AUTOMATIC SPEAKING AND WRITING
There is a widespread belief that spiritism--or spiritualism, as it is
more commonly known--is on the wane, and will soon be relegated to the
limbo of extinct religions. But the facts indicate otherwise. At a
conservative estimate, there are to-day, in the United States alone, no
fewer than 75,000 avowed spiritists, in more or less regular attendance
at the meetings of nearly 450 spiritist societies, and possessing church
property valued at $2,000,000; and more than 1,500,000 believers who,
without openly identifying themselves with any society, accept the
ministrations of 1,500 public and 10,000 private mediums. Spiritism has
even "followed the flag" into the Philippines, séances being held at
Manila and elsewhere.
This certainly is a remarkable showing for a moribund religion, and
what makes it more remarkable is the fact that spiritism, from its very
beginnings sixty years ago, has been permeated with fraud. Its founders,
the Fox sisters, daughters of a New York farmer, were naughty little
girls who amused themselves by making strange noises which superstitious
persons interpreted as communications from the dead. This proving
profitable to the sisters Fox, the business of producing "spirit
knockings" spread from town to town, and forthwith modern spiritism was
born. Since then its record has been a long and dismal catalogue of
swindles exposed by skeptical investigators. Scarcely a month passes
without a story of some sensational exposé; yet, disproving all
predictions to the contrary, spiritism continues to expand, constantly
welcoming new recruits to its ranks.
Several reasons account for its amazing progress under what would appear
to be the most adverse conditions imaginable. One is the innate tendency
of many people to dabble with the occult and mysterious. Another is the
appeal spiritism makes to the most sacred emotions of humanity. Its
central doctrine is that it is possible for the dead to communicate
with their surviving relatives and friends, through the mediumship of
"psychics" gifted with extraordinary powers. Thus the hope is raised
that messages of good cheer may be received from loved ones who have
passed to the great Beyond--that their voices may be heard, their faces
seen, and their hands clasped by those from whom death has separated
them.
To the spiritistic séance, consequently, go grief-stricken men and
women, skeptical perhaps, but fervently hopeful that their skepticism
will be overcome. To borrow Professor James's striking phrase, they are
already deeply imbued with "the will to believe," and are in no mood
for close observation of what happens in the séance room. Usually, to
speak plainly, they are utterly lacking in the qualities that make a
scientific investigator. The sense of their loss is all-absorbing, and
in this state of mind it is easy for any trickster who poses as a medium
to delude them into fancying that they have actually been in touch with
the dead.
But the main reason why spiritism has survived repeated exposés, and
persists as a force to be reckoned with in the religious life of to-day,
is the fact that it is by no means altogether synonymous with swindling.
There are certain phenomena, particularly so-called automatic speaking
and writing, which it is out of the question to attribute invariably to
trickery and deceit. While one need have no hesitation in dismissing
as fraudulent[22] all "physical" mediums--that is to say, mediums
whose stock in trade is the production of such phenomena as the
"materialization" of spirit forms and faces, the levitation and flinging
about of furniture, and the striking of the "sitters" by unseen
hands--the case of the automatists, or "psychical" mediums, is decidedly
different.
[22] Of course, strictly speaking, the term "fraudulent"
should not be applied to those mediums who are the victims of
a peculiar form of hysteria. This is discussed in detail in
the next chapter.
These are mediums who, after passing into a peculiar condition of
trance, and occasionally while seemingly in their usual waking state,
appear to be controlled by some outside intelligence, and, when so
controlled, utter or write information which it is hard, if not
impossible, to believe they could have obtained by any ordinary means.
To be sure, there is a host of spurious automatists, against whom one
cannot be too watchfully on guard. Some of these are out and out cheats,
as brazen as the most rascally materializers. Some depend for their
success on guessing and on inferences shrewdly drawn from hints
unconsciously dropped by their patrons. Quite a number, however,
undoubtedly seem to exercise a gift not possessed--or, at all events,
not utilized--by everyday men and women.
