WHY I BELIEVE IN TELEPATHY
Some years ago, when living near New York, I had a curious dream that
made a deep impression on me. In this dream I seemed to be at a club
or hotel, when a messenger boy entered and announced that I was wanted
up-stairs. There I found in a large room a family with whom I had been
intimate in my boyhood in Canada. I had heard nothing of them for years,
and naturally was delighted to see them. But I was struck with the
absence of one of the sons, Archie, who, as a youngster of about my own
age, had been one of my closest friends.
To my inquiry as to why he was not with them, I was told: "He's gone,"
a statement which, despite its vagueness, seemed in the dream a wholly
adequate and satisfactory reply. When I awoke, however, with the dream
details vividly in mind, I had a strong feeling that, as I said to my
wife: "Something serious must have happened to Archie Tisdale." The
sequel proved that this feeling was amply justified.
For it developed that, at about the time of my dream, he had died from
an illness of which I knew nothing until, prompted by the dream, I made
inquiries about him.
Again, many years earlier, whiling away the time one summer evening in a
green lane that led to the shore of a beautiful Canadian lake, I had an
experience which similarly gave me food for thought. I had been leaning
on a rail fence, taking in the glories of the fading sunset. It was one
of those evenings and one of those scenes of which poets delight to
sing, and as I gazed across the lake at the changing hues on the distant
hills, slowly turning from blue to gray as the twilight deepened, I gave
myself up to the pleasurable day-dreaming so common in the romantic age
of youth.
Suddenly I was roused by hearing my name called, in a tone so faint,
albeit perfectly audible, that for a moment I could fancy the call came
from beyond the lake. The next instant, however, I realized that it was
what, with my larger psychological knowledge of to-day, I should term
wholly subjective, coming from within me rather than from without; and
at the same time I distinctly got the impression that it was connected
in some way with accident or illness befalling a young lady in whom I
was then much interested--the young lady, in fact, who afterwards became
my wife.
It was in vain that I sought to dismiss this impression as a mere freak
of the imagination. So insistent did it at last become that I returned
to the house and hastily scribbled a note, stating what I had heard--or,
rather, thought I had heard--and expressing the hope that all was well.
My letter had to go to a distant city, and it was therefore several days
before an answer could arrive. I well remember how, in the interval, I
fretted and worried. But by return mail a reassuring reply reached me.
Only, most strangely, the writer added that late in the afternoon of the
day on which I heard the hallucinatory call, she had been overcome by
heat, and was for some hours thought to be in a serious condition.
Once again I heard the same weird inward calling of my name--this time
at eleven o'clock on the night of a Fourth of July celebration, when I
was lounging in a hammock on the bank of the Niagara River, watching the
last of the fireworks on the American side. I was quite alone, as the
friends with whom I was staying had retired an hour or more before; and,
for that matter, it was not their custom to address me by my first name.
Yet I heard myself called, faintly but distinctly, and seemingly from
across the water, precisely as in my previous experience.
As in that experience, also, I instinctively associated the calling with
my absent sweetheart, and wrote to her at once. Two days later, our
letters crossing, I received word that on the night of the Fourth she
had taken an overdose of headache powder, with consequences that might
have been serious had not medical assistance been promptly obtained.
But even more singular than any of the foregoing is a happening
connected with an accident that occurred to my wife while she was still
a mere schoolgirl.
With a party of young people she had gone on an outing to a Maine lake
resort, and in the dusk of a pleasant evening started for a drive in an
old-fashioned hay-wagon. There was no thought of danger, and the drive
was thoroughly enjoyed by all until, coming down a long and rather steep
hill, the breeching broke, and the horses ran away. At a sharp turn
in the road, half-way down the hill, the drive came to a sudden and
disastrous end with the overturning of the wagon.
A number of its occupants were seriously hurt, my wife, with great
presence of mind, saving herself by jumping clear of the wagon just as
it began to go over. Even so, she did not escape uninjured, her face
being badly cut.
Now comes the curious part of the affair. Early the next morning a
telegram from her mother in Boston was handed to her. It read: "Are you
hurt or ill? Wire at once. Am writing." The letter which followed gave
the amazing information that the previous night--that is, the night of
the accident--the mother had had an unusually vivid dream in which she
saw her daughter driving in a carriage, thrown out of the carriage, and
badly cut about the face. So realistic was the dream that on waking it
frightened her, and led to the sending of the telegram.
Obviously the question arises: Were these four strange experiences
representative merely of extraordinary chance coincidences, or were they
indicative of the action of some direct means of communication from mind
to mind by other than the ordinary recognized channels of communication?
Personally I am satisfied that chance alone will not suffice to account
for them, and that they are veritable instances of the workings of a
faculty latent in all mankind and operable in accordance with a true,
if as yet little understood, law of nature--call it telepathy, thought
transference, or what you will.
