The error had not been dis- 
 covered at once, because there was an aunt Nannie who was 
 often mentioned. But gradually it dawned upon Professor 
 Hyslop that the latter was always called " Aunt Nannie," 
 while all that was said about " Nannie " without prefix 
 did fit the stepmother. It was George Pelham to whom 
 it fell to clear up the matter, and his demeanour is 
 very characteristic. It was on this occasion that he 
 alluded, with some bitterness, to the treatment he had 
 himself formerly been subjected to by the experimenters. 
 His reproaches, however, were undeserved as regards 
 Professor Hyslop, who had purposely abstained from 
 asking for the name. But Dr. Hodgson did not under- 
 stand this, and of his own accord introduced the 
 question : 
 
 " Dr. H. The name of the mother in the body has never 
 yet been rightly given. 
 
 " R. Has it been asked for ? 
 
 " Dr. H. The stepmother has been referred to in various 
 ways, for example as Hettie's mother. She has also been 
 called Nannie, but her name is not Nannie. 
 
 " R. I cannot understand it. 
 
 " Dr. H. There have been several references to incidents 
 which were true about the stepmother, but in referring to 
 these things, the name Nannie . . . 
 
 " G. P. Well, why do you not come and say give me my 
 stepmother's name and not confuse him [Mr, Hyslop] about 
 anything except what you really want ? 
 
 " Dr. H. I think that it has been asked for directly but 
 cannot be sure. 
 
 " G. P. Has it ? Very well, if she has a name you shall 
 have it. 
 
 " Dr. H. I have drawn special attention to it because I
 
 248 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 thought it might help you to know that there seems to be 
 some peculiar difficulty about getting her name. 
 
 " G. P. I do not think so, H. ; but I do think he would 
 refer to it in his own way if let alone. I know how you 
 confused me, by Jove, and I don't want any more of it. I am 
 going to help him and he is going to tell all he knows from 
 A to Z. No doubt about it, H., no one could be more desirous 
 of doing so than he is." 
 
 Towards the end of the sitting George Pelham re- 
 appeared : 
 
 " G. P. I will speak for a moment, and say I do not see 
 any reason for anxiety about Margaret. He said I suppose 
 I might just as well tell you first as last and have done with it, 
 as James may think I do not really know. Go tell him this 
 for me. You see I got it out of him for you, H., but you no 
 need to get nervous about it, old chap. 
 
 " Dr. H. All right, George, thanks. 
 
 " G. P. Well, I cannot hold him any longer, and you will 
 get more later. I am glad to meet your friend even though 
 you fail to say anything about him. [To Professor Hyslop] I 
 am George Pelham, and glad to see you. I will stand by you 
 at all costs. 
 
 " Prof. H. I am glad to meet you, especially as I know 
 your brother in Columbia University. 
 
 " G.P. Yes, Charles. 
 
 " Prof. H. That is right. 
 
 " G. P. Good, I'll see you again. Auf Wiedersehen." 
 
 As may be seen, George has still some difficulty in 
 reconciling himself to the distrust shown towards him, 
 but has withal preserved the same combination of 
 geniality and humour which was characteristic of him 
 from the very first. 
 
 At the next sitting it was Rector who took occasion 
 to reproach the experimenters for their not always 
 rational proceedings. He had asked them already two 
 days earlier to give the communicator time to grasp the 
 meaning of their questions fully, and if he failed to answer 
 that day let him think it over and reply at the next 
 sitting. It was after this that Professor Hyslop asked 
 for some memories from the time before his own birth, 
 and that the father told of his sister Eliza, and promised
 
 THE HYSLOP SITTINGS 249 
 
 to recall other incidents. At the ensuing sitting there 
 had been some confusion which Rector now explained in 
 the following manner : " He came with his thoughts 
 full of thuigs concerning his last memories at the meeting 
 before, and could not be made to understand that he 
 should speak of other things." It can hardly be denied 
 that Rector is right in his criticism, and that the investi- 
 gators, in fact, made things difficult for the communi- 
 cators. Their silence and distrust were a necessity ; but 
 the same hardly applies to their tendency to mix too 
 many things together, and to pass too quickly from one 
 matter to another, which Dr. Hodgson admits to have 
 been a fault already at George Pelham's first manifesta- 
 tions. It is true, however, as Mr. Hyslop once said in 
 another connection, that " what was their loss is our 
 gain " ; if it made it more difficult for the communicators 
 to solve their task, it has in return increased the value of 
 its solution for the research. 
 
 The above sitting was the last which Professor Hyslop 
 held. But the interest of the trance personalities in 
 procuring evidence did not stop there. A month later, 
 on July 6th, 1899, Rector reminded Dr. Hodgson that 
 there was much for Mr. Hyslop's son to do and look up 
 yet. " There must not," he said, " be any neglect of 
 duty in regard to this, viz., the broken wheel, the visit of 
 the sister to church, the prayer meeting in the barn, 
 the sunstroke of one of the McLellan family." Mr. 
 Hyslop himself put in : "I would say one word more 
 only. Some of the things date back many years. 
 Adieu." 
 
 It was mostly the incidents from the time before his 
 son's birth he alluded to. The event of the sunstroke 
 was not quite as old as that. But Professor Hyslop had 
 known nothing about the existence of the uncle of James 
 McClellan, David Elder by name, who had been afflicted 
 in that manner more than thirty years ago, and he had 
 great difficulty in finding the persons to confirm the fact. 
 The communicators seemed at last to have fully com-
 
 250 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 prehended what kind of evidence was best suited to 
 refute " the thought theory." 
 
 The EngUsh Proceedings contain nothing more about 
 Robert Hyslop. But his ardour to assist in the work 
 of his son did not cool, and it is possible to renew the 
 acquaintance with his sympathetic personality else- 
 where.^ 
 
 1 See below, p. 341.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE TUNOT SITTINGS ^ 
 
 Immediately after the Hyslop sittings a new series 
 began, which covers a period of more than six years, 
 and in several respects makes a singular contrast to the 
 former. Mr, Hyslop was at his death an old man who 
 had suffered maich ; who had lived his life to its end and 
 gained its wisdom. Bennie Junot, the happy child of 
 rich and loving parents, at the age of seventeen finished 
 his earthly existence, to their deep grief, just at the 
 moment when he was leaving his boyhood behind him. 
 His father, Mr. Junot (pseudonym), who was a lawyer 
 and lived a thousand miles west of Boston, had heard of 
 Mrs. Piper, and applied to Dr. Hodgson, by whose inter- 
 vention he obtained about a year after his son's death 
 his first sittings with the famous medium. From thence 
 and until the death of Dr. Hodgson he came to Boston 
 once a year to find Bennie, most often accompanied by 
 his wife ; sometimes Bennie's brother Roble or sister 
 Helen were also present. In the intervals there were 
 sittings where Bennie came to Dr. Hodgson alone. 
 
 A great number of evidential statements are given in 
 this series, which contains altogether sixty-five sittings,^ 
 and where several deceased relations of the Junots 
 appeared. With a few exceptions, however, no informa- 
 tion was given that had not been known at some time to 
 some members of the family. But many of the clearest 
 and most correct statements were made when Dr. Hodgson 
 was alone, so that they, at any rate, cannot be explained 
 
 1 Report on the Junot Sittings, by Helen de G. Verrall, Proceedings 
 S.P.R., Vol. XXIV., pp. 351—664. 
 
 "^ The Junots had seances also after Dr. Hodgson's death, but these 
 are not included in the report in the Proceedings.
 
 253 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 as reading off the mind of a present person. The sittings 
 were commented on at the time by Mr. Junot with a 
 care that makes it easy to judge of the value of the 
 statements. 
 
 Mr. Junot was introduced to Mrs. Piper anonymously, 
 according to Dr. Hodgson's usual practice. A certain 
 amount of information was, however, deliberately given 
 to the communicator by the sitters. Bennie was not for 
 the sake of evidence worried by far so much as George 
 Pelham and Mr. Hyslop had been, although at a later 
 point he learned to comprehend the importance of giving 
 tests. Still less was he tormented through an unnatural 
 attitude of the sitters hke that which had in the beginning 
 troubled Professor Hyslop's father. The outcome of 
 this was a greater naturalness of the dialogue, and a 
 greater joy in the conversations on the part of the com- 
 municator. This no doubt contributes to impart to 
 the reader of the report a picture of a happy boy who 
 exults in being able to communicate with his dear ones ; 
 this is, perhaps, the strongest impression left from this 
 series of sittings — a boy, though, who seems to grow 
 before the eyes of the reader during the six years of the 
 acquaintance. 
 
 With regard to the question of " articles," the situation 
 seems to be the same as at the Hyslop sittings. They 
 were considered to be of a certain usefulness, but were 
 not indispensable. Mr. Junot had for his first sitting 
 brought some objects that had belonged to his son, but 
 they were wrapped in thick paper and lay until far into 
 the seance on a table on the other side of the room. 
 Later they were unwrapped and handed to the medium. 
 Several times in the course of the sittings Bennie alludes 
 to the import of such objects ; for instance : "I would 
 like something at this moment, dear, and it will help me 
 to keep clear"; "I only wish to get help so I can 
 remain " ; " my things help me very much." 
 
 The proceedings at the seances were the same as at the 
 Hyslop sittings ; Rector was acting as amanuensis at
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 253 
 
 the writing, while George Pelham now and again assisted 
 in other ways. In the deep trance the communication 
 took place exclusively by means of the hand, but in the 
 so-called waking-stage Mrs. Piper might, among her own 
 utterances, sometimes put forth something that seemed 
 to be a rendering of the words of a communicator. 
 
 Mr. Junot's first sitting took place on June i6th, 1899, 
 and commenced in the following manner : 
 
 " R. We see among our friends here a young man who 
 seems dazed and puzzled. He is not near enough to us for 
 us to give him much help at the moment but will be presently. 
 George is here with him and trying to urge him to come 
 closer 
 
 " B. I hear . . . I hear something. Where is my mother. 
 I want very much to see her. I can breathe easier now. I 
 want to go home now . . . And take up my studies and go 
 on. I see some one who is very hke my father. I want to 
 see him very much. 
 
 " Mr. J. Speak, Bennie 
 
 " B. I . . I want to see you awfully . . I Father 
 papa papa Pa Pa father I hear something strange . . can it 
 be your voice 
 
 " Mr. J. Yes, Bennie. 
 
 " B. I . . You hear me . . do you hear me I . . 
 wonder how I can reach you as I long to do. I heard all you 
 said . . . And I want to tell you where I am. [To Dr. 
 Hodgson] You are not my father ? " 
 
 Dr. Hodgson now explained that he had brought his 
 father for him that he could free his mind to him : 
 
 " B. And can I do so now ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes. 
 
 " B. Do you [know ?] the boys (?) and if they will be glad 
 to see me. I want to see father more than any one except 
 mama." 
 
 This was the introduction which was followed by 
 inquiries on the part of both. It appeared that Bennie 
 knew a great deal about things that had happened after 
 his death. He had apparently, as he continued to do, 
 watched the doings of those he loved on earth. Alluding 
 to a cow-boy named Harry, who had been his friend
 
 254 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 on the farm where the family passed the summer, he 
 said : 
 
 " B. I want to know about Harry. 
 
 " Mr. J. He wrote your mother lately. 
 
 " B. I thought he sent the photograph to her, 
 
 ;; Mr. J. He did, yes. 
 
 " B. I heard her say it looked like him Did Harry say 
 
 he would send me any message ? 
 
 " Mr. J . ^ Mamma wrote and told Harry that you had gone 
 away and left us. 
 
 " B. I wonder what he thought when he heard that. Give 
 him my love and tell him I will never forget the good 
 times we had together." 
 
 It is funny that Bennie thinks it likely that Harry 
 would send him a message, and very boyish that he 
 wonders what the cow-boy thought when he heard of his 
 death. Evidently he feels himself to be an interesting 
 person on account of that circumstance. 
 
 The next sitting took place on the morrow, and was 
 full of eager inquiries from Bennie, both about people 
 and about the things he had left. There were, however, 
 also put questions to him ; for quite exempt from the 
 desire of tests the father was not. But Bennie's way of 
 replying differs in a characteristic manner from that of 
 other communicators. For instance, Mr. Junot asked 
 him about a gold scarf-pin with which he had formerly 
 presented his son, and which he had now brought to the 
 sitting : 
 
 " Mr. J. What did I tell you about the pin ? Where did 
 I say the gold came from ? 
 
 " B. This came from . . Oh I never can say it. Co . . 
 Who was the man who went out there with you and . . I 
 had so many pieces of it. 
 
 " Mr. J. Do you mean the miner man ? 
 
 " B. Yes I do, but his name has gone from me completely." 
 
 The scarf-pin was made of a Colorado nugget presented 
 to Mr. Junot with a number of other nuggets from a 
 miner friend. 
 
 One of the matters that Bennie had most at heart was 
 his horse, which he wanted his sister to have.
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 255 
 
 " B. I want her to have my horse, want her to have my 
 horse . . I do very much. 
 
 " Mr. J. She's got a nice new horse of her own. 
 
 " B. I know it. I know it, and . . 
 
 " Mr. J. And your horse has been sent to be sold. I think 
 it has been sold. 
 
 " B. Has it . . I don't think so. I wanted her to have 
 it." 
 
 The horse had been sold but not delivered, and was 
 recovered by telegram. Mr. Junot had no more sittings 
 that time, but on July 6th, 1899, Dr. Hodgson asked 
 George Pelham whether there was any message from 
 Bennie. The latter now appeared himself, saying : 
 
 " B. Oh give my love, my dearest love to papa, mama 
 Roble and Helen. 
 
 " Dr. H. I will. 
 
 " B. Oh tell them I love them oh so much and I will do all 
 I can to help them know I live. I am so glad about the 
 horse. I do not know what to say." 
 
 It was only in a letter of July 12th that Dr. Hodgson 
 learned that Mr. Junot had stopped the sale of Bennie's 
 horse. 
 
 In the month of March in the following year Mr. Junot 
 returned, this time accompanied by Bennie's mother. 
 Bennie's joy was excessive : 
 
 " B. Dad Dad Dad yes I am coming dear It is I, 
 
 Bennie don't you know me. 
 
 " Mr. J. Yes Bennie, we hear you. 
 
 " B. I see mamma I am so glad so glad . . Oh do you 
 know all I feel for you 
 
 " Mrs. J. Bennie, I often think you come to me. Do 
 you? 
 
 " B. Come to you . . Yes indeed I do and mama there 
 is no doubt about it. I do see and know a great deal about 
 you and the things you do. I see all the pictures of myself 
 and all my own work." 
 
 Mr. Junot writes that they had a great many pictures 
 of Bennie lately placed in their rooms, also various 
 pieces of his handiwork. As to Bennie's mode of address 
 to himself, he states that he used to call him both " Dad " 
 and "Pa" and " Papa."
 
 256 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Later Bennie asked to be left alone with his mother for 
 a little time. " I want to see you. Mamma, as I did 
 before I came here, and he [Dr. Hodgson] confuses me," 
 he said to the mother, and a long conversation ensued. 
 Then the father returned, asking : " Do you want me, 
 Bennie?" and Bennie answered: "Yes I do. Oh I am 
 so glad. There never was a boy so glad." 
 
 And thus he goes on chattering, about " Grandpa 
 Junot," and the farm, his much beloved summer home, 
 and concludes with a gracious permission for Dr. Hodgson 
 to return : " Call him back once more and let him help 
 me." Bennie seems somewhat prone to regard this 
 stranger as a subordinate person. " Hello, dear dad, is 
 that you dear," he says a few days later ; " just you talk 
 to me and don't mind that man. Rector knows him." 
 In a short time, however, they became the best of friends. 
 
 Towards his parents Bennie was unceasingly grateful 
 and loving. At the next sitting he said, among other 
 things : 
 
 " I almost never see you but that you do not speak of me 
 
 and it makes me very happy But the one thing that has 
 
 troubled me more than anything since I came to this life is 
 the thought of dear mamma's feeling that she could do more 
 for me. I tell you now that she did all she could and nothing 
 could have kept me in the body. Do you hear me dear ..." 
 
 Before the parents left Boston, Bennie had got informed 
 of the import of the evidence he might be able to furnish. 
 He commenced their last sitting by clearing up something 
 that had become confused in the preceding one, and 
 afterwards turned to new statements, interposing : "I 
 know perfectly well what you want of me now, because 
 Rector told me." And he displayed certainly in the 
 subsequent part of the seance a remarkable energy to 
 satisfy their demands. 
 
 In the midst of the sitting the communication was, 
 however, on the point of being cut off too early. Bennie 
 ceased to speak, and Rector said to Dr. Hodgson : 
 
 " Friend, I think — if we could ask thee to go a little way 
 off for a time it might help us to keep him."
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 257 
 
 Dr. Hodgson now left the room, and Bennie returned : 
 
 " B. Yes dad here I am again I begin to think again. 
 
 And my head is getting clear since that man called George 
 went away with his father. 
 
 " R. [to Dr. Hodgson who had returned] That is thy father, 
 friend." 
 
 The little episode shows how George Pelham helped to 
 keep other communicators away. Apparently, Dr. Hodg- 
 son's father had come to speak to his son, and G. P. took 
 him away because his presence confused Bennie, who at 
 the time was the principal person. " What is it, H. ? 
 Want my help } " G. P. interposed on another occasion; 
 " I am here on Deck." 
 
 A few weeks after the Junots had left, Bennie had some 
 conversations with Dr. Hodgson. He learned to under- 
 stand what part the latter played as intermediary between 
 his parents and himself, and displayed now towards him 
 also the geniality of his nature. They talked together 
 about all sorts of things, memories of the past and the 
 actual situation. Bennie told about Rector and the band, 
 saying : 
 
 " You should see the kindly men who are teaching me how 
 to find the way to speak clearly. You would be as glad as I 
 am to do just what I am doing." 
 
 The friendship developed through the natural talk of 
 Dr. Hodgson to such a degree that Bennie even forgot 
 that they were not " on the same side : " 
 
 " B. Such fun as Roble and I used to have you never saw. 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, I used to have jolly times myself, Bennie, 
 when I was a young fellow. 
 
 " B. Did you, did you have a brother like mine ? 
 
 " Dr. H. I have a brother about seven years younger than 
 myself. One of my chums when I was your age was my 
 cousin Fred. Ask Rector to introduce him to you, and he 
 can tell you about some of the fun we used to have. 
 
 " B. Well I will, that will be fine for me. He perhaps can 
 help me. Well I am awfully glad I know you. I love music 
 dearly, do you ? 
 
 CD. S
 
 258 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, I used to play the violin. 
 
 " B. Oh yes jolly. King of instruments. 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes. 
 
 " B. Well, we have great music here I tell you, can you 
 hear it at all ? 
 
 " Dr. H. No, my senses are too shut in, 
 
 " B. Well, that is too bad, can I do anything for you ? 
 
 " Dr. H. I fear not, thank you. I must wait till I get to 
 your side. 
 
 " B. Oh yes well that will be all right then won't it. Yes. 
 Well, I begin to understand better, I think. You are in the 
 body. That is it. All right. Now let me tell you all I can 
 before I get too weak." 
 
 At the close of the sitting Bennie asked : " What is 
 your real name if you do not inind telling me before I get 
 too far away." It appeared a little difficult for him to 
 catch it, but at last he succeeded. " H O D G S O N," 
 he spelt out. " Good, I won't forget it," he finished the 
 sitting. 
 
 At a later seance Dr. Hodgson read aloud to Bennie 
 letters from Mr. and Mrs. Junot. His excitement was 
 touching. " Do you wonder I am happy ? " he asked 
 when Dr. Hodgson finished reading the letter from the 
 father. " A most worthy lad," Rector said about him a 
 little afterwards when he had gone away. Later he 
 returned and explained some matter to Dr. Hodgson, to 
 which the latter replied : " Yes, I understand." This 
 gained him the most unfeigned appreciation on the part 
 of Bennie : 
 
 " B. Well that is good. You must be pretty bright, I 
 think. Did you ever teach school ? 
 " Dr. H. Yes, I have taught. 
 " B. I thought so. Did you hke Algebra ? 
 " Dr. H. Yes, I did. 
 " B. I am glad to know it. I didn't." 
 
 It is really as if it were a boy fresh from college 
 speaking. 
 
 Neither did Bennie forget Dr. Hodgson's recommenda- 
 tion of the cousin Fred with whom he used to have so 
 much fun. At a seance by another sitter a fortnight
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 259 
 
 later he appeared for a moment, George Pelham acting 
 as secretary, and said among other things : 
 
 " B. I saw Mr. Hyde and I Uke him mighty well . . he 
 is a very bright fellow and has been helping me in many ways. 
 
 " Dr. H. Oh, you mean my cousin Fred. 
 
 " B. Yes he is your cousin Fred and the gentleman who is 
 speaking for me [G. P.] helped me to find him." 
 
 Noteworthy is Bennie's correct mention of Dr. Hodg- 
 son's cousin as " Mr. Hyde " ; he does not call strangers 
 by their Christian names. George Pelham's name, how- 
 ever, appears to confuse him a little ; he says " Mr. 
 George," and once " George somebody " (" George some- 
 body is very good to us here"). One might conceive 
 that it was the circumstance of his having the pseudonym 
 Pelham besides his real name which embarrassed him. 
 About Rector he once says : " the man they call Rector, 
 but he isn't Rector at all, he is somebody else." On 
 asking for Dr. Hodgson's name he said : " What is your 
 real name if you do not mind telling me," as if he were 
 accustomed to people being called by pseudonyms. 
 There is an inner unity in all this which is very realistic. 
 
 • ••••* 
 
 At the parents' sittings in the third year, 1901, it is as 
 if it were a somewhat more serious and grown-up Bennie 
 speaking. He is very anxious to reply to their questions 
 in a satisfactory manner, and altogether thinks more 
 about others than about himself. When the father on 
 being asked had admitted that they felt it was difficult 
 for him to remember names, he answered very earnestly : 
 
 " Well that is so. But I have hunted for you ever since I 
 left the body and I said if I could reach you in any way I 
 would do so, and here I am if I am imperfect." 
 
 And on the morrow he said to his mother : 
 
 " B. Several times I was too weak to answer for you 
 before. 
 
 " Mrs. J. Yes. 
 
 " B. Will you forgive my blunders and see me as I am 
 when I am not trying to whisper to you dear. 
 
 s 2
 
 26o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " Mrs. J. Yes, Bennie, I think you do very well. 
 " B. But I try and that is all I can do dear " 
 
 As Mrs. Junot had asked why his grandmother never 
 came to them at the sittings, he answered penitently : 
 
 " But she has dear, only I fear I am a little greedy and take 
 up all the hght dear mother, but I do not mean to." 
 
 At a later point, in 1902, Bennie had conquered this 
 selfishness, ^is uncle Frank Clarke had during an 
 absence of his spoken with Mr. Junot, and when Bennie 
 returned, he said : 
 
 " Father, you realize I know the desire on the part of 
 Uncle F to meet you again. That is why I left so suddenly." 
 
 Immediately afterwards he gave his place up to another 
 communicator. 
 
 A kind of test that played a great part at the sittings 
 consisted in Bennie displaying his knowledge of the 
 doings of his family. Among other things he had several 
 times given veridical statements respecting their visits to 
 his grave — " the place where they laid my body," he 
 once called it. At a sitting in 1902 he said that he had 
 seen his father there, and Mr. Junot asked if he also 
 heard what he said. Bennie replied : 
 
 " Bennie, these are for you dear, and something else I 
 
 heard it quite clearly, tell Mr. H[odgson] you said, something 
 about Doctor, I think tell Doctor this." 
 
 The father had, standing by the grave, said aloud : 
 " Dear Bennie, these flowers are for you. We have not 
 forgotten you. Go and tell Dr. Hodgson this." Bennie 
 did not seem to realize that Hodgson and " Doctor " 
 was the same person. He mentions him also later as 
 Mr. Hodgson. 
 