One Sunday evening, in the late nineties, I visited the spiritist church
on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, of which the late Ira Moore Corliss was
then pastor. In his day Mr. Corliss was probably the most prominent
medium in Brooklyn, a city where spiritism has always flourished. He was
an obviously religious-minded man, and one who sincerely believed that
it was his mission to act as an intermediary between this world and the
next. That evening the usual order of services in spiritist churches
was followed--a prayer, some hymn singing, a sermon, or "inspirational
discourse," and, lastly, the giving of "test messages," in which the
medium passed rapidly up and down the aisles, pausing here and there to
deliver oral communications alleged to come from the world of spirits.
Seated next to me was an elderly gentleman of dignified appearance, who
watched the proceedings with a quiet smile of contempt. It was evident
that this was the first time he had ever seen anything of the kind, and
that he was both amused and disgusted. Suddenly Mr. Corliss, halting
directly in front of him, said, in the quick, nervous way common to him
when under "spirit control":
"I have a message for you, sir."
"For me?" repeated the elderly gentleman, incredulously.
"Yes, sir, for you. There is a spirit here that wants to thank you for
your kindly thought of him to-day. It is the spirit of a rather tall
man, heavily built, clean-shaven, with bright, tender eyes. He says his
name is Henry Ward Beecher."
The smile faded from the other's face. He bent forward, listening
intently.
"Go on," he said.
"This spirit," continued the medium, "says that he is glad to know you
have not forgotten him. He says that he was with you this afternoon,
when you went to the cemetery and took this flower from his grave."
With a dramatic gesture Mr. Corliss drew from the lapel of his
astonished auditor's coat a sprig of geranium, and held it up so that
all could see it.
"Am I not right?" he demanded.
"You are. Quite right."
Afterward I joined the elderly gentleman on the sidewalk, and plied him
with questions. I found him greatly mystified.
"This is too much for me," said he. "I am a stranger to Brooklyn, and
had never attended a spiritualist meeting until to-night. I only dropped
in out of curiosity. But it is true that this afternoon I visited the
cemetery where Henry Ward Beecher is buried, and picked this flower from
near his grave, as a memento of my visit. Mr. Beecher was a very good
friend to me in my younger days. How the medium could know these facts
I cannot imagine. I had told nobody of my trip to the cemetery, and I am
positive that no one saw me pick the flower."
On another occasion I took an artist friend to the first séance he ever
attended. The medium was a psychic of the Corliss type, an automatist
who delivered his "spirit messages" by word of mouth. There were
perhaps a dozen other sitters present. To one of these, a thin, gaunt,
haggard-looking young woman, the entranced medium announced the presence
of "a spirit named Wagner." It was none other, it appeared, than the
spirit of the great musician, who promised he would aid her with her
musical compositions. A smile of infinite content transformed her
careworn features, as she leaned over and whispered to my friend:
"The spirit of Liszt is already helping me. With Wagner's aid I cannot
fail."
One could not smile in face of the story of boundless faith and pitiful
struggle these few words told. And with the next sitter pathos rose to
positive tragedy.
"There is the spirit of a man here, whose name is Frederick," the
medium declared, "and he comes to you, madam. Take my hand."
Slowly a woman, dressed in deep mourning, stood up and extended her
hand. Intensity was written in every line of her face.
"There were two Fredericks," she said. "Which is it?"
"It is the Frederick--it is the Frederick, who, while on earth, did
this."
And he struck her sharply on the arm. Tears filled her eyes.
"I understand," she murmured, "I understand. What does he say?"
All this was interesting, but not convincing. For aught we could tell to
the contrary, the medium had familiarized himself with the life stories
of these women, who doubtless were regular attendants at his séances.
But now he passed to the friend by my side.
"A message for you, sir," said he, "from the spirit of a
military-looking man. Yes, he says that when he was in this sphere he
was a commander of soldiers, a general. This is what he looks like."
He launched into a long description, which I could see was making a
profound impression on my friend.
"Has he anything particular to say to me?" he asked.
"He says that you must on no account decline the offer that has been
made to you to go West--that you will never regret going."
Less than two hours earlier my companion had told me of a commission
unexpectedly tendered him, involving a long sojourn in California. At
the medium's words he turned pale, and glanced around as though half
expecting to see a ghost standing behind his chair.