And in saying this, I am well aware that, even if my belief is in
agreement with that entertained by many eminent men of science--such
as Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Camille Flammarion, Charles
Richet, Theodore Flournoy, Henri Morselli, Professor W. F. Barrett and
the late William James--it is contrary to the opinion held by the
great majority of scientists at the present day. Their view, to put
it briefly, is that there is no such thing as telepathy; that chance
coincidence, deliberate or unconscious falsification, and errors of
memory are sufficient to explain most instances of alleged telepathic
communication; and that the remainder are reducible to the operation
of more or less familiar principles in the psychology of the
subconscious--notably the law of hyperæsthesia, or unusual extension
of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, etc.
I am perfectly willing to admit that much which passes as telepathy may
be thus reducible. For example, I am seated writing at the desk in my
study. Unexpectedly there flashes into my mind an idea concerning a
person of whom I have not thought for weeks or months. The next instant
the doorbell rings, and presently the maid informs me that the very
person of whom I have that moment been thinking has entered the house.
This is a not infrequent experience, as most of my readers will
concede. So frequent is it that it is absurd to attempt to account for
it on the hypothesis of chance coincidence. But neither would it be
always safe to raise the theory of telepathy. For it might well happen
that while I was seated intent on my work, with the study windows
closed, my ear nevertheless caught the sound of footsteps coming down
the street, or on my porch; that I subconsciously recognized in them my
friend's walk, and that I consequently, though without knowing why,
thought of him at that precise moment. This is assuredly a possible
explanation--though I am far from conceding that in all such cases it
is the only explanation properly applicable.
So, likewise, one must be constantly on guard against over-readily
accepting as evidences of telepathic action the feats of "mind reading"
often undertaken by way of parlor amusement. Stage "mind reading" by
professional entertainers may be safely left out of the reckoning, as
undoubtedly based on methods of conscious trickery and deceit. But in a
private gathering, where there can be no question of confederates and
deliberate signaling, surprising results are sometimes obtained in
the finding of hidden objects, etc. On the surface this would seem
explicable only on a telepathic basis, yet in reality it is commonly
brought about by "muscle reading" rather than by true "mind reading."
Experiment has shown that the effort to concentrate thought on a given
matter--a name or an object--tends to produce some form of muscular
activity, either subconscious whispering of the name thought of, or
subconscious movement in the direction of the object. If, as is the
rule, the spectators are supposed to keep their minds fixed intently on
the name or object they have selected for the "test," some of them are
apt to give these involuntary muscular hints, which the performer will
accept and act upon, it may be without being clearly conscious of the
source of his information.
Still it must be added that experiments in the "willing game" have
been carried out under conditions and with results indicating that
occasionally, at all events, successes are achieved without any such
subconscious guidance. Not so very long ago some interesting and most
striking experiments of this sort were described to me by Professor
J. H. Hyslop.
"The subject of my experiments," said he, "was a young woman of good
family, who was credited with having exceptional ability in divining the
thoughts and wishes of others. It was arranged that I should investigate
her powers, and accordingly for a period of some weeks I had frequent
sittings with her, in the presence of a few interested and trustworthy
friends.
"The plan followed in every experiment was this: The young woman having
left the room, I mentally selected some more or less complicated action
for her to perform upon her return. I then wrote down on a slip of paper
what I wished her to do, showed it to the others, and concealed it in
a book, which did not leave my hand until after the completion of the
experiment. From first to last not a word was spoken by any one, so as
to guard against any possible hyperæsthesia of hearing on her part.
"The young woman was then called back, and almost invariably proceeded
to execute the commands mentally given her. She did this so promptly
that I cannot conceive how she could possibly have got any unconscious
hints from those present, and conscious signaling was out of the
question.
"For instance, I once wrote on my paper an order for her to pick out of
a vase a bunch of keys I had hidden there, cross the room with the keys,
and place them on the mantel-piece. She entered, stood for but a moment
with her eyes closed, and then, swiftly passing to the vase, which was
on the floor, picked up the keys, turned, and deposited them on the
mantel-piece as I had mentally suggested. It was all done so quickly and
spontaneously that to my mind it afforded strong evidential proof of
true thought transference.
"She was not always successful, but some of her failures were quite
as instructive as her successes. On three occasions she executed, not
the commands I had written on the paper, but commands I had thought of
writing but for one reason or another had abandoned. No one in the room
excepting myself knew of these previous intentions, so she could have
derived her knowledge of them from the involuntary movements of no one
excepting me; and if it had actually been a matter of subconscious
guidance, it is obvious that my muscular indications would have related
not to the abandoned commands but to the commands I actually wished her
to carry out.
"All things considered, my experiments with this young woman satisfy
me that the hypothesis of subconscious guidance is not always properly
applicable, even when the 'mind reader' is in a position to see or hear
the persons testing him."