 At the same sitting, in February, 1902, Mr. Junot asked 
 a question that led to a most interesting result. He had 
 had a negro coachman named Hugh Irving, who lived with 
 the family through the whole of Bennie's life. He was 
 discharged on account of drinking in August, 1901, and 
 died two months later of an unsuspected cancer, which
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 261 
 
 appears to have been the cause of his taking to drink. 
 When he left the Junots he took with him a dog named 
 Rounder, the loss of which worried Mr, Junot very much. 
 So, when he came to Boston next time, he asked Bennie 
 about him : 
 
 " Mr. J. Bennie, do you know where Hugh is now ? 
 
 " B. Oh yes I have seen him several times. What did he 
 go for ? 
 
 " Mr. J. Bennie, tell Hugh that we want the dog Rounder 
 back. 
 
 " B. 1 will sure and if you will wait for me a moment I will 
 attend to it now and you shall have him sure. 
 
 " Mr. J. Good 
 
 " B. See if I don't. Wait a moment and in a few days 
 you shall have him. I'll prove it dad." 
 
 Later Rector said that Bennie had gone away for a 
 moment. When he returned, he said : 
 
 " B. Yes, father are you still here ? 
 
 " Mr. J. Yes. 
 
 " B. You shall have him right away They will give 
 
 him back to you, he told me so and when I go out again I'll 
 
 ask him all about where he is You will have him sure. 
 
 This is my test to you dear father." 
 
 Afterwards Hugh himself appeared. He told that he 
 had lost Rounder, but promised to find him and send him 
 back. The next day the Junots had their last sitting for 
 that time, and then returned to their home. But on 
 April 2nd, 1902, Dr. Hodgson being alone, the following 
 scene occurred while Mrs. Piper was in the waking- 
 stage : 
 
 "Mrs. P. John Welsh has Rounder. 
 
 " Dr. H. John Welsh was round her ? 
 
 "Mrs. P. John Welsh has Rounder Tell this . . tell 
 . . tell . . tell . . John Welsh has Rounder. 
 
 " Dr. H. John Welsh is round her ? 
 
 " Mrs. P. has . . has . . It's I, Bennie, don't you see 
 me ? I, Bennie. 
 
 " Dr. H. John Welsh has Rounder. Yes, I understand. 
 
 " B. Tell Dad." 
 
 When Mr. Junot got this message, he set about finding 
 John Welsh, but without success. In the process, how-
 
 262 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 ever, he found the dog in the hands of another man and 
 recovered him. John Welsh he could not trace, but at 
 last, in June, 1902, it occurred to him to ask the deputy 
 sheriff, and from him he learned that a neighbouring 
 working man, a great friend of Hugh Irving's and com- 
 monly known as " Old Happy," was registered to vote as 
 John Walsh. At Mr. Junot's request the sheriff visited 
 this man and asked him about the dog. He quickly 
 became suspicious and would not answer, saying : " What 
 are you asking about the dog for ? They have got him 
 back." Thus, it is very probable that he had really had 
 something to do with Rounder. The mention of him in 
 Mrs. Piper's trance by a nama which was almost known 
 to nobody, in connection with the dog that had been 
 taken away by his friend, is one of the circumstances that 
 it is most difficult to account for, either by mind-reading 
 or by clairvoyance. 
 
 The remaining sittings occupy as much space in the 
 report as the preceding ones, but it must suffice to quote 
 a fragment here and there in order to follow Bennie as 
 far as the editor has made it possible. 
 
 November, 1902. 
 
 Bennie arrives to beg Dr. Hodgson to take a message to 
 his father, and says afterwards : 
 
 " B. You have been so kind to me always I feel as though 
 I had always known you, 
 
 " Dr. H. I feel as if you were an old friend. 
 B. Well, I think I am." 
 
 <( 
 
 February, 1903. 
 
 Bennie had talked to his father about his friend Dwight, 
 and asks : " Does he know I am alive, or any [of] the 
 rest of the boys ? " It was not the first time that he 
 showed his anxiety to make his friends know that he was 
 not really dead. Above all, however, he thought of his 
 brother and sister, in whose progress and welfare he took 
 a deep interest :
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 263 
 
 " B. Dad Roble is doing finely again he takes to his 
 
 work hke a soldier and is looking forward to getting through. 
 Father he appreciates all only you give him time dear he is all 
 right. 
 
 " Mr. J. Bennie, tell me about yourself. 
 
 " B. About myself dear. Well dad I am progressing all 
 the time. I am very happy helping others, learning all I can 
 about this life and the philosophy of life in the body before we 
 enter this. I look over my life in the body and wonder what 
 I could have done more for you and mother dear. I wonder 
 if you understand all I feel for you both. 
 
 " Dad do you want me to give you some more tests ? 
 
 " Mr. J. Surely, if you can. 
 
 " B. I'll think up some things and tell you next 
 
 time. Now let me tell you one thing. Don't question the 
 
 right and wrong of my returning because there are no wrongs 
 in it. 
 
 " Mrs. J. Yes Bennie, it gave us a little anxiety as to 
 whether we were doing right in calhng you to us. 
 
 " B. I heard it all and it made me uneasy dear so thought 
 I would settle it for you." 
 
 His parents had on the evening before held a long 
 conversation on this subject. 
 
 In the following winter Bennie told Dr. Hodgson 
 several things about the doings of his brother and sister. 
 He had seen Roble try on a new suit, and to his great 
 amusement seen him paint his straw-hat green. Helen 
 photographed the pony, and she had got a red coat 
 which did not quite please Bennie. All this turned out 
 to be correct, except that Helen's coat was not red, but 
 blue with red lining. Bennie, however, knew well that 
 he was not infallible. " I may make some few mistakes, 
 I do not claim to do otherwise when I see so much." 
 On an earlier occasion he had said : " Objects sometimes 
 seem quite clear, then again they seem to lose their 
 shape completely." 
 
 February, 1904, 
 
 II 
 
 Roble. Bennie, do you remember now how your old 
 runabout was broken ? 
 
 " B. Surely I do & told you I would come here some day 
 and tell him [hand points to Dr. Hodgson] just how it happened. 
 Then you can't say I got it out of your mind see . . .
 
 264 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " R. Yes, I understand. 
 
 " B. George is always talking about this to me." 
 
 That George Pelham is very kind to the boy Bennie 
 appears from a little conversation with Dr. Hodgson at 
 a time when the latter was alone : 
 
 " B. Here is George perhaps you would better greet him 
 too. 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, George, very grateful for all your help. 
 
 " G. P. Ju^t say good morning, that will do. You know 
 I understand. It is only to please the boy." 
 
 June, 1904. 
 
 On this occasion both Helen and Roble had come to 
 Boston with their mother. B^ennie talked to his sister 
 about his old horse that had " kicked up a good deal " : 
 
 " H. Yes he was very mean last summer. 
 
 " B. Very what Helen ? 
 
 " H. Mean. 
 
 " B. Do you mean that . . . 
 
 " H. He was ugly, and my driving worried him. 
 
 " B. Oh yes. I understand what you mean. But he is 
 
 getting old When I saw Helen it brought it all back to my 
 
 mind because I wanted her to have my horse." 
 
 The few sentences convey a vivid impression of Bennie's 
 affectionate mind, which even embraces his old horse 
 that five years previously he had been so anxious to leave 
 with his sister and not with strangers. 
 
 October, 1904. 
 
 " B. Dear Mr. Hodgson. I am glad to greet you. Please 
 tell my dear ones in the earthly world that I am still with and 
 watching over them. When I can conveniently do so I shall 
 tell about some of their doings since we last met. Do you 
 hear me ? 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, Bennie. I have a letter from your father 
 [reads it aloud]. 
 
 " B. 1 am delighted. Thank you. Now cannot you 
 help me by corroborating all that I have previously mentioned 
 that was clear ? it will enable me to avoid repetition." 
 
 Bennie speaks in a very grown-up manner on this 
 occasion. Likewise, he talked most seriously with his 
 parents when he met them the next time.
 
 THE JUNOT SITTINGS 265 
 
 February, 1905. 
 
 " B. I heard you talking about my going a long way from 
 you, not so dad, I am growing all the time in knowledge of this 
 new life, but not that I shall leave you . . . 
 
 " Mrs. J. No, but, Bennie, in your thought to care for us, 
 you must not do anything to prevent your own progress. 
 
 " B. No, how could I, dear mother ? there are laws 
 connected with this life and its conditions which enable me to 
 progress constantly, yet while progressing I am better able to, 
 if possible, to help you than otherwise." 
 
 But he can also speak of things that amuse him. The 
 following episode is rather curious : 
 
 " B. Tell me who the fellow was in Roble's room last 
 night. 
 
 " Mrs. J. I shall ask. 
 
 " B. Such fun I never heard. He was playing on a banjo. 
 He and another fellow were there together playing and one 
 sang something like Dellia. 
 
 " Dr. H. Deha ? Deha ? 
 
 " Mrs. J. Bennie, perhaps you mean Burdelia, Budelia ? 
 It is a song that the boys sing. 
 
 " B. Yes I think so. Say it again it sounded so queer to 
 me. 
 
 " Mr. J. It's Obedeha. 
 
 " B. I heard O I heard steel ing I heard Delia I heard 
 Roble laughing merrily. He and . . do you know Bert ? " 
 
 A few months afterwards Bennie was alone with Dr. 
 Hodgson and reverted to the funny song. 
 
 May, 1905. 
 
 " B. Good morning Mr. Hodgson will you give my love to 
 all at my home and ask about the evening I heard that 
 song. 
 
 " Dr. H. The boy or young fellow with Roble did sing that 
 song about Bedelia, and so on. I forget just how it goes. 
 
 " B. Well I heard him and I heard him say something 
 about stealing her . . . 
 
 " Dr. H. Yes, I think that's right. 
 
 " B. Well it was so queer to me I laughed and laughed to 
 hear him say it " 
 
 Roble Junot states that he and his friend Bert had 
 very often sung the song " O, Bedelia, I've made up my 
 mind to steal you," together, but not on the evening
 
 266 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 mentioned by Bennie. On that night he was with a 
 party of young people, and they played the piano and 
 sang, but did not sing Bedelia. Bennie thus appears to 
 have confounded different recollections, or rather to 
 have been mistaken with regard to the time when he said 
 " last night." 
 
 In November, 1905, the Junots for the last time met 
 Bennie in the presence of Dr. Hodgson. One of the last 
 things he said to them was the following : " When you 
 are called to this beautiful world I shall be the first to 
 greet and help you — I can only give you glimpses of 
 what it really is, but I am glad to do even this." Bennie 
 is right when he says that it is only glimpses he has been 
 able to give of the world in which he appears to live ; 
 it does not seem possible to make it conceivable to earthly 
 people. When once Mr. Junot replied to a statement by 
 the son about something referring to the latter's own life : 
 " All right, I understand," Bennie answered, no doubt 
 with good reason : " Well, I am not sure that you do." 
 As, moreover, everything of that kind is unverifiable, I 
 have left it out as far as possible. In one respect only it 
 is possible to test the value of statements about " the 
 beyond," namely, when Bennie speaks of the departed 
 whom he meets, either those who have preceded him, or 
 those who have died after his own demise. Of this may 
 the same be said as of his statements about his own 
 earthly existence, or about the things he pretends to see 
 occurring on earth after his death. On the whole, they 
 agree with facts, and the occasional mistakes are easily 
 accounted for through the circumstances attending the 
 communications. 
 
 To Bennie himself the words seem to fit which Dr. 
 Hodgson wrote about George Pelham ; what there was of 
 change was not a change of disintegration, but of evolu- 
 tion and growth.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE HODGSON-CONTROL 
 
 As fate would have it, the next communicator of con- 
 sequence who purported to communicate in the Piper- 
 trance was Dr. Hodgson himself,^ As previously men- 
 tioned, he died suddenly in Boston on December 20th, 
 1905. On December 28th a Hodgson-control already 
 manifested through Mrs. Piper, and in the next time 
 hardly any sitting passed entirely without him. In the 
 beginning he spoke only a few words every time, but 
 by degrees he seemed to grow stronger, and made, as 
 formerly George Pelham, a convincing impression upon 
 most of his surviving friends. 
 
 But among these were also some of the most sceptical 
 psychic researchers, as Professor James and Professor 
 Newbold. And there was with regard to the Hodgson- 
 control the special ground for scepticism that the medium 
 had known the living Hodgson, and during a long series 
 of years seen him constantly. It would therefore seem 
 that she had special qualifications for personifying him ; 
 one could never with regard to the evidential information 
 produced by him feel entirely secured against the possi- 
 bility that he might have told it to her during their inter- 
 course. It is true that the latter thing was thought very 
 improbable ; the medium and the experimenter had only 
 used to pass a few moments together before the trance 
 began, and Dr. Hodgson had not at all been on terms of 
 intimacy with Mrs. Piper ; on the contrary, he seems to 
 have adopted a purely business tone with her. More to 
 the point, perhaps, was the contention that she might 
 
 • Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-control, by Professor William 
 James, Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXIII., pp. 2 — 121.
 
 268 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 know him subconsciously from his demeanour during the 
 trance and from his numerous conversations with the 
 communicators. The possibiUties of this were wide- 
 ranging. To quote Professor Hyslop^:"The scientific 
 man will attach less value to what purports to come from 
 Dr. Hodgson through Mrs. Piper than if it came from 
 some one else." 
 
 But how; right this may be in the abstract, it will hardly 
 in the individual cases be difficult to decide whether there 
 is any probability of the normal Mrs. Piper having been 
 told about the matter in question by Dr. Hodgson. The 
 same, of course, applies to his utterances to the trance- 
 personalities. A few things, he is known to have talked 
 about to Rector, etc., but with regard to the greater part 
 of the statements given after his death this must be con- 
 sidered quite out of the question. Besides, such an 
 application of casual knowledge would not at all agree 
 with the usual proceedings in the Piper-trance, where 
 there is rarely made use of anything but what the drama 
 requires. Nay, matters which are well known to Mrs. 
 Piper, the trance-personalities may seem ignorant of. 
 For instance, the Hodgson-control made a mistake with 
 regard to the name of the lady who assisted Dr. Hodgson 
 in his office, and did not, when some time had elapsed, 
 remember that of the street where he had lived, though 
 Mrs. Piper knew both things very well. 
 
 As to the characterization given of Dr. Hodgson through 
 the trance-communications, the medium's knowledge of 
 his personality might sooner be considered a ground for 
 scepticism. At the same time, it must be questioned 
 whether a knowledge of him as manager of the sittings 
 could be of much use when he ought to be presented in 
 his relations with his friends. Towards these he had been 
 both gay and full of feeling, and had in return been much 
 valued and loved by them. That his relations with Mrs. 
 Piper were not very cordial appears from the circumstance 
 that she was at one time disposed to break off the connec- 
 
 1 Journal Am. S.P.R., Vol. I., p. io6.
 
 THE HODGSON-CONTROL 269 
 
 tion altogether. After all, the art of transforming 
 Dr. Hodgson as she knew him was perhaps — if it were art 
 — not smaller than to create Bennie and Mr. Hyslop and 
 George Pelham on the basis not of her own but of other 
 people's knowledge about them. 
 
 The first persons who had sittings with Mrs. Piper in 
 the hope of finding Dr. Hodgson were some of his women 
 friends. One of them was so overcome by the first 
 meeting with him that she fainted after the sitting had 
 finished. Professor James says about his first appear- 
 ances that they were " characteristic enough in manner, 
 however incomplete." Hodgson was very lively, though 
 somewhat worried by the difficulties of communication, 
 which were greater than he had expected. Respecting 
 this he says in January, 1906 : 
 
 "I am Hodgson ... I heard you call — I know you — 
 you are Miss Pope. Piper instrument. I am happ}^ exceed- 
 ingly difficult to come, very. I understand why Myers came 
 seldom. I must leave " 
 
 And on another occasion : 
 
 " Remember, every communication must have the human 
 element. I understand better now why I had so little from 
 Myers." 
 
 As an instance of his conversation may be quoted the 
 
 following from a sitting on January 30th. The sitter, 
 
 Mrs. M., said : 
 
 " Mrs. M. Do you remember our last talk together, at N., 
 and how in coming home we talked about the work ? 
 
 " R. H. Yes, yes. 
 
 " Mrs. M. And I said if we had a hundred thousand 
 dollars — 
 
 " R.H. Buying Billy ! ! 
 
 " Mrs. M. Yes, Dick, that was it — ' buying Billy.' 
 
 " R. H. Buying only Billy ? 
 
 " Mrs. M. Oh no — I wanted Schiller too. How well you 
 remember." 
 
 Mrs. M., before Dr. Hodgson's death, had had dreams 
 of extending the operations of the American branch of 
 the Society for Psychical Research by getting an endow-
 
 270 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 ment and possibly inducing Professor Newbold (Billy) 
 and Dr. Schiller to co-operate. 
 
 A few months later Professor Hyslop had sittings, where 
 Hodgson manifested and at great length discussed their 
 common work and the plans that were cut short by his 
 death. As an instance, the following conversation on 
 April 25th^ may serve ; it has a special interest because 
 Professor X Hyslop knew nothing about the matter which 
 the communicator alluded to : 
 
 " R. H. Do you remember a man we heard of in — No, in 
 Washington, and what I said about trying to see him ? 
 
 " Prof. H. What man was that ? 
 
 " R. H. A light. 
 
 " Prof. H. A real light ? " 
 
 " R. H. Yes, I heard of him just before I came over. 
 Perhaps I did not write you about this." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson had not written about any such discovery. 
 But in June, 1906, Professor Hyslop was in Washington, 
 and accidentally met a gentleman who mentioned that 
 he had written to Dr. Hodgson a short time before his 
 death about a man there who showed signs of mediumistic 
 powers. 
 
 From a sitting that Professor James held on May 21st, 
 1906, may be chosen the following small episode which 
 at the time impressed the sitter much, though he adds 
 that Mrs. Piper Jtiight have heard the anecdote : 
 
 " R. H. Do you remember — what is that name, Eliza- 
 beth Putnam ? She came and put her hands over my 
 eyes and said ' who is it ? ' I said ' well it feels like El. Putnam, 
 but it sounds like — ' 
 
 " Prof. J. I know who you mean. 
 
 " R. H. Do you realize how difficult it is ? 
 
 " Prof. J. Yet you were just at the point of saying it. 
 
 ' R. H. Dr. — not Putnam — Dr. Bowditch ! 
 
 " Prof J. That is it. 
 
 " R. H. Sounds like Dr. Bowditch." 
 
 Dr. Hodgson, though, had of course said the reverse 
 of what is told here, namely " it feels like Dr. Bowditch," 
 a gentleman who weighed nearly 20olbs. Besides, the 
 
 1 Reported in Journal Am. S.P.R., Vol. I., p. 106.
 
 THE HODGSON-CONTROL 271 
 
 little girl's name was not Elizabeth, but Martha Putnam ; 
 when Professor James objected that the first name was 
 wrong, Hodgson attempted " Annie — Mary — Mamie," 
 and finished by saying : " Well, it has gone from me at 
 the moment. That is less important than the thing 
 itself," a remark which it is not difficult to subscribe to. 
 
 In a series of sittings by Mr. George B. Dorr, Hodgson 
 gave a detailed and in every respect characteristic de- 
 scription of his visits at the sitter's place, " Oldfarm." 
 Here Mrs. Piper's possible knowledge of Dr. Hodgson's 
 experiences seemed a too extravagant assumption, and 
 the reporter can as alternative to the spirit theory only 
 suggest that of reading of Mr. Dorr's mind. 
 
 But the most interesting sittings from Professor 
 James's report are probably those by Professor Newbold. 
 Here Hodgson, among other things, reverts to his favourite 
 subject, psychical research, and his former discussions on 
 it with the sitter. For instance, on July 7th, 1906 : 
 
 " R. H. You said you could not understand why so many 
 mistakes were made, and I talked you blind, trying to explain 
 
 my ideas of it You laughed about the ungrammatical 
 
 expressions and said, why in the world do they use bad 
 grammar ? 
 
 " Prof. N. Yes Dick, I said that. 
 
 " R. H. I went into a long explanation and attributed it 
 to the registering of the machine. You were rather amused 
 
 1 find now difficulties such as a blind man would 
 
 experience in trying to find his hat. And I am not wholly 
 conscious of my own utterances because they come out 
 
 automatically, impressed upon the machine I impress my 
 
 thoughts on the machine which registers them at random 
 
 I understand so much better the modus operandi than I did 
 when I was in your world." 
 
 Later in the same sitting Hodgson reminded Professor 
 Newbold of some experiences which the latter, however, 
 did not recollect. Which of them was right can hardly 
 be decided. The characteristic point is that Hodgson, 
 in spite of all denials on the part of the other, clung to his 
 opinion. At last he said : 
 
 " I find my memory no worse than yours in spite of the 
 fact that I have passed through the transition stage — state.
 
 272 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 You would be a pretty poor philosopher if you were to forget 
 your subject as you seem to forget some of those little memories 
 which I recall, Billy ! " 
 
 It cannot be denied that the deportment of this com- 
 municator is somewhat more superior when the sitter 
 will not bow to his opinion than that of poor Phinuit 
 when he was unable to satisfy the inquirers. In a cor- 
 responding tone of language he spoke later, after Mrs. 
 Piper's sojurn in England, about the English investi- 
 gators, Sir Oliver Lodge and Mr. Piddington. A friend 
 of Dr. Hodgson's, Miss Bergman, had a sitting on 
 January ist, 1908, at which, among other things, she 
 asked Hodgson whether he knew that she had been at his 
 lodgings. It was after the death of Dr. Hodgson that 
 she had been there, but the communicator naturally 
 believed that she referred to a visit during his life-time. 
 So he asked whether they had had tea together or whether 
 she had visited him to read something ? When he at 
 last was informed of the real facts, he exclaimed : " Capital, 
 that is good. Lodge and Piddington consider it good 
 when I don't remember what did not happen ! " The 
 irony of this is not bad. 
 
 That Hodgson, like Bennie and other communicators, 
 is represented with the faculty of peering down to the 
 living appears, for instance, from a passage from the 
 conversation with Professor Newbold : 
 
 " R. H. I heard you and William discussing me, and I 
 stood not one inch behind you. 
 
 " Prof. N. William who ? 
 
 " R. H. James. He said he was baffled but he felt it was 
 I talking — at one moment — then at another he did 
 not know what to think. He said I was very secretive and 
 careful. 
 
 " Prof. N. I don't remember his saying so." 
 
 Professor James writes, " I remember it," and states 
 that the above is a perfectly true description of his con- 
 versation with Professor Newbold after his sitting with 
 Mrs. Piper on June 27th, 1906.
 
 THE HODGSON-CONTROL 273 
 
 It is hardly necessary to quote more from the com- 
 munications from Hodgson to obtain an impression of 
 Mrs. Piper's reproduction of him. There were things 
 that disappointed the experimenters ; the communicator 
 did not try to give them the key of a cypher employed by 
 Dr. Hodgson, and he did not seem to recognize some 
 English friends who were introduced at sittings while 
 Mrs. Piper was in London. But these and similar defi- 
 ciencies can hardly alter the value of the positive results 
 that were obtained. The latter are in his case, as in that 
 of the other communicators, a phenomenon which, 
 explicable or inexplicable, does not cease to exist because 
 other things call for criticism. Hence, I have in the 
 preceding review dwelt especially on the positive matter. 
 Only if it be possible to make the whole fall into unity by 
 elucidating the good results through the bad ones, it 
 becomes a necessity to omit nothing. Such was the case 
 with regard to the automatic writings of Mrs. Verrall 
 and Mrs. Holland, which when they were looked at as a 
 whole proved to be wholly due to the automatists them- 
 selves, or to their supernormal impressions about living 
 people. A similar unity of conception is unattainable in 
 the Piper case. In whatever way the deficiencies and 
 the improbabilities of the communications be conceived, 
 there will always remain large quantities which cannot 
 be explained away by referring to them. To present an 
 idea of the nature of those quantities has been the object 
 of the preceding extracts. 
 
 CD.
 