When the séance had come to an end, and we were walking home together,
he solemnly assured me that the medium had accurately described a dead
friend, an army officer of the rank of general, whose advice, had he
been alive, he would have sought with regard to his projected journey to
California.
Again, there is an interesting case reported from New England by the
Reverend Willis M. Cleaveland. Among Mr. Cleaveland's parishioners was
a young woman, Miss Edith Wright, who developed mediumistic abilities,
being controlled at times by what purported to be a discarnate spirit.
Dreading notoriety, Miss Wright gave very few séances, and then only
to her closest friends or to sitters with whom her friends were well
acquainted, and in whose discretion they could place reliance.
One of these was Mr. Cleaveland, who, being interested in psychical
research, undertook to obtain, if possible, proof of the identity of
the supposed communicating spirit. If you really are a spirit, he said
in effect, you ought to be able to give us some facts about yourself,
something about your history while you were on earth, with data that
will enable us to obtain confirmation of what you say. The "control"
readily conceded the reasonableness of this, and in the course of
several séances made twenty-six personal statements, of which the most
significant were:
That her name was Amelia B. Norton.
That she had been the daughter of an orthodox clergyman, of the "water
type."
That she had lived near the Kennebec River, in the State of Maine.
That when writing letters it had been her custom to sign herself by the
initials N. N., meaning Nellie Norton.
That she had died in middle life.
That when quite young she had had a love affair with a Mr. L. C. Brown,
who was still living and engaged in business in Boston, at an address
which the "spirit" gave.
As goes without saying, Mr. Cleaveland at once wrote to Mr. Brown, and
in a few days received a reply from him, in which he said:
"I was out in the town of Sharon very recently, and called on an elderly
gentleman who was a manufacturer there when I resided there as a boy in
my teens. To my surprise, as we were reviving old recollections of fifty
years ago, he spoke of a Miss Norton that he said I was sweet on at that
time.
"The facts of the case are that Mary B. Norton, who always signed
herself Nellie B. Norton, came there, a young miss about my age. We
were, I guess, ardent lovers, but in the course of two years I left the
town and she did, and I knew very little of her for a few years after
that. I think it was about five years later that on my way home from the
White Mountains I stopped off at her home in Maine, which was beside a
large river. I feel sure this was the Kennebec River. Her father was an
orthodox minister, but I do not understand the meaning of the 'water
type.' I think some two years later she was residing in Fairhaven and
sent me some papers that contained letters written by Mary B. Norton,
but from that time--some over forty years--I have not seen her. I heard
that she died some years ago, and think she must have been about fifty
years of age."
Later Mr. Brown wrote again, saying that on second thought he was not
certain that her name might not have been Amelia instead of Mary, as he
had always known her "only as Nellie B."[23]
[23] This case is reported in detail in the _Proceedings of
the American Society for Psychical Research_, vol. ii, pp.
119-138.
It is to the constant occurrence of incidents like these that the
vitality of spiritism is mainly due. To many people it seems impossible
to account for such detailed and abundantly corroborated proofs of
personal identity on any hypothesis short of actual spirit control. Yet
in the last analysis, when viewed in the sober light of latter-day
scientific knowledge of the workings of the human mind, it will be found
that they do not afford the conclusive demonstration of the validity of
the spiritistic doctrine which on the surface they appear to yield. For
there is always the possibility--amounting, I feel warranted in saying,
to certainty--that what they really indicate is not communication with
the dead, but thought transference between living minds.
In fact the telepathic connection between the mind of the medium and
the mind of the sitter is often most obvious. Take the three cases
just cited, and which are typical of mediumistic communications. The
statements made by the medium Corliss to the friend of Henry Ward
Beecher were statements relating to an incident fresh in the latter's
memory, and therefore easily obtainable by the telepathic process,
which, there is reason to believe, is exceptionally at the command of
genuine psychics. Likewise, my artist friend was much occupied mentally
with the problems involved in the California offer, and was doubtless
thinking of it, consciously or subconsciously, at the time the medium
invoked the "spirit" of the army officer whose advice my friend would
have sought had that officer still been in the flesh. All the medium had
to do was to tap telepathically my friend's subconsciousness and extract
from it every detail of the "revelation" so sensationally made to him in
the séance room.
