Chapter XIV: Mrs Piper's Trance Utterances

Almost alone amongst mediums of note, Mrs Piper of Boston has never resorted to physical phenomena, her powers being entirely confined to trance manifestations. No single medium, not even Helene Smith, has been subjected to such close and continuous observation by expert scientific observers. In 1885, this lady's case was first investigated by Professor William James, of Harvard (brother of the famous novelist). Two years later Dr Hodgson and other members of the Society for Psychical Research began their observation of her trance utterances. This course of observation has continued for twenty years, and nearly all Mrs Piper's utterances have been placed on record. The late Dr Hodgson was indefatigable in his labours to test the genuineness of the phenomena. He spared no pains, and died, I believe, convinced that all means of accounting for them had been exhausted.

There is so much evidence concerning Mrs Piper, who, two years ago came to England at the invitation of the Society for Psychical Research, and was subjected to numerous tests, that I hesitate how best to typify its purport. Most striking is a letter to Professor James in the Society's "Proceedings" from a well-known professor, Shaler of Harvard, who attended a _seance_, with a very open mind indeed, on 25th May 1894, at Professor James's house in Cambridge (Boston).

Professor Shaler was disposed to favour neither the medium nor even the telepathic theory. He writes:

"MY DEAR JAMES,--At the sitting with Mrs Piper on May 25th I
made the following notes:--

"As you remember, I came to the meeting with my wife; when Mrs
Piper entered the trance state Mrs Shaler took her hand. After
a few irrelevant words, my wife handed Mrs Piper an engraved
seal, which she knew, though I did not, had belonged to her
brother, a gentleman from Richmond, Virginia, who died about a
year ago. At once Mrs Piper began to make statements clearly
relating to the deceased, and in the course of the following
hour she showed a somewhat intimate acquaintance with his
affairs, those of his immediate family, and those of the family
in Hartford, Conn., with which the Richmond family had had
close social relations.

"The statements made by Mrs Piper, in my opinion, entirely
exclude the hypothesis that they were the results of
conjectures, directed by the answers made by my wife. I took no
part in the questioning, but observed very closely all that was
done.

"On the supposition that the medium had made very careful
preparation for her sittings in Cambridge, it would have been
possible for her to have gathered all the information which she
rendered by means of agents in the two cities, though I must
confess that it would have been rather difficult to have done
the work.

"The only distinctly suspicious features were that certain
familiar baptismal names were properly given, while those of an
unusual sort could not be extracted, and also that one or two
names were given correctly as regards the ceremony of baptism
or the directory, but utterly wrong from the point of view of
family usage. Thus the name of a sister-in-law of mine, a
sister of my wife's, was given as Jane, which is true by the
record, but in forty years' experience of an intimate sort I
never knew her to be called Jane--in fact, I did not at first
recognise who was meant.

"While I am disposed to hold to the hypothesis that the
performance is one that is founded on some kind of deceit, I
must confess that close observation of the medium made on me
the impression that she was honest. Seeing her under any other
conditions, I should not hesitate to trust my instinctive sense
as to the truthfulness of the woman.

"I venture also to note, though with some hesitancy, the fact
that the ghost of the ancient Frenchman who never existed, but
who purports to control Mrs Piper, though he speaks with a
first-rate stage French accent, does not, so far as I can find,
make the characteristic blunders in the order of his English
words which we find in actual life. Whatever the medium is, I
am convinced that this 'influence' is a preposterous scoundrel.

"I think I did not put strongly enough the peculiar kind of
knowledge that the medium seems to have concerning my wife's
brother's affairs. Certain of the facts, as, for instance,
those relating to the failure to find his will after his sudden
death, were very neatly and dramatically rendered. They had the
real-life quality. So, too, the name of a man who was to have
married my wife's brother's daughter, but who died a month
before the time fixed for the wedding, was correctly given,
both as regards surname and Christian name, though the
Christian name was not remembered by my wife or me.

"I cannot determine how probable it is that the medium, knowing
she was to have a sitting with you in Cambridge, or rather a
number of them, took pains to prepare for the tests by
carefully working up the family history of your friends. If she
had done this for thirty or so persons, I think she could,
though with some difficulty, have gained just the kind of
knowledge which she rendered. She would probably have forgotten
that my wife's brother's given name was Legh, and that of his
mother Gabriella, while she remembered that of Mary and
Charles, and also that of a son in Cambridge, who is called
Waller. So, too, the fact that all trouble on account of the
missing will was within a fortnight after the death of Mr Page
cleared away by the action of the children was unknown. The
deceased is represented as still troubled, though he purported
to see just what was going on in his family.