 SECTION VI 
 
 Mrs. Piper's Mediumism. III. Experiments 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 cross-correspondences 
 
 In the autumn of 1906 Mrs. Piper, by arrangement 
 with the Society for Psychical Research, for the second 
 time set out for England. In November and in the 
 beginning of December a series of sittings were held at 
 the house of Sir Oliver Lodge at Edgbaston, near 
 Birmingham, under his own direction. Afterwards the 
 medium came to London, where the experiments were 
 directed by Mr. Piddington during three months, and 
 afterwards by Mrs. Sidgwick until May 8th, 1907. A 
 few sittings by Sir Oliver Lodge ended the medium's 
 sojourn in England. 
 
 The sittings which will be mentioned below were 
 devoted to experiments, and are for the greater part 
 reported by Mr. Piddington in his paper, " A Series of 
 Concordant Automatisms."^ They are, apart from the 
 results of the experiments, of a special interest because a 
 principal part in them was played by Myers, who had 
 otherwise very seldom manifested through Mrs. Piper. 
 According to Hodgson's statements in January, 1906, it 
 seems to have been the difficulties of communication that 
 kept him back. It has, at any rate, a dramatic fitness 
 that it was the death of Dr. Hodgson which apparently 
 caused a change, so that he was henceforth eager enough 
 to assist in the work. Hodgson's own anxiety to secure 
 his co-operation appears from the following utterance to 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXII., pp. 19 — 416.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 275 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge at the latter's last sitting before Mrs. 
 Piper went up to London ^ : 
 
 " Myers has had very little opportunity or encouragement 
 
 to prove his identity it should be given him in any case, 
 
 as he is intelligent, clear, and understands the necessity of so 
 doing." 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge had been much taken up with other 
 communicators, especially his late friend and neighbour, 
 Isaac Thompson, whose family was anxious to communi- 
 cate with him. He himself admits that he had neglected 
 Myers. Any great respect for the alleged discarnate the 
 experimenters cannot be said to display. At a later 
 sitting Mr. Piddington interrupted Myers in an important 
 matter to inform him that a sitter — who had nothing to 
 do with their experiment — had arrived. " Do I under- 
 stand that I am to go ? " Myers asked, with evident sur- 
 prise, though with his usual gentleness. In a very 
 different tone had George Pelham on a similar occasion 
 exclaimed : " Sorry to be put out in that way, Vance, 
 but I suppose I shall have to swallow it." The informal 
 way in which the communicators were treated affords 
 us at any rate an opportunity to admire the manner in 
 which their reaction by the treatment is characterized. 
 
 In London, however, Myers got plenty to do ; the 
 experimenters here were, if anything, prone to overwork 
 him. The main object they had proposed to themselves 
 was to obtain cross-correspondences, or mutually corre- 
 sponding things, through the different psychics. They 
 were, as we know, inclined to believe that Frederic Myers 
 had for a long time produced such correspondences in the 
 automatic writings of Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. Holland. 
 They intended now to make the Piper-Myers undertake 
 definite tasks in the same direction, and then to watch 
 the eventual results in the different scripts. 
 
 Both Myers and Hodgson were very willing to try such 
 experiments. But nothing indicates that Myers had 
 
 1 " Report on Some Trance Communications," by Sir Oliver Lodge, 
 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXIII.. pp. 246 seq. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 tried them before. On a certain occasion, on the contrary, 
 he expressed some distrust with respect to their evidential 
 value. Mr. Piddington had spoken of the importance 
 the investigators attached to them. Myers could not 
 understand why they did so; for, said he, "if you estab- 
 lish telepathic messages, you will doubtless attribute all 
 such [i.e., cross-correspondences] to thoughts from those 
 living in the mortal body." Mr. Piddington, however, 
 had a special reason for praising the cross-correspon- 
 dences ; he had in a " message," composed in Latin, 
 asked Myers to produce a kind of complementary corre- 
 spondence, and intended by his utterances in favour of 
 the simple ones to protect t-he contents of this message 
 which Myers had not yet shown symptoms of under- 
 standing. Myers seems to have accepted his opinion ; 
 at any rate, he displayed immediately afterwards an 
 increased eagerness to produce cross-correspondences. 
 " Myers is specially interested in taking messages," said 
 Rector a few days after his above conversation with 
 Mr. Piddington. But his very rational remark during 
 that conversation proves both that the cross-correspon- 
 dences were no invention of his, and that he had no 
 notion of the complementary ones. Rightly it has been 
 argued that the Myers who spoke in such a way could 
 not be identical with the personality that had inspired 
 Mrs. Verrall's and Mrs. Holland's writings during the 
 preceding years. 
 
 This, however, cannot influence our conception of the 
 Piper-Myers, as we found no cause to assume that the 
 so-called cross-correspondences in Mrs. Verrall's and Mrs. 
 Holland's scripts were other than impressions which one 
 of them obtained about the other. Apart from Dr. Hodg- 
 son's attempt with the "pass-word" stahdelta which, at 
 any rate, left traces in Mrs. Verrall's script, the pheno- 
 menon in fact did not begin until Mrs. Piper's sojourn in 
 England in 1906 — 7. It is on the performances from 
 that time that the judgment of its signification must be 
 based.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 277 
 
 The first attempt at these experiments was made 
 at one of Sir Oliver Lodge's earliest sittings, on 
 November 15th, 1906.^ Mr. Piddington had, as said 
 before, been in Boston in the spring of that year in con- 
 sequence of Dr. Hodgson's death. He had then had 
 sittings with Mrs. Piper, and among other things to the 
 Hodgson-control mentioned Mrs. Holland, about whom 
 Dr. Hodgson, living, never knew anything. Thus it is 
 natural that Hodgson immediately thought of this lady 
 as the recipient of a cross-correspondence, while Myers 
 chose Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 I quote the dialogue with only a few omissions. After 
 an introduction by Rector first Myers and afterwards 
 Hodgson appeared : 
 
 " M. Well well Lodge. I am Myers. 
 
 " Sir 0. Glad to see you 
 
 " M. I wish you to remind me of something. 
 
 " Sir 0. What we are anxious to get is correspondence 
 messages between this medium and others. 
 
 " M. Good. I understand. 
 
 " Sir 0. Well, will you now give one to some one. 
 
 " M. Very well, give me a message. 
 
 " Sir 0. Suppose you say ' Julius Caesar.' Can you send 
 that? 
 
 " M. Yes spell it [Sir Oliver spells.] I will give 
 
 it her within five minutes. 
 
 " Rector. He has gone. 
 
 " M. Here I am I have given your message to Mrs. Verrall, 
 and she will record it in black and white within a few hours. 
 
 " R. H. Hello Lodge. I am not dead as some might 
 suppose. I am very much alive. Speak to me. 
 
 " Sir 0. Are you interested in the cross-correspondences ? 
 Could you send something to other communicators [i.e., 
 automatists] ? 
 
 " R. H. I am very, and think it the very best thing. 
 
 " Sir 0. Could you send one now to one of the mediums ? 
 
 " R. H. I will go to Mrs. Holland. 
 
 " Sir 0. What will you send ? 
 
 " R. H. St. Paul I will give it to her at once." 
 
 Afterwards he said : " Give my love to Piddington and 
 
 1 Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXIII., p. 227 seq.
 
 278 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 tell him I shall try cross messages." On the morrow he 
 announced that "St. Paul " had been given. 
 
 Such was the commencement ; the result was not very 
 satisfactory. " Julius Caesar " did not appear in any 
 automatic script. As to " St. Paul," Mrs. Holland 
 wrote : 
 
 December '^ist, 1906. 
 
 "II Peter^I 15 [Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be 
 able after my decease to have these things always in 
 remembrance]." 
 
 This was followed by quotations from St. John and 
 St. James, without references, and finally the words : 
 " This is a faithful saying," a^phrase which occurs several 
 times in St. Paul's epistles. 
 
 Miss Helen Verrall wrote : 
 
 January 12th, 1907. 
 
 " The name is not right robbing Peter to pay — Paul ? " 
 
 February 26th, 1907. 
 " You have not understood about Paul ask Lodge." 
 
 If all this be due to anything but chance, it seems to 
 mean that Mrs. Holland had written Peter instead of 
 Paul, and that an attempt to correct the mistake was 
 given through Miss Verrall's script. 
 
 The fate of these first two cross-correspondences was 
 shared by many in the following period. The Julius 
 Ccesar experiment is an instance of the numerous cases 
 where a cross-correspondence was agreed upon, nay in 
 the opinion of the communicators accomplished, but 
 where no result appeared in the automatic writings. 
 St. Paul is a case where it is impossible to feel sure that 
 the productions are really connected with the announced 
 message. The difficulty of decision is in this and similar 
 cases increased through the long space of time that may 
 elapse between the announcement and the production of 
 the cross-correspondence. That a certain time must pass 
 before a delivered message could be written down, the 
 communicators no doubt seemed to expect. For instance.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 279 
 
 Myers said above that he had given " Julius Caesar " to 
 Mrs. Verrall, and that she would record it within a few 
 hours. This, however, was his first sanguine conception 
 of the matter. On the next day he added : " I have not 
 succeeded in getting it through to Mrs. Verrall, but I will 
 persist." On a later occasion, on June 2nd, 1907, he 
 said, also to Sir Oliver Lodge, about some cross-corre- 
 spondences : " These I propose to work on until they 
 appear through Mrs. V." It is a mode of expression 
 that recalls Dr. Verrall's experiment, where it had 
 certainly been necessary to work assiduously before any- 
 thing akin to a result appeared in the script of his wife. 
 The faculty of the communicators to impress the auto- 
 matists does not seem to differ much from that of the 
 living. 
 
 Besides the unsuccessful and the doubtful cross-corre- 
 spondences there are, however, a number of cases which 
 may be characterized as successful, great enough to make 
 it impossible to ascribe the whole phenomenon to chance. 
 From these I propose to reproduce the clearest and most 
 instructive. The extracts will be made as short as possible, 
 but accessories of special interest must sometimes be 
 cited at length. The cases are given in the chronological 
 order of the first appearance of the cross-word at the 
 Piper-sittings. 
 
 Laurel Wreath. 
 On January 2nd, 1907, Myers said through Mrs. Piper : 
 " I said wreath to Mrs. Verrall. Wreaths." 
 
 Rector added that he felt that the word wreath had 
 been received by Mrs. Verrall. On January 21st this 
 lady was herself present at the sitting with Mrs. Piper, 
 and Rector asked her : " Did you understand about the 
 wreath ? " She answered in the negative, and Rector 
 perceived his indiscretion and said two days later to 
 Mr. Piddington : " We are rather sorry we mentioned 
 wreath before her, but we did so inadvertently."
 
 28o COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 On February 6th Mrs. Verrall wrote automatically as 
 follows : 
 
 " Laura 
 
 " Apollo's laurel hough 
 
 " Laureatus a laurel wreath 
 
 " perhaps no more than that [drawing of laurel wreath] 
 
 " Corona laureata has some meaning here 
 
 " with laureate wreath his brow serene was crowned— 
 
 On Febriiary 27th Myers said through Mrs. Piper : 
 
 " I gave Mrs. Verrall Laurel wreath." 
 
 On March 4th he added : 
 
 " When I gave Mrs, V. the message about Laurel wreath I 
 purposely said Laurel so as to make the message clear. After 
 having mentioned wreath here, i thought it wiser to add more 
 to it." 
 
 A script by Miss Helen Verrall of March 17th is possibly 
 
 a reflex from that of her mother which she had not seen : 
 
 ". . laurel leaves are emblem laurel for the victor's brow." 
 
 Arrows. 
 On February 12th, 1907, the following occurred at the 
 Piper sitting : 
 
 " R. H. Arrow 
 
 HODGSON 
 " Mr. P. Will you explain that ? 
 " R. H. I said to Mrs. V " 
 
 On February i8th Rector said : " Hodgson says do not 
 forget arrow. Watch for it if it comes out." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall's script of February nth had contained 
 the following : 
 
 tria convergentia in unum [three converging to one].
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 281 
 
 Perhaps the arrows are a first outcome of Hodgson's 
 attempt, but their number and position as well as the 
 Latin phrase are probably a result of Mrs. Verrall's 
 thoughts being in this period occupied by another experi- 
 ment, aiming at the co-operation of three mediums.^ 
 But, at any rate, the following script, of February i8th, 
 seems connected with Hodgson's exertions : 
 
 " Do ew. No nor any other 
 " Can't you take the message ? 
 
 " [drawing] it seems to be carvings in stone 
 
 " Church architecture or some such thing 
 
 " Architectonic Architrave 
 
 " [drawing] a pointed arch 
 
 " I can't get rid of the idea A R C H it obsesses me 
 
 " There has been great confusion here and I do not think 
 anything has been accurately said 
 
 " accurate dicta adcuranda sunt [things said accurately 
 should be attended to] 
 
 " But the white arch should give a clue." 
 
 On February 19th the following conversation was held 
 at the Piper-sitting between Mr. Piddington and Hodgson : 
 
 " Mr. P. You said you were going to give arrow to Mrs. 
 Verrall. 
 
 " R. H. I did certainly say so and I have been there three 
 days trying to impress it upon her, hard. She did get ar I 
 think and stopped there ; after that I saw w written I know. 
 
 " Mr. P. It did seem to me that she was getting near the 
 idea of arrow. Do you know what she did get ? 
 
 " R. H. Not exactly, but Piercing, swift and Piercing 
 came into my own mind while impressing her, and I tried in 
 several ways to make her understand my real meaning. She 
 is the very best subject we have to work with and I believe 
 she can become much more important to us." 
 
 The conversation was continued on the morrow in this 
 manner : 
 
 " R. H. I should Hke to know if Mrs. V understood 
 
 my message ? 
 
 " Mr. P. I find she did write ' ar.' I can't say anything 
 about the ' w ' ; it isn't certain. 
 
 " R. H. I am not absolutely sure myself about this, but 
 she wrote what appeared an M or a W. 
 
 - See below, p. 315.
 
 282 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 '' Mr. P. Is the first letter an M ? 
 
 " R. H. Yes but my point was to bring out the W. I 
 beheve she made it distinct enough to be recognized as a W. 
 
 " Mr. P. I am going to ask you a question, Hodgson. 
 
 When Mrs, Verrall got the letters ' ar ' she wrote several words 
 beginning with the letters ar. 
 
 " R. H. That makes no special difference to me. My 
 special word to her was arrow A R. 
 
 " Mr. P. I quite understand, but what I want to know is 
 this : In yoijr attempt to impress ' arrow ' did you try to 
 get at it by impressing the actual words which she wrote 
 beginning with ar ; or are these words the result of Mrs. 
 Verrall's own mind ? 
 
 " R. H. That is what it is. The actual word or point was 
 to make her write arrow. 
 
 " Mr. P. I'll tell you^ the words in ' ar ' which 
 
 Mrs. Verrall wrote. They were ' arch,' ' architecture,' 
 ' architrave ' and ' pointed arch.' 
 
 " R. H. Pointed was my own word to suggest arrow 
 
 Well suppose I go to her again as soon as' I finish here and give 
 her the suggestion again." 
 
 On February 25th the subject was once more discussed 
 at the Piper-sitting : 
 
 " R. H. Got arrow yet ? 
 
 " Mr. P. Well, Hodgson, I don't think the word ' arrow ' 
 has been written, but it has certainly been drawn. 
 
 " R. H. Amen. I spent hours of earthly time trying to 
 make her understand." 
 
 The drawing which Mr. Piddington alluded to was 
 that of the three arrows in Mrs. Verrall's script of 
 February nth. On March i8th, however, her script 
 contained four drawings, of which the last three repre- 
 sent a bow and arrow, an arrow, and a target. They 
 seem to have no connection with the rest of the script, 
 and may then, perhaps, be considered a late result of 
 Hodgson's renewed exertions. Mrs. Verrall knew nothing 
 about his utterances respecting " arrow " in the Piper- 
 trance. 
 
 Miss Verrall's script of February 17th had contained 
 the following : #1 
 
 " \ many together."
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 283 
 
 As she, like her mother, on February nth, speaks of 
 many arrows, the script in all probabihty is a reflex of 
 that of Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 Violets. 
 
 On March nth, 1907, at one o'clock, Mrs. Piper said 
 in the waking stage : 
 
 " Violets. Dr. Hodgson [said] violets." 
 
 According to the experience of Mr. Piddington such an 
 utterance alludes to a cross-correspondence. On the 
 same day at eleven a.m. Mrs. Verrall had automatically 
 written as follows : 
 
 " With violet buds their heads were crowned 
 " violaceae odores [scents of violet] 
 " Violet and olive leaf purple and hoary 
 " The city of the violet " 
 
 Diana. 
 After Mrs. Sidgwick had undertaken the charge of the 
 Piper-sittings, the following conversation took place on 
 March 19th, 1907 : 
 
 "Rector. Mr. Hodgson wishes to ask if you under- 
 stand that Mrs. V — has written Dianna. 
 
 " R. H. Good morning Mrs. Sidgwick I said DIANNA 
 I tried to impress it on her mind. 
 
 " Mrs. S. Yes, I will inquire. 
 
 " R. H. ... Why don't you get her to send you what 
 she does get each day so you can compare it with what I tell 
 you here ? Would not that be wise ? 
 
 " Mrs. S. She sends it every day to Mr. Piddington, and I 
 tell Mr. Piddington what you say. 
 
 " R. H. Oh yes, very good." 
 
 On April 4th it was Myers who spoke to Mrs. Sidgwick 
 about the cross-correspondence : 
 
 " M. I should be glad if you could tell me if she wrote 
 about Diana. 
 
 " Mrs. S. I will inquire. I think she wrote something Uke 
 it, but not quite Diana. 
 
 " M. It was that that I was impressing upon her mind." 
 
 Mrs. Sidgwick had in mind a script of Mrs. Verrall's of 
 March 13th which spoke about Bacchic revellers and
 
 284 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " Diva the goddess," and, probably as an attempt at the 
 latter, contained the meaningless " Dina." But Mrs. 
 Verrall had in fact produced a script about Diana already 
 on February 27th where she, utilizing reminiscences 
 from Horace, wrote among other things : 
 
 " Nemorum custos [guardian of the woods] 
 
 " Montium custos [guardian of the mountains] 
 " Dianam tenerae dicite virgines [sing Diana youthful 
 maids] 
 
 " I cannot get the meaning clear. I will try again." 
 
 Besides, she had on January ist written the name 
 Diana, but in a connection which made it evident that 
 it was the Christian name of Mrs. Forbes that was meant. 
 On April 29th Mrs. Verrall had herself a sitting with Mrs. 
 Piper, where she referred both to the latter script and to 
 that of February 27th, but not to that about " Diva," 
 which Mrs. Sidgwick had mentioned. Mrs. Sidgwick was 
 not present on this occasion : 
 
 " M. I referred to the word Dianna I thought 
 
 you wrote it. Look that up also. 
 
 " Mrs. V. I've written the word Diana, I am quite sure. 
 
 "M. Recently? 
 
 " Mrs. V. Some time ago. 
 
 " M. Yes, I told her [Mrs. Sidgwick] so, but she said no. 
 
 " Mrs. V. Then she was wrong ; twice I had a reference to 
 her — once a longish time ago to her name and another time to 
 a Latin poem of Diana. 
 
 " M. Yes I was sure you had understood me and that you 
 had registered it. We must try to do better and she must be 
 sure of what you do write. It is so much easier for me when 
 I say I know that you did get a word for her to understand. 
 Otherwise I keep on trying at the same word again. Therefore 
 you must make it clear to her and vice versa." 
 
 It is curious to see the communicator instruct the 
 experimenters as to the best manner of proceeding. 
 Rector, too, had endeavoured to teach Mrs. Sidgwick. At 
 the sitting on April 4th he said to her : 
 
 " Will you note friend our messages to and about Mrs. V. 
 and reply to us when we think we have succeeded in getting 
 
 messages through ? We do not wish to make the same 
 
 things when once they have been received."
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 285 
 
 The trance-personalities do not seem quite unjustified 
 in their criticism. If the unpractical proceedings were 
 due to the desire of excluding the explanation " telepathy 
 from the sitters," they, at any rate, were not carried 
 through. Mrs. Sidgwick knew Mrs. Verrall's script 
 about " Diva," and Mr. Piddington had, as the experi- 
 menter in charge, constantly made himself acquainted 
 with the productions. 
 
 Euripides. Spirit and Angel. 
 
 On April 8th, 1907, Myers said to Mrs. Sidgwick 
 through Mrs. Piper : 
 
 " Do you remember Euripides ? Do you remember 
 
 Spirit and Angel ? I gave both Nearly all the words I 
 
 have written to-day are with reference to messages I am trying 
 to give through Mrs. V." 
 
 Mrs. Verrall had on March 7th produced a long script, 
 containing among other things the words " Hercules 
 Furens " and " Euripides." On March 25th she wrote : 
 
 " The Hercules play comes in there and the clue is in the 
 Euripides play, if you could only see it " 
 
 Furthermore, she wrote on the same day a piece 
 wherein words like shadow were constantly repeated : 
 
 " Let Piddington know when you get a message about 
 shadow. 
 
 " The shadow of a shade. That is better umbrarum 
 umbras [shadows of shadows] o-kiSs ItSwXoi/ [shadow of a shade] 
 was what I wanted to get written." 
 
 The word " Spirit," however, did not appear. On 
 April 3rd she obviously strove for a definite goal, but 
 without obtaining the word " Angel": 
 
 " Flaming swords wings or feathered wings come in 
 
 somewhere Try pinions of desire The wings of Icarus 
 
 Lost Paradise regained his flame clad messengers 
 
 [drawing of angel with wings] 
 that is better F W H M has sent the message through — at 
 last ! "
 
 286 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 On April i6th Mrs. Holland produced a piece that 
 seems to reflect Mrs. Verrall's Euripides script, what is 
 moreover indicated by the mention of her name Margaret : 
 " Lucus Margaret To fly to find Euripides Philemon." 
 The names Lucus and Philemon come from Browning's 
 version of Euripides' Hercules Furens. On inquiry 
 Mrs. Holland answered that she had not read this play ; 
 but she oWned the book, and Mr. Piddington points out 
 that she may easily have seen the names by turning over 
 the leaves. 
 
 Mrs. Holland's script on March 27th, which was 
 written on the day of the week chosen for experimenting 
 with Mrs. Verrall, is perhap§ in a similar way related to 
 the script about Shadow : 
 
 tenebrae [darkness] obscura [dark] Sorrow 
 
 and love — as inevitably as Light and Shadow — Shadow 
 and light " 
 
 Shadow, at any rate, does not here mean Spirit but, 
 like tenebrae, darkness, and so cannot have anything to do 
 with the Piper cross-correspondence. 
 
 What must above all strike the student on contemplat- 
 ing these cross-correspondences, and provisionally grant- 
 ing that they are what they pretend to be, viz., attempts 
 on the part of the Piper-personalities to produce certain 
 words in the script of Mrs. Verrall, is the extreme difficulty 
 which the task presents. As pointed out before, it is a 
 difficulty comparable with that which Dr. Verrall ex- 
 perienced when he tried to impress his Greek phrase. 
 That the success of the trance-personalities is greater 
 than Dr. Verrall's can at any rate only be said of a 
 number which is small in comparison with that of the 
 attempts ; many more " messages " were planned with 
 apparently no result at all. Besides, the tasks which 
 they proposed to themselves were far easier than Dr. 
 Verrall's. They were aiming at simple words like 
 " Diana " or " Arrow," and generally at one word at a 
 time; even Laurel wreath was only chosen because
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 287 
 
 " wreath " alone had been spoiled by Rector's thoughtless 
 mention of it to Mrs. Verrall. In return, it was the 
 identical word they wanted to produce, not a similar one. 
 Hodgson's remarks on the attempts at Arrow are in this 
 respect very instructive. " That makes no special 
 difference to me. My special word to her was arrow," 
 he said to Mr. Piddington when the latter alluded to the 
 other words which Mrs. Verrall had written. There was 
 no question here of anything but " hitting the bull." 
 