Slightly different, however, is the case of Miss Edith Wright. Here
the facts thought to emanate from the dead Amelia B. Norton were facts
concerning which Miss Wright's sitter, the Reverend Mr. Cleaveland, was
ignorant. But it is most significant that, continuing his researches,
Mr. Cleaveland made the discovery that Miss Norton's old sweetheart, Mr.
Brown, had had at least one sitting with Miss Wright. Mr. Brown denied
that he had ever said anything about Miss Norton in Miss Wright's
presence; but his memory may have played him false, and, in any event,
she could have got from him by telepathy the data with which she
afterward astonished both him and Mr. Cleaveland. Let me remind the
reader that among the few definitely ascertained laws of telepathy
is the fact that it is possible for telepathic messages to lie long
latent in the recipient's mind before emerging above the threshold of
consciousness.
This is of even greater significance in connection with the rarer, but
still quite numerous, instances in which the mediumistic communications
offered as evidence of spirit identity refer to incidents not known by
the medium or by the sitter or by any previous sitter. These, spiritists
insist, are absolutely inexplicable on the telepathic basis. I can make
their position clearer by citing an illustrative case taken from the
experience of that greatest of automatists, the New England medium, Mrs.
Leonora E. Piper, whose remarkable mediumistic faculty was first made
known to the scientific world by Professor James thirty years ago, and
who has since been repeatedly investigated by leading members of the
Society for Psychical Research. Detectives have been employed to dog her
footsteps, open her mail, watch her every move. But not once have they
detected her in fraudulent practices; and, on the other hand, she has
given such convincing proof of the genuineness of her power that some of
the most skeptical among her investigators have ended by accepting at
face value her "messages from the dead."
On one occasion, while she was being investigated in England by a
committee of experts, that famous English psychical researcher, Sir
Oliver Lodge, placed in her hands, while she was entranced, a gold watch
once the property of an uncle of his who had died some twenty years
before. It was now owned by another uncle, a twin brother of the dead
man.
"I was told almost immediately," says Sir Oliver, "that it had belonged
to one of my uncles--one that had been very fond of Uncle Robert, the
name of the survivor--that the watch was now in the possession of this
same Uncle Robert, with whom its late owner was anxious to communicate.
After some difficulty and many wrong attempts, Doctor Phinuit--a
'spirit' alleged to be controlling Mrs. Piper--caught the name Jerry,
short for Jeremiah, and said emphatically, as if impersonating him:
'This is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am here. Uncle Jerry,
my watch.'
"All this at the first sitting on the very morning the watch had arrived
by post, no one but myself and a shorthand clerk, who happened to have
been introduced for the first time at this sitting by me, and whose
antecedents were well known to me, being present.
"Having thus ostensibly got into communication through some means or
other with what purported to be Uncle Jerry, whom I had indeed known
slightly in his later years of blindness, but of whose early life I knew
nothing, I pointed out to him that to make Uncle Robert aware of his
presence it would be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood,
all of which I would faithfully report.
"He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during several successive
sittings ostensibly to instruct Doctor Phinuit to mention a number
of little things such as would enable his brother to recognize him.
References to his blindness, illness, and main facts of his life were
comparatively useless from my point of view; but these details of
boyhood, two-thirds of a century ago, were utterly and entirely out of
my ken.
"'Uncle Jerry' recalled episodes such as swimming the creek when they
were boys together, and running some risk of getting drowned; killing a
cat in Smith's field; the possession of a small rifle, and of a long,
peculiar skin, like a snakeskin, which he thought was now in the
possession of Uncle Robert.
"All these facts have been more or less completely verified. But the
interesting thing is that his twin brother, from whom I got the watch
and with whom I was thus in correspondence, could not remember them all.
He recollected something about swimming the creek, though he himself
had merely looked on. He had a distinct recollection of having had the
snakeskin, and of the box in which it was kept, though he did not know
where it was then. But he altogether denied killing the cat, and could
not recall Smith's field.
