Mrs. Piper

Michael Tymn is probably today's foremost authority on European and North American mediumship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – a subject matter that he covers in a blog and in several books, including his most recent: Resurrecting Leonora Piper.

As the title indicates, the book's purpose is to rekindle interest in Mrs. Leonora Piper, the turn-of-the-century Boston medium who became the principal subject of investigation by psychical researchers in America for over 20 years. Unassuming, sensible, and decidedly "normal" in all outward respects, Mrs. Piper was happily married and had two daughters. She took a small annual stipend from the researchers for the use of her time, but could have earned far more had she been interested in exploiting her talents for commercial gain. She sought no publicity and downplayed her abilities on the rare occasions when she consented to any media coverage. In a newspaper story she once speculated that the communications might be coming to her via mental telepathy from the living, a statement maliciously characterized as a "confession" by debunkers (most of whom, naturally, don't believe in telepathy either, so it's hard to see how the so-called "confession" does them any good).

Leonora Piper in a portrait by Eveleen Myers 

Resurrecting Leonora Piper is an excellent summary of Piper's best cases, largely passing over the weaker sessions and the misfires. As Tymn puts it, he is acting like Piper's attorney, laying out the evidence in the light most favorable to his client. "If it is seen as an apologia for Mrs. Piper," he writes at the end, "so be it." In his view, the book is a necessary corrective to debunking accounts that overemphasize problematic sessions while downplaying or ignoring the more evidential ones.

Tymn's book makes it abundantly clear why early psychical researchers devoted so much time and effort to Piper, and why for many of them she (along with Gladys Osborne Leonard in England) was the "white crow" whose abilities established the reality of supernormal perception, whatever its ultimate source (spirits or ESP).

The book also corrects some frequent misconceptions about Piper's mediumship. For instance, it is often said that William James was deeply involved in investigating Piper. Actually, while James did "discover" her and brought her to the attention of other psychical researchers, he played a fairly limited role in the subsequent research, the bulk of which was carried out by Richard Hodgson and, later, James Hyslop, with important contributions by Oliver Lodge during Piper's two sojourns in England. Tymn makes it clear that William James remained on the fence about the "spirit hypothesis" throughout his life, clearly preferring the super-ESP idea or some equivalent. He may have been unwilling to jeopardize his hard-earned reputation by openly endorsing spiritism. Or perhaps he was sincerely in doubt about the evidence, since, as Tymn concedes, much of Piper's communications did consist of "misses," generalities, nonsense, obvious fishing, and other "bosh" (James's word). 

With regard to fishing for clues, Tymn makes the valuable point that while it certainly occurred – more often in the earlier sessions when "Dr. Phinuit" was the spirit control, and (I think) less often in the later sessions under the guidance of "Imperator" and "Rector" – this can plausibly be interpreted as fishing for a clearer message from the communicating spirit. In other words, it seems as if there was not infrequently a failure of communication between the spirit wishing to address the sitter and the control (gatekeeper) whose job was to relay the message. Some of the communications indicate that the spirits must themselves engage in a kind of mediumship to make contact. The control (say, Phinuit) lowers his vibrations to take charge of the empty vessel of Piper's body (her spirit having temporarily exited); while Phinuit is in this entranced condition, he relays what he hears from the sitters on one side and the communicating spirits on the other. If this is in fact how the process works, then it's hardly surprising that there would be difficulties in communication, especially since the entranced Phinuit would be approximately in the condition of a sleepwalker or a deeply hypnotized subject.

Tymn devotes considerable time to Mrs. Piper's most evidential cases, the ones with the greatest proportion of "veridical" (verified) material. This emphasis is necessary to make the case for Mrs. Piper as a legitimate medium, but for me personally, the non-evidential communiqués are often more interesting, inasmuch as they venture into more philosophical territory. Perhaps the most intriguing is a message purportedly originating from psychical pioneer William Barrett, author of the groundbreaking book Deathbed Visions. 