 This, however, was not always achieved even in the 
 cases where a correspondence is undeniable. In the case 
 of " Spirit " the word was not obtained, in those of 
 " Angel " and " Arrow " it was only the drawings that 
 really expressed the idea. And almost always the word 
 in question was wrapped up in the automatist's own 
 productions in the same manner as Dr. Verrall's Greek 
 words had been. It is interesting to see how a foreign 
 impulse appears to struggle with the matter in the writer's 
 own mind, and how now one and now the other part 
 predominates. " I can't get rid of the idea arch, it 
 obsesses me," Mrs. Verrall writes during her exertions to 
 produce arrow. Often it is possible to trace the auto- 
 matist's subconscious thoughts, which form a chain of 
 more or less evident associations of ideas, and to see how 
 the foreign element intrudes between them. The latter 
 is not linked to the contents of the writer's mind by any 
 association, but may of course become the starting-point 
 for new ideas. At times it is as if the automatist had a 
 feeling of having reached her goal. " Perhaps no more 
 than that," Mrs. Verrall writes after having put down the 
 words Laurel wreath; and after the angel has been drawn, 
 the script exclaims triumphantly : " F W H M has sent 
 the message through — at last ! " 
 
 On the other hand, it is clear from what has just been 
 said that most of the automatic script is at any rate due 
 to the writers themselves. To this obviously belong the 
 divers remarks about " the clue " (" the clue is in the 
 Euripides play," " the white arch should give a clue "),
 
 288 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 which we know from Mrs. Verrall's earlier productions ; 
 and the conversations which she frequently holds with 
 herself : "I cannot get the meaning clear"; "Can't you 
 take the message " ; " There has been great confusion 
 here and I do not think anything has been accurately 
 said." All this confirms with regard to the greater 
 portion of the script that conception of its character 
 which we ^ had previously attained to. The question 
 that remains is, whether we ought to add the contention 
 that the isolated words which constitute the cross- 
 correspondences originate from an external source that 
 may in a degree be compared to Dr. Verrall in his oft- 
 mentioned experiment. 
 
 • •••■• 
 
 Before entering into the discussion of this problem 
 there are, however, a few more cross-correspondences to 
 take into account. The experiments were continued 
 after Mrs. Piper's return to Boston by Mr. George B. Dorr, 
 who, in March — May, 1908, held a large number of sittings 
 with her,^ and devoted a portion of them to cross-cor- 
 respondences. The English investigators knew nothing 
 of this while it took place ; afterwards the records were 
 sent to England, where Mrs, Verrall read them in October, 
 1908. Mr. Dorr, on the other hand, did not know the 
 details of the English experiments ; he only knew that 
 such had been undertaken. Having, therefore, no 
 model to guide him, he often set the communicators 
 more difficult tasks than they had performed in England. 
 He himself most often proposed the subjects. 
 
 The cases are, as before, quoted in the chronological 
 order of the Piper-sittings. 
 
 Troy, Joy, and Wreath. 
 
 The following conversations took place in March, 1908, 
 between Mr. Dorr and the Piper-personalities : 
 
 1 " Further Experiments with Mrs. Piper in 1908," Proceedings 
 S.P.R., Vol. XXIV., pp. 31—200.
 
 (( 
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 289 
 
 March gth, 1908. 
 
 R. H. He [Myers] says Say to our good friend, Troy. 
 Troy, I'll go give that to Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 " My. D. Will you give her the words Exile and Troy ? 
 Take as synonym for Troy ' the city in flames ' " 
 
 March 1.6th, 1908. 
 
 " M. I have given Mrs. V. Troy, Joy. 
 
 " Mr. D. Why did you write ' joy ' ? 
 
 " M. In making her understand TROY she misunder- 
 stood and wrote Joy. 
 
 " Mr. D. Did you get ' Troy ' through too ? 
 
 " M. Yes she finally got it right, and wrote Troy. She 
 
 understood flames ... I gave her my first initials F.M. so 
 she would understand who was writing." 
 
 March 2;^rd, 1908. 
 
 " R. H. We wrote wreath and Joy, also Joy of the Gods. 
 
 " Mr. D. Did you do this in any allusive fashion, so far as 
 you can tell ? 
 
 " R. H. No. That is good and by itself, as we wrote 
 archway for P [iddington] in England. Joy was written in 
 
 the same way We wrote it straight out as we did archway 
 
 long ago." 
 
 " Archway " is evidently a mistake for Arrow, which 
 cross-correspondence was more than a year old now. 
 
 Myers had on March 9th said to Mr. Dorr : " I can't 
 take more to Mrs. Verrall, but I will take a message to 
 Helen Verrall." Later in the same sitting he said : 
 " I shall go and give my messages to Mrs. V. and Helen." 
 Mrs. Verrall's script contained no trace of the above 
 cross-correspondence, but Miss Verrall wrote on April ist, 
 1908, the following : 
 
 " The pillars of converging fire 
 The ministers of joy divine " 
 
 and on April 20th, 1908 : 
 
 " A holly leave or something like that green and 
 
 prickly a hoUy wreath Troy Laodamia ^ " 
 
 * Cf. Wordsworth, Laodamia: " The Beach of Troy," etc. 
 CD. U
 
 290 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Exile. 
 
 On March 23rd, 1908, Mr. Dorr spoke to Hodgson 
 about the other messages that had been proposed on 
 March 9th. 
 
 " Mr. D. Did you write ' Exile ' ? 
 
 " R. H. Yes, long ago. It came out with Moore. 
 MOORE." 
 
 More than a month later, on April 27th, Miss Verrall's 
 script contained the following quotation from Moore : 
 
 " A golden harp — the harp that once through Tara's 
 halls " 
 
 •s 
 
 and on May i6th she wrote 
 
 " By the waters of Babylon. The song of exile in a strange 
 land The harp that once through Tara's halls " 
 
 On February loth, 1909, Mrs. Holland wrote in India 
 a script where allusions to Ireland and to exile appeared 
 together, among several other things ^ : 
 
 " St. Bridget's Day— St. Bride Oh Bay of Dublin my 
 
 heart you're troubling — Leave your home behind lad " 
 
 Prometheus. 
 
 On March 31st, 1908, Mr. Dorr suggested " Prome- 
 theus " as a message to be taken to the other automatists. 
 On April 7th in the waking stage came the words : 
 
 " Fire — from careless man — he taught them all his wiles and 
 wisdom. 
 
 " Shelley ! he taught them all he knew. And they were 
 envious of him — 
 
 " Poor Prometheus ! What would we have known but for 
 him." 
 
 Promeiheus was afterwards referred to as a message to 
 be taken with Fire and Art in several sittings in April 
 and May. 
 
 On September 23rd, 1908, Mrs. Verrall, who at that 
 
 1 " Third Report on Mrs. Holland's Script," Proceedings S.P.R., 
 Vol. XXV., pp. 218—303.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 291 
 
 time had not seen the records of Mr. Dorr's sittings, 
 wrote in Greek as follows : 
 
 " In a narthex was hidden the fire by which Prometheus 
 made men like unto gods." 
 
 This was followed by English verse containing remi- 
 niscences from iEschylus' Prometheus. This, the editor 
 adds, is the only mention of Prometheus in 282 scripts 
 by Mrs. Verrall, covering a period of nearly four years. 
 
 On December 30th, 1908, Mrs. Holland quoted, with 
 a few alterations, a verse from Shelley's Prometheus 
 Unbound : 
 
 " Here oh here 
 We bear the bier 
 
 Of the Spectres of many a vanished year 
 Spectres we 
 Of the dead time be 
 We bear Time to his tomb in Eternity." 
 
 Meanwhile, Miss Helen Verrall had on November 19th, 
 1908, written as follows : 
 
 " Time's hour glass whose sands never run out — Time and 
 Eternity " 
 
 Possibly Mrs, Holland's script, which began, " The 
 solemn beat of time swinging through the spheres to 
 Eternity," is a reflex of Miss Verrall's— if it be more than 
 a result of her new-year's sentiments. 
 
 Turkey?. 
 
 On April 6th, 1908, the following conversation occurred 
 between Mr. Dorr and Hodgson : 
 
 " Mr. D. Now shall I give you a new message ? It refers 
 to the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers — 
 
 ' The breaking waves dashed high 
 On a stern and rock-bound coast.' 
 Do you understand what ' Pilgrim Fathers ' means ? 
 
 " R. H. Something about birds or turkeys." 
 
 Mr. Dorr did not at once understand this association 
 of ideas. Not until after the sitting it dawned upon him 
 that Hodgson had thought of Thanksgiving Day, which 
 
 u 2
 
 292 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 commemorates the Pilgrim Fathers' first harvest in 
 America, and is always celebrated with turkeys for dinner. 
 He explained, however, what he had in mind, and finished 
 by saying : 
 
 " Mr. D. Now you understand about the ' breaking 
 
 waves ' and the ' rock-bound coast ' ? 
 
 " R. H. Good. I understand well. Breaking waves ? " 
 
 On April 22nd Mr. Dorr told Hodgson that he had 
 discovered the association between turkeys and pilgrims : 
 
 " R. H. I could not think of the word [Thanksgiving]. 
 " Air. D. You might add it and turkeys to the message." 
 
 On May 4th, Hodgson, on " Thanksgiving " being 
 mentioned, said : 
 
 " I said Turkeys and Birds to Mrs. Holland, and Mrs. V. 
 also." 
 
 On December 9th, 1908, Mrs. Holland's script contained 
 the following words and drawing : 
 
 " Mallard 
 
 and a path between — " 
 
 Mrs. Holland took this to be a reminiscence from a 
 drinking song which is sung at the celebration of All 
 Souls' Day in All Souls' College in Oxford. Its first 
 verse runs as follows : 
 
 " Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon, 
 Let other hungry mortals gape on, 
 And on their bones with stomachs fall hard, 
 But let All Souls men have the mallard." 
 
 A connection there must needs be between the script
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 293 
 
 and Mr. Dorr's experiment ; to that the fullness of the 
 impression testifies. In whatever way Mrs. Holland had 
 obtained it, it had called forth not only the " birds and 
 turkeys," but withal the notion of a feast where such 
 creatures were eaten, nay even the picture of the voyage 
 across the waves which Mr. Dorr had associated with the 
 Pilgrim Fathers. 
 
 Medusa's Head. 
 
 There had at the sitting with Mrs. Piper on April 13th, 
 1908, been talked about Medusa, and Perseus who cut off 
 her head, and Mr. Dorr had suggested that " Medusa's 
 head " would be a good message to take to the other 
 lights, adding : " Describe it if you can as you have to 
 me, carried through the air and dropping blood." On 
 May 12th the trance-personality wrote that the message 
 had been received by Mrs. Holland, who had written 
 " Blood — Horse — Head, etc." However, it was not until 
 a year later, on May 19th, 1909, that Mrs. Holland wrote 
 the following : 
 
 " Pershore — pericarp — Persia — Persens — The Fateful Head 
 — Medusa — The mirrored shield and the winged sandals of 
 swiftness " 
 
 Shelley's Skylark. 
 
 On May 4th, 1908, Mr. Dorr spoke with Myers as 
 follows : 
 
 " Mr. D. You spoke of Shelley's poem the Skylark the 
 other day ; perhaps you could get one of them to quote for 
 you some lines from it. 
 
 " M. We will impress her [sic] to write it." 
 
 On May 8th, Mr. Dorr reverted to the question, saying : 
 
 " We agreed the other day upon Shelley's poem the Skylark 
 as a message. And you were going to try and make one of 
 the other Lights write some lines from that " 
 
 In the waking stage on the same day Mrs. Piper said : 
 
 " We said Ode, and we said Skylark, and we wrote them. 
 And she drew a bird." 
 
 At Mr. Dorr's sittings no more was said about this
 
 294 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 experiment. But on December 9th, 1908, Miss Pope had 
 a seance with Mrs. Piper, and asked the communicators 
 to give " a message for England." 
 Hodgson wrote : 
 
 " G.P. has one which I think good. The nightingale has 
 a lyre of gold. Myers and Hodgson with the help and encour- 
 agement of\ G.P. The lark is on the wing. No more, too 
 
 many may lead to confusion We shall get on famously 
 
 after a while. I saw and helped Mrs. Holland." 
 
 Hodgson's humorous announcement of " the lark " 
 seemed to be verified on February loth, 1909, when Mrs. 
 Holland wrote the lines of Shelley's Ode to a Skylark : 
 
 " Hail to thee blythe Spirit 
 Bird thou never wert." 
 
 COMUS. 
 
 On May 12th, 1908, Mr. Dorr said to Myers, referring 
 to something he had read to him on May 4th, from 
 Milton's Comus : 
 
 " I read you ' Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting, 
 Under the glassy cool translucent wave.' Perhaps this, as a 
 quotation, may help you to give it to the other Lights." 
 
 On December i6th, 1908, Mrs. Holland wrote : 
 
 " The glassy cool translucent wave — . . . 
 I want her to draw a recumbent figure [Sabrina ?] " 
 
 Lux, Clouds, Arrow. 
 
 This case and the following are from the beginning of 
 1909, when now Miss Pope, and now Mr. Dorr, held sittings 
 with Mrs. Piper. On January 13th Myers, among other 
 things, said to Miss Pope : 
 
 " Helen wrote gathering clouds, clouds are gathering in the 
 
 west and she also wrote Lux [light] Then another thing 
 
 was written. Arrow, light and swift as an arrow Then 
 
 Mrs. Verrall wrote as did Mrs. Holland also clouds before 
 dawn."
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 295 
 
 Miss Helen Verrall had on November 5th, 1908, 
 written : 
 
 " Mist on the high peaks of the mountains at sunrise when 
 the clouds in the valley grow rosy in the growing hght. 
 Lucifero radio Phoebus iam diffugat umbras et sub luce nova 
 nova lucent omnia [now Phcebus with Hght-bearing ray puts 
 to flight the shadows, and beneath the new light all things 
 shine anew]." 
 
 And on November loth : 
 
 " The two horns of the moon and between them a cord — 
 thus Diana's shafts speed swiftly — the arrow by day." 
 
 Trailing, Rolling Waves. The Voyage. 
 
 On March ist, 1909, the following conversation was 
 held at the Piper-sitting : 
 
 " R. H. Helen. Trailing Trail TrelHs 
 " Mr. D. Is that word traihng ? 
 
 " R. H. Yes, very good Sea Season Rolling Roll 
 
 Waves. I got these through Helen V." 
 
 Later in the sitting Mr. Dorr read to Myers the verse 
 from Tennyson's The Voyage, beginning, " For one fair 
 vision," when the hand wrote : 
 
 " Wait for this. I have already referred to this particular 
 verse with Helen V." 
 
 Miss Verrall had in her script from the preceding 
 months the following : 
 
 November 24th, 1908. 
 
 " a sloping hillside with trailing vines. 
 
 December 12th, 1908. 
 
 "From the deep the wailing of the waters thalassa, 
 
 thalassa [the sea, the sea]. 
 December i^th, 1908. 
 
 " [In Greek ."] Of the sounding sea. 
 
 January 22nd, 1909, 
 
 " On the face of the waters — when the deeps are stirred 
 
 February 1st, 1909. 
 
 " The sound of great waters when the bed of ocean 
 
 rocks 
 
 " We know the merry world is round 
 
 " And we may sail for evermore."
 
 296 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The two last lines are a quotation from Tennyson's 
 The Voyage. 
 
 A retrospective glance at the above cross-correspon- 
 dences in their entirety will show that they may be divided 
 into two groups — those that had appeared in the script 
 of other automatists before they were mentioned by the 
 Piper-personalities, and those that did not appear in the 
 automatic scripts until a shorter or longer time after they 
 had been mentioned at Mrs. Piper's. To the former 
 group belong almost all experiments performed in England, 
 besides the two last-described correspondences referred to 
 at the sittings in Boston in 1909 ; Myers or Hodgson 
 asked whether some word had been written, or declared 
 that it had been so, and it turned out that it had in fact 
 appeared in some script. Mr. Dorr's experiments in 
 1908, on the contrary, fall under the other category. 
 Generally it was himself who proposed the messages ; 
 thus, as far as they did appear at all, it must needs be 
 after the mention of them in the Piper-trance. 
 
 In judging of the value of the cross-correspondences, it is 
 not, however, without import whether they belong to the 
 former or the latter of these categories. The possibility 
 that the correspondence between a subject talked of at the 
 Piper-sittings, and the script of one of the non-entranced 
 automatists, might be due to supernormal perception on 
 the part of the mediums, is no doubt greater when the 
 mention at the Piper-sittings precedes the script than 
 when it is the reverse. It is especially great in the four 
 cases where it is in Mrs. Holland's script that the corre- 
 spondence appears. This lady returned to England in 
 the autumn of 1908 ; in the period of Mr. Dorr's experi- 
 menting with Mrs. Piper she had not produced any auto- 
 matic writing, and during the summer only a single piece. 
 But after a conversation with Miss Johnson on Novem- 
 ber 24th, 1908, she began once more to write. The result 
 was among other things the four cross-correspondences 
 mentioned above, the two of which were produced in
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 297 
 
 December, while the next appeared in February and the 
 last one as late as in May, 1909. To all of them it applies 
 that they did not appear until Miss Johnson and Mrs. 
 Verrall had seen the records of Mr. Dorr's experiments. 
 Under these circumstances, much speaks in favour of 
 conceiving Mrs. Holland's script as a reflex only of the 
 knowledge of the other ladies. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is difficult to acquiesce in this concep- 
 tion. The four cases are very different from the so-called 
 cross-correspondences between Mrs. Verrall and Mrs. 
 Holland in former years. There is here nothing of the 
 vague similarity which formerly made the researchers 
 believe that it was not the same thing which was impressed 
 on the two automatists, but complementary ones. We 
 have seen how jeast, birds and " breaking waves " 
 were transmitted in the Pilgrim Fathers experiment ; 
 the message Medusas Head was likewise reproduced 
 with great completeness. From Shelley's Skylark, 
 Mr. Dorr had wanted some lines to be quoted, without 
 specifying which ones ; Mrs. Holland quoted two. As 
 regards Comus, Mr. Dorr had himself chosen the lines ; 
 one of these " Sabrina fair, listen where thou art sitting," 
 was indicated through the words " a recumbent figure," 
 while the other, " Under the glassy cool translucent wave," 
 appeared with the exception of the first word. Neither 
 ought it to be overlooked that it had in three of the said 
 cases — Turkeys, Medusa, and Skylark — been expressly 
 told in the Piper-trance that it was to Mrs. Holland that 
 the message was sent. 
 
 The two cases from 1908, in which the correspondence 
 appears in Miss Helen Verrall's script, present difficulties 
 of another kind. In the former, at any rate, the plan seems 
 to have been that it should appear through Mrs. Verrall, 
 which it did not. More perplexing, however, is the 
 circumstance that the Piper-personalities in both cases 
 seemed to know in what form the message would appear, 
 long before it was produced in any script. " In making 
 her understand Troy she [Mrs. Verrall] misunderstood
 
 298 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 and wrote Joy — she finally got it right and wrote Troy," 
 Myers says on March i6th, 1908 ; both Joy and Troy 
 appeared through Miss Verrall not long afterwards. 
 About Exile, Hodgson says : " It came out with Moore," 
 two months before Miss Verrall wrote : " The song of 
 exile," at the same time quoting Moore's line : " The 
 harp that ^once through Tara's halls." Here again one 
 would be justified in contending that it is on a supernormal 
 perception of what has occurred at the Piper-sitting that 
 Miss Verrall's script is based. But, on the other hand, the 
 correspondence is in this case, as in that of Mrs. Holland, 
 much greater than is usual wjien it is due to such impres- 
 sions. If it be in itself difficult to " hit the bull," it is of 
 course more improbable still that it will happen with two 
 shots at a time, as is here the case both with Joy -Troy and 
 with Exile-Moore. One feels tempted to appeal to the 
 " explanation " prevision. 
 
 With regard to the category of cross-correspondences 
 where the Piper-personalities refer to a message that 
 turns out to have already appeared, the matter stands 
 somewhat differently. Theoretically, it is no doubt 
 possible to urge that Mrs. Piper might as well obtain 
 impressions about the other automatists as vice-versa, 
 and in very simple cases like Violets and Euripides this 
 possibility could hardly be dismissed. But there are 
 cross-correspondences within this category where the 
 case is too complicate to make the explanation satis- 
 factory. Such a one is, for instance, the Arrow corre- 
 spondence. Hodgson contends that he has said " arrow " 
 to Mrs. Verrall, and that at least " ar " has appeared. 
 In reality, Mrs. Verrall has drawn three arrows and, 
 moreover, groped for a word beginning with ar. About 
 this Mrs. Piper ought to have obtained not a vague im- 
 pression, but as clear a knowledge as that which the 
 reader of the records obtains, to be able to utilize it for 
 the fiction that it is Hodgson who has produced it. The 
 Laurel Wreath case is no less remarkable. The Piper- 
 personalities tell that they have endeavoured to make
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 299 
 
 Mrs. Verrall write " wreath " ; at that time she has not 
 yet done so, but later she writes " laurel wreath," and 
 they pretend now to have added laurel, because they 
 had inadvertently mentioned wreath. It can hardly 
 be denied that Mrs. Piper, if it be she, understands 
 how to produce exactly the right impression of Mrs. 
 Verrall's script being influenced by the alleged com- 
 municators. 
 
 But even if the cross-correspondences do not furnish 
 conclusive evidence for the reality of the trance-personali- 
 ties, but must rank with the other mysteries of Mrs. 
 Piper's trance, they have at least proved very different 
 from those we got to know earlier by the same name. 
 There we found only a reflex from one automatist to 
 the other ; apart, perhaps, from stahdelta, Dr. Verrall's 
 sentence was the only thing that looked like a result of 
 intentional transmission. But that there had not pre- 
 viously been made any attempt at influencing the auto- 
 matists from outside does not, of course, preclude the 
 possibility of such attempts being made now. Hodgson 
 says at one of the Piper-sittings in London in 1907 about 
 Mrs. Verrall : " She is the very best subject we have to 
 work with, and I believe she can become much more 
 important to us." The Piper-personalities thus seem to 
 conceive the present experiments as a beginning, and in 
 that at any rate they are right. Whatever they are, 
 they must be judged by themselves, without regard to 
 that which had preceded them in the writings of the 
 English automatists. 
 
 Before leaving the cross-correspondences, it is necessary 
 to mention one which has gained a special reputation, 
 and which perhaps, if it were all that the English re- 
 searchers have assumed, would be of no small value for 
 the conception of the whole problem. For in that case 
 six different mediums would have been co-operating in 
 one and the same cross-correspondence, aiming at the 
 production of the number seven. The assumption, how-
 
 \ 
 
 300 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 ever, has been sharply attacked by the critics, and no 
 doubt they are right. 
 
 The incident is long when all that belongs to it in the 
 opinion of the investigators is included, and without 
 doing this the argument can hardly become satisfactory. 
 The real cross-correspondence occurred in the year 1908, 
 but in 1904 an event had already taken place which is 
 thought to constitute the introduction. I shall begin 
 by this event, and relate the whole case in chronological 
 order. 
 
 On July 13th, 1904, Mr. Piddington wrote in the rooms 
 of the Society for Psychical Research in London a letter 
 which he sealed and gave into the custody of Miss Johnson, 
 who without knowing its contents placed it in one of the 
 drawers of the office. The plan was that it should 
 remain unopened till after his death ; circumstances, 
 however, led to its being opened in the autumn of 1908. 
 The contents of it were, slightly abridged, the following : 
 
 " If I ever am a spirit, and if I can communicate, I shall 
 endeavour to remember to transmit in some form or other the 
 
 number SEVEN. I should try to communicate such 
 
 things as : ' The seven lamps of architecture,' ' The seven 
 sleepers of Ephesus,' ' unto seventy times seven,' ' we are 
 seven,' and so forth. The reason why I select the word seven 
 is because seven has been a kind of tic with me ever since my 
 early boyhood. I would walk along the street to a rhytm 
 
 formed by counting i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 I have purposely 
 
 cultivated this tic as I think it likely that the 
 
 memory of it having by practice been frequently revived in 
 my lifetime, may survive the shock of death." 
 
 On the same day when Mr. Piddington composed this 
 " posthumous letter " in London, Mrs. Verrall produced 
 in Cambridge a script that among other things contained 
 the following lines : 
 
 "It is something contemporary that you are to record — 
 note the hour — in London half the message has come." 
 