"His memory, however, was decidedly failing him, and he was good enough
to write to another brother, Frank, living in Cornwall, an old sea
captain, and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain facts--of
course not giving any inexplicable reason for asking. The result of this
inquiry was triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith's field as
a place near their home, where they used to play in Barking, Essex; and
the killing of a cat by another brother was also recollected; while of
the swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details were given,
Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that foolhardy episode."
Sir Oliver Lodge himself appears to believe that he was actually in
communication, through Mrs. Piper, with his dead Uncle Jerry; and by
spiritists generally this is alluded to as a characteristic instance
impossible of explanation on the theory of telepathy between living
minds. But it is pertinent to point out that possibly, in his childhood,
Sir Oliver may have heard his uncles, in some moment of reminiscence,
discussing these very incidents. He would naturally have forgotten the
episode, so far as conscious recollection of it was concerned; but he
would none the less have retained some memory of their conversation in
his subconsciousness, whence Mrs. Piper could have gained knowledge of
it telepathically. And, even had he never heard of the incidents, they
might indeed have been transmitted to him telepathically from the
surviving uncles, and been by him retransmitted to Mrs. Piper.
This last possibility, involving as it does telepathy between more than
two persons, may seem to be far-fetched. But there is plenty of evidence
that telepathy of this sort--known technically as _telepathie à
trois_--is an actuality. I have in mind one particularly interesting
case studied by Mr. Andrew Lang, the brilliant essayist and psychical
researcher. It concerns a crystal-gazer named Miss Angus.
"Again and again," to give Mr. Lang's own words, "Miss Angus, sitting
with man or woman, described acquaintances of theirs but not of hers,
in situations not known to the sitters but proved to be true to fact.
In one instance, Miss Angus described doings, from three weeks to a
fortnight old, of people in India, people whom she had never seen or
heard of, but who were known to her sitter. Her account, given on a
Saturday, was corroborated by a letter from India, which arrived next
day, Sunday. In another case she described--about ten P. M.--what a
lady, not known to her, but the daughter of a matron present, who was
not the sitter, had been doing about four P. M. on the same day. Again,
sitting with a lady, Miss Angus described a singular set of scenes much
in the mind, not of her sitter, but of a very unsympathetic stranger,
who was reading a book at the other end of the room.
"I have tried every hypothesis, normal and not so normal, to account
for these and analogous performances of Miss Angus. There was, in the
Indian and other cases, no physical possibility of collusion; chance
coincidence did not seem adequate; ghosts were out of the question, so
was direct clairvoyance. Nothing remained for the speculative theorizer
but the idea of cross currents of telepathy between Miss Angus, a casual
stranger, the sitters, and people far away, known to the sitters or the
stranger, but unknown to Miss Angus.
"Now," adds Mr. Lang, in a paragraph that every attendant at spiritistic
séances would do well to learn by heart, "suppose that Miss Angus,
instead of dealing with living people by way of crystal-visions, had
dealt by way of voice or automatic handwriting, and had introduced a
dead 'communicator.' Then she would have been on a par with Mrs. Piper,
yet with no aid from the dead."
That automatists "read the mind" of their sitters, or draw upon the
contents of their own subconsciousness in obtaining the facts which
they give out as coming from the spirit world, is further evident from
experiments in automatic writing conducted by several American and
English psychical researchers.[24]
[24] The extent to which automatists sometimes draw on the
contents of their own subconsciousness is strikingly
illustrated by a case investigated by Mr. Lowes Dickinson,
wherein the medium, an estimable young lady of his
acquaintance, was seemingly "controlled" by the "spirit" of
a noblewoman of the Middle Ages, who described the customs,
manners, and personages of the country in which she claimed
to have lived, in such minute detail and with such accuracy
that it seemed certain this was one case at all events in
which survival had been proved. Ultimately it was discovered
that every fact given by the alleged spirit was contained in
a little known historical novel which the medium had read,
but read only once, when a very small girl. So far as
conscious recollection went she had forgotten all about this
book, but subconsciously she had evidently retained a
marvelously exact memory of it.