When I come into the conditions of a sitting I then know that I can only carry with me – contain in me – a small portion of my consciousness. The easiest things to lay hold of are what we may call ideas; a detached word, a proper name, has no link with a train of thought except in the detached sense; that is far more difficult than any other feat of memory or association of ideas. [p.73] 

In a session with Mrs. Leonard, a communicator purporting to be Barrett elaborated on this idea: 

Sometimes I lose some memory of things from coming here [i.e., coming to the sitting]; I know it in my own state but not here. In dreams you do not know everything, you only get parts in a dream. A sitting is similar; when I go back to the spirit world after a sitting like this I know I have not got everything through that I wanted to say. That is due to my mind separating again, the consciousness separating again. In the earth body we have the separation of subconscious and conscious. Consciousness only holds a certain number of memories at a time. When we pass over they join, make a complete mind that knows and remembers everything; but when one comes here to a sitting the limitation of the physical sphere affects one’s mind, and only a portion of one’s mind can function for the time being. When I withdraw from this condition one’s whole mind becomes again both subconscious and conscious; my subconscious mind encloses my conscious one and I become whole again mentally... I cannot come with and as my whole self. I cannot. [Pp. 191, 192] 

In reading this, I was reminded of James Beichler's fascinating book To Die For, which interprets evidence for the afterlife in terms of a higher-dimensional reality. In a paper presented before the 2012 conference of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Beichler summarizes his basic view: 

Consciousness itself is completely four-dimensional, which distinguishes it from three-dimensional mind. It is not just four-dimensional, but exists along the fourth direction of space as well as three-dimensionally. Mind and consciousness form the electromagnetic four-dimensional overlay and self-organizing control mechanism for the three-dimensional matter/energy body and Biofield….

Since consciousness is a four-space-dimensional physical object, there is no reason for mind and consciousness to cease existence when the three-dimensional material body dies. In fact, when the material body dies the matter/energy pattern or Biofield is disrupted and the biochemical processes that support life cease to function. But this disruption does not affect mind and consciousness other than to free them from their material reliance and captivity in three-dimensional space. Mind and consciousness survive death as a mutually cohering physical but non-material complexity without a material body or even a material connection to the three-dimensional world of matter and energy. However, the roles of mind and consciousness reverse. While alive, consciousness is dominated by the mind and hidden away as intuition. Consciousness takes over and dominates mind upon death of the material body and severance from the three-dimensional matter/energy pattern. The degree to which the surviving mind is aware of its new existence is a completely different matter. In fact, it is a matter of how advanced the individual consciousness became and its state of awareness of the higher dimension of space before death.

It's readily apparent that "Barrett's" remarks from a century ago dovetail neatly with Beichler's interpretation. This also explains why communicators and controls frequently seem easily confused or misled (as was the Hodgson control when a pair of debunking researchers invented a spirit named "Bessie Beals" and persuaded him to provide a message from her *) and why they sometimes lack the full range of mental powers they exhibited in life. William James himself was reportedly troubled by such things, fearing (as Tymn tells us) that the afterlife might consist of a mere shadowy zone of semi-existence, comparable to the Greek Hades or the Hebrew Sheol — a sort of limbo. The explanation provided by "Barrett" and seconded by other communicators is that the spirit has a greater range of mental faculties than its incarnate counterpart, but must surrender much of this newfound intellectual power when lowering itself to operate "the machine" (the medium). Again, this would seem to fit Beichler's theory of a four-dimensional consciousness restricting itself to three-dimensional operation in a 3D world.

Overall, Resurrecting Leonora Piper is a superb addition to the literature on one of history's most thoroughly studied mediums, a woman who sat patiently with researchers day after day for roughly 20 years. No serious person who reads the book can maintain the hypothesis that Piper was a conscious fraud; some of the information she obtained was simply impossible to have researched or guessed. At the very least, a fair-minded reader will conclude that Piper represents an enigma requiring an expansion of conventional views of the potentialities of the human mind. Many will go further and see Piper's communications – with their distinctive personalities, specific memories, and clear demonstration of active intent — as strong evidence of personal survival. I certainly do. 

 —— 

* Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail discovered, in researching the Bessie Beals case, that Bessie was not precisely a fictitious creation. There actually was a Bessie Beals known to one of the researchers, though she was alive, not dead. 

But it is undeniably true that some controls, especially Phinuit, would confabulate in an effort to please the sitter if no authentic information was available. Critics take this as evidence that Phinuit was a secondary personality of the medium, but it is equally possible that he behaved much like the unconscious mind under hypnosis because he was, essentially, hypnotized in order to control the medium.

