There is a widespread belief that phenomena relating to spirit are impossible to study and, even if they could, should not be. The majesty of the Divinity would be tarnished by attempting to bring Him into the laboratory. Likewise, questions about an afterlife are religious not scientific, a matter of belief not of science. Besides, any kind of afterlife is impossible, thus not amenable to the tools of science. However, ever since the methods of science were developed in the 16th and 17th centuries there were some people, religious as almost everyone in those days was, who believed that questions about life after death were so important that perhaps science could provide some answers.
Most of the earliest psychical research (parapsychology) involved questions about the afterlife. Alfred Russell Wallace, co-developer with Darwin of the theory of evolution by natural selection, was an enthusiastic supporter. While, for Wallace, Christianity’s approach to understanding the world was antiquated and unconvincing, it did seem to him that there is some kind of spiritual or moral force at work which has to do with that something we call the human soul. While his and Darwin’s theory of natural selection could explain things of the physical world, perhaps the soul guided by this spiritual force develops along other lines. Whatever this as yet undiscovered spiritual power might be, Wallace became convinced science has the responsibility to investigate it. Any evidence supporting this possibility could only be found by looking into the realms of the supernatural.
For Wallace and other early pioneers in psychical research, the most obvious examples of supernatural phenomena, particularly involving the possibility that the soul continues on after the death of the body, were those occurring within spiritualism and the activities of mediums. To investigate this possibility, Wallace began attending séances with London mediums. What he soon discovered was nothing that approached the level of scientific proof but was strange enough to suggest that something was going on. A sitting with Daniel Douglas Home, the most famous medium of the day, was particularly impressive, leaving Wallace with what he described as a “solid basis of fact.” Surely, he said, other intelligent men must be troubled, as he was, by mysteries “which science ignored because it could not explain.” (Blum, 2006, p. 39)
British Society for Psychical Research and William James
Three people, less well known today, made particularly important contributions to developing the science of psi research, Henry Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, and Edmund Gurney. Together in 1882 the three friends founded the British Society for Psychical Research. William Crookes and Alfred Russel Wallace attended this first meeting, along with physicist William Barrett, who had been investigating thought transference (mental telepathy).
Membership in the SPR grew rapidly and soon involved more than 200 people, including politicians, clergymen, painters, spiritualists, and writers such as essayist and social critic John Ruskin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the American writer Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). The best known of all the early supporters of the newly established BSPR was another American, William James.
In 1885 James’ one-year-old son Herman died of pneumonia. Although he had hoped that perhaps Henry might enjoy some “promise beyond life on earth,” as he put it in a letter, James had no intention to consult a medium in hopes of gaining possible evidence of this. Yet, in what he always considered a remarkable coincidence, this happened.
The medium who was to become involved was Lenora Piper, the 26-year-old wife of a middle-class Boston shopkeeper. From early childhood she had been able to tell people things about their lives that she couldn’t have known. In the years following her 16th birthday, Lenora had been conscious of a dull ache across her midsection that grew stronger after the birth of her first child. Doctors could not diagnose the cause, so she ended up visiting a clairvoyant, who claimed he contacted spirits to aid in healing. When he touched her she grew dizzy and tumbled to the floor. Voices started ringing in her head. Responding to one, she got up, went to a table, scribbled a note, and handed it to one of the men waiting to see the psychic. Upon reading the note, the man, a Cambridge judge, announced that it was a remarkable message from his dead son.
Hearing of this strangers started coming to the Pipers’ home, and asking Leonora to give them similar messages from the beyond. One was William James’ mother-in-law, Eliza Gibbens. After attending the sitting and, in fact, conducting an investigation of her own, Mrs. Gibbens enthusiastically related to James that the names and facts Leonora Piper had provided about family members was incomprehensible without supernormal powers.
James considered himself something of an expert on psychic performances, as he and the Reverend Minot Savage had been visiting the more notable Boston mediums. What they had discovered through meticulously investigation was only examples of brazen fraud. Nevertheless, he remained intrigued by the possibility that there might be some kernel of truth somewhere, and he decided to personally examine Mrs. Piper.