But when they are genuine automatists, it would be unjust to accuse
them of conscious deception in attributing their communications to
discarnate spirits. The trance state into which they usually fall is
an abnormal condition, and is not unlike, if not identical with, the
hypnotic state. As will be shown in detail later, one of the distinctive
characteristics of hypnosis is the preternaturally increased
suggestibility of the person hypnotized. He will accept and act upon
the slightest suggestion of the hypnotist, no matter how ridiculous
and absurd the suggestion may be, so long as it is not repugnant to
his moral sense. Moreover, he can be induced to think that he is some
one other than his real self, and will often assume the traits of the
suggested personality with a fidelity that is astounding.
So, likewise, we must believe, with the automatist, who will impersonate
anybody suggested--albeit suggested quite unconsciously--by the
sitters, whether it be the "spirit" of a Greek philosopher, an Indian
chief, or the deceased friend of some one present. Usually he is so
deeply entranced as to have no knowledge of what he is doing, just as
the hypnotized subject remains in ignorance of the actions he carries
out in response to the operator's suggestions. But there is a record
of at least one instance in which the automatist, an amateur psychical
researcher named Charles H. Tout, of Vancouver, clearly recognized that
his various impersonations were suggested to him by the spectators.
Mr. Tout relates that after attending a few séances with some friends he
felt an impulse to play medium himself and assume an alien personality.
Yielding to this impulse, he discovered that, without losing complete
control of his consciousness, he could develop a secondary self that
would impose on the beholders as a discarnate spirit. On one occasion he
thus impersonated the "spirit" of a dead woman, the mother of a friend
present, and his impersonation was accepted as a genuine case of
spirit control. On another, after having given several successful
impersonations, he suddenly felt weak and ill. At this point, he states:
"One of the sitters made the remark, which I remember to have overheard,
'It is father controlling him,' and I then seemed to realize who I was
and whom I was seeking. I began to be distressed in my lungs, and should
have fallen if they had not held me by the hands and let me back gently
upon the floor. I was in a measure still conscious of my actions, though
not of my surroundings, and I have a clear memory of seeing myself in
the character of my dying father lying in the bed and in the room in
which he died. It was a most curious sensation. I saw his shrunken hands
and face, and lived again through his dying moments; only now I was both
myself--in some indistinct sort of way--and my father, with his feelings
and appearance."
All of which Mr. Tout rightly attributes to "the dramatic working out,
by some half-conscious stratum of his personality, of suggestions
made at the time by other members of the circle, or received in prior
experiences of the kind."
Add to this the known facts of telepathic action, and there is no need
of looking further for a comprehensive explanation of the otherwise
perplexing and supernatural-seeming phenomena of psychic automatism.
This applies even to the phenomenon of so-called "cross-correspondence,"
which has been especially stressed the past few years by certain members
of the Society for Psychical Research as affording proof positive of
survival.
With reference to this particular problem, it should in the first place
be said that, in addition to Mrs. Piper, there are a number of other
automatic writers who have been similarly investigated by the
Society for Psychical Research for a long term of years, and whose
trustworthiness has likewise been definitely established. They include a
Mrs. Holland, a Mrs. Forbes, a Mrs. Thompson, Mrs. Verrall, of Newnham
College, Cambridge, England, and Mrs. Verrall's daughter, Miss Helen
Verrall. Through these ladies thousands of alleged "spirit messages"
have been received, including many purporting to come from Edmund
Gurney, Henry Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, and Richard Hodgson, who in
their lifetime were the most active and prominent members of the Society
for Psychical Research. And among the automatic writings supposed to
emanate from them there have been not a few so peculiarly conditioned
as to suggest not only that the "spirits" of the four great psychical
researchers are in touch with their living friends, but that they are
working hard to devise special tests to prove their identity.
To put the matter more concretely, let me cite the case of Mrs. Holland.