 This was followed by remarks about the contents of 
 Myers's sealed envelope left with Sir Oliver Lodge, and a 
 statement about a sealed envelope left by Professor
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 301 
 
 Sidgwick, We have previously seen to what extent 
 Mrs. Verrall's mind was at this period occupied with the 
 thought of Myers's letter, and how this preoccupation 
 led to statements in her script which turned out to dis- 
 agree with the facts. That under these circumstances 
 she may have got a clairvoyant impression about Mr. 
 Piddington's performance on the same day is not im- 
 probable ; this kind of supernormal faculty she was 
 often proved to possess. The phrase " half the message " 
 is no doubt due to her usual tendency to expect a com- 
 plement to her own writing.^ 
 
 Three years after this prelude another episode followed, 
 which the editor includes in the report about the Sevens. 
 It seems, however, to get its natural explanation from 
 the circumstance that the automatists, who in this case 
 were Mrs. Verrall and her daughter, had been much 
 occupied with the before-mentioned " Latin message " 
 experiment that was completed in May, 1907, and that 
 aimed at making the Piper-Myers establish a cross- 
 correspondence between three mediums. It was in a 
 special degree Mr. Piddington's experiment, and it is 
 probably to him Miss Verrall alludes in the following 
 script of August 6th, 1907 : 
 
 " A rainbow in the sky 
 
 " fit emblem of our thought 
 
 " the sevenfold radiance from a single light 
 
 " many in one and one in many 
 
 " [In Latin .*] Doubtless he himself will seem to have 
 transferred this to his own rule. Wlierefore whatever is set 
 forth must be co-ordinated, lest, being scattered, it should 
 escape notice " 
 
 At any rate, it seems certain that the script alludes 
 to cross-correspondences between several mediums. The 
 rainbow is such a familiar symbol of fusion that its choice 
 
 1 Miss Johnson {" Second Report on Mrs. Holland's Script," Proceed- 
 ings S.P.R., Vol. XXIV.) assigns a deeper meaning to the said phrase. 
 The real cross-correspondence which took place in 1908 embraced, in 
 her opinion, besides the sevens also allusions to Dante ; Mr. Piddington's 
 sealed letter, therefore, was only " half the message." According to 
 this conception, the cross-correspondence must have been planned four 
 years before its execution !
 
 302 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 hardly requires to be explained as an impression from 
 Mr. Piddington, even if his constant occupation with 
 sevens might be considered to influence the ladies of his 
 acquaintance who wrote automatically. 
 
 Mrs. Verrall read her daughter's script on August 28th, 
 1907, and on the same day wrote as follows : 
 
 " Significatio patet ; symbolum tetigisti [the meaning is 
 obvious; yoh have touched the symbol]. Test the weakest 
 link [drawing of three hnks of a chain] the chain still holds. 
 Not ours to teach. You learn alone Place the question in the 
 midst and let each have his test. The same should be said to 
 each — Try this new experiment — Say the same sentence to 
 each of them and see what completion each gives to it. Let 
 Piddington choose a sentence -that they do not know and 
 send part to each Then see whether they can complete Or 
 he might give different parts of the same sentence to each of 
 them if the sentence is long enough " 
 
 It is evident that Mrs, Verrall, at least subconsciously, 
 has taken her daughter's script to refer to Mr. Piddington's 
 experiment ; the drawing of three links further indicates 
 that she has the Latin message in mind. The memory 
 of it has set her imagination in motion, and made it in a 
 somewhat confused manner devise plans for similar 
 experiments. To his sealed envelope or the sevens 
 nothing is pointing. 
 
 In the spring of 1908, however, began what the inves- 
 tigators consider the real cross-correspondence. Mrs. 
 Verrall's script of April 20th referred to " the seven hills " 
 of Rome ; according to an entry in her diary she herself 
 thought that the reference was due to the circumstance 
 that April 21st is the date of the founding of Rome, a date 
 which had been very familiar to her from her girlhood. 
 
 On April 27th her script referred to numbers, though 
 more to threes than to sevens. She wrote as follows : 
 
 " [Scrawl] and later too — Do not try to attend 
 
 37603 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 72
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 303 
 
 Try again 
 
 3 
 
 7 
 
 6 41 
 
 17 
 
 13 + 3 361 
 
 16 495 
 
 " I can't do anything but these figures. They seem to be 
 wanted but I can't tell why." 
 
 Miss Helen Verrall's script of April 29th appears to 
 reflect that of her mother : 
 
 " The figure 3 that seems wanted " 
 
 On May 4th she wrote : 
 
 " 8 eight .... 
 A a triangle " 
 
 On May 8th occurred what is considered to be Mrs, 
 Piper's contribution to the cross-correspondence. At a 
 sitting by Mr. Dorr in Boston she said in the waking stage 
 the following : 
 
 " We are seven 
 
 " I said Clock ! Tick, tick, tick ! Stairs, " 
 
 Some days afterwards Mr. Dorr asked the communicator 
 about the meaning of this : 
 
 " Mr. D. The first thing she said was ' We are seven.' 
 " C. That is Wordsworth, but we were seven in the distance 
 as a matter of fact." 
 
 Miss Johnson writes that this " rather enigmatic 
 phrase " she takes to mean that seven persons were 
 concerned in the cross-correspondence. I cannot see 
 that it says anything more than that the group of commu- 
 nicators were seven at the particular moment. Together 
 with the remark that the quotation " we are seven " 
 comes from Wordsworth, this statement destroys every 
 foundation for believing that seven referred to a cross- 
 correspondence, let alone that it alluded to its being 
 performed by seven persons. 
 
 Further, Miss Johnson laid great stress on Mrs. Piper
 
 304 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 having said " Tick, tick, tick ! " In Mr. Piddington's 
 sealed letter the word tic occurred in the sense of habit. 
 But, as Professor Hyslop^ has afterwards made clear, 
 Mrs. Piper's tick, followed by stairs, refers to a clock on 
 the stairs of Dr. Hodgson's " taverna," which had been 
 the subject of the preceding conversation between the 
 communica|:or and Mr. Dorr. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Verrall had in the days from May 5th 
 — 8th, been occupied in reading the last cantos of Dante's 
 Piirgatorio : on May 8th she composed automatically a 
 poem that was evidently prompted by this reading. On 
 May loth she wrote the following script, which was after- 
 wards thought to refer to the Sevens cross-correspondence : 
 
 " I have wanted for some time to tell you of something that 
 will interest you greatly, but it is very important that Helen 
 should know nothing of it. It concerns her more closely than 
 it does you but you will have to wait some time to hear of it. 
 She has got quite a new type of thing in her writing — it is she 
 who will lead this time not you — you only fill in her gaps " 
 
 But there is in fact nothing in it that points beyond 
 subconscious fabrication. Miss Verrall believed that the 
 " new type of thing " referred to the figures that had 
 appeared in her script ; but Mrs. Verrall had herself 
 written figures, even more than her daughter. If the 
 allusion were to the sevens, it was neither correct that 
 Mrs. Verrall would " fill in her gaps," nor that Miss 
 Verrall's script would tarry in appearing. Mrs. Verrall 
 has no share whatever in the following part of the cross- 
 correspondence, and Miss Verrall's script about the 
 sevens appeared already on the day after that of her 
 mother. 
 
 The facts of the case seem to be that Mrs. Verrall's 
 reading of Pur gator io, especially of Canto XXIX., where 
 the number seven is constantly repeated, has been reflected 
 in the automatic script of her daughter. Miss Verrall, on 
 May nth, wrote : 
 
 " A branching tree not a real tree but emblematical. 
 Scrolls in place of leaves. 
 
 » Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXV., p. 298.
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 305 
 
 " Jacob's ladder and the angels upon it. What does that 
 mean — 
 
 " A spinning top many colours but as it spins they are 
 blended into one — 
 " Mark the simile 
 
 " [drawing of branch with seven leaves] a leaf that hangs 
 down like that and a flower small and white I think and a sweet 
 scent, it is a scrub — foreign — not English — Sciola a name like 
 that. 
 
 " The seven branched candlestick it is an image — the seven 
 churches but these not churches 
 " seven candles united in one light 
 " and seven colours in the rainbow too. 
 " Many mystic sevens 
 " all will serve 
 " we are seven 
 
 " Who (?) F. W. H. Myers." 
 
 Jacob's ladder is mentioned in the part of Purgatorio 
 read by Mrs. Verrall, and appears in her automatic verses 
 of May 8th. But there is also a flower called " Jacob's 
 ladder " which is described in Bentham's British Flora, a 
 book familiar to Miss Verrall ; in the illustration of it the 
 number of leaflets shown hanging down is seven. The 
 allusion to it, then, evidently originates from Miss Verrall's 
 own subconscious mind ; neither does the script contain 
 any other thing which she did not know ; the angels upon 
 the ladder, the seven-branched candlestick, and the seven 
 colours in the rainbow, are everyday knowledge. Besides, 
 there is an echo of the preceding year's script about the 
 sevenfold radiance and the rainbow. 
 
 Miss Johnson herself leans towards the above opinion, 
 viz., that Miss Verrall's script is due to her mother's pre- 
 occupation with Dante. The same explanation, however, 
 may doubtless be extended to the next link of the cross- 
 correspondence. Mrs. Verrall had a friend, Mrs. Frith, 
 who wrote automatically, and who believed herself to 
 receive communications from Hodgson ; there had been 
 a few indications of supernormal connection between her 
 script and Mrs. Verrall's. Immediately before his death 
 in 1905, Dr. Hodgson had mailed a Christmas card to 
 Mrs. Verrall, containing a quotation from Tennyson's 
 
 CD. X
 
 3o6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Ancient Sage, " Climb the Mount of Blessing." In 
 February, 1908, Mrs. Verrall addressed the following 
 question to Mrs. Frith in the hope of getting an answer 
 through her script : " Can R. H. say what are his associa- 
 tions with the words * Climb the Mount of Blessing ' ? " 
 No reply was obtained, but on June nth, a few days 
 after Mrs. yerrall had read her daughter's script about 
 the sevens, and the day after she had told Mr. Piddington 
 about it in a letter, Mrs. Frith automatically wrote a 
 poem, the first and last lines of which run as follows : 
 
 " Then you are drawing nearer to the plane 
 The plane of blessing and the promised land 
 
 Pisgah is scaled the fair and dewy lawn 
 Invites my footsteps till the mystic seven 
 Lights up the golden candlestick of dawn." 
 
 The first lines are evidently prompted by Mrs. Verrall's 
 question, which was normally known to Mrs. Frith, while 
 she did not know the answer. As she both through this 
 question, and otherwise, was in rapport with Mrs. Verrall, 
 it is quite likely that she may have obtained an impression 
 about the sevens which just at that moment filled Mrs. 
 Verrall's thoughts. That her verse contains allusions to 
 Dante, as Miss Johnson contends, I am unable to see. 
 Both Pisgah — the mountain from whose top Moses saw 
 the Promised Land — and the seven-branched candlestick 
 are well-known Biblical references. 
 
 The next contributor to the cross-correspondence was 
 Mrs. Holland. Anterior, however, to her real contribu- 
 tion to it, the following occurred. She was on her way 
 home to England from India, when she, in the night 
 between the 14th and 15th of July, 1908, had a dream, 
 which in a letter to Miss Johnson she described as follows : 
 
 " Last night I dreamt that I was in a large bare room — 
 rather like a studio. . . . 
 
 " Some one showed me an old note book — or diary — in 
 which was written in a small neat hand : 
 
 " * Since in 1872 a dear friend chose as a sign by wliich to
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 307 
 
 communicate with me the figure 6, I, in my turn, will try, 
 in the time to come, to send the figure 6, — simply the sign 
 of 6.' " 
 
 There is a very curious resemblance between the note- 
 book and its contents in the room like a studio and 
 Mr. Piddington's sealed envelope in the office of the 
 Society, distorted just in the manner in which dreams 
 use to distort things. Possibly the dream was really due 
 to an impression from Mr. Piddington, who on account of 
 Mrs. Verrall's communication about her daughter's 
 sevens, must needs have been led to think more than 
 usually of his " posthumous letter." 
 
 On July 23rd Mrs. Holland, who was still at sea, 
 automatically wrote the following script : 
 
 " There should be three at least in accord and if possible 
 Seven — The lady and the learned lady and the maiden of 
 the crystal and the scribe and the professed scribe — and the 
 two new comers — what could be better than that ? Take this 
 
 for token ' Green beyond belief.' Not only on the ocean 
 
 may the Green Ray appear " 
 
 A few days previously, on July i8th, Mrs. Verrall had 
 read Mrs. Frith's script of June nth, and had been 
 impressed by the similitude between it and her daughter's 
 sevens. Thus it is also in this case probable that the 
 automatist has received a supernormal impression from 
 her ; Mrs. Holland, as we know, had on numerous 
 occasions demonstrated her sensitiveness with regard to 
 such. The plan of an experiment with seven contributors 
 had been intimated already in Miss Verrall's script of 
 1907, and must, at any rate subconsciously, have existed 
 in her mother's mind. Mrs. Holland took the five of the 
 mediums mentioned by her to be Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. 
 Verrall, Miss Verrall, herself and Mrs. Piper. In the 
 opinion of the investigators, however, there were only 
 six mediums. The seventh contributor to the cross- 
 correspondence was Mr. Piddington. 
 
 " Green beyond belief " was, in Mrs. Holland's opinion, 
 due to a phenomenon on the sea which she had been told 
 
 X 2
 
 3o8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 of. Miss Johnson interpreted it as an allusion to Dante — 
 the eyes of Beatrice are in Purgatorio compared to 
 emeralds. 
 
 The last contribution to the Sevens cross-correspondence 
 was due to a non-professional trance-medium, Mrs. Home, 
 through whom a " Myers-control " had often purported 
 to speak. Through her the following conversation was on 
 July 24th, 1 90S, held with Colonel Taylor and one Miss H. : 
 
 " M. Seven times seven and seventy-seven. Send the 
 burden of my words to others. 
 
 " Miss H. To whom shall we send ? 
 
 " M. Souls that labour for your earthly wisdom send no 
 names. 
 
 " Miss H. May we say the message is from a teacher ? 
 
 " M. No . . Several wait to hear. Some say they do 
 not mind the name ; others seek only. Omnia vincit. 
 
 " Col. T. Shall I send this to ^liss Johnson, or to Mrs. 
 Verrall ? 
 
 " M. Miss Johnson likes it better ; you can help better 
 through her." 
 
 The puerility of all this no doubt suffices to characterize 
 it as subconscious fabrication. But the phrase " seven 
 times seven and seventy-seven " just at this point can 
 hardly be dismissed as a casualty. Miss Johnson states 
 that there had been a slight coincidence between an earlier 
 trance-utterance of Mrs. Home's and one of Mrs. VerraU's 
 scripts. Thus it is not improbable that this medium too 
 has received a supernormal impression from the latter, 
 who was at that time so engrossed by the sevens. 
 
 From the above representation it appears, among 
 other things, that the contributors to this curious cross- 
 correspondence really were but four. Mrs. Piper has 
 nothing at all to do with the case ; but neither does 
 Mrs. Verrall, strictly speaking, belong to it ; her script 
 about the seven hills of Rome has no relation to the rest. 
 On the other hand, she is at the bottom of the whole 
 affair as the involuntary cause of the productions of the 
 other ladies. Her reading of Purgatorio is reflected in her 
 daughter's script of May nth, and as soon as she has 
 seen this and told Mr. Piddington of it, Mrs. Frith too
 
 CROSS-CORRESPONDENCES 309 
 
 receives an impression about the sevens that emerges in 
 her script of June nth. This script is read by Mrs. 
 Verrall on July i8th, and on July 23rd and 24th the 
 impression is transmitted to Mrs. Holland and Mrs. Home. 
 Thus, at any rate, it may have happened. Mr. Podmore, 
 who has criticized the Sevens case from a similar point of 
 view,^ assigns a share in the result to Mr, Piddington ; 
 on my part I inclmc to confine his influence to the dream 
 of Mrs. Holland. 
 
 The chief reason why the researchers, in spite of 
 numerous improbabilities, ascribed the Sevens cross- 
 correspondence to extra-terrestrial influences, was that 
 it seemed too preposterous to assign to a sub-personality, 
 for instance, that of Mrs. Verrall, a plan like that which 
 apparently was at the bottom of it. We have seen, how- 
 ever, that there is no reason whatever to speak about a 
 plan or a design on the part of her nor any other. The 
 marvel of this cross-correspondence is reduced to four 
 separate sensitives having obtained an impression from 
 her in the same supernormal manner in which a single 
 one — Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. Holland, Miss Verrall — had so 
 often done it. With regard to the percipients, the case 
 was of exactly the same nature as otherwise ; and as 
 regards " the agent," she was no more a party to it than, 
 for instance, in a former case the friend in Copenhagen 
 from whom Miss Ramsden received an impression. 
 Probably that kind of thing often takes place when 
 people experiment with automatic script and the like, 
 and the special point here is only the circumstances 
 that brought to light the different elements of the incident. 
 
 The Sevens cross-correspondence had yet an after-play 
 which the recorder interprets in favour of her own con- 
 ception, but which, if anything, speaks against it. In the 
 middle of January, 1909, Mr. Piddington said half in jest 
 to Mrs. Verrall that " a recent case told rather against 
 spirits." He had in mind his " posthumous letter " and 
 
 • The Newer Spiritualism, pp. 268 — 76.
 
 310 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 its possible influence on the Sevens scripts, but did not 
 tell Mrs. Verrall anything about it. He had in the 
 autumn opened the letter and shown its contents to 
 Miss Johnson, but Mrs. Verrall had not been made 
 acquainted with its existence. About a week after her 
 conversation with Mr. Piddington, on January 27th, she 
 automatically wrote as follows : 
 
 " Nothing is swifter that Thought, nothing more 
 
 sure — swifter than arrow or than bullet thought flies from 
 mind to mind, instantaneous. It is a now and a now, at 
 once, no pause, no then. Don't you understand ? 
 
 " And ask what has been the success of Piddington's last 
 experiment ? Has he found the bits of his famous sentence 
 scattered among you all and does he think that is accident, 
 or started by one of you ? Tell him to look carefully and he 
 will see a great difference between the scripts in this experi- 
 ment and in the others. That ought to help the theory. One 
 language only has been used this time. But even if the 
 source is human, who carries the thoughts to the receivers ? 
 Ask him that. 
 
 " F. W. H. M." 
 
 It is evident that Mrs. Verrall, who knew nothing about 
 Mr. Piddington's sevens, had through the conversation 
 with him been led into a wrong track. His remark about 
 the case that " told rather against spirits " had set her 
 mind in motion, and it was now by her automatic self 
 interwoven with the idea in her former script of his 
 dividing a sentence among different mediums. To be 
 sure, the whole is rather meaningless. Formerly it was 
 he who ought to distribute the sentence, now it is asked 
 whether he has found it scattered among them. But this 
 is only one of many instances of the looseness of the sub- 
 conscious fabrication, which so much resembles that of 
 dreams, and so little satisfies the logical exigencies of the 
 waking reason. With the sevens the script has no con- 
 nection whatever. The one thing that might apply to 
 that cross-correspondence is the remark that only one 
 language had been used ; but of course it would no less 
 apply to an experiment, like that mentioned in the script, 
 where a single sentence had been parcelled out in bits.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 
 
 During Mrs. Piper's sojourn in England in 1906 — 7 
 the English researchers had, besides the cross-correspon- 
 dences, performed a number of other experiments. On 
 the whole, it must be said that they demanded a great 
 deal of the trance-personalities. Perhaps more had been 
 attained through less exacting proceedings ; but in return 
 that which was attained is no doubt the more valuable as 
 regards the solution of the question of its origin. 
 
 In one respect, however, the proceedings seem due to 
 an erroneous conception on the part of the experimenters. 
 As formerly in the case of George Pelham, they appeared 
 to think that people after death could remember all that 
 they had ever experienced. Perhaps it was the, if not 
 unlimited, yet considerable subliminal faculty of remem- 
 brance that was transferred to the discarnate ; but 
 nothing, in fact, justified the conception. Supposing 
 that the Piper-communicators were what they claimed to 
 be, their memory was on an average like that of the living. 
 George Pelham could not remember with whom Mr. 
 Howard and himself had once dined in New York, still 
 less how many pages his manuscript contained, but he 
 recollected other and more important things ; the same 
 was the case with Hodgson and others. In England 
 Myers was worried with divers inquiries which while 
 living he would hardly have been expected to answer 
 after the lapse of many years. Thus, Mrs. Verrall had 
 come across a letter from Frederic Myers to Dr. Verrall, 
 in which, on account of the latter having called the 
 " Archytas " ode by Horace^ "positively bad," he 
 
 1 Carminum, I,, 28.
 
 312 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 exclaims : " The first six lines of Archytas have entered 
 as deeply as almost any Horatian passage into my own 
 inner history." This caused Mrs. Verrall to ask the Piper- 
 Myers the following question through Mr. Piddington : 
 " Which ode of Horace entered deeply into your inner 
 life ? " The letter was written in 1884. Is it to be 
 wondered at that Myers, if it were he, found it difficult 
 to answer the question twenty-three years later ? 
 
 Another incident where much was exacted of his 
 memory is of a special import because it shows that the 
 Piper-Myers in 1907 pretended to influence Mrs. Verrall's 
 script also in a case where there was no question of a 
 cross-correspondence. Mrs. Sidgwick ^ had through Mrs. 
 Verrall put the question to him whether he could 
 remember what the last conversation she had had with 
 him before the death of her husband referred to. Pro- 
 fessor Sidgwick died in the summer of 1900, Frederic 
 Myers half a year later. The conversation had had 
 reference to matters of great interest for the widow, but 
 hardly of so much importance for Myers, who was then 
 drawing near to the end of his own life. Besides, they 
 had had more than one conversation, and there was no 
 reason for his remembering, after the lapse of six years, 
 what they had spoken of in this particular case. At any 
 rate, the Piper-Myers committed several mistakes, though 
 by-and-bye he recollected many things. At one time he 
 thought it possible that they had discussed a library 
 matter, probably the library of Edmund Gurney. It 
 was at this point that he alluded to Mrs. Verrall's script 
 in a manner that is more interesting than the question 
 whether or no he had in 1900 talked with Mrs. Sidgwick 
 about a library. On February nth, 1907, the following 
 conversation took place between him and Mr. Piddington : 
 
 " Mr. P. You will remember that at our last meeting you 
 said that one of the subjects of the conversation between you 
 and Mrs. Sidgwick was connected with a library. 
 
 ' See her paper, " An Incident in Mrs. Piper's Trance," Proceedings 
 S.P.R., Vol. XXII., pp. 417 — 40; and ibidem, pp. 46 — 59.
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 313 
 
 " M. Yes as I recall. 
 
 " Mr. P. Well, the day after our last meeting here Mrs, 
 Verrall wrote a message and in it there was a reference to a 
 library. There was no obvious connection between what 
 Mrs. Verrall wrote and what you said except for the bare 
 mention of a library. Still it seems possible to me that you 
 tried to repeat through Mrs. Verrall what you had already 
 said here. 
 
 " M. This is quite true. Did I not tell you that I would go 
 to Mrs. Verrall ? 
 
 " Mr. P. Yes. I want you to tell me if you can how 
 
 your message came out. 
 
 " M. Just how much she understood I am not sure, but 
 what I do wish her to understand is that during my conversa- 
 tion with Mrs. S. the library was referred to as an important 
 
 transaction What I said to her was, write for Mrs. Sidg- 
 
 wick that we talked about library. 
 
 " Mr. P. That is exactly what I wanted to get at. But 
 as a matter of fact there is no reference to Mrs. Sidgwick in 
 what Mrs. Verrall wrote ; only a quite disconnected reference 
 to a library. 
 
 " M. What a pity I persistently repeated the word 
 
 to her, also my own name and Mrs. Sidgwick's." 
 