Incidentally, the frequent claims that "Dr. Phinuit" knew no French and nothing of medicine are refuted in Tymn's book; on some occasions (though not consistently) he did hold conversations in French, and he often prescribed herbal remedies appropriate to the era in which he purportedly had lived.

One thing I always found troubling about the Imperator control is his habit of speaking in stilted, antiquated English reminiscent of the King James Bible. (Example: "It will be so in spite of anything which thou mayst think to the contrary.") There seems to be no good reason why an exalted and supposedly ageless spirit would speak in this artificial way. Yet in thinking about it now, I wonder if this style of expression is a product of the interaction of the medium's own mind and the influence of the control. Perhaps Mrs. Pipers's subconscious, associating the cadences of the King James Bible with the highest spiritual truths (as most Christians in her era did, and as many still do), automatically rendered Imperator's high-sounding thoughts in this ornate language.

Incidentally, as Tymn points out, if Phinuit, Imperator, and Rector were "secondary personalities," then what about other controls, like George Pellew and ultimately the deceased Richard Hodgson himself? They were convincing enough to persuade longtime friends of their continued existence. As the Hodgson control communicated, "If I am not Hodgson, he never lived."

Comments

[someone]

Looks Interesting,
Acording to Gauld (1982), James actually did lean towards survival when he investigated the Hodgeson case.

[someone]

BTW can somebody give me a estimated percentage of sittings that were good in the Piper case and ones that were good?

[RabbitDawg]

She took a small annual stipend from the researchers for the use of her time, but could have earned far more had she been interested in exploiting her talents for commercial gain. She sought no publicity and downplayed her abilities on the rare occasions when she consented to any media coverage.

This cannot be glossed over. Whatever anyone might think of Leonora Piper's abilities, it's hard to see how she could be seen as a fraud. The imposition on her time with her family for comparatively little pay, and outright abuse she endured from the high-society "gentlemen" that investigated her makes her more of a psychical research hero, not the low-class shrew the skeptic crowd tries to portray her as.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

With no intent to be argumentative I think that one may be overlooking perhaps the best way of validating the authenticity of purported communications from a “control” used by a medium and that is, the use of language by the communicating identity. I have noted that there have been criticisms of language usage by disembodied spirits by some who say that the language is either high-sounding, ornate or not understandable. Such comments reveal a lack of recognition of how language usage changes and has changed over time. What is really meant by people who make such comments, I think, is that they don’t understand the language. Not that the language is not understandable. They mean that the language seems “high-sounding” or “ornate” to them. I could say much the same thing about the language of Chaucer or Shakespeare for that matter. I only understand Chaucer to the extent that I have studied it. I understand the prologue to the Canterbury Tales because I was made to study it in high school but the rest is “not understandable” to me and it is tedious for me to try to understand it so I just don’t try. I can understand more of Shakespeare’s use of English, although high-sounding and ornate, since Shakespeare’s language, written in the late 1500s is closer to the English that was used during my 70-year lifetime than the English used by Chaucer in the 1300s. Communications from controls reminiscent of the language of the King James translation of the Bible, as in the example from Imperator, seem to me to be appropriate if we believe that the communicator should have the freedom to present himself or herself in whatever persona best fits the personality to be presented.

Why should we expect controls, whoever or whatever they may be to use language that we understand and that we deem proper for the control to use. The very fact that controls use such archaic, stilted or antiquated language, in my opinion only validates that the information is not coming from the subconscious mind of the medium or picked up by super-psi from living minds. This validation is especially convincing when word usage, grammar and syntax by the controls reveal words and word usage no longer found in spoken or written language and only found to have been part of the English usage after painstaking effort to conduct in-depth research. Patience Worth’s use of the nouns regale, cockshut, slaver, dods, shoon, and verbs ettle and fetch, and many others convince me that the subconscious mind of Pearl Curran was not the source of writings containing those words. Language use by controls, if it has been documented, is in my opinion, the best available tangible evidence of a disembodied entity that exists; far better than memory recall, observations or opinions of long-dead human beings

[Ray]

Thanks Michael ( and Michael) I just downloaded on kindle.
Amos
The Patience Worth case completely baffles me. Here we have an ordinary housewife who channels brilliant works from an alleged spirit that speaks an antiquated English dialect that she never knew. Philosopher Steven Braude wrote extensively on the case in his book "Immortal Remains" and came to the conclusion that Patience was a secondary personality that Pearl Curran subconsciously invented to fester her latent capabilities. I really really find this to be a stretch since some scholars were baffled by the works produced and all originals. however she gave no verifiable details about her existence and only said "I be me and she be she". If there is a spirit world I wish they could be a little less esoteric about their existence in cases like this but I guess PW didn't feel it was the focal point of coming through.