Accompanied by his wife Alice, James visited Mrs. Piper for a sitting. They did not give their names, and his mother-in-law on her earlier visit had not disclosed their identities. James had coached Alice to observe strict rules of psychic research by not providing any information about their family whatsoever, not asking or answering leading questions, and merely listening politely.
After engaging in small talk, Leonora fell into a trance, her voice deepened a bit, and she began repeating the names she had previously given Alice’s mother. She then began fumbling for other names, which seemed to come with difficulty. Alice’s father’s name of Gibbens she first pronounced as Niblin, then Giblin, before getting the right name, as if she couldn’t initially pronounce the words or couldn’t quite hear them right. She went on to add details to the names, and then asked about a dead child. This wasn’t too unusual as many couples had lost children, but, after saying it was a small boy, she fumbled for a name, perhaps Herrin, before concluding that it sounded more like Herman. James as he later wrote, became increasingly uneasy. Could she be making incredibly lucky guesses about the personal life of strangers and their relatives? Could it be, regardless of how scientifically impossible it seemed, that she was possessed of supernormal powers?
Concerned that he might, in some unknown way, be duped by the medium, James asked his partner the Reverend Savage to investigate. Savage visited Mrs. Piper anonymously only telling her he’d heard about her séances and wanted to observe one. At the first sitting Mrs. Piper began talking about his father who had died years before in Maine, saying that he was called Savage Judson, his middle name used by only his father and half-brother, also deceased. She then correctly named this half-brother, who had died in Michigan two years before and had never been in Boston, and described, with painful accuracy in both words and pantomime, the way he had died. It wasn’t only the details Mrs. Piper was able to provide that was so unnerving, but also the way she talked and acted while in trance, as if these dead people were somehow there beside her.
Mrs. Piper, like many other medium’s, had a spirit guide or control, who functioned to relay messages from the deceased and to summon others who might want to communicate to the sitters. Her control was a French man who called himself Dr. Phinuit and claimed to have lived from 1790 to 1860. In her séances, after going into trance, he would take over. Her voice would become deeper with a French accent, and her personality would change from gentle and eager to please, to abrasive and forceful
On March 6, 1889, in a sitting with Mrs. Piper, William James’ wife Alice and his younger brother Robertson asked about the health of the brother’s aunt who had been sick. Suddenly Mrs. Piper threw back her head and said in startled way, “Why Aunt Kate’s here. All around me I hear voices saying, Aunt Kate has come.” Upon questioning her control, Dr. Phinuit, related that the aunt had died early that morning, maybe around 2:00 am. Robertson immediately went directly to Hodgson’s office where he found his brother William. Hodgson wrote a statement about what happened, which the three signed, indicating the date and time and that no news had been received by any of them about the aunt’s possible death. A few hours later, after James had returned to his home, he received a telegram from his cousin saying that his aunt had died early that morning, shortly after midnight.
Occasionally a sitting with Mrs. Piper involved communication that was so clear and so personal that anyone would have been hard pressed to deny that the spirit of a deceased individual was actually present. One such case involved the parents of a five year-old girl nicknamed Kakie, who had died a few weeks earlier. At a sitting, with no names revealed, they presented a silver medal and string of buttons that she had once played with. The transcription of the sitting reads as follows:
Where is Papa? Want Papa. [The father takes from the table a silver medal and hands it to Mrs. Piper] I want this—want to bite it. [She used to do this.] … I want you to call Dodo [her name for her brother George]. Tell Dodo I am happy. [Puts hands to throat] No sore throat any more. [She had pain and distress of the throat and tongue] … Papa, want to go wide [ride] horsey [She pleaded this throughout her illness] Every day I go to see horsey. I like that horsey … Eleanor. I want Eleanor. [Her little sister. She called her much during her last illness.] I want my buttons. Where is Dinah? I want Dinah. [Dinah was an old rag doll, not with us]. I want Bagie [her name for her sister Margaret]. I want to go to Bagie … I want Bagie … (Blum, p.218)
On a December evening in 1905 Mrs. Piper experienced a disturbing dream in which she saw a man ahead of her who raised his hand to block her way. She was startled by the appearance of that hand with its strong long fingers and callused palm. It looked remarkably like the hands of Richard Hodgson, a prominent investigator for the BSPR. In the morning she told her daughters what she saw and that she was certain the man was Hodgson. An hour later the morning’s newspaper contained an account of Hodgson’s death.