Assuming, however, for the sake of argument, that Professor Hyslop's
conclusion is erroneous, and that the involuntary movement theory does
always suffice as an explanatory hypothesis when experimenter and
subject are in the same rooms, it becomes manifestly and hopelessly
inadequate when applied to explain the transmission of ideas between
persons a considerable distance apart. Yet what I consider abundant
proof has been experimentally obtained that such transmission may, and
sometimes does, take place--occasionally in most dramatic form.
Take, for example, the experience of a French lady, Mme. Clarence
de Vaux-Royer, who, feeling uneasy one day about a friend who was
then living in the United States, thought she would cable to him.
Unfortunately it was Sunday, and her maid found the cable office closed.
Mme. de Vaux-Royer then decided to attempt a telepathic experiment, and,
knowing that her friend was mourning the death of his mother and of a
favorite sister, decided to try and impress him with an idea that they
were near him and would comfort him in any trial he might be undergoing.
She told her maid of her intention, and asked the maid to note the date,
so as to be able to give corroborative evidence if the experiment
succeeded.
This was on November 7. Ten days later the American mail brought to Mme.
de Vaux-Royer a letter from her absent friend, who, after referring to
some matters of wholly private interest, stated:
"Last night (the 7th), while I was praying, I saw, hovering above my
head, some gold circles, which gradually floated away until I could no
longer see them. At the same time I seemed to hear some one calling
to me: 'Mother! Mother! Sister Minnie!' Then the circles floated back,
approaching until they almost touched my head. Oh, how much comfort I
felt! How they inspired me with sentiments of goodness and happiness!"
From this it is manifestly only a step to the experimental production of
telepathic phantasms of the human form, as in the two instances given in
the previous chapter (the Wesermann and Sinclair experiments), and in
numerous other instances, of which one or two additional may well be
narrated here. In one, a Harvard professor, an acquaintance of Professor
James, on whose authority I quote the story, having heard of the
possibility of telepathic hallucinations, determined one evening that
he would try to make an apparition of himself appear to a friend, a
young lady who lived half a mile from his home. He did not mention his
intention to her or to anybody else. The next day he received a letter,
in which she said:
"Last night about ten o'clock I was in the dining-room at supper with B.
Suddenly I thought I saw you looking in through the crack of the door
at the end of the room, toward which I was looking. I said to B.: 'There
is Blank, looking through the crack of the door!' B., whose back was
toward the door, said: 'He can't be there. He would come right in.'
However, I got up and looked in the other room, but there was nobody
there. Now, what were you doing last night, at that time?"
At that precise moment, as he told Professor James, "Blank" had been at
home, sitting alone in his room, and trying "whether I could project my
astral body to the presence of A."
Possibly had the young lady been alone, and not actively engaged, she
might have had a more definite view of the phantasm of her absent
friend, for experience has shown that solitude and quiet are favoring
conditions for the perception of telepathic apparitions. In nearly every
instance reported to the Society for Psychical Research the percipient
of the phantasm is alone and in a more or less passive, quiescent
frame of mind. Such a condition usually obtains immediately before or
immediately after sleep, and it is then that experimental apparitions
are seen most plainly. Though occasionally they are vividly experienced
when the percipient is in a state of the most active consciousness,
as in the following case, reported by the agent--that is, the person
sending the telepathic message--and confirmed by the percipient, an
English clergyman now dead, the Reverend W. Stainton Moses.
"One evening," runs the agent's account, "I resolved to try to appear
to Z., at some miles distance. I did not inform him beforehand of the
intended experiment; but retired to rest shortly before midnight with
thoughts intently fixed on Z., with whose rooms and surroundings,
however, I was quite unacquainted. I soon fell asleep, and awoke next
morning unconscious of anything having taken place. On seeing Z. a few
days afterward, I inquired:
"'Did anything happen at your rooms on Saturday night?'
"'Yes,' replied he, 'a great deal happened. I had been sitting over
the fire with M., smoking and chatting. About twelve-thirty he rose to
leave, and I let him out myself. I returned to the fire to finish my
pipe, when I saw you sitting in the chair just vacated by him.
"'I looked intently at you, and then took up a newspaper to assure
myself I was not dreaming, but on laying it down I saw you still there.
While I gazed without speaking, you faded away.'"
Of course in the case of all single experiments like these,[10] the
skeptically inclined might plausibly fall back on the theory of chance
coincidence. But it is impossible seriously to entertain this hypothesis
in cases where experiments in the telepathic transmission of ideas have
been carried on repeatedly and with an astonishing measure of success.
[10] Accounts of other experiments of the same type will be
found in my book, "The Riddle of Personality," pp. 140-142.
To mention only the most notable experiments of this systematic kind,
I would call attention to the results obtained by two sets of English
investigators, the first comprising two ladies named Clarissa Miles and
Hermione Ramsden, the second two gentlemen, F. R. Burt and F. L. Usher.