 The interesting point is this that the script which 
 Mr. Piddington had in mind was not at all the one which 
 Myers spoke about. Mrs. Verrall had on February 6th 
 produced a script mentioned above and containing the 
 cross-correspondence Laurel Wreaih.'^ It began with 
 Laura, but afterwards passed on to other things, among 
 them " The great Library has already gone before. 
 Hugh Le Despenser," after which it went on wdth 
 " Apollo's laurel bough," etc. It was this script with its 
 " quite disconnected reference to a Hbrary " which 
 Mr. Piddington referred to ; and he himself points out 
 that the above passage is no doubt partly due to the 
 circumstance that Mrs. Verrall had recently heard that 
 Lord Spencer v^ould retire as Chancellor of the University 
 in Manchester ; " the great library " alludes to the 
 Althorp Library in Manchester, and " Hugh Le Des- 
 penser " to Lord Spencer. So there would have been 
 ahnost nothing evidential about the case if it were this 
 
 ' See above, p. 280.
 
 314 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 script that represented Myers's attempt to produce 
 " library " ; moreover, it was Mr. Piddington who 
 mentioned it to him, and not the reverse. But, on 
 February 4th, Mrs. Verrall had written another script 
 which Mr. Piddington had wholly forgotten, though he 
 had seen i^ immediately after its production. With this 
 script the description by Myers corresponds. It ran as 
 follows : 
 
 " On the Council I asked and she said Yes. Tell Mrs. Sidg- 
 wick that. And something about the Gurney library which 
 I think she will remember or a Gurney memorial which she 
 
 was to take over The signature might help. H. Sidgwick. 
 
 We have tried for that to day, wait for their answer. 
 F. W. H. M." 
 
 Though evidently interspersed with subconscious fabri- 
 cation, it contains all that Myers had assured at the sitting 
 on February nth. After this sitting Mr. Piddington, 
 who had been much struck with the way in which the 
 communicator " stuck to his point," looked again at the 
 recent pieces of script sent him by Mrs. VerraU. At the 
 next meeting he was able to tell Myers that he had been 
 right in every point. " You did mention Mrs. Sidgwick's 
 name, you did mention a library, and you did sign the 
 message with your name," he said, and Myers replied : 
 " I did certainly, and am very pleased to hear that she 
 fully registered the thoughts which I indubitably gave 
 her." 
 
 Of course it may here, as elsewhere, be urged that 
 the entranced medium has had a supernormal knowledge 
 of Mrs. Verrall's script, which she utilized in her usual 
 dramatic manner. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 The longest and most remarkable among the experi- 
 ments with Mrs. Piper is the one called The Latin message, 
 which has been alluded to above. ^ It became remarkable 
 for quite a special reason, namely in consequence of the 
 misunderstandings it occasioned between the experi- 
 
 1 See p. 276 and p. 301.
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 315 
 
 menters and the communicator, and there is doubtless 
 much to learn from the manner in which the latter bore 
 himself under these circumstances. 
 
 The researchers were, as we know, inclined to think that 
 it was Myers who had invented the cross-correspondences, 
 nay, that he had devised the plan of making them comple- 
 mentary in order to exclude the explanation telepathy 
 between the living. To test this theory it was determined 
 to ask the Piper-Myers to arrange a cross-correspondence 
 of the following type : to two automatists should be given 
 two different messages, between which no connection 
 was discernible, and then as soon as possible to a third 
 automatist a third message, which would reveal the 
 hidden connection. To obtain the more security for the 
 success being eventually due to Myers and not to Mrs. 
 Piper, the request was translated into Latin, and more- 
 over into an intricate and difficult language. The message, 
 as it was called, was dictated to the Piper-personalities 
 in small portions in several sittings, and it appeared to 
 be a laborious task for them to get hold of it through an 
 intermediary like Rector, whose ignorance of Latin was 
 often accentuated. On January 2nd, 1907, the whole of 
 it had been transmitted, but in February they still had 
 only attained to a vague conception of the meaning of the 
 first lines. 
 
 How hard it was for them to grasp the Latin words is 
 illustrated by the following episode. Mr. Piddington 
 had at a sitting read aloud a piece of the message to 
 Hodgson, who acted as Myers's helper. Hodgson asked 
 for a repetition of " the next to the last word," which was 
 jamdudum. Mr. Piddington now told him that the first 
 syllable was " spelt like the English word jmn — preserves." 
 " Oh yes, I understand. Marmalade," Hodgson exclaimed ; 
 " that has been the most difficult word for him to under- 
 stand." More was not said about it ; but jamdudum 
 was rightly translated " long since " when Myers shortly 
 afterwards tried to give a version of the beginning of the 
 message. Thus one cannot deny the possibility of the
 
 3i6 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 request being understood if all of its words had been 
 caught clearly. 
 
 Mr. Piddington's ardour, however, did not allow him 
 to await this possible result. Something had occurred 
 which had impressed him strongly, and made him suspect 
 that Myers had already comprehended the message. 
 
 On February nth the following conversation had 
 taken place at the Piper-sitting : 
 
 " M. Did she [Mrs. Verrall] receive the word Evangelical ? 
 
 " Mr. P. 1 don't know, but I will inquire. 
 
 " M. I refeiTed also to Browning again. 
 
 " Mr. P. Do you remember-what your exact reference to 
 Browning was ? 
 
 " M. Yes. I referred to Hope and Browning. I also said 
 Star." 
 
 It turned out later that Rector, who evidently had no 
 knowledge of Browning, must have been very unfortunate 
 in transmitting the principal words on this occasion. 
 " Evangelical " proved to be a mistake for Evelyn ; it 
 was Browning's poems Evelyn Hope and My Star which 
 Myers claimed to have given to Mrs. Verrall. But of course 
 it was impossible for Mr. Piddington to guess this. On 
 looking through Mrs. VerraU's recent scripts, he found one 
 from January 28th that contained the words Aster [star] 
 and hope, besides divers quotations from Browning ; so he 
 assured Myers that " the message he said he gave to Mrs. 
 Verrall about Browning, Star and Hope " had come out 
 clearly. Myers thus had every reason to believe that this 
 attempt at a cross-correspondence was a decisive success. 
 
 But Mr. Piddington had, on reading Mrs. VerraU's 
 
 script of January 28th, been struck by an idea which 
 
 made him consider Myers's "Hope Star Browning" 
 
 much more than an ordinary cross-correspondence. 
 
 Mrs. VerraU's script in extenso runs as follows : 
 
 " Aster [star] 
 
 " Tepa<; [wonder or sign] 
 
 " The world's wonder 
 
 " And all a wonder and a wild desire — 
 
 " The very wings of her 
 
 "A WINGED DESIRE
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 317 
 
 " {rTTOTTTCpOS tpWS [wingCCl lOVC] 
 
 " Then there is Blake 
 
 " and mocked my loss of liberty. 
 
 " But it is all the same thing— the winged desire 
 
 " tpws TTo^eivds [passion] the hope that leaves 
 
 " the earth for the sky — Abt Vogler for earth 
 
 " too hard that found itself or lost itself— in the sky. 
 
 " That is what I want 
 
 " On the earth the broken sounds 
 
 threads 
 " In the sky the perfect arc 
 " The C major of this life 
 " But your recollection is at fault." 
 
 " A D B is the part that unseen completes the arc." 
 
 The first quotation, " And all a wonder and a wild 
 desire," comes from Browning's The Ring and the Book ; 
 the later quotations are from his poem Aht Vogler. 
 Correctly it ought to be : " The passion that left the 
 ground "to lose itself in the sky," and " On the earth 
 the broken arcs ; in the heaven a perfect round." 
 
 But it was some other lines from Abt Vogler that gave 
 birth to Mr. Piddington's idea. In Stanza VII. is the 
 passage : 
 
 " I know not if save in this [i.e., music] such gift be allowed 
 to man, 
 That out of three sounds he frame not a fourth sound, but 
 a star."
 
 3i8 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 The three sounds that form a star he conceived to be 
 an ingenious symbol of the co-operation of three mediums 
 which in the Latin message he had asked Myers to bring 
 about. The mention of " Hope Star Browning," then, 
 through Mrs. Piper, he took to refer to Abt Vogler, and 
 the quotation from this poem, through Mrs. Verrall, to 
 indicate his^ comprehension of the message. To be sure, 
 it was not the actual verse that Mrs. Verrall had quoted. 
 Neither did the utterances in the Piper-trance suggest 
 that Myers had at that time grasped the Latin. But 
 Mr. Piddington was, to use his own expression, too 
 " obsessed " by his idea to catch sight of its deficiencies. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Myers should 
 deliver his reply to the message. The first sentence of 
 this was the following : 
 
 " Diversis internuntiis quod invicem inter se respondentia 
 jamdudum committis, id nee fallit nos consilium, et vehementer 
 probamus [As to the fact that you have for a long time been 
 entrusting to different intermediaries things which correspond 
 mutually between themselves, we have not failed to notice 
 it, and cordially approve it]." 
 
 On February 20th Myers said to Mr. Piddington : 
 " The idea I got was that I should be a messenger and 
 hand through coherent messages to you." At the next 
 sitting a week later, he said : 
 
 " I felt a little perturbed over your message to me when you 
 
 said I [failed ?] in replying sufficiently to convince you 
 
 What you said [was this] Although you as intermediary have 
 long since united mutually ideas, you have or do not reply 
 or respond sufficiently to our questions as to convince us of 
 your existence etc," 
 
 It will be seen that Myers endeavoured to translate the 
 Latin ; he knew only the beginning of the message, and 
 was therefore ignorant of what was really demanded of 
 him. But he had misheard the word internuntiis as inter- 
 nuntius, and so made it the subject of the sentence. He 
 believed it was himself it applied to — that he himself 
 was called an intermediary, as the one who had given 
 " things which correspond mutually between themselves."
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 319 
 
 He appears to have been glad to be characterized as a 
 messenger ; at least Rector, on December 31st, 1906, said 
 that he had been delighted with the message, as far as he 
 had been able to receive it. As for the rest of the Latin, 
 he at any rate displayed more knowledge than it seems 
 possible to ascribe to Mrs. Piper. Only the conception 
 that the message contained a criticism on himself must 
 be due to a strange misunderstanding {oi fallitP), if it 
 were not a conclusion drawn from the word " although," 
 by which he translated quod. Something, he may have 
 argued, must be wrong with his exertions, as Mr. Pidding- 
 ton said : " Although you have long since," etc. Later 
 he expressed the same thought in a somewhat altered 
 manner : " you have long since been trying to assimilate 
 ideas," he says, when after the close of the experiment he 
 attempted to reproduce the message for Sir Oliver Lodge. 
 The mistake that the message contained a censure 
 was, however, destined to influence the experiment 
 greatly. It led Myers to mention a few of his perform- 
 ances, and among them Browning's poems Evelyn Hope 
 and My Star. The import of this will appear from an 
 extract of the conversation held on February 27th : 
 
 " M. Now I believe that since you sent this message to 
 me I have sufficiently replied to your various questions to 
 convince the ordinary scientific mind that I am at least a 
 fragment of the once incarnate individual whom you called 
 Myers. 
 
 " Mr. P. You say you have repHed. Tell me in what 
 messages your reply is given. 
 
 " M. In my messages reported here and through Mrs. 
 Verrall. The poems, the Halcyon days. Evangelic 
 
 " Mr. P. Tell me what poems. 
 
 " M. Chiefly Browning's lines given through Mrs. VerraU, 
 
 " Mr. P. Thank you very much. I think you are making 
 it clear ; but I want you to make it completely clear. I think 
 if you can get through a clear and complete answer to my 
 Latin message you will have forged a new and strong link in 
 the claim of evidence for survival of bodily death. 
 
 " M. I understood that you asked me to reply referring to 
 my utterances through Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 " Mr. P. Now I think you have done enough for to-day 
 in the matter of replying to the Latin message."
 
 320 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Myers then asked for the last sentence of the Latin to 
 be repeated, which was done. Afterwards the conversa- 
 tion went on as follows : 
 
 " Mr. P. I want to say that you have, I believe, given an 
 answer worthy of your intelligence — not to-day, I mean, but 
 some time ^back — but the interpretation must not be mine. 
 You must explain your answer at this light. 
 
 " M. Yes. 
 
 " Mr. P. You could do it in two words. 
 
 " M. Yes, I understand. 
 
 " Mr. P. Well ? 
 
 " M. Hope Star. 
 
 " Mr. P. Well ? Yes ? 
 
 " M. Browning. 
 
 " Mr. P. Exactly. It couldn't be better. 
 
 " M. That is my answer. 
 
 " Mr. P. I can't thank you enough. That is what I have 
 been waiting for. 
 
 " M. Well what I wished was to translate the whole 
 message for you into EngHsh 
 
 " Mr. P. Translate into English certainly, if you like. 
 
 In telling me that ' Browning, Hope and a Star ' contains 
 your answer to the Latin message you have given an answer 
 which to me is both intelligible and clear ; but still I should 
 like you to bring out one more point still, so as to leave no 
 doubt in any one's mind of your meaning. 
 
 " M. My Star. Evely ... I am too [weak] to tell it 
 to-day. My thoughts wander ..." 
 
 It is clear that Myers and Mr. Piddington had talked 
 about quite different things. Myers did not intend to say 
 that he had answered the Latin message, but mentioned 
 his rephes to Mr. Piddington's various questions, and the 
 cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper and Mrs. 
 Verrall, as performances that were not quite despicable. 
 When in the midst of this Mr. Piddington reverted to the 
 Latin message, he did not comprehend why the conversa- 
 tion had been turned that way, but said with some 
 astonishment : "I understood that you asked me to 
 reply, referring to my utterances through Mrs. Verrall," 
 i.e., to the cross-correspondences. And beginning now to 
 suspect that Mr. Piddington had spoken of something 
 other than he had himself done, he asked for a repetition
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 321 
 
 of the last sentence of the message. Afterwards Mr. 
 Piddington praised him for the reply already given, but 
 begged him to explain it through Mrs. Piper. Unable to 
 comprehend him, Myers tried to escape with a vague 
 " Yes," but Mr. Piddington continued : " You could do it 
 in two words." It was fatal, but hardly to be wondered 
 at, that Myers believed that Mr. Piddington had in mind 
 the two words of the cross-correspondence which had 
 recently been spoken of as a great success — Hope and 
 Star. Evidently he did not understand his enthusiasm 
 on receiving them, and was quite at a loss when asked to 
 " bring out one more point." He made a feeble attempt 
 to explain, faltering out at last the real titles of the two 
 poems, and left the matter there for the time being. 
 
 Very dramatic is the next sitting, on March 6th, where 
 George Pelham, who had together with Hodgson acted 
 all the time as Myers's assistant, but mostly behind the 
 scenes, appeared and tried to unravel the misunder- 
 standings. He did not succeed with regard to Mr. 
 Piddington, but for the reader the following conversation 
 is instructive : 
 
 " G.P. Did he [Myers] tell you about My Star ? 
 
 " Mr. P. He did. Can you explain about My Star ? 
 
 "G.P. Yes it was a poem he had on his mind of Browning's. 
 
 " Mr. P. And why had he this poem on his mind ? 
 
 " G. P. He said because it was one of his test experi- 
 ments with a lady in the body to whom he refers as V. He 
 also had another : Evelyn — Evelyn Hope. 
 
 " Mr. P. Is that the explanation of the word which came 
 out as ' Evangehcal ' ? 
 
 " G. P. Yes. It was very stupid of Rector I must say as 
 Hodgson and Myers both kept repeating it over and over 
 again to him. I understand your Latin message very well. 
 
 " Mr. P. Well, will you show me that you understand it ? 
 
 " G. P. Yes certainly. You said in order to convince you 
 he should repeat a message not only through this lady Mrs. V. 
 but it should be reproduced here " 
 
 George Pelham's utterings are just as clear in them- 
 selves as they are erroneous with regard to the contents 
 of the Latin message ; but he was considerably less sure 
 
 CD. Y
 
 322 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 when after some explanations on the part of Mr. 
 Piddington he left the scene. His remarks, however, 
 teach us how the Piper-personalities at this time appre- 
 hended the message. In reality, the opinion expressed 
 by G. P. was the only natural one after the sitting on 
 February 27th, where Mr, Piddington had incessantly 
 asked Myers to repeat something that had appeared in 
 Mrs. Verrall's script. How was it, after this, possible 
 to doubt that the Latin did refer to some new cross- 
 correspondence ? The more because the communicators 
 had conceived the idea that their former achievements 
 were thought to be unsatisfactory. 
 
 From this point there was not any question of the real 
 contents of the Latin message, but only of the title of 
 the Browning poem which Mrs. Verrall had quoted in her 
 script of January 28th. Myers had comprehended that 
 this was what Mr. Piddington demanded, and the latter 
 formulated his demand very clearly in a note which was 
 read to Myers on April 2nd by the new experimenter in 
 charge, Mrs. Sidgwick : " You promised to try to tell us 
 what particular poem of Browning's you meant to refer 
 to by the words Browning, Hope and Star." 
 
 There are several things that indicate that Myers had a 
 certain knowledge of Mrs. Verrall's Abt Vogler script. 
 For instance, he referred in a connection as if he endea- 
 voured to recall it, at the first sitting after February 27th, 
 to the circle and the triangle which are found there. 
 And from the very first he appeared to know that its 
 subject was survival — that " Hope " meant hope of a life 
 after death. This was quite another conception than 
 that which had suggested itself to Mr. Piddington after 
 he had read the script. But it was in fact the right one. 
 If an external agent had a share in it, his object must 
 have been to impress the idea of another world on the 
 automatist. It is already this thought that underlies 
 the " winged desire " ; but it appears to have fought 
 with other thoughts in Mrs. Verrall's mind. " Winged " 
 has led her to write " winged Eros," and Eros again
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 323 
 
 leads, as Mr. Piddington points out, to the meaningless 
 interpolation : " Then there is Blake and mocked my loss 
 of liberty " ; the quotation comes from Blake's Prince of 
 Love, who " mocks at the lover's loss of liberty." But 
 she reverts to that which is " all the same thing " : the 
 hope that leaves the earth for the sky, the unseen arc. 
 It is for the sake of these thoughts that Browning is 
 quoted. 
 
 Furthermore, it would by no means be unnatural if 
 the Latin message had filled Myers's mind with recollec- 
 tions of words and lines from Browning that speak of 
 earth and heaven and the intercourse between them, 
 seeing that it had made him realize his own position as an 
 intermediary between two worlds. But even if he had 
 attempted to impress them upon Mrs. Verrall, this, of 
 course, is quite another thing than if he had intended to 
 answer the message by means of them, and there was no 
 reason why they should have remained in his memory, 
 as they must have done in the latter case. On the other 
 hand, he could not know how far Mrs. Verrall caught his 
 thoughts ; " just how much she understood I am not 
 sure," he says in the Library case, and later : "I am glad 
 she registered the thoughts I indubitably gave her." For 
 one reason and another his conception of her script 
 must be vague. Besides, the incident was many weeks 
 old now, and the interval had been filled with cross- 
 correspondences and experiments in great abundance. 
 
 Such being the case, it would agree with the situation 
 if Myers must ponder somewhat over the matter before 
 he named a poem — and if he were mistaken. And this 
 was just what happened. On April 8th he reluctantly 
 told Mrs. Sidgwick that the poem he had " specially 
 thought of " was La Saisiaz. But this mistake is very 
 important. This long poem by Browning has for its sole 
 subject the possibility of a future life, ending with a 
 vision of Hope, whose arrow pierces the cloud of doubt. 
 If the trance-personality had not so much remembered it, 
 as devised that it might be this poem that had appeared 
 
 y 2
 
 324 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 in Mrs. Verrall's script, he must not only have known the 
 tendency of her Browning quotations, but must withal be 
 very familiar with that poet. He could obtain it by 
 mind-reading as little as by clairvoyance, as it was 
 neither found in the thoughts of the experimenters nor in 
 the script^of Mrs. Verrall. 
 
 Myers, however, was far from being sure of having 
 found the right poem, and of course Mrs. Sidgwick's 
 surprise at the mention of it must add to his doubts. At 
 the following sitting it became evident that he had 
 abandoned La Saisiaz, and the next time he named the 
 right one — Aht Vogler. 
 
 His joy and triumph after he had succeeded in getting 
 through the difficult and, to Rector, incomprehensible 
 German name seem in fact to indicate that he now felt 
 sure of having found the right poem. His assurance was 
 like that of a person who remembers, and not of one who 
 guesses. And with a deep emotion he explained what 
 just this poem meant to him, adding : " The thing which 
 impressed me most was the lines beyond the grave." 
 He would have said more, but, as impUed by Rector and 
 confirmed at a later sitting, some words were left out here 
 by mistake. It turned out afterwards that he had had 
 in mind the lines about the return of the dead from Abt 
 Vogler, Stanza V. : 
 
 " The wonderful Dead who have passed through the body 
 and gone 
 But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth 
 their new." 
 
 Thus it is evident that Abt Vogler' s significance to him 
 was the same as that of La Saisiaz. It was a poem that 
 touched on the problem of a future life. For this reason 
 had he — if it were he — mentioned it through Mrs. Verrall ; 
 for this reason he at any rate was now sure of its being 
 the poem that expressed what was for him the meaning 
 of the Latin message— that he should be a messenger to 
 the living from the dead. Afterwards, as Rector says, 
 he tried " to explain a little about the poem," speaking
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 325 
 
 of the resemblance between his own experience and Abt 
 Vogler's " doubts and fears, then his acceptance of God and 
 faith in Him." But Mrs. Sidgwick had expected a wholly 
 different explanation of his choice of Abt Vogler. To her 
 his speech was quite irrelevant as long as he did not 
 mention the line about the three sounds. But she must 
 wait a long time for that. That Myers considered his 
 answer satisfactory may be seen from the conversations 
 at the close of the sitting on April 24th and at the next 
 two : 
 
 " M. Now can I do more to help you than give other 
 messages ? 
 
 " Mrs. S. I should like you to say exactly why that poem 
 was so appropriate as an answer to the Latin message. 
 
 " M. Because of the appropriate conditions mentioned in 
 it which applied to my own life ; and nothing I could think 
 of so completely answered it to my mind as those special 
 words." 
 
 Mrs. Sidgwick got no other reply that time. But 
 Myers did not forget that at the end of the sitting she had 
 seemed less content than when he had first mentioned 
 Abt Vogler. So when he met her again, he himself intro- 
 duced the subject : 
 
 " M. I am anxious to-day to clear one or two things. Do 
 you remember my reference to the poem ? Did you wish to 
 ask anything more ? Do you remember when I said I had 
 passed through my body and returned ? I tried to give it 
 clearly, but was not sure you understood. 
 
 " Mrs. S. Do you mean you gave the name of the poem ? 
 
 " M. Oh ycb. I mean I tried to give another part also 
 which referred to completed happiness in this life and the 
 possibility of returning to the old world again to prove the 
 truth of survival of bodily death." 
 
 All that the message had meant to him is given in this 
 single sentence. But he felt the want of sympathy, and 
 said urgently : 
 
 " M. Mrs. Sidgwick, dear old friend, do you hear me at 
 all? 
 
 "Mrs. S. Yes I hear and I think that I shall 
 
 understand.
 
 326 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 " M. I believe you will when I tell you I have returned to 
 breathe in the old world which is not however better than our 
 new." 
 
 This time he had succeeded in getting the important 
 lines through, and no lack of enthusiasm on the part of 
 the experimenters could make him doubt the sufficiency 
 of this response. At the next meeting it was not he who 
 reverted to the message. Nay, he had even ceased to 
 think of it, and was unprepared to return to it. He had 
 spoken about another question, and occasioned by a 
 passing remark Mrs. Sidgwick's mention of it : 
 
 " M. And the Latin [message] I have previously answered 
 through both lights sufficiently for you to understand that I 
 have really answered at last. 
 
 " Mrs. S. The Latin message, as you know, refers to 
 cross-correspondences, but also to something more, and there 
 is a line in Abt Vogler which we think you had in mind as 
 describing that something more. 
 