Three weeks later, while delivering a written message in a sitting, Mrs. Piper’s hand began to shake so badly she initially dropped her pencil. She managed to write the word Hodgson. A few days later in another sitting the message came through “I am Hodgson…. I heard your call . . . Piper instrument. I am happy exceedingly difficult to come very. I understand why Myers came seldom. I must leave. I cannot stay. I cannot remain today.” Two weeks later in a sitting with Mrs. Piper, attended by William James wife Alice and son Billy, the Hodgson personality again appeared. “Why, there’s Billy! Is that Mrs. James and Billy? God bless you! I have found my way, I am here, have patience with me. All is well with me. Don’t miss me. Where’s William? Give him my best wishes.” As the Hodgson personality began to flicker in and out of Mrs. Piper’s sittings, it became obvious that this presented another opportunity to attempt to prove that spirits of the dead do return. Yet who possessed the necessary objectivity, precision, and restraint to do so. No one, James concluded, except himself. (Blum,pp. 272 – 274)
In analyzing the messages coming through Mrs. Piper from the Hodgson personality, James recalled there were times during the sittings when it seemed that the Hodgson personality was so real he broke out in a chill. Yet, there were tedious hours of what he described as appearing to be some “peculiar creation derived from Mrs. Piper’s interpretation of the masculine personality.” But James persisted in plowing through piles of transcripts from the sittings hoping some more concrete and verifiable piece of information might emerge.
The Hodgson personality in one sitting asked a friend to destroy some letters he had written to a woman and hidden in his desk. James couldn’t locate the letters and asked for more information about the woman. The response was “There was a time when I greatly cared for her and I did not wish it known in the ears of others. I think she can corroborate this. I am getting hazy. I must leave.” When he returned, another detail was added. The last time he had seen her “I proposed marriage to her, but she refused me.”
James had never heard a word from Hodgson while he was alive about this woman, and he doubted this claim, but he wrote to her nevertheless. Her reply was completely a surprise. “Regarding the utterances of Mrs. Piper, I have no difficulty in telling you the circumstances on which she may have founded her communications. Years ago, Mr. H asked me to marry him, and some letters were exchanged between us which he may have kept.”
James described himself as feeling a leap of euphoria. Here in this very secret part of Hodgson’s life seemed to be the proof he was seeking of the “return of the Spirit.” But, being the very careful investigator he was, James recognized he needed to establish that this was really private knowledge unknown to anyone. He interviewed a dozen of Hodgson’s friends who knew nothing about this relationship. But one person did say that Hodgson occasionally consulted with Mrs. Piper’s control about his private life. There was thus a very remote possibility that she knew about the hidden letters and the proposal. She hadn’t shown any signs of such knowledge, but it might just be hidden away in a “trance memory.” James didn’t believe he could call this incident proof of spirit communication. Unfortunately, by such strict standards, he concluded acceptable proof might never be found.
William James died in 1910. He had been friends with and championed the efforts of the founders of psychical research, and had himself taken part in their investigations, in spite of severe criticism of some of his professional colleagues. Recalling that Guerney and Meyers had once estimated that perhaps five percent of the paranormal claims they had investigated were legitimate, he had steadfastly supported the particular importance of studying that small number.
“Either I or the scientist is of course a fool,” James wrote in his last essay on psychical research, “with our opposite views of probability here…. I may be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of better-judging posterity; I may be raising myself to honor; I am willing to take the risk, for what I shall write is my truth, as I now see it.” (Blum (p. 313)
Buum, D. (2006). Ghost Hunters