As I see it, indeed, the Miles-Ramsden and Burt-Usher experiments have
the additional interest that they not only make clear some of the
fundamental laws of genuine thought transference, but also show just
why it is that we can never hope to obtain such absolute control of the
telepathic process as to be able to send mental messages from one to
another with the same ease and certainty as we now send ordinary
telegrams and marconigrams.
This inability of control has long been a stock objection against belief
in telepathy, especially among the scientifically trained. "Not until
we can repeat at will, and with invariable success, the experiment
of direct transference of thought, will we accept telepathy as
established," say these scientific skeptics. "We know that if, in our
chemical and physical laboratories, we bring such and such elements
together, such and such action will always follow. We must be able to do
as much with telepathy before we will accept it." But the Miles-Ramsden
and Burt-Usher experiments show that there are excellent reasons for
affirming that telepathy is a fact, and that nevertheless its processes
cannot be governed with the certitude possible in the case of chemical
and physical processes. There are factors involved which elude, and must
always elude, the directive control of the experimenter.
In the experiments by the Misses Miles and Ramsden it was arranged that,
at a stated hour of a stated evening in each week, Miss Ramsden--who
acted throughout as the percipient, or receiver of the telepathic
messages--was to remain for a few minutes in a condition of complete
passivity, and immediately afterwards was to note on a post-card
whatever ideas came into her mind during that time. The post-card was
then to be mailed to Miss Miles, who, for her part, was to think of Miss
Ramsden at intervals during the day agreed on, and in the evening was to
make a post-card entry--to be mailed to her friend forthwith--of the
idea or ideas she had tried to convey to her telepathically. Thus, in
the event of achieving any degree of success, they would have a perfect
documentary record to substantiate their claims.
As to the distance separating them, it ranged from a few score to
several hundred miles. They made, in fact, three distinct series of
experiments, with about a year's interval between each series. During
the first they were at their homes, Miss Miles in London, Miss Ramsden
in Buckinghamshire. During the second, Miss Ramsden was in Inverness, in
northern Scotland, and Miss Miles visiting friends in various parts of
England. The third series was carried on while Miss Miles was making a
tour of the beautiful Ardennes region of France and Belgium, Miss
Ramsden at the same time being again in the Scottish Highlands.
Thus there was a progressive increase in the distance between them for
each series, but this seems to have made no difference in the result.
In each, as the attested record shows, Miss Ramsden succeeded in
getting, completely or in part, no fewer than two out of every five of
the messages her co-experimenter tried to "telepath" to her. Such a
proportion is clearly too high to be explained away on the theory of
chance coincidence, and this theory is rendered still more untenable
by the attendant circumstances which the record reveals.
On one occasion Miss Miles, who is an artist, had been busy in the
afternoon painting a model's hands. She thought of this when evening
came, and determined to endeavor to impress Miss Ramsden with the idea
"hands". In her post-card, written at seven o'clock the same evening,
Miss Ramsden stated that of several ideas which had come into her mind
at the experiment-hour the "most vivid" was "a little black hand, quite
small, much smaller than a child's, well formed, and the fingers
straight. This was the chief thing.
Similarly, having noticed at a meeting in London a curious pair of
spectacles worn by a gentleman seated near her, Miss Miles, on returning
home in the early evening, wrote down the word "spectacles," with the
idea of "telepathing" it to Miss Ramsden. The latter's post-card entry
for that evening noted that "spectacles" was "the only idea that came to
me after waiting a long time."
Again, while on a sketching expedition to an English village, Miss Miles
was much amused by an adventure with a large white pig. She selected
this pig as the subject of her next telepathic communication, the result
of which Miss Ramsden, writing as almost always on the night of the
experiment, thus reported:
"You were out of doors rather late, a cold, raw evening, near a railway
station; there was a pig with a long snout, and some village children.
It was getting dark."
On the other hand, in several instances Miss Ramsden's impressions
contained much which Miss Miles had not consciously sought to convey to
her. And this brings us to what is unquestionably the most important
feature of the experiments.
As was said, about two out of every five messages were correctly
received, in whole or in part. But it frequently happened in the case
of the seeming failures, that while Miss Ramsden did not get the ideas
which Miss Miles was endeavoring to send to her, she did get ideas
relating to people, things and events much in Miss Miles's mind at that
moment, or which had been more or less in her mind during the day of the
experiment.
To illustrate, Miss Miles once tried to make Miss Ramsden think of
"pussies, or cats." What Miss Ramsden did think of was "a manuscript,
pinned by a patent fastener in one corner." And, oddly enough, Miss
Miles had spent a good part of that afternoon reading to a friend from
a manuscript "fastened together," as the friend has testified, "with a
patent fastener." Similarly, during Miss Miles's visit to the English
village above mentioned, Miss Ramsden's report for one experiment ran:
"First I saw dimly a house, but I think that you wish me to see a little
girl with brown hair down her back, tied with a ribbon in the usual way.