 " M. Did you say line ? [of the] poem ? I remember the 
 message as referring to my giving proofs of survival of bodily 
 
 death through cross correspondence messages 1 could 
 
 not help thinking of Browning " 
 
 Only after a time was he able to repeat his former reply 
 — that the point where the poem suggested itself to him 
 was this : " Those who passed beyond do return, those 
 beyond mortal vision," In return it is here confirmed 
 that this was what he wanted to add when he immediately 
 after his first mention of Abt Vogler said that the thing 
 which impressed him most was the lines " beyond the 
 grave." This time, however, Myers had understood that 
 he had not achieved all that was wanted of him. And 
 there was in fact one thing which in his eagerness to explain 
 his choice of A ht Vogler he had in the later sittings quite 
 lost sight of : the star. Of course it had been clear to him 
 that the Hope-Star poem must in some way be connected 
 with stars. At the first sittings by Mrs. Sidgwick he had 
 said that the poem referred to " life after death and stars." 
 La Saisiaz he had among other things described as a 
 " poem which Browning wrote to a friend about star and
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 327 
 
 hope," where " star " is wholly misplaced. Even into 
 Abt Vogler he had introduced the star, talking about " his 
 questioning and the answer through his seeing a star," a 
 mistake which is no doubt due to the idea of a star being 
 indispensable in " the poem." At the same time, how- 
 ever, the star had had another significance for him. 
 But to understand this it is necessary to go back some 
 months. 
 
 At a Piper-sitting on January i6th, 1907, Mr. Pidding- 
 ton had proposed that Myers should mark his cross- 
 correspondences with some sign, " say a triangle within 
 a circle." Myers's reply had shown that he understood 
 his meaning : " You wish me to make a sign when giving 
 a word at Mrs. Verrall's also at Mrs. Holland's, the same 
 sign." On January 28th, as seen above, a triangle within 
 a circle had been drawn beneath the script of Mrs. Verrall. 
 It is true that it was used to illustrate the quotation from 
 Aht Vogler about the perfect arc, but it may on the part 
 of Myers have been a result of Mr. Piddington's sugges- 
 tion, or may have served two ends ; at any rate Myers 
 when on March 6th he told the experimenter that he had 
 endeavoured to draw it, interposed the remark, " As you 
 suggested." There are, however, several tokens of his 
 having preferred to use another sign, viz., a star. And 
 though he first mentioned the circle in connection with 
 Mrs. Verrall's script of January 28th, he seems afterwards 
 to have thought that he had marked it with a star. When 
 on alluding to La Saisiaz he wanted to explain that he 
 spoke about the poem in Mrs. Verrall's script, he said 
 first : "I made a circle," but immediately added : "I 
 then drevv or tried to draw a star." In fact on that 
 occasion no star was drawn, but only the word aster 
 written ; but Mrs. Sidgwick confounded it with another 
 script and replied : " Yes, there was a star drawn." 
 From thence Myers unhesitatingly connects the star 
 with the script of " the poem " ; on April 24th, imme- 
 diately preceding his efforts to give the name Aht Vogler, 
 a star was drawn, and he exclaimed : "I remembered
 
 328 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 Vol [Vogler] as it came to my memory." But it was as 
 the sign that the star made him recollect the poem. 
 When he quoted from it, it was other thoughts that filled 
 his mind. 
 
 Seen on this background, the sequel becomes clear. 
 From Aipn\ 24th till May 6th, Myers had repeatedly 
 vindicated his choice of Abt Vogler. But Mrs. Sidgwick 
 had not been satisfied with his quotations ; she had asked 
 for a line which was not among them. He then remem- 
 bered the star, which of course must not be absent from 
 the Hope-Star poem. And lie succeeded in recalling a 
 line about a star. It was not among those which had 
 impressed him specially ; indeed his recollection of it 
 was faint. But its significance, he believed, lay in its 
 referring to the sign. So at the very next sitting, on 
 May 7th, a star was drawn, and with some difficulty, and 
 alluding to another line of Abt Vogler, he wrote the 
 following : 
 
 " In my passion to reach you as clear as the sky I quote : 
 if instead of a fourth [sound] framed a star — came a star. 
 And to make it clearer I drew a star. This completes my 
 answer to the Latin message, if you have received all my 
 words clearly. In my passion to reach you clearly I have 
 made Rector try to draw a star for me so there can be no 
 mistake. When I quoted to Mrs. Verrall I drew the star so 
 as to make it clearer and I wished Rector to reproduce it in 
 connection with the words in the line." 
 
 Thus at last Myers had completed his answer. That 
 he conceived the meaning of the star as he did was only 
 natural ; it ought to be drawn by two mediums " so 
 there could be no mistake." That at the same time a 
 line about a star ought to be quoted was certainly a 
 strange device. But as the experimenters with great 
 urgency demanded a line, and Myers of course could not 
 suspect the real reason for this demand, it was very sen- 
 sible on his part to conjecture that it must refer to the 
 sign. When on a later occasion he wanted to explain the 
 experiment to Sir Oliver Lodge, he must no doubt have 
 felt that this was not done easily. But at this point he
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 329 
 
 had received so many assurances of his success that he 
 could not doubt that it was all right. Though with some 
 difficulty, he succeeded in fact in presenting a short 
 review of its last stages regarded from his own point of 
 view. What preceded the moment when he understood 
 that it was a question of reproducing som.ething which 
 had appeared in Mrs. Verrall's script, he must give up 
 explaining. What he said was the following : 
 
 " Remember when Piddington gave me his message the 
 special point in it was for me to give definite proof through 
 both lights. The first thought I had was to repeat a few 
 words or lines of Browning's poem, but in order to make it 
 still more definite I registered a star, and the lines I quoted 
 to you before [i.e., ' Instead of a fourth sound came a star '] 
 were the most appropriate I could find." 
 
 " To repeat or give more words of Browning's poem," 
 he had in his last conversation with Mr. Piddington, 
 on March 13th, understood to be the task before him. 
 Ever since he had tried to do this. With the words 
 from Abt Vogler about the returning dead he had 
 believed himself to have performed his task. Per- 
 ceiving that more was wanted, he had drawn the star 
 and quoted " the line " — not knowing what it meant 
 to Mr. Piddington, and not having thought of it before. 
 As may be seen, his recollection of it was imperfect to 
 the last. 
 
 The experimenters looked upon the reference to Abt 
 Vogler and the quotation of the line about the three 
 sounds as a proof of Myers having comprehended the 
 Latin message and shown his comprehension through 
 Mrs, Verrall's script of January 28th. As regards the 
 critics, some explained the quotation by mind-reading, 
 while others were of opinion that the experimenters in 
 charge had given the Piper-Myers sufficient hints to 
 obtain Abt Vogler and the line in reply. I on my part 
 cannot subscribe to any of these contentions. I am 
 inclined to think that the Piper-personalities never dis- 
 played a greater independence or a clearer intelligence
 
 330 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 than when they made their way out of the confusion 
 which Mr. Piddington's idea had wrought.^ 
 
 Mr. Dorr's experiments were no more than those of 
 Mr. Piddington confined to cross-correspondences alone. 
 He had cqnceived the good plan of reading aloud to the 
 Piper-personalities, especially to Myers, divers classic 
 things in English translation, fragments from Myers's 
 autobiography, and the like, with the intention of observ- 
 ing how they would react upon it. This mode of pro- 
 ceeding produced many interesting results, though it 
 perhaps, as accentuated by Mrs. Verrall, who reports 
 some of the experiments, suffered from several faults — 
 too many topics being presented at a time, etc. As in 
 the case of Mr. Piddington, the trance-personalities must 
 often ask the experimenter not to overwork them. It is 
 fair to state this, as the performances of course required 
 the greater intelligence — whether that of Mrs. Piper or 
 of the alleged communicators — the more severe the 
 conditions were. 
 
 There cannot here be a question of reviewing many of 
 the experiments, and it is no easy matter to decide which 
 ones ought to be preferred. I choose a few of the most 
 simple where Myers is the communicator. Often both 
 he and Hodgson appeared to be present, at other times 
 only one of them. It is interesting to see that while 
 Mr. Dorr might forget which of them had been his inter- 
 locutor, the communicators themselves were never mis- 
 taken as to what they had taken part in. On May 8th, 
 Mr. Dorr had read some lines aloud to Hodgson, and men- 
 tioned them on May 12th to Myers. " Did you recite it 
 to me before, friend? " asked the latter. " If so, I did 
 not fuUy understand." The dramatic form is as usual 
 right at Mrs. Piper's. 
 
 One of the cases in which Myers displayed the greatest 
 
 ' For further particulars about this incident see my paper, " The 
 Latin Message Experiment," Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XXVI., pp. 147 
 — 170.
 
 OTHER EXPERIMENTS 331 
 
 classical erudition is doubtless the following. At the 
 sitting on March 12th, 1908, Mr. Dorr read aloud the first 
 ten lines from Dry den's version of the Mneid. The last 
 of them run as follows : 
 
 " For what offence the queen of Heaven began 
 To prosecute so brave, so just a man ; 
 Involved his anxious life in endless cares, 
 Exposed to wants, and hurried into wars." 
 
 When Mr. Dorr had read these lines Myers interposed : 
 
 " Is there such anger in celestial minds ? 
 A hero for piety renowned — should suffer and toil." 
 
 The first sentence translates the line that was to come 
 (verse 11), tantcene animis ccBlestibus irce, which Dryden 
 renders, " Can heavenly minds such high resentment 
 show? " but which Mr. Dorr had not yet read aloud. 
 The ensuing sentence is a perfectly accurate rendering 
 of the immediately preceding lines {Mneid v. 9 — 10), 
 which are given a little more freely by Dryden. " It is 
 certain," Mrs. Verrall writes, " that a Virgilian scholar, 
 hearing a translation of insignem pietate virum tot adire 
 labores impulerit, would expect the words tantcBue animis 
 ccelestihus ircB ; and it is a remarkable proof of familiarity 
 with the opening lines of the first Mneid to combine 
 phrases which translate both what has, and what has not, 
 been read in Dryden's version." It can hardly be denied 
 that she is right in this. 
 
 A small, but interesting proof of a thoroughgoing 
 literary culture is the following. At the sitting on 
 April 22nd, 1908, Mr. Dorr read to Myers ten lines from 
 Shelley's translation of The Cyclops of Euripides, pur- 
 posely so chosen that they neither contained names nor 
 any other thing that might serve as a clue : 
 
 " Mr. D. ' One with eyes the fairest 
 Cometh from nis dwelhng, 
 Some one loves thee, rarest. 
 Bright beyond my telling. 
 In thy grace thou shinest 
 Like some nymph divinest
 
 
 332 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 In her caverns dewy : — 
 
 All delights pursue thee, | 
 
 Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing. 
 
 Shall thy head be wreathing.' 
 " M. You read well. 
 
 " Mr. D. Now see if you can tell me whose verses these 
 are. It's a translation from the Greek. 
 " M. Did he write Ode to the Skylark ? 
 " Mr. D. Yes, that is splendid, quite wonderful I think. 
 " M. Thank you. If I am not Myers, who am I ? " 
 
 To complete the characterization of the Piper-Myers 
 may finally be adduced an incident from one of Mr. Dorr's 
 first sittings. The latter was^reading aloud passages from 
 Frederic Myers's Fragments of Prose and Poetry, which is 
 partly an autobiography. Among other things he read : 
 
 " From ten to sixteen I lived much in the inward recital of 
 Homer, ^Fschylus, Lucretius, Horace, and Ovid. It was the 
 life of about the sixth century before Christ, on the isles of 
 the ^gean, which drew me most." 
 
 As these words were spoken, Myers wrote : 
 
 " A life incomplete. Oh ! it is all so clear, I recall so well 
 my feelings, my emotions, my joys, my pain and much pain. 
 Oh ! I am transported back to Greece. I recall it all. I am 
 transported — I remember before my marriage all my imagina- 
 tions, my pain, my longing, my unrest. I lived it all out as 
 few men did. I drank, as Omar K[hay]yam, life and all its 
 joys and griefs. And never was it complete. A disappointing 
 — long, dreary longing for a fulfilment of my dreamed of joys. 
 I found it here and only here. ' Men may come and men may 
 go, but I go on for ever.' ^ I shall be delighted to complete my 
 memories of Homer, Horace and Vergil until you are satisfied 
 that I am still one among you, not a fantasy but a reality." 
 
 There is perhaps nothing " evidential " in this. But 
 wonderfully well it fits the personality that has been 
 depicted at the Piper-sittings — the wise and gentle scholar, 
 the unpretending and untiring champion of the cause 
 which had filled the life of Frederic Myers. 
 
 1 Tennyson.
 
 SECTION VII 
 
 Conclusion. New Mediums 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 In the preceding sections I have presented as much of 
 the materials gathered by the researchers as seemed 
 sufficient to yield a basis for the judgment of the question 
 which is the subject of this book. It has been my aim 
 to present " the evidence " in such fullness that it might 
 speak for itself. My own words can be few. 
 
 What, then, has this evidence told us ? It told us in 
 the first place that Professor Flournoy was right when he 
 pictured mediums whose statements originated from their 
 own dream-world, whose non-normal faculties at best 
 consisted in their being able to remember in a trance- 
 condition things that had long ago been obliterated from 
 their waking consciousness, or had perhaps scarcely 
 reached it. It told us in the second place that Hartmann 
 was right when he assigned to certain people a super- 
 normal power of perceiving things which were not only 
 distant with regard to space but might also be with regard 
 to time, and which in the latter case might belong not 
 only to the past but even to the future. We found 
 mediums, or automatists, who possessed this power, and 
 we saw that it was, like cryptomnesia, utilized for the 
 fabrication of romances in which their waking conscious- 
 ness had no share, but considered the products of foreign 
 beings. All this made us ask : Is there, then, no limit 
 to what may be perceived clairvoyantly and fabricated 
 unconsciously ? Is it possible that the whole difference
 
 334 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 is, that in the case of those who are only a little medium- 
 istic, or a little entranced, we may trace the cause of their 
 performances, discover the sources of their knowledge, 
 the motives for their fabricating, while in a highly 
 mediumistic and deeply entranced individual like Mrs. 
 Piper we are unable to do this ? Is it only a difference 
 in degree ? Do all of them on a small scale achieve what 
 Mrs. Piper and similar mediums do on a large one ? 
 
 Let us remember what Professor Flournoy relates. 
 " There was hardly," he writes, " a prominent or well- 
 known man in Geneva who had departed this life who did 
 not soon afterwards manifest to me through some medium, 
 but invariably these manifestations corresponded to the 
 medium's idea of the deceased persons rather than to my 
 own relations with them." He adduces divers ridiculous 
 instances of the platitudes assigned to the departed. 
 Here, then, pure imagination sufficed to explain the 
 phenomenon ; clairvoyance did not play a part. In the 
 same way the great men of the past were re-constructed ; 
 Calvin recommended spiritualism in the tritest phrases, 
 and through a medium, too, who was the intelligent 
 authoress of philosophical and moral writings. Finally 
 we ought to recall the most famous among the Genevese 
 mediums, Helen Smith, who composed in trance romances 
 about the conditions on the planet Mars, and for one thing 
 invented for the use of the inhabitants a language that in 
 the most naive manner imitated her own mother-tongue. 
 With good reason. Professor Flournoy's experiments with 
 these mediums resulted in his talking of silliness, childish 
 joy in self-invented comedies, and relapse to a lower stage 
 of development than that occupied by the sensitives in 
 their waking condition. 
 
 It is a tremendous leap Professor Flournoy must make 
 when proceeding to speak about Mrs. Piper. The possi- 
 bility of mind-reading he had beforehand granted. " A 
 good medium," he says, " is able to mirror, or transmit, 
 the unconscious ideas of the sitters." Here already he 
 had by far exceeded the standpoint of his own mediums.
 
 CONCLUSION 335 
 
 But as regards Mrs. Piper's performances, he saw that it 
 was necessary to go further and to admit " an active 
 and selective telepathy," by the aid of which the medium 
 could choose from the minds of many living — present or 
 absent — the elements from which the images of the dead 
 were reconstructed. Or else, he suggested, the incom- 
 plete image of the defunct which one of the sitters had 
 transmitted telepathically to Mrs. Piper might attract 
 to itself other fragmentary images possessed by other 
 persons, and thus give birth to a complete whole. In 
 extension, if not in principle, this does not much differ 
 from clairvoyance. And even so the cases where the 
 sitter does not know the communicator are not taken into 
 account. In fact, there is nothing for it but to grant her 
 clairvoyance, and that a wholly unlimited clairvoyance. 
 
 Well, clairvoyance is a fact, I shall not here dwell on 
 its limitations. Possibly the entranced medium possesses 
 it in a higher degree than the waking psychometrists or 
 the semi-waking automatists. That question cannot be 
 decided, as the problem at issue is just whence the 
 entranced medium obtains her knowledge— whether from 
 the discarnate or by means of clairvoyance. For the sake 
 of the argument it is necessary to grant Mrs. Piper this 
 supernormal faculty in the farthest possible dimension. 
 
 Mrs. Piper, then, is clairvoyant. There is nothing so 
 distant nor so forgotten that she cannot get hold of it. 
 She does not always get it, but this is not because it is a 
 question of a specially distant or wholly forgotten matter ; 
 it may be quite simple and obvious things she fails in, 
 while more difficult tasks are performed. But having 
 admitted all this, having admitted that her knowledge 
 may be due to clairvoyance, because clairvoyance exists, 
 we proceed to something else — namely to her utilization 
 of the material to which she, maybe through clairvoyance, 
 has access. 
 
 Her command of it is wonderful, her use of it that of a 
 master. What she makes of it we have seen ; here it 
 can only be hinted at. She creates a figure, Phinuit,
 
 336 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 whom she endows with mediiimistic powers, with clair- 
 voyance and the faculty of psychometrizing, with medical 
 knowledge and prevision ; a medium, though an imperfect 
 one — as mediums mostly are. Beside him, she creates 
 figures in the likeness of deceased persons. These she 
 does not piake mediumistic — they know no more than 
 their human prototypes might be supposed to know. In 
 return, their knowledge is not dim and groping like that 
 of Phinuit, but certain enough within their limited 
 territory, apart from the slips of memory that are natural 
 for human beings, ^ 
 
 And she goes further. She creates George Pelham, who 
 also represents an individual who has died, but who lives 
 on in new activity, the old George whom friends and rela- 
 tives recognize, and yet quite a new George. The same 
 applies to Professor Hyslop's father, Bennie Junot, Hodgson 
 and Myers — in short, to all the prominent portraits in 
 Mrs. Piper's gallery. It is not only a question of attract- 
 ing, as Professor Flournoy suggested, other people's 
 images of the persons represented ; when Mrs. Piper has 
 subliminally created her figures, they live, talk, and act, 
 not as they have talked and acted in the past, but as they 
 might be conceived to do if they still existed under new 
 conditions. It is no historical novel about bygone times 
 that Mrs. Piper composes on the basis of her mysterious 
 knowledge. The latter is the material of which she may 
 have fabricated her persons ; but her ability does not 
 end here ; she presents them in their relations with the 
 survivors, she shows us their reciprocal relations. Together 
 with the sitters and the researchers, she acts an extempora- 
 neous drama with a never-failing faculty of carrying 
 out the characterization of the countless personalities, 
 and making each of them play just the part claimed by 
 the situation. She even ventures to depict them con- 
 fused or momentarily incapable of replying to the proffered 
 questions, if the characterization demands it. For this 
 is not a way of covering her own possible lack of know- 
 ledge. It is part of the drama that the personalities
 
 CONCLUSION 337 
 
 differ from each other with regard to clearness and faculty 
 of communicating. If the actual communicator cannot 
 answer what he is asked about, George Pelham may 
 perhaps learn it from him afterwards. Or, on the other 
 hand, what Phinuit could not obtain by psychome- 
 trizing, the spirit might tell when he himself appeared. 
 Mrs. Piper draws from an inexhaustible well, and distri- 
 butes her riches with the eye of a dramatic genius. 
 
 She does not flinch at any task. She has created 
 Myers, and she is so little afraid of the consequences 
 that she makes Hodgson ask the experimenters to give 
 him more opportunities to prove his identity ; she has 
 access to English literature and classic learning as to all 
 other knowledge, and need not fear to lack material for 
 his figure, the most exquisite she has produced. That 
 she can manage the cross-correspondences, and in a 
 highly intelligent manner make her way out of the mazes 
 of the Latin message experiment, is scarcely more remark- 
 able than the rest. 
 
 The question is then whether a person is subliminally 
 capable of all tliis. We have heard Professor Flournoy's 
 opinion. On reading about his Mile. X. one is reminded 
 of Mrs. Verrall and the other English automatists. 
 Intelligent, cultivated — nay, in the case of Mrs. Verrall 
 and her daughter, possessed of classical erudition — as they 
 were, their automatic productions might assume a form 
 which might deceive. But, in fact, it became for this 
 reason the more noticeable that their writings were so 
 incoherent and puerile as on a closer examination they 
 most often turned out to be. The automatists themselves 
 had an open eye for these qualities. It required many 
 exhortations to make Mrs. Holland continue her writing, 
 and Mrs. Verrall, who has herself reported her first pro- 
 ductions, mentions them in more than one place in a very 
 ironical manner. One faculty certainly seems to dis- 
 tinguish the subconsciousness in preference to the waking 
 man — memory. No doubt it is this phenomenon, cryp- 
 tomnesia, the faculty of drawing in trance or semi-trance 
 
 CD. Z
 
 338 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 things from a hidden store which the conscious self ignores, 
 that has contributed the most to assign importance to 
 the automatic productions. It is the same faculty that 
 distinguishes the hypnotized person ; it may in this 
 connection be worth noting that a renowned physiologist ^ 
 says that though such a person may remember many 
 details which the waking self has forgotten, the accumu- 
 lated store of learning is not made use of by him as it is 
 by the unmutilated consciousness of the waking man, 
 and, above all, " the accumulated knowledge of the past 
 is not at the command of the hypnotic self for deliberate 
 judgment, for the determination of conduct and the 
 expression of the will." 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 This, then, is how matters stand with regard to the 
 evidence for communication with the dead. Everything 
 depends on the possibility of Mrs. Piper's automatic 
 productions being ingenious while those of other people 
 are infantile and foolish. To me it has appeared impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Of course, within the boundary of a single book it has 
 been infeasible to draw any but the roughest outlines of 
 the reply to the question. Above all, it must be accen- 
 tuated that there has not been any question of explaining 
 the phenomena, but only of their classification. It ought 
 however to be emphasized, that in spite of all disparity 
 they constitute a unity. Nature makes no bounds. It 
 is only apparently that there is a chasm even between the 
 silliest dream-fabrications and the manifestations through 
 Mrs. Piper. All of them grow in the same soil — the 
 mediumistic state of dissociation, that state where, to 
 use an expression which must only be taken as a symbol, 
 the spirit appears to have more or less completely left 
 the body. The effect of this state may be that there are 
 as in sleep born fancies for which the waking reason is 
 not responsible. But the same state, when the dis- 
 
 ' Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality, pp. 86 — 87.
 
 CONCLUSION 339 
 
 sociation is more complete or the individual more fit for it, 
 may make it possible for other intelligences to make use 
 of the organism, A small quantity of mediumism pro- 
 duces the former result, a large one the latter. But it is 
 the same principle that underlies both phenomena.^ 
 
 There are a quantity of minor questions which it has 
 been impossible to consider here. One of the most 
 important is the question of the interference of the 
 medium's subconsciousness in those cases where it is not 
 the sole factor. Even in the case of a medium of the 
 type of Mrs. Piper, and as deeply entranced as she is, it 
 seems to play a certain part. When Hodgson ^ once said 
 through her that " every communication must have the 
 human element," he no doubt spoke the truth. 
 Suggestibility and other subliminal qualities appear at 
 times to influence the communicators when they make use 
 of a medium's organism ; in the strangest way they are 
 now and again seen to protrude. Sometimes it is as if the 
 communicators must forcibly suppress a foreign tendency. 
 There might be quoted a number of cases where a com- 
 municator is on the point of accepting a suggestion, but 
 in due time succeeds in rejecting it. Thus, Professor 
 James had at a sitting on May 21st, 1906, proposed that 
 Hodgson should undertake Rector's part as intermediary. 
 " Yes," was the answer, " that is a very good suggestion, 
 very good." But immediately after he said : " But he 
 repeats for me very cleverly and he understands the 
 management of the light." And on a later occasion he 
 expressed in the strongest words the necessity of Rector's 
 intervention : " It is Rector who is speaking and he speaks 
 for me. I have no desire to take his place. He under- 
 stands the conditions better than any individual spirit. 
 When I finished with the conditions in the earthly life 
 I finished with my control over the light." 
 