"I have given you a mixture of observations and criticisms; let
me say that I have no firm mind about the matter. I am
curiously and yet absolutely uninterested in it, for the reason
that I don't see how I can exclude the hypothesis of fraud,
and until that can be excluded no advance can be made.

"When I took the medium's hand, I had my usual experience with
them--a few preposterous compliments concerning the clearness
of my understanding, and nothing more."

Among those who have made a careful study at first hand of Mrs Piper's clairvoyance besides Dr Hodgson and Professor James are Sir Oliver Lodge, the late Frederic Myers, Mrs Sidgwick, Walter Leaf, Professor Romaine Newbold, and Professor J. H. Hyslop, and all of these have recorded their conviction that the results are not explicable by fraud or misrepresentation.

Another account which sheds light on what occurs at Mrs Piper's seances is furnished by Professor Estlin Carpenter, Oxford. It is dated 14th December 1894:

"DEAR PROFESSOR JAMES,--I had a sitting yesterday with Mrs
Piper at your house, and was greatly interested with the
results obtained, as they were entirely unexpected by me.
Various persons were named and described whom we could not
identify (my wife was present); but the names of my father and
mother were correctly given, with several details which were in
no way present to my mind at the time. The illness from which
my father was suffering at the time of his death was
identified, but not the accident which took him from us. A
penknife which I happened to have with me was rightly referred
to its place on the desk in his study, and after considerable
hesitation Mrs Piper wrote out the word _organ_ when I asked
concerning other objects in the room. She added spontaneously a
very remarkable item about which I was in no way thinking--viz.
that on Sunday afternoons or evenings (her phrase was
'twilight') we were accustomed to sing there together. She
stated correctly that my mother was older than my father, but
died after him; and she connected her death with my return from
Switzerland in a manner that wholly surprised me, the fact
being that her last illness began two or three days after my
arrival home from Lucerne. She gave the initials of my wife's
name rightly, and addressed words to her from her father,
whose first name, George, was correct. She also desired me, in
my father's name, not to be anxious about some family matters
(which have only recently come to my knowledge), though their
nature was not specified. Finally, though I should have
mentioned this first, as it was at the outset of the interview,
she told me that I was about to start on a voyage, and
described the vessel in general terms, though she could not
give its name or tell me the place where it was going. I saw
enough to convince me that Mrs Piper possesses some very
extraordinary powers, but I have no theory at all as to their
nature or mode of exercise."

Another who visited Mrs Piper was the famous French author, M. Paul Bourget, who was astonished at what he heard. He happened to have on his watch-chain a small seal which had been given him by a painter, long since dead, under the saddest circumstances, of whom it was impossible the medium could ever have heard; yet no sooner had she touched the object than she related to him the circumstance. One could quote case after case in the Society's reports, but in all the time Mrs Piper has been under such rigid scrutiny not one suspicious instance or one pointing to normal acquisition of facts has been discovered.

Some have boldly hazarded the conjecture that Mrs Piper worked up the _dossiers_ of her sitters beforehand; inasmuch as she could easily obtain her facts in many ways; by reading private letters, for instance, or information derived from other mediums, or by employing private inquiry agents. These things are said to be habitually done by professional clairvoyants, by either going themselves or sending an agent in the capacity of, say, a book canvasser, to some town or district, and get all the information they can, to return some months later and give clairvoyant sittings. There is a belief, and it is possibly correct, that there is an organisation which gives and exchanges information thus obtained by the members of the Society. Perhaps this may account for the extraordinary good fortune of some spiritualists in obtaining "tests." Some sitters who went to Mrs Piper had visited other mediums previously. But one may be sure that all precautions were taken to ensure against her knowing the names of the sitters, so that she could not use any information, even if she had obtained any, in this way. Those best qualified to judge are convinced that her knowledge was not gained in this way, partly because of the precautions used and partly by reason of the information itself.

As has been said, Mrs Piper was under the close scrutiny of Dr Hodgson for many years, and nothing of the kind has ever come to light. Also Dr Hodgson arranged beforehand her sittings for more than ten years, never telling her the names of the sitters, who in almost every instance were unknown to her by sight, and were without distinction introduced under the name of "Smith." She made so many correct statements at many individual sittings, and the proportion of successful sittings is so high, that it is very difficult to attribute fraud to her. About dates she appears to be very vague. She prefers to give Christian names to surnames, and of the former those in common use rather than those out of the way. As her descriptions of houses or places are generally failures, she seldom attempts them. Mrs Piper seems to be weakest, indeed, just where the so-called medium is most successful. Her strongest points are describing diseases, the character of the sitter, his idiosyncrasies, and the character of his friends, their sympathies, loves, hates, and relationships in general, unimportant incidents in their past histories, and so on. To retain such information in the memory is very difficult, and to obtain it by general means well-nigh impossible.