She is sitting at a table with her back turned and seems very busy
indeed. I think she is cutting out scraps with a pair of scissors. She
has on a white pinafore, and I should guess her age to be between eight
and twelve."
Miss Miles had not been trying to make Miss Ramsden think of anything of
the sort. But the description fitted perfectly her landlady's little
daughter, of whom the mother, Mrs. Laura Lovegrove, says:
"I have a little girl aged eleven, with brown hair, tied with a ribbon
in the usual way. She wears a pinafore, and, being ill, often amuses
herself cutting out scraps."
Another time, when the hour for the experiment arrived, Miss Miles
forgot all about it, being busy writing letters to some friends. In
particular she was absorbed in framing an answer to an important letter
from a Polish artist, written in a peculiar script. Miss Ramsden's
report for that evening was:
"I felt that you were not thinking of me, but were reading a letter in a
sort of half-German writing. The letters have very long tails to them.
Is there any truth in that?"[11]
[11] The experiments of the Misses Miles and Ramsden are
reported in detail in the _Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research_, vol. xxi, and in the _Journal of the
Society for Psychical Research_, vol. viii. The report of the
Burt-Usher experiments appears in the _Annales des Sciences
Psychiques_, January and February, 1910.
Significant also is the fact that precisely the same sort of thing
occurred in the more recent experiments between Mr. Burt and Mr. Usher,
who, like Miss Miles and Miss Ramsden, conducted their investigations
in a careful, methodical, conscientious way, and over a long period of
time.
Mr. Usher, like Miss Miles, invariably acted as the sender of the
telepathic communications, while Mr. Burt was the percipient. From first
to last the latter remained in London, while Mr. Usher was part of the
time in Bristol, more than one hundred miles from London, and part of
the time in the Austrian city of Prague, a thousand miles away. On each
experiment-evening it was Mr. Usher's practice, at the hour previously
agreed upon, to sit alone in a dimly lighted room, draw some design on a
piece of paper, and remain for fifteen minutes thinking intently of the
design and "willing" to transmit it to Mr. Burt, who, at the same hour,
would be seated in a darkened room in London, noting the images that
passed before his mind's eye, and, at the expiration of fifteen minutes,
setting down on paper the one or two that had seemed to him most vivid.
Nearly fifty experiments were thus made, with results defying any
explanation by the theory of chance coincidence. And, as in the
Miles-Ramsden experiments--for the matter of that, as also in Professor
Hyslop's experiments--it at times happened that when Mr. Burt totally
failed to draw a design corresponding with that which Mr. Usher had
drawn, Mr. Burt's design did correspond with images demonstrably in Mr.
Usher's mind at or immediately before the moment of the experiment.
Thus, one evening in Prague Mr. Usher tried to make Mr. Burt get the
impression of an oblong composed of numerous small dots. Instead Mr.
Burt saw and designed a peculiar plume-like ornamentation, which Mr.
Usher instantly recognized as a picture of part of the unusual carving
on the table at which he had been seated. On another occasion--the
eighteenth experiment--Mr. Usher sought to transmit a crude design
of a flower in a pot. What Mr. Burt actually drew was an excellent
representation of a lighted cigarette with the smoke curling away from
it.
"And," says Mr. Usher, "the evening that he drew this was the first
evening I had smoked a cigarette while experimenting with him."
Such incidents, with those cited in connection with the experiments of
Professor Hyslop and the Misses Miles and Ramsden, in my opinion go to
show exactly why it is that one cannot hope to obtain unfailing control
over the process of telepathy. For they indicate that at bottom genuine
thought transference depends not so much on conscious _willing_ as on
subconscious _feeling_. It is not necessarily the things about which
one thinks most strongly, but rather things which are tinged with some
emotional coloring, that are most likely to become subjects of
telepathic communication.
And these experiments further indicate that, on the receiver's part
also, the mechanism involved in the transmission of telepathic messages
belongs rather to the subconscious than to the conscious portion of the
mind. In order to allow the emergence of the transmitted ideas into the
field of conscious knowledge, there seems to be always necessary some
form of psychical "dissociation"--as in a trance, dream, reverie, or
moment of absentmindedness. Such states of dissociation are not always
easy to bring about voluntarily; and when they are brought about,
whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it by no means follows that ideas
received telepathically will forthwith and rapidly rise above the
threshold of consciousness.
For, as recent psychological experiment and observation have shown, in
dissociated states the tendency is for the emergence chiefly of ideas
which, through their emotional associations, are of deep personal
significance--as when we dream of persons or things associated
with events that once affected us profoundly. Every one of us has
subconscious reminiscences of this sort, and with these personal
subconscious reminiscences any ideas which have been transmitted
telepathically have of necessity to compete for emergence. They may
get through or they may not; whether they will get through apparently
depends in large measure on the degree of their own emotional intensity.