This lady is a resident of India. In 1893, having seen in the _Review
of Reviews_ a reference to automatic writing, she experimented in it
herself, and found that she possessed the faculty of penning coherent
sentences without being conscious of what she was writing. She continued
these experiments for ten years, or until 1903, when, after reading
Myers's "Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death," she one
day discovered that her automatic writing was seemingly no longer
spontaneous, but controlled by two outside intelligences that called
themselves "Myers" and "Gurney." Each "control," alternating with the
other, caused her to write long communications, in which there was
mingled with much that seemed unintelligible and nonsensical long
descriptions of unnamed persons and places. Her interest aroused, Mrs.
Holland collected a number of these communications and mailed them to
Miss Alice Johnson, Research Officer of the English Society for
Psychical Research.
Examining them carefully, Miss Johnson discovered, much to her surprise,
that they contained unmistakable references to people and the homes of
people whom Myers and Gurney had known intimately, but of whom, as Miss
Johnson satisfied herself by searching inquiry, Mrs. Holland had no
knowledge. Thus there was an excellent description of Mrs. Verrall, her
husband, Dr. A. W. Verrall, and the Verrall dining-room, in which Myers
had often been entertained. Even the street address of the Verralls was
correctly given. Miss Johnson, as may be imagined, at once wrote, urging
Mrs. Holland to continue her automatic writing, and to forward all her
script to the offices of the Society. This was done, with the result
that much else of a seemingly evidential value was soon obtained. It
was especially noted that, although Mrs. Holland knew nothing of Latin
and Greek, her communications from the Myers control occasionally
contained passages written in both these languages, with which Myers
had been well acquainted.
November 25, 1903, the Gurney control wrote in the automatic script:
"Now there is an experiment I want you to make--Suggest to the P. R.--to
Miss J.--that some one with a trained will--she will have no difficulty
in finding some one of the sort--is to try--for a few minutes--every
morning for at least a month--to convey a thought--a phrase--a
name--anything they like--to your mind." In due course this suggestion
was sent by Mrs. Holland to Miss Johnson, who arranged for a series of
such experiments, with Mrs. Verrall acting as the second medium.
The experiments began in March, 1905, were continued until towards
the end of May, and were resumed for a few weeks in the spring of the
following year. The scheme adopted, however, was not exactly that
suggested by the Gurney control. Instead of simply attempting to convey
some thought to Mrs. Holland's mind, Mrs. Verrall, at Miss Johnson's
suggestion, wrote automatically herself on each day that Mrs. Holland
was to write. Neither medium was to hold the slightest communication
with the other, but both were to forward their automatic scripts to Miss
Johnson as soon as written. In fact, in order to prevent any loophole
for fraud, Miss Johnson throughout the 1905 experiments kept Mrs.
Holland in ignorance of the identity of her fellow-experimenter, who, on
her side, was ignorant of Mrs. Holland's real name--the "Holland" being
a pseudonym. Some exceedingly interesting results were secured.
March 1, 1905, Mrs. Holland's script contained these sentences, "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 above the roar of the traffic." In reply to a
questioning letter from Miss Johnson, Mrs. Verrall wrote:
"On March 1 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 ... were three pots of growing yellow
tulips--the only flowers near any window. The day was dull in the
morning, but about twelve the sun came out and it was warm; it rained
heavily in the afternoon."
There was no "cross-correspondence" in the writings of the two scripts
for this or the next two weeks--the experimenters wrote only once a
week--but in the scripts of the week following Miss Johnson found a
curious coincidence--the presence of notes of music. Only once before
or since, she testifies, have notes of music appeared in the script of
either Mrs. Verrall or Mrs. Holland. In Mrs. Holland's script of that
same date, March 22, there was also a reference to "the ivory gate
through which all good dreams come." Mrs. Verrall, it was learned, on
March 19 or 20, had been reading Virgil's passage in the "Æneid" about
the gates of horn and ivory. She had been reading Dante, too, in the
original Italian, the first time she had read anything in Italian for
months; and, oddly enough, Mrs. Holland's script for March 22 contained
a sentence in Italian.