[alanborky]

"she once speculated that the communications might be coming to her via mental telepathy from the living".

Michael to me this suggest's two things about her 1) she was having a range of experiences we've never heard about because they didn't correspond to the preconceptions of the times 2) she didn't have an agenda or preconceived world view to sell and actually questioned what was happening to her.

"fishing for clues...certainly occurred".

Are athletes frauds when they run up and down on the spot to warm themselves up or get themselves in the mood and doctors dentists lawyers police officers etc fish all the time hence the distinction in the medical profession between Signs and Symptoms [though when my unemployment agency sent me after a job as a telephone line card reader I personally found the problem wasn't fishing for CLUES but filtering out CUES clients fed me to get the answers they wanted to hear in some cases misleadingly so hoping to trip me up and convince themselves it was all a load of bollocks].

There's also what's known in the esoteric trade as the doctrine of necessity which can require amongst other things the right question being asked if the informational cache's to be released hence the catastrophic importance of Perceval failing to ask "Who serves the Grail?"

"There seems to be no good reason why an exalted and supposedly ageless spirit would speak in this artificial way."

Well if you think about it Krishna was raised as a very dark skinned low caste cowherder with an accent [much like Alexander the Great] picked on by his detractors as unmercifully as a red neck hillbilly's would be if he attended Eton.

And even Leonora Piper only spoke English because her nervous system was bombarded by various forms of it from the moment she was born hence any spirit taking control of her probably had to work with whatever cultural and emotional references in her nervous systemic data base best approximated the effect it wanted to achieve.

This potential cross contamination of the spirit and the medium's data bases of course's why some people have difficulties with any information received unlike say the grace bestowed 'new tongue' used by Jesus' disciples which enabled them to be understood by speakers of any language.

[Michael Prescott]

"she was having a range of experiences we've never heard about because they didn't correspond to the preconceptions of the times"

Well, keep in mind that as a trance medium, she had no memory of what took place during her sessions and had to rely on the sitters' or researchers' reports, so she was not really in the best position to evaluate what was going on. The ESP theory was favored by some researchers, and she presumably picked it up from them.

[tsavo]

@Ray [Re: Patience Worth]:
"...she gave no verifiable details about her existence and only said "I be me and she be she"..."

Pretty much the way Seth described himself WRT Jane Roberts, except for also claiming previous reincarnational entanglement.

It's worth noting that Edgar Cayce's medical diagnosis capability seems no less amazing than Patience Worth's literary skills, but did not appear to require spirit involvement. There were also the famous healers Ambrose and Olga Worral, who didn't even need trance to directly heal individuals. Where did the paranormal abilities of these individuals derive? Who knows, but the simplest thing would be to say they're accessing a single source.

Also, savant capabilities in art, mathematics, and music can occur spontaneously as well as deriving from birth. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine "savant psychic capabilities" arising in individuals as well.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Ray:
I have to say that I agree with you concerning Professor Braude and his comments about Patience Worth in his book Immortal Remains. Although he may be a very erudite professor of philosophy and has written several books, I don’t think that he has presented the final word about the origins of the Patience Worth/Pearl Curran phenomenon. He quotes Schiller and agrees with him that “it is safer to credit Patience Worth to the unconscious and to classify her, officially, as Mrs. Curran’s secondary self.” I suppose this means that one can maintain one’s status and credibility as an intellectual by crediting Patience Worth to Pearl Curran’s unconscious rather than to acknowledge that Patience Worth may be an entity separate from Pearl Curran.

Braude’s often referenced discourse on Patience Worth in Immortal Remains is, however, one of the better ones, confounded I think, when he associates the Patience Worth with Hélène Smith, Rosemary Brown, Luiz Gasparetto, Frederic Thompson, and Fernando Pessoa drawing upon his perceived differences or similarities between those mediums to explain Pearl Curran. In his concluding remarks, Professor Braude seems as perplexed and duplicitous about Patience Worth as most others who have studied this case. He says that "a survivalist interpretation of the case simply leaves too great a residue of mysteries.”