Hence it is that that scientist is doomed to perpetual unbelief who
boasts that he will never place credence in telepathy until he can
play with it as he plays with the chemicals in his test tubes. One
cannot handle feelings as one can handle a chemical compound, nor can
one manipulate at will the subconscious as though it were a physical
substance. Hence, too, the case for telepathy must always rest
less on experimental evidence--strong though the Miles-Ramsden and
Burt-Usher experiments demonstrate that this sometimes is--than on
well-authenticated instances of spontaneous occurrence, which have
been recorded in ever-increasing volume since systematic investigation
of the subject was first undertaken a scant quarter of a century ago.
In such instances, the records further show, one of the commonest forms
in which the telepathic message is received is that of an auditory
hallucination, as in the "voice" heard by me on the shore of the
Canadian lake and on the bank of Niagara River. When there is connected
with the sending of the message some supreme crisis in the career of
the sender--the crisis, it may be, of the moment of death--the auditory
hallucination is sometimes of such a nature as to make its dire meaning
almost self-evident. In this respect I know of nothing more striking
than a strange case reported, with ample corroborative evidence, to the
Society for Psychical Research.
The narrator, a well-to-do Englishman, was living at the time in a
country house. It was early spring, and on the night of his telepathic
experience there had been a slight snowfall, just sufficient to make
the ground white. After dinner he spent the evening writing until ten
o'clock, when, to continue the story in his own words:
"I got up and left the room, taking a lamp from the hall table, and
placing it on a small table standing in a recess of the window in the
breakfast-room. The curtains were not drawn across the window. I had
just taken down from the nearest bookcase a volume of 'Macgillivray's
British Birds' for reference, and was in the act of reading the passage,
the book held close to the lamp, and my shoulder touching the window
shutter, and in a position when almost the slightest sound would be
heard, when I distinctly heard the front gate opened and shut again with
a clap, and footsteps advancing at a run up the drive; when opposite the
window the steps changed from sharp and distinct on gravel to dull and
less clear on the grass-slip below the window, and at the same time I
was conscious that some one or something stood close to me outside, only
the thin shutter and a sheet of glass dividing us.
"I could hear the quick, panting, labored breathing of the messenger,
or whatever it was, as if trying to recover breath before speaking.
Had he been attracted by the light through the shutter? Suddenly, like
a gunshot, inside, outside, and all around, there broke out the most
appalling shriek--a prolonged wail of horror, which seemed to freeze
the blood. It was not a single shriek, but more prolonged, commencing
in a high key, and then less and less, wailing away toward the north,
and becoming weaker and weaker as it receded in sobbing pulsations of
intense agony.
"Of my fright and horror I can say nothing--increased tenfold when I
walked into the dining-room and found my wife sitting quietly at her
work close to the window, in the same line and distant only ten or
twelve feet from the corresponding window in the breakfast-room. _She
had heard nothing._ I could see that at once; and from the position in
which she was sitting, I knew she could not have failed to hear any
noise outside and any footsteps on the ground. Perceiving I was alarmed
about something, she asked:
"'What is the matter?'
"'Only some one outside,' I said.
"'Then, why do you not go out and see? You always do when you hear any
unusual noise.'
"'There is something queer and dreadful about this noise,' I replied.
'I dare not face it.'"
Nothing more was heard, and early next morning he made a careful search
in the grounds around the house, but not a footprint was to be seen in
the snow, which had ceased falling long before the occurrence of the
wailing cry. A little later in the day, however, word arrived that at
ten o'clock the previous night one of his tenants, who lived half a mile
distant and with whom he had spent the afternoon, had committed suicide
by drinking prussic acid.
He had gone up to his bedroom, his groom testified at the inquest,
had mixed the poison in a tumbler of water, drank it off, and, with
a terrible scream, fell dead on the floor.
Fortunately, telepathic hallucinations do not usually come with such
intensity or in such an alarming form. Often they are mere vague
impressions that something unpleasant or disastrous is occurring
to a relative or friend, and, as in the case of self-originating
hallucinations like that reported by Lady Eardley, they occasionally
impel to action that averts disaster. It was thus, to give a single
instance, in an experience reported[12] by William Blakeway, a
Staffordshire Englishman:
[12] In "Phantasms of the Living," vol. ii, pp. 377-378.
"I was in my usual place at chapel one Sunday afternoon, when all at
once I thought I must go home. Seemingly against my will, I took my hat.
When reaching the chapel gates I felt an impulse that I must hasten home
as quick as possible, and I ran with all my might without stopping to
take breath. Meeting a friend who asked why I hurried so, I passed him
almost without notice.