Many of the personalities or "controls" of Mrs Piper speak, write, and act in a way extraordinarily in consonance with those characters as they were on earth. In other words, her "controls" have well-differentiated identities. Each has a different manner, a different voice, different acts, different ways of looking at things; in fact, has a different character. For example, there is the spirit of G. P., a young journalist and author who died suddenly in February 1892. A few weeks later his spirit possessed Mrs Piper's organism, and although he was unknown to Mrs Piper in life, yet for years since then he has carried on numerous prolonged conversations with his friends, including Dr Hodgson, and supplied numerous proofs of his knowledge of the concerns of the deceased G. P. G. P.'s personal effects, MSS., etc., are referred to, as well as private conversations of the past, and, moreover, he suddenly recognises amongst those attending Mrs Piper's _seances_ those whom he knew during life. Dr Hodgson was unable to find any instance when such recognition has been incorrectly given. But G. P. is only one of several trance personations speaking through Mrs Piper's organism and recognised by friends.

After a contemplation of Mrs Piper's trance utterances alone we are inevitably faced by a choice of three conclusions: either (1) fraud (and fraud I hold here to be absolutely inadmissible); or (2) the possession of some supernormal power of apprehension; or (3) communication with the spirits of deceased persons.

Dr Hodgson was driven by sheer force of logic to accept the third of these hypotheses. Others who have studied the phenomena have followed. Dr J. H. Hyslop has published a record of the sittings held with Mrs Piper in 1898 and 1899. His report contains the verbatim record of seventeen sittings, and no pains have been spared to make the record complete. It has exhaustive commentaries and accounts of experiments intended to elucidate the supposed difficulties of trance communication. Professor Hyslop finally arrives at the conclusion, after an extensive investigation, during which no item of the evidence has failed to be weighed and no possible source of error would seem to have escaped consideration, that spirit communication is the only explanation which fits all the facts, and he altogether rejects telepathy as being inadequate.

* * * * *

I hope that those who have so far followed me in this brief inquiry into the mysteries of occult phenomena will recognise the impartiality with which I have endeavoured to conduct it. I said in the beginning that I set out with a light heart as well as an open mind. I had no idea of the extent of the territory, I knew little of its voluminous literature, of the extraordinary ramifications of occultism, of the labours of the many learned men who have spent their whole lives in seeking to separate fact from superstition. My mind was light because, frankly, I believed--with a sort of inherent, temperamental belief--that, however much the testimony concerning coincident dreams, hallucinations, mediumistic manifestations, materialisation, and clairvoyance might mystify, it was all capable of normal explanation--there was nothing supernatural about it. And so throughout the inquiry I sought to show how, chiefly, telepathy was a working hypothesis in most of the manifestations, while for the physical ones, such as table rapping, levitations, and the rest, an unknown extension of human muscular power might possibly exist to solve the mystery. So far I strode forward with some confidence. But now the time has come when my confidence deserts me. Telepathy breaks down. It is a key which by no amount of wriggling will turn the lock. "It is not," as one leading inquirer has said, "that telepathy is insufficient: it is superfluous." If the existence of disembodied spirits is proved, then all the other phenomena are also proved.

If the case of Mrs Piper--under rigid surveillance for years--has convinced some of the profoundest intellects of the day--men who began by being sceptical--that disembodied spirits are responsible for her utterances, it would certainly tend to convince me. But I carefully guarded myself from conviction until I had read the evidence--even to a _resume_ of this medium's utterances last year in London under the auspices of the Society for Psychical Research--and I assert with confidence that no metaphysical theory has ever been formulated that will account for these manifestations save one--the survival of the human personality after death. Once Mrs Piper is admitted as genuine, then it follows that the spiritistic manifestations which have puzzled mankind, not merely for generations or during the modern cult of spiritism, but ever since primitive times, become, as it were, emancipated.

"It does seem to me," said Mr Balfour, in his famous Society for Psychical Research address, "that there is at least strong ground for supposing that outside the world, as we have, from the point of science, been in the habit of conceiving it, there does lie a region, not open indeed to experimental observation in the same way as the more familiar regions of the material world are open to it, but still with regard to which some experimental information may be laboriously gleaned; and even if we cannot entertain any confident hope of discovering what laws these half-seen phenomena obey, at all events it will be some gain to have shown, not as a matter of speculation or conjecture, but as a matter of ascertained fact, that there are things in heaven and earth not hitherto dreamed of in our scientific philosophy."