 Another instance of suggestibility presents an incident 
 
 ' Dissociation may withal produce pathological states ; but this does 
 not involve that mediumism is in itself pathological, which is not 
 indicated by anything else. 
 
 2 See above, p. 269. 
 
 Z 2
 
 340 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 from the Horace Ode case.^ Myers had not answered 
 Mrs. Verrall's question : " Which ode of Horace entered 
 deeply into your inner hfe ? " But when during the Latin 
 message experiment he had cited the hnes from Abt 
 Vogler about the dead who return to breathe in the old 
 world, the experimenters, who did not recognize the 
 quotation, thought that it was possibly due to an attempt 
 to answer the former question ; the Archytas ode which 
 Mrs. Verrall had in mind alludes to the unsatisfactoriness 
 of our single and short earthly existence. In spite of 
 Myers having, as has been seen above, quoted the lines 
 about the returning dead for quite a different reason, he 
 accepted at the moment Mrs. Sidgwick's suggestion about 
 connecting them with the Horace question. On the next 
 day he tried to retract his answer, and acknowledged that 
 he only remembered the ode " in a sense." 
 
 Of the same kind it is when Myers, to Mrs. Sidgwick's 
 question about Abt Vogler, " Do you mean that you 
 gave the name of the poem ? " replies : " Oh yes. I 
 mean that I tried to give another part also," etc.^ The 
 communicators are obliging in a somewhat unnatural 
 manner that recalls the forced obedience of the hypno- 
 tized person. It is a task of no small import to elucidate 
 how far they are influenced by the subliminal qualities. 
 And in the sam.e way divers problems might be pointed 
 out whose solution must be the next step for those who 
 had attained to the conviction that the principal question 
 was answered. 
 
 1 Cf. above, pp. 311 — 12. J 
 
 2 See above, p. 325.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 NEW MEDIUMS 
 
 It is by means of the manifestations at the Piper- 
 sittings that I have attempted to prove the commmiica- 
 tion with the dead. Mrs. Piper was for a long time the 
 only medium with whom experiments were conducted 
 in a large number under scientific supervision, and the 
 material collected in this wise is of a copiousness that has 
 not yet been equalled. In later years, however, Professor 
 Hyslop has experimented with other mediums of a similar 
 type, and a series of reports on these experiments has been 
 published in the Proceedings of the American Society for 
 Psychical Research. ^ 
 
 In itself there is no reason for discussing this material 
 here. But it is interesting to find again through these 
 new mediums " the group," as Myers-Hodgson-Pelham 
 call themselves ; with them also Professor Hyslop's 
 father, who has become one of the most ardent collabora- 
 tors in the work of enlightening humanity about the truth 
 of the survival of bodily death. When Mrs. Chenoweth 
 (pseudonym), who is one of Professor Hyslop's best 
 mediums, presents, for instance, George Pelham to us, it 
 is like meeting a good friend once more. It is precisely 
 the old G. P. who talks, for instance, in the autumn of 
 1910 with Professor Hyslop about the first attempts at 
 communicating made by Professor William James, who 
 had died in the preceding August and seems to have joined 
 the group immediately : 
 
 " G. P. James is very particular and anxious to have 
 everything just right. He is improving, we think. Do not 
 you ? 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, I do. 
 
 * The extracts below are from Vol. VI.
 
 342 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 ti 
 
 G. P. When he can push the pad around to suit himself 
 he will be getting pretty near into my class, but not yet. I 
 still hold the pennant and I don't intend to let any emigrant 
 from little Cambridge get in ahead of me. You see there are 
 some of us who still have a streak of human cussedness in 
 us " 
 
 On another occasion George Pelham reverts to the 
 period when we first became acquainted with him, the 
 time of his earliest manifestations through Mrs. Piper : 
 
 " G. P. I am always tempted to recall some of my own 
 past every time I return for I never can quite recover from 
 the awful grilling which Hodgson gave me after my most 
 respectable and sudden departure. You are not such a fiend 
 as he was or we would all be in the deep deep sea. 
 
 " Prof. H. Thank you. 
 
 " G. P. You get the evidence just the same and we are 
 not so distressed. The sittings with you are so much 
 pleasanter, so much more social. Hodgson says that will do, 
 he wants to hear no more of such soft compliments " 
 
 Professor Hyslop asserts that the medium had not read 
 the records of the Piper-sittings. But even if she had 
 done so, it would require no small amount of intelligence 
 to produce on the basis thereof the above pieces of charac- 
 terization. 
 
 A new communicator was, besides Professor James, 
 Mr. Frank Podmore. This well known critic of the 
 results of psychical research had, like James, died in 
 August, 1910 ; he appeared already in the following 
 October through Mrs. Chenoweth, who, being an American, 
 had never heard the name of the English author. Pod- 
 more had in his lifetime disputed, not exactly the possi- 
 bility of a future life, but the probability of getting into 
 communication with the departed. Above all, he had 
 contended that no proof had been produced of it. His 
 method had been that of attacking all weak points in 
 the communications without regard to the totality, and 
 without attempting any attack where the position was 
 strongest. No doubt he did good service by pointing 
 out the weaknesses, and by demanding that all possi- 
 bilities for a human explanation ought to be faced ; but
 
 NEW MEDIUMS 343 
 
 he generally reckoned only with explanations like fraud, 
 self-deception, cryptomnesia, and at most telepathy. 
 Clairvoyance he was rather unwilling to admit, and to 
 psychometry he does not seem to have paid much atten- 
 tion. That he had not believed in it was affirmed by 
 Miss Johnson in reply to an inquiry by Professor Hyslop. 
 For those who know Mr. Podmore as an author it is 
 curious to read a conversation that took place in May, 
 1911, through Mrs. Smead (pseudonym), another medium 
 of Professor Hyslop's, between him and the latter. Pod- 
 more had, as stated afterwards by Hodgson, made the 
 acquaintance of a recently deceased lady who in Hodg- 
 son's lifetime had had sittings with Mrs. Piper, and who 
 had herself practised psychometry. He had thus been 
 converted into a belief in this phenomenon, a belief which 
 Professor Hyslop did not share. The unwillingness of 
 the latter to accept his opinion made the conversation 
 rather long but at the same time so instructive that I 
 propose to reproduce it with only a few omissions : 
 
 " P. Different objects do carry their influence, Hyslop, 
 more than you know. 
 
 " Prof. H. All right, I am glad to hear that. 
 
 " P. Yes and in some cases it is all from your side. Do 
 you know I wish to convey the meaning [of] Psychometry ? ^ 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes. 
 
 " P. Yes. But only when objects are used continually ^ 
 does it come like second nature to the ' Medium.' 
 
 " Prof. H. I understand. 
 
 " P. A case of Practice makes perfect. Yes that was how 
 I find it was with some of those I experimented with since I 
 have been here. 
 
 "Prof H. Good. 
 
 " P. All of the earth side. Do you know that ? 
 
 " Prof. H. No, I do not, but I am glad to hear it. 
 
 " P. Yes, these workers of whom I speak did much in this 
 way ; believed it was from here but only of the psy[chometry]. 
 
 Yes, of earth life. Impressions of ours are left more 
 
 distinctly on those things we have kept about our person 
 continually. Yes do you not find it so ? 
 
 " Prof. H. I do not know, unless you mean , . . 
 
 " P. You get best results as you term it, H., from such. 
 
 ^ Here and elsewhere the medium spells " Scicometry." 
 2 I.e., by the medium.
 
 344 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 But sometimes the owner of it is not present and yet you get 
 information from them. 
 
 " Prof. H. Can you get little incidents of their lives, that 
 is, of the owners from the objects alone ? 
 
 " P. Not I, but some on your side, H., can. Can you 
 understand me ? 
 
 " Prof. H.^ Not quite fully because that must be long 
 investigated. 
 
 " P. Fact yes 
 
 " Prof H. All right. 
 
 " P. positively so too. Yes it does not of necessity need 
 be that we are with them to get the earth memories. 
 
 " Prof. H. Do you mean that the associations . . . 
 
 " P. remain with them. 
 
 " Prof. H. affect the mind of the . . . 
 
 " P. Yes yes yes, H., that is it exactly, H., that is why so 
 much is taken for Spirits that is not really so. 
 
 " Prof H. But . . . " 
 
 It was a mistake on the part of Podmore to conclude 
 from Professor Hyslop's utterances, which he himself cut 
 short, that he agreed with him. Professor Hyslop, how- 
 ever, in the sequel set forth his opinion so plainly that 
 the mistake was cleared up : 
 
 " P. Psychometry stops there. And if you keep the object 
 from their personal touch, H., you do not get much. Can you 
 understand my expression ? 
 
 " Prof. H. If you mean that many thoughts from the 
 spirit world are conveyed to the mind of the psychic and then 
 are recalled by association with the objects. 
 
 " P. No. No. I mean that those objects hold for a 
 while the impressions our Spirits left with them. 
 
 " Prof. H. Do you mean that thoughts are left on the 
 objects and can . . . 
 
 " P. Certainly, be picked up, if you please, by the ones 
 having the gift to do so. Not tel[epathy]. 
 
 " Prof H. I understand that. 
 
 " P. They, H., could not get them if the objects were not 
 brought into contact with them. 
 
 " Prof H. I understand, but it is incredible to me. 
 
 " P. No, but if you keep the object from their touch and 
 your own, as it has been suggested, we can keep more in touch 
 with our earth friend, as it is then a case of our personality 
 and kept out of reach of the other's touch, the psychic touch, 
 if you like. You know I did not believe in Psy[chometry] 
 having any hold, when there, but when I came to try those 
 I had experimented with I found the new difficulty.
 
 NEW MEDIUMS 345 
 
 " Prof. H. Then would it be better always not to have 
 objects near at hand when experimenting ? 
 
 " P. Not to let the psychic come in touch personally with 
 them. Do you now get my thought ? 
 
 '' Prof. H. Yes. 
 
 "P. If you desire a perfect set of facts and clear ones 
 never let them see or touch them, as they will always get 
 impressions if personal contact exists. 
 
 " Prof. H. I understand. 
 
 " P. Keep them as H[odgson] was told to do. I ridiculed 
 the idea when there, but it is true nevertheless. 
 
 " Prof. H. Then you simply read off the object your own 
 
 tt 
 
 P. life history, yes. 
 
 " Prof. H. Then it might be difficult to prove spirits 
 at all. 
 
 " P. If as I said, H., you let the psychic touch them. Can 
 you not understand yet ? 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes go on. 
 
 " P. It is only, H., when no other comes in contact with 
 our earth memories can they be proven as of Personal Identity. 
 Cannot you see that if another comes in contact it takes away 
 the proof ? 
 
 " Prof. H. That may be, but go on 
 
 "P. It was hard for me to believe it. 
 
 " Prof. H. Yes, and it is hard for me to believe it now, in 
 spite of your statement. 
 
 " P. Fact just the same. 
 
 ;; Prof. H. All right. 
 
 " P. I never did give in. 
 
 " Prof. H. No, and I shall have to get much more evidence 
 to make me give in. 
 
 " P. Try it for yourself with my thoughts in view. See if 
 some of those you experiment with do not find it difficult to 
 get information without personal touch of objects, H." 
 
 As may be seen, Podmore's statement on the whole 
 agrees with the results we have previously attained to 
 with regard to " articles." But it is interesting to see 
 that it is he who advocates them, and advocates them 
 just in the way he does. Now he knows that communi- 
 cation is a fact, but he has also become convinced that 
 psychometry is so ; and he immediately discerns the 
 possibilities involved in this. He has made himself very 
 familiar with the subject. He knows that it can be 
 useful to bring objects, as it helps the communicators
 
 346 COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD 
 
 to keep in touch with the sitters. That was just what 
 the utterances of Rector and others at the Piper-sittings 
 went to show. But the objects must be kept as Hodgson 
 was told to do — they must not come into contact with 
 the mediun^ ; the reverse may, even if the deceased owners 
 are present, occasion an interminghng of the psychic's 
 own impressions, and, what is the most important, it 
 takes away the proof. How characteristic that this sceptic 
 par excellence above all thinks about the proof ! 
 
 And not only does he want to teach the experimenter 
 how to avert the objectionable influence of the articles ; 
 he points out, moreover, that the psychometric faculty 
 of certain mediums may become a means of deciding 
 whether the communications coming through them are 
 genuine or not. " Try yourself and see if some of those 
 you experiment with do not find it difficult to get infor- 
 mation without personal touch of objects." This is the 
 difference between those who can only psychometrize 
 and those who are really in communication with the dead ; 
 only the latter can procure information without touching 
 the objects. 
 
 Professor Flournoy in his book Spirits and Mediums 
 expresses half in jest the wish that " Myers or the other 
 spirits — if they really come into play at all — will reveal 
 to us a means of eliminating from mediumistic manifes- 
 tations the combined action of the subliminal imagination, 
 and of telepathy from the living." If the misleading 
 term telepathy be replaced by the more real notion 
 psychometry, Podmore has in a degree fulfilled this wish. 
 The danger of the sitters themselves being psychome- 
 trized no doubt remains, but it is of less consequence, 
 as in that way information may perhaps be obtained 
 about the living, but in a very small measure about the 
 dead. As for the action of imagination, Professor 
 Flournoy has himself indicated the means of discrimina- 
 tion by his accentuation of the inferiority of the subliminal 
 products. 
 
 So much for generalities. In the concrete, however,
 
 NEW MEDIUMS 347 
 
 the difBculties are great. Between a medium like Mrs. 
 Piper and those described by Professor Flournoy there 
 are many grades ; nay, even among the apparently 
 genuine communications are interspersed things that do 
 not bear the stamp of genuineness. Beforehand only 
 one thing is certain — that an immense quantity of what 
 believing spiritualists accept as messages from beyond 
 must fall beneath a scientific criticism. On the other 
 hand, there may be danger of overlooking some golden 
 grain in the big heaps of chaff. But worse would it 
 be to call anything gold which was not gold. And 
 however hard it might be for many to see what they 
 believed in weighed and found wanting, the loss might 
 be made up by a more perfect assurance that not every- 
 thing was false — that through some mediums at least, 
 with regard to some of their performances, the reality 
 was proved of that communication with the dead which 
 tells us that they are living, and that we too shall pass 
 through the gate of death into a new life.
 
 \ 
 
 I 
 
 i'.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Anne, " Aunt Anne," control, 189 
 
 Baltimore, Mrs., 79 
 Bergmann, Miss, 272 
 
 Calvin, control, 3, 12, 334 
 Carruthers, Eliza, 229, 231, 245- 
 
 246, 248. — , James, 229 ; 
 
 control, 231, 236, 247 
 Chenoweth (pseudonym), Mrs., 
 
 341-342 
 Clarke, Mr. and Mrs., 197-198 
 Clarke, Frank, control, 260 
 Constable, Mr., 85-88 
 Coventry, Mrs., 25 
 Curtois, Miss, 93-94 
 
 Dandiran, Mme., 9-10 
 
 " Doctor," control, 223, 226 
 
 Dobeln, von, 36-37 
 
 Dorr, George B., 271, 288-297, 
 
 303-304, 330-332 
 Dupond, Mme., 4-6 
 
 Elder, David, 249 
 
 Fawcett, Henry, 155. — , Mrs., 
 
 155 
 Feilding, Everard, 130-131, 142- 
 
 145 
 
 Flournoy, Professor, 1-17, 42, 46, 
 
 73, 171, 17/, 333-337. 346-347 
 Forbes (pseudonym), Mrs. Diana, 
 59-85, 89, 121-123, 129, 139- 
 145, 159, 163, 165, 170, 284, 
 307, 309- — , Mr., 142, 159. 
 — , Talbot, control, 59, 66, 79- 
 81, 83-84, 142-145 
 Frith, Mrs., 305-308 
 
 Conner, Mrs., 40 
 
 Gurney, Edmund, 32, 50, 195, 
 312, 314 ; control, 59, 61, 66, 
 80, 83-84, 104-105, 108, III- 
 112, 130, 149, 192-195, 221 
 
 Hart, John (pseudonym), 199- 
 202 
 
 Hartmann, Eduard von, 16-31. 
 41-46, 174, 333 
 
 Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 69-72, 95- 
 100, 132, 134-138, 174-175, 177. 
 179-180, 187-188, 199-200, 202 
 -216, 218-220, 223-234, 236- 
 237, 239-245, 247, 249, 251- 
 
 267, 270, 272, 276-277, 305, 
 311 ; control, 133-138, 175. 
 267-275, 277, 280-283, 287- 
 299, 304-306, 311, 315, 321, 
 330, 336-339, 341-346 
 
 Holland (pseudonym), Mrs., loi- 
 171, 173-174, 273, 275-278, 
 286, 290-298, 306-309, 327, 337 
 
 Home, Mrs., 308-309 
 
 Howard, James, 200-202, 205- 
 207, 210-211, 213-215, 218, 
 311. — , Miss Katharine, 200. 
 — , Mrs. Mary, 200, 207-209, 
 211-213, 2l8 
 
 Hyde, Fred, 259 
 
 Hyslop, family, 229. — , Anna 
 (Annie), 229 ; control, 235, 244. 
 — , Charles, 229 ; control, 230- 
 231, 235, 244-245. — , Pro- 
 fessor James, 43, 177, 235-250, 
 
 268, 270, 304, 341-345. — , 
 Mrs. Margaret (Maggie), 229, 
 234, 239, 247-248. — , Mrs. 
 Martha Ann, 229. — , Robert, 
 229; control, 226-252,336, 341. 
 — , Robert (jr.), 244 
 
 " Imperator," control, 223-226, 
 
 243 
 Irving, Hugh, control, 260-262 
 
 James, Professor William, 137, 
 174, 184, 267, 269-272, 339; 
 control, 341 
 
 " Jessie," 134-137 
 
 Johnson, Miss Alice, 101-104, 
 106, 109-112, 114, 117-125, 
 127-132, 134-138, 141-144, 146. 
 152-154, 157, X60-161, 163-
 
 350 
 
 INDEX 
 
 169, 296-297, 300-301, 303, 
 305-310, 343 
 
 Junot (pseudonym), family, 250- 
 266. — , Bennie, control, 250— 
 266, 272, 336 
 
 Lang, Andrew, 30, 32, 121-122 
 
 Leaf, Dr. Walter, 69-70, 173, 181, 
 184, 188, 197 
 
 Leblanc, Mme., 7-8 
 
 Lodge, Alfred, 190. — , Fred, Mr. 
 and Mrs., 29. — , Frank, 191.. 
 — , Jerry, control, 190-191. — , 
 Miss, 193. — , Sir Oliver, 29, 38, 
 41, 43, 45, 58, 68, 70-72, 95. 115. 
 117-119, 178-179, 181-183, 185 
 -186, 188-196, 221-222, 227, 
 272, 274-277, 279, 300, 319, 
 328 ; Lady L., 189, 193- — . 
 Robert, 190-191 
 
 Lund, Mr., 196-197. — , Maggie, 
 control, 196-197 
 
 Mackensie, Mrs., 40-41 
 
 Marsh, Mr., 92 
 
 Maxwell, Dr. Joseph, 96, 130, 136, 
 
 148 
 McClellan, James, control, 229. 
 
 — , Robert, control, 229, 243- 
 
 244 
 Miles, Miss Clarissa, 17-27, 31, 42- 
 
 44. 49, 57. 60, 78, 96, loi, 112, 
 
 121, 162, 186 
 Moses, Staynton, control, 112, 
 
 223-225 
 Miinsterberg, Professor Hugo, 135, 
 
 137 
 Myers, Dr. A. T., 50. — , Frederic, 
 38-39, 41, 48, 61-63, 67-68, 70- 
 72, 75-76. 85-88, 94, 97, 103- 
 104, 114-116, 119, 142, 223, 
 300-301, 312, 332 ; control, 48- 
 49. 56, 58-59. 64-72, 76-79, 
 104-120, 125, 130, 147-152, 171, 
 269, 274-280, 283-285, 287, 289, 
 293-296, 298, 301, 305, 308, 
 310-332, 336-337, 340-341. 346. 
 — , Mrs., 62-63 
 
 Newbold, Professor William, 177, 
 206, 208, 220-223, 267, 269-272 
 
 Noel, Roden, 152-154, 161, 166- 
 167 
 
 Oliphant, Laurence, 120 
 
 Paladino, Eusapia, 130 
 Peirce, Professor, 203, 207 
 
 Pelham (pseudonym), Mr. and 
 Mrs., 205-209, 211. — , Frank, 
 206. — , George, control, 198- 
 230,243,245,247-249, 252-253, 
 255. 257, 259-267, 275, 294, 
 311, 321-322, 336-337. 341-342 
 
 Peters, Vout, 33-38, 42, 45-46, 
 176, 178-179, 181, 185-186 
 
 Phinuit (Dr. Jean Ph. Scliville), 
 control, 134, 176-222, 225-227, 
 235, 272, 335-337 
 
 Piddington, Mr., 69-70, 95-96, 
 130, 134-137. 272, 274-277, 
 279, 281-283, 285-287, 300- 
 302, 304, 306-310, 312-324, 
 327-330 
 
 Pigou, Professor, 161-163 
 
 Piper, Mrs., 14, 95-99. 132, 134- 
 135, 172-177, 179, 185, 187- 
 188, 192, 196, 199-201, 203, 
 211, 216 — 221, 225, 228-229, 
 233. 239, 252-253, 261-262, 
 267-269, 271, 273-275, 283, 
 288, 293-294, 296, 298-299, 
 303-304, 308, 311, 314-315, 
 
 319, 330, 334-339. 341-343. 347 
 Podmore, Frank, 309 ; control, 
 
 342-346 
 Pope, Miss, 269, 294 
 Prince, Morton, 338 
 " Prudens," control, 226, 234, 236 
 
 Ramsden, Miss Hermione, 17-27, 
 31-32, 42-47. 49, 56-57, 60-61, 
 78, 96, loi, 112, 121, 162, 181, 
 185, 309 
 
 " Rector," control, 96, 222-228, 
 230, 232, 234-236, 239-241, 
 243-244, 247-249, 252-253, 256 
 -261, 268, 276-277, 279-280, 
 284, 287, 315-316, 319, 321, 
 324, 328, 339, 346 
 
 Rich, Dr., control, 195-196, 227- 
 228 
 
 Richet, Professor, 131 
 
 Sallie, " Aunt Sallie," 220-221, 
 228 
 
 Savage, Minot J., 199-201 
 
 Schiflf, Professor, 4 
 
 Schiller, Dr., 269-270 
 
 Schweizer, Mrs., 39 
 
 Scliville. See Phinuit. 
 
 Sidgwick, Professor Henry, 116, 
 153. 180, 301, 312-314 ; con- 
 trol, 71, 104, 108, 112, 152, 314. 
 — , Mrs., 39-42, 71. 77. "6-
 
 INDEX 
 
 351 
 
 117, 152. 274, 283-285, 312- 
 314, 322-328, 340 
 
 Smead (pseudonym), Mrs., 343 
 Smith, Helen (pseudonym), 2-3, 
 
 9-13, 105, 334 
 Stella, Mrs., 32-3.3. 45, i95 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 239-240, 
 
 244 
 
 Taylor, Colonel, 308 
 
 Thompson, Mr. and Mrs., 193, 
 195-196, 227. — , Isaac, con- 
 trol, 228, 275 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 152 
 
 Verrall, Dr., 21-22, 48, 50-58, 
 60-61, 63, 67, 73, 78, 89, 98, 
 
 109-112, 121, 137, 149-153, 
 161-162, 165, 279, 286-288, 
 299,311. — , Mrs., 21, 46-105, 
 109-130, 138-142, 145-171. 173 
 -174, 184, 273, 275-277, 279- 
 291, 294, 297-314, 316-324, 
 
 327-331. 337. 340- — . Miss 
 Helen, 95-96, 156-159, 166, 
 170, 278, 280, 282, 289-291, 
 294-295. 297-298, 301-309, 337 
 Vogt, Carl, 4 
 
 Walsh (Welsh), John, 261-262 
 
 ZoRA, Mme., 6-8 
 Zschokke, Heinrich, 28 
 
 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

 
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