"When I reached home I found the house full of smoke, and my little
boy, three years old, all on fire, alone in the house. I at once tore
the burning clothes from off him, and was just in time to save his life.
It has always been a mystery to me, as no person whispered a word to me,
and no one knew anything about the fire till after I made the alarm at
home, which was more than a quarter of a mile from the chapel."
Here the wholly subconscious nature of the phenomenon, on the
percipient's part at all events, is plainly evident. It is even more
evident in all cases where, as frequently occurs, the telepathic message
is received in a dream like that which was recorded in the opening
paragraphs of this chapter. As is to be expected, too, in telepathic
dreams we often find an element of symbolism. The news of illness, of
accident, of death, or whatever it may be, is not conveyed directly,
but indirectly, amid a mass of more or less relevant details of dream
imagery.
A couple of years ago I received a letter from a lady living in
Brooklyn, describing an experience that admirably illustrates this
point. Her dream, however, was of such an intimate character that the
names of the persons and places must be suppressed. Five years ago, this
lady writes, her daughter became interested in a young man, Mr. V.,
whose suit, however, the mother discouraged. Afterwards her daughter
met, fell in love with, and was happily married to a physician in the
Government service. She soon went abroad with her husband, to a remote
and isolated post. My informant continues:
"We could not hear from them all winter because they were ice-bound, but
my thoughts of them were always most delightful, for their last letters
were bubbling over with happiness, and I was lovingly busy getting
things ready for them.
"Mr. V. had almost passed from my mind, when one morning, in the middle
of June, I arose, took a bath, and, having a half-hour to spare, went
back to bed again, falling into a deep sleep.
"Suddenly Mr. V. appeared to me in one of my lower rooms. It seemed
to be breakfast time, and I invited him to have some. He accepted,
and we sat together for some time, but I do not remember any of our
conversation. Suddenly he arose, faced me, and, looking straight into
my eyes, said emphatically:
"'Now she is mine! Nothing you can do will ever separate us again! This
time she will belong to me!'
"I awoke with a start, much frightened. Then, realizing the situation, I
thanked Heaven she was safely married, and promptly put the dream from
me. This was about eight o'clock. At ten a despatch reached me saying
that my daughter's husband had died, from the result of a boating
accident two weeks before."
Or, when apprehended in dream, the telepathic message may be so
distorted that its true meaning cannot possibly be recognized
immediately. A characteristic case of this kind occurred at the time
of President Lincoln's assassination, though it is only recently that
it was for the first time reported in detail by Mrs. E. H. Hughes,
daughter of the San Francisco architect, S. C. Bugbee. It should be
explained that before removing to California from Massachusetts in
1863, the Bugbees were well acquainted with the Booth family, and
that John Wilkes Booth was an especial favorite of Mrs. Bugbee's. Says
Mrs. Hughes, in her report to the American Institute for Scientific
Research:[13]
[13] _Journal of the American Society for Psychical
Research_, vol. iv, pp. 210-217.
"One night my mother woke my father suddenly, saying: 'Oh, Charles! I
have had such a terrible dream! I dreamed that John Wilkes Booth shot
me! It seemed that he sent me seats for a private box in a theater, and
I took some young ladies with me. Between the acts he came to me, and
asked me how I liked the play. I exclaimed, "Why, John Booth! I am
surprised that you could put such a questionable play upon the stage. I
am mortified to think that I have brought young ladies to see it." At
that he raised a pistol, and shot me in the back of the neck. It seems
as if I felt a pain there now.' After a while my mother fell asleep, and
dreamed the same thing a second time.
"The next morning came the terrible news which plunged the nation into
grief and mourning. Almost at the hour of my mother's dream, President
Lincoln was assassinated; shot, in the back of the neck, in a private
box at a theater, by John Wilkes Booth."
On the other hand, there may be no symbolism or distortion, the
dream corresponding so realistically with the event as to make its
significance manifest. To give an illustration, Mrs. Morris Griffith,
an Englishwoman, reports:
"On the night of Saturday, the eleventh of March, I awoke in much alarm,
having seen my eldest son, then at St. Paul de Loanda on the southwest
coast of Africa, looking dreadfully ill and emaciated, and I heard his
voice distinctly calling to me. I was so disturbed I could not sleep
again, but every time I closed my eyes the appearance recurred, and his
voice sounded distinctly, calling me 'Mamma!' I felt greatly depressed
all through the next day, which was Sunday, but I did not mention it to
my husband, as he was an invalid, and I feared to disturb him. Strange
to say, he also suffered from intense low spirits all day, and we were
both unable to take dinner, he rising from the table, saying: 'I don't
care what it costs, I must have the boy back,' alluding to his eldest
son.
"I mentioned my dream and the bad night I had had to two or three
friends, but begged that they would say nothing of it to Mr. Griffith.