Later scripts were characterized by even more striking correspondences,
and--which is not without interest--on more than one occasion
the "controls" issued warnings against placing faith in Eusapia
Paladino. For instance, on December 1, 1905, the Myers control wrote
through Mrs. Holland: "There may be raps genuine enough of their
kind--I concede the raps--poltergeist merely--but the luminous
appearances--the sounds of a semi-musical nature--the flower falling
upon the table--trickery--trickery." And the Gurney control added:
"Her feet are very important--Next time can't Miss J. sit with the
sapient feet both touching hers--Let her fix her thoughts on the feet
and prevent the least movement of them."
As American investigators have since discovered, Eusapia's feet are
indeed important.
These first experiments were followed by others, in which, besides Mrs.
Holland and Mrs. Verrall, all four of the other mediums mentioned above
took part, and again suggestive cross-correspondences were secured.
Besides which, having been induced by the results of the Verrall-Holland
experiments to study more closely earlier scripts stored in the
Society's archives, Miss Johnson discovered what seemed to be similar
cross-correspondences that occurred before any experiments of this kind
were undertaken. I can give only one or two illustrations. August 28,
1901, Mrs. Forbes wrote a message purporting to come from her dead son
Talbot, to the effect that he had to leave her in order to control
another "sensitive," and through her obtain corroboration of Mrs.
Forbes's own automatic writing. On the same day Mrs. Verrall wrote in
Latin of a fir tree planted in a garden, and the script was signed with
a sword and a suspended bugle. The latter was part of the badge of the
regiment to which Talbot Forbes had belonged, and Mrs. Forbes had in
her garden some fir trees grown from seed sent to her by her son. These
facts, according to Miss Johnson, were unknown to Mrs. Verrall.
In another case Mrs. Forbes wrote, on November 26 and 27, 1902,
references, absolutely meaningless to herself, to a passage in a book
which Mrs. Verrall had been reading on those days; and the references
also applied appropriately to an obscure sentence in Mrs. Verrall's own
script of November 26.
But undoubtedly the most impressive cross-correspondences were obtained
in a series of experiments extending from November, 1906, to June, 1907,
and involving concordant automatism between Mrs. Holland, in India, and
Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall, and Miss Verrall, in England. A full report
on this series is given in the October, 1908, issue of the Society's
_Proceedings_. The plan followed was to suggest to the controls of
Mrs. Piper--in her case the alleged "spirits" of Myers, Sidgwick, and
Hodgson--that they transmit to one or more of the other automatists some
test word or message. There were many failures, but there were also many
seeming successes.
January 16, 1907, the Myers control promised that it would, as a proof
of its identity, cause Mrs. Holland and Mrs. Verrall to sign a piece of
automatic writing with a triangle drawn within a circle. A circle with a
triangle inside it actually appeared in Mrs. Verrall's script of January
28, while a script from Mrs. Holland exhibited several geometrical
figures, including a circle with a triangle outside it. February 6 the
same control said that it had just been referring, through Mrs. Verrall,
to a "library matter," and investigation showed that half an hour
earlier Mrs. Verrall, writing at her home in Cambridge, had begun a
script in which the word "library" occurred three times--the only time
during the period of the experiments that "library" was mentioned in
her automatic writing or in Mrs. Piper's trance statements. The Myers
control again, on February 11, announced that it had given "hope, star,
and Browning" to Mrs. Verrall, and her script showed that this was
correct. February 12 the Hodgson control declared it had been trying to
impress the word "arrow" on Mrs. Verrall. Her script for the previous
day, when received at the Society's offices in London, proved to be
decorated with a drawing of three arrows.
It is the multiplicity of coincidences like these--and I have given only
the merest fragment of the evidence in hand--that has recently persuaded
many hitherto hesitating psychical researchers, notably Sir Oliver
Lodge, that scientific proof of spirit communication has veritably been
obtained. For myself, I must frankly say, however, that I cannot accept
this view of the case. Fraud, I admit, is out of the question as an
explanatory hypothesis. Nor does it seem possible to explain away the
evidence on the theory of mere chance, guessing, "lucky hits," etc. But
there remains the hypothesis of telepathy between living minds; and,
as it seems to me, there is nothing whatever in the evidence presented
incompatible with the view that the cross-correspondences in question
resulted from direct thought transference between the automatists
themselves.