[tsavo]

@AOD
" I suppose this means that one can maintain one’s status and credibility as an intellectual by crediting Patience Worth to Pearl Curran’s unconscious rather than to acknowledge that Patience Worth may be an entity separate from Pearl Curran."

This seems unnecessarily dismissive. Does what you've read of Stephen Braude lead you to believe he is dishonest intellectually and that would do this to protect his perceived status, or this a blanket statement to be applied to anyone that does not accept spirit entities?

"In his concluding remarks, Professor Braude seems as perplexed and duplicitous about Patience Worth as most others who have studied this case. He says that "a survivalist interpretation of the case simply leaves too great a residue of mysteries.”

Again, "...duplicitous..." seems a bit harsh. Then you also don't accept that he might truly have felt there was "...too great a residue of mysteries" in this case?

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Tsavo:
I appreciate your insights. Obviously I don’t know what Professor Braude may “truly have felt” so I can’t respond to your query. I only know what he has written in his book Immortal Remains and while I think his dissertation is thoughtful I personally do not agree with everything he states regarding Patience Worth and Pearl Curran. Throughout the dissertation he provides many thoughts and opinions about this case, some of them conflicting. He does a good job presenting several possibilities which makes his treatise a good one. His concluding remarks state that “The Patience Worth case seems no less mysterious today than it did initially.”

In the last paragraph in the chapter he states:

“Thus, the Patience Worth case illustrates why we must take very seriously non-survivalist interpretations of more evidential cases. If Pearl Curran could tap into the latent creative capacities needed to produce the Patience Worth scripts, and if she could use her psychic abilities to access obscure but relevant chunks of historical and linguistic information, then presumably similar feats can occur in cases where verified information is provided about a previous personality. So the Patience Worth case reminds us that we should be alert to the superficial treatments of the evidence…and also very circumspect in rejecting non-survivalist explanations of the better cases. Moreover, and perhaps most important, the case is a humbling reminder that there’s much still to learn about the human mind.”

As you can read, Braude regards the case as one of the "more evidential" cases and a "humbling reminder that there’s much still to learn about the human mind." Yes, if Pearl could psychically “access obscure chunks of historical and linguistic information” and if she could “tap into her latent creative capacities, then perhaps that is an explanation. But is my mind those are big “IFs” and two that have not been explained.

[tsavo]

@AOD,
Cool. Much more objective assessment of Braude. Never a good idea to assign motives to people without justification. Probably not even then. Analytical disagreement OTOH is always a path toward better understanding.

[Barbara]

The search for the objective truth of evidence is in vain, like the old search for the absolutes of classical physics.

The quantum truth is in probabilities, based on what most people think, and probabilities change when the collective mind changes.

[someone]

Also another interesting thought. Many researchers of Victorian Mediumship believe that if Mrs. Lenoard had as much recording and was studied as hard as Mrs. Piper, she, not Mrs.Piper would be labelled as the strongest medium in know hisotry

[tsavo]

@Barbara,

"The search for the objective truth of evidence is in vain, like the old search for the absolutes of classical physics."

Haha, not at all in vain. The search for absolutes in classical physics led to quantum physics. Therefore not in vain. The reward was greater understanding.

[Juan]

Michael, I think that resolves the tension here between reports of NDEs and reports of ADCs, because people who report their NDEs are referring to a four-dimensional disembodied state, but now they are in three dimensions, while the spirits of mediumistic sessions must project into three dimensions and they show a funnel effect, that is, they have to reduce their minds to control the medium. And this solution is not ad hoc because it follows certain mediumistic communications.

It's worth noting that Edgar Cayce's medical diagnosis capability seems no less amazing than Patience Worth's literary skills, but did not appear to require spirit involvement. There were also the famous healers Ambrose and Olga Worral, who didn't even need trance to directly heal individuals. Where did the paranormal abilities of these individuals derive?

This proves that the involvement of spirits of the deceased is not necessary to demonstrate certain anomalous skills, but does not prove that in some cases of anomalous skills there are not departed spirits involved. But is not it simpler to say that all cases of anomalous skills are secundary personalities and unconscious creativity? No, because as I wrote on another occasion, if we take into account all the other evidence and the past of the mediums, the most plausible is that in some cases mediums make contact with spirits of the deceased.