The next day a letter arrived, containing some photos of my son, saying
he had had fever, but was better, and hoped immediately to leave for a
much more healthy station. We heard no more till the ninth of May, when
a letter arrived with the news of our son's death from a fresh attack
of fever, on the night of the eleventh of March, and adding that just
before his death he kept calling repeatedly for me."[14]
[14] "Phantasms of the Living," vol. i, pp. 343-344.
It is only a short transition from such a dream as this to a waking
hallucination in which--as in the cases of experimental occurrence
mentioned above, and those other cases detailed in the preceding
chapter--phantom forms are discerned at the moment when the person seen
is threatened by some danger or is passing through the supreme crisis of
death.
But now, accepting telepathy as an established fact, the problem
remains: How are we to explain it? What is the mechanism by which one
person is able to transmit messages directly and instantaneously to
another person although they may be half the world apart?
To this question, it must frankly be admitted, no positive answer can
as yet be returned. But some extremely plausible hypotheses have been
advanced, not by mere theorists but by eminent men of science, who,
themselves affirming the actuality of telepathy, have given much thought
to the problem of its mode of operation.
Sir William Crookes, for example, calling attention to the marvelous but
undisputed facts of ethereal vibration as evidenced by the phenomena of
wireless telegraphy and the Röntgen rays, urges that here we have quite
possibly an adequate explanation of the mystery of telepathy on a wholly
naturalistic basis--that is to say, a basis which enables us to accept
telepathy without dislocating our entire conception of the physical
universe.
"It seems to me," he suggests, "that in these rays [Röntgen rays] we
may have a possible way of transmitting intelligence which, with a few
reasonable postulates, may supply the key to much that is obscure in
psychical research. Let it be assumed that these rays, or rays of even
higher frequency, can pass into the brain and act on some nervous center
there. Let it be conceived that the brain contains a center which uses
these rays as the vocal chords use sound vibrations (both being under
the command of intelligence), and sends them out, with the velocity
of light, to impinge on the receiving ganglion of another brain. In
this same way the phenomena of telepathy, and the transmission of
intelligence from one sensitive to another through long distances, seem
to come into the domain of law and can be grasped."[15]
[15] Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical
Research, January 29, 1897.
This undoubtedly is the explanation that most strongly commends itself
to those scientists who courageously acknowledge their belief in
telepathy. Nor do they see any objection to it in the fact that people
apparently are affected by the telepathic impulse only at certain times.
For the brain of both sender and receiver may conceivably, on the
analogy of wireless telegraphy, be set to transmit and receive
telepathic communications only when attuned to vibrations of a certain
amplitude. There is, however, as Sir William Crookes himself has
recognized, another and really formidable objection to this vibratory
hypothesis.
It is found in the fact that, assuming telepathic messages to be
conveyed by a system of infinitely minute waves in the ether, we
logically have also to assume that these waves would still obey what is
known as the law of inverse squares. By this is meant that, spreading on
every side in ever-expanding waves, they would lose power in proportion
to the square of the distance from their source. Consequently, it would
not only require a tremendous initial energy to project them any great
distance, but the farther they were sent the feebler they would become,
so that in the case of a percipient remote from the agent, either the
telepathic message would not be received at all or at most it would be
received in exceedingly attenuated fashion. Whereas the fact is that,
according to the results of such experimentation as that which I have
described, complete failure often occurs when the experimenters are only
a few yards apart, and brilliant successes are sometimes achieved at
distances of hundreds of miles.
This consideration has led some thinkers--notably Sir Oliver Lodge,
Professor W. F. Barrett, and the late F. W. H. Myers--to abandon
outright all attempt at an explanation on a naturalistic basis, and to
advance instead the view that telepathy is not explicable in physical
terms because it is a wholly psychical process--"a direct and
supersensuous communion of mind with mind." After all, though, as Mr.
Frank Podmore has pointed out, this view rests simply on a negation--our
present inability to conceive a thoroughly satisfactory explanation;
and at any time scientific research may remove that inability, as has
happened again and again in the past in the case of other and seemingly
equally inexplicable phenomena.
Meanwhile, all that we, scientists and laymen alike, need do, is to
remember that inability to explain gives us of itself no warrant to
deny. We must acquaint ourselves with the facts before accepting or
rejecting them. And for myself I can only say that the actuality of
telepathy has to my mind been absolutely proved. With Sir Oliver Lodge:
"I am prepared to confess that the weight of testimony is sufficient
to satisfy my own mind that such things do undoubtedly occur; that the
distance between England and India is no barrier to the sympathetic
communication of intelligence in some way of which we are at present
ignorant; that just as a signaling-key in London causes a telegraphic
instrument to respond instantaneously in Teheran--which is an everyday
occurrence--so the danger or death of a distant child, or brother, or
husband, may be signaled without wire or telegraph clerk, to the heart
of a human being fitted to be the recipient